Wiccan vs. Pagan?

[Cinder]

Hey,

I was curious...What is the difference between a Wiccan and a Pagan? I always thought there was no difference, but if there is, can you please tell me what it is? thanks so much

~Cinder~

[shadowx]

Ahhh you have been hoodwinked by the wiccans eh?!

Paganism is MASSSSSSSIIIIIIVE! Wicca is small small small!

Paganism is everything that isnt a mainstream religion (christianity, judaism, islam pretty much) so druidry, shamanism, african tribal beliefs and wicca are all branches of paganism.

You dont have to be wiccan or a shaman to perform witchcraft. If you imagine a tree, Wicca is one branch, druidry is another etc... Paganism is the trunk and the leaves. Paganism is where all the other religions come from and merge into (trunk) and at the same time it is the leaves, filling in the parts that the branches cant reach and cant cover.

I am a pagan, i am not wiccan and truth be told i cant stand wicca. It has this habit of doing what it has done to you, putting blinkers on new comers so all they see hear and know is wicca and nothing else exists. Wicca is the only way, the lord and lady are the only deities, the law of three applies to everyone etc... I can assure you the law of three does not apply to me...

and the lord and lady are nothing but figments of the Wiccan imagination. but of course, this is just my opinion.

My advice is if you like wicca then stick with it, but do not ignore the rest of the world and what it has to teach you. Paganism is absolutely massive, bigger than any living person has ever known and no-one can help to learn it all. Wicca on the other hand is but 50 years old and *invented* rather than truly developed.

My opinion though of course....

[WitchyLady506]

Wicca is by no means the same thing as paganism. It's like a square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn't a square.

Wicca is a type of paganism, neo-paganism to be exact, but not the other way around. Wiccans have a strict set of beliefs, like any organized religion, as paganism can be anything outside of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Neo-paganism is old pagan style nature worshiping revamped for the modern world with often mixed beliefs thrown in. You can also create your own beliefs and be pagan.

And just to point it out, Wicca does NOT equal witchcraft. There are Wiccans who practice their own version of witchcraft, while others have nothing to do with the craft at all. Witchcraft is also not a religion, but can be apart of any belief and atheism.

[shadowx]

Witchcraft is also not a religion, but can be apart of any belief and atheism.

well said, forgot that part

I am possibly what you might call an atheist, i dont believe in any gods or goddess at all, no demons no angels, no fairies, goblins etc... Just humans, animals, and the scientific possibility that life forms exist elsewhere in the universe. But i still believe in the power of witchcraft. Too many people think you must be a wiccan to be a witch but ask yourself, do you have to be a christian to pray? Nope.

[Cinder]

Thank you both so much!! Now I understand. Now when you said Paganism can be practice along with any religion, does that mean I could be raised Catholic and still be a Pagan?

[WatchfulEyeTheButterfly]

Of course you can! I was raised Baptist and am now wiccan. Where you come from doesn't matter, it's where you are now and where you are going.

[Cinder]

Thank you!! So much. Really. This makes me feel so much better about what i'm doing.

[shadowx]

I could be raised Catholic and still be a Pagan?

Sort of....

The key is that you cant be both christian and pagan for the same reason you cant be christian and muslim.

But you can be raised christian, find out it is all lies and then become pagan.

[Cinder]

I could be raised Catholic and still be a Pagan?

Sort of....

The key is that you cant be both christian and pagan for the same reason you cant be christian and muslim.

But you can be raised christian, find out it is all lies and then become pagan.

Ah, I see....Maybe that's what's going on. I'm so confused about who I am

[Cinder]

that makes sense. Especially the fact that it must be older then 50 years.

[shadowx]

Ahh but it isnt older than 50 years. Of course the concept of male/female balance of the gods and goddesses etc... is ancient but wicca is not. WIcca was invented by Gerald Gardener just over 50 years ago. It is true many of the beliefs involved are old indeed but the grouping of those beliefs into one is not.

As for them not having faces what of the green man faces: http://www.google.com/images?client=ubu ... CDcQsAQwAw

[Cinder]

hhhhmmm....That sounds kind of odd actually...I would of thought it would of been extremely old. hmm, guess not.

[Kassandra]

Hey,

I was curious...What is the difference between a Wiccan and a Pagan? I always thought there was no difference, but if there is, can you please tell me what it is? thanks so much

~Cinder~

Wicca
Hi Cinder. As shadowx pointed out, the contemporary "organized" religion known as Wicca was indeed founded by a British man named Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. It was a period in the 19th and 20th centuries when people were rediscovering their cultural and spiritual roots, and there were a lot of "neo" (meaning, "new") religions, like neo-druidism, etc. They were called revivalists, reconstructionists, etc. They took what they knew of ancient practices and reworked them into a modern context.


Paganism
As regards paganism, the word itself stems from a Latin word for "country dweller," or "of the country." When the Roman empire converted from worshipping their pantheon of gods (polytheism, worshipping several gods) to Christianity (which is monotheistic, worshipping one god), it was mostly the city folk who were actually the nominal Christians. On the outskirts of the empire however, the "country" people kept to their old religious practices.

So the word in its original context was meant to be a put-down, like "you country-bumpkin pagans are not as good as us intelligent, sophisticated Christians." To them pagan just means any religion that is not Christianity. They considered themselves godly, and imagined all pagans to be hedonistic, "sinful" devil-worshippers, and so forth, and in many Christian circles, that view still holds to this day. So any polytheistic religion is considered pagan in this context, including Shinto, voodoo, Native American traditions, Hinduism, you name it. (note: since Judaism and Islam also recognize the ancient patriarch Abraham, as Christianity does, they're not considered pagan as such --don't ask me).


