Attn: Mountain Man. Where the rubber hits the road: Wicca vs. Christianity

[franktalk]

What's the point of having the Bible, of reading it!? What are we supposed to do to fulfill the Great Commission!? Come up to someone and do some tap-dancing, grinning like an idiot?

You are free to chat with anyone you wish in what ever manner floats your boat. I believe that it is God who chooses how and who He will change. If He wants me to stand on a street corner and recite the Gospel I will be happy to. But until then I will just speak about my experience and approach each soul as a brother.

I'm not sure whether you do realize that personal philosophies (or what you would call persons' viewpoints, I suppose) do evolve, especially when people experience something that challenges their beliefs.

How does one challenge a belief if one does not listen to others. I prefer to use the ears before engaging the mouth.

[Durthorin]

So it seems my quest was for knowledge and understanding of the workings of the world. Your quest was more internal. A study of yourself and what you are. Am I right?

To understand the world and others one must first understand ones self. Without that as a starting point to refer back to your earlier statements concerning viewpoint.. we do not know the filters we use on the universe around us, the people and our own beliefs. I once had a student who hated Christianity.. Hated it with a passion. It took awhile to lead her to the conclusion that she hated it, because she loved it and felt a sense of betrayal.. I suppose ironically, I led her over her crisis of faith and back to Christ.. if not the organized Christian church

[franktalk]

Durthorin ,

You are correct. I first had to realize I was a product of science. Then I found that foundation was not what I thought it was. So my structure of self was shaken. But I rebuilt it on faith and a spiritual existence. Although to some that may appear to be a shaky way to form one's beliefs I believe it is the most solid.

It all depends on what you hold most dear. If you are of the earth then your connection to the earth will define you and you will have all of those ideas of the world to help you maintain that belief. But if you are of the spirit then the world means little.

[tmancour]

What!? I wrote, ‘I don’t want that if the real truth is hard to understand in whole or to accept.’ I now assume you didn’t misread that. You appear to contradict yourself. In an earlier post, you said something to the effect that truth should be easy to recognize and understand. But your preparations for the Initiations are supposed to be difficult and labor-intensive. You could be one confused dude.

I'm not. Truth should be easy to understand, but that's largely dependent upon whom is trying to understand it -- and some truths, particularly the deeply personal ones, can only be arrived at through the arduous process of introspective examination and meditation. One of my beefs with text-based religions is the idea that such truths can be spoon fed from Authority, skipping the hard work necessary to arrive at them. Once there, such truths are often easy to understand -- but the process of arriving isn't easy, and it shouldn't be.

But, you still need teachers to function as midwives or obstetricans, so to speak? I would agree people need to be taught to think for themselves and to be given ways to look for truth and test it.

It's preferred by many to have a teacher, but I've known very wise and very powerful Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans who have made the journey on their own. In my case, I'm dealing with a 17 year old girl who I feel will avoid a lot of unnecessary suffering and confusion if she has a competent teacher. That won't excuse her from doing the work, of course, but it will keep her from spinning her wheels. Teaching her how to look for truth, think for herself, and find the solutions is a major part of that effort.

Ah, so people’s evil natures made you leave Christianity. The Bible is full of accounts of people doing evil. Why didn’t you leave the first time you read about David’s murder of Uriah? And people are still evil. I dunno about the Wicca people, are they really all good?

It wasn't the "evil" natures of people, but their unwillingness to take responsibility and ownership of their issues. I have a deep-seated loathing of hypocrisy, and Christianity is rife with it. I don't consider hypocrisy inherently evil, nor do I consider human nature inherently evil, but hypocrisy leads to other problems and diminishes the potential for spiritual development, and it also allows plentiful latitude for "the ends justify the means".

Wiccan people aren't "all good", but then we don't have the same dualistic baggage that the Abrhamic faiths do. And we certainly aren't "all evil". We're just as much of a mixed bag as any other religion. We just emphasize the individual taking responsibility for their actions more than most religions.

I’m not sure to what you refer. Women are better treated in Christianity than in other religions, at least they are supposed to be.

That's highly debatable. Especially considering the purge of the Goddess from the Abrahamic faiths. Look at how you constructed the sentence: "Women are better treated in Christianity than in other religions", as if women were somehow dependent and subsidiary to religious life and function. In Wicca and most of the other Goddess religions, women are not "treated", they are often the primary leaders of our groups and figures of great spiritual importance. Since our Godhead is shared between the two genders, reflective of the polar nature of our sexuality and society, there is a freedom in Paganism for women to aspire to greatness and power without inherent limitation. The proper respect for their essential role in the continuation of the species and the propagation of the generations is demonstrated constantly, through the adoration and worship of the Goddess in Her many forms. Most of our Elders are women of great wisdom and ability, and there is almost none of the condescension and derision that the Abrahamic faiths display. Beyond that, the highly restrictive "madonna/whore" model of femininity displayed throughout Christian history, doctrine and practice essentially limits the roles of women, demeans their sacred sexuality, and treats them as (at best) second class citizens or (at worse) children or property. Not for me, thanks.

’Radical’? Maybe you used that adjective as an accentator, not as a restrictor. If you did mean the latter, what’s an example of a monotheistic godhead that’s not radical?

