Wicca for Beginners (3 page)

As you can see, there are a lot of interpretations of Wicca. Now that you have made it through the philosophical stuff and you know something about what Wicca is (or what others think it is), you’re ready to explore what Wiccans actually
believe
in chapter 2. But there is one important thing to take from this chapter before you move on: If you choose to walk this path, your Wiccan experience can be pagan, experiential, shamanistic, mystical, magical, or all or none of the above, but the one thing it
certainly
will be is your own. Wicca, from any angle, is a path of empowerment and personal growth. Like many things in life, Wicca is what you make of it. The joy—and the challenge—is discovering what it will make of you.

2

Some Basic Wiccan Principles and Ethics

One of my teachers
has commented frequently that Wicca is a religion with a lot of theology (study of the nature of deity) and no dogma (rules imposed by religious leaders). Many people become Wiccans because they’re independent souls who don’t want to be told what to think or believe. Wicca offers fertile ground and a lot of space for spiritual creativity and independence. Although the Wiccan community is very diverse and is becoming more so all the time, there
are
a few common principles that most Wiccans share. This chapter will cover seven of these common principles and also a basic Wiccan code of ethics.

Before we dig in, however, here is a list of things that Wiccans do
not
do or believe. It may seem ridiculous that I included some of these, but all of them are here because some Wiccan, at some time, has had to explain to someone that they’re not true. So, for the record, Wicca is not:

satanic or anti-christian.
As I stated in the “new old religion” section in chapter 1, Wicca is not the same thing as Satanic witchcraft. Wiccans do not believe in Satan. Satan is part of the Christian religion, and Satanism is a Christian heresy. Contrary to Hollywood notions, Wiccans do not perform animal or human sacrifice or pervert the Catholic mass. Wiccans do not hate Christians, or try to harm them or their faith. They do, however, wish Christians would stop knocking on their doors and leaving leaflets on their front steps in an effort to convert them. Which leads me to . . .

proselytizing.
Wiccans do not try to convert others to Wicca. Wiccans do not troll the high schools for vulnerable teens to brainwash into secret cults. Wiccans do not go door-to-door trying to convince others that their religion is the right religion. Wiccans know that people in cultures from all over the world, throughout human history—including Christians, Muslims, Jews, Ba’hai, Buddhists, pagans, and others—have been killed for their religious beliefs or forced to adopt someone else’s faith, and many Wiccans see proselytizing as a continuation of this bullying and coercion. Wiccans know that there is more than one path to God, and that everyone must find his or her own spirituality (or not, if they choose). Wiccans believe that if people are meant to walk the Wiccan path, they will find it without someone proselytizing to them. Wiccans also know that those who do find the path on their own value it more than they would if they had been “convinced” to become Wiccan.

dualistic.
As you’ll see in Wiccan Principle 1, below, Wicca incorporates a lot of dual and polarity symbolism. However, although some religions see dualities as antagonistic, like God and Satan, for example, Wiccans see them as opposite partners, or two parts of a whole. That whole “black and white,” “absolute right and absolute wrong” mindset has no place in Wicca. Wiccans see many shades of gray. This does not mean that Wiccans have no ethics! See the ethics section toward the end of this chapter for more about that.

exclusive.
There is nothing in Wicca that says you can’t practice more than one religion or worship more than one god or set of gods.

a way to get power over others.
Wicca is a way to build your own power. Isn’t that more important?

only about magic.
If you are exploring Wicca only so you can learn magic, don’t waste your time. Wicca is a religion, and you don’t need it to do magic. Magic exists outside of religion. Wicca provides one of many paths to magical practice, but magic is not its central theme. Some Wiccans don’t do magic at all.

an edgy trend with great clothes.
Black vinyl pants and matching lipstick, a pentagram nose ring, a vaguely threatening tattoo, and the latest melancholic, angst-ridden rock CD do not make you a Wiccan. Many Wiccans like fun, unusual body decoration (black is slimming, glitter is fun, and tattoos are good conversation starters), but getting into Wicca to make a fashion statement, because it’s trendy, or because it’s bound to freak out your parents, neighbors, or boss trivializes the religion. And as long as we’re talking about fashions and trends, Goth and Wicca aren’t the same thing! Wicca is Goth-friendly because it explores and even embraces death and the darker aspects of spirituality, and there are a lot of Goth Wiccans, but you can be Wiccan whether you’re wearing Armani, Hot Topic, Salvation Army, or nothing at all.

an excuse for sexual abuse.
Wicca is not about using sex to manipulate others or about sexually abusing children. Wiccans find these things as abhorrent as anyone else does. Child abuse is not acceptable, and it is not condoned in the Wiccan path. It’s true that Wiccans tend to be pretty open about sex (see Wiccan Principle 7), but because they’re frank about sexuality, and even celebrate it, most covens will not accept a student under the age of twenty-one. It’s not appropriate to include a child or teenager in rituals that may contain sexual symbolism. That said, if someone tries to tell you that sex is expected as payment for Wiccan training, run screaming into the night. That person is a sexual predator, not a Wiccan.

Here is a list of seven basic things that many Wiccans do believe.

