[Opinion] What's your opinion on Wicca?

[Fish man]

I feel like some Wiccan practice could labelled as appropriation.

 

[NecromanticFox]

Overall, I don’t think it’s necessarily inherently “bad”, but I do agree that some things could be appropriation. I’ve noticed that commonly a lot of new-agey books of “Wicca” tend to pluck from closed practices like Vodou and Hoodoo, so a lot of those who are new may not be familiar with it enough to have that discrepancy. I know there has been lists made with authors that had books like that so people knew what to avoid.

 

[Firetree]

'' Some '' ?

 

[asger]

Why do you think 'appropriation' is a bad thing?
You can use whatever you like and desire, knowledge is there to be learnt and experienced, not to ignored due to its origin in cultures other than your own.
If that was the case, majority of western occultism wouldn't exist in same form it exists today.
A lot of religions or traditions of magic are syncretic after all.

This is of course only my opinion, not absolute truth

 

[Firetree]

It doesnt appear that anyone here is saying appropriation is a bad thing - one poster commented that Wicca is not inherently bad .

 

[Ohana]

The problem becomes when they don't say thats what their taking it from and parrot it as their own unique thing.

If Wicca does have some spirtual roots with Vodou then they should say that. Or else it just looks like their taking from a disenfranchised group and saying it came only from them so they aren't associated with that group. Further fueling the myth of a certain culture being superior to another's.

When you take from every other culture and say its actually yours now then I guess that culture had nothing and it was yours all along.

Great.

They could atleast say which source they're taking each practice from and even ask the culture if its okay to use this source of culture so they can take it with another and create thier own practice. Of course with credit to them as being a part of their culture too.

 

[FireBorn]

Challenge: Name one modern occult practice/lineage that hasn't borrowed, adapted, or straight-up lifted from somewhere else over time. I'll wait.

I built an occult timeline going back to 10k BCE chasing 'pure' currents, and guess what? None exist. Everything evolves, syncretizes, changes. Wicca's no exception. Gardner mashed British folk, Crowley, etc., and later waves grabbed more (sometimes sloppily, credit where due).

Wicca isn't a more or less mashed up soup of stuff anymore than Thelema, LHP, RHP, Enochian, Witchcraft, Kabbalah, Demonolatry, whatever your sacred cow is.

Since when is appropriation a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing if its a mixed bag of stuff? Why is it a bad thing? Maybe that's the real question here.

Not your path? Fair. But it clicks for some, and that's what matters. Results over purity tests and popularity contests. Its only stupid if it doesn't work.

And for the record, it isn't my jam either. Doesn't mean it doesn't work for others though. YMMV

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

Well it was founded by one man who was in other magickal groups before and wanted to have his own.

My view on Gardener is really mixed (to not say bad) Even though he allowed new "green" spirituality to emerge .... I still see him as a sexist man who just wanted to be around naked beautiful and young women.

 

[FireBorn]

Well it was founded by one man who was in other magickal groups before and wanted to have his own.

My view on Gardener is really mixed (to not say bad) Even though he allowed new "green" spirituality to emerge .... I still see him as a sexist man who just wanted to be around naked beautiful and young women.

If that is your disqualifier, please dont look into Thelema or Enochian, as an easy example. Mathers and Crowley did exactly that to create Enochian Magick and Thelema respectively. That was my main point here.

Most of what we think we know about the occult is smoke and mirrors. When I say 'occult' I mean the systems and books and grimoires we put entirely too much emphasis on.

The systems we know about and follow, the grimoires are only scaffolding to get to spirit, or perform actual magick. Nothing more, nothing less. The magick is the point, not the system. YMMV on what system you resonate with most. BUT that doesn't mean system purity, or effectiveness. This is the hard part for us all.

There is enough bullshit in and around the occult with mystique and fantasy. The magick is so fucking cool, it doesn't need all the extra fluff. Its like magick being the cake, and the fantasy, half truths, mystique being the cheap icing. Over time that icing has gotten so thick people aren't getting to the cake. Fighting over which system is pure and which ones are bad. This was one of my drivers to do my deep dive into the occult timeline. I wanted to see the history for myself. Where this whole thing came from and how it moved through time. Fuuuuuuck, what a ride and I am nowhere near done with it.