I use the term to refer to the Abrahamic faiths, since all three of them see Monotheism as exclusive. A non-radical monotheism would be, perhaps, Zoroastrianism, which sees Ahurha Mazda as the focus of the Godhead but recognizes other manifestations of divinity as well. Of course, then it gets bogged down in dualism and spoils much of the advantages of non-radical monotheism, but what can you do?

wow, so you freely murder; covet; bear false witnesses; expropriate property; etc. List of what, the tribal mores?

Why do you assume that all cultures that don't have the Bible as the basis for their moral codes have, therefore, no moral codes? The fact is that all human cultures, from the simplest tribal cultures to the most sophisticated industrial cultures, have moral codes that prohibit murder, lying, and stealing (at least from other members of the tribe -- there are plenty of cultures where stealing from other tribes is seen as a good thing). Did not Classical Rome have laws against murder? Violating oaths? A hundred other offenses? Did not Ancient China have plenty of laws and regulation prohibiting similar crimes? The Bible doesn't have a lock on all human morality, and most human cultures are perfectly able to construct such basic moral codes without the necessity of burning bushes and divinely given tablets. In Wicca and many of the other Neo-Pagan traditions, the basic moral stricture is known as the Wiccan Rede, which is most often articulated as "An it harm ye none, do what thou wilt." In other words, the Golden Rule. That's not the entirety of Wiccan thought on the subject of course (we have some pretty screaming debates about proper ethical behavior, actually, far more than most Christian communities do) but just because we don't have a textual source code for our morality doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

What counts is the truth, yes? If God is indeed the God of the Bible, are you still going to pout that a certain something that is female was left out, even if it’s not God.

Why yes, yes I would. Because that would undermine what is, by observation, a fundamental truth of human life on this planet: that it takes a masculine and feminine principal, working together, to move our species forward. If the very male God of the Bible (Jehovah/Elohim/Allah) is, indeed, the "absolute truth" as written I will be woefully disappointed in his crappy execution of such a basic principal. And I'll still whine about the Goddess.

I don’t know what your experiences are, but what you think they are is not necessarily the truth. Nor can your feelings have anything to do with the truth. If one says that he feels that this or that is true, that is meaningless in itself. To be sure, when one comes to understand something, that moment can engender a great feeling. Note, however, the temporal sequence: understanding leads to feeling. You think feeling leads to understanding. No, it cannot be. How can you feel about anything BEFORE you experience it?

You're putting the cart before the horse, here. Let's separate truth into Objective Truth (truth that can be "objectively" observed and independently verified -- the truth developed by the scientific method being the prime example) and Subjective Truth (truth that is valid and necessary to an individual "subjectively", but may not apply to all people at all times). An Objective Truth is that the Moon orbits the Earth. A Subjective Truth is that the Moon represents the divine nature of the Goddess. That's a deeply held and intensely personal thing for me, reflective as it is of the eternal mystery of the divine feminine, but to you it's just a pretty satellite. I could try to convince you of the Objective Truth of my Subjective Truth, but the fact is that, without you having experienced what I have over the course of my life, my Subjective Truth is going to be meaningless to you no matter how adamantly I might try to explain it. Biblical Truth is a Subjective Truth, and for me it doesn't apply any more than the Moon-as-Goddess applies to you. Of course, my Subjective Truth about the nature of the Moon isn't exclusive -- I can hold that truth closely and still acknowledge the Objective Truth that the Moon is a satellite that orbits the Earth without there being a logical disconnect in my mind. In fact the two are compliamentary truths, because while there is no Objective evidence that the Moon is, in fact, a manifestation of the Goddess, there is strong evidence of the Objective Truth that the presence of the Moon creates the tides that stirred the primordial soup and fostered the development of the earliest forms of life on this world. Did that make sense?

It does look like my ideas were wrong, but why go around calling yourselves witches and mages? It looks like terrible PR to me.

But that's what we are. "Witch" means (among other things) "Wise", and we practice a Wisdom Religion. We practice Magick. So do y'all, you just practice a more theurgic form, and don't call it that (you call it "prayer"). Would you counsel a Jew to stop calling themselves that, because of all the Antisemitism in the world? Of course not. We in the Neo-Pagan community have reclaimed these titles from a thousand years of oppression and open warfare against the practice of our magickal, polytheistic religion. Those who are willing to look beyond stereotype and prejudice will recognize us for what we are. We don't really care what the rest think, if they are so hide-bound in their thinking as to reject us on that basis. We aren't here to convert people to our way of thinking, we're here to follow our Craft.

Orthopraxic? = ‘straight practice’? Sounds like Buddhism: right living. Who’s to know what is ethical and not without something like the Bible to tell ya!?

Hitler perhaps felt it was right to exterminate Jews. Most of the world disagreed with him. Which side is right?

As mentioned before, the Romans, Indians, and Chinese managed to develop pretty sophisticated civilizations without the benefit of the Bible. We don't need outside help to tell us paternalistically what is right and what is wrong. We can figure out such things on our own. We're pretty smart folk who live in a pretty sophisticated society. And yes, "orthopraxic" is a term that describes several different religions. Would that Christianity were one of them . . .

