What it is….What it isn’t
First and foremost, Welcome and Blessed be, you have chosen to persue a wonderous path, and to get you started out on the right foot, I am going to HIGHLY recommend that you run out and purchase a copy of Scott Cunningham’s Book “The Truth about Witchcraft Today”, by Llewellyn Publications, (no I don’t work for them, It is just an excellent starting book) and hopefully I’m not invading any copyright infringments by typing this, but what I am giving you here is the introduction taken straight from his book, it’s excellently written, and I don’t want to change a thing.So here it is…word for word..
Night. The curtains in the upper-class home are drawn against prying eyes. Candles gleam in the living room. Incense smoke swirls. Robed figures, chanting in a long-dead language, whirl around a rustic wooden table. On it, between the candles, sit sacred images: a robust Goddess wearing a crescent Moon on Her forhead, a God holding a spear in His upraised hand. All movement stops. A woman standing near the altar says:
In this sacred space and time
We call now the old ones
The Goddess of the Moon, of seas and rivers;
The God of the rayed Sun, of valleys and forests;
Draw near us during this, our circle.
This is Witchcraft….
Two thousand miles away, a fifteen-year-old girl affixes a green candle onto a Polaroid photo of a friend. In the darkened room she lights the candle. She closes her eyes. Within her mind, she visualizes a glowing purple light surrounding her boyfiend’s broken arm. She chants an impassioned healing incantation.
This too, is Witchcraft….
These examples sum up Witchcraft. It is a religion known as Wicca. It is also the practice of folk magic. Thanks to a centuries-long smear campaign, the average person thinks that Witchcraft consists of Satanic worship, orgies, and drug use. They falsely believe Witches to practice a mishmash of Devil worship, unsavory rituals, cruelty, and human sacrifice.
Persons who practice such atrocities certainly do exist: murderers, psychotics, and those frustrated by the religion into which they were born. But these people aren’t Witches, and they don’t practice Witchcraft.
It isn’t surprising that such false beliefs exist, for they’ve been reinforced by literature, the fine arts, motion pictures, television, and tens of thousands of hours of virulent sermons. Though the facts have been readily available for the past twenty years or so, they’ve been largely suppressed, ridiculed, or ignored.
As is often the case, the truth about Witchcraft is far less tantalizing than the lies. It doesn’t lend itself as readily to talk shows as Satanism and rarely creates headline news…But it is there.
Ok, I believe that sums up what Witchcraft ISN’T better than anything I could have come up with.
Now, on what Witchcraft is….that’s a little tougher, and not too dissapoint, but I’m gonna leave that one a little vauge…I believe that Witchcraft(Wicca) is an individual spiritual journey to get in touch with the Divine..and something that can’t truely be defined, it has to be experienced. There are too many kinds of Wicca to be explained, each person knows the Goddess/God in his/her own way. I told you I was gonna be vague. All you…dear reader are getting from me is that Wicca is a very peaceful, earth based theology, we do not recuit as some religions, and…..this is where it get’s tricky…hold to the idea of a feminine&masculine(some traditions) idea of deity.
Like I said at the beginning, is you want truely to learn, what Wicca is and isn’t, get the book, it’s an excellent jumping off point, and if you do decide to comtinue along the path, then I can guarantee that you will be well informed.
Blessed be and I hope to meet you in your journey.
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Witch's Well 