5 Reasons Why Wiccan Books Suck

As you can see from my Amazon profile, I both read and dislike a lot of pagan and Wicca-themed books.  Why I persist is an entry all of its own, but as a writer and a spiritual person who believes in the value of reading, I sometimes will pick up (i.e. download) a few of the most popular Wiccan books just to gauge the cultural climate and see what the new and young people might be reading.

I’m very rarely impressed.

With that said, I present to you: five reasons why Wiccan books suck.

1. Introductory Material—AGAIN.

Wicca is an unusual religion inasmuch as most of its adherents are adult (or teenage) converts, so it’s no surprise that there are a lot of introductory texts out there that are addressed to an adult audience.  Conversely, the basic tenants of mainstream religions are usually taught in infancy and childhood, so it’s more common to see these issues of “who we are” and “what we believe” put down in picture books and cartoons.  That said, this rehashing of the same material—what is a circle, what is magick, what are the Gods—needs to stop.  Unless you have some wild new take on these subjects (and from what I’ve read, very few new authors do), than cite your source and move on.  Astute readers might notice that not every book about Christianity has 33% of its bulk devoted to explaining who Jesus was--unless it is a Christological text, in which case, it better have something new to say (but not too new—that’s heresy).

Check out Sorita d’Este and David Rankine’s Wicca Magickal Beginnings for a well-researched history of Wicca—something every new student should read.

2.  Stop it with the recipes!

This goes for spells, chants, and invocations, too.  How often have I ordered a hefty book on Wicca (420 pages!), had it delivered, opened it up, and realized most of the pages are half-filled with recipes for incense, chants to say in the shower, candle magick spells, and on and on?  Very often.  Most of the time, even.  Authors: stop it.  This is filler material and we’re all aware of it.  Unless you are specifically publishing an encyclopedia on spells, incense, oils, and what not (which has already been pretty definitively done by Scott Cunningham), don’t pepper your text with these page wasters.  Most people I know prefer to compose their own anyway, and they really distract from whatever message you might have been trying to relay in the meantime.

Check out Scott Cunningham’s Amazon page!

3.  This pattern looks familiar…

It might be the Wheel of the Year, but more often it’s the four elements.  Please stop using the pattern of earth, air, fire, and water as a structural device.  It has literally been done to death.  (Even Starhawk has done it!)  I get it; I really do.  Using the basic elements allows the author to explore a given topic from four different perspectives.  Only now, every one in three books that I read has used this as a layout for the message they want to convey.  I usually don’t get past “air.”  Please stop.  If your content is good, then you don’t need a gimmicky frame for it.  If you DO feel the need to frame your work, try and use something original.

Jane Meredith uses mythological descents into the underworld to frame her self-help work Journey to the Dark Goddess, which is pretty effective.

4.  Feels, not Reals

Oh boy, this one is huge.  Unless you are writing a personal account of your experience with a given topic, do not tout your Unverified Personal Gnosis above actual historical/cultural research.  This is how newcomers get confused when first starting out, especially when their UPG does not jive with yours.  Start with the confirmed socio-historical facts and branch out from there if you must.  Even better, encourage your readers to seek out their own UPG!  When the market is cluttered with everyone's own brand of Wicca, it gives the community a negative public image (like we can't get our shit together) and scares away interested people who can't make heads or tails of the fifteen different "traditions" Amazon keeps recommending them, most of which are built on UPG.

Instead, check out Thracian Magic by Georgi Mishev, who builds his tradition Threskeia on solid historical research.

5.  Who edited this?

This is more of an issue with ebooks than physical books, but please make sure that your punctuation, spelling, and grammar are sound.  And for the love of all that's holy, do NOT use emoticons in an actual published work, electronic or not.  It's fine for your blog, but we are trying to look professional here!  I can't believe that this is as big a problem as it is.  Winky face.

For an alternative, check out literally any book published before 2000.

Unverified Personal Gnosis

So, let's talk about unverified personal gnosis.  It's the difference between Hecate being culturally associated with dogs, snakes, keys, torches, and so on, and the goddess personally coming to me and telling me that she really likes goats, too.  I have no way to back this bit of knowledge up; thus, it remains unverified.  I am welcome to use this knowledge, or gnosis, in my personal practice, but it would be unethical to pass this on to someone else.  For one, this knowledge might be for my ears only, so to speak.  The goddess might not have intended for me to share this information.  Secondly, what is true for me may not be true for someone else.  Someone might get really offended that I've ascribed goats to Hecate.  Unverified personal gnosis is what gives paganism its particularly unique flavor, but also what keeps us from forming a solid community a la Christianity and other major religions.  One might even posit that UPG is what keeps paganism from really catching on in a big way.  In any case.

