Wicca.

[Ninurta]

Yes, that's all very interesting, but the burning question everyone here on Rogue Nation wish an answer to is:
Even though you said you had no interest in it, did you dance naked in the wood with this female?

.............................................

A gentleman never tells...

The thing is -as you've pointed out, this 'religion' isn't very old, although it seems an ideal faith for the sixties in California!
An author can basically write anything as the Wiccan craze grew back then, but I suppose it's a unique harmless way of
meeting women.

Indeed - an added bonus is the women you meet are in the moonlight, and already naked!

What passes for wicca these days really isn't very old, at all. Now, all religions had to begin somewhere (the cult of Zeus was born around 5000 years ago in northern Greece, probably as an ancestor worship of a mortal human who later became deified - so there was a time when even ancient Greek religion was brand-spankin' new), so that's not an absolute bar, but they've co-opted the name and place of an already existent religion, and made stuff up on the fly and referred to their fantasies as "traditions", as if they have a much longer history than they actually do. In short, they are trying to replace, remake, and reform something that is not theirs to screw with.

It would be the same thing if I declared myself a Muslim, then wrote a book about our Islamic traditions of eating an entire pig on Thursdays, starting with the tail and ending with the snout... or if I were to declare myself a Christian, then write a book expositing our traditional habit of having orgies in the church basement on the second Tuesday of every month, or if I declared myself a Buddhist and then wrote a book about our main religious objective to rid the world of all life... It ain't right, and it flies in the face of the Leftist gripes that folks are appropriating the cultures of others. That is PRECISELY what these "wiccans" are doing, even though the vast majority of them ARE left-wingers!

As far as I can tell, ALL modern "wiccans" are Gardnerian, despite their attempts to distance themselves by using terms like "Seax-wicca". Almost all ancient cultures in both the old world and the new had witches, albeit with different practices, and "wicca" was the term used by Saxons for their own witches. Therefore, "Seax-wicca" would be closest to correct(except that a "seax" or "sceax" was just a really big knife, not a nationality), and except that it has no concept of actual Saxon wicca. So modern wiccans are employing a term for a particular form of witchery, but culling their practices from other forms (predominantly Celtic it appears) with some Catholic Christianity thrown on for a ceremonial flavor... and then there is the other "stuff" they practice and write about, which is wholly imaginary, the product of fertile, but diseased, minds. I believe one of your references spoke of their similarity to Druidism, albeit of the modern variety (which is not really Drudic, either), which serves to show how they try to steal OTHER religions to incorporate into their own.

While most modern "wiccan covens" are pretty eclectic, Dianic Wicca is not. It is tailor-made for hagged out Feminist husks of what used to pass as "female", before their disease took them. Other "covens" worship a duality, a "horned" god and a "moon" goddess... Dianics do not. They worship ONLY a female deity. Other "wiccans" have both male and female membership and hierarchy. Dianics do not. they are exclusively female, and do not admit male members (oh, that "male members" didn't sound good, did it? - No matter, they don't admit those either). Dianics worship 20th century Feminism pretty much, personified as a "goddess", and co-opting the names of ancient goddesses to try to gain some legitimacy. They are becoming a haven for lesbians to have get-togethers. One of their main ritual focuses is to "purge themselves of the Patriarchy".

In contrast, the witches I've known do not limit themselves to 2 deities - they have main deities - sometimes more, sometimes fewer - and a plethora of "spirit forces" for lack of a better term. Actual witches do not deny the duality of human kind, and are inclusive of both genders as necessary for the continuance and quality of life. They also are not as rigidly ritualistic as "wiccans". I never knew one to possess an athame, for instance, or find one necessary or even useful for much of anything other than self-defense. They certainly don't use such ritually. I've never heard of one having a "craft name". They don't need robes - they wear what they wear, or not, as the occasion may arise. They do not write books to pass on their knowledge - it is passed down only by the spoken word, never the written. It's my understanding that it's done that way for the same reasons that it was done that way millennia ago - so that outsiders could not co-opt the religion, or gain access to any "power" they might have, and so that the uninitiated would not injure themselves by trying to do things or interact with the spirit world in ways that they were absolutely not ready for.

Nowdays, anyone can just "buy the book" and presto! they're a "witch"!

All in all, I have no real gripes with wiccans EXCEPT their attempts to co-opt a religion that is far older, and far different, than what they are attempting to reform it into. If they'd rename themselves to something else (something like "New Age Hex-Tossers" would work fine, and be descriptive, too!), more in line with their newly invented religion, so as not to be trying to remake what is not theirs to remake, I'd have no gripes at all.

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