h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Although I'm a Christian I recently became very interested in Wicca and celebrate the Winter Solstice which was the only Wicca celebration I knew of. Now reading through this entery I have found new celebrations I can take part in. I already celebrate Halloween and I was wondering if anyone can give any guidelines as to how I should celebrate the other six festivals. I'd like to know if there are and specific deities as well. I know there is the horned one but I'm still a bit confused about the lady. Are the any witches out there who'd like to tell me a bit about Wicca. I like to talk to someone about it.
Thanks.
Richard.

well... let's see.

the lady herself is confusing, even to me. i guess it's left to interpretation what she is. my own personal lady is pretty much the embodiment of what i want to be myself: wise, beautiful, successful, kind... the ideal me, i guess. although that would have to be different for a man.

let's see, sabbat celebrations. i think i'll have to research that one a bit, and answer you when my parents aren't around so i can bring my books to the computer.

as for telling you about wicca... what do you want to know? i don't know where to start...

Let's see about where to start. I suppose if I need to start knowing about Wicca I'd say the begining which I know dosn't help much. If you could just give me a background of what goes on and if they have any main dieties. That would be a good starting point. Thanks.

Also on the Legacy Of Persecution my Dad dosn't like me reasarching Wicca or anything like that because he belives it's to do with Satanism and I even had to reasearch that just to point out the differences. The main difference is Wicca's sign is a penticle and Satamism's sign is an upsidedown pentagle.

There's a little more difference between Wicca and Satanism than which way up their Pentacles are...

Tell your dad that Wiccans can't be Satanists or devil worshippers because {you can shout this next bit} they don't believe in Satan. Sarcasm is always useful in this kind of situation, I find.

MyRedDice - "So presumably Satan's trying to pretend to be the earth mother by wearing a green skirt and trying to cover up the horns or something?"

let's see.

there are two types of wiccans: those who believe in the goddess and those who believe in the goddess and a god together. it doesn't make a lot of difference in the actual worship or the religion itself since wicca is left very much to interpretation.

we respect and accept the beliefs of others. we don't evangelize. we don't convert people. we don't cast spells for money, and we don't kill people, hurt people, curse people. we believe that whatever we give out, whatever we send out into the world, be it actions or spells or words, it will come back to us threefold.

some witches celebrate every sabbat, some don't know what sabbats are. some wiccans are practitioners, some are worshippers, some are both. practitioners practice magick and don't really do the prayer/meditation/sabbat thing, while worshippers don't do much magick but worship the deities regularly. like i said, it's all left to personal interpretation, and you can pretty much tailor the Craft to suit your lifestyle.

even the deities aren't set in stone. some worship egyptian deities, some greek, some roman, some a mix of all of them. it's all for you to decide which you identify with.

and WITCHES DO NOT BELIEVE IN SATAN!!!!! satan is a creation of christianity, and he plays NO ROLE WHATSOEVER in our beliefs.

It's your hell, you burn in it, so to speak.

Richard,

I wish you the best of luck researching your new path. What is it that attracts you specificly to Wicca? Is it that its not Christianity? There is a whole big world of Pagan paths that maybe another path would be more up your alley. Whatever floats your boat they say.

Its a small worldview that the entirety of the spiritual realm is in only two camps. That of the creator god, and that of the adversary. Many Christians hold this view. If its not in the realm of thier god, it must be the domain of thier adversary (Satan). Personaly I am a polytheist, where there are countless gods and goddesses and no real camp of good and evil. There is room enough in my worldview for all gods.

I was wondering, do you belive in any kind of life after death or does that depend on the Gods you worship? Being Chirstian I'm not sure on the view of the adversary. Although I am Chirstian I disagree with a lot that they are surpossed to believe.

*MY* view on the afterlife is kind of unconventionable. I personally believe that there is an infinite number of realms in the afterlife. The Christian Heaven is real as is Buddhist Nirvana, as is Norse Valhalla, and the Irish Tir na nOg. Perhaps if the soul wishes for it, there is even oblivion.

The afterlife is full of options! Take you pick!

i myself believe in reincarnation. many wiccans share this belief. i believe that when i die, i will be born again as another human being, because i love this world and i do not want to leave it. just think of all the things you can do, the things you can be in an infinite number of lifetimes!

How about that when you die there is some kind of 'heaven' but if you die young then you get reincarnated and get a second chance at life since you didn't really get a chance the first time. I'm not sure what I belive in but that's something I thought up a couple of months ago that I like to sound of. On the other hand I'm not to keen on the idea of renincarnation but I wont bore you with why unless you REALLY want to know.

