Hi guest! As you can see, the new Wizard Forums has been revived, and we are glad to have you visiting our site! However, it would be really helpful, both to you and us, if you registered on our website! Registering allows you to see all posts, and make posts yourself, which would be great if you could share your knowledge and opinions with us! You could also make posts to ask questions!
Let's keep this thread about Wicca specifically. Also, @Angelkesfarl it would be cool if you translated and shared one of those 4000 secret books instead of quoting snippets from them as replies to old threads.
"Indeed, I have translated for you from verified personal practices (or successful field experiments), not from a book, two sections detailing the Spirits by their correct, potent names, yet nothing has happened to anyone. I am writing entirely from my own mind and am not copying from any other source."
I used to be Wiccan for quite a while, but eventually left because the Epicurean paradox kept following me, but that's a whole other can of worms. I agree with the others here that it's a good point of contact between "normies" and the occult, given that it takes up the most space relatively speaking in the public consciousness of the western world.
I would caution against saying a path is BS. There’s a whole spectrum of practice out there, and even the fluffy, more New-Age-adjacent stuff often has a clear purpose: supporting the practitioner’s health and wellbeing. Basic energy work, meditation, and small rituals that mostly boost serotonin and dopamine can still be genuinely helpful. Is that the same thing as full-on spirit work? No, not even close. But in terms of personal change, the results can be just as meaningful.
Now, if the conversation shifts to influencing others or the external, material world, that’s where the difference becomes obvious. Whether we call those gentler methods “magic” depends on how tightly we define the word, but they do fall under the broad idea of shaping one’s life through subtle means. And honestly, if a practice helps someone improve their life and feel more whole, I’m not inclined to take that away from them.
I'm not Wiccan and never have been, and I have plenty of critiques of Wicca, neopaganism and modern pagan reconstructionism for trying to absorb all magic into itself, crap history , retconning of misinformation to claim original ownership in some fantasy idealized verson of history where "actually" they originally came up with other people's magical tech. It's was just more Anglo-Saxon Neo-colonialism, in my more Latino view.
But for the best glimpse, in my opinion, at a very sincere , honest, and grounded attempt to travel the modern pagan 'witchcraft' path, I highly recommend Diana Helmuth's The Witching Year. You might end up cheering for her as I did.
A few chapters in I could tell with her deep sincerity it would all eventually click for her , as she re-writes her dysfunctional subconsious self, and it might just activate a mystic luminosity that would transform her.
On the level of magical and mystical technology Wicca and paganism = New Thought + Romantic nature mysticism + academic speculation, but who cares? New Thought is totally legit , works, and does not matter if that person needs pagan gods and hippie pagan poetry to make it click for them.
And who knows, maybe something Eternal speaks behind the Wiccan and neopagan names and forms? That is up to them to discover, not me or anyone , to say what it 'really' is.
Amazon Description: Diana Helmuth, thirty-three, is skeptical of organized religion. She is also skeptical of disorganized religion. But, more than anything, she is tired of God being dead. So, she decides to try on the fastest growing, self-directed faith in America: Witchcraft. The result is...
Wicca is a religion that honors a Goddess and a God (mainly one Goddess and God archetype). Individual practitioners may however have more than one God or Goddess in their pantheon. Magic is a practice that is connected but can be separate from the veneration and worship of those deities. It has a rich history depending on the lineage and has its roots in Freemasonry and the HOGD and adjoining systems.
Post automatically merged:
Just to follow-up. Don't start/stop at Margaret Murray. There's a lot of issues with her scholarship/methods. I recommend the following books to give anyone a historical picture of Wicca, specifically the Gardnerian line. Note: none of the books below presents a perfect picture of Wicca's history, but together they do illuminate the history behind the movement and religion.
Adler, M. (2017). Drawing down the moon. In Religion Today: A Reader (pp. 250-252). Routledge.
Heselton, P. (2000). Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Capall Bann Publishing.
Hutton, R. (2019). The triumph of the moon: A history of modern pagan witchcraft. Oxford University Press.
Gen-X magician here, so I was there for the 1980's and 1990's explosion of Wicca. The now discredited Murryite Hypothesis - that witchcraft was a matrilineal pagan survival - was where Wicca at the time did start and stop. I thought it was true too, we all did, but I had not formulated my mythic universe around it.
I had read Prof Hutton's Triumph of the Moon when it came out, and it was a gut punch to the neopagans. Many people had their hearts broken. Many have wandered away, or are still wandering in the wilderness. I also like some of the neopaganisms and Witchcrafts v2.0 that have sprung up in it's wake, others not so much.
Signal boosting the excellent Prof. Ronald Hutton. I think he feels a little bad for nuking Wicca from space, and is trying to help out a bit
Just a quick correction to your list. Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon was published in 1999, not 2019. That was when Wicca fell apart and began searching for a new founding myth.
Aidan A. Kelly's book, Crafting the Art of Magic, was published in 199 . I read it in 1995 and it was the first time I had gotten the sense the story of pre-Christian religion and belief that Anglophone academia has been spreading since the 1800's was not totally accurate. Hutton's book in 1999 was the killing blow.
Gen-X magician here, so I was there for the 1980's and 1990's explosion of Wicca. The now discredited Murryite Hypothesis - that witchcraft was a matrilineal pagan survival - was where Wicca at the time did start and stop. I thought it was true too, we all did, but I had not formulated my mythic universe around it.
I had read Prof Hutton's Triumph of the Moon when it came out, and it was a gut punch to the neopagans. Many people had their hearts broken. Many have wandered away, or are still wandering in the wilderness. I also like some of the neopaganisms and Witchcrafts v2.0 that have sprung up in it's wake, others not so much.
Signal boosting the excellent Prof. Ronald Hutton. I think he feels a little bad for nuking Wicca from space, and is trying to help out a bit
Just a quick correction to your list. Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of the Moon was published in 1999, not 2019. That was when Wicca fell apart and began searching for a new founding myth.
Aidan A. Kelly's book, Crafting the Art of Magic, was published in 199 . I read it in 1995 and it was the first time I had gotten the sense the story of pre-Christian religion and belief that Anglophone academia has been spreading since the 1800's was not totally accurate. Hutton's book in 1999 was the killing blow.
