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What is Wicca? The phrase probably means nothing to most, but to Wiccans it is the name of a unique and vibrant faith tradition.
Edvard Zhavo, who has practiced Wicca sporadically for about the past six years, sums it up this way: "It's a practice that has nature at its center, utilizing the powers or energies of nature."
Many Wiccans do indeed revere nature, as do Neopagans more generally.
"But what, then, is Neopaganism?" you might ask. And I will tell you—to the best of my ability:
Neopaganism, also known as Contemporary Paganism, is a complex of various religions or "new religious movements" which take influence from, or claim to be derivatives of, historical pagan traditions. By "pagan traditions" I mean those religious traditions, often polytheistic (adhering to the belief in multiple gods, or deities), which existed in areas of the world (especially Europe) prior to their conversion to the monotheistic (adhering to the belief in one god, or deity), Abrahamic faiths. (That is, those faiths based on the tradition of the Jewish prophet Abraham—namely Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam, though also including Judaism.)
Many forms of Neopaganism are known for their attempts to revive, re-establish, or re-invigorate ancient or lost, indigenous faiths: For example, Neopagans who practice Hethenry (also called Heathenism, and better known as Germanic Neopaganism) base their religion on that of ancient Germanic peoples (such as the Vikings of Scandinavia), and revere or worship the Germanic or Norse gods (i.e. Odin ("Wotan" in Old High German) and Thor ("Donar")); Neopagans who practice Religio Romano ("Roman Religion"), also known as Italo-Roman Neopaganism or Cultus Deorum Romanorum ("Care of the Roman Gods"), base their religion on that of the ancient Romans, and revere or worship the Roman gods (i.e. Jupiter ("Zeus" to the Greeks), Mercury ("Hermes"), and Neptune ("Poseidon")).
The examples above, it should be mentioned, are forms of what one might call "reconstructionist" or "revivalist" Neopaganism, which (as the terms imply) attempt to reconstruct or revive some religious tradition, and thus emphasize the relevance of that particular tradition—its sources, culture, rituals, or mythology.
On the other end of the spectrum are those forms of Neopaganism which are eclectic, meaning they represent faiths or spiritual systems which espouse broader, more compromising views of doctrine or theology. Many eclectic forms of Neopaganism allow their followers to borrow freely the philosophies, practices, or deities of any number of religions or spiritual systems, and incorporate those aspects into their own, personal sense of religion or spirituality, as they see fit.
"But what does this all have to do with Wicca?" you might ask.
Well, Wicca is one of the most recognizable Neopagan faiths, for one, and, secondly, on the eclectic-reconstructionist spectrum of Neopaganism, Wicca is generally considered eclectic. (Although there are a number of different Wiccan denominations, some of which are more reconstructionist than others.)
Wicca has been called "an earth-based pagan religion" given its closeness to the cycles of nature. According to Merriam-Webster, Wicca is "the religious cult of modern witchcraft, especially an initiatory tradition founded in England in the mid 20th century and claiming its origins in pre-Christian pagan religions."
Merriam-Webster's definition is one of critical importance here, as it clarifies the where and when of Wicca, which lead us to a man by the name of Gerald Gardner.
Gardner (1884-1964), also known by his religious name, Scire, was an Englishman from Lancashire who lived much of his life abroad before returning to England in the late 1930s, where he joined a Rosicrucian order of occultists. Gardner claimed that, during his time participating in the order, he encountered a cabal within the group known as the New Forest coven, whose members purported to preserve a "witch-cult", a pan-European, matriarchal pagan tradition that flourished before Europe's conversion to Christianity and honored a great Mother Goddess and her male counterpart, the Horned God, as part of a duotheistic (adhering to the belief in two gods, or deities) system of belief.
Gardner made it his priority to resurrect this witch-cult in modern times, forming his own religious society around the concept. Thus Wicca was born. (Or perhaps revived, if the claims of the New Forest coven are correct.)
Wicca, like the Neopagan movement it is a part of, is broad and, at times, ill-defined. But it is also this lack of specificity that makes Wicca (and many other Neopagan traditions) attractive to ever-more people in contemporary society: it feels "free" and "open", especially when compared to the relatively strict Abrahamic faiths.
