liese-l:

Ah, okay! That’s a really helpful document, thank you! Am I still able to worship the God and Goddess and follow an more eclectic neo-pagan path in terms of my practice, or it God and Goddess worship reserved only for initiated Wiccans? (I’m sorry for all these questions omg)

The difficulty with non-initiates honouring the Lord and Lady is that they don’t actually know these Gods. They don’t know their names, or really who or what they are, directly. Since they are two specific deities of the British Isles, you can’t replace them with other deities, and they’re really not what you’d call ‘soft-polytheistic’ in nature - they are individual deities, not a collection of all gods and goddesses into one god and one goddess.

You can address them by their honorifics, Lord and Lady, or generically as God and Goddess, but you will have no way of knowing or verifying that the deities who attend your rites and interact with you are the specific Lord and Lady of the Wica.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t happen. Plenty of people who are not initiated (yet) feel the call to join the Wica honour the Lord and Lady before initiation, without knowing their specific names or being able to confirm that they are in fact the gods of the Wica. But until you’re an initiate, you’ll have no way to confirm that, and you will be running purely on your own faith.

If you’d really like to experience the Lord and Lady of the Wica, and honour them, you’ll need to come to them through a lineaged coven.  Otherwise you’re going to be left guessing. And really - if the idea of a coven doesn’t work for you, or some of the core concepts of the Wiccan experience leaves you cold, it’s ok - it’s a fertility cult, it’s a very small priesthood, and it’s not meant for everyone. You don’t have to cram yourself into a mold you don’t fit. Explore some different pantheons and cultures. Find out what resonates for you personally, what interests you on a broad scope, and then start narrowing it down. Wicca is just a single, small, very specific thing - a small branch of a much bigger pagan tree. So don’t be afraid to look at all your options first.

liese-l:

Thank you, I had no idea about that! I had thought it was fair enough to charge for any sort of service, but if that’s the case, I’ll give them a miss. They also charge $20 a lesson for those in the beginner’s circle, so ^^; I really don’t know much about this, so I welcome any advice!

Also, I wanted to ask you, is it correct to call what I am doing Neo-Wicca? I read on your disclaimer page that one cannot call what they practice Wicca until they are initiated into a coven, so I wanted to make sure I’m not appropriating any terms! Thank you for your help ^^;

Well, as a BTW initiate, I’m inclined to say no. ‘Neo-Wicca’ isn’t really very useful as a term because Wicca in and of itself is less than 100 years old already. It’s already fairly new.

I don’t have a problem with people choosing to practice solitary paths, and build their own Craft. I have done the same in my own life. But it isn’t accurate to call those practices Wicca. Wicca is a coven-based practice, and ‘Wiccan’ is a title earned through hard work and study, and granted by ones’ peers.

My other issue with things like ‘neo-Wicca’ is that these paths are so often personal and eclectic that have very little in common with each other, let alone with Traditional Wicca. Most of what people think of as Wiccan very often isn’t - it is instead a form of eclectic neo-pagan witchcraft, which may have a Wiccan ‘flavour’.

I have written a short article about the nature of Wicca, as I understand it, which you can download from my website. (http://www.witchscauldron.net/cauldron/whatiswicca.doc)

Also, feel free to check out the rest of the posts I’ve made about Wicca on my Tumblr. They may not be directly useful, but I think they’re interesting nonetheless.

liese-l:

Ah, I see. I really have no idea about these things, so ^^;

There is an Alexandrian coven near me that does lessons on how to work with magic and the theory of magic, and then if they like you they’ll invite you to the beginner’s circle where you start training to join the coven (it seems pretty popular so I imagine the coven must be huge)

But it’s $200 for four 3.5hr lessons which actually only comes down to just under $15 an hour which is p. good but I’m just a bit nervous about spending all that money, especially if I find I don’t like it? But yeah, I might contact them at some point and see if I can take the lessons.

Anyway, thank you! I’ll keep a discerning eye on the information I find and make sure to cross-reference things so I’m not just blinding believing wildly incorrect info. 

So. Yes.

I’d pass.

That’s not a good scenario. BTW (which includes the Alexandrian tradition) has these things called the Ardanes. One of the Ardanes expressly states that no money should be charged for teaching of the Craft. Covens might charge for material costs - but more than that is questionable.

They may be doing this with the argument that the ‘magic lessons’ aren’t Wicca, and feature no religious material, thus they don’t fall under the Ardanes. But that sort of reasoning seems dodgy, if they make it clear the class is connected to a coven of Alexandrian Wiccans and they take students into the coven’s outer court from the paid lessons.

Some covens legitimately do use a student group or open circle as a sort of intake-filter; they might invite good prospects for the coven to study further with them. But I’ve never seen those groups do more than have dues or take up a collection at meetings to cover material costs.

I think you can probably find a better way. The money thing is a red flag. What they’re charging is exorbitant, and not really in keeping with the spirit of the Ardanes. Even if it might within the letter of said law, who wants to join a coven that rules-lawyers its’ way past the laws and practices they swore oaths to uphold? And if these classes and beginner’s circles are both large in population and have high turnover, it’s another red flag - Traditional Wicca typically looks for quality over quantity, not the other way around. It isn’t for everyone, and it doesn’t go fishing for new members.