The Gods And Goddess Of Witchcraft and Wicca

The gods and goddess of witchcraft and Wicca are an amorphous mob. Given that there is no clear consensus as to the meaning of "witchcraft", and various confusions about the use of the term "Wicca", it should come as little surprise that the gods and goddess of witchcraft and Wicca wear a variety of faces.

Wicca, many authorities confidently state, is the religious aspect of Witchcraft. It's actually not. It may be a religious aspect of Witchcraft, but as Witchcraft is an umbrella term, encompassing a very wide spectrum of beliefs and metaphysical models some of which don't include gods at all, it can't be said to have anything resembling an homogeneous theology.

It is generally agreed that "Wicca" is properly considered a subcategory of Witchcraft. This allows African tribal Witches, Broom-Hilda, certain Satanists, Hermione Granger and so on to get on with their lives, gods or goddesses included, without being accused of being inauthentic Wiccans. Wicca in this usage is taken to have a specific set of qualities which are, much more often than not, believed to derive substantially from Gardnerian Witchcraft.

A decade or two ago, acceptance of "the" Goddess - with an option on "the" God - would most probably have been requisites for inclusion in Wicca. Time changes things. The magical and religious aspects of Wicca but just as there has been a massive growth in religions based on Paganism and Pantheism that don't involve magic per se, there has also been a resurgence of a sort of eclectic, religiously-neutral, spell-based Witchcraft that many consider to have more in common with pre-20th century Craft than with the Gardnerian version.

The more intriguing question is whether one can be said to be Wiccan without some degree of belief in the gods and the goddess in particular. Is a degree of religiosity necessary for the terms to have meaning or are the Goddess and God of Gardnerian-derived Craft one of the optional extras of the path, to be embraced or rejected as one might skyclad working, strict male-to-female polarity work, or the ban on "being a Witch alone"?

Given this background, one has to was whether one can talk sensibly about the gods and goddess of witchcraft and Wicca at all!

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The Guardian

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CBC.ca

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