Study of Witchcraft: A Guidebook to Advanced Wicca - Softcover

Deborah Lipp

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1578634091 ISBN 13: 9781578634095

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2007

