Secret Societies: Inside the World's Most Notorious Organizations (32 page)

Still, old habits are not easily abandoned. Much of the civilized world remains hostile to the Wicca movement on the basis of religious/moral grounds, fear that it represents a seditious philosophy, and its record of secretive behavior, or simply because its adherents refuse to conform. As a result, Wicca in the twenty-first century remains unknown and often feared, viewed as a secret society by those mired among images of cackling witches and evil spells.

“Wicca” is derived from the medieval
wicce
, meaning “to bend,” although most dictionaries make no distinction between
Wicca
and
witch
. This etymology suggests that the practice may be bent or shaped to meet the needs of the practitioner, an interesting contrast with the inflexible dogma of most organized religions. In fact, the core ethical doctrine of Wicca, known as the
Wiccan Rede
, is
An ye harm none, do what ye will
, which
echoes to some degree the Golden Rule so warmly embraced by Judeo-Christian teachings. This moral flexibility disturbs conventional religions because it appears to promote situational ethics, anathema to those who preach fixed codes of ethical guidelines from sources such as the Ten Commandments and the Koran. How can such flexibility and adaptability provide firm moral direction? In response, Wicca believers submit the Law of Three.

Along with the Wiccan Rede, the Law of Three serves as a moral direction for members of Wicca. According to this law, all energy dispensed by individuals returns to them threefold in a mystical interpretation of Newton's law regarding action and reaction. In this instance, positive healing energy—love, support, prayers for good health and success—return to the sender with three times the power. Similarly, harmful energy will return to the sender, in one form or another, with three times the effect its sender originally wished to have on the target.

Is Wicca a religion? Perhaps. Its followers identify it as a “paganist religion,” which sounds too much like an oxymoron for some to accept. Other members of Wicca prefer to identify it as a “personal, positive celebration of life,” something many people would like to see reflected in the goals and activities of conventional religions.

All religions worship some entity or another, and Wicca qualifies to at least this extent, worshipping not one god but two. The most significant deity is known simply as the Great Goddess, although she has several parallel or secondary identities, including the Earth Mother, the Lady of the Moon and the Star Goddess. She may also be called Queen of the Underworld and the Triple Goddess. In this latter role, she represents three personas: the Virgin, the Bride and the Hag; or, if you prefer, the Maiden or the Mother, and the Crone.

In her role as the Virgin she is the Creatrix, the Giver of Inspiration, and the eternal virgin for the goat-god Pan, which suggests some serious questions about their relationship. She is, in Wiccan lore, the lover of all, yet she is wed to none, and her
sacred color is white. She is identified with the waxing moon and with Venus as the morning and evening star. Echoes of the Virgin Mary resonate in this description although Wicca followers claim that this persona predates Christianity. Of course, if the later religion has borrowed from the earlier one, this would not be an unusual event.

Next, the Bride identity of the Great Goddess springs from her function as Preserver. She is the Goddess of flocks and herds, the Lady of Love and Fruitfulness and Fertility, represented by the full moon and by fields of sheep and lush plants. The Bride's sacred color is red.

In her third and final role, the Great Goddess becomes Hag the Destroyer, Goddess of the Night and the Underworld, the realm of the cave and the tomb. This is where the warm-and-fuzzy soul of Wicca grows dark and ominous. Hag the Destroyer is the sow who eats her young, a participant in the circle of death and decay that ultimately yields new life. For Hag the Destroyer, Wicca believers look to the waning moon, a crossroads at midnight and silence in shadows. Her sacred color, of course, is black.

Partner to the Great Goddess is the Horned God, and his title generates negative reaction among fundamentalist religions, which interpret the description as either Satan or Satyr. The Horned God clearly is associated with excessive and extramarital sexual activity, although Wicca teachings identify him in this role through various secondary titles: the Ancient God of Fertility, the Lord of Life, the Giver of Life, and especially the Horned Consort to the Great Goddess. Beyond these titles, definitions grow more complex and confusing. The Horned God is both the hunter and the hunted; he is Lord of Light and Lord of Darkness, the sun by day and the sun at midnight.

Here, the pagan traditions underlying Wicca grow more apparent. The Horned God's destiny is to die with the harvest, be buried as seed, and be resurrected in spring out of the womb of the Earth Mother. Like gods in pre-Christian religions and traditions, he is often depicted wearing the horns of a bull, goat,
ram or stag, an appearance that persuaded critics of Wicca that his actual identity is Satan, regardless of the Wiccan statement that the devil plays no role in its dogma.

This supposed satanic connection, along with some practices inherited from shamanism, echoes centuries of persecution and prejudice from well before “the burning times” down to our present day. Like the shamans, practitioners of Wicca seek to transcend the physical world and enter a parallel psychic world by utilizing tools and methods unavailable to ordinary people. The transition, Wiccans believe, is achieved via alternative states of consciousness, and the tools to enter these states are familiar. They include fasting, thirst, concentration, hallucinogenics and the infliction of pain. To heighten the psychedelic effect, these are often accompanied by drumbeats, rattles, music, chants and dancing, usually performed in darkness with the added effects of flickering firelight.

These devices are recognizable as ceremonial elements of native cultures throughout the world, which persuades many skeptics that Wicca is nothing more than a wasp-adapted version of rituals performed in old movies of Native American war dances, or racial clichés of lost African native tribes. This ignores the reality that all organized religions, functioning on a supposedly higher intellectual and spiritual plane, have employed their own mystical rituals throughout history. The Catholic Church, for example, “magically” converts wafers to flesh and wine to blood with the assistance of burning incense, stirring music and repeated phrases spoken in unison (and, for hundreds of years, Gregorian chants) to achieve similar objectives. The practice of Communion is an analogy; the objective, however, is similar.