We Witches were against Hitler -- pretty actively, actually, if you believe the lore about Lammas Night in the 1940s. To paraphrase, the Witches of Britain conjoined their spellwork to attack Hitler and get him to stop bombing the British airfields. While that meant he instead bombed the cities, Britain was able to maintain a credible defense and keep a German invasion at bay until the US entered the war. Nor is genocide ever justifiable under any moral code. Just ask the Indians and the Australian Aborigines who suffered genocidal policies at the hands of good God-fearing Christians.

Many people calling themselves Christian do practice what may be called feeling-based religion. No, in Judaism and Christianity, practice should match what the Bible says should be ethical behavior. And, your active beliefs are in some sense your acts also.

Agreed. Which is why I despair when I see the hypocrisy in most Christian practice.

Why not have one of those erudite Wiccans come here and show Dizzle one thing or two?

Would anyone listen? Really? Honestly, we've got a lot more important things to do than try to convince die-hard Christians that they are in error. I try it once or twice a year just to keep my skills sharp, but once they've drunk the kool-aide, it's usually like teaching a pig to sing. Wisdom dictates that we reserve our energy for more vital work.

Uncertain what you mean. ‘More fictional than true history’?

Yep. Hagiography isn't "true history", regardless of the religion it springs from. While there are genuine historic references within the Bible and the Koran, that doesn't mean that the entire thing can be academically regarded in the same vein as historical fact. Absent a compelling reason, there's no way I can accept the Bible with the same veracity that I accept, say, Winston Churchill's excellent "A History Of the English Speaking Peoples" or Barbara Tuckman's "A Distant Mirror".

Adam and Eve aren’t even your ancestors?

Nope. They're two characters from a foreign hagiography. Not even from the same language group as my ancestors, much less the same cultural context.

Seems to me you misswrote. Anyway, what’s your favorite contradiction? Note, a true contradiction is one that can be logically put in the form: A and not A (A is a proposition).

I note that you use reason and logic, which are Pagan inventions, to try to prove your point. I won't hold it against you.

The idea that Jehovah is both Omnibenevolent and Omnipotent is a good place to start. I believe that's part of the underpinning of most Christian doctrine.

I don’t see any compelling reason to accept Wicca as the way to Truth. My feelings be damned.

They might be -- but not in Wicca, where damnation is a foreign concept. I don't require or even insist that anyone see a compelling reason to accept Wicca as a way to the Truth. The fact that many serious seekers do so is adequate. I know I have found it to be the way to the Truth, and that is sufficient for me.

The world was never more than ½ Christian. Far less so in fact. People profess themselves to be Christian, but as you would put it, they don’t walk the walk . . . I still suspect you misunderstood the Bible.

That's what everyone gets accused of who doesn't agree with the Bible. Mayhap. All I know was that as a Christian I was miserable, and as a Pagan I am joyous. Within the warm and loving embrace of the Goddess I have found myself and I can take refuge in a peace and security that Jehovah never engendered.

[tmancour]

Durthorin ,

You are correct. I first had to realize I was a product of science. Then I found that foundation was not what I thought it was. So my structure of self was shaken. But I rebuilt it on faith and a spiritual existence. Although to some that may appear to be a shaky way to form one's beliefs I believe it is the most solid.

It all depends on what you hold most dear. If you are of the earth then your connection to the earth will define you and you will have all of those ideas of the world to help you maintain that belief. But if you are of the spirit then the world means little.

Some of us find no real difference in the world and the spirit and are able to navigate both with the same joy.

[Augustine2004]

How does one challenge a belief if one does not listen to others. I prefer to use the ears before engaging the mouth.

OK, but you missed the point. I wasn't writing about any person's attempt to change others' beliefs. I meant something more general: some miracle or what appears to be one. No, I meant an event that happened contrary to some belief.

[Augustine2004]

I'm not. Truth should be easy to understand, but that's largely dependent upon whom is trying to understand it -- and some truths, particularly the deeply personal ones, can only be arrived at through the arduous process of introspective examination and meditation. One of my beefs with text-based religions is the idea that such truths can be spoon fed from Authority, skipping the hard work necessary to arrive at them. Once there, such truths are often easy to understand -- but the process of arriving isn't easy, and it shouldn't be.

Ah, I see. I wonder now if your training program is anything like neurolinguistic programming–here’s a reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-l...ic_programming Now, I don’t know how good that is, but it ought to give you some idea.


Pray tell how one would be spoon-fed by reading stuff? I suppose, though, that would apply to the case of a teacher insisting that a student learn some assigned reading so well that he could pass a test of his comprehension of the reading.

It's preferred by many to have a teacher, but I've known very wise and very powerful Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans who have made the journey on their own.

I could understand people’s becoming wise. Powerful!? It seems clear now that you don’t mean superpowers, like being able to transport in an instant from one end of the world to another, but I don’t think I have a good idea yet what powers you’d claim top Wiccans have.

It wasn't the "evil" natures of people, but their unwillingness to take responsibility and ownership of their issues. I have a deep-seated loathing of hypocrisy, and Christianity is rife with it.

Even if it were the one true way, you would still reject it simply because most people don’t tread on it.

I don't consider hypocrisy inherently evil, nor do I consider human nature inherently evil, but hypocrisy leads to other problems and diminishes the potential for spiritual development, and it also allows plentiful latitude for "the ends justify the means".

Oh, stop that, hypocrisy is evil. A bit harmless, though, I concede. You are one dude who doesn’t consider the most important things in the world. You also seem to slight ethics.

