Just another seeker. Pleased to meet you.

[Woodwind Moonsight]

Hello. I'm just here to connect with people and possibly pick their brains as I sift through the volumes upon volumes of information and misinformations regarding paganism, neo-paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca. It's rather difficult to parse information sources when half of it is buried beneath the kind of sales pitches that indicate that one is trying to sell paganism rather than portray it accurately. I have no interest in the brand of the occult that's trying to appeal to rebellious teenagers, jaded victims of religious fundamental bigotry, or just trying to convince you that you can solve your problems if you just buy this book and the steps detailed within... while I'm given to understand that magick for the sake of improving one's life is a legitimate part of many belief systems under this umbrella, the trustworthiness of an info source becomes rather dubious when it's emphasized so much.

The spells I've seen for enlarging one's private parts are particularly entertaining to me. One admits to morbid curiosity as to how many people may have been taken in by the possibility.

In any case, consider me a solitary student, rather than a practitioner. I'm still in the "reading everything I can" phase. Beyond that, who can say what will happen in the future? I probably won't post here unless a particular discussion-in-progress captures my attention, or else I have a specific question that turns up a blank in the search engine. At present my focus is Wicca (I am reading Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca: A Further Guide by Scott Cunningham, as well as Wicca for Life and Complete Book of Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland) but I will certainly expand my studies beyond that sphere when I have a better grasp on what information sources come recommended by those who know what they're talking about. Suffice it to say that I am unlikely to give the likes of Silver Ravenwolf much attention at all, for whatever that's worth as a metric for what I mean by that.

In the meantime, it's good to meet you all and I suppose a brief summary of who I am and where I come from is in order. Well, I was raised in a Catholic family, albeit this wasn't much of a religious upbringing one side of my family is pretty laid-back about it and I don't see much religious belief in the other side of my family at all. I attended Catholic school until 8th grade and then high school was public education, during the course of which I passed through a protestant phase and then spent the following decade agnostic-atheist. My anti-religion bitterness phase died out pretty early on during that; nowadays I'm inclined to just shrug my shoulders and move on when someone says they believe a particular thing.

It is the atheism that leaves me open to paganism and witchcraft, more than anything. Thinking about it, one must admit that, if one does not already believe in some form of deity (Christian or otherwise), then the only barrier to belief in such things is one's own skepticism. Following that logic, there is no potential drawback in giving such beliefs a "fair shake," as it were; either one comes out of it with some strong reason to believe in powers beyond the purely physical and material, or one does not. If one can check their skepticism as required, which is merely an effort of will to shift into a needed perspective, then with that shift of perspective and the dedication to put time and effort into it, one may evaluate such religious paths truly and honestly--at least, in theory.

That is the point of view from which I currently approach paganism and its sub-categories. Take that as you will.

[Jenett]

Welcome! You're right there's a lot of lousy info out there (and the people trying to sell you things tend to be noisier than the people who aren't, which makes sense but that makes it no less annoying.)

I have a website of material aimed at people seeking to learn more about Paganism (and specifically religious witchcraft, which is the thing I do).My recommended list of starting books (and why I like them) might be helpful for you (as well as why I don't actually recommend starting with Cunningham or some of the other classics because the community and conversations in the community do change over time.) The site itself is http://gleewood.org/seeking

[Woodwind Moonsight]

Thanks for the welcome and for the link! I'll be sure to take that information into account as I continue my studies. I'm not all that concerned about books being out-of-date in various ways, though, as I'm well aware of how to contextualize information based on the time of its original publication and am not inclined to jump into religious or magickal practice without knowing what I'm doing. I ought to clarify that my intended approach was to gain a basis through these "classics" and then use that information to assess the relative trustworthiness of more recently-published sources of information, since it is in more-recent times that the quantity of books increases and their potential for misinformation becomes proportionally greater. The books I chose are, in fact, two books that are roughly as old as I am, and two books published over the intervening two decades, one from each author. This I thought would provide some general idea of how thoughts and information regarding Wicca and witchcraft may have changed over time and allow for a smoother transition into books published in the later 2000s and the 2010s.