Wiccans no longer use pain as a means of crossing from the physical to the psychic world and most modern practitioners reject the use of hallucinogenics. Yet Wicca remains stigmatized by people who equate its activities with orgiastic rituals, devil-worship, and the use of drugs and narcotics. For this reason many Wiccans, male and female alike, choose to conceal their involvement, fearing
ridicule, loss of employment, violence and, among women separated from their partners, the loss of custodial rights to their children. The only defense against this kind of prejudice is secrecy. (With sardonic humor, some Wiccans describe the public admission of their beliefs as “coming out of the broom closet.”) As we have seen in other instances, secrecy deepens suspicion, leading to greater motivation for concealment.

Even though Wicca may be considered the most liberal and least regulated of secret societies, an initiation of sorts has evolved over the centuries. The rites are often performed in the presence of a coven although Wiccans may, if they choose, initiate themselves through a process called self-dedication. In the parlance of modern psychology, this becomes a form of “contract with oneself,” a ceremony in which the individual considers the path he or she wishes to follow and, once committed to the journey, affirms themselves as a child of the Wicca faith, pledging to abide by the Wicca Rede and to grow spiritually.

Membership in an established Wicca coven may involve a more elaborate ritual and perhaps a waiting period, often “a year and a day,” before full membership is granted. Covens may also recognize various levels of status within the group, requiring some evidence of heightened skills or experience, marked by degrees of initiation, before full acceptance is granted. Attaining these degrees could involve sacramental rituals, with specified duties and expectations.

The concept of covens still creates, in the minds of people unfamiliar with and concerned about Wicca, images of black-capped women stirring pots of bubbling brew beneath a full moon,
à la
Macbeth. Or, in a more contemporary setting, dancing naked in the woods. The Macbeth scene is entirely fictional, but the visions of nudity among modern-day Wicca may well be authentic.

Some members of Wicca prefer to enact their rituals “sky-clad,” shedding their garments as an expression of pride in the bodies they inherited from their gods. They may practice this alone or in the presence of a coven but, like almost everything
else associated with Wicca, the decision is left up to the individual. A number of Wiccans, for example, choose to wear ritual garments, especially for festivals and formal sacraments. And, as we shall see, “skyclad” may owe more to the carnal curiosity of a twentieth-century male than to pagan traditions.

One of the more common group activities among Wiccans involves casting “The Magickal Circle,” which is actually conceived as a sphere separating Wiccans from the rest of the world and its negativity, and extending above and below the ground or floor.
¹¹
This presents problems for modern apartment-dwelling Wiccans, since a circle of sufficient diameter could extend into other dwellings directly above and below the Wiccan's residence. As a result, high-rise adherents are advised to cast their circles late at night, when adjacent residents are sleeping and thus unlikely to pass through the “magick space.”

A Magickal Circle holds four Watch Towers, one at each quadrant of the compass, and each Watch Tower represents one of the four elements of Wicca: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. North is the location of Earth, and Earth represents the body of Life. As the darkest and heaviest of the four elements, Earth is Mother, the source of our lives, and our final destination. From Earth, Wiccans draw stability, abundance, growth and patience. Air, representing the breath of life and the fresh breezes of change, resides at the eastern point of the Circle, where the sun rises. Air is considered a masculine quality, providing clarity of thought, truth and the conscious expression of the Will.

At the south point of the circle, Fire represents the energy of life, the location of the sun in midsummer. Another masculine quality, Fire provides the Earth Mother with energy, encouraging a bountiful harvest, and provides the Wiccan with courage, conviction and passion. It also threatens anger and hostility if shown inadequate respect.

¹¹
The “magick” spelling in this context was introduced by Aleister Crowley.

The womb of Mother Earth is Water, guardian of the western quadrant of the Magickal Circle. This is where the sun sets,
and where souls pass into the invisible world. Water also corresponds with the moon, acknowledging the satellite's effect on the tides. It is also an intuitive element, capable of perplexing the logical rationale of Air, and Wiccans look to Water for cleansing, sensitivity, compassion and love.

A typical Magickal Circle, visualized as a three-dimensional sphere.

The technique used to create Magickal Circles suggests a naive Harry Potter–like approach. Everything occurs within the imaginative mind of the Wiccan who, if creating a circle for her individual use, need make it only as large as her own body. The process appears to have as many variations as sources, but among the most common directions are these:

1. The space within which the circle is formed may be a highrise urban apartment or a lush clearing in a forest or jungle. Location is irrelevant.

2. The first step requires cleansing the space, either blessing the area by sweeping the floor or ground, or making a great deal of noise to drive away evil influences (not recommended for apartment dwellers in the dead of night).

3. Solitary Wiccans stand at the circle's center; when three or more are creating the circle they position themselves around its circumference. Relaxing until they feel the energy of the Earth, they turn to face one of the four Watch Towers, gathering its special energy in one hand while pulling energy from the sky with the other hand.

4. Using both hands, they apply the energy to the imaginary spherical shape enclosing them, repeating the process with each of the four Watch Tower locations. Each application builds the sphere's walls, making them thicker and more protective.

5. When the Wiccans sense the invisible sphere is stable, they cease building its walls. The Sphere now may be perceived in various
ways—as a color, a thickening of the air, a wall of electrical power, or simply the source of a low hum.