Wiccan people aren't "all good", but then we don't have the same dualistic baggage that the Abrhamic faiths do.

You mean, hypocrisy? Nonsense, the faiths are not hypocritical; people are.

[Women’s status in Christianity is] highly debatable.

I concede that the evidence seems to be that the status of women is lower than that of men. Even now the tradition is that churches should be led by men. Far fewer female pastors than male pastors.

Especially considering the purge of the Goddess from the Abrahamic faiths.

You can’t possibly have evidence of any such purge.

Look at how you constructed the sentence: "Women are better treated in Christianity than in other religions", as if women were somehow dependent and subsidiary to religious life and function.

What the heck should I have put it? ‘Women’s status is lower . . . ‘

In Wicca and most of the other Goddess religions, women are not "treated", they are often the primary leaders of our groups and figures of great spiritual importance. Since our Godhead is shared between the two genders, reflective of the polar nature of our sexuality and society, there is a freedom in Paganism for women to aspire to greatness and power without inherent limitation. The proper respect for their essential role in the continuation of the species and the propagation of the generations is demonstrated constantly, through the adoration and worship of the Goddess in Her many forms. Most of our Elders are women of great wisdom and ability, and there is almost none of the condescension and derision that the Abrahamic faiths display. Beyond that, the highly restrictive "madonna/whore" model of femininity displayed throughout Christian history, doctrine and practice essentially limits the roles of women, demeans their sacred sexuality, and treats them as (at best) second class citizens or (at worse) children or property. Not for me, thanks.

There’s a division of labor, OK? Anyway, Christians are not supposed to demean women and subject them to derision.

Why do you assume that all cultures that don't have the Bible as the basis for their moral codes have, therefore, no moral codes? The fact is that all human cultures, from the simplest tribal cultures to the most sophisticated industrial cultures, have moral codes that prohibit murder, lying, and stealing (at least from other members of the tribe -- there are plenty of cultures where stealing from other tribes is seen as a good thing). Did not Classical Rome have laws against murder? Violating oaths? A hundred other offenses? Did not Ancient China have plenty of laws and regulation prohibiting similar crimes? The Bible doesn't have a lock on all human morality, and most human cultures are perfectly able to construct such basic moral codes without the necessity of burning bushes and divinely given tablets. In Wicca and many of the other Neo-Pagan traditions, the basic moral stricture is known as the Wiccan Rede, which is most often articulated as "An it harm ye none, do what thou wilt." In other words, the Golden Rule. That's not the entirety of Wiccan thought on the subject of course (we have some pretty screaming debates about proper ethical behavior, actually, far more than most Christian communities do) but just because we don't have a textual source code for our morality doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Evidence of conscience aside, the Bible claims to go back all the way to Adam and Eve, long before China and ancient Rome. I think as a rule societies tend to be successful the more virtuous they are. When they do fall, it’s usually the case they were less virtuous at the end than at the beginning of their rise.

Why yes, yes I would [reject Christianity because it does not have a Goddess]. Because that would undermine what is, by observation, a fundamental truth of human life on this planet: that it takes a masculine and feminine principal, working together, to move our species forward. If the very male God of the Bible (Jehovah/Elohim/Allah) is, indeed, the "absolute truth" as written I will be woefully disappointed in his crappy execution of such a basic principal. And I'll still whine about the Goddess.

The Bible says that God made Eve. You don’t accept that teaching, OK, but the above passage is idiocy.

You're putting the cart before the horse, here. Let's separate truth into Objective Truth (truth that can be "objectively" observed and independently verified -- the truth developed by the scientific method being the prime example) and Subjective Truth (truth that is valid and necessary to an individual "subjectively", but may not apply to all people at all times). An Objective Truth is that the Moon orbits the Earth. A Subjective Truth is that the Moon represents the divine nature of the Goddess. That's a deeply held and intensely personal thing for me, reflective as it is of the eternal mystery of the divine feminine, but to you it's just a pretty satellite. I could try to convince you of the Objective Truth of my Subjective Truth, but the fact is that, without you having experienced what I have over the course of my life, my Subjective Truth is going to be meaningless to you no matter how adamantly I might try to explain it. Biblical Truth is a Subjective Truth, and for me it doesn't apply any more than the Moon-as-Goddess applies to you. Of course, my Subjective Truth about the nature of the Moon isn't exclusive -- I can hold that truth closely and still acknowledge the Objective Truth that the Moon is a satellite that orbits the Earth without there being a logical disconnect in my mind. In fact the two are compliamentary truths, because while there is no Objective evidence that the Moon is, in fact, a manifestation of the Goddess, there is strong evidence of the Objective Truth that the presence of the Moon creates the tides that stirred the primordial soup and fostered the development of the earliest forms of life on this world. Did that make sense?

I guess so. Ironically, ‘objective’ truth is often less reliable than ‘subjective’ truth. You know that you exist, eat, sleep, can walk, can read, etc. You see the Moon as symbolizing the Goddess. And so on. Praxeology, which incorporates Economics, is more reliable than physics.