That all being said, any additional advice on how to proceed is much-appreciated food for thought, so I'll be looking over that website when my schedule allows. Much obliged!

[SunflowerP]

Hi, Woodwind Moonsight, and welcome to TC!

A Reminder:

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[Jenett]

I ought to clarify that my intended approach was to gain a basis through these "classics" and then use that information to assess the relative trustworthiness of more recently-published sources of information, since it is in more-recent times that the quantity of books increases and their potential for misinformation becomes proportionally greater.

This is something I have a lot of opinions on, reasonably well informed (I'm a librarian by profession, so I think about 'how do we decide which books we suggest for a thing' an awful lot, one way or another.)

In the case of Pagan material, I think there's five big reasons to be cautious with older texts, and to consider seeking out high-quality recent ones as an early part of the mix (my actual usual advice is to start with some books from the recommendation list I posted up thread, and then start adding the classics in once you've read 3-5 more current works that have nuanced and well-honed explanations.)

1) The way we use terms has changed, sometimes drastically.

We have gotten a lot more nuanced in the past couple of decades - it used to be that basically everything was lumped into Wicca or witchcraft. People would regularly use the words 'Wicca', 'witchcraft' and 'Pagan' interchangably. 

These days, we get more deliberate - religious witchcraft, agnostic or atheistic witchcraft, eclectic Wicca, Neo-Wicca, British Traditional Wicca, specific tradition names, and so on. And of course, there's a much wider awareness of many other religions under the Pagan umbrella: the reconstructionist religions, people working with specific deities or pantheons outside a reconstructionist structure, magical practices that aren't religions, religions that don't include magic, and so on.

On one hand, that can be confusing, when you're getting started. On the other hand, once you figure out what you're aiming for, it makes it a lot easier to find more, than 'witchcraft' will. More disambiguation over here, if lists of some variations are handy.

2) Changes in writing and publishing.

A lot of older books either are or come across as prescriptive, and they're often not at all focused on explaining why we do things - sometimes there's a lot of "how to do this thing" and sometimes there's a good chunk of lore or connective material, but 'why' is often given pretty short shrift.

(There's often a lot of stuff that *looks* like a 'why', but when you read closely, the actual answer given is 'because that's how we do it' or 'because that's how we've always done it'. (See point 4)

3) (Mostly) unintentional exclusion and limitation.

A lot of the early books make a lot of assumptions about your available time, education, background, and resources. If you don't fit their initial view of how people live, they can be a really poor fit - if you live with roommates, have physical limitations, have limited access to materials, spend most of your waking hours with a small child nearby, aren't cisgender heterosexual, or a whole long list of other things, a lot of them come across as leaving you out.

Since a lot of people interested in pursuing witchcraft are interested in it precisely because other religions leave them out in various ways, or because they want more control over what's going on in their religious life, that seems a pretty lousy place to start from.

It's one thing to say "this is what you need to do this" when it's relevant - but we've gotten a lot better at figuring out what stuff is actually important and what stuff is fun but not essential.

4) The history is often downright awful.

This is a whole topic of its own, but the history in most witchcraft and Wicca books up through at least 2000 is usually pretty reliably awful. A lot of them have improved thanks to conversations sparked off by Ronald Hutton, Philip Hesleton, and a number of other well-researched, thoughtful, engaged commentary.

If you want a solid grounding, and you're reading basically any book before about 2000, be extremely dubious about the historical data involved. (There are places where it's right. But they're often shoulder to shoulder with things that are demonstrably incorrect, and mingled with a lot of stuff there's not much good evidence for when we do have evidence for other things that aren't discussed at all.)

5) We get better at talking about stuff, when we have time to talk about it more.

There are an awful lot of complex topics where it takes several rounds of playing with an idea and talking about it and exploring it before we get remotely competent at explaining it to other people. Witchcraft is definitely complex, and it's definitely one of those topics. And it took - because of the speed of publishing and communication in the 50s through about the 90s, and about how Pagans formed in communities (or didn't) a fairly long time for there to be a lot of debate and discussion in some areas.

