Witch = Wicca ... So, Now What?

[pt_tangles]

Here it is, my meaty post for the night ...

In one of my Yahoo groups, this article (and an ensuing conversation) has come to light:

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usmo&c=words&id=10563

The author claims (and has some pretty solid entymology to back it up) that Witch and Wicca [pronounced witch-ah] are the same word. Also, that the magic and religion of the Witch are not seperable (as has been posited in recent years).

This, I would think, leaves us modern Witches in a bit of a conundrum. If we are to accept that Wicca is not the name of a religion, but another word for Witch, then what happens to those of us where are practising a form of religious Witchcraft that bares little, if any, resemblance to what Garnder taught? Do we have to come up with yet another new term for our practise and leave 'Witch' to Gardner's children? Or do we just do away with all of the work we have done to show ourselves as a diverse set of religions (with Wicca losing its identity in the process)?

What was all of the work for, if not to allow for more deviation from Gardner's teachings, while allowing an identity to remain to those who chose to work within his core structure?

In all honesty, I think that Gardner himself would likely agree with the author of this article. From what I have read about the man, he was all about the 'revival' of Witchcraft as a religion, not about being the father of a new religion. And that may have been great in the early days when most modern Witches were doing things in much the same way.

But now that we have the World Wide Web and the Gobal Village ... now that the term Witch can cover countless cultures, beliefs and practises, what use is a term that can stretch to cover everyone who chants softly over a candle? Is that really what we want to be striving for? A complete loss of our individuality?

I don't think I will be jumping on that bandwagon anytime soon. I like being a non-Wiccan Witch, thank you.

--Phae

Comments

[elf]

The author is Mike Nichols, who's written some pretty wonderful stuff on other topics. (Worth noting, 'cos he's not a fly-by-night fluffhead.) If you're not familiar with the name, google for him; he's worth reading.

I think Mike is oblivious the the rather *drastic* differences between various types of religious witchcraft. His etymology is accurate (or reasonably so), but his insistance that since wicca and witch used to mean the same thing, they still should, is ridiculous.

His point that "wicca is the religion and witchcraft is the practice" is legally dangerous is worth noting. It's a bad idea to allow the religion of wicca to have a legal existence separate from the practice of witchcraft--because while the law can't ban religious practices, it can ban almost everything else, and witchcraft's got a long history of being illegal. It's only by insisting that it's an essential part of the religion that it's allowed today.

However, I think we can claim "essential part of the religion" without claiming "absolute identity of the religion." We don't call Christians "prayerists," even though prayer (of various sorts) is essential to their religion.

I'm not sure why I argue for these points. Sometimes, I think it'd just be easier to start calling myself a Satanic Wiccan and insist "that's the label that best suits me, and it's only my opinion and of course other people might disagree, but only the Goddess can tell you whether you're a real Wiccan."

[sine-silverwing.livejournal.com]

Even without reading the article, I think it's silly to claim that any one word should still mean exactly the same thing as it did a thousand years ago.

I took Saxon in college; I didn't do well, but I was fascinated by the words themselves. I can't speak it at all, but I saw how words change, and the meanings change over time.

"Were" used to mean man; that's where the compound "werewolf" came from. "Man" meant female human, but was not as commonly used as "wif" leading to the common phrase "wer and wif" used the way we use "man and woman."

"dreory" was pronounced "dreary" but it meant "covered with blood." That's not what dreary means now, exactly, is it?

Wicca and witch may have been the same word a thousand years ago; I think so, and I have since that class. But ten centuries later, it is no longer the case.

[pt_tangles]

It's not just a thousand years ago, though. This guy is arguing from the standpoint as it was in the 60s and 70s ... I think that brings the whole thing a lot closer to home.

I don't have any answers ... and my gut reaction is just 'uh, no'. But it is an interesting point of veiw.

--Phae

[pt_tangles]

The author is Mike Nichols, who's written some pretty wonderful stuff on other topics. (Worth noting, 'cos he's not a fly-by-night fluffhead.)

No, I could tell that by the writing. I genuinely believes that he really knows his stuff when it comes to this. The whole thing just seemed *really* shortsighted to me.

