Your fortune for today: you will begin the day by planning the coming weeks of your life. It is a great time for this kind of planning, as the decisions you make today will be spot on. In love, remember not to push your partner too hard on anything. If you are single, you will attract people with weaker characters than your own.
Wicca is the name of a neopagan religion that has spread across Europe and the United States. It was founded by a retired British civil servant, Gerald B. Gardner, probably in the 1940s, but only made public in 1951. Since then it has become widely popular and has split into several large and a dozen or so smaller branches known as traditions. Originally, however, Wicca meant only the tradition created by Gardner – an initiatory mystery religion drawing on pre-Christian traditions.
At first this religion was called Wicca, a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon wicca, meaning a sorcerer (the feminine form wicce gave rise to the modern words “witch” and “witchcraft”). Gerald Gardner used the terms “wicca” (which he spelt “wica”) and “witchcraft” interchangeably.
Wicca was started by Gerald B. Gardner, who in the 1930s came across a secret coven in the New Forest area of England. This group was said to preserve the traditions of the ancient religion of witches, and Gardner was reportedly initiated into it by Dorothy Clutterbuck. The group’s existence was officially announced in 1951, when Great Britain, as one of the last countries in Europe, repealed the legislation requiring witches to be prosecuted.
There is no agreement on whether Gardner really discovered the remnants of a witch cult or created Wicca from his own reading, experiences and fascinations. It is known that he had previously been initiated into Aleister Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis. There are also accounts linking Gardner to Freemasonry. What is certain is that in developing the principles of Wicca, Gardner drew inspiration from the theories of Margaret A. Murray, a British Egyptologist and anthropologist. In 1921 she published “The Witch-Cult in Western Europe”, in which she argued that a matriarchal “cult of Diana” had been developing in Europe since Neolithic times. This cult was supposedly a kind of counter-religion to dominant Christianity, and its followers were said to include witches as well as some members of ruling dynasties. Today Murray’s theories are received with scepticism and divide ethnologists, anthropologists and scholars of religion as well as Wiccans themselves all over the world. Murray’s theory is the reason why Wicca is often, and wrongly, called “the Old Religion”.
After Gerald B. Gardner’s death in 1964, Wicca split into several traditions, and these in turn into further traditions. Even during Gardner’s lifetime, people emerged (such as Robert Cochrane) who claimed to have discovered the witch cult or to have continued it for many years.
Today, in the view of its followers, Wicca has a chance of becoming one of the most popular religions in the world – in the United States alone the number of Wiccans is estimated at around 300,000. In September 1986 a federal appeals court ruled that Wicca is a religion protected by the US Constitution.
The main Wiccan traditions
There are several dozen Wiccan traditions. Only a few of the most popular are discussed below.
British Traditional Wicca (BTW, a term coined by American pagans) in the British Isles comprises two traditions: the Gardnerian tradition (also called Gardnerian Wicca) and the Alexandrian tradition (also called Alexandrian Wicca).
In the United States, several other traditions are also counted as BTW. In Great Britain, people initiated in one tradition are often recognised in the other as well. In the USA the situation is somewhat different, and the divisions are clearer.
The Gardnerian tradition – the oldest tradition, named after its founder, Gerald B. Gardner. Joining a Gardnerian coven must be preceded by initiation, and initiation by a period of preparation that traditionally lasts a year and a day. The details of the training that prepares for initiation are secret, as are the details of Gardnerian rites (they are passed on only to coven members). It is known, however, that the rites are based partly on classical ceremonial magic. Gardnerians place enormous emphasis on individual contact with the divine and with the cyclical changes taking place in nature. The path to personal religious experience is participation in the Wiccan mysteries.
The Alexandrian tradition – founded in the 1960s by Alex Sanders and based almost entirely on Gardnerian principles. The term “Alexandrian Wicca” was first used by Stewart Farrar, a British journalist and populariser of Wicca. The main differences are that it traces its initiatory lineage to Alex Sanders and places greater emphasis on ceremonial ritual.
Minor traditions, usually not called traditions as such:
- The Dianic tradition – founded in the 1970s by Zsuzsanna Budapest. It draws on Margaret A. Murray’s theory and recognises only the Goddess, leaving out the God.
- The Correllian tradition – founded by Orpheis Caroline High-Correll (according to oral tradition this happened in 1879, before Wicca arose as a religion). This tradition places special emphasis on honouring the ancestors.
The Minoan tradition – founded by Edmund M. Buczynski in the late 1970s. Its pantheon is drawn from pre-Dorian (pre-Greek) mythology and also refers to the legacy of Minoan culture, while its rites are very similar to Gardnerian ones.
