Wicca - A few questions

[Serpent]

I am searching for a path, and one that I looked into when I was younger was Wicca (that was about 6 or 7 years ago, so its been a while and I don't remember anything about it). I'll admit, the first book I ever picked up about it was by Silver Ravenwolf. From what I've been told, she is not a very good source. I still have the book actually. I will be visiting the library at some point to see if I can find any good books (recommendations are welcome but I figure I'll look in that section of this forum).

I will also be researching other paths but since this one seems the most familiar, I'd look into this one first. Now I did have a question. I really have no interest in joining a coven. (I'm just not comfortable around new people. If I got to know a group of people really well, then I can see myself possibly doing that, but I could not see myself joining a religious circle with strangers.) I've been told "real" Wicca is always done in a group setting. I have also been told Wicca has a very sexual side (on this subject I had heard there are sexual rituals performed by high priest and high priestess). I will be doing some research into this. Can you follow Wicca as a solitary? I'm sure some of you will say "Of course!" but I do not like to offend religions and those that follow them.

I'm sure as I begin researching it, I will have many more questions. I would love to hear about your personal experience with Wicca if you happen to follow that path, whether solitary or in a coven.

[Jenett]

I've been told "real" Wicca is always done in a group setting.

The first thing to realise is that people use the term Wicca in widely different ways. Traditional initiatory Wicca must be learned from other people, and generally in a group setting, because group work is part of the point and there are techniques and rituals that require more more than one or two people to do.)

I've got an essay on my website that might be of some help here, about different ways the term Wicca is used. (You might find the whole Basics section of use, actually.)

For example: I identify what I do as initiatory religious witchcraft. If you look at the range of stuff in books that identifies as Wicca, my practices clearly fit in there. I'd rather be more precise for a variety of reasons, so I save "Wicca" as a descriptor, when I get a choice, for initiatory Wicca. (Which I'm not: my tradition has a different lineage, some different core religious mysteries, and so on.)

Broader uses of the term are broader, which a) means you're very unlikely to get any kind of useful consensus, and b) means that it can be hard for people to provide advice and suggestions unless you give some context. (Actually, what you gave here is a good start.)

I would say that no healthy coven or religious group is going to say "You are now our instant friend!" Healthy groups will give you a chance to get to know them - and them a chance to get to know you. And there's often a period of low-commitment (you agree to show up or let them know you can't/won't be, not oaths or formal ritual commitments or anything like that) where you both get to feel each other out.

(Think of it a little like romantic relationships: there is such a thing as love at first sight, but dating for a while, then getting engaged, *then* getting married after a bit is generally a lot more sensible all round.)

In the group I trained with, that into involved a series of five intro classes in a public location (cafe or local esoteric store) that included invites to some group rituals and social events (depending on what was happening at that time.)

After that, people could decide to pursue more serious study with us (which *still* had at least a year before any really lasting commitment was required), or could choose to attend guest-appropriate rituals and other events for a bit to get to know us better, (or, of course, could go away and do something else, with no other 'cost' than that we might say hi to them and ask how they were doing if we ran into them in said esoteric store or at some other Pagan event.)

I'm now living in a very different geographic area in Pagan terms, so what I've done with two people so far is meet for coffee (again, public place), talk, and see how it goes from there.

Anyway, generally people who are doing group work *and* teaching tend to combine the two - it's a lot of effort to, say, come up with rituals to do with a solo student, plus one's own personal practice, plus group rituals. And there are a lot of places in witchcraft where having multiple explanations or descriptions of how something feels/smells/sounds/tastes/looks energetically can be really helpful to the student. (Above and beyond the fact there's stuff you can do in group ritual you can't do with one or two people, and the fact it's less of a drain on the people leading the ritual.)

I have also been told Wicca has a very sexual side (on this subject I had heard there are sexual rituals performed by high priest and high priestess).

Traditional Wicca is a fertility-focused religion. Sex is obviously an aspect of the necessary process.

That said, "sexual rituals" is a phrase that's not terribly useful here. What people usually think of when you say something like that is "Priest and priestess have tab-A-slot-B sex in a gender configuration that might result in children."

That part is relatively rare in Wicca, though covens where the High Priest and High Priestess already have a sexual relationship may draw on that. (by relatively rare, I mean, "really quite uncommon, even if you count "HP and HPS already have a relationship" into it. I can think of maybe a dozen instances I know of where it wasn't predatory sleaze involved, in the past 12 years and fairly wide-ranging Pagan community interactions.)

Even the ones who do tend to be fairly private about it (the couple withdraw, things happen while the rest of the group does something else in the ritual space, the couple returns.)

(There are also sleazy people out there who imply someone must have sex for initiation, but sleazy predatory people exist in all religions - if you look at the CARE pages on my website, there's some ways to spot the red flags for that.)