I think Mike is oblivious the the rather *drastic* differences between various types of religious witchcraft.

Yeah, and while I have my own moments of 'how much does that really matter in the grand scheme of things?', I don't think that the distinctions we have should be tossed out because of the original meanings of a word.

His point that "wicca is the religion and witchcraft is the practice" is legally dangerous is worth noting.

I've been thinking about that as well. I am not sure that I think it is something that really needs to be worried about all that much now, but I can see problems arising in the future as well if it is pushed too hard outside of the community.

Which is something else that I think is worth noting. When *outside* the community, maybe it is better to just use Wicca and Witch interchangabley. People seem to have a rudimentary understanding of what Wicca is and they don't really care about the specifics.

Inside the community, it is different, however. That is where we get into specifics to have discussions about personal theories and practises.

I'm not sure why I argue for these points. Sometimes, I think it'd just be easier to start calling myself a Satanic Wiccan and insist "that's the label that best suits me, and it's only my opinion and of course other people might disagree, but only the Goddess can tell you whether you're a real Wiccan."

Yeah, I get tired of the whole thing too. I don't so much care anymore who calls themselves Wiccan and I think that people like the one I have been dealing with on gURL (and Erin as well, though I avoid her) are wasting a lot of energy chasing down newbies about that when they could be advancing their own paths.

Though part of me secretly wants to unleash this argument on them and see them try to wrap their heads around that and fit it into their whole 'Wicca is a priesthood ... not every Witch has the right to that term' propaganda.

--Phae

[desree42.livejournal.com]

In all honesty, I think that Gardner himself would likely agree with the author of this article. From what I have read about the man, he was all about the 'revival' of Witchcraft as a religion, not about being the father of a new religion. And that may have been great in the early days when most modern Witches were doing things in much the same way.

I think one of the issues with any argument involving Gardener is that he was working from faulty facts. He bought strongly into Murray's theories of a religion that existed from ancient times that was 'witchcraft'. In short he was trying to revive something that we now know never really existed as an actual solid coherent mass that was unlike what he claimed it was.

I really think you'd enjoy Witchcraft Today - bits of it make my teeth hurt worse then Drawing Down the Moon(such as his ascertion that Witches were actually all beautiful young women dancing nekkid by bonfire transformed solely by the Insquisaition as well as the tooth pain I get from anyone claiming that all witches are hearing and feeling the pain of Mother Earth Gia who calls out to us and... well you get the point.)

Part of this, I think, attaches to some of the same issues I have with Drawing Down the Moon. Yes yes it's a product of it's times but... old things within pagan religions are given more weight then new things. There is this though or concept that because it was written 50 years ago and managed to get published it's a good book or a good basis not only for it's target audience(which, of course, it's going to be valuable for them) but for a wider audience who have little relation to the actual context of the book.

I fight strongly against the conflation of Witch and Wicca, if no one else had noticed. Heh. And I do this because, well, it's a slippery slope. I can accept that definitions change over time, sure people can use Wicca to mean whatever they want. I have some issues with claiming words to be chosen by self definition - a dog is not a dog because it calls itself a dog. And If it were would that make a collie any less of a dog simply because it does not call itself one?

I am not Wiccan, I am not strongly influenced by wicca within my own practices - as a concious choice I assure you. It can be very difficult to not be influenced without actively working against it or being aware of where those influences will come from. However if Sally Jo Neopaganist over there does the same things I do and calls it Wicca, and let's say get's a group of friends together and does the same and that's accepted as validly being wiccan.. well I'm like the border collie. I look like a dog now, I bark like a dog now, and I have fleas by association and so I am unwillingly dragged into a definition that does not fit me simply because of the stretching of the definition to include people who are like me.

Though I'm not sure if any of that makes any sense to anyone but me.

I can accept that definitions change and that Wiccans can be whomever calls themself a wiccan(though I disagree with the sentiment and the concept of self indeitifying definitions). I can accept that Wicca and Witch at one time were synonyms or extremely close in meaning. The two, however, don't work together as a modern concept. Either definitions can change over time, in which case the original etymology of the word matters little in modern context. OR the original definition matters and it canot be stretched to include things that were not originally included within the definition.

