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 Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 10:22 am
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Efstathios The Indubitable Katie-Kat Wicca is a dithiestic fertility cult created by Gerald Gardner in the fifties with influences from multiple religions. It is an oathbound mystery religion that worships the Lord and Lady of the Isles, and requires initiation for access to the mysteries and the true names of the God and Goddess. To be a Wiccan, one must find a coven. A true Wiccan coven will be able to trace its lineage back to Gardner unless they were initiated by the Lord and Lady in which case they would be able to verify their initiation with the true names of the Lord and Lady. Covens do not initiate people under eighteen without a parental waiver because one must be of legal age for sexual activity due to the nature of the Great Rite, and of legal age to sign a contract so that a member cannot disclose any oathbound information. What's more, Wiccans do indeed believe in the Christian Hell. In his 161 Laws of Wicca, Gerald stated that oathbreakers condemn themselves to the Christian Hell. Go to the M&R FAQ on Wicca for more information: Wiccan FAQI'm sorry, but that simply isn't true. What's more most practitioners no longer practice sky-clad and the Great Rite is usually symbolic rather than literal.
Care to prove that?
Quote: I am a hedgewitch and a shaman by bloodright. Wicca is not a fertility cult and there are no secrets.
How can you be a shaman through blood right? Don't you have to learn it first?
Quote: The only religion I know of with an age limit is Satanism and that's only in the case of membership to the church of Satan.
Lavey Satanism you're talking about, hopefully. xP
Quote: If you want to know anything about actual Wicca, I reccomend The fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. Or Power Of The Witch by Laurie Cabot. Starhawk's is a Utopian book, I would love to live in the village in the north in here book, it's too wonderful. Cabot's work is more matter-of-fact and is more instructional.
If you really want to know the truth about a fertility cult I suggest you read the works of Gerald Gardner who made the religion through a bunch of other different practices.
Some of his books can be found online here: This seems like a good source to me.
Quote: Also Wiccans know that the Christian Hell is a mere astral world that some Christians enter directly after death, but most don't stay there. Perhaps you are confusing Christian hell with an idea more like C.S. Lewis's Grey Town.
Where do you get this information from?
What book said that, and how sure are you that oath breakers to the coven don't pass there after death?
It was in the 161 laws, how could you deny it? |
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Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 2:14 pm
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wicca is a pagan religion, therefore, nothing is definate in my eyes. since only one rule is laid, "An ye harm none do what ye wilt" one is not forced to believe anything really, minus that of what they wish. if you want to worship a goddess and god, do so, if you would rather just cast magick, do so.
i believe it is about aknowledging yourself wth the world around you, through magick and the goddess, but many wiccans dont believe in a goddess. when you think about it, all religons are the same, they all try to answer the same questions, and all branch from shamanism.
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Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 8:13 pm
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Angel of Evernight wicca is a pagan religion, therefore, nothing is definate in my eyes. since only one rule is laid, "An ye harm none do what ye wilt" one is not forced to believe anything really, minus that of what they wish. if you want to worship a goddess and god, do so, if you would rather just cast magick, do so. i believe it is about aknowledging yourself wth the world around you, through magick and the goddess, but many wiccans dont believe in a goddess. when you think about it, all religons are the same, they all try to answer the same questions, and all branch from shamanism.
Are you sure about that?
All different paganistic religions, unless you're an eclectic, have different dogmas.
Wicca has 161 Laws. Not just one.
All Wiccans have to believe in a goddess, and a god, because they worship the God and Goddess of the Isles. Whoever they may be, because their names are only avaliable to the innitiated.
This is for Gardener's Wicca though. Seax and Dianic I've heard, are ones you're able to be a solitary practitioner of.
It's not a syncretistic religion.
Not all religions branch from Shamanism because Shamanism means you contact with other worldly spirits, not all religions believe in other worldly spirits or that they're contactable.
And not all religions are the same, though some may be similar, because they all have different practices. |
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 12:33 am
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How am I supposed to prove what loads of private individuals across at least two contintents do in small groups? No one I know practices sky clad except for when preforming the great rite, which is, as far as I know, never done in the flesh during a coven ritual.
There are plenty of books about Wicca, try the ones reccomended earlier in the thread. Wicca: A guide for the Solitary Practitioner is a good one and it supports the assertions I made.
riku4245 Quote: I am a hedgewitch and a shaman by bloodright. Wicca is not a fertility cult and there are no secrets. How can you be a shaman through blood right? Don't you have to learn it first? Quote: The only religion I know of with an age limit is Satanism and that's only in the case of membership to the church of Satan. Lavey Satanism you're talking about, hopefully. xP
My father had powers and told me that because I was the first born I would also have these powers, and that my sister would have them to a lesser degree. It's different from what you would know as shamanism. I have been trained mainly in dreams and by spirit guides, not by a physical being. I have a master now though and will begin training as soon as I can.
I'm talking about whichever kind of Satanism the Church of Satan prescribes to, I am not a Satanist and have not studied it extensively.
riku4245 If you really want to know the truth about a fertility cult I suggest you read the works of Gerald Gardner who made the religion through a bunch of other different practices. Some of his books can be found online here: This seems like a good source to me.
