How Dictionary.com Defines Wicca & Witchcraft

These definitions are fair, but leave out a major consideration. Wicca is classsified as a religion, while witchcraft is a practice, an art, a craft and a spirituality. There is a world of difference between these two. Very similar is to throw into the mix the word Pagan. All witches are Pagan, but all Pagans are not witches.

I believe that each person has the right and choice to define who they are and what it is that they believe. Knowing the terms and their meanings is helpful if you are going to utilize them to describe yourself. I define myself as an ecclectic witch. I am not wiccan.

I thought the Wicca definition was pretty decent, it included our reverance toward nature and the fact that its based on pre-Christian beliefs. Most definitions i've found just say a religion invented by Gardner, which i never like to see. He did not INVENT anything, he just gave us a name!

Gerald Gardner is recognized as the one who brought Wicca to this country. He introduced it to the American mainstream. While I am not Gardnerian, I can appreciate that what he did helped make it possible for me to practice without fear of being burned at the stake. So many of the early ones who brought witchcraft out of the closet, Gardner, Sommers, Fortune, Zain, Leek, Crowley, etc., and the later Reformationists, as well as those current spokesmen and women of the craft deserve our thanks. While I enjoy looking at Janet Farrar's breasts in the Witches' Bible and in What Witches Do, it would be hard to imagine what the face of the craft would be today without the groundwork laid by Janet and Stuart.

Ok, for my two cents......

I fall into the camp that believes that Gerald Gardner invented his own religion. He did it by combining popular folk magick with ceramonial magick teachings. It was proven that he was greatly influenced by Margaret Murray, and her book "The Witch-Cult in Western Europe". That book has been prroven to be baised on rubbish. Gardner might of actually been inducted by a surviving coven, but, he created his own religion in Wicca. That religion has only been arround for 60 years or so.

That's not to say that Wicca is a false religion. It is a very valid one. But it's not a very old one that has streached back for centuries.

I look at Wicca as more of a atempt to do with paganism and Witchcraft, what the Golden Dawn did with the rest of the occult. To create a codeified system of beliefs that encompases and organizes as much as possable. While the history itself might be false, it works, and it's practisioners get something out of it. If you wanted to argue about it, I could always point out that Christanity could be accused of doing the exact same thing.

And as far as Gardner bringing Wicca to America, most people would say that Raymond Buckland is more responable for that.

In the end, does it really matter much what someone calls themself. Names are just that. Ways for us to seperate ourselves from others. And to bind us to a group. We all practice our faith in our own ways. We all create our own traditions. No matter what we do, we all honor the Divine in a way that is different from anyone else.