I agree with Sea. I also believe that reincarnation is yet another alternative to the afterlife.

Anohther questions (for I have many) although you don't believe in Satan, do you belive in any kind of demons or anything like this. Wicca makes a lot of sense to me when I think about it. I just can't seam to let it fit in with my beliefs. There must be some place for the two to go I've just got to find it. Any idea.
I want to say that finding this entry was great. I tried reseahing paganism, found that Wicca was the 'type' I was interested in and looked more and more and didn't get anywhere. Then I came here and I haven't needed to go anywhere else.

I am not a Wiccan, I may perhaps be called a pagan, but my religious beliefs aren't very fixed or strict. I think my religion fits in very well of the ancient Celts, and they weren't that strict either. My core values are that love is the most importan thing or quality in the universe, and that life is also very important. As for the nature of life and death, I would like it if there was such a thing as reincarnation, and I strongly suspect that there is, based on a number of reasons. I love life, I love the earth and the universe, and if I could choose I would choose to live for an infinity of time over an infinity of lifetimes - doesn't matter if some of them are bad, because there will be an equal or greater number that are good, and I won't mind getting a chance to experience everything from the very worst to the very best!

prof. sarah: i don't share your beliefs regarding reincarnation, but they are rather interesting and i've never encountered anyone with that outlook before.

you can't fit wicca into your beliefs system? have you read anything about trinitism? (you did say you were once christian, right?) it's the magickal worship of christian gods. i myself think it's a bit of a cop-out, but to each his own, who am i to judge?

demons. i believe in the possibility of the existence of demons. i've never met one, but i've never seen undeniable proof that they don't, either. so i don't know, i guess it's personal preference.

The problem I'm having is trying the fit Wicca in my Christian beliefs. On the subject of reincarnation, I'm not sure what I belive in. I do belive in heavan (or hell) or some equivalent at the end but the reincrnation was one idea I had. I'm looking into how to fit my belifs together.

Me too, I used to be a christian, and I still believe in Jesus Christ, but I expanded my views because I just cannot believe that everybody else is wrong about God or about good/bad right/wrong or about human nature or the nature of the universe. I would rather believe that different belief systems all have a particular point of validity while probably also having some mistaken beliefs, and that includes christianity and Wicca as well. I don't want to be tied to any particular 'system', but I must say that as Sea has explained, Wicca is not really a system, it allows the individual the freedom to find the truth for him or herself.

I aggree with exactly what you say. I've always belived that all religions have a point of truth in them. The only problem I had with Wicca was I thought that the main bases of it was beliveing in multiple dieties and that is just one thing I can't accept. I belive that there is just one God and that Jesus is his son. If there is a way to incororate Wicca into the belief I'd be very intrested to know about it.

That's actually an important issue. Personally my view of God is 'the totality of everything' - but I believe that this 'totality of everything' has a mind and a will and the nature of a person - a divine person - and the qualities that we ascribe to God, such as ominpresence, omniscience and omnipotence, although how that is interpreted can be problematical. But if God is the totality of everything there can be as many sub-gods as you want, and they will still all be included in God, and only add to the full nature of God, there will be no paradox. Of these 'lesser gods' some may be masculine and some feminine. I believe that there's a problem with a particularly masculine view of God. If we understand God to have feminine attributes as well our relationship with such a God would be different, as well as the way we serve such a God.

As for Jesus, I believe he was a manifestation of God, which means a being that is very intimately in touch with the transcendent nature of God. This is rather difficult but I can try to explain it if you want - it's only the way I understand it, it's not necessarily the truth. But as for other gods - those would be merely 'entities' on a 'higher level' than humans. Both concepts - that of 'entity' and 'higher level' might need some further clarification, but again, I at least know in which way I understand them. But note that the belief in gods does not conflict with the view of a single transcendent god in this (my current) system. What does cause a conflict is that I believe that God can manifest many times - in other words there might be new people born who have some or all of the qualities of Jesus Christ, but they will not be recognized by christians, they will be called 'false messiah's' and that may be a real problem if these people are *not* false messiahs but indeed true incarnations of God. But note that an 'incarnation of God' is only a relative term in my view - it merely means a person who is a little more closely connected with the divine top level than the average person, so a claim of being an incarnation or manifestation of God would not be a particularly radical claim.