UPG makes it almost impossible to have a frank discussion about the nature of deity in the pagan community, at least not without allowing for every person's interpretation of deity.  It's impossible to even have an argument.  For instance, I think the very idea of godspouses and astral babies is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, but maybe that's just because no god or goddess has decided to wife me up yet.  It goes against the basic tenants of paganism to dismiss UPG altogether; although the old school Wiccans that I know would have us do so.  I've had this discussion many times.  Many (older) Wiccans find new traditions like Universal Eclectic almost distasteful.  A fair amount, too, don't care.  This puts us in a strange position as a community.  What do we do when we can't agree on anything, and, furthermore, we can't even argue with one another?

Some would say that we shouldn't even attempt a discussion.  There can't be any end to it, no agreements to be made; it's pointless.  We should focus on our own lives, instead of squabbling over technicalities.  But can we really call the nature of our beliefs "technicalities?"  How do we explain our faith to other people without getting bogged down by UPG?  It is clear that apologetics is nigh impossible.  And I've mentioned this before, but it also turns our online communities and discussion groups into endless rounds of agreeing with one another for fear of offending anyone.  This is my site, and I can say that godspouses are the delusions of self-important ninnies, but I might face serious heat if I said it elsewhere.

We could try to learn from one another, but accepting another person's UPG as your own is somewhat problematic.  After all, what if there are fifty people out there who claim to be married to Loki?  Either the gods are running mortal harems, or the source of some UPG is not as solid as they would like to believe.  How do we separate the wheat from the chaff? 

What I'm asking are unanswerable questions, and what ultimately comes down to the largest flaw (or strength) of paganism today.  Either we accept the reality of UPG and go on with our unique spiritual practices, or we come to a compromise and start instituting dogma like mainstream religions--and that isn't going to happen.  Paganism will always be a minority religion, because it lacks the ability and will to impose itself on other people.  Part of the reason Christianity is the force it is today is because it condemned heresies and burned the heretics.  As much as someone claiming to be married to an Avengers character (er, that is, a god) annoys me, I'm not about to set them on fire for it.

Nimue Brown's Spirituality Without Structure

Nimue Brown's book Spirituality Without Structure is foremost a guide on how to establish your own religious/spiritual practice, but its inclusion in the Pagan Portal series is somewhat telling, because it gives a certain insight into the pagan community today.  While the book might be more concerned with the "how-to's" of practicing your own brand of (pagan inspired) religion, looking between the lines shows the reader how paganism is really practiced in 2014.

Once, Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon was the definitive guide to pagan practices in the United States and Britain, but as I mentioned in a previous post, things have changed significantly since then.  With the advent of the Internet and the wealth of information and rapid communication that it provides, the pagan community has changed.  More and more, people are branching out on their own, no longer subscribing to formal religious systems such as is found in British Traditional Wicca or any reconstructionist movement.  In a survey I recently conducted of a pagan audience, about 7% of participants claimed that a connection to deity was unimportant to them; 18% reported that rituals were unimportant in their practice; 33% felt that magick or spellwork was unimportant, and 41% felt that divination was unimportant to their spiritual lives.  These traditionally valued aspects of pagan religions are no longer important to a good chunk of pagan people.

Instead, the growing trend seems to be "if it works, it works," when it comes to acquiring religious practices and philosophy.  The difficulties here run the gamot from cultural appropriation (which the tumblr crowd is more likely to vocalize about) and the lack of a unified community, which concerns me more.  I have practiced a form of paganism since 2004; now, granted, the Internet was alive and well at the time, but the information on paganism and Wicca was both less plentiful and more bare bones introductory material.  When I decided to create a web presence in the past year or so, I saw the advent of godspouses and otherkin and all manner of beliefs, but what concerned me the most was the lack of an ethical system that some people seemed to have.  Brown addresses this concern in her book, but she does so with the assumption that her readers will automatically want to espouse some kind of ethical system.  From what I have seen, there are just as many who don't, and these are not the sort of people that I want to form a community bond with.

As it is, I often find physical and online communities troublesome, because no one is speaking the same language anymore.  In physical settings, the drive is to let everyone speak their piece, but in a large group where everyone walks down a unique path, this can take hours of valuable time.  Online, where connections need to be made through one's message alone, it becomes harder and harder to relate to anyone.  Online pagan communities tend to become circlejerks, where no one wants to offend anyone by calling out their beliefs as silly or vapid, making discussions almost impossible. 