Wiccan Principle 1: Deity Becomes a Polarity

Many Wiccans believe that there is a single great divine force, which they call “spirit,” “the all,” “the divine,” or just “deity.” It gives life to the universe, and it transcends gender, space, and time. They also believe, as do practitioners of many of the world’s religions, that deity in its entirety is too large and abstract for humans to comprehend fully. In the wonderful
Power of Myth
series of interviews that Bill Moyers conducted with Joseph Campbell, the twentieth century’s foremost authority on mythology, Campbell sums up this idea: “God is a thought. God is a name. God is an idea. But its reference is to something that transcends all things. The ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought.”
[1]

Wiccans believe that deity separates (or we separate it) into facets—or aspects—that humans can relate to. The first “division” of deity is into its male and female halves. In the
Power of Myth
interviews, Campbell describes a beautiful representation of this idea: the Mask of Eternity in the Shiva Cave at Elephanta in India. The mask consists of a central face looking forward and one face looking to each side. Campbell explains that the left and right faces of the mask signify the first division of deity and that “Whenever one moves out of the transcendent [deity], one comes into a field of opposites. These . . . come forth as male and female from the two sides.”
[2]
So by splitting into aspects, deity moves into the field of time, which is where humans exist. Campbell continues: “Everything in the field of time is dual. The past and future. Dead and alive, all this; being and nonbeing, is, isn’t.”
[3]

That’s pretty heady stuff, but the Wiccan interpretation of the same idea is fairly straightforward. The two main aspects of deity that Wiccans work with—the male and the female—are simply called the God and the Goddess. The Wiccan God and Goddess represent yang and yin, positive and negative, light and dark. Since they are two halves of the same whole, they are separate but never truly apart; they are connected by their polarity. Neither exists without the other. The polarity—the relationship—between the God and the Goddess is a central, sacred dynamic of Wicca.

Wiccan Principle 2: Deity Is Immanent

Wiccans believe that deity, the life force described in Principle 1, is immanent, or inherent in all people and things. It is in the greatest cathedral and the smallest grain of sand. This is not quite the same thing as the animist idea that a cathedral or a grain of sand have consciousness of their own, but rather that there is a sacred force that infuses everything, and that force is deity or a part of deity. Deity is in each of us as well, regardless of our religion. Because deity is immanent in us, each of us is a part of the divine.

Wiccan Principle 3: The Earth Is Divine

Wiccans believe that the earth is a manifestation of deity. It is a tangible piece of the divine, particularly of the Goddess, who gives birth to all things and receives them again in death. Therefore, everywhere on earth is sacred space. Although you may argue that some places are more sacred than others, Wiccans believe that there’s a bit of the divine in every corner of the earth, so they focus on attuning and working with earth energies. This means understanding the cycle of the seasons, participating in these cycles through ritual and contact with the earth, and living within the flow of the earth’s natural power rather than working against it.

The ultimate religious experience for many people is to transcend the mundane, the earth, and go to some higher place. It can be a “location,” like the Christian heaven, or an inner place, like when one finds enlightenment or Nirvana. Although many Wiccans believe that there is a special place that they go to after they die, and many of them believe in an “otherworld” or “underworld,” the majority of their practice is centered in the here and now, on planet earth. For example, Wiccan rituals often mimic the seasonal changes, and Wiccans include trees, rocks, and herbs in ritual and magic.

Many Wiccans believe that a significant part of their spiritual path is taking care of the earth, whether it is by everyday actions such as recycling, larger efforts such as work for environmental causes, or any number of things in between. This is not a requirement of Wicca, but many Wiccans do it anyway because it flows naturally from the belief that the earth is divine.

Wiccan Principle 4: Psychic Power

Wiccans believe that psychic abilities exist, that they work, and that each of us is born with our own psychic gifts. If each of us is infused with the same divine force, and the earth and everything around us are too, we ought to be able to tap into that force to get information and do things beyond the realms of the five senses. We know that many things we encounter in nature occur in patterns, like the shapes of spiral nautilus shells and the patterns of leaves and branches on many trees, the geometry of which are related to the Golden Proportion. (The Greeks, among others, made great use of sacred geometry and the Golden Proportion in building their temples—talk about working in concert with nature!) Wiccans believe that in addition to these well-documented natural phenomena, there are other, less scientifically verifiable patterns in nature and in the spiritual realms, and they work at understanding and using those patterns. Psychic ability is simply a sensitivity to and awareness of those patterns.

Psychic abilities help Wiccans with many things, like honing their intuition, divination (reading astrological charts or tarot cards, for example), and sensing things that science can’t explain yet, like the spirits of the dead or the presence of the gods. Like many other talents, psychic abilities can be sharpened, and Wicca can help us harness these gifts. One of the most obvious but important ways in which Wicca does this is simply by teaching us that psychic abilities are real. After all, it’s hard to use something that you don’t believe exists. Wiccans also strengthen their psychic abilities through practice. They do meditation, magic, divination, and ritual, all of which require them to flex their psychic muscles. I’ll go into some of those practices in more depth in the upcoming chapters.

Wiccan Principle 5: Magic

Wiccans believe that magic is real, that it works, and that they can use it to better their lives and help them on their spiritual journeys. By magic, I don’t mean pulling rabbits out of hats, turning your younger brother into a toad, or hexing your ex-girlfriend. I mean something closer to the definition of magic given by the famous (and infamous) twentieth-century magician Aleister Crowley in his equally famous book
Magick in Theory and Practice
. Magic (or magick, to Crowley) is “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformance with will.”
[4]