| Wicca is hard to define, since different paths
practice differently from each other, and solitary witches often incorporate
ideas from many religions into their own version of Wicca. For example:
Some Wiccans believe in and worship only the Goddess and her Consort in
their different forms as the seasons turn, while other Wiccans will believe
in a whole pack of Gods, maybe they believe in Greek gods, or Egyptian
Gods, and worship them. Usually though, even if a Wiccan believes
in many Gods, more emphasis is usually placed on the Goddess, with her
powers of creation.
Wicca and Drudism (the 2 most commonly accepted forms of paganism), in their earliest forms, have been traced back to Ancient Great Britain, way before the Romans, and therefore far before Christian faiths starting popping up like weeds. However, Goddess Worship has been practiced much longer and unfortunately cannot be traced much farther back than when writing started. Goddess worship was certainly practiced in Ancient Egypt, along with their other Gods. Goddess worship was practiced almost exclusively on the Island of Crete when the Minoans (who preceded the Myceneans who in turn preceded classical greeks) thrived there. So you can see that Goddess Worshippers and Wiccams have a long history. They do not claim to be the ONLY religion. Wicca and Goddess worship, along with other forms of paganism, thrived until monotheistic religions came and used fear to force people to their religions. They tried to turn all the old gods into devil (how else did you think Christians got the idea for a devil that was half man half goat? It's PAN!) and even changed their own holy texts so that it would be alright for them to hate people of other religions, and persecute them, and torture them to death. For anyone who doesn't already know, the King James Bible, which is widely accepted, was greatly changed from the original bible. Before good ole Jimmy came along and decided to take matters into his own hands, there was nothing in the Bible about witches being "evil". However, James decided he didn't like them, put the idea into his "version" of the bible, and this led to great slaughtering of pagan peoples everywhere. Because these people were killed suddenly and without warning, there was no chance of passing along the precious information that they had, and a lot practices in many faiths simply vanished because no one alive knew the rituals anymore. It is good to see pagan religions thriving again, especially in Britain where they were almost wiped out. However there is still a long way to go, because many pagans face hardships everyday because of Christian imagery of evil witches killing babies for their blood and having orgies with the devil. I must point out that if you are of a christian faith, and a pagan person expresses a dislike of your religion, it is probably not your religion they disagree with, but the way it is practiced by a great deal of people, and the way in which it was used to wipe out thousands of innocent people, just because they believed in a simple form of peace: "All Gods are one God, All Goddesses are one Goddess." |