Maybe Gardner was sexist, maybe not. I mean Id love to be around naked beautiful women too, but I'm not going to make an occult system to do it... this year (KIDDING!)

 

[supremecoyote]

I respect it bc everyone has their own path. Even if it differs from mine. Not a fan of gardener or the 3 folds law, but if it's not my cup of tea I don't have to drink it.

 

[ashlesha]

I've recently come to see it as ceremonial witchcraft. It's so heavily inspired from ceremonial forms from Thelema and the Golden Dawn that the folk elements become the actual cool innovation to the way that sort of magic is practiced. I'm okay with it taking from hoodoo or whatever other traditions, that's just part of how new systems develop. My understanding is that Wicca was huge from the 70s-2000s, but that now is being looked at as a sort of "pop-occult" fad by elitists who value academic grimoires and older forms of magic as a way to legitimize their interest. In trying to legitimize themselves, they've become the wannabe pop-occult. Go figure!

I believe that systems, deities, and spirits carry unique currents that WANT to be expressed in our world. The inspiration and draw we feel before we know anything about it are these currents calling to us. Sometimes it's symbiotic, sometimes neutral, and sometimes parasitic. I believe that wicca leans neutral-good, as I don't really see the average wiccan prospering, but their metric of prosperity is usually lower for being into arts and crafts as their profession. The magicians and magical systems I see prospering the most are those more philosophically & academically inclined, but there are also so many predisposing socioeconomic factors that play into this that make the whole outlook very obvious.

 

[glaive]

Here's some stuff that has annoyed me personally about Wicca in the past....

• Gardner drawing a lot of inspo from Margaret Murray's
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  , which is largely discredited in academia. I don't care about this that much anymore, but when I was a high schooler very into "historical accuracy" and reconstructionism, this is what pissed me off the most lmao. Now I am more of the opinion expressed already in this thread, that most if not all religious groups make an appeal to historicity as a way to legitimize their practice (Another example of this is apostolic succession in Catholic/Orthodox and a few other churches).
  • I also think it's a bit frustrating that they make this appeal to some sort of magical current underneath Christianized history, but afaik don't really engage with European folk magic practices because they have been Christianized. Like, idk, an 18th c charm to stop thieves from making off with your cows isn't less magical just because it invokes the virgin Mary instead of some ur-goddess.
• Wiccans assuming their belief system is universal in all occult/pagan spheres. This isn't as much of a problem now, but in high school/college I would have people warning me of the threefold law as if it was an objective Thing in other systems.
• Wiccans I knew in general making historical claims that are easily falsifiable with a little bit of research. I had an English teacher (!!) telling me that the inverted pentagram was made up specifically to persecute Wiccans.
• Very dualistic/complementarian view of gender. By no means is this specific to Wicca but I do find it funny when "countercultural" spiritualities reinforce very mainstream beliefs in the neutrality of the nuclear family, heterosexuality, etc.

I've recently come to see it as ceremonial witchcraft. It's so heavily inspired from ceremonial forms from Thelema and the Golden Dawn that the folk elements become the actual cool innovation to the way that sort of magic is practiced

100%!! I think if it had advertised itself as "ceremonial witchcraft" I would've been more forgiving of it when I first went to research it. I also agree that it was viewed as a "pop-occult" fad in the 2000s/2010s, since a lot of easily available occult books would be branded as Wiccan, and in some spaces there was a general assumption that if you did ANY magic you were Wiccan or at least Wiccan-adjacent. There's been a bit of a pushback since, and the currents move on, though, so now if I see someone who labels themselves as Wiccan it's more likely that they are doing "ceremonial witchcraft", even BTW, and aren't just someone who picked up a Llewellyn Book of Shadows from Barnes & Noble. (And no shade to the latter! Everyone's gotta start somewhere! But maybe think before you label yourself as an adherent of a particular craft, especially if it's one with a specific background--like Wiccan or Thelemite, vs broader terms such as ceremonial witch, occultist, etc.)