However, that's not quite the whole picture. The ritual that many Wiccan (and related practices) do is called the Great Rite in Symbol (often referred to as just the "Great Rite" - the symbolic version generally involves a chalice and an athame - a ritual blade. The alternate, sometimes referred to as "Great Rite in Truth" is the actual physical sex version.)

Symbols can be very powerful. A thoughtfully done Great Rite in Symbol, with energy and will and desire behind it, can forge very similar energetic ties, connections, and lasting effects to physical sex. It's not something to do lightly, and I know people who feel that their relationship agreements with their spouse/romantic partner preclude that kind of interaction in ritual (even with everyone's clothes on, and no touching beyond maybe a hug).

Can you follow Wicca as a solitary? I'm sure some of you will say "Of course!" but I do not like to offend religions and those that follow them.

Again, a point of definition: someone can be initiated as a Wiccan, learning a particular tradition (line of practice and shared initiatory experiences), and then work solitary. (such a person is a solitary Wiccan).

Someone who learns entirely on their own from books and independent experience may or may not be considered Wiccan by others, if you push them for a decision.

(I, as you might guess, tend toward the "I'm sure you have a nice personal practice, but I'm not sure I want to call everything under that umbrella Wicca, and more labels would be nice." And try to follow suit myself.)

Book recommendations:
One excellent starting place is Thea Sabine's _Wicca for Beginners_. She does a good job explaining a lot of basics, in a way that's clear about some definitional issues but not as tangled as those discussions can be. She also focuses much more on religious practice than magical.

You can find a bunch of my starting book recommendations (and reasons why) on my books page. (you may also find the rest of the site handy: it's written for people seeking something like Wicca or religious witchcraft, though I need to do a bunch of updating.)

(Um. I could obviously go on for quite a while, but feel free to ask more questions. I'll warn you that I'm moving apartments this week, and out of town much of the week after, with some pauses in easy 'Net access over the weekend, so I'm going to be around less than I usually am.)

[Faemon]

I am searching for a path, and one that I looked into when I was younger was Wicca (that was about 6 or 7 years ago, so its been a while and I don't remember anything about it). I'll admit, the first book I ever picked up about it was by Silver Ravenwolf. From what I've been told, she is not a very good source. I still have the book actually. I will be visiting the library at some point to see if I can find any good books (recommendations are welcome but I figure I'll look in that section of this forum).

I don't identify as Wiccan anymore, although a lot of the core values like environmentalism and sex-positive gender equality still really resonate with me. My absolute favorite author of all time, ever, ever -- is Wiccan. His name is Christopher Penczak, and a lot of the specific methods that he addresses: psychic self-defense (The Witch's Shield), communication with spiritual entities (Spirit Allies), attuning to the energies of an urban environment (City Magick -- especially personal to him, as a nature worshipper,) I found very bare-bones... not that he hid where he himself was coming from, he didn't, he just made allowances for other practices... and easily adapted.

Penczak has some Wicca-specific books, I've got Gay Witchcraft: Empowering The Tribe on my list for my next order. Maybe you'd like his Temple series, I've followed one or two newbie Wiccan blogs on Tumblr who used that series for their Year And A Day, and they found it very comprehensive. I'm just passing on their word about it now, because, well, as good a writer that I know Penczak is... the timing is just wrong for me to get too deep back into Wicca? Well, I'll just throw that title in here, anyway, and see what everyone else says about it.

To supplement the philosophy, I would also recommend giving The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith a read-through. She identified as Pagan, not Wiccan, but I can see how the severe health problems she encountered by following the Harm None edict could also easily apply to Wiccans. I thought the first part where she deconstructs the morality of Harm None (impossible, we need to eat to live, we need to eat beings that were in the middle of living to live, so we need to kill to live, and we need to kill microorganisms so that we don't get sick, so much for rule of three...) was beautiful and brilliantly put together. The other sections of her book are... disappointingly, cherry-picked or fabricated scientific facts, but just for the first section I think it's worth it.

There are also sleazy people out there who imply someone must have sex for initiation, but sleazy predatory people exist in all religions

True. Even if you're a solitary, it's still a label and responsibility you'll share with other human beings, and human beings invariably drop the ball or just outright suck. Not always to sleazy predatory proportions, but close enough sometimes, and other times exactly that (link content warning: ritual sexual abuse of children.)

[Serpent]

 
Thank you both for your responses. Wicca itself interests me a lot but again I'm not really interested in being with a group. My plan right now is to learn as much about it as possible (read as many books and websites as possible) and see if its something I can connect with and if so, follow all of the practices minus the group aspect and simply call it Wiccan-flavored paganism.