The supposed message of Jesus,
one of deliverance, peace, love and
salvation, was curiously reworked
over the centuries by his followers
into a message of damnation and fear.

His followers further augmented this
message into a worldwide institution
of racial, cultural and spiritual oppression,
abuse of innocent women and children
(for example, as we now see in the
rampant Christian rape and molestation
cases surfacing), and unchecked
greed (the Vatican and the Mafia are
reknown for keeping each other in
business).

This all makes Christianity quite
unsettling, actually ...wonder what
its founder would say about it now.



But then along came the revivalists of the 19th and 20th centuries, who were proud to be "neo-pagans," and founded religions based on the indigenous spiritual practices which were once oppressed by Christianity; Wicca falls into that category. So while Wicca is a (neo)pagan religion, obviously not all pagans (non-Christians) classify themselves as Wiccans.

And the term paganism itself has taken on a softer meaning, not so much a put-down anymore. It denotes a spiritual path that honors the rhythms of the Earth, and respects the properties of the elements around us, the air, the water, fire, earth and spirit. In that sense, even if one is a city dweller, one could still celebrate a deep connection to our Earth home and its processes through the platform of paganism. And the practices of witchcraft utilize the Earth's elements to effect changes at the will of the practitioner, making it a component (not a requirement) of paganism, if one so chooses to practice it.



Christian witchcraft
Finally, regarding "Christian witchcraft," since all the holidays Christians celebrate are based on pre-existing pagan celebrations given Christian names and explanations, and not based on any Christian scriptural dictates, it makes me think of Christianity itself as in-denial pagan religion, with more similaries to Wicca than differences. It seems to me the Christ written about in the Bible had no need for Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Halloween costumes, Maypoles, Carnival celebrations, and other "Christian" practices. Each of those practices, and even the trinity teaching itself, stem from ancient "pagan" beliefs. Call me whacky, but it seems a hypocritical, ignorant --maybe both, when Christians have a problem with (their fellow) pagans. In light of all that, it's not odd to me when someone describes him- or herself as a Christian witch. It could just mean he or she has penetrated and transcended all the hypocricies and lies, and accepted the truth that it's all the same in the end.

In any event, here are a couple books you might find useful to explore this subject further:
The Path of a Christian Witch
The Christian Witch Wheel of the Year

And here's a snippet I found about Gerald Gardner and Wicca:

Here enters the man known as Gerald Gardner, who became an initiate of Dorothy Clutterbuck's New Forest coven. Mr. Gardner was certainly no stranger to the occult; he was a Masonic Lodge member, and an honorary member of the O.T.O. (an organization run by Aleister Crowley); not to mention the various other systems he was possibly familiar with (such as many Eastern, African, Middle Eastern, and even Judeo-Christian Traditions). Overall, he was an amateur anthropologist who enjoyed putting his studies to practical use.

Today, we are not exactly sure what it was that Gardner set out to do. He began by combining the many systems he was familiar with into a coherent whole: basically taking the models of Hermetic Ceremonial Magick, assigning to them correspondences from Celtic Paganism, and using them within the Murray/New Forest Religious structure. Just like the rest of his peers, he claimed that his creation was the very same "organized religion" described by Murray, finally come out of hiding. He decided to call it "Wicca" (Wik-ah, a mispronunciation of Wicce) after the Celtic healers and midwives described previously, and as a way of linking his creation with ancient sources. Gardner went public in 1953 with his book Witchcraft Today; much to the horror of the many existing covens attempting to guard their privacy. However, his ideas eventually took hold on the public, and the Neopagan movement was officially underway.

Wiccans are certainly pagan, and they do indeed practice witchcraft. However not all witches are Wiccans (i.e.- followers of the religion created by Gardner) by any stretch of the imagination. Likewise, all pagan religions are hardly the same as Wicca either. It is a grave form of disrespect for Wiccans to assume that every pagan, or witch, in the world is automatically Wiccan.

Wicca and Neopaganism, a Short History By Aaron Leitch (Khephera)

[shadowx]

hhhhmmm....That sounds kind of odd actually...I would of thought it would of been extremely old. hmm, guess not.

most of the individual ideas in wicca are very old indeed. Paganism itself is almost as old as human kind but bringing the ideas together and a lot of the wiccan teachings are, at the moment, younger than most grandparents.

It is a grave form of disrespect for Wiccans to assume that every pagan, or witch, in the world is automatically Wiccan.

This is my main gripe with wicca, it is as bad as christianity with the whole "we are the only way" crap. Damn. Little emo kids just get sucked in and think they are amazing when they are nothing but emo kids with limited mindsets.

Wicca is fine if you dont want to see the truth in the world, if all you want to see is fluffy little animals and pretty little coloured birds. But if you want to see the truth and be prepared then wicca is a waste of time. But thats opinion of course...

Not all wiccans are bad and if you intend to follow wicca i would implore you to at least read things outside of wicca. Wicca will teach you a fair bit but it just glazes over the dirtier side of paganism and tells you that if you come under attack all you have to do is ask the goddess to send her love and you will be saved when that just isnt the case!

But opinions differ.

[Cinder]

hhhmm, i see. Now that makes a bit more sense. Thank you Kassandra and Shadow. So what your saying is that the word "Pagan" used to be more of a general term and an insult, and now it is it's own religion...hhmm...interesting.