Wicca for Beginners (21 page)

Authors: Thea Sabin

Tags: #wicca, #witchcraft, #for beginners, #beginners, #beginner, #sabin, #thea sabin, #wicca for beginners, #spellwork, #rituals

BOOK: Wicca for Beginners

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Minoan

The Minoan tradition was created in 1977 and is based on the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially those of Crete. It has three separate branches: the Minoan Sisterhood for women, the Minoan Brotherhood for men, and the Cult of Rhea for both. It is an oathbound, initiatory tradition with Gardnerian influences.

Seax Wicca

Seax Wicca was created by Raymond Buckland in 1974. Buckland is credited with bringing Gardnerian Wicca to the United States, but Seax Wicca is not related to Gardnerianism. Seax Wicca borrows from many sources, central being the Saxon and Norse traditions. Its primary deities are Woden and Freya, with Woden presiding over the dark half of the year, from Samhain to Beltane, and Freya over the light half, from Beltane to Samhain. Seax covens are autonomous and democratic, and their material is not oathbound. Seax Wicca recognizes self-initiation, where the dedicant declares himself or herself Wiccan rather than being “made” Wiccan by someone else.

Asatru

Asatru is not Wicca in the strictest sense, but the two practices overlap in several places and Asatru has become popular, so I am including it here. Asatru is a tradition based on the Norse Eddas and other sources. It was established in the United States in 1973, but its roots are in Iceland. Its priests are called gothi and its priestesses gythia. Asatru practitioners work with the Norse gods. They do not necessarily observe the eight sabbats, although many of them mark Yule and Ostara. Some also observe a holiday called Winternights, which occurs in the fall. Asatru is not an oathbound tradition.

Church of All Worlds (CAW)

The Church of All Worlds is one of the first fully incorporated neopagan churches. It was created in 1962 by a group of friends who were inspired by Robert Heinlein’s novel
Stranger in a Strange Land
. The central ritual that CAW groups practice is called “water sharing.” This ritual acknowledges the divine within those sharing the water. Many groups are members of CAW, but they vary widely in practice. Generally they observe the eight sabbats.

Covenant of the Goddess (COG)

COG is not a tradition per se, but rather an umbrella group that was created in 1975 in order to give Wiccans and pagans legal protection and legitimate ministerial credentials. COG is made up of autonomous covens and solitary Wiccans, but all members agree to a common code of ethics.

New Reformed Orthodox Order
of the Golden Dawn (NROOGD)

NROOGD was created by a student at San Francisco State University as part of a class assignment, but it quickly took on an energy of its own and spread. It has a central liturgy, it recognizes a god and a triple goddess, and its members work skyclad.

Central Valley Wicca (CVW)

Central Valley Wicca is actually a group of traditions—including the Kingstone, Silver Crescent, Daoine Coire, Majestic, and Assembly of Wicca—that came out of the Central Valley area of California. There is some dispute about how Wicca got there in the first place, and thus also about the origin of these traditions, but some practitioners trace it back to a woman from the United Kingdom who may have relocated to the area in the 1960s. Kingstone is probably the largest of the CVW traditions. Its practices are similar in some respects to Gardnerianism, and it is an oathbound initiatory tradition with a core book of shadows. Kingstones observe the eight sabbats.

Blue Star

Blue Star Wicca was started in 1975 by Frank Dufner, but it was spread largely by his wife, Tzipora, and her second husband, Kenny Klein, who were traveling musicians. Blue Star is a hierarchical, oathbound tradition with roots in Alexandrianism. It observes the eight sabbats.

Dianic Wicca

Dianic Wicca arose from the feminist movement. In 1976, Zsuzsanna Budapest wrote a book called
The Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows
, which became the core text for the tradition. The book has since been republished as the
Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries
. Dianic Wiccans practice in all-female circles and worship only female divinity.

Reclaiming

The Reclaiming tradition has a strong environmental and activist focus, and it seeks to fuse politics and spirituality. It developed out of the Reclaiming Collective, a group of feminists that in turn came out of classes created by Starhawk and Diane Baker in 1978. Starhawk is the author of
The Spiral Dance
, one of the most popular books ever written about Wicca. There is no hierarchy or core belief structure in the tradition, but its members agree to adhere to the group’s “Principles of Unity.” Groups are run by consensus.

So which is better, eclectic or traditional? The answer is that Wiccans are lucky to have both options, and whichever one works for you is the one that’s better. For you. I practiced as an eclectic for a decade and then decided I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge with formal training. I joined a tradition and went through the degrees, and now I teach that tradition. Being a traditional Wiccan has brought me to some places in my life that I may never have found otherwise, but I wouldn’t be the Wiccan I am if I hadn’t first explored and experimented as an eclectic. My coven is about as traditional as they get. My private practice—the personal stuff I do without my coven—is eclectic and not traditional at all. So you could say I’m cheating, but there are no rules that say I can’t, as long as I don’t mix my eclectic practices in with my traditional ones. You can have your cake and eat it too, if that is what serves your spiritual purpose and helps you walk the path of the gods.

Are There Particular Things
I Should Look For in a Teacher?

When looking for a teacher, you should ask most of the same questions I listed for looking for a group, and ask for references. Talk to the potential teacher’s other students, if possible. Ask around about him or her in the community, bearing in mind the gossip factor, and plug his or her name into an Internet search engine and see what comes up. If the teacher has teachers or elders, ask if you can speak to them as well. Some teachers may find this insulting, but ask anyway—respectfully. The elders may not be able to tell you much if the teacher’s tradition is oathbound, and the teacher may not be able to reveal who his or her elders are because that’s oathbound, but it’s worth trying. Most importantly, as with looking for a group, tell the teacher what you are looking for and what your philosophy is so together you can determine if he or she is the right fit for you.