Walking a unique path has its benefits: you remain true unto yourself, but it's lonely.  Part of why Catholicism and other Christian denominations work is not because everyone truly believes everything the Church espouses.  They work because people make compromises in order to be part of a group.  We are at a critical junction.  Do we go it alone, or do we capitulate to the majority? I've made my choice.  After working for the Church for so long, I refuse to compromise this part of who I am, even if it means I'll never have someone who really, truly understands me and my spirituality.  For others, community is what is important, and there's nothing wrong with that, either.

A Witch's Responsibility to Her Children

This article was recently posted to the Wicca subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/wicca), and it got me thinking about children and our responsibility to them.  That is to say, do we, as pagans or Wiccans, actually have a responsibility to our children when it comes to religious education?  I know many pagans and Wiccans are strictly against evangelizing or "indoctrinating" their children, and so will not teach them about Wicca or any other religion until they are of age.  It seems the other half choose a more open-minded approach, where the household is openly Wiccan, but makes allowances for friends and families.  In any case, the rise of the "Wiccaning" (a Wiccan naming ceremony for children and infants) can only suggest that more and more parents are choosing to set their children down the same path that they walk.  But is this truly wise?

First of all, it should be noted that the Wiccaning ceremony is leagues away from baptism.  From what I understand, never having attended one myself, during a Wiccaning, a child is presented to the gods and given a magickal name, one that he may choose to keep or discard as he gets older.  There is little obligation on the child to actually become Wiccan, or follow Wiccan beliefs.  Baptism, on the other hand, could almost be described as a violent process--the competentes (also called the Elect, those who have put their name forth for baptism) are said to experience a full spiritual death from which they are reborn as Christians.  The person who they were is dead, and the one who now stands in her place is obligated not only to follow the Church's teachings, but to spread those teachings as well.  I feel I should also mention that baptism is for life.  What has been done cannot be undone; even if one should choose to leave the faith, the sacramental seal (that which confers God's grace) remains in place.  Think of it as a stamp that cannot be wiped off.  If you were baptized as an infant and now feel somewhat violated, you are not alone.

By exploring the differences between these two parallel rituals, it is evident that Wicca leaves something of an escape route for our children, should they choose not to continue practicing.  The same option is present for Christian children, but they may find that the entanglements that Christianity imposes on a family are difficult to shake off.  That is not to say that Wiccan parents do not place expectations on their children, but there seems to be some leniency there, too.  Parents may suffer the same disappointment when their child chooses not to be their little witchling anymore, but this is just a part of watching the child grow into their own person.  If a child questions the world, the gods, her own nature, then the parent has done a good job.  A child who thinks she has it all figured out is heading for a rude awakening.

So, by all means, make your child's childhood magical.  Just don't be too put out when that line of hereditary witches you wanted to start peters out before it even began.

The Problem of Evangelization

Pope Benedict XVI once said, "The greatest work of charity is evangelization."  Of course, following Christian tradition, "charity" is synonymous with "love."  So, the greatest act of love that you, a human being, can give to another, is to inform them of (and hopefully recruit them to) the Christian faith and the peace and love of our lord Jesus Christ.

Ugh.

As pagans, one of the basic tenats of our faith is that we do NOT evangelize.  In fact, most pagans that I know are very much against evangelization in general, especially what I call "active evangelization" or "door-to-door evangelization" where one is accosting strangers and aquaintances with unwanted religious advances.  I have always said that the quickest way to alienate someone is to ask, "Can I talk to you about Jesus Christ?"  But that goes for any deity.

The truth is, active evangelization is inherently disrespectful, especially in a modern, western setting (but really anywhere), where most people have been exposed to one or more religious traditions.  Why?  Not only is the so-called evangelist asking if you are so oblivious to the culture around you that you haven't heard of Christianity or considered it as a religious option, but that the path you have decided to follow (or not) is inherently worse than what they are about to offer.  It ultimately comes down to "my god is better than your god," which can further be refined down to "my way of life is better than your way of life."  To see the results of such thinking, one needs only to look back through history, in which we see many long years of war, colonization, forced assimilation, and so on.

