Witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism

(*Please Note* If you decide to use the information you find on this page,
please give me credit, even in your Book of Shadows.)

First, let us quickly define the differences between Witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism. They are not all the same thing.

Witchcraft – Also known as “the Craft of the Wise,” Witchcraft originated centuries ago, if not longer. Its roots are in ancient Paganism, which is thousands of years old. Witchcraft can be Wiccan, but it is important to understand that not all people who call themselves Witches are in fact Wiccan. Many of them practice a very different pagan path, which has been passed down through oral tradition or family teachings. All witches and Wiccans are technically pagan, however. Most witches are not Satanist, although there are a small number of Satanist witches. (Satanism will be covered very little on this blog, if at all. I am not a big fan of this “religion”) Witches usually honor the Goddess, or various other deities, and keep some sort of magickal book of shadows or grimoire to record their spells and other important information. Most witches believe in the use of energy through oneself in combination with natural, symbolic objects to influence and alter reality. This is called magick and is the primary aspect of spellcasting.
Click Here for a simple magick lesson.

Wicca – This formal religion was developed in the mid 1950’s by Doreen Valiente and Gerald Gardner. It is an attempt to reconstruct a comprehensive religious path from the surviving knowledge of original paganism and witchcraft. Typically, Wiccans believe in a god and a goddess who work together and often invoke neo-ancient patheons such as Greek and Eqyptian. Wiccans celebrate the eight sacred sabbats, however these holy days have been honored throughout history, thus making them pagan and not exclusively Wiccan. Wicca sees things in terms of polarity, hence the idea of the Lord and Lady, the four directions, and the four elements. The "Threefold Law" is an exclusively Wiccan concept, based on the idea of Karma, the Golden Rule, etc. The Wiccan Rede outlines ethical principals and practices of Wiccans, not Witches. While yes, those Wiccans are witches, not all witches are Wiccan.

Paganism – This is an umbrella term for any and all Earth-based spiritual paths other than Christianity, Judaism, or Islam (and they even call each other pagan sometimes).Technically anyone who is not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim (or I suppose also Atheist) is considered a pagan. Witches, Wiccans, Satanists, Buddhists, Hindus, and Native Americans are all technically branches of paganism. The earliest religion in the world was paganism, in the form of ancient hunter-gatherer tribes who worshiped the Mother Goddess of the Earth. There is a vast amount of archaeological evidence to support this idea, such as the Venus of Willendorf, the sculpture of Lilith, and the Libyan Sybil. 

Witches do NOT worship Satan. If you are an ignorant person who believes that anything/one who is not your god is Satan by default, bugger off. This site is not for you, and I refuse to waste my time and energy trying to convince you otherwise when I know you are stuck knee-deep in the grey mire of your pig-headed ways.

Moving on.  

As I mentioned before, the majority of Witchy sites are trying to break the Satanist stereotype, so they display only what I like to call “fluffy bunny” content. If you are involved in the Craft, you may have heard this term before. It refers to witches who want to be perpetually “white,” with no practice or representation of darkness whatsoever. They are under the tragic impression that darkness and evil are the same thing. I cannot stress this enough, they are NOT.  Anyway, you will not find any dark spells on those sites, and if you contact them asking for some, you are likely to get a response that goes something like “Witches are not evil and we don’t worship the devil! Go look for black magick spells somewhere else!”

This response obviously isn’t very helpful.

In truth, there is more to the Craft than meditation and healing spells. There are plenty of dark spells which are not harmful in any way. Invoking dark goddesses is a responsible use of dark magick. They are not evil, and will gladly lend their mysterious energy to your cause.

Banishing spells are very simple, level-one examples of dark magick. Best performed at the dark moon, banishing and "return-to-sender" spells are very basic ways to rid your life of unwanted entities. They send forth no energy of their own, simply repelling the negativity which already exists.

As I have said, paganism is ancient. There are countless examples of various historical legends surrounding the pagan pantheon. One of my favorites is the story of Aradia, the messianic daughter of Lucifer (the god of light) and Diana (the goddess of the moon). Aradia was sent to teach the secrets and mysteries of the craft. She was allegedly born in 1313 in Italy, and a book called The Gospel of the Witches (<<<view full txt) was written to solidify her teachings, out of which was created the path of Stregheria.

Check out the Song of Aradia by Inkubus Sukkubus, it's beautiful, and half in Italian>>>

 

The Primary Differences Between Wicca and Satanism

While it is almost impossible to denote every single difference between every individual practitioner, it is easy to outline the most important and fundamental contradictions between the two belief systems. 

First of all, neither actually worships Satan, but most withes don't even believe in Satan, since the Devil is a Christian myth. Even Satanists do not actually worship Satan. They see the Devil as a metaphor for the carnal, primitive nature of humanity, and believe that these aspects should rule our actions and reality. Rather than "As Above, So Below" they would say "As Below, So Above." This concept is demonstrated by their inverted pentacle, which represents the physical ruling over the spiritual, instead of the other way around.

Satanists do not practice magic. They do not believe in exerting one's sacred Will, as it is physical urges and the desires of the flesh which motivate them.

Granted, the flesh can be fun too. While the Craft doesn't encourage over-gratification of the senses, it also isn't about suppressing earthly desires, or condemning them as sinful... that's Christianity.  It seems to me that Satanism is mostly about being/doing exactly the opposite of Christianity... in a really weird, sort of backwards way...

I obviously am not a proponent of these ideologies, and therefore I will say no more on the subject. If it is Satanism which interests you, here is a link to the Church of Satan, founded by Anton LaVey at some point in the sixties or seventies, or something like that... I don't know for sure, nor do I care... Have fun being all scary and Ungroundable, or whatever it is your raging teenage hormones are compelling you to do this week... Some of us have serious universal mysteries to consider.

 

Here are some earlier entries I have written
which are relevant to this subject,
explaining the differences between
Darkness and Evil:

Darkness
Dark Magick Part 1
Dark Magick Part 2
Dark Magick Part 3