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Why I Ain't Wiccan...

To: alt.religion.wicca,alt.traditional.witchcraft,alt.witchcraft
From: "Xavier Sloane" 
Subject: Why I Ain't Wiccan...
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 21:01:40 GMT

Hi.
You all know me as Corvun Saepius (I'm trying out a new internet alias).
I've been thinking a lot the past few months about my spirituality, and
about my alleged apparent "one-true-way-ism".

When I first began my path, I was taught by the daughter of a local High
Priestess (I've told the story before), who taught me that "Wicca" was the
old religion.  Like most newbies, though, I was still getting a lot of my
info from the internet.  Everywhere I looked, Wicca was referred to as "the
old religion", "the old ways", and the like.  Predictably, then, when I
began hearing that Gerald Gardner probably made up most of the religion he
presented to the world (or at least pieced it together from other occult
sources), the conclusion I drew was that Gardner's religion, if it was
really new, couldn't be Wicca since Wicca by definition is "the old
religion".

When I found out just how many religions there used to be that Wicca was
supposedly based on, I mentally made the adjustment that Wicca was a LOT of
"old religions", and not just one religion after all.

Imagine my confusion the first time I heard that Wicca was a new religion.
I was up in arms -- "Wicca is ancient!  It's the OLD religion!" I'd say in
protest.  The justification for Wicca being a NEW religion always had to do
with Gardner.  This always seemed to frustrate me.  My position was that
Wicca was the Old Religion, and that if Gardner invented a religion, that
religion couldn't be "real Wicca" because I had the _a priori_ assumption
that Wicca was first and foremost an ancient religion.  So whatever Gardner
may have invented couldn't have been "real" Wicca.

Eventually, I came upon a website talking about "Elder Wicca".  Rather than
referring to Wicca as modern religion, they divided it into two categories;
"Neo-Wicca", invented by Gardner, and "Elder Wicca", referring to the
elusive "Old Religion" (to wich Gardner may or may not have had a
connection).  So I began calling myself an "Elder Wiccan", and boy did that
ever cause confusion!  I still get flack because I supposedly used to go
around calling myself an Elder.  Yeesh.  I could've lived without *that*
ordeal!

So I countinued trying to convince everyone that Wicca was the Old Religion.
Wicca was the "Old Religion" presented by Gardner.  When it was realized
that the religion Gardner presented wasn't old, I concluded that it wasn't
Wicca because Wicca is "the old religion" -- and I just couldn't understand
why everyone else was saying that Wicca was that which was presented by
Gardner, and therefore young.  I understood that the term "wicca" had to
refer either to the Old Religion(s) or to the religion presented by Gardner,
since the two were different.  I just didn't understand why everyone
automatically kept using the term to refer to the religion presented by
Gardner and why they automatically discarded the "old religion" part.  It
deemed so backward to me.

Meanwhile, I was content to keep refering to all of the old religions as
"Wicca".  To me, Druidry, Asatru, Stregheria, etc. were all "old religions"
and were therefore all just different forms of Wicca (not to be confused
with Neo-Wicca, which was only one religion, invented by Gardner).
Essentially, I was using the word "Wicca" the way most others were using the
word "Pagan".  Then I somehow got the idea in my head that since Paganism
didn't necessarily involve the practice of Witchcraft, and since the Wiccan
religion was also often referred to as "the Craft", that Paganism was simply
"Wicca, minus the Witchcraft".

So there I was, having forged my own terminology which although internally
consistant was at odds with the terminology which was already in common use,
growing more frustrated by those trying to claim that Wicca was a young
religion.  Each time I heard someone say "I'm not Wiccan, I'm [insert name
of other tradition]", the frustration only grew.

This however, wasn't the only factor in my resentfulness toward those "I'm
not Wiccan" Pagans and Witches.

Early on in my path, while I was being taught by the High Priestess's
daughter, I had a Pagan friend named James.  He was a flaky, D&D fanatic who
went around saying "I'm not Wiccan, I'm a WARRIOR!"  He had a book called
"Druid Warrior" which he'd gotten from the New Age section at Waldenbooks.
He called it his bible.  He once told me that my girlfriend wasn't "much of
a Witch" because she couldn't throw fireballs from her hands!

I suppose somewhere along the line, I began subconsciously equating the "I'm
not Wiccan, I'm [insert name of other tradition]" statement with flaky D&D
fantasy of the same ilk as James' delusions.  My gut reaction, therefore,
was to assume that anyone who claimed to be a non-Wiccan Pagan or a
non-Wiccan Witch was automatically a nut and a flake.  Not to say that all
other traditions were flaky -- I actually had a lot of respect for them.
But I also still had the idea in my head that all the old religions (and
family traditions) were just different forms of Wicca (but not Neo-Wicca,
invented by Gardner), so anyone who didn't want to be called "Wiccan", in my
mind, was just some weirdo wanting to play make-believe by giving himself a
more archaic, "cooler" label -- and that no SERIOUS Pagan or Witch would
have any problem referring to himself as a Wiccan.

Well, though I do have somewhat of a sentimental attatchment to the "Wiccan"
label, since that is where it all started for me, I'm sick of alienating
myself from the rest of the Pagan community based on semantics.

So, here's my surrender...

I'm not Wiccan, I'm an ecclectic neo-Pagan Witch.

There.  I said it.  I feel sick now.

Peace Out,
- Xavier Sloane (Corvun Saepius)



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