Can anyone help me find information on the Wiccan religion? Not much info available here in my local area.?

Question

Currently living in KY. Most people here see wicca as devil worship. (WRONG) Need some good info on practices, events, etc. Thanx!

Answer 1

HI, luckily, there are plenty of places on the web where you can get accurate info on Witchcraft. I will list a bunch of websites and links to educational Wiccan/Pagan videos to help you. If you have any other questions feel free to contact me.

Videos

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1590377409630299605&q=wheel+of+the+year
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8636008658074614593&q=Goddess
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5242937865873126465&q=Burnt+Page
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9101767666136381149&q=The+Celts
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8908439228541178414&q=Strega
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2112695438336543016&q=Burnt+Page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF4DsggUcPc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P3utVi8GsQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aMCuqnOzBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edLtlEV1tJo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP_65De6cYM&mode=related&search=

Answer 2

I have Friends in Covington, KY. I've visited a few times, there are more Wiccan and Occult stores than you might expect. There is even a Wiccan run homeless shelter!

This website lists 16 Pagan owned shops in KY. http://www.witchvox.com/vn/sh/usky_sh.html

This is the kentucky main page.
http://www.witchvox.com/vn/hm/usky.html
There you can find people in your area to talk to, who might know of shops in your area, that might not have a local shop profile.

If you have specific questions about Wicca, I'd love to help answer them!
Blessings and light
Rev. Amy

Answer 3

You can also look to see if there are any meet ups in your area:
http://wiccan.meetup.com/
If you look in the lower right corner you may see other topics that may interest you--or do a search for keywords. If you are near Cincy, there is a very active pagan community there with various covens and yahoo groups---and I think they should put on a Witch's Ball again this year. I live about an hour away---but on the ohio side. E-mail me if I can help or if you just want to chat.

Answer 4

witchvox.com is the most valuable website for wicca info. bonus - no popups, no ads, just good stuff. you can search for groups, people, stores, etc in your local area.

blessed be )O(

Answer 5

http://www.witchvox.com is the best site on the net for Wiccan info.

Answer 6

Here's some info for you:

In 1897 Godfrey Leland wrote "Aradia Gospel of The Witches". The book was plagiarized from two of his other books, Etruscan Remains and Gypsie Sorcery. Leland claimed he was given an ancient manuscript, which is the same story he used about one of his other books. This is the same era when Joseph Smith Jr., was finding “gold plates”, so maybe it sounded possible. The manuscript was never produced for examination, like Smith’s plates. Even though the book doesn't mention "wicca", it was the inspiration of what was to come. "Aradia" deals with Diana and her brother Lucifer, a being "banished from paradise for his pride" and was obviously the Christian devil. Diana and Lucifer have a daughter named Aradia, who was supposedly a witch avatar who lived in Sicily in the 14th century. No witch cult like Leland's was ever found, and the document is obviously fake.

Next came Margaret Murray. A quack anthropologist, Murray hatched her own witch theory inspired by Leland's hoax. Murray invented the idea that witches of medieval witch-hunts were actual part of a Pagan cult that survived into 1600's or so. Murray wasn't above lying as her writings about Joan of Arc bear out. If she had actually read the trial transcripts from St. Joan's trial as she claimed, there are no way she could have drawn the conclusions she did about the devout Catholic Joan being a witch. Murray tests the limits of the reader's patience with ideas like an poor accused witch being tortured crying "Queen of Heaven help me!" as an incantation to a Pagan goddess, rather than the obvious St. Mary. But Murray's books inspired (and continues to inspire) others.

Wicca was started by Gerald Gardner in New Forrest England circa 1950. He was a nudist & masochist and basically created Wicca as a sex cult. Followers nowadays like to forget that part, and instead fantasize they have magical powers. Many American Wiccans deny Gardner's sexual fetishes, but they're commonly accepted as fact in the U.K. Gardner was a member of Crowley’s O.T.O. and plagiarized his writings for his Book of Shadows.

Adian Kelly wrote a book on the history of Wicca called "Crafting The Art of Magic" in the 1980's. Wiccans had a fit when it was published, and pressured Llewellyn to take it out of print. It was supposed to be the first in a series of books. I think Adian Kelly probably summed it up best when he said this about the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows", the closest thing Wicca has to a sacred book:

" [M]any of the Book of Shadows rituals did not exist in 1954 (when Witchcraft Today was published) but instead were still being written. [T]he major sources from which the rituals had been constructed included: (a) Mather's edition of the Greater Key of Solomon; (b) Aleister Crowley's Magic in Theory and Practice; (c) Leland's Aradia (d) some Masonic rituals akin to those described by Duncan and those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (aside from those transmitted by Crowley; and (e) Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult in Western Europe. There were also bits and pieces from other works by Leland, Jane E. Harrison, Gilbert Murray, James Frazier, and other great classicists from the 19th century. That accounted for EVERYTHING in the rituals! There was nothing left that differed in any important way from what you can find in those sources- - but that is NOT at all what Gardner had claimed!"

Wicca a religion where anything can be added in, where the followers mistakenly think they have magic powers, and it's not older than rock and roll, even though it's called the "Old Religion". Authors like Gavin and Yvonne Frost, Silver Raven Wolf, Raymond Buckland, Scott Cunningham crank out books about how to get love, money, and above all else "protection". The Frost's Magic Power of White Witchcraft says "Witchcraft Can Make You Rich in a Ghetto" according to the title of chapter 11. However, the Frosts themselves aren't rich. Coincidentally, they claim to have taken a "vow of poverty" according to one of their webpages, to explain why they apparently can't make their spells work either.

Eventually Ronald Hutton wrote his own history of Wicca, called "Triumph of the Moon". Hutton is a history professor at Oxford, so he is not easliy dismissed. Even though some Wiccans have realized their history is a sham, they still want to cling to the "witch" fantasy (like Kelly for one, he calls himself a "Christian Pagan") by calling it a "reconstructionist movement". But you can't reconstruct something which never existed in the first place. Even so, these types still seem to allude to their religion being thousands of years old.