Thought the Fifth:

60-Second "Wicca 101" For Non-Pagan Visitors

After receving an e-mail recently from an (apparently) non-Pagan visitor to my site and reading through some postings on a Wiccan bulletin board, I feel I should provide some sense of what this "Witchcraft" stuff is about.
Here goes...

1. "Witchcraft" is a)not Satanism; b) a spiritual path which celebrates the inner workings of nature and professes that one can attain influence over "mundane" reality through "magical" (or "magickal", if you prefer) work; and c)not a word I like to use (except for political purposes)
2. "Magic" is the use of the will in harmony with the natural energies and rhythms of nature to effect change--magic happens in the heart not in a candle or a ragdoll
3. "Wicca" (or "The Craft of the Wise")--fancy-schmancy (but politically-useful) word for Witchcraft
4. Other Magickal Disciplines include: a)Druidry--derived from the religious heritage of the ancient Celts, celebrating the passage of the year and the wisdom of the trees; b)Shamanism--mostly a solitary practice involving contact with entities in non-ordinary reality to evoke change in the "ordinary" world; and c)Neopaganism--a sort of catch-all term to describe folks who practice nature-based spirituality but may not wish to be thought of as adhering to a particular tradition
5. "The Wiccan Rede"--"An it harm none, do what ye wilt" (or, "The human will is and must be truly free, fettered only by the need to protect the living world")
6. "Law of (Threefold) Return"--you know the bit about casting bread upon the water? or "as ye sow, so shall ye reap"? Same thing; which means magickal practice must never be used to inflict harm, or the witch will suffer three times the injury.

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