{"id":83,"date":"2010-08-13T17:46:17","date_gmt":"2010-08-13T22:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gleewood.org\/seeking\/"},"modified":"2020-07-19T13:42:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-19T18:42:45","slug":"religious-witchcraft","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gleewood.org\/seeking\/beginning\/religious-witchcraft\/","title":{"rendered":"What is religious witchcraft?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many people hear first about Wicca (a particular form of religious witchcraft) and never realise that there are other variations out there. So, I’m going at it the other direction: talking about the broader options, and then we’ll move on to Wicca (and different ways people use that term<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Beginning:<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Before we go any further, I also want to say that there are many many wonderful groups, teachers, and individual practitioners out there who use these terms in widely varying ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My focus here on the terms we use is not about the actual practices themselves. Rather, I want to help people who are looking for a particular thing find it more easily. That might be a kind of practice or likeminded folks to talk to, or advice, or ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are times when one label makes sense – and there are times when perhaps, a different label might be more informative (part of the reason I tend to refer to my own practice as initiatory religious witchcraft.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious witchcraft practices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Religious witchcraft generally involves some combination of the following, though the forms it can take can be extremely varied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Use of folk magic (witchcraft)<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Common practices include using herbs, food and drink, candles, and other simple tools to focus and direct energy to a particular goal. Many of these uses overlap with medical principles or other practical solutions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we talk about folk magic in a witchcraft context, we’re usually talking about that in the European sense of that. The term “witch” in English has a complicated history, but it usually includes both positive practices (like healing or helping the harvest of crops) and negative ones (like cursing).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are certainly plenty of non-European approaches (and approaches that come from interaction between European and non-European cultures in various ways), but many of those practices don’t call what they do witchcraft. In a number of places, what English translates as “witch” only has very nasty meanings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My witchcraft tends to focus on physical objects I can do something with. <\/strong>Sometimes that’s candles, sometimes that’s food, sometimes that’s making a piece of symbolic art. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interaction with deities in some form<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Check out the deities page<\/a> <\/strong>for more on this, but some paths work with a specific deity. Some work solely with goddesses. Some work solely with male gods. Some work with a single male and single female deity. Some work with an entire pantheon from a specific culture, or with deities from several different pantheons. There are numerous other variations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I honour and work with a variety of different deities. <\/strong>Most of the time, that’s the two I have chosen to focus on, and four deities central to my witchcraft tradition. Depending on my goals, my areas of interest, and other aspects, I might honour and invite other deities to my ritual, or make offerings to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some recognition of cycles<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

These can be cycles of the seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn), or they can be cycles of self-transformation. In some paths, they might be a cycle based on the core myths or stories that path honors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I follow the Wheel of the Year<\/strong> along with some personal dates of interest. My tradition’s wheel is focused more on self-transformation and development than agricultural cycles, but we do pay attention to what’s going on in the world around us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shared practice more than shared belief<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is actually true of most Pagan religions. It may help to think of it a bit more like Judaism than like Christianity, in this sense: you\u2019re a good Jew in Judaism because you do the stuff that Judaism says to do, rather than because you believe the right things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll be talking more about what this actually looks like in practice in a bit, but there\u2019s a certain amount of history we\u2019ve got to get through in order for the spectrum thing to make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pause for some history:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are a number of different evolutionary trees. <\/strong>The one we\u2019ll be discussing in depth (Wicca<\/strong>), starts with its roots in British folk practice (with smidgens from all sorts of other places). There are Italian religious witchcraft practices (Strega<\/strong>), and there are traditions like Feri<\/strong> which have their roots in Appalachian and Hawaiian influence, plus some other stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s also a significant set of offshoots influenced in various ways by the feminist spirituality movement.<\/strong> The two best known are Dianic witchcraft (sometimes also called Dianic Wicca, though this hits the definitional issues I\u2019ll be talking about later). Most forms of this are either women-only or women-centered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other well-known option is Reclaiming<\/strong>, which has some Feri<\/strong> roots, but has gone in a much more politically-focused and centered direction. Reclaiming groups work by some form of consensus, but welcome pretty much any gender identification out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wicca<\/strong> is by far the best known for a bunch of reasons that I won\u2019t go into here: suffice it to say that it\u2019s what sells more books, shows up on more TV shows, and so on than the less well-known ones. Because of that, the term has a fair amount of pull. Some of that is simplicity. (I grant, \u201cI\u2019m Wiccan\u201d is easier than \u201cWell, sort of Wiccan, but …\u201d) And some of it is a desire to belong to a broader group that overrules whether or not the term is actually the best fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Revised July 19, 2020<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many people hear first about Wicca (a particular form of religious witchcraft) and never realise that there are other variations out there. So, I’m going at it the other direction: talking about the broader options, and then we’ll move on to Wicca (and different ways people use that term.) Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3965,"parent":2273,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-83","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P11EQH-1l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2273,"url":"https:\/\/gleewood.org\/seeking\/beginning\/","url_meta":{"origin":83,"position":0},"title":"Beginning","author":"jenett","date":"December 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Are you curious about Paganism? Not sure what different terms or concepts mean? 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