Practitioners of Wicca are known as wiccans, and sometimes refer to themselves as witches. While Wicca has no central authority or specific set of practices or beliefs associated with it, many Wiccans feel some attachment to the concept of witches and witchcraft, and practice paranormal or ritual magic, or "magick" (spelled with a "k" to distinguish it from stage magic), as a form of meditation, self-development, or for practical purposes.
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), arguably the world's most recognizable occultist, and the principal revivalist of magick (he coined the term), occultism, and the esoteric traditions of Europe in modern times, gave a now widely-accepted definition for magick in his book Magick (1912): "The Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will."
That is, magick, for whatever reason it is put into use, is believed by its practitioners to be a method for changing either oneself or one's external conditions in some way.
Also under this definition, everything we do is in some sense "magick". Crowley once wrote, to this effect, that, "Every intentional (willed) act is a Magical Act."
But without delving into the psychology of concepts like "will" and "intent", or the metaphysics behind the very mystical notion that everything is, in some sense, inherently magickal, most of us still look at magic, if we are aware of it at all, as superstitious and petitionary, and a lot of us—raised in the Abrahamic faiths, which decry "witchcraft" or "sorcery" as idolatry and sacrilege—are deeply suspicious of the concept.
It should be mentioned that, despite the variety of magickal practics that exist, it is not actually necessary to practice magick or witchcraft in order to be a Wiccan. Conversion to Wicca, and being a Wiccan, is first and foremost about doxis (faith) rather than praxis (practice), though many Wiccans take up magick and witchcraft (sometimes called "the Craft"), whether as a solitary commitment or in a Wiccan group—known as a coven. (Group work in Wicca often takes the form of some kind of ritual ceremonial magick, or is a sort of worship service honoring deities or spirits, or forces of nature and their manifestations.)
Outside of magick, then, what is Wicca all about?
Arguably the most important aspect of Wicca, a moral creed known as the Wiccan Rede, clarifies the ethical philosophy of the religion, and it is expected that any self-respecting Wiccan live out the Rede in his or her life. The so-called "Long Rede" is a poetic version of the Rede with its most essential eight words occurring at the end of the poem, which read as: "An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will."
Wiccans typically worship, or at least honor the symbolism of, the aforementioned Mother Goddess (also known as the Triple Goddess or, simply, the Goddess—sometimes associated with the moon) and the Horned God (also known, simply, as the God), divine representations of opposites—whether male and female, night and day, the moon and sun, among other aspects of nature—the deities' love being their unification in the harmony of the cosmos. As such, the God and Goddess are often represented by the sun and moon, respectively, and in the believer's mind may take on the image of various gods and goddesses.
That being said, and despite the fact that most Wiccans are either duotheistic or in some sense non-theistic (that is to say, they view the God and Goddess as symbols, rather than actual beings), many Wiccans worship (or, in the case of non-theists, honor the symbolism of) multiple deities, often considered to be manifestations of the principle divinity of the God and Goddess. However, Wicca is unique among many religions in that there is no prescribed pantheon, unless one follows a Wiccan denomination which specifies a certain set of deities. (Yet even among these denominations there is usually a good deal of theological flexibility.) One example is a sect known as Dianic Wicca, whose followers venerate only goddesses—though goddesses of many religions—and view them as manifestations of the one, principle Goddess.
Those deities revered by non-sectarian Wiccans can be of any kind or from any culture, from Egyptian to Semitic to Polynesian to Roman. All told, Wicca can be considered on different levels duotheistic, polytheistic, non-theistic (some Wiccans even consider themselves atheists or agnostics) and also—in its reverence for nature—pantheistic. (Pantheism being the view that nature itself is sacred or divine, that nature is "God".) This makes one wonder where the real difference between a religion and philosophy lie...
Wicca is an intriguing tradition which continues to gain traction throughout the United States and in other parts of the world. It remains a stark departure from the Abrahamic faiths that many of us are used to, and unique among world religions, many of which are entrenched in complex hierarchies and are far more organized and demanding of their followers.
Perhaps, whether Wiccan or not, we'd all be happier if we lived by the words "An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will."
I asked Mr. Zhavo, and he agrees.