Most Wiccan teachers are honest, ethical, well-meaning folk, but there are some people who pose as Wiccan teachers in order to take advantage of others, offering “training” for money or sex. It is not unheard of to ask for money for training, so don’t let that stop you if you’ve found a teacher you like, and don’t assume that because the teacher charges that he or she is a fraud. However, the amount should be stated up front and be reasonable. As I said earlier, there are many, many traditions that forbid taking money for teaching. The teacher was given the gift of the knowledge by his or her teacher, and now is passing along the knowledge. As for sex, if a teacher insists on it, get out and don’t look back. As I’ve already established, there are some Wiccan traditions that include ritual sex, and Wiccans see sex as sacred, but ritual sex and sex as payment for instruction are not the same thing. The latter is unethical at best.

Am I a Real Wiccan if I Don’t Have
a Teacher or a Tradition?

Does it take a Wiccan to make a Wiccan? Are you a Wiccan just because you decide that you are? In other words, do you have to find a teacher and go through formal training to become Wiccan, or do you just have to study and dedicate yourself to the path? If you ever feel like starting a fistfight at a large Wiccan gathering, opening up a debate about these questions would be a good way to do it. Some Wiccans feel that you’re not truly Wiccan unless you have been trained. Some Wiccans would rather eat broken glass than go through someone else’s idea of training or practice someone else’s way. And some potential Wiccans want training, but can’t find it in their area. Should they be barred from calling themselves Wiccan just because they can’t find anyone to teach them?

If you read the list of traditions, you’ll notice that several of them are initiatory, for example the Gardnerian, Alexandrian, and Feri. That means that you can’t declare that you’re a Gardnerian, Alexandrian, or Feri unless you have been “brought in” by a legitimate member of that tradition. (By the way, claiming to be initiated into a tradition when you haven’t is very, very disrespectful, and bad Wiccan etiquette, not to mention a lie.) However, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t be a legitimate Wiccan without initiation. And you can definitely be a witch without initiation. You can join several of the traditions or groups on the list without being initiated, and you can practice solitary too. There are plenty of self-identified Wiccans and witches out there practicing happily without the benefit of being deemed a Wiccan by someone else.

You should know, though, that some Wiccans won’t consider you Wiccan unless you have undergone an initiation ceremony of some kind. This is not because they are elitist, exclusive snobs—the country-club set of the Wiccan community. There are legitimate reasons for the belief that you need initiation. First, some believe that it’s impossible to teach yourself a complete and cohesive religious system. As I said before, if you haven’t been trained or you’re not working in a specific framework, you might miss something because you aren’t aware of what you don’t know. Another reason some Wiccans believe that you must be initiated is that they see Wicca as a mystery tradition. Mystery traditions are designed to help you have a certain set of experiences and revelations in a certain order. This is not something you can do for yourself. My tradition is a mystery tradition, and I can tell you that there is no way my initiation experience would have revealed to me the things it did had I done it alone. (Actually, it’s impossible to do it alone, but for the sake of argument let’s say that I could have.) That said, I believe that if you really work the Wiccan system, you will have your own revelations and experiences of the mysteries over time.

There are also Wiccans who believe that the word Wiccan should apply only to witches who belong to traditions that have descended from Gerald Gardner because he popularized the term, and to him it referred to the teachings he was given as opposed to witchcraft in general. People who hold this belief usually think that everyone not “related” to Gardner should use the term witch instead of Wiccan. In the United States, we call the traditions derived from Gardner “British Traditional Witchcraft,” although that phrase means something else entirely in the United Kingdom. Others believe that the toothpaste is out of the tube, so to speak, and the word is no longer associated solely with British Traditional Witchcraft, so any witch who wants to can call him- or herself Wiccan.

As you can see, the issue of “what makes a Wiccan” is complex. The question, then, is whether you believe you can be Wiccan without initiation, whether you feel the term applies to you (“witch” is a perfectly good word too, after all), and whether the opinions of those other Wiccans matter to you.

Wicca is many things, but above all it is a path of empowerment. It stands to reason, then, that you should be able to declare yourself Wiccan or create your own self-initiation ceremony. This can be a personal rite that you do alone, or you can do it with friends or your coven. There are ideas for self-initiations in many Wicca books and online, and you can use them or dream up something that is only yours. One can argue that a ritual you create yourself—a rite that truly gets to the heart of your desire to be a Wiccan or witch—can be as powerful and transformative as any rite anyone else can put you through, if not more so.

Some Wiccans choose to do a dedication ritual instead of a self-initiation. This puts their feet on their new path without having to deal with the “valid initiation” issue. Nobody can question your dedication if you do it in a heartfelt way and make a commitment. After all, when you strip away all the trappings, the opinions of others, the rules, and traditions, Wicca is just you and the gods, and a dedication is a promise to yourself and to them.

If you do a self-initiation or dedication, the gods and your subconscious both will take you seriously and begin to make it a reality, so do it with respect. Don’t stop with an initiation or dedication—it is a beginning, not an ending. Study, work the path, and continue to learn. Don’t become a one-book wonder, an insta-Wiccan, or a fluff bunny. Whether you initiate yourself or someone does it for you, you are saying to the gods and—more importantly—to yourself, “Here I am! I will know the gods. I will discover the mysteries. I will work actively and spiritually to develop as a person.” You are beginning to find and work your true will. It’s as simple and complex as that, and so mote it be.

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