However, in our culture today, we don't really see anything quite that violent (unless you are on tumblr--in which case, you should get off tumblr).  Evangelization has become gentler.  No one is putting you in thumb screws to force you to convert.  The worst you're going to encounter in America, at least, are smartly dressed strangers knocking at your door at god-awful times of the morning.  Some might call this a more effective way of evangelizing.  People see how great your life is going, so when they ask, "How do you do it?" you can attribute all your successes to Whomever.  Or, you get someone who is down on their luck, and offer them help...with a caveat.  Some would call this gentler, but also more sinister--insidious, if you will.

Having spent most of my adult life around devout Christians, I can assure you that on a basic level, most of them do not have sinister intentions with their clumsy attempts to evangelize you.  They genuinely believe in what they are trying to foist off on you, and really do think that your life will be better with their deity in it.  They have also been taught from a very young age that evangelizing is something that they are morally obligated to do.  However, this naivete disappears the higher you go up the ladder.  The money and power of televangelists, pastors who receive a salary from their churches, and high-ranking priests (who are more politicians than holy men) are dependent on getting the little people and their wallets to join their ranks.  This is essentially how organized religions support and sustain themselves.  Think of it as a global pyramid scheme.

So, where does this leave us?  If you're a Christian, wait until someone shows signs of being receptive to your religious advances, just as if you were in a bar situation trying to pick someone up.  You don't hit on the person who is doing their best to ignore you.  Also, consider inspiring change in other people by setting a good example.  Live out the words of Christ, instead of the mandates of the Church.

If you're a pagan like me, it's really a non-issue.  Our gods don't need us to reach out to others, and some witches still espouse secrecy as part of their tradition.  In my experience, the old gods have a way of snagging the people that they want.  However, when someone becomes aggressive with you because of what you believe, or they make unwanted advances, don't respond in kind.  Don't respond at all, if it so pleases you.  If you have to say something, be firm, but polite.  You're not interested, and you'd thank them not to bring it up again.  Hate only breeds more hate.

Pagan Catechetics?

I am currently studying catechetics, which gives me a good opportunity to reflect on pagan and Wiccan religious education.  I'm sure that this audience is well aware that most elders in our community will refuse to take on students until they are at least eighteen and absolutely sure that this is the path that the student wants to follow.  I wrote an earlier post on my experience with Catholic catechesis.  (It wasn't good.)  I strongly disagree with the practice of catechizing children, especially at their parents' insistence and not on their own.

But in any case, let's talk about the difference between theology and professions of faith in religious education.  Now, in most traditionally Christian households, the catechist (be it the parent or someone in the church) usually teaches from a position of faith.  That is to say, they teach by making an example of themselves, living out the life of Christ in their own existence.  The focus is less on actual knowledge of the faith in question and more in moralizing, which is why there are so many adult Christians who have no idea what's in the Gospels or the first thing about sacramental theology, but they know prayers and how to live out the faith.

With paganism, the process is different, but similar.  Most pagans are not born that way (though perhaps this will change), but come upon it later in life.  For most, the first thing they do is educate themselves about the faith by reading.  The actual living out of the faith happens later.  Many pagans are voracious readers.  However, the content that is most readily available to new pagans is somewhat suspect.  No one can argue that, on the whole, most resources available at large, mainstream bookstores are introductory material--basically, how-to manuals on getting started: how to cast a circle, how to honor the Wheel of the Year and so on.  They are books on what Wiccans DO with perhaps a short explanation as to why.  Deeper pagan theology is a bit harder to come by and usually gleaned from a variety of different sources.  Some Wiccans and pagans simply stop after reading a book or two by Silver Ravenwolf or DJ Conway, and no further catechesis occurs.  We are all familiar with these people: we call them fluffy bunnies.  The general opinion on fluffy bunnies is negative, as I'm sure this audience is aware.  But should we really look on them with the disdain that we do?

It's a little unfair to judge pagans for being ignorant or uneducated about their faith when there is no catechetical structure in place.  Pagans who do not have someone in their lives to guide them down the path have to make due with what they have, which, depending on one's area, can be rather dubious information.  With the exception of Cherry Hill Seminary, there is no place for pagans to go to further their education.  It is left up to them to make individual choices about every bit of information they receive.  This naturally results in many different flavors of paganism, which further complicates the catechetical issue.  In every Catholic catechetical class I have sat in on, there is a programmed curriculum based on the students' age that has been handed down from a central authority.  It is obvious why this system would fail in a pagan setting: there is no central authority.

Is there a solution to this problem?  Perhaps.  Perhaps if we hold pagan publishing houses to a higher standard, instead of continuing to purchase from them when they are putting out subpar material to sell more books, we might make room for writers who actually know what they're talking about.  But that does nothing to combat the wealth of bad information available on the internet.  Perhaps we need to change our attitude about people who are new to the faith.  After all, few of them are ever willfully ignorant.  If you consider yourself to be someone in the know, make yourself a resource to the young and new people around you.  Just don't let it go to your head.