It's a lot better now: it's pretty common to see a cycle of 'new thing' 'commentary on new thing' 'even better discussion of thing' 'handful of resources that address specific issues in the thing or develop the really cool stuff further' take place over a year to 18 months now - where pre-1990s, that cycle could take a decade comfortably.

(Some of this is having the internet, some of this is people engaging much more frequently in person through small group work but also festivals and conventions, and some of this is books and materials being more widely available thanks to there being many more bookstores that carry things, even if you live in the middle of nowhere.)

It takes time to learn to talk about new things (or things that are new to being talked about). It takes time to figure out explantations that make sense to people who don't share particular aspects of our background or experiences. It takes time

Older books are older. But they are not necessarily *better*.

Some of them are, absolutely, classics, and worth reading, to know where we came from, and where our roots are. But many of them are not the best books for starting with now, because they don't reflect all the things we've learned talking about those concepts,

You can see this very clearly with some books: Starhawk's Spiral Dance has been through three editions, with footnotes explaining how things have changed for her, and there's a fairly significant amount of "I would not do it that way now." and "I've learned that is is a really lousy way to explain this." or "This excludes people I am sorry I excluded." in there. Cunningham never had that chance (I would have loved to see what he wrote after 20 more years of practice. We don't get that in this lifetime.) You can see some of it with Buckland, though some of his own background and approaches tended to mean he stayed a bit more prescriptive (or at least, often comes across much more deliberately prescriptive) than some other authors.

The sweet-spot for explanations for me is often people who've been doing the thing for 10-20 years, have some meaningful degree of experience in varied settings (i.e. not just their own personal practice, or just group practice, or just their tiny segment of the community, but a mix plus some broader interactions) and who have some experience with teaching, writing, or explaining stuff that goes beyond the book they're writing.

(This is part of why I recommend Thea Sabine's book, Wicca for Beginners - she's very clear on what her background is, and how it fits what she's talking about, she has significant professional experience in education and a sense of how to build learning material over a longer work, and she has enough experience in the broader Pagan community to have a good sense of common questions and issues that come up, and experience explaining what she does to other people in useful ways.)

So, yes, the classic texts have some useful stuff. But there's all sorts of reasons why they may well not give you context that's as helpful today as your comments here hope for - and where reading thoughtfully chosen more recent texts, plus a mix of other resources (like this forum) and exploring other options may work a lot better.

[PanSoka]

Hello. I'm just here to connect with people and possibly pick their brains as I sift through the volumes upon volumes of information and misinformations regarding paganism, neo-paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca. It's rather difficult to parse information sources when half of it is buried beneath the kind of sales pitches that indicate that one is trying to sell paganism rather than portray it accurately. I have no interest in the brand of the occult that's trying to appeal to rebellious teenagers, jaded victims of religious fundamental bigotry, or just trying to convince you that you can solve your problems if you just buy this book and the steps detailed within... while I'm given to understand that magick for the sake of improving one's life is a legitimate part of many belief systems under this umbrella, the trustworthiness of an info source becomes rather dubious when it's emphasized so much.

The spells I've seen for enlarging one's private parts are particularly entertaining to me. One admits to morbid curiosity as to how many people may have been taken in by the possibility.

In any case, consider me a solitary student, rather than a practitioner. I'm still in the "reading everything I can" phase. Beyond that, who can say what will happen in the future? I probably won't post here unless a particular discussion-in-progress captures my attention, or else I have a specific question that turns up a blank in the search engine. At present my focus is Wicca (I am reading Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca: A Further Guide by Scott Cunningham, as well as Wicca for Life and Complete Book of Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland) but I will certainly expand my studies beyond that sphere when I have a better grasp on what information sources come recommended by those who know what they're talking about. Suffice it to say that I am unlikely to give the likes of Silver Ravenwolf much attention at all, for whatever that's worth as a metric for what I mean by that.