We Witches were against Hitler -- pretty actively, actually, if you believe the lore about Lammas Night in the 1940s. To paraphrase, the Witches of Britain conjoined their spellwork to attack Hitler and get him to stop bombing the British airfields. While that meant he instead bombed the cities, Britain was able to maintain a credible defense and keep a German invasion at bay until the US entered the war. Nor is genocide ever justifiable under any moral code. Just ask the Indians and the Australian Aborigines who suffered genocidal policies at the hands of good God-fearing Christians.

Ethics! You can’t see what the ethical thing to do is. The British were the ones who did the Asiatic Indians and the Aborigines thing. Ever heard of the British Empire? A major, if not the pivotal, cause of World War II was the British desire to maintain the Empire’s supremacy. Churchill was keen to crush the Germans, Hitler or no Hitler. As a result of World War II the Empire was swept into the pages of history.

Would anyone listen? Really? Honestly, we've got a lot more important things to do than try to convince die-hard Christians that they are in error.

Hey, if your mighty witches and mages can get Hitler to switch tactics, they can get Dizzle to see the errors and inadequacies in her arguments.

I try it once or twice a year just to keep my skills sharp, but once they've drunk the kool-aide, it's usually like teaching a pig to sing. Wisdom dictates that we reserve our energy for more vital work.

There’s a saying, part of wisdom is recognizing your limitations. Work within them; not outside them. I sure wonder, you made Wicca seem quite powerful, but now you seem to implicitly admit to some limit.

Yep. Hagiography isn't "true history", regardless of the religion it springs from. While there are genuine historic references within the Bible and the Koran, that doesn't mean that the entire thing can be academically regarded in the same vein as historical fact. Absent a compelling reason, there's no way I can accept the Bible with the same veracity that I accept, say, Winston Churchill's excellent "A History Of the English Speaking Peoples" or Barbara Tuckman's "A Distant Mirror".

Churchill’s a liar. Tuchman, no ‘K’, OK? Barbara’s not wholly reliable anyway.

Nope. They're two characters from a foreign hagiography. Not even from the same language group as my ancestors, much less the same cultural context.

Opinion? Fact? Anyway, your reasons, if any? Please, feelings are not reasons.

I note that you use reason and logic, which are Pagan inventions, to try to prove your point.

Ho, ho, ho. Got evidence anyway? Why didn’t people get the idea of logic from the Bible (more specifically the OT) in the first place?

The idea that Jehovah is both Omnibenevolent and Omnipotent is a good place to start. I believe that's part of the underpinning of most Christian doctrine.

Theodicy. I admit that God created Hitler. I don’t know why. But, whatever reasons God had, I have to accept them as good. God is sovereign, whether you like it or not. You can’t do anything about that.

They might be -- but not in Wicca, where damnation is a foreign concept. I don't require or even insist that anyone see a compelling reason to accept Wicca as a way to the Truth. The fact that many serious seekers do so is adequate. I know I have found it to be the way to the Truth, and that is sufficient for me.

If a Wiccan murdered a babe whose parents are among the best people around, no damnation?

That's what everyone gets accused of who doesn't agree with the Bible. Mayhap. All I know was that as a Christian I was miserable, and as a Pagan I am joyous. Within the warm and loving embrace of the Goddess I have found myself and I can take refuge in a peace and security that Jehovah never engendered.

Well my only thought is, the ways of the Lord are mysterious.

[franktalk]

OK, but you missed the point. I wasn't writing about any person's attempt to change others' beliefs. I meant something more general: some miracle or what appears to be one. No, I meant an event that happened contrary to some belief.

Sorry I missed the point. We live in a spirit filled world and many have experienced a connection with it. Some more than others. Now that spirit world is not one sided. It exist in a state of war. Few realize this.

[franktalk]

Some of us find no real difference in the world and the spirit and are able to navigate both with the same joy.

Let me ask you about joy and sadness. Where do you think it originates? In the spirit world is there a connection so that some control of the physical universe can manifest? Can any sadness come from the spirit world?

[Augustine2004]

In the spirit world is there a connection so that some control of the physical universe can manifest?

I'm not sure I understand correctly. 'Is there a connection between this world and the spirit world? Can some entity in the latter world influence events in this world?'

[franktalk]

I am pretty sure I know your thoughts on this. I wanted to get an opinion from tmancour. People who believe in a spirit world have all kinds of beliefs. I would like to know what his views are concerning the spirits.

[tmancour]

Ah, I see. I wonder now if your training program is anything like neurolinguistic programming–here’s a reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-l...ic_programming Now, I don’t know how good that is, but it ought to give you some idea.

Parts of the training are quite like NLP. Self-mastery techniques, whether they be witchcraft, martial arts, yoga, or "other", are often quite similar.

Pray tell how one would be spoon-fed by reading stuff? I suppose, though, that would apply to the case of a teacher insisting that a student learn some assigned reading so well that he could pass a test of his comprehension of the reading.

Exactly. My own training was not just by a qualified High Priestess, but one with a degree in Religious Studies and a masters in Folklore. So it was highly academic in nature, as well as experiential, and I ended up reading well over 100 books before she counted my trained.

I could understand people’s becoming wise. Powerful!? It seems clear now that you don’t mean superpowers, like being able to transport in an instant from one end of the world to another, but I don’t think I have a good idea yet what powers you’d claim top Wiccans have.

Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans make a distinction between "power-over" -- what most people think of when they think of power -- and "power-from-within", which is analagous to the Taoist Chinese concept of te (often translated as "virtue"). Essentially the power that one develops during one's training is the power that comes from self-mastery, not the power to dominate others. That isn't to say that it can't effect the rest of the universe, but it's usually a lot easier to move your own mind than move the rest of the universe. And usually wiser, too.

Even if it were the one true way, you would still reject it simply because most people don’t tread on it. Oh, stop that, hypocrisy is evil. A bit harmless, though, I concede. You are one dude who doesn’t consider the most important things in the world. You also seem to slight ethics.

I wouldn't venture to label hypocrisy as evil, but I'd certainly call if a potentially devastating weakness. And I don't slight ethics -- far from it. Wicca and the other traditions delve into personal and societal ethics pretty extensively. I'll concede that it's harder without an artificial external yardstick as a benchmark, but then again Wisdom is organic and fluid in nature, as are most ethical situations.

You mean, hypocrisy? Nonsense, the faiths are not hypocritical; people are.

Debatable, but for the sake of argument I'll concede the point. I'd point out that faiths are mere intellectual constructs unless people try to live by them, and if the faith in question is set up to encourage hypocrisy, even by accident, it leads to a stronger vein of hypocrisy in the followers of that faith.

I concede that the evidence seems to be that the status of women is lower than that of men. Even now the tradition is that churches should be led by men. Far fewer female pastors than male pastors. You can’t possibly have evidence of any such purge.

Actually, there's quite a lot of evidence. I refer you to Mircia Eliade and other secular religious studies professionals who have documented the purge of female elements from Judaism, Christianity and Islam repeatedly during their formative years. Jehovah especially had an axe to grind with the Goddesses of the Ancient Near East, which is pretty regularly demonstrated throughout the OT. And in the first three centuries of the common era, the Church Fathers went after the Goddess cults of the Roman Empire with a vengeance and sought to purge any vestige of Goddess-oriented practice and iconography from Christianity. Look at how thoroughly the Gospel of Mary was suppressed, for example. Of course a lot of those pagan Goddesses were re-invented as saints, once their more "offensive" attributes were purged.

What the heck should I have put it? ‘Women’s status is lower . . . ‘ There’s a division of labor, OK? Anyway, Christians are not supposed to demean women and subject them to derision.

The key phrase is "not supposed to" . . . but the evidence is pretty strong that women have been demeaned and subjected to derision throughout the history of Christiandom. Again, while the faith may not technically be hypocritical, when it comes to the practice of the faith the way the religion is structured certainly encouraged such hypocrisy. Had the early Church Fathers had the sense to equate the Holy Spirit with the Goddess, and build a real Holy Family, no doubt the history of the religion and the world would be quite different.

Evidence of conscience aside, the Bible claims to go back all the way to Adam and Eve, long before China and ancient Rome. I think as a rule societies tend to be successful the more virtuous they are. When they do fall, it’s usually the case they were less virtuous at the end than at the beginning of their rise.

Only it doesn't. China, certainly, enjoyed a sophisticated civilization long before Abraham, and while the Classical world was concurrent with the development of Judaism, archeology and history suggest that the Pentatuch, wherein the fable of Genesis and Adam & Eve was written for the first time, came after the development of the earliest elements of Classical civilization.

And I think your contention about the virtue of a civilization is highly culturally dependent. How does one measure virtue? And where does a civilization begin and end? Murky waters, those.

The Bible says that God made Eve. You don’t accept that teaching, OK, but the above passage is idiocy.

Clarify, please. Are not male and female necessary for the survival of the species? I contend that my religion is based upon human universals, and that's a biggie. I consider a religion that lacks a strong feminine element, including a feminine Godhead, is by definition crippled. Considering how patriarchal the ancient Semites were (and, of course, the early Church Fathers and the early Muslims) it isn't unreasonable to conclude that their religion, as a reflection of their society (or the other way around, if you like) developed an anti-woman/anti-Goddess bias early on and kept returning to that principal throughout most of the history of the Big Three.

I guess so. Ironically, ‘objective’ truth is often less reliable than ‘subjective’ truth. You know that you exist, eat, sleep, can walk, can read, etc. You see the Moon as symbolizing the Goddess. And so on. Praxeology, which incorporates Economics, is more reliable than physics.

I cannot argue that! That's one of the key teachings of the first year of most good Wiccan programs, the fact that despite our attempt to view the universe objectively, it's impossible to do so because we have inherently subjective minds. You can come close enough to it to make "objective" observation a useful tool -- but then some subjective truths ("love conquers all", etc.) often trump our "objective" reality.

Ethics! You can’t see what the ethical thing to do is. The British were the ones who did the Asiatic Indians and the Aborigines thing. Ever heard of the British Empire? A major, if not the pivotal, cause of World War II was the British desire to maintain the Empire’s supremacy. Churchill was keen to crush the Germans, Hitler or no Hitler. As a result of World War II the Empire was swept into the pages of history.

Were not the British Christians at the time? And the Spanish when the conquered the "New World"?

Hey, if your mighty witches and mages can get Hitler to switch tactics, they can get Dizzle to see the errors and inadequacies in her arguments. There’s a saying, part of wisdom is recognizing your limitations. Work within them; not outside them. I sure wonder, you made Wicca seem quite powerful, but now you seem to implicitly admit to some limit.

