What My Neighbor Believes: Wicca (Part Two)

By Lady Rose, Guest Blog­ger On the Horizon

Meet Your Friendly Neigh­bor­hood Witch

Basic Wic­can Facts, Beliefs and Traditions

• There are many dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions of Wicca, so there is no one way or “right” way to be a witch.
• “Harm none” is the guid­ing rule for all who fol­low the path of Wicca.
• Wic­cans strive to live in har­mony with nature and others.
• The Divine (Great Spirit) is viewed as being both male and female, or the God and the God­dess; how­ever, in some tra­di­tions, there is more empha­sis on the feminine.
• What is referred to as “magic” is actu­ally focused thought, will and emo­tions, often using sym­bols and var­i­ous tools or items as focal points and\or to enhance the focused intentions.
• The Earth (the Mother of all Life) and all the crea­tures of the Earth are hon­ored and held sacred.
• The soul con­tin­ues to exist beyond the veil of death, and lives in an after­life (Sum­mer­land) until it is time to be reborn.
• The 8 sea­sonal changes of year are cel­e­brated at the sol­stices and equinoxes.
• The phases of the moon mark the times to gather to honor the God­dess and God.
• Witches respect all pos­i­tive, life-affirming spir­i­tual tra­di­tions and religions.

What Witches Are Not

• Witches do not wor­ship the devil. The devil is a Chris­t­ian con­cept and has noth­ing to do with Wicca (his­tor­i­cally or today).
• Witches are not evil. They adhere to the basic prin­ci­ple of “harm none,” as well as the belief that all you do comes back to you threefold.
• Witches do not recruit or brain­wash any one. Being a witch is a per­sonal choice that has to come from heart and spirit, and is not some­thing that is drummed into any­one. Witches have no desire to “con­vert” anyone.

Why I Am A Witch

Wicca is the spir­i­tual tra­di­tion that res­onates with my soul and with which I feel most com­fort­able. I enjoy the rit­u­als and cer­e­monies, and my soul is uplifted by the con­nec­tion with the Divine in Nature. For me, being a witch is also about hon­or­ing the Divine God and God­dess within each per­son and within myself. It is about heal­ing the planet, con­nect­ing with the Web of Life, and help­ing to bring bal­ance, har­mony, and peace to my life and those around me.

So the next you see some­one dressed in a cape, pointed hat, and car­ry­ing a broom, you will know they are just dressed up as a fic­tion­al­ized ver­sion of a witch for Hal­loween or a Harry Pot­ter cos­tume party because if they were a real witch they would be fly­ing on the broom. (Kidding!).

I hope you’ve enjoyed read­ing about Wicca and real witches, who are just ordi­nary peo­ple who dance to the beat of a slightly dif­fer­ent drum­mer, cel­e­brate the hol­i­days a lit­tle dif­fer­ently, and occa­sion­ally might hug a tree or two.

Bright Bless­ings,

Lady Rose
The Diet Pul­pit
2 Witches Blog

Invi­ta­tion to Serve as a Guest Blogger

I invite you to con­tribute to an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion On the Hori­zon about the var­i­ous belief sys­tems and, more par­tic­u­larly, what the many dif­fer­ent churches believe and teach. The invi­ta­tion also extends to those who, like me, are spir­i­tu­ally walk­ing beyond the walls of orga­nized reli­gion and per­sons of all dif­fer­ent faiths, not just Chris­tians, in order to fur­ther our knowl­edge and tol­er­ance of each other’s under­stand­ing of and approach to spir­i­tu­al­ity and belief.

Send your con­tri­bu­tion to admin at hope­ful­spirit dot com!

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