Wicca Bashing, Part 1: Your Problems With "Wicca" Are Really Just Community Issues- And We're All Responsible For Solving Them

This is by no means a new trend at all. It's been a constant issue for a very long time. But it's tiresome watching people pull down their pants and take what amounts to a massive crap all over Wicca in particular- and do so with incredibly ignorant (and often hypocritical) statements that betray their lack of knowledge about Wicca in the first place; statements which ultimately show that they haven’t actually bothered to ever sit down and learn anything legitimate about our history; about the history of the 20th to 21st century Witchcraft Revival ... And are really only parroting the same 5 basic talking points from whichever neoEducator they’ve attached themselves to online this popularity cycle.

In truth, the behavior annoyed me when I was your run of the mill early 2000's Eclectic NeoPagan ... It annoyed me when I was a Reconstructionist in the 2010's ... And it's annoying me now, still, as a Traditional NeoWiccan and Noahide now converting Jew in the 2020's ... It's something we really need to talk about, however, because it was childish and petulant then- and it’s still childish and petulant now. But more, there’s a particular issue of hypocrisy about the whole thing which runs along its undercurrent that needs to be heavily addressed.

First of all, however, before we really get started: As we've always said (and have been required to repeat a trillion times over, every time this conversation comes up) ... What most people keep calling "Wicca", which exists in the mainstream marketable materials, and which is often what they actually have the most problems with? Is not Wicca at all. It's Eclectic NeoPaganism. There is a difference, and it suffices to say that difference matters a lot. Especially because you cannot actually have any kind of legitimate criticism about Wicca when what you are criticizing isn’t even a form of Wicca in the first place.

The newest, biggest parotable problem people now seem to have with Wicca, which I see most commonly first named ... Is that "it was created by a racist white man". And I hate to say this but ... Yes … We know. We're not idiots; we're not ignorant about the origins of our own religion, and the fact it was created by a white English government employee who worked in India during Colonization, was an Orientalist (like most people of his generation), and had a lot of other problems. The only people who actually seem to be legitimately shocked by this are people who are not Wiccans.

We're also not ignorant, however, about the fact that Gerald Gardner completely eclipsed (to the point of almost erasing) Doreen Valiente's right to be properly recognized as Wicca's co-creator; the fact that she did an amazing amount of work rewriting Wicca's early liturgy in order to remove a lot of the unsavory elements- especially elements contributed by Aleister Crowley (who was not a founder and was only involved insomuch as he lied to Gardner and contributed his materials under the guise of also having been a member of a surviving Witch Cult). Otherwise it could be a lot worse. This conveniently gets left out of the conversation every time, especially by people with a bone to pick about Wicca, however.

But that's besides the point ... The ultimate point- and I really need people to understand this- is that we live in a western, racist, colonialist, white supremacist, Antisemitic (etc) society at its very core. That kind of stuff is baked into the very foundation of our society and culture- and it ultimately has been for a very long time. There's no denying that. There's also no getting around it, either. You cannot avoid it.

Pointing it out in Wicca is kind of obvious. It's so obvious that you really don't even need to do it, honestly. It's just a given, especially because of the time and place of its creation, and the dominant social ideologies at the time. And we're already aware of it. We know about the faults of our own religion. We don't need outsiders pointing it out to us and demonizing us ... Especially because what most people refuse to recognize the most whenever they do this- and which is what truly makes this behavior ultimately hypocritical? Is that so is everything else, too.

The fact of the matter is that there's nothing in our culture that hasn't been touched by all of these exact same issues in various forms and quantities at one point or another. And that carries over into Witchcraft on every single level; you can't walk 5 feet through the 20th to 21st century revival Witchcraft traditions (religious or otherwise) and not touch every single one of these problems, in every single tradition which ultimately exists. Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, it's impossible; it may be subtle in some cases, but it’s still there and must be addressed.

And when I say everything, I do mean everything: Cochranite traditions ... Sabbatical craft ... Hermeticism ... Ceremonialism ... Thelema ... Folk Magic and Traditional Witchcraft. The Grimoire Traditions ... And yes, everyone's favorite Big Bad Evil Scapegoat: Wicca ... All of it, and more; even Revivalist and Reconstructionist traditions- all of them- must address the fact that they were largely started by Nationalists in their countries of origins.

In the end it's all influenced by the same people- many of whom were friends, regularly corresponded with one another, sniped materials from each other, or were even actively cross initiated into each others' traditions (Robert Cochrane Himself was even a 1st Degree Initiate of Gardnerian Wicca- why do you think Cochranite TradCraft and Wicca look so similar in the first place) ... More, the vast majority of it all stems from the same finite pool of sources and resources which were available to them at the time of many of these Traditions' productions. And we still share that same finite pool of resources today, even though that pool has grown and has improved over the decades (and even centuries in some cases), and we have a better understanding of much of it.

The end result is that we're all "guilty" of the same thing; the same influences; the same inherent issues; and we all have to be careful of and address that ... And so you can't actually point your finger at one single tradition and say "they’re specifically the one that has all the issues. They’re specifically the problematic ones and we're not allowed to associate with them anymore" ... It's not only incredibly disingenuous to point your finger at any singular tradition like that- but especially Wicca in particular, only- but it's also incredibly hypocritical to do so.

The only thing we can all realistically do is acknowledge that these are all legitimate living traditions- and that as living traditions things change. Things have changed already (significantly in some traditions). Things can continue to change; we can educate ourselves on what these issues are, how they manifest within our own traditions and what it looks like when they do, and then actively work on deconstructing them within our own traditions ... Not with malice, purity culture nonsense, and hypocritical finger pointing ... But with the proper historical understanding, nuance, and (most importantly) human compassion and understanding.

Significant headway has been made in correcting many problems across the three true Wiccan denominations (and their thousands of independent traditions) over the decades. However, this fact continues to be ignored in favor of a penchant towards actively locking Wicca into what is essentially a 1950's time warp; refusing to recognize it as the living set of religions that it is ... Based wholly off a false image that is perpetuated by the lies of a mainstream informational market only set up to make money, and which is ultimately completely divorced from the reality of those actually living within the faith themselves- and a penchant for modern practitioners to blatantly ignore us when we tell them about the realities of our faiths as they have changed in the present day. And it is both unfair and disingenuous.

In other words: You cannot stick your nose over your neighbor's fence and complain about the stench when you have the exact same piles of trash in your own back yard … It just doesn't work … You have to clean up your own crap, too. To do anything less is ultimately blatant hypocrisy and a complete lack of integrity ... And I don't know about anyone else, but I want better from my religious and spiritual community. Because we do deserve better.