Witchvox Article

Author: Jenna
Posted: January 25th. 2009
Times Viewed: 6,390

First of all, allow me to state for the record that this essay might provoke much hate mail and I highly doubt that the majority of people will even give the topic a chance. So be it. I'm not writing it for them. I'm writing it for those like myself who have tried for years to guide Wicca into something special, something far beyond the conventional religions available to the masses and have become increasingly disappointed at the evolution of both Wicca and modern Paganism in general.

If you think that my point of view is somehow heretical, consider that Raymond Buckland has given many interviews where he proclaims his dismay at how Wicca has become a philosophy that embraces everything and stands for nothing in the minds of many of the modern Wiccans.

Now, this is not yet another "I hate fluffy bunnies" essay like the ones I have seen here and else where on the Net. I have no problem with so called fluffy bunnies; we all started off as beginners (except for those who claim a highly doubtful lineage stretching back to the Druids or something) , most of us have learnt mainly from books and now the Net, and most of us do not want to spend 40 years trying to understand the medieval texts that so many Wiccans are now claiming to be "real Wicca". At best they are but a few hundred years old (there is no evidence that they dated from the time of Solomon as they claim) and belong to the Judeo-Christian faiths, not Paganism.

In fact, this "battle" between wannabe Ceremonial Wiccans and the "fluffy bunnies" is what drove me to distance myself from Wicca in the first place and to simply declare myself a Pagan, but even that is becoming harder to claim these days.

Why? Why am I seriously considering abandoning the faith that has helped me through several very depressing years, helped healed my body, mind, and soul, helped me to find my soulmate and to accept my body to become healthy enough to become pregnant? Why would I consider giving up the grace and love of the Goddess and the God, the flow of the seasons? Well, there are a few reasons why, and here they are:

1) Wicca is trying REALLY hard to become a mainstream religion. I'm not one of those people who chose Wicca to irk the parents (although it did do that) or to be an outsider. I chose it because it meant something deeper, more profound than conventional faiths. The Goddess and the God are not "out there, somewhere"; they are in us. They ARE us. Our very souls, our very breath, all come from the Gods. And we don't have to believe that they're deities in the classical sense.

A hardcore atheist can be Wiccan by accepting the Goddess and the God as manifestations of his/her psyche (the Jungian concept) . This is simply not so with the "Religions of the Book". They have a concept of deity that MUST be followed and believed, and vast amounts of dogma. They also call for commonsense to be set aside.

In Wicca, we not only can accept modern science, but we have a duty to accept and embrace it. Scientists and doctors were the wizards of their time, and the orthodox religions threaten them even today. It is the duty of every sane person to stand with him or her. What does this have to do with Wicca? That is my next point:

2) We now LOVE the Christians (Never mind that a good lot of them would love to go back to the "good old days" when they could literally burn people like us) . Why is this a problem? Shouldn't we foster peace and understanding with the dominant religious force in the Western world? No, not at the cost of selling our souls.

The way many Wiccans are behaving towards Christians reminds me of women and African Americans who, just because they've made it and want to be accepted by the "big boys" they pretend that there was never injustice and that anyone who says otherwise is just a crybaby. If one counts the Holocaust (as I do, considering the fact that many Germans wore belts with "God with us" written they tossed Jews into the ovens and the Catholic Church only excommunicated one Nazi in the War and that was for the unpardonable crime of marrying a Protestant) , Christianity has killed millions.

Now, if the philosophy were somehow different or more evolved from those days I might let it go, but the party line is still "Jesus is the only way, truth, and light, and no one gets to the Father but through him". Say what you want, but that is an intolerant and bigoted belief. Also, it sets us up for World War III with another group whose "holy book" makes the same claim about their holy man: the Muslims. In case you haven't noticed in the past decade, the Crusades have returned, and now they're nuclear. Or biological. Or they seek to overthrow our own governments by using our own laws of tolerance against us.

Of course, the Christians have a solution: it's us or them, chose our theocracy. Don't let them fool you; this is the moment that they've been waiting for, the classic "V for Vendetta" period in which everyone is so scared and overwhelmed that most of us would accept the warm embrace of Christians to shelter us from the Muslim storm. Make no mistake, this would be a disaster and would result with the loss of freedom for decades, perhaps centuries.

