This longer answer can clarify it a bit more: Wicca is a religion which also contains sundry magical and mystical practices. It is sometimes referred to as a mystery religion.
Wicca is one of the many Neo-Pagan religions, reportedly the largest. It was popularized in 1954 by Gerald Gardner. At its core, Wicca involves the belief in and the worship of the Divine manifesting in both feminine and masculine forms, generally referred to as the "Goddess" and "God."
Wiccan "churches," as well as other Neo-Pagan religious organizations, have been recognized by governments in the USA and Canada and given tax exempt status. The American IRS uses the following criteria for a religious organization:
Military Courts of Justice in the USA have also found Wicca to be a valid religion, deserving of protection under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In United States v. Phillips, (42 M.J. 346) in 1995, the concurring opinion by Judge Wiss stated:
First, Wicca is a socially recognized religion. It is is acknowledged as such by the Army. See Dept. of the Army (DA) Pamphlet 165-13-1, Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups: A Handbook for Chaplains (April 1980), revising A Pamphlet 165-13, "Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups: A Handbook for Chaplains" (April 1978). Further, it is acknowledged as such in courts of law.Gerald Gardner himself--the "Grand Old Man of Wicca"--in his Witchcraft Today (1954) described a "joyous religion."
As Wicca is a religion that contains mystical and magical practices, it may appear to many as being totally different from other religions. Nevertheless, the addition of mystical and magical practices does not negate the core of the Wiccan religion.
FAQ: How can Wicca be a religion if there is no laity? Isn't religion the practice of worship of a god or gods as directed by a priesthood over a laity?
The most basic definition of religion refers to the human belief in, or the worship of, a powerful being or beings. In polytheism, these powerful beings would be the "Gods" and "spirits." In monotheism, this powerful being would be the one "God."
A religion does not necessarily need a "laity." Otherwise, the Quakers, aka the Friends Church, or the Religious Society of Friends, are not practicing a religion. Quakers or Friends do not have the divisions of "laity" and "clergy." Indeed, a central doctrine among the Friends is the Protestant Christian doctrine of a "priesthood of all believers." (This Protestant Christian doctrine is also known as the "universal priesthood.") This doctrine means all members of the Friends have a right to preach and expound upon the aspects of their faith.
The Wiccan religion does involve the practice of worship due to belief in deities or the Divine. Generally, each intiated Wiccan is said to be a priest/ess of the "Goddess" and "God."
Aside from worship or veneration of a deity, deities, or spirits, religious observances include rituals/ceremonies, festivals, feasts, public service, music, sacred stories (mythology), art, rites of passage (matrimony, funerals, child blessings, coming of age, initiation), trance, meditation, prayer, and other aspects of human culture and activity. Wicca has these too.
When Gerald Gardner wrote Witchcraft Today (1954), he was very clearly describing a religion.
At the beginning of standard Wiccan ritual, a circle is cast around participants to mark sacred space. The spirits of the four directions are called. Then the Goddess and God are invoked into the circle.
Wicca, a religion?
I once had an extraordinary bit of correspondence in which a person emphatically insisted that Wicca was NOT a religion, explaining:
Religion is a sham--it's a f--king joke, concocted by sad, frightened people, determined to label themselves something collective to make themselves feel better....I do not worship. I do not belong to any laity.The author also explained that he did not "believe in" or "invoke" either Gods or spirits:
I evoke. A lot! I bring things supernatural and infernal into physical being. I also have a close relationship with the "gods" I work with. To me, they are teachers, guides, mentors. In all cases therefore my relationship with all the aforesaid entities is a physical, tangible REAL one. Not imagination. No invisible god. I have physcal results that have come from a tangible workable relationship. I do not believe in Gods. The entities I work with are physical. ...I am not a xtain led to believe in an imaginary friend that I must pray to. ...I don't believe in gods. There is a hill outside my house. It is covered in snow. The snow is held there by Gravity. If I stop believeing (as the relativist would attempt to argue at this point) then the hill will still be there whether I believe it or not. ...This argument is a rather intense denouncement of religion in general. I have quoted these portions of his correspondence in order to share my response and answers to these questions.We have left behind the Age of the Mother--but we still Honour Her--we are putting away the rules, and restrictions that is the Age of ther Father--and like a teenager finding itself--clumsy-- ignorant--and headstrong WE--the shining child of promise are coming into our own. The Child of Promise.
Religion is nothing but the opium of the masses--and like Lucifer kicking off the shackles of his father we become KING in our own right. This same story is reflected in every childs' maturity and coming into their own. So it is the fundemental singular defining point of Wicca--you are no longer a member of ANY herd!
So assuming you've dumped all of the above and written it off as subjective wibble:
1) Wicca--where is your ecclesiarchy
2) Wicca--where is your laity
3) Wicca--where is your dogma
4) Wicca--where is your book
5) Wicca--where is your mechanism to control people
6) Wicca--. . . .and so on ad infinitum.
Aside from being Wiccan, I am also a Panthiest. Yes, I touch the soil of the planet Earth. I feel the rain on my skin and breath the air in Earth's biosphere. I observe the moon. I marvel at the stars visible to the naked eye and at the Hubble telescope images of colliding galaxies.
On a January day, the snow also covers the grass and cars outside my house. I know the snow is held there by gravity and the water in the snow was formed in Earth's atmosphere, condensed into a tiny droplet, frozen in the upper atmosphere. The ice crystal was drawn by gravity towards the ground, from the cloud of precipitation. As it is drawn to the ground, this ice crystal grew by picking up more water vapor along with other ice crystals. As the ice crystal came into contact with warmer air, it melted somewhat. This melting acted like a glue, causing crystals to bond together into larger fluffy looking snowflakes. Thus, I end up scraping the snow off the window of the car prior to driving.