Wicca isn't powerful . . . unless the people who practice it are powerful (see "self-mastery", above). It's a path towards Wisdom, and the "power" involved is directly tied to a practitioner's mastery of that path. And part of Wisdom is, indeed, knowing your limitations without being bound by them. Trying to argue with a Christian apologist, while fun and instructive, is also usually ultimately futile. Most of us have more important things to do with our energy.

Churchill’s a liar. Tuchman, no ‘K’, OK? Barbara’s not wholly reliable anyway.

My bad. But you're so certain of the veracity (or lack thereof) of heavily documented history books written within the last century, yet you accept the "history" of Genesis with regards to Adam & Eve? Do you hold Moses to the same academic standards as Churchill?

Opinion? Fact? Anyway, your reasons, if any? Please, feelings are not reasons.

Um, the utter contradiction of the palentological and archeological record with the myth as related in Genesis? Would that do? There's no more historical evidence of Adam & Eve than there is for the creation stories in the Upanishads, the Enuma Elish, or any number of Eastern texts. I accepts them all equally -- as hagiography. Every human culture has myths and legends about the origins of man and the universe. Most are derivative or syncretic with other, older myths and legends. That's fine -- each of them has a lot of subjective truth, wisdom and magick in them, and I welcome that. It's when someone tries to insist that their particular tribe's legends should be accepted as objective history that I object. The fact that nearly every square inch of our globe has at one time or another been under water, for instance, does not prove the veracity of the Flood myth in the OT. It more strongly suggests that the ancients who originally told the myth had ancestors who experienced a particularly devastating flood (not uncommon in the fertile crescent) and the oral history of that flood was incorporated into the myth by a canny and literate Egyptian priest (Moses) in an attempt to give his followers a sense of community and legitimacy while they wandered in the desert. So, I suppose this is opinion, but well-informed opinion.

Ho, ho, ho. Got evidence anyway? Why didn’t people get the idea of logic from the Bible (more specifically the OT) in the first place?

Were not the ancient Greeks (Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, et. al.) the developers of logic and reason? I'd say that was pretty strong evidence -- although there's evidence to suggest that the disciplines of logic and reason were independently discovered or re-discovered in the early Buddhist communities of India. Which passage of the OT are you suggesting puts forth logic and reason in so coherent a manner as the Greeks?

Theodicy. I admit that God created Hitler. I don’t know why. But, whatever reasons God had, I have to accept them as good. God is sovereign, whether you like it or not. You can’t do anything about that.

Who says I can't? And do you mean God the Demiurge (the "Nature's God" of the Deists), or Jehovah, the National God of Israel? I make a distinction between the two. God either created Evil or he didn't. The former indicates a lack of benevolence, and the later suggests a lack of omnipotence. Saying that no one can possibly understand the mysterious mind of god is a cop-out. Doing so excuses just about any serious problem in reason and erodes the intellectual integrity of the faith. I can't accept that essential hypocrisy without a far more profound and compelling reason than "because I said so." if Jehovah was detail-oriented enough to lecture the Hebrews on the dangers of pork and shellfish, surely he could have managed a little basic cosmology?

If a Wiccan murdered a babe whose parents are among the best people around, no damnation?

Nope. I'm not saying that the Wiccan in question would have a good time in the afterlife, since according to tradition we spend time between incarnations painfully reviewing the previous life for our enlightenment and instruction, but eternal damnation? We just don't have that. We do have the idea of karmic burdens, however, and such a crime would likely have a profound effect on the next several incarnations.

Well my only thought is, the ways of the Lord are mysterious.

Aren't they just? The ways of the Lady, on the other hand, are usually pretty straight-forward. That doesn't mean She can't be a real pain in the butt sometimes, but it's usually for our benefit. But never our destruction or damnation.

Arion

[tmancour]

Let me ask you about joy and sadness. Where do you think it originates? In the spirit world is there a connection so that some control of the physical universe can manifest? Can any sadness come from the spirit world?

I accept that as an axiom, for a lot of complex reasons. But joy and sadness both affect the universe, and that includes the spirit world. And I do believe that the "spirit world" (which from my experience should be considered plural) has an affect on the material world.

For example, one of my former students was deeply depressed a lot of the time. Part of this came from her home situation which, while not abysmal, was not ideal. Once she got out of that situation, however, she sunk still deeper into depression. After a lot of counseling, some consultation with her shrink (with her permission and presence, of course) and some hardcore pathwork, we were able to establish that the seed of her sadness stemmed from her mother's miscarriage of her younger sibling when she was still just a few years old.

The therapist, of course, saw her emotional state as being a reflection of absorbing her mother's profound sadness in childhood, and while I agreed that was part of it, my student and I also came to the conclusion that the spirit of the lost child was still karmically attached to his sister and was loathe to abandon her for another incarnation. While this wasn't objectively provable, of course, it is instructive to note that after making this determination and dealing with the issue through ritual and meditation, the depression lifted significantly and she remains untormented by her earlier problems to this day. Of course she has other problems now, but . . .

[franktalk]

tmancour ,

I think I understand. In a similar way you think each of us has a spirit just like some other religions. And that spirit moves to an afterlife. Now in the case you mentioned the spirit did not move along so it still had an affect on this world. This implies that the spirit has some say so on what happens to it after death.

