Portal:Wicca
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Culture · Geography · Health · History · Mathematics · Nature · Philosophy · Religion · Society · Technology
|
 He claimed that the religion, of which he was an initiate, was a modern survival of an old witchcraft religion, which had existed in secret for hundreds of years, originating in the pre-Christian paganism of Europe. Wicca is thus sometimes referred to as Wiccanism ("teaching of the sages") the Old Religion, or the New Religion of the Old Gods. 
 Some Wiccans see the Goddess as pre-eminent, since she contains and conceives all; the God is the spark of life and inspiration within her, simultaneously her lover and her child. This is reflected in the traditional structure of the coven. In some traditions, notably feminist Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is seen as complete unto herself, and the God is not worshipped at all. Wicca is essentially an immanent religion, and for some Wiccans, this idea also involves elements of animism. A key belief in Wicca is that the goddesses and gods are able to manifest in personal form, most importantly through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests via the ritual of Drawing down the Moon (or Drawing down the Sun). According to Gardner, the gods of Wicca are ancient gods of the British Isles: a Horned God and a Great Mother goddess. Gardner also states that a being higher than any of these tribal gods is recognised by the witches as Prime Mover, but remains unknowable. Patricia Crowther has called this supreme godhead Dryghten. Some Wiccans have a monotheistic belief in the Goddess and God as One. Many have a duotheistic conception of deity as a Goddess (of Moon, Earth and sea) and a God (of forest, hunting and the animal realm). This concept is often extended into a kind of polytheism by the belief that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are aspects of this pair (or of the Goddess alone). Others hold the various gods and goddesses to be separate and distinct. Still others do not believe in the gods as real personalities, but see them as archetypes or thoughtforms. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have observed that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic as it matures, and embracing a more traditional pagan world-view. Beliefs in the afterlife vary among Wiccans, though some support reincarnation. Reincarnation is a traditional Wiccan teaching - Raymond Buckland holds that a soul always reincarnates into the same species, though this belief is not universal. Donald H. Frew is a Wiccan Elder and High Priest of Coven Trismegiston in Berkeley, California. He is one of two National Interfaith representatives for the Covenant of the Goddess. He is active with a number of interfaith groups, and has served with the Parliament Assembly of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the Global Council of the United Religions Initiative, the board of directors of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio of San Francisco, and the Expressing the United Religions Initiative in Music and the Arts. Frew is the founder and director of the Lost and Endangered Religions Project, focused on preserving and restoring the religious traditions of marginal communities. Frew has written articles on the history and origins of Wicca and witchcraft, including a critique of Aidan Kelly's Crafting the Art of Magic; Kelly had been initiated into Gardnerian Wicca in Frew's coven. Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals of the Irish calendar, celebrated either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring. Originally dedicated to the goddess Brighid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid's Day. In Scotland the festival is also known as Latha Fhèill Brìghde, in Ireland as Lá Fhéile Bríde, and in Wales as Gwyl Ffraed. While in the Northern Hemisphere Imbolc is conventionally celebrated on 1 February, in the Southern hemisphere it is sometimes celebrated on the calendar date, but those who see it primarily as a celebration of spring may move it to 1 August. Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to Groundhog Day.
"Wicca has been, up until the past decade or so, a closed religion, but no more. The inner components of Wicca are available to anyone who can read and has the proper wit to understand the material. Wicca's only secrets are its individual ritual forms, spells, names of deities and so on."
...that because Wicca is a season based religion, many people in the Southern Hemisphere celebrate holidays in opposing times of the year, compared with the Northern Hemisphere? Project Neopaganism |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
