Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s):
============================
1. Is “Wicca” just another name for Witchcraft?
Well, yes and no, depending on how you use the word "witch."
Most, but not all, people who call themselves Witches are adherents of the neo-pagan religion Wicca. Wicca is a Nature-centered religion which honors a Goddess and a Horned God (or many gods and goddesses) as the personifications of the spiritual aspects of Nature. Wiccans celebrate the changing seasons of the solar cycle and the cycles of the moon. While there’s considerable diversity among individual Wiccans and Wiccan groups, they do share a basic common theology, metaphysics, magical practice and ritual structure.
Other Witches may happen to call themselves "traditional Witches" rather than “Wiccans” and try to distinguish their own practice from Wicca; but from what I've seen of "Traditional Witchcraft,” there are considerable similarities in theology, metaphysics, magic and ritual. There are also some differences, but they seem minor compared to the similarities.
However, there are also a few people who use the word "witch" without considering it a religion at all, but rather a kind of magical practice. This tends to be the way that anthropologists use the word, too; but it’s a questionable usage, applied for example to “witch doctors” who would more appropriately be called “shamans.” While both Wicca and traditional Witchcraft do have shamanic elements in their practice, shamanism itself is a worldwide religious phenomenon, not limited to witches.
To confuse things even more, there are also a few real nut cases (or sometimes just teenagers) who call themselves “witches” because they just want to be seen as weird and spooky and shock people. They’re not really following the religion, they’re just doing magic; and often it’s negative magic. Such people don't really bear much relation to Wicca. They’re few and far between, but unfortunately they often manage to attract an undue amount of attention from the media and the public at large.
Finally, there are a few (very few) Wiccans who prefer not to use the word “witch” at all because they feel it has too much baggage; the negative connotations, they feel, are too firmly embedded in our culture to be overcome. While this may seem to be the case, the fact is that each year more people become aware of the existence of Wicca – witchcraft – as a Nature religion; so much so that even mainstream dictionaries have begun to change their definitions accordingly.
To summarize: while most witches are Wiccans, and while (almost) all Wiccans are witches, the two terms are not quite synonymous. They can, however, be used interchangeably within context.
* * * * *
2. How does Wicca view Nature and the Gods?
0. When we say "Nature" we generally mean not just the manifest, visible world, but more subtle or
unmanifest realms as well. Thus, the Gods, nature spirits, the souls of ancestors who have passed on, magical energies, etc., are all part of what we consider to be Nature.In the pantheistic way in which we conceive of it, nothing is outside of Nature; by definition, Nature includes everything. (Kind of like the Tao in Taoism.)
1. The Goddess is usually seen as infinite and eternal, as the Soul of Nature, and Creatress; while the
Horned God comes from Her, and is perennially dying and reborn. She is the timeless; He is all that moves through time.
2. Wiccans may see the Gods in different ways: as the forces of Nature; as symbols or metaphors; as archetypes internal to our own psyches; or as personal deities with whom it is possible to interact. But it’s best to see Them as all of the above, and much more that we cannot possibly imagine; Wicca is about entering into a relationship with ultimate Mystery, and since the Gods themselves are indeed that mystery, there's no way we as mere mortals could begin to comprehend them.
3. Wiccans have correspondingly different attitudes toward prayer; some pray, and some don't. Some see ritual or magic as the form of communication with deity, the idea being that if we want to communicate with mystery, we should try to speak its language. For some meditation or visualization practices serve the purpose that prayer does in other religions. Really, all of these practices are helpful, and all are perfectly compatible with prayer.
4. Wiccans have different views about whether the many polytheistic gods and goddesses are all really just aspects of the one Goddess and one God. That's a common Wiccan view, but there are also those who regard all divinities as separate individual persons or forces. Here again, one could see the answer as “all of the above. ” It's sort of like debating whether one has two hands or ten fingers.
5. Finally, there are differences in the attributes which Wiccans ascribe to the Goddess and Horned God - i.e., the way we perceive gender in various qualities. The more traditional view has the Goddess with 'lunar' qualities - cool, receptive, watery, etc.; and the Horned God with 'solar' qualities - hot, penetrating, fiery, etc. (Sort of like the ideas of yin and yang in Chinese Taoist thought, except
that in Wicca both deities have bright and dark aspects.)
Some Pagans have recently raised concerns about how these qualities are accorded by gender, and how it reflects our ideas of masculine and feminine; some such pagans have somewhat more androgynous views of deity. However, traditional Wiccan theology is based on the polar opposites of masculine and feminine aspects of the Divine, and so this obviously implies that there are important innate gender differences. (Which differences many of us would celebrate...and do!)