Obviously Christians believe in manifestations of spirits, at least I do. So is there an equivalent understanding or belief for Wicca? Like angels or that small voice of the Holy Ghost?

In Christianity people pray for spiritual strength, healing, and understanding, as well as knowledge. In some cases a person is called to witness to the future. Is there an equivalent there as well?

In Christianity there is a judgement after death. In your spirit existance is there any of this?

Now in Christianity it is God who places a spirit into the flesh. In your beliefs who does this? Is it a one shot deal or does a spirit keep coming back?

It seems to me that your beliefs are connected to nature and science. Where some would say that Christians are told to use nature you believe that you are part of it and as such must protect it. Is this true?

I also wish to know if you attempt to find the oldest knowledge of Wicca or does the knowledge flow like science and developes over time? In this way it would be the opposite of Christianity. I also see there are many forms out there. Is there any attempt to unify everyone or is this not a problem?

[tmancour]

tmancour ,

I think I understand. In a similar way you think each of us has a spirit just like some other religions. And that spirit moves to an afterlife. Now in the case you mentioned the spirit did not move along so it still had an affect on this world. This implies that the spirit has some say so on what happens to it after death.

Great questions -- thanks for asking!

Obviously Christians believe in manifestations of spirits, at least I do. So is there an equivalent understanding or belief for Wicca? Like angels or that small voice of the Holy Ghost?

While the exact nature of the spirit world changes somewhat from tradition to tradition, most Wiccans and druids, at least, believe in at least three iterations of the Spirit World. First there are what we call "The Shining Ones", usually known as the Gods and Goddesses. While their exact nature is a Mystery, consider them for the sake of this discussion to be epitomes of powerful forces within the lives of Men.

Then there are the "Noble Ones", the natural spirits. Often called the sidhe or the Faeries, the Noble Ones are forces of nature, often tied to a particular location, situation, or natural formation.

Then there are the "Honored Ones", the spirits of our ancestors whose genetic material has combined and re-combined over the millennial to form our selves.

Different Pagans honor, worship, or revere the spirits in different ways and to different degrees. Some Pagan folks ignore one or more of these groups, but most acknowledge their presence and importance in some way.

In Christianity people pray for spiritual strength, healing, and understanding, as well as knowledge. In some cases a person is called to witness to the future. Is there an equivalent there as well?

Yes, some sort of divination is usually an important part of Pagan spiritual practice. While overtly peaking at the future is generally frowned upon as unwise, the techniques to witness such events or gain guidance from one of the spirit worlds are widely known and practiced. I don't do it often, myself, because I know such things are fraught with problems and I'm wise enough to know that anything I need to know the Gods will reveal to me, but in general we don't shrink at the idea of divination.

In Christianity there is a judgement after death. In your spirit existance is there any of this?

"Judgement" is too strong a word and implies a legalism you just don't find in Neo-Paganism. In Wicca, tradition says that when you die you go to the Summerland, where you review your past life in context of your soul's over-all journey, reflect on it, learn from it, and restore yourself while you prepare for your next incarnation. There's a sense of karma implicit in this, but no one judges and punishes you. We're great at doing that to ourselves already. The Gods and Ancestors involved are far more interested in you learning from your mistakes and not repeating them than they are in arbitrarily punishing you.

Now in Christianity it is God who places a spirit into the flesh. In your beliefs who does this? Is it a one shot deal or does a spirit keep coming back?

You keep coming back. There's not a lot of lore on this, but in general it's acknowledged that the Great Goddess ensouls you about the time in the pregnancy known as "the quickening". But even if you die in utero, you'll reincarnate. There are plenty of lessons and experiences to be gleaned from the process of gestation.

It seems to me that your beliefs are connected to nature and science. Where some would say that Christians are told to use nature you believe that you are part of it and as such must protect it. Is this true?

Absolutely. In Neo-Paganism, Science informs our religion without contradicting it. We don't have arguments over who created the world -- the world IS, and WE are of it. That's our "reward" and purpose for existence, to live here and learn. And since we don't mind waxing poetical about such things, we can speak of the Creator and the Creation as one thing and not suffer any ill effects. That being said, since we look to Nature for inspiration and sustainment, protecting the natural world is a very high priority for many of us.

I also wish to know if you attempt to find the oldest knowledge of Wicca or does the knowledge flow like science and developes over time? In this way it would be the opposite of Christianity. I also see there are many forms out there. Is there any attempt to unify everyone or is this not a problem?

The age of the knowledge isn't nearly as important as its usefulness. Some Wiccans put a lot of store in "ancient wisdom", but the truth (to me at least) is that each practitioner's journey is different, sometimes radically so, and that one witch's "ancient wisdom" is another witch's obscure trivia. We try to appreciate those differences without letting them separate us. Ideally we realize that each of us is on a different path, at a different stage of our journey, and while we try to help each other out along the way it's considered rude and impolite to try to exercise control over another person's spiritual path without their consent. Since we tend to prize "walking the walk" more than "talking the talk", what a Wiccan does says far more about them to us than what they believe. And no matter how long a Wiccan or druid has studied, the arrogance that their journey and experience is somehow superior or more important than another is not something we encourage.

Was that helpful?

Arion