Do you know of any good youtube video blogs that might be useful? I will definitely check out the beginners section and the book recommendation pages. Hopefully I can make a trip to the library tomorrow.

[Jenett]

Thank you both for your responses. Wicca itself interests me a lot but again I'm not really interested in being with a group. My plan right now is to learn as much about it as possible (read as many books and websites as possible) and see if its something I can connect with and if so, follow all of the practices minus the group aspect and simply call it Wiccan-flavored paganism.

That's a plan other people do.

Just be aware that you can't follow *all* the practices by yourself. As I said above, there's some stuff that just takes multiple people. (The Great Rite being an example in itself: connecting with another person is a different experience than doing something on your own. Not that by-yourself is bad, but it is different, and I think it's important to be aware of that.)

Do you know of any good youtube video blogs that might be useful? I will definitely check out the beginners section and the book recommendation pages. Hopefully I can make a trip to the library tomorrow.

Honestly, I find watching most videos of that kind immensely frustrating. Some of that's that I read a lot faster than information is conveyed in videos, but it's also that most of the video blogs I've seen don't present information well and even when they do, it's hard to work with because of the format. So no recommendations here. Glad to talk further about books, if you've got questions about any of my rec lists.

(And if you tell me what your local library system is, I'd be glad to go poke at it and see what they carry that might be of interest that I haven't mentioned on that list - I'm a librarian by profession, so digging in catalogs is easy for me. Pagan materials can be a bit tricky to hunt for because of the ways libraries catalog them.)

[Jenett]

(And if you tell me what your local library system is, I'd be glad to go poke at it and see what they carry that might be of interest that I haven't mentioned on that list - I'm a librarian by profession, so digging in catalogs is easy for me. Pagan materials can be a bit tricky to hunt for because of the ways libraries catalog them.)

 
Also, you might find a post in an old thread of use - the rest of the thread might be interesting to you, but the post is me doing the brief explanation of hunting Pagan materials in library catalogs. I need to write it up better, but that's not going to happen this week or next, at the least.

[Serpent]

 
I just looked over your list of recommended books and wrote quite a few of them down as books I'd like to read. I do not believe my library system has many books available. I'm in the Chesterfield county Library system for Richmond VA. I've tried looking for books and I've found a few I might read.

I like video blogs because I'm a visual learner. I can learn from books, but I retain a lot of information by watching someone else do something.

[Jenett]

I just looked over your list of recommended books and wrote quite a few of them down as books I'd like to read. I do not believe my library system has many books available. I'm in the Chesterfield county Library system for Richmond VA. I've tried looking for books and I've found a few I might read.

Right.

The ones I'd recommend from that collection:

- Starhawk is not Wiccan (her training is in the Feri tradition, and the tradition that's grown from her work is called Reclaiming), but her works are great for some introductory and deeper material.

_Spiral Dance_ is a classic (written in 1979), though somewhat dated and a bit more political than some people like. (The 20th anniversary edition, which is what your library system has, has two sets of editorial notes. Read them to see how her approach/take has changed.)  

But her _Twelve Wild Swans_, written with Hillary Valentine, has a lot of really great material, introductory exercises, ways to go deeper, and much more that you might find useful.

I also see Penzack's _Outer Temple of Witchcraft_ which I haven't read directly: there are ways I like his take in general, and ways where he goes in directions that I think can be confusing when put into the larger community context.

(A lot of the other stuff I'm seeing searching under Witchcraft is more pop-Wicca than focused on religious practice. You can likely do better - bear in mind that you can get used books fairly inexpensively via various online sources these days. If you do read them, bear in mind they're generally representing a very eclectic combo of practices, and that while that can have useful bits, it's also got complications.)

I like video blogs because I'm a visual learner. I can learn from books, but I retain a lot of information by watching someone else do something.

 
I can understand that - just I'm so not a visual learner myself.

I also think there's a particular issue with YouTube here: breaking stuff down to 5-10 minute segments works great for some topics, but not necessarily well for deeper discussion of ritual methods, for example.

(Above and beyond the complications of videoing such things appropriately - there's certainly a lot of my practice I'll talk about in substantial part, or demonstrate to someone in person, but would consider it highly inappropriate to record and make public.)

Which is part of why I'm a big proponent of including face-to-face learning whenever possible, or at least experience. (Which can mean covens, but also teachers, public events like Pagan Pride or festivals or hotel-based conferences.)

[Serpent]

I would just like to thank you for taking the time to answer my questions! I really do appreciate it. My next step then is to get my hands on some of these books. I plan on making a trip to a local used book shop and also to the library.

I do understand what you mean by recording certain things being inappropriate. I guess I didn't think of it that way. I have quite a few hours to myself tonight so I will spend that time doing some research online.