Thoughts on Wicca

The growth in interest in Wicca as a lifestyle choice has been one of the highest within the vast panoply of Pagan paths. There are debates about whether Wicca has anything to do with Paganism, but for the purposes of these thoughts I will be taking as read that it does. The reasoning behind this is that Wicca in its principles is reverent of nature, the founder of Wicca, Gerald Gardner was a keen naturist and naturalist and the use of Celtic symbology within some branches of Wicca suggest that it is at least a reasonable fit. This is not to say that all Wiccans would consider themselves Pagan, or that all Pagans are comfortable with the fit with Wicca. Personally I don’t see any insurmountable issues.

That debate having been put aside for a moment, it is worth recapping what Wicca actually is, as there seems to be a tremendous range of “wiccan” practices and information, much of which is not necessarily Wicca as it was originally intended. The history of Wicca as a spiritual path dates to the 1940’s and ‘50’s and was founded by Gerald Gardner, a well travelled gentleman with a background in Freemasonry and turn of the Century Occult practices of the type favoured by the Ordo Templis Orientalis (OTO), the Golden Dawn and by association Aleister Crowley and Thelema. After a number of years researching occultism in various forms Gardner decided to establish a movement that would embrace much of what he had learned, and allow him to disseminate that knowledge to a select group.

The form that this movement took in the first instance was of a small, private group which he described as a coven. It is generally accepted, although still controversial, that in order to lend credibility to his ideas and thoughts Gardner created a back story for his movement linking it to the cunning folk traditions of Essex, Hampshire, Dorset and Somerset and also to a purported intact surviving witchcraft tradition in the New Forest. It is unlikely that this back story had any significant validity, the New Forest coven being almost certainly a late 19^th Century reconstructionist group based loosely around Rosicrusianism and the work of the folklorist Margaret Murray. I can understand in the context of the period why Gardner felt a need for historical validity, but for me this is no longer a factor and is best treated as an interesting aside. The subsequent work carried out with Wicca is probably of greater benefit as a subject of study.

The system that Gardner established was, in essence, a straightforward one. The group was to be lead by a high priest and high priestess working together to guide the spiritual and magical development of the other group members. New members of the group joined for a period of time before being formally initiated into the group, and once initiated would begin a period of training and learning progressing through three levels of initiation, each marked by an intricate ritual. In this much the template seems to have been Masonic in nature, the difference being found in what knowledge was being imparted. The group would be private in nature, the rituals and practices written down within the group and not to be published in any form. It is my belief that this served two purposes. Firstly it established a feeling of camaraderie and fraternity/sorority within the group that allowed for closer, more intimate sharing of ideas and thoughts within the group, and secondly Gardner was aware that some of the practices within the group were sufficiently challenging from a psychological viewpoint that there was a risk that if practiced alone without a support structure that psychological harm could result.

Having established a working structure for the group, Gardner and some of his group and the wider occult community set about refining and developing a complete belief system based around the cardinal points of the compass, the solar and lunar calendars and classical Greek elemental correspondences and the use of Magic as defined by Crowley and others as the manifestation of change through true will. Gardners initial idea seems to have been to disseminate his system through the training of the initial group members to third degree level at which point they would hive off to establish working groups of their own. Each group was, I believe, to be at least semi-autonomous in that modifications of the original Book of Shadows (BoS – the Wiccan combination of notebook, spellbook, grimoire and almanac) were permitted within the constrictions of holding true to the underlying principles, these principles being that the coven would operate in perfect love and perfect trust, and that the principle belief was expressed as “an’ it harm none do what ye will”, will in this context being Crowleys concept of “true will” as opposed to an invitation to hedonism.

The hiving off of daughter covens led, perhaps inevitably, to transformations in the way Wicca was practiced, particularly seen in the differences between Alexandrian and Gardenerian Wicca and the later American offshoots such as Seax Wicca and it has been suggested that some of these changes caused friction within Wiccan circles. Over time additional friction has been caused by the release into the public domain of sections and eventually complete BoS from a variety of covens, as well as material that owed little if anything to Gardeners original group purporting to come from that lineage. This has let to the concept of solitary wicca as a path available to anyone who is interested, to the point of self initiation and self dedication. This is the point at which Wicca stands today. There are still private initiatory covens practicing various forms of Wicca much as Gardner intended. There are also a great number of non-lineaged covens practicing version of wicca pieced together from a variety of sources and large numbers of solitary wiccans practicing again from a range of source material.

This apparent ambiguity as to what Wicca is has led some to question whether there is a long term sustainable future for Wicca as a movement, or indeed if wicca as it is practiced today bears a close enough resemblance to Gardners vision of Wicca to have meaning were he to see it today. Personally I find initiatory Wicca to be too restrictive and proscriptive to sit comfortably with my particular approach to spirituality, although I find the commitment required to work successfully within a coven structure to be refreshing in an age of instant gratification. By contrast I find much of the solitary wicca espoused online and in books to be a poor imitation of what was intended to be a modern Western mystery tradition. With the mystery element removed, I find myself questioning the purpose, and the spirit of the movement. I wonder if perhaps Wicca is not conducive to solitary practice at all, but that is an argument for another day…..