Is Wicca/Witchcraft Dangerous?

[Ravenstar]

Whenever I search on YouTube under Wicca or witchcraft there always are a bunch of videos of ex witches and Christians warning against it. Why? It always makes me wonder if I should do this. Blessings.

[Xiao Rong]

Edited title from "Christianity vs. Wicca on Youtube" to "Is Wicca/Witchcraft Dangerous?" to be more descriptive.

As for the question ... well, there's a lot of different angles to this question. I suspect that most ex-witches and Christians will warn you that the reason witchcraft is dangerous is because it will lead you to Satan or hell. The vast majority of Wiccans and witches do not believe in either hell or Satan, and if you don't believe in something, then it's not much of a danger. Wicca is generally considered to be a peaceful, nature-worshipping religion (there's more nuance to what Wicca is versus Paganism, but we'll leave that to future discussions); I would say that generally speaking being a follower of Wicca is probably about as inherently dangerous as being a Buddhist -- it's simply a different religion. If there's any danger in practicing Wicca, it would likely be from your community or society discriminating against Wicca and other minority faiths (but again, not unlike the danger you would face as an open atheist or Buddhist in some parts of the country).

Many people (including some/most Wiccans) practice witchcraft as well, which CAN be more dangerous in terms of experimenting with magic, but most of the time it's self-inflicted. Many Wiccans follow the Rule of Three, which states that whatever you send out comes back to you threefold. If you practice black magic and harm others, then you can expect more negative consequences from your own actions. But again, none of these negative consequences have anything to do with Satan, hell, sin, etc.

Bear in mind, this is a very Wicca/Witchcraft 101 explanation; if you continue further along the path, I'm sure you'll find that the answers (especially about witchcraft and magic) will be more complicated, and I'm sure many other witches on the forum will chime in with their opinion that may disagree with or add further nuance to what I just posted. But the dangers that most Christians will warn you about are not really of concern to us.

[SnowCat]

Witches are like Klingons. We have no devil. If I've lost anyone, that's a cultural reference to the original Star Trek series.

Snow

[Siona]

Whenever I search on YouTube under Wicca or witchcraft there always are a bunch of videos of ex witches and Christians warning against it. Why? It always makes me wonder if I should do this. Blessings.

Because there are many Christians who believe Wiccans and witches are being tricked by Satan, getting into demonic stuff, and so on. According to their world view it is very dangerous, because they think witches are opening themselves up to all sorts of demonic and dark stuff. The other thing they do is put these types of videos and such out there to keep other Christians from exploring these things, rather than actually directing them at Wiccans/witches. They believe they are saving souls, and they have a very clear and very biased opinion on the whole thing.

As for if it's really dangerous? In regards to witchcraft (which often plays a role in Wicca) I'll be honest and say yeah, it can be, but it certainly doesn't have to be, and the vast majority of witches I've met have never had any serious troubles. The few who do run into issues tend to have done so because they jumped right into the deep end, getting into some complex areas of witchcraft without learning basic things first. But then again, that is true of so, so many activities. Is hiking dangerous? Not necessarily, but if you immediately try to climb a mountain beyond your skill level that you have no preparedness for... yeah, you might end up in a nasty situation, you know? As was mentioned, Wicca is a religion like any other, and so there's not really much danger there from that point of view.

As a final note, I have talked with quite a few "ex-witches" who were trying to convince Christians to stay away from witchcraft or Wicca, and when I questioned them about their old practices... they knew nothing, it was very clear they were lying. I'm sure some really did used to be Wiccans or witches, but a lot of these testimonials are pretty made up, and you can also see quite a few of those videos following the exact same sort of script.