What is WICCA and why is it the fastest growing religion in the world?

Question

I found this on a statistics website,

SOURCE:
Adherents.com

All the major religions of the world seem to be shrinking, especially Christianity.... Why?

Answer 1

The reason Wicca is growing is because a lot of teens find wicca to be a good relgion since it is so based on nature and it holds women and men equally and being gay is celebrated not a sin like in the christian religion.


this website has detail on what wicca is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicca#Wicca_as_a_magical_religion

Answer 2

I highly question any stats that Wicca is the fastest-growing religion, at least by sheer numbers. The problem is that a lot of Wiccans are still closeted; others have an agenda to try and muscle their way into perceived legitimacy.

As for the state of things in general; religions all go through life cycles. They start out as small cults, then the successful ones continue to grow. As they grow they become more standardized. Then they hit their peak, at which case they begin to collapse under their own weight and dogma.

Wicca--and paganism in general--is not immune from bigots and other stupid people. Some pagans try to say that "We're so much better than those Christians!" The truth of the matter is that all religions have good and bad people. It's just that right now Christianity is going through its collapse, while paganism is going through its growth. David and Goliath and all that.

Answer 3

Wicca is an earth based religion centered around the idea that Nature is based on Polarities. The Personified Polarity is that of God and Goddess. The religion is very non dogmatic. There are only 13 Principles of Wiccan Belief. So many people are attracted to it because it simply states that An Harm Ye None, Do What thou Will. No more guilt for sexual feelings or natural urges like in Abrahamic Religions.

I firmly believe that Wicca is growing at such a fast rate because of accessable information on the internet.

Answer 4

I surely have been listening to that Wicca is the quickest transforming into faith for variety of 15 years now and that i nevertheless doubt it. If it have been genuine, Wicca might have made up a minimum of a million% of the inhabitants by potential of now, yet it nevertheless would not. we at the instant are not so hiding interior the shadows that thousands and thousands of practitioners stay interior the broom closet. i think of it fairly is in basic terms something human beings say, i don't have faith there are any actually learn or information to be sure this declare. additionally i think of an stunning style of human beings who come to Wicca bypass away it interior a pair of years- it seems to not be what they theory it would be (a shortcut to getting what they want and magicky powers and stuff) or it seems to easily be a delightful creation to the Pagan international and that they pass directly to different Pagan religions. So even though if human beings are turning to Wicca at a intense fee, there's a somewhat reasonable fee of human beings who bypass away it.

Answer 5

Traditional Wicca:
A modern form of Witchcraft is called "Wicca." Traditional Wicca is based on the teachings of Gerald Gardner, is coven based and each coven can trace its lineage (line of teaching passed on by initiated Traditional priests and priestesses) back to Gardner himself. There are offshoots of Gardnerian Traditional Wicca such as Alexandrian Wicca, Georgian Wicca and many others. Traditional Wiccans are considered a 'mystery' religion, require initiation by the coven and have a "degree system" or different levels of rank based upon coven training and the readiness of the initiate to accept the duties and responsibilities of that degree. They have a core of inner knowledge-often called the "Book of Shadows"-which is known only to initiated Wiccans. Most Traditional Wiccans believe in the balance of male-female divinity. Traditional Wiccans are seldom solitary except for those 'Elders'-usually former priests and priestesses-who may have retired from active coven involvement.

Other Forms of Wicca:
A newer form of Wicca has developed since the 1970's which is looser in structure and practice than the Traditional Wicca. These practitioners may follow a mixture of various or "eclectic' pagan and/or non-pagan beliefs. Some have formed 'traditions' or covens of their own, with or without a degree system, and have written a "book of shadows" outlining their own belief system and coven structure. Many are solitary practitioners who practice their beliefs and formulate their rituals in their own way.
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I really think Wicca is the fastest growing religion in the US, because of it's lack of Dogma. This religion is about finding your connection with Deity. (God, Goddess, what ever you want to call Him, Her, It, Them) Instead of religion being about "SIN" and how evil everyone is.

For Heaven's sake, Christianity teaches that we're born with "sin" How can you look at a newborn baby, who has been in this world, less than a day, and say that this child has sinned, by being born.

It's not a religion of Guilt. It's a Faith of empowerment. You are in charge of your own destiny.

Answer 6

Islam is also the fastest growing religion in the World too.
Christianity is still the largest religion in the world. Islam is the second largest. Don't know which one is on top as fastest growing: Islam or Wicca. I think its Islam, but that's because I'm Muslim :)

Answer 7

That's like saying the US economy is one of the worst in the world because it only grows at 3 or 4 percent each year.

My church isn't shrinking. It's been growing robustly for a long time. (LDS)

Wicca is a new-age mish-mash of several ancient pagan philosophies.

Answer 8

No Islam is growing twice as fast.

Answer 9

Nature worship is the shortest way i can put it. its all about peace, karma thats why its wide spread because people would rather have peace and anarchy than kill kids over oil.

Answer 10

Wicca goes back to the 1950's and was created by a man named Gerald Gardner. It's growing because people can make it uo as they go along and delude themselves into thinking they have magical powers.

Gardner was a nudist and masochist who liked to be beaten by strong willed women. He plagarized writings from his mentor Aleister Crowley (a junkie who thought he was the Antichrist). There were several other sources of input for Gardner as well.

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. Eventually Murray was initated into Gardner's coven.

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.