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Introduction

What Is Wicca?

Wicca is a positive journey to enlightenment through Goddess-worship and the mystical art of white magick. It is a shamanistic nature-oriented religion and a unique and exciting blend of the traditional and the eclectic that seeks neither to convert, conform, or control.

Unlike many other religions, Wicca does not claim to be the one and only way for everybody, and it does not campaign against other religious traditions (although the other way around is unfortunately the case at times).

Wicca is not anti-Christian; however, it does not acknowledge the existence of sin, the Devil, or a judgmental and avenging god as defined by Christianity.

Wicca encourages free thought, artistic creativity, individuality, and personal, spiritual, and psychic growth. It is a celebration of the cycle of seasons and of life. Wicca is respecting and living in harmony with all living things. Wicca is Light. Wicca is Love. Wicca is called the “Craft of the Wise” and is both ancient and new. It is a path unlike any other in the world.

What Is Magick?

Magick is difficult to define. The dictionary calls it “the art of persons who claim to be able to do things by the help of supernatural powers or by their own knowledge of nature’s secrets.” Most Wiccans and Neo-Pagans alike would agree that although magick might appear to be “supernatural,” it is a power or force that is quite natural.

For many people a first impression of magick is that it is all “bell, book and candle,” but upon closer examination, they find that there is more to it than magickal paraphernalia. (The tools of the Craft are merely “props” serving as sources to help focus power.) Magick is a wondrous energy that is raised through various means (meditation, dancing, and ritual sex, to name a few) and then psychically directed at a specific goal—to heal an illness, attract love, or remedy a bad situation.

Magick is “the use of will to effect some desired change”; therefore, any open-minded human being who possesses the ability to focus and concentrate their will is capable of working successful magick. Some folks need to practice often to get their magickal skills fine-tuned, while others are blessed with more of a natural aptitude for it.

Magick is a state of mind and a Goddess-given gift that plays a major role in the religion of Wicca. It is the Witch’s contact with the Divine. It is the Witch’s prayer.

Just as there are many different ways to define magick, there are also many different ways to perceive it. Magick is all around us, and within us. It radiates in all things that live and die. It can be felt in a baby’s first breath and in the changing of the seasons. It is a part of the Earth, the mysterious ocean, and the starlit heavens above us. There is magick in love and magick in dreams. It can be found on a hill of wildflowers dancing in the sun-drenched breeze, in the cool shadows of some quiet enchanted woodland, or in the lines of a beautiful poem. All you need to do is open your heart.

“AN IT HARM NONE, LOVE,

AND DO WHAT THOU WILT!”

—THE WICCAN REDE