Why Wicca?

I was brought up as a Christian and taught to believe that there is only one God and Jesus Christ is his son. Fair enough, but what about before that, what did people believe? They got along well enough worshiping the sun and the moon and whatever else had significance in their world. I have always felt very in tune with nature. I think many of us do feel that way and as I get older, I fell more and more protective of the earth and all its beautiful mysteries.

Wicca offers the opportunity to worship both a God and a Goddess and is more of a maternal religion, allowing us to be as one with mother Earth. There are no priests to tell us what to do and no expensive buildings to keep up. There are few rules to follow. We can worship alone or with others. Wicca is very much a religion that puts you at the centre. We are working with very powerful forces for change and therefore we need to be very careful about our methods.

'Aye, it harm none, do what you will.'

If you follow this rule, then you will have a lot of freedom. So long as what you are doing does no harm to anyone else, be it a person or an animal or society in general, then all will be well, or will it?

Let's examine that for a moment... Suppose you are offered a wonderful new job, just what you have been waiting for, but there is a snag. The job is hundreds of miles away and it will mean uprooting your family and all the chaos that will cause. What do you do? If you are a Christian, then you will probably pray about it, asking God to help you to make a decision, which will benefit the whole family, not just you. If you are a pagan, you will meditate on it, asking the God or Goddess to help you find the way. Witches pray too but we are not submitting to a fiery God who will throw us into hell if we don't do what we are told is right. Our God is the God of the forest. He manifests in different guises. He and his Goddess are within us, not in some distant heaven, far removed from the world.

What we need to understand is that what we seek has been there all along. We are back to being on our own. We and only we are responsible for our actions. There is no one else to blame if 'it all goes wrong'. It is a very powerful place to be, accepting that not everything is someone else's fault.

We can choose to see the beauty in our world, live in harmony with the natural world and take full responsibility for our actions.