In the meantime, it's good to meet you all and I suppose a brief summary of who I am and where I come from is in order. Well, I was raised in a Catholic family, albeit this wasn't much of a religious upbringing one side of my family is pretty laid-back about it and I don't see much religious belief in the other side of my family at all. I attended Catholic school until 8th grade and then high school was public education, during the course of which I passed through a protestant phase and then spent the following decade agnostic-atheist. My anti-religion bitterness phase died out pretty early on during that; nowadays I'm inclined to just shrug my shoulders and move on when someone says they believe a particular thing.

It is the atheism that leaves me open to paganism and witchcraft, more than anything. Thinking about it, one must admit that, if one does not already believe in some form of deity (Christian or otherwise), then the only barrier to belief in such things is one's own skepticism. Following that logic, there is no potential drawback in giving such beliefs a "fair shake," as it were; either one comes out of it with some strong reason to believe in powers beyond the purely physical and material, or one does not. If one can check their skepticism as required, which is merely an effort of will to shift into a needed perspective, then with that shift of perspective and the dedication to put time and effort into it, one may evaluate such religious paths truly and honestly--at least, in theory.

That is the point of view from which I currently approach paganism and its sub-categories. Take that as you will.

Welcome!!!!!

I also am coming from a Christian —> Atheist/Agnostic background in my search. I’m starting off researching Wicca as well.

You will find some very nice people here. I have encountered very supportive and informative people in my short time here so I think you will find some good conversation.

[Voren]

Hello. I'm just here to connect with people and possibly pick their brains as I sift through the volumes upon volumes of information and misinformations regarding paganism, neo-paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca. It's rather difficult to parse information sources when half of it is buried beneath the kind of sales pitches that indicate that one is trying to sell paganism rather than portray it accurately. I have no interest in the brand of the occult that's trying to appeal to rebellious teenagers, jaded victims of religious fundamental bigotry, or just trying to convince you that you can solve your problems if you just buy this book and the steps detailed within... while I'm given to understand that magick for the sake of improving one's life is a legitimate part of many belief systems under this umbrella, the trustworthiness of an info source becomes rather dubious when it's emphasized so much.

The spells I've seen for enlarging one's private parts are particularly entertaining to me. One admits to morbid curiosity as to how many people may have been taken in by the possibility.

In any case, consider me a solitary student, rather than a practitioner. I'm still in the "reading everything I can" phase. Beyond that, who can say what will happen in the future? I probably won't post here unless a particular discussion-in-progress captures my attention, or else I have a specific question that turns up a blank in the search engine. At present my focus is Wicca (I am reading Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca: A Further Guide by Scott Cunningham, as well as Wicca for Life and Complete Book of Witchcraft by Raymond Buckland) but I will certainly expand my studies beyond that sphere when I have a better grasp on what information sources come recommended by those who know what they're talking about. Suffice it to say that I am unlikely to give the likes of Silver Ravenwolf much attention at all, for whatever that's worth as a metric for what I mean by that.

In the meantime, it's good to meet you all and I suppose a brief summary of who I am and where I come from is in order. Well, I was raised in a Catholic family, albeit this wasn't much of a religious upbringing one side of my family is pretty laid-back about it and I don't see much religious belief in the other side of my family at all. I attended Catholic school until 8th grade and then high school was public education, during the course of which I passed through a protestant phase and then spent the following decade agnostic-atheist. My anti-religion bitterness phase died out pretty early on during that; nowadays I'm inclined to just shrug my shoulders and move on when someone says they believe a particular thing.

It is the atheism that leaves me open to paganism and witchcraft, more than anything. Thinking about it, one must admit that, if one does not already believe in some form of deity (Christian or otherwise), then the only barrier to belief in such things is one's own skepticism. Following that logic, there is no potential drawback in giving such beliefs a "fair shake," as it were; either one comes out of it with some strong reason to believe in powers beyond the purely physical and material, or one does not. If one can check their skepticism as required, which is merely an effort of will to shift into a needed perspective, then with that shift of perspective and the dedication to put time and effort into it, one may evaluate such religious paths truly and honestly--at least, in theory.

That is the point of view from which I currently approach paganism and its sub-categories. Take that as you will.

Hello and welcome!