I have no love for the teachings of Mohammed. I think that anyone who claims Islam is love has not cracked a Koran or even attempted to study a bit of the history and beliefs of Muslims. Islam desperately needs a reformation in its faith, but I doubt this will happen in our lives. Perhaps it will come too late and they will succeed in building their nuclear bombs and wiping out the World. Even if this were the case, I still would rather die than to live as a slave under the new Inquisition.

3) We need to stand with the secularists. I'm certain that many of you have read my views on humanism and secularism on my posts and even my acceptance and embrace of atheism. We all need to do that in the Wiccan community and as alternative belief systems in general. Why? Because, as Pope Benny showed, when push comes to shove the orthodox faiths stand together. Catholicism and Islam might very well hate one another, but they hate secularism even more and they strike out against it whenever they can.

Why is secularism important? Because unless you want you child learning Bronze Ages myths as science, want the technological advances to cease and to even be discarded, want the world to return to a new Dark Age in which The Bible and Koran are given the same respect as divine script as they had in the Middle Ages but now can be enforced with nuclear bombs, you had better be like me and hope that the Secularists are successful in leading people into a new Enlightenment.

Some Wiccans complain that atheists trash the belief in Tarot and astrology. Guess what? They should! Unless you can prove these methods really do predict events better than simple chance they should be discarded. We no longer cut up animals and read their entrails. Perhaps it's time to discard all methods of divination.

However, if you can prove that they are still valuable and should be used, by all means conduct your study and submit it for publication in a major scientific journal. Secularists now amount for 13-20% of the population. Think about it. There are more Secularists than Jews, Buddhists, Wiccans, Hindus, what have you in North America today (and don't even ask about Europe. Roughly 90% of France claims to be Catholic, but only 10% actually attends Mass) .

You might feel that the Christians will accept you more because you both share unproven beliefs, but rest assured, if they ever have the power that they want (and that you're helping them to get every time you denounce atheists) your kids will be taken away, you will lose your job, your life will be threatened, etc. Atheists might think your beliefs are silly, but they're not going to (literally) burn you at the stake. Stand with the Secularists, or lose your freedom.

4) I'll make this one quick, but here it is: Wicca seems to be becoming more superstitious as it ages. You might think that's a good thing; I think it's the doom of the faith. When people claim that the myths are literally true, that astrology is a science, that they can make things fly about, etc. it just makes Paganism look like a bunch of nuts and rightfully so. Look, NeoPaganism accounts for a very small percentage of the population. So you might very well be the first Wiccan someone has ever met. What does this mean?

It means, unlike with Christians, Muslims, and Jews who have a long established tradition and history, you might well be someone's only link to Wicca so you are, in a sense, an ambassador. By your actions and beliefs you can make or break Wicca in someone's mind. Walking about saying that you'll only get married on the 9th moon of the year when Saturn is aligned or other such stuff will make all of us look crazy.

To all Pagans, embrace the Gods, but throw off any unproven beliefs. Embrace science and rational thought. Embrace the new atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett) . Before you dismiss them, read their works. Watch their interviews. Really think about what they are saying and decide if you want to live in their world or the one where people might well end all life as we know it over Bronze Age myths.

In closing, if you have read this, thank you for your time. I welcome responses, and while I know the majority will be denouncing me and my point of view on this topic, I also hope that there are rational Pagans out there like myself who feel lost in this world and even more lost in the standard Wiccan party line. Are we going to use Wicca as a way to bring Enlightenment and freedom from superstitions and nonsense, or are we going to allow it to devolve into a conventional faith where nothing is questioned and people must recite the new dogmas? The choice is now ours. In a generation or two, it won't be.

Carpe diem, mes amis. Shalom.

Footnotes:
"god is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens
"The End of Faith" by Sam Harris
"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins
"Unweaving the Rainbow" by R. Dawkins
"Why I am not a Christian and other essays" by Bertrand Russell
"Why I am not a Muslims" by Ibq Warraq

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