I believe I am part and parcel of the planet Earth and the Cosmos. I consider the Earth to be sacred. I consider the Cosmos to be a manifestation of the Divine.
I am also an animist and a polythesist. I believe in the "Gods" and in the existence of sundry spirits. As a Wiccan, I cast circles and call the spirits (Air, Fire, Water, Earth) at the four directions. I invoke my Gods into the sacred space, where I offer my Gods worship. I sing. I meditate. I chant. I celebrate. And--yeah--at the end of a ritual, I feel better.
Having explained my own perceptions, I will respond to this author's questions.
1) Wicca--where is your ecclesiarchy?
Well, an ecclesiarchy is control of government by clerics. I live in the USA and due to separtion of church and state, we don't have an "ecclesiarchy." If you mean "ecclesiastical hierarchy," most Wiccans wouldn't use that phrase, but Wicca does have three degrees of initation.
None of these folks (1st, 2nd, 3rd degrees) are paid professional clergy.
2) Wicca--where is your laity?
I've explained above that I don't think a religion needs to have priesthood ruling over a laity in order to qualify as a religion.
3) Wicca--where is your dogma?
We try not to be too dogmatic about it, but Wiccans do have theology involving the nature of the Gods and our interaction with them and with the manifested universe...and so forth. This whole discussion is theology.
4) Wicca--where is your book?
Actually, I have a whole library...but I assume the question is about the one "sacred text." There is a bunch of stuff--like the Wiccan "Charge of the Goddess," which appears in many different versions of folks' BOSs (Wiccan Book of Shadows). Of course, there's more than one version of the "Charge of the Goddess" floating around the community and everybody has their own interpretations. Personally, I think diversity is what makes theology fun.
A religion does not need one "sacred text" to be a religion. Shinto is a religion. Yet, there is no core sacred text in Shinto, as the Koran is the "sacred text" of Islam or the Bible is the "sacred text" of Christianity. There are books of Shino lore and history--but they are really not the same thing as the "sacred text."
5) Wicca--where is your mechanism to control people?
Ah, that would be the discussions of ethics in which Wiccans encourage each other to master the "basics of being a decent person."
6) Wicca--. . . .and so on ad infinitum.
This question is not a question so there is no answer.
Although the author of this correspondence has a different view than mine, ultimately he must judge his own path.
There are some who claim that a practitioner of the occult arts stands on his own two feet, like the lone wizzard, outside the herd. The masses are sheep and do not understand the mystery or the reality of the magical currents.
His questions, though, led me to answer the question of who the laity of Wicca might be.
If someone believes that Wicca--in order to be a religion--must have a laity, I can, just for the fun of discussion, attempt to suggest who could be defined as the laity.
FAQ: Don't some Wiccans use "godforms," as the Jungian concept of archetypes, to be a focus point for making a change in mind and behavior? Isn't this different than believing in gods?
Yes, some Wiccans do interpret the Gods in the form of Jungian archetypal imagery. The Swiss psychiatrist, C. G. Jung developed a theory that there are repeating ancient and/or archaic images which derive from the human "collective unconscious" which are found in mythologies all over the world. Jung suggested that these "archetypes" were innate, universal, and hereditary.
A few of the archetypes that Jung described included the great mother, the wise old man, the trickster, the hero, the maiden, etc. However, Jung allowed there were many more archetypes than he discussed. As Jung explains:
All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes. This is particularly true of religious ideas, but the central concepts of science, philosophy, and ethics are no exception to this rule. In their present form they are variants of archetypal ideas created by consciously applying and adapting these ideas to reality. For it is the function of consciousness, not only to recognize and assimilate the external world through the gateway of the senses, but to translate into visible reality the world within us.John H. Halstead wrote in The Archetypes Are Gods: Re-godding the Archetypes, 2011: "In the 1960s and 1970s, as the claims to historical continuity with an ideal Pagan past began to come under attack, Neopagans turned to Jungian psychology as a means for legitimating Neopagan practice."
The Jungian archetypal imagery does draw on powerful symbolism and concepts. Some of these symbols and concepts are unquestionably ancient. Demeter is the ancient Greek Goddess of agriculture, grain, and bread. Demeter, the barley mother, provided bread--the prime sustenance of humanity, and thus could be interpreted as the nurturing and comforting "great mother" archetype. Thor, from the Norse pantheon, fights the Jotum (giants). Thus, likewise, Thor can be viewed as the champion and defender "hero" archetype.
In the 1990’s, the concept of "hard core" polytheism, in which the Gods are viewed as literal beings existing independently of the human psyche, became popular. This concept spurred an ongoing theological debate about whether or not the Gods are "real" or "merely archetypes." This theological debate continues on. The debate not only involves contemplation of the nature of the Gods themselves, but the nature of human belief and what it entails.
Is calling upon "'godforms' as the Jungian concepts of archetypes," different than "believing in gods"? I'm not certain, but it does seem to still involve religious theology and belief.
Personally, I think the Gods could accurately be described as both. For example, Mahatma Gandhi could be described as the "archetypal wise guru," but that doesn't mean that I think Gandhi wasn't a real person. Mohandas Gandhi lived 1869 to 1948. He was a physical, tangible human being.
copyright February 2013 Myth Woodling