Wicca, the Goddess, Witchcraft, paganism, New Age ... how does it all fit together?

"One slight problem with Witchcraft is that we don't know what it is. You might know; I might know; he, she or they might know; but we don't. There is no consensus, least of all among those who claim to practice it. Witchcraft has been a great many different things over the years ..." Liam Cyfrin, The Inner Circle.

A relatively rare term in the exoteric world until the 1990s, "Wicca" now crops up all over the place, frequently used to describe what used more commonly to be called in the media "white Witchcraft".

it's more generally agreed that "Wicca" is properly a subcategory of Witchcraft. This allows African tribal Witches, Broom-Hilda, certain Satanists, Hermione Granger and so on to get on with their lives without being accused of being inauthentic Wiccans. Wicca in this usage is taken to have a specific set of qualities which are, much more often than not, believed to derive substantially from Gardnerian Witchcraft.

Gardner was a colorful mid 20th-century character who codified various aspects of modern witchcraft, while wrapping them in a manufactured veil of historical tradition that has passed seamlessly into popular culture as "the Truth".Among these codified elements were the eight sabbats, the worship of the Goddess and the Horned God, and the rites of initiation.

In 1921, Egyptologist Margaret Murray gave the world The Witch Cult in Western Europe, and began to popularise the notion that Witchcraft was the survival of a coherent, well-organised, Pagan (rather than Satanic) "Old Religion".

"Despite the not entirely unwarranted academic mauling Murray's theory of Witchcraft later received, it was readily embraced by such sober institutions as The Times and the Encyclopædia Britannica, and was pounced on with enormous glee by masses of esotericists, including, of course, Gerald Gardner, for whose Witchcraft Today (1954) Murray contributed a short introduction. Even today, when Murray's vision has pretty much shot past its Use By date, there are numerous Witches who defend it as vehemently as any Creationist arguing that evolution should be taught to children as mere theory. " Liam Cyfrin, The Inner Circle.

A little over a century after the Bible's first English translation, one of the earliest attempts to give Witchcraft a single meaning was unleashed by two sentimental old softies named Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. This pair's magnum opus, the Malleus Maleficarum (circa 1486 in Germany), being written in Latin, didn't actually use the word "Witch", but there was no mistaking the translation this time. According to this dastardly duet of Dominicans, there was only one species of Witch and that was one too many. They also seemed to appear to feel that two genders was one too many as well, but had reluctantly to concede to the impracticality of annihilating absolutely all women.

Kramer and Sprenger weren't the very first men of God to wage war on Satan by encouraging utterly diabolical acts on anyone they felt might be a bit on the Witchy side, but the Malleus Maleficarum definitely upped the ante. It also went into extravagant detail regarding what Witches allegedly got up to and why. Witchcraft was grounded in sexuality (another aspect of life Heinie and Jim weren't fans of, though they seemed to obsess about it more than was perhaps seemly in men of the cloth), the feminine and a form of magic that was irrevocably evil. Sadly, the book was a smash and the world became a very much nastier place for a very long time.

Excerpt from The Inner Circle, by Liam Cyfrin.

There is little doubt that sexual puritanism fuels anti-female religious persecution, and that the fear and loathing demonstrated by the opponents of witchcraft in all its forms is a form of projection, in which unwanted impulses of one's own are "projected" onto another group, where they can be hated and persecuted at a safe remove.

That said, the notions in witchcraft can, like the notions in the Bible, become distorted in an unbalanced mind and contribute to horrific acts of violence or suicide. Religion is for people who are WELL, and the mentally ill should steer clear of all forms of religion until their condition stabilises.

The romantic notion that Goddess worship was somehow more peaceful than worship of male gods, combined with the rabid mysogynism of the witch-hunting era, led to the development of a movement in the late 20th century to return to worshipping a female Nature-Goddess. Most adherents of this movement see Nature in her sanitised 19th-century "noble savage" or pastoral landscape version, rather than the more Classical "red in tooth and claw" Nature.

Many modern Witches claim to worship "The" Goddess, and some even go so far as to ignore the traditional pagan Horned God, and focus all their devotion on the feminine aspect of Divinity alone.

The extreme Christian fundamentalist response to nature-worshipping pagans has stimulated debate, and produced some fabulous satire, including the Landover Baptist website, which preaches zero tolerance for Wiccans.

A short answer to the question would actually be - Wicca is frowned upon for exactly the same reasons that evolution is frowned upon. It threatens the "monopoly on the Truth" that the Christian right is still determined to defend. Since the Christian right has such a huge influence in the US that all politicians have to at least pretend to be churchgoers, it seems to most mainstream Americans that Wicca and witches are somewhere on a scale between used car salesmen and child molesters.

Internationally, though, there is less fundamentalism and more tolerance for diversity, and Wicca, or paganism in general, is recognised as a valid alternative religion in some places. If you are in the right part of the US, you can find pockets where it seems that every other woman is a witch (or even a self-proclaimed incarnation of The Goddess) - I believe southern California would be one place to go for this experience.

Images: Wikipedia, simpologist