A question on Wicca vs. non-Wicca

So, I am not a practitioner of any of these systems, but I have an academic interest in the larger topic from having done a fair amount of work in graduate school of Greek magical and divinatory texts.*

So I have a question. Why's with the pointed exclusion of Wicca. Is there some sort of deep rift between Wicca people and non-Wicca people?

*I am one, I flatter myself, one of the world's greatest experts on the "twitch divination" texts of Pseudo-Melampus—woo hoo!

There are even rifts between Wiccan groups on what is and is not Wiccan. In that way, they are no different than Baptists saying Catholics aren't Christians, etc. In this case, it's probably it is believed* that Wicca is a very new religion that "steals" ancient magical systems in a "fluffy bunny" sort of way.

*Not necessarily by myself.

The "fluffy bunny" aspect is certainly high in my mind when I look at modern revivals. Astrology is the most obvious example. Ancient astrology was not psychological; it was understood to be predicative and scientific. In that form, it virtually died, to be revived for very different ends. It is as if, 2500 years from now x-ray photography were rediscovered as a tool of personal fulfillment.

The exclusion was more of an "in-joke" then anything else.

Wicca is a supposed modern derivation of many ancient pagan systems - and yet there is no evidence of it having been around pre 20th century. This in itself is not a bad thing - Thelema is also a relatively new system. Yet Wicca has the added disadvantage of being the form of magick popularised by teenage magazines where you can cut out love spells and perform them for yourself with the aid of red candles of rose petals. It is a sad fact that anything championed by 14 year old girls tends to be written off. Perhaps I am at fault for doing so.

Of course, I have nothing against people who believe and practice Wicca - each to their own and I'm sure it's a very potent magickal system in the right hands.

Yet there are several tenets of the system that I find nonsensical. The greatest of these being the Rule of Three - that which states that whatever energy a person puts out there, positive or negative, will be returned threefold. There is no basis for this in any truly ancient theology or theosophy (as far as I know). In fact, in ancient days when magick was practiced and plied as a trade, "black magic" and curses would have been used as freely as any other spell. They would have paid just as well!

So in brief answer to your question - there's no real rift between Wicca and non-Wicca people, but there is a general belief amongst practitioners of other systems that Wicca is a made up system with no grounding in ancient practice or knowledge.

With respect, is there any evidence for any of this stuff being practiced over time, particularly if the state of mind of the practitioner is taken into account? Astrology would be my best-case example here. If not astrology, what then?

That "magic" has taken place through time and across cultures, or that in European magic there are certain currents (eg., interest in opposites, naming, secret oral transmission of information) that go over long periods, doesn't seem to me to be evidence of a true "tradition."

I mean, there are commonalities between medieval and ancient spell books, for example, but they don't go much beyond some basic ideas of this nature and co-occurrence within the same large-scale physical and social culture (eg., lots of spells about wine and goats, but not many about macadamia nuts). And much is just a play of the dominant belief system. That is, to believe that the eucharist has powerful occult powers is not evidence of a strong, long-running independent tradition. It's evidence of Catholicism.

You raise an interesting point. For myself, I practice Seidr, which is based upon the ancient Nordic traditions. I am also particularly interested in Shamanism.

You may be right - there is little evidence of lasting traditions. We can, however, make assumptions from texts, and from the law. Medieval English law in particular gives some interesting insights into witchcraft and how it was practiced in the way that it set about prohibiting certain things. But then, there are also grimoires which go into much more depth and illustrate a very healthy tradition of magick from all over the world.

I personally just happen to find Wicca a bit wishy washy. In my experience, it is thin on the ground in philosophy and part of what I love about Occultism are the oblique references to older texts that have you running off trying to find out about the life of some long dead Englishman who had his eye on power.

Heh. I like the way you put it. Certainly one attraction I have to my religion, Catholicism, is that it's got "stuff" to it. Obviously, you don't NEED to read Greek and Latin and care about the machinations of long-dead monks and philosophers, but it's there for you if you want it. It's got lots of stuff—cruft even. Obviously it's not a religious argument, but I'd find it hard to be a Mormon. Too new! (Then again, the documentation is better...)

In my own opinion, Catholic ritual is theurgic magic.
The Protestant religions lost most of their magical power when they cut out the 'bells and smells".
There's some real power channeling in even the vestments. e.g. In the Old Style ritual, where the priest had his back to the congregation during the central part of the Mass, the gold applique coming over each shoulder on the chasuble meeting in that central boss right in the middle of the back would carry the energy from where the consecration is taking place. The Stole had both a gold fringe on each end to carry of any charge accumulated as well as a cross at the nape of the neck covering the usual entry point for inimical energies.
Chanting has, as you probably know, some strong energetic effects. "Stuff" indeed!

I think there's something to what you say, but also a danger. "Catholic ritual is theurgic magic" is an opinion like "Islam is just Judaism washed through 7c Arab culture" or "Hinduism is just like ancient Greek religion." There is no simple "is" when it comes to describing a religious tradition, least of all one that flattens it down so much. What are you describing? Historical emergence, outward appearances, inner meaning, hidden meaning, conventional interpretation--all of these and more are equally valid ways of saying what Catholic ritual or any similar topic "is." But none is sufficient either.

I think it would be fair to say that all religions are magickal systems in and of themselves. The Semitic faiths that dominate the world at present are all heavily influenced by the practices of the peoples that they amalgamated into themselves. They all have certain rites and rituals that are about chanelling energy one way or another - and this is what magick is afterall! These rituals are very potent.

Prayer and meditation are one and the same in my opinion. They are about closing the mind to external and internal influences and communing directly with the Godhead - or Universe.

It just happens to be that the dominant ideologies - or faiths - have done a grand job of denouncing all other practices as "heathen". Interesting that even that word - heathen - has come to mean something evil, or bad, when originally it merely described the practices of our Northern ancestors.

Of course, magick as we tend to talk about it now would be in direct competition with the ideals put forward by the semitic faiths because it allows power to be held by individual people. It allows for ordinary men and women to commune directly with "God"/"Gods" and yield some of the power that is attributed to them. This doesn't make for a stable society. And as we all know, religion has long been used as a tool of oppression, NOT enlightenment or liberation.

I don't think it is any coincidence that one of the most widely spread magickal systems practiced today is that of Thelema. This system is very firmly seated within a Christian paradigm and draws upon many of the ritual elements we might associate with Catholicism.