- The eclectic tradition (Eclectic Wicca) – drawing inspiration from various pantheons, freely chosen by the practitioner. Because this freedom leads to misunderstandings, it is often denied the right to call itself a Tradition.
Wiccans are also divided into those who belong to groups and those who practise alone. The number of the latter is, for obvious reasons, hard to estimate.
Details of the ideas, rituals, spells and other teachings of each tradition are usually contained in Books of Shadows, which are separate for each tradition or coven.
Core principles
Wicca is a community of practice rather than a community of belief. The beliefs of individual Wiccans can differ considerably. What unites them is the rites they perform together and the practice of magic.
Wiccans worship a pair of deities, the Goddess and the God. In BTW the names of the deities are kept secret and known only to initiates. In eclectic Wicca, any freely chosen pair of deities is worshipped. The essence of the cult is the balance between the masculine and the feminine principles.
The two deities symbolise the dual nature of the universe and the existence within it of opposing principles that strive for balance – masculine and feminine, light and darkness, creation and destruction. For Wiccans, nature itself is sacred and is seen as a great theatre of life, death and rebirth.
The Goddess plays a special role in Wicca and is often depicted in a threefold form: as maiden, mother and crone. The symbol of the Goddess in her three aspects is the Moon in its three phases: waxing, full and waning. It is worth noting, however, that the Wiccan Goddess also has a so-called Dark Face (symbolised by the New Moon), which is worshipped in one branch of neopaganism known as dark paganism.
Ethics. Wicca has no single ethical system. It holds that every person is endowed with free will and decides on their own conduct. Wiccans do not recognise a division into good and evil; these are two sides of the same power and so form a whole. For this reason Wicca has no concept of sin or of punishment for it. As a being endowed with reason and free will, a person can influence the world around them and the course of events through active deeds, including the use of magic. However, they bear the consequences of their actions (including magical acts) themselves, through the Threefold Law, which states that “whatever you do will come back to you three times over”.
A Wiccan is advised to follow two principles:
The Threefold Law: “Whatever you do, good or ill, will return to you three times over”
The Wiccan Rede: “An it harm none, do what ye will”.
Some maintain that these principles are merely a kind of magical safety instruction and not ethical rules at all. Others, however, derive from them an ethical system that guides them in everyday life.
It is worth noting that the Wiccan Rede is exactly that – a piece of advice – and not a strict commandment.
Wiccan festivals
Wiccans celebrate lunar festivals (Esbats) and solar festivals (Sabbats). The lunar festivals are all the Full Moons of the year. The solar festivals are linked to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and hence to the current season and the agricultural calendar.
Originally Wiccans celebrated only the greater sabbats. In time, however, the lesser sabbats were added, creating the cycle known as the Wheel of the Year. Each festival is one spoke of the wheel.
Most Wiccan festivals have counterparts among the festivals celebrated in pre-Christian Europe.
They are divided into the Greater Sabbats:
- Imbolc – 1 February
- Beltane – 30 April/1 May
- Lammas (Lughnasadh) – 1 August
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Samhain – 31 October
and the Lesser Sabbats (the equinoxes and solstices): -
Spring equinox – 21 March
- Summer solstice – 21 June
- Autumn equinox – 22 September
- Winter solstice, known as Yule – 21 December
The spring equinox, summer solstice and autumn equinox are sometimes called Ostara, Litha and Mabon. These names are used most often by eclectic Wiccans, while traditional Wiccans (BTW) use the former terms.
The symbol of Wicca is the pentagram, whose five points refer to the four elements (air, fire, water, earth) and to the element of spirit (akasha) as the fifth point.
Wicca in Poland
The first Wiccans (the Polish spellings “wikanie” and “wikkanie” are also used) most probably appeared in Poland after 1989. Nothing certain is known about any Wiccan presence in earlier years.
At present Wicca is not a registered denomination in Poland. The very form of the cult makes registration practically impossible: each coven is an autonomous unit of up to 13 people and so does not meet the criteria for registration.
Among Poles who identify with Wicca, so-called eclectic Wiccans (not initiated into any tradition) predominate. They meet and keep in touch mainly through online discussion lists, the oldest of which was the now-defunct wicca-pl group, founded in 2000. A list devoted exclusively to Wicca that is still active is Wicca-ABC, founded in 2003. There are also several forums devoted to pagan topics where Wiccans post as well: “Forum Neopogan”, “Forum Czarostwa Belladonny”, “Forum Rozstaje” and the forum of the International Pagan Federation.
In recent years a small group of Wiccans initiated into BTW has appeared in Poland.
There is still a lack of Polish translations of the most valuable books on Wicca and paganism, which means that Poles’ knowledge of the subject is often incomplete. For this reason, as everywhere else in the world, the large number of “fluffy bunnies” has become a major problem.