If I wanted to know about a fertility cult I would, I was happy being a Wiccan though, Gardnerian witches have this habit of thinking Gardner invented Wicca. The basis of Wicca is the the Wiccan Rede and the threefold law, the experiential mysteries and true names of deities can be learned from the deities themselves.
riku4245 Where do you get this information from? What book said that, and how sure are you that oath breakers to the coven don't pass there after death? It was in the 161 laws, how could you deny it?
I am not a Gardnerian witch, I do not believe in the 161 laws. I believe in only one law. I would think that anyone able to travel the astral realm could learn this, that astral worlds are only astral worlds and cease to exist as soon as someone stops projecting them. Some people, not necessarily all Wiccan, believe that the Earth itself is an astral world. There are many accounts of objects manifesting in the "physical" realm after being created in the astral plane.
This isn't a matter only of religion, there is real power.
Besides, if you were going to the Hell of the Christians that'd actually mean you'd end up in heaven because Christians don't go to Hell. |
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Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 1:19 am
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If you really want to get down to it, all religions came from animism. It's been changed and refined, bits have been cut away and bits have been added.
All religions have a couple things in common though, the inability of the believer to accept that the world is a product of random chance and that they will cease to exist.
The need of the believer to feel that they have supernatural abilities, whether these abilities are to please a deity so it will act on their behalf, personal power, or the ability to counteract the very essence of nature. To break from the cycle of death of the old and birth of the new by never dying(belief in immortal soul, not physical immortality usually).
Most people also desire a reward for doing 'good' and want other people to think they'll be punished for doing 'bad'.
[source= logic and common sense, also my 10th grade AP World History book by Peter Stern I believe.]
To my knowledge, buddhism is the sole exception to this generalization. [Herman Hesse's Siddartha gives a good grounding in Buddhist spirituality, their exact beliefs and rules can be found online]
Wicca is just one of many religions that recognize the importance of energy, whether you call it Chi(Chinese), life force(common), pranic energy(sanguinarians), The All (pagan), the divine, psionic energy, gaea/gaia, g-d, YHWH, or the Goddess herself, it's all the same thing and it pervades all that exists. It's real, you can feel it, you can move it, transfer it, infuse it with your intentions, shape it, whatever. It's existence is a fact, but that's the only thing about you can really state, everyone has different beliefs regarding it's origin, properties, and rules regarding the ability to do anything with it. No one can really refute the existence of non-physical energy, anyone can feel people's moods.
[You can learn all this with just a little research, Philosophy of Wicca talks a little about it.]
The second thing that unequivically exists is the Astral Plane, again it has many different names in different belief systems, the basic gist is that disincarnate spirits reside there, we can travel there and everything we see there is colored by what we believe. Many belief systems give it different levels, some ennumerate several planes of existence sometimes including the the astral, the ethereal, and many subtler planes. Some belief systems include little or no mention of it, but some people have physically manifested things from the astral realm, so I'll go out on a limb and say it exists. If you want sources, try Laurie Cabot's Power of the Witch and John Magnus's Astral Projection and the Nature of reality. Especially the second because it is not colored by religion.
Going specifically in the origin of Wicca, the word was used to describe non-christians in almost as broad a way as the word pagan once upon a time (the law codes of Alfred the Great in 890 used the term Wicca, that's the earliests source I know) Shortly before Gerald Gardner published his first book (1949, I believe) J.R.R. Tolkien used the term "Wicca" to describe his character gandalf in a draft(So he didn't pull it out of his butt then either, people knew the word). Wicca is the masculine singular form, Wiccan is masculine plural, Wicce and Wiccen are female singular and plural respectively. In English we usually leave off the gender endings leaving us with "Witch" a gender-neutral term.
Gardner also claimed to have learned from other Wiccan (So apparently he didn't quite invent it) And supplemented what he learned with a hodge podge of other religions to flesh it out. The usual comeback to this is that Gardner was shown to be lying about finding a coven so he really did invent it, well he was heavily influenced by many other groups and by ceremonial magic, so actually no, he still didn't quite invent it.
The term Wicca and it's meaning have changed alot over time, some like to think that in reference to religion it can only refer to Gardnerian witchcraft, well it originally probably reffered to druids (Circa 890). So Gardner wasn't the first to use it in referrence to religion either. Tough nuts.
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Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:01 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:34 am
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:45 pm
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Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:20 pm
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Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:48 pm
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Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 12:19 pm
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Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:02 pm
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 9:11 am
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Aurelia the Neko Witch ok, a note on the age limit thingy i think its a coven thing that generally covens wont accept you unless ur a certain age or higher because in the teen years you've got all sorts or drama and hormonal stuff and the moodiness can affect the balance of the group. Also newly weds and college people are likely to not be accepted because they have too many demands on their time and cant do so much at once. there are covens thatll accet younger people, but they are generally more able to handle whatever will come with the new younger person. Ok, ive said my peice.
From what I've heard it's because they practice ritual sex as a part of the way they like to work, and it'd be against the law to have anyone under 18 in the coven because of that.
@ the Ouija Board: Lol!
Sorry, talking about it getting burned, not a ghost following you.
I heard Ouija boards are just divination boards used from Egypt or something.
Almost like Tarot, they tell you what's in your mind subconsciously. Only the Ouija board is more straightforward, and shows you the dark side of yourself.
But I wouldn't know, I've never used one, so I'm just going by what sounds more plausible to me.
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Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:38 pm
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Reply
