I've started answering emails on my website, in part to catalogue the highs and lows of my emails. Today's seemed deep enough to bother reposting. (Yesterday's was from a girl who believed she was destined to slay demons, and was looking for some sort of Demonslaying For Dummies. *sigh*)
I wonder if you could add a section on this site referring to the different flavors of Wicca that aren't like the original ones such as Gednerian or Alexandrian. There is lots of stir about Wiccans taking recon religions and making paths of them, the biggest argument I think is over Norse Wicca which has Asatruars in a big tissy with much reason. I'd like to know your opinion on issues like this. (Asatru is a reconstructionist religion, dedicated to honoring the Norse pantheon in a relatively traditional manner. They are sometimes called Odinists, although the term is falling out of use. A section of them are essentially neo-Nazis, but they are the exception and generally unwelcome in the larger community)
Groups like Gardnerians and Alexandrians are distinct Traditions, passed from teacher to student, codified within a Book of Shadows. The beliefs with distinguish them are oathbound - people not initiated into these Traditions do not know them. As such, there is no reason to attempt to define them. I do not have intimate knowledge of these groups, and if I did I shouldn't be telling other people.
There are eclectic groups that have formed Traditions that frequently are not oathbound, but they are also generally small - sometimes only a couple covens in size. These groups still generally require you to be part of the actual coven to be a member (you can't learn it from a book or the internet), so such information would be of extremely limited use to website readers.
Then there are "flavors" of Wicca, as you put it, which generally describes the general influence upon a person's personal Wiccan practice. I personally find it problematic to even use such labels. First off, people tend to confuse them with Traditions. I have heard so many people say they follow the Celtic Wiccan Tradition simply because they follow Celtic gods. That is not a Tradition. A Tradition is a distinct practice that is passed on and repeated. There are no distinct rituals that define "Celtic Wiccans." Take two "Celtic Wiccans" and you may find they worship different gods, have different rituals, celebrate the Sabbats entirely different...really, have nothing in common other than the general structure of belief that makes them Wiccan.
Second, the "Celtic" (or "Norse" or whatever) influence on their practice may be extremely minimal. In the case of the Celts, we have such huge holes in our understanding of the historical culture that to call our practices Celtic seems a tad presumptive.
As for the complaints of the Asatruar: I will not say that it is impossible to appropriately integrate the Norse pantheon into Wicca, but I know that frequently Wiccans do, in fact, abuse the Norse pantheon. I think there can be multiple appropriate ways of approaching deities of a certain pantheon, but that does not mean that all approaches are appropriate. Wiccans are kind of infamous for rewriting Norse gods. Freya is not a Moon Goddess. She simply isn't. There's nothing in her mythology that makes that connection logical. Google "freya moon goddess" (without the quotation marks) and see why the Asatruar are so upset. It becomes particularly irritating when "Norse Wiccans" discount the whole warrior culture of the Norse in preference to the shiny-happy-hippy approach of many Wiccans. You can't claim some association with a culture you want to have nothing to do with, and I can understand that people would take offense at the gods they love being portrayed completely differently than both their understanding, especially when their understanding is bolstered by research and the "Norse Wiccans" are making it up as they go along.
Again, I'm not saying that every Wiccan who follows the Norse pantheon behaves this way, but there are a large number of them that really do a disservice to the "Norse" description, so I understand why the Asatruar get pissy.
For anyone who doesn't know nightwind's website, it's Wicca For The Rest of Us.
Posted by: Dan | Thursday, January 12, 2006 at 10:55