[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
  Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
  , 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.)

 

[Aldebaran]

Wicca deservedly gets a bad rap among occultists. Especially if you look at LoA and Love and Light Wicca from 5-10 years ago.

BUT... lets give credit where credit is deserved. Without wicca growing in massive popularity and becoming mainstream in the 90's, magick as we know it today would not be as prevalent or normalized. Scott Cunningham and Neve Campbell did more for Magick in modern times then Uncle Crowley (lol - i said it)

We are literally standing on the roads that Wicca paved for us. Thanks Nature Moon Goddess of the Holy Gaia Night Light on the Full Moon.

 

[art-vark2323]

I practice it as ceremonial witchcraft, which I've seen other people use in this thread. It has problems, but nothing I can't compare to other religions at the end of the day! I think abandoning my religion and my witchcraft practice for some of these problems would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater for me. You have to find what works for you and go with it. I don't generally follow newer Wiccan trends and mostly focus on BTW with my own additions or changes. Lots of traditional covens advertise this to seekers now because times have changed and they want to stay up to date and welcoming-- that's what I noticed while searching for one in the places they connect with seekers. Some even have personal websites with reading lists for potential initiates.

I stay away from appropriative material because it doesn't usually fit my vibe anyways and there are plenty of ways to get something I need done without it. That said, I don't think too hard about if other people are using it because it's not worth the time. You might benefit from that! The world is big and full of people who will do things you disapprove of every day. It's better to worry less about something you can't control and focus on what you can and that's how I approach the topic of appropriation in Wicca.

 

[rekker]

There happen so much to wicca in last 70 years that it is hard to keep it short. There were some ups and downs, but after all there wouldn't be magickal revival as we can experience rn whithout wicca in the '70 and '90 no other thing in western occult and esoteric scene (outside new age) provoke so many people

For traditional british wicca had come hard times again after pandemic time, but i bet traditinal covens in general survive. Solitairy and ecclectic wicca of '90 and is well there is so many new titles published and selfpublished every year that there is no ona who can read'em all.

With every wave of newcommers there happens some bashing chains in social media but in general times are hard so wicca will be the answer to many. But i see no new 'celebrities' among wiccans. I think that era has ended and there will be more people around but no big fish any more.

 

[Denise13]

Gerald Gardner, who invented Wicca along with Doreen Valiente, did indeed appropriate a lot, but mostly from Western Ceremonial Magic.

Wicca has been the face of occultism to the wider Western occult community for a long time now, and has therefore been useful to inspire many potential occultists. It's largely a religion with its own rules, but serves those who follow it as much as any other system.

 

[rekker]

Gerald Gardner, who invented Wicca along with Doreen Valiente, did indeed appropriate a lot, but mostly from Western Ceremonial Magic.

I am not sure if word appropriate is appropriate in that case. Gardner was running with some off-shot rosicrucians and he had some entry degree in OTO so it is natural that what he got was based in ceremonial western magick. Doreen throw out most of the Crowley quotes and wrote her own poetry to that corpus. And they both were very much into local folklore. It is good to remeber that first versions of Book of Shadows were few handwritten pages. Lot of ceremonial stuff came later especially in Alex Sander's covens.

Also in the first half of XX century, ceremonial stuff, spiritualists stuff and theosophical stuff altoghether with egyptomania and later avalon and arthuromania were intertwined so thightly and occult scene so small that it was impossible to find pure bred. At least this is how i see it.

 

[Aerith]

Wicca is a fine gateway for the uninitiated to "bend" nature. But for those who have walked the Aethyrs with Dee or dined with the gods in the desert, it remains a charming, if somewhat shallow, nursery for the soul. It is the difference between a garden pond and the abyss.

 

[MorganBlack]

I say magician are magpies - "appropriate" away - but also honor the people who came before you, and whose stuff you're taking.

I was just talking about a bit of this here.

[Help] - Recipe for black art oil

Hello fellow travelers of the occult corridors.Does anyone has a recipe for black art oil ,hex oil or any oil for mallefica workings.Asking for a friend 😂

wizardforums.com

I like Wiccans. I even like Gardner. Also, not my thing. Latino here, and Brujeria is more my jam. And no, we do not walk in Gardner’s footsteps. Wiccans have been "appropriating" Brujeria and Hoodoo recipes since the late 1970's to early 1980's. Wicca was originally more a system of mysticism than sorcery. All good.

Religious and esoteric syncretism is pretty cool. Look at Alexandria, where most of our 'trad magic' flows from. Magicians are magpies. So this I don't see any issues - if history is not erased to spread fakelore. (This is different from one's own personal-use internal myths, and sometimes happens when a group is trying to "own magic" by rewriting history. )

What I dislike is when an idea gets unmoored from the flow of time and sort of 'sits' over everything under it as a totalizing idea. Before the internet, it was common for Wiccans to outright make the bald-faced claims that 'Gardner taught Crowley.' They had already hoovered up Brujeria in the late 1970's from a few white pagans hanging with Latinos from the New York and Houston, Texas (and a couple even working in Botanicas adn writing books) .

All good but fast forward all that was forgotted and quickly glossed over to sell pagan books (and make what I mock as "The Pagism"), so that they could make money selling the low-infomation claim that Van Van oil 'really is' pagan - and effectively erasing the actual history of the African American experience. Erasure of the history of brown-skinned people is the crime, not the use of magical recipes.

What I do not like is Wicca and modern paganism trying to claim an ancient pedigree to 'jump ahead' of everyone by spreading misinformation. That was maybe excusable when all this spread by word of mouth, but now we have the internet, and this misinformation overgrowth needs pruning back sometimes. have fun, but don't pollute the intellectual common we are all drinking from. It is no longer acceptable.

 

[giusma]

without going too far into the subject of appropriation, it just seems like the romantic version of witchcraft