The modern Wicca
To arrive at some perspective on what the modern mythos called, variously, "Wicca", the "Old Religion", "Witchcraft" and "Neopaganism" is, we must firstly make a firm distinction; "witchcraft" in the popular informally defined sense may have little to do with the modern religion that goes by the same name. It has been argued by defenders of and formal apologists for modern Wicca that it is a direct lineal descendent of an ancient, indeed, prehistoric worldwide folk religion.Some proponents hedge their claims, calling Wicca a "revival" rather than a continuation of an ancient cult. Oddly enough, there may never have been any such cult!
"The fact is that the instincts of ignorant people invariablyfind expression in some form of witchcraft. It matters little what the metaphysician or the moralist may inculcate; the animal sticks to his subconscious ideas..." - Aleister Crowley
"If you are on the Path, and see the Buddha walking towards you, kill him." - Zen saying, paraphrased slightly
"Previously I never thought of doubting that there were many witches in the world; now, however, when I examine the public record, I find myself believing that there are hardly any..." - Father Friedrich von Spee, S.J. , Cautio Criminalis, 1631
What, are we to make of modern Wicca? It must, of course, be observed as an aside that in a sense witchcraft or "wisecraft" has, indeed, been with us from the dawn of time, not as a coherent religion or set of practices and beliefs, but as the folk magic and medicine that stretches back to early, possibly paleolithic tribal shamans on to modern China's socalled "barefoot doctors". In another sense, we can also say that ceremonial magick, has had a place in history for a very long time, and both these ancient systems of belief and practice have intermingled in the lore of modern Wicca, as apologists are quick to claim.
In Gardnarian Wicca, the Goddess and Horned God - and the Priestess and Priest, represent that balance. There is nothing, nothing of pacts with the "Devil" or the worship of evil in any of this; that belongs to misguided exChristians who have been
given the absurd fundamentalist Sunday school notion that one must choose the Christian version of God, or choose the Devil. Islam, Judaism and even Catholicism have at one time or another been thought "satanic," and occultists have merely played on this bigoted symbolism, not subscribed to it.
As we have seen, Wicca since Gardner's time has been watered down in many of its expressions into a kind of mushy white-light new age' religion, with far less of the strong sexuality characteristic of Gardnerianism, though, also, sometimes with
less pretense as well. In any event, Satanism has popped up now and again through
much of the history of the Christian Church. The medieval witches were not likely to have been Satanists, as the Church would have it, but, as we have seen, neither were they likely to have been "witches" in the Wiccan sense, either.
