Witchcraft and wicca: Which witch are we talking about?

As with all spiritual paths, each is a lifetime of study, so trying to do even one path justice in a few paragraphs just won’t happen. Wait, isn’t a witch a green hag with a wart on her nose, a fictional character suited to hang out with the likes of Dracula and the Mummy?

This image of a witch comes from a couple thousand years of the Christian church trying to demonize any path that wasn’t Christianity. The idea that someone could be in charge of their own spiritual path, and have their own relationship to the world around them, was likely a threat to the early church, with its hierarchy and partnership with the ruling powers, struggling for economic power. Looking back now, it seems that any path that didn’t adapt to the patriarchal, fear-based attitudes of the prevailing culture became evil. Everything that was once considered sacred became associated with sin.

Lets face it, history wasn’t written by the losers, it reflects the dominant culture. Due to so many years of fear-driven persecution, witchcraft existed in secret, if it indeed survived at all. There aren’t enough facts for us to prove (or dis-prove) anything, but there is evidence that witchcraft was practiced for at least hundreds of years before the Common Era (BC). So today we don’t truly know how closely the practices of the modern witch resemble those of the past.

Yet, there is an inner knowing that the core principles of flowing with life’s cycles and seasons, and living with a reverence for nature, probably haven’t changed much over time. Perhaps the knowledge of our ancestors has survived disguised as old wives’ tales and folklore. The hustle and bustle of our modern capitalistic twenty-four hour convenience now-now-now society has separated us from nature’s cycles. Electricity has allowed us to forget the significance of the light from a full moon. Hot houses have allowed us to take for granted the cycles of agriculture, the planting, growing, and harvesting of crops we now eat year-round.

Generally speaking, a witch lives his or her life in harmony with the land and their surroundings, with nature and its cycles and seasons. This isn’t to say they live without modern conveniences, but they strive to be aware of nature’s cycles and how they relate to our modern lives. The full moon becomes a time to see a project through to fruition, while the dark of the moon is a good time to take it easy. Practicing Magic (sometimes spelled “magick” to differentiate from stage magic and illusion) or casting a spell is not unlike an interactive prayer, a means of co-creating reality with the forces of nature, harnessing the energy of the universe and directing it towards personal goals.

It is more appropriate to call the craft a way of life than a religion—it is very much a personal path, centered around the individual. There is no unifying leadership body and no two witches are likely to share exactly the same practices, so it’s difficult to get more specific on what a witch is or is not in this short space.

So is being a witch and a wiccan the same thing?

Maybe. It depends on who you talk to, one can be either or both. There are commonalities, but there are also differences. Wicca is more like a religion based on witchcraft. Like the craft, the exact history is subject to speculation. It doesn’t begin to come together until somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century. While perhaps less structured than conventional religion, it is more structured than witchcraft, with common rituals and practices. There are various traditions of wicca that have their own specific rituals and practices, and there are solitary practitioners, whose paths and traditions vary per individual. Some claim to practice Eclectic Tradition Wicca, drawing their practices from various sources, wiccan and beyond. Each path is valuable and beautiful.

Like the craft, it is a “nature-based” or “earth-centered” spirituality. There are eight holidays (holy-days), called Sabbats, that mark the changes of the seasons. These are occasions to celebrate life, usually with community and ritual. They fall on the summer and winter solstices, the spring and autumn equinoxes, and the mid-points in between. A common analogy is “the wheel of the year”, each sabbat marking a spoke on the wheel that is the ever-turning solar cycle (takes the earth one year to revolve around the sun). Esbats are also important dates, the lunar cycles celebrated on the full moon, and sometimes the new moon, or dark of the moon (the darkest days of the cycle right before the new moon first appears).

Wiccans honor some form of universal energy that weaves through everyone and everything, a common source. Usually this is honored as the dualistic form of God and Goddess, masculine and feminine principles. Some wiccans are pantheistic and honor nature/universe/god as synonymous, while others are polytheistic, honoring deities that have been venerated in many cultures through history (often recognized as different aspects of the same whole—in other words, if “God” were a diamond, all the many gods and goddesses would be its facets, each a different side of the same entity). Often the sun and sabbat celebrations are associated with masculine energies, the god, while the moon and esbat celebrations (monthly cycles) are associated with feminine energies, the goddess.

Many witches and wiccans today have reclaimed out-dated symbols of the public’s fear of the unknown, hanging halloween decorations donning green hags in their home, sometimes year-round. They remind us that just beneath the surface of our modern holiday traditions, lies a hidden truth, and we smile with an inner knowing that not all has been forgotten.

Tagged as: connection to Nature, earth-centered spirituality, masculine and feminine energy, Seasonal Energy, spiritual path, witch