My Wicca Testimony

So, today, someone told me that the key to proper catechism (religious education) is testimony.  That is, sharing your own religious experiences but making sure to draw attention to what God has done for you rather than yourself, can be super effective, not to educate, obviously, but to evangelize.  "Bearing witness to Christ" is the best way bring people to the Church.  How to properly share your testimony, though?  Answer these three questions:

1. What was your life like before Christ?
2. How did you convert to Christianity?
3. What is your life like now, with Christ?

Obviously, my testimony will be a little different.

My life before Christ was one of loneliness and isolation (so far so good, right?).  I grew up as basically atheist in a small, rural Christian town.  When I was in middle school, I had friends who asked me things like, "If humans are descended from apes, why are there still monkeys?"  In my class in world history in the sixth grade, my teacher asked me to describe and draw my favorite Bible story.  My mom took me to an Episcopal Church where the homily started out, "Hey, at least we're better than Lutherans!" 

Because this is my Christian story, I'm going to skip over my years as a fledgling witch.  Let's go to college!

I went to a private Catholic institution.  As a part of my curriculum there, I was required to take six hours in theology.  Not a big deal.  I enjoy studying other cultures.  Now, I admit, I was nineteen and naive.  When we got to the Biblical portion of my Intro to Catholicism class, I was pretty good at Biblical interpretation, despite the fact that it was the first time encountering many of the texts.  I earned a lot of praise from my male professor, which admittedly felt pretty good.  I lacked a certain amount of male praise growing up.  I earned a scholarship for community service work.  Some of the projects I was involved with were entirely secular (such as helping catalogue photographs at the local library), but the majority of my projects were through the school, which meant there was a spiritual aspect/reflection in almost everything I did.  I got heavily involved in campus ministry, if (initially) for the community outreach aspect of it.

So, combining all the praise I was receiving in my theology courses and the feeling of being included with campus ministry, along with the isolation I felt being a witch at a small Catholic university, I decided to major in theology.  From there, it only made sense to be confirmed in the Catholic Church, if only for my career.  I don't think I ever really believed in the teachings of the Church.  I was always very uncomfortable with the position of women in the Church.  At the back of my mind, I think I felt as though I could help things along between Catholics and pagans by approaching them using their own language.  I was terribly naive.

After college, I went to work for the Church.  Let me say this: my supervisor was a very good, upstanding man.  He took a chance with hiring me with no experience and I truly appreciate the opportunity.  However, he was also laity.  Almost every priest I met refused to look me in the eye, or even address me directly.  This was off-putting, of course, but I ignored it.  After a few months, I realized that there would be no advancement in my career.  Even more, the issues that were most important to me (such as environmental issues), were completely brushed off by the majority of people I met in a professional capacity.  I say "brushed off," but it was really more like "aggressively ignored."  It was made very clear that these issues were not of interest to the average Catholic.

And then there were the phone calls.  After every weekend, I would dread coming back to work because I knew my voicemail would be inundated with people (Catholic parishioners) swearing and screaming at me because they disagreed with (again, their own Catholic) politics.  It was then that I realized there was no hope approaching Catholics with a pagan perspective, because they couldn't even agree with each other.  I gave up hope and quit my job.

Now, let's go back and tell the story again, but with Wicca.

The inciting incident that led me to Wicca was this: I attended a performance by my nieces and nephews at their Bible Camp.  At the end of the performance, the children parroted off Bible verses without understanding them.  It struck me as very wrong, but it shouldn't have, not if I was truly an atheist.  So I went on a quest for what I believed in.  I went through some of the same struggles that I'm sure a lot of pagans and Wiccans go through: do I really believe this, or do I just want to believe this?  This went on for years, despite experiences that confirmed my beliefs.  I found that traditional Wiccan practices didn't quite fit with my lifestyle, as I've mentioned in a previous post.  Eventually I found a spiritual practice that worked for me and a deity that in her infitine graciousness took interest in me.  (I have to note that it happened in that order; it seemed that when I was more attentive to my beliefs, I attracted more spiritual attention.  Funny how that works.)

Life after Wicca is actually fairly normal.  I work a full-time job, pay my bills, watch movies, read books.  But I have the benefit of being able to see transcendence everywhere.  Deity is all around me.  That is what makes my life rich.