Frankly I tend to think the whole thing comes down to the concept that people want instant recognition without the hard work or time. If people didn't want an easy in to the percieved status of being a labeled pagan without the nasty dirty bits of goign through the requirements to actually earn that name... I don't think this would be a problem at all.

[pt_tangles]

Frankly I tend to think the whole thing comes down to the concept that people want instant recognition without the hard work or time. If people didn't want an easy in to the percieved status of being a labeled pagan without the nasty dirty bits of goign through the requirements to actually earn that name... I don't think this would be a problem at all.

See, I don't know about that part. One of the points raised in Freeform Craft (the Feri list I am on) was that back in the 70s and 80s people who were 'doing the work' were using Wiccan instead of Witch because, at the time, Witch congured images of Satanic cults and baby eatings and such (back in the midst of Michelle Remembers and all that crap), and Wicca was a more neutral term that people would say, 'So, what's that?' rather than close down.

So, there is a sense that the people who did work for that recognition (for all of us, supposedly) should have a say in the matter. And I don't really think that it is fair to lump them in with fluffy eclectic new agers who want the whole world served to them on a silver platter (which is what tends to happen now), just because they happen to have the same position on this issue. KWIM?

I am a bit torn on how much I feel I should care about this. I don't like it when people like that chick from Wife Swap try to represent all Witches, but I also don't want to be put in the position of playing that part myself because I know that *no one* is capable of being on tv, and not becoming a pariah at home.

Sometimes I think that it would just be better for us to *not* be in the public eye at all. Then, none of this would matter anymore. It would *always* be an internal argument that people would only care a limited amount about because ultimately, when you take the media angle out of it, there is only so much damage someone calling themselves by your label can do. It can resort to a 'live and let live' thing.

I like to think that the wave of Witchcraft's popularity will end soon, but it doesn't really seem to be waning.

--Phae

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Mike's not a fluff-head, but he is forgetting or ignoring the fact that definition changes with usage. What the word "wicce/wicca" meant in Anglo-Saxon is NOT what it has come to mean today, regardless of whether or not he likes it.

Lark and I just got back from a small gathering in Memphis where we were able to spend several hours in essentially private conversation with Judy Harrow, who was the principal guest there. I'm amazed and/or appalled (or both, by turns,) at the degree to which our thoughts and Judy's run together on the present state of Wicca, where Wicca is headed over the next twenty years or so, and what Wicca is going to need in that time.

I'll also point out that Fred Lamond, who knew Gerald Gardner probably as well as any man now living, has now said publicly that the "New Forest Coven" was created a deliberate effort by members of a magical lodge working in concert with several members of a family with a history of involvement with folk-magic to reconstruct Murray's "witchcult," and that the New Forest group was only one of several such experiments in Britain in the early 20th Century.

Fred went on to say that Gardner's breach with the rest of the New Forest group came specifically because Gardner saw what we now call Wicca as having the potential to become a real, active religion meeting people's real spiritual needs in the real world. The other members of the New Forest Coven evidently were extremely unwilling to attempt to move beyond what they saw as little more than an interesting exercise in magical theory.

[pt_tangles]

Fred went on to say that Gardner's breach with the rest of the New Forest group came specifically because Gardner saw what we now call Wicca as having the potential to become a real, active religion meeting people's real spiritual needs in the real world. The other members of the New Forest Coven evidently were extremely unwilling to attempt to move beyond what they saw as little more than an interesting exercise in magical theory.

It seems like a lot of Pagan religions started out that way. I remember seeing a similar story in DDtM about a group of college students looking to recreate something akin to Druidry, and being totally unprepared for the results of what they had created.

--Phae

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

Ah, you're thinking of the Reformed Druids of North America, organized in the early 1960's by students at Carlton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The students decided to avoid mandatory attendance at Sunday morning chapel services by creating their own religion which held its observances at a more convenient hour, thus permitting them to sleep in late on Sunday mornings.

One of those students eventually wound up as a graduate student at UC Berkeley and continued to practice as a Druid and lead public rituals. One of the people who became interested in things Druidic as a result of this was another grad student named Isaac Bonewits.

There's a pretty fair amount of information on RDNA and its offshoots on the Web. Google is your friend.