I was reading the CNN website last night and found 
I’m not going to go into great detail on this here because I need to sleep soon. But I’m going to get it off my chest before laying down for the night. Maybe I’m the only one that sees this going on. Maybe I’m just the only one it bothers. Then again, maybe not.
I have noticed a trend in the pagan communities of which I have been a part. When asked what path all these folks at Pagan Pride Day or other gathering events follow, rarely will you get the answer ‘Wiccan’. Often, you will get the answer ‘I’m pagan, but I’m definitely not Wiccan!’ or some other phrase that implies that Wicca is the equivalent of spirituality shite.
Ok, I can appreciate that maybe someone doesn’t follow every little niggling bit of what Gerald Gardner cooked up. But then, this is what I observe…
The Celtic Reconstructionist pagan casts a circle with an athame… even calls it an athame. Calls the offering section Cakes and Ale. Um, that’s pretty Wiccan.
“Pagan walking a Kemetic path” observes the Wheel of the Year but no Egyptian feast days. Um, which religion did you say you follow again?
Another pagan that isn’t Wiccan calls herself the High Priestess of a coven, meets for the Sabbats with said coven, calls quarters and sets up circle in a pretty standard way that has come down to us from, yes, Wiccan covens practicing and yet… She still isn’t Wiccan.
Ok, so I get it! Everyone wants to be special and no one wants to be Wiccan. I could, if I wanted to, call myself a “pagan who walks an Egyptian Mysteries path with a heavy concentration in tantra and ceremonial occultism”. The fact of the matter is, the way I work in circle is pretty basically thanks to the strides made by WICCAN priests and priestesses before me. The trainings I underwent came from WICCAN priests and priestesses who received them from still a WICCAN priest or priestess before them. The holidays I observe are the Wheel of the Year which you will find in pretty much ANY book on WICCA. Yes, there is more to me than just my Wiccan roots, however, I am not ashamed of my Wiccan roots. I’m proud of them.
I’m proud of all the Wiccans that came before me and helped progress things to the point where I can say “Oh, I’m Wiccan” and there’s a good chance someone’s heard of it. I’m proud of the fact that, regardless of what you think about Wicca, the circle format for doing ritual seems to work for pretty much darn near everyone. Yes, I know a good bit of it is a gift from our Ceremonial Magick brethren, but still… have you ever been a member of a Lodge? Most “pagans poo-poo’ing Wicca” not only have NOT been a Lodge member, but learned the Wiccan way of doing it and have been doing it that way ever since with no “Gee, I wish there was some other way to do ritual because this fucking sucks”.
So you want to be a PAGAN with a capital P-A-G-A-N or some other uber-specific and hyphenated label to avoid being labeled as *gasp!* one of those Wiccan people. What-EVER! Regardless of what you say, if I see you doing ritual and celebrating Wiccan holidays and acting like a Wiccan HPS/HP and espousing beliefs that are basically the core Wiccan framework, then you have a Wiccan root to which you owe a great deal of your personal practice.
I have never understood the need to throw out a path because someone who claimed to be of that path was a poor reflection of it. I suppose that means that every spiritual path should be null and void because someone, at some time or another, has acted like a horse’s ass while calling themselves a devout believer. No, Wicca has no standardized central authority to ensure all HPS and HP are equipped to do the job. No, not all covens are created equal. And yes, some people are real assholes. But what does any of that say about the path itself?
I don’t understand why pagans who (a) basically operate Wiccan but (b) don’t want to be called Wiccan don’t step up and fight to improve the reputation of Wicca by living with integrity and with pride in the fact that they’re Wiccan. Why don’t people fight for the good name of the Craft? Why is it the tendency to peel off the Wiccan label like a sullied robe and apologize for the mud that someone ELSE was responsible for splashing on the path?
Maybe it’s laziness. Maybe it’s ego. Maybe people want to be special. Maybe it’s just what’s cool to do. Maybe people are just insecure that they can’t handle being even remotely compared to a nasty-bad Wiccan and so it’s just better not to be Wiccan at all so they’re safe from someone else thinking bad of them by default. After all, it’s not that they have a problem with labels. Oh no… they’ll give you plenty of labels to describe themselves in place of the word ‘Wiccan’, so it’s certainly not a label-issue.
All I know is that I’m torn between laughing and raging. Raging for the ground lost with every person that badmouths the very path that has shaped so much of them. And laughing… laughing because it’s not the LABELS that define you — it’s what you DO that defines you. And I know what I see a lot of people DOING.
And it’s called Wicca.
Photo by VK-Red (via Flickr).
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Sunday, 28th June 2009 at 3:44 PM