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On This Page:
* What is Wicca?
* Where does Wicca come from?
* What is Correllian Wicca?
* What is Paganism and how does it differ from Wicca?
WHAT IS WICCA?
Wicca is a modern
Pagan religion which involves many different Traditions (denominations)
not all of which have common origins. Wicca grew out of older movements,
taking its modern shape during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries AD
As a
rule the characteristics that define Wicca include:
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* The veneration of
the feminine aspect of Deity (Goddess) either alone or in combination
with the masculine aspect (God).
* The belief that Deity comes to people in many different ways, contingent
upon their personality, capacity, and culture, and thus that all faces
of Deity are valid as faces for Deity.
* The belief that
all things are connected through Deity, often expressed through the idea
of the Four Elements as the symbolic qualities of existence.
* Belief in the
Wiccan Rede “An it Harm None do as You Will” –a corollary to the
Law of Thelema (Do As You Will) from Rabelais.
* Belief in
reincarnation and some version of Karma/Fate, often encapsulated in the
“Threefold Law” –that what you do comes back to you multiple times.
* A belief in
magic, which the accessing and directing of the higher powers of the
soul, and that the use of magic is a good thing when used wisely: that
we are meant to be “co-creators” of our own lives, not merely the
passive recipient of fate.
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WHERE
DOES WICCA COME FROM?
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Wicca is a modern world religion having
heterogeneous roots and consisting of many Traditions, some of which
have very little in common with each other. The roots of Wicca trace to
both survival (often fragmentary) and revival of European tribal and
classical religion, the hermetic and alchemical movements,
ceremonialism, masonry, Deism, and spiritualism. Many people lumped all
these practices together under the term “Witchcraft”, using it as a
generic term for non-Christian metaphysical practices. By the nineteenth
century there were also strong influences from Asian, Native American
and African religions.
These heterogeneous elements began to form into
the modern Wiccan religion when descendants of these various movements saw
themselves and their beliefs, rightly or wrongly, reflected in the
writings of Charles Leland, Margaret Murray, and Dion Fortune (among
others) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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In
the mid-twentieth century the movement was given a public face by the
writings of Gerald Gardner, Sybil Leek, and Stuart Ferrar. Gardner’s
writings were the first to publicly use the term “Wicca” which had
long been cited as the origin of the term Witch and to publicly apply it
as the name of the modern movement.
In the 1970s and 1980s the use of the term Wicca spread through many
Traditions of Witchcraft unrelated to Gardnerianism, such as the Dianic
and Correllian Nativist Traditions, becoming a blanket term for modern
religious Witchcraft, especially in the United States –although some
people insist that the term should only properly apply to the Gardnerian
Tradition.
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What
is Correllian Wicca?
The Correllian Tradition is a branch of Traditional Witchcraft which has
identified as Wiccan since the 1970s, in much the same way as the Dianic
Tradition identifies as Wiccan. Originally a familial Tradition
Correllianism has been an open, public Tradition since 1979, expanding
rapidly since the late '90s.
Correllian Wicca places a very strong emphasis on the philosophical and
theological aspects of Wicca, and stresses personal spiritual, magical,
and psychic development. Correllian Wicca also places great importance
on the idea of the Ancestors, meaning both the Ancestors of the
Tradition as well as members' physical and philosophical
Ancestors.
Correllian Wicca celebrates the Wheel of the Year in the same manner as
most Wiccan Traditions, but in addition to this also celebrates a
twice-yearly rite of purification and blessing called the
"Lustration" which is considered uniquely Correllian. The
Lustrations began as private, comparatively simple Ancestor-rituals
practiced by the High-Correll family and the Correll Mother Temple to
honor and maintain their connection to the Ancestors and bring through
Oracles from them, and evolved into an elaborate public ceremony as the
Tradition expanded.
You can learn more about Correllian Wicca at www.correllian.com
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What is Paganism and how is it
different from Wicca?
A Pagan is a religious person
who is not a Jew, Christian, Muslim, or Satanist. As such “Pagan”
takes in a lot of territory. Ancient faiths such as Hinduism and Taoism,
as well as the Classical religions of Greece, Rome, Egypt, etc… are
Pagans, as are modern movements such as Wicca, Asatru, modern Druidism,
etc… Thus Wicca will be seen to be a branch or a kind of Paganism. To
give an example, Wiccan is to Pagan as Methodist is to Christian. It should be
noted that historically the term Pagan has been applied from outside and
that only fairly recently has there been any recognition among Pagans
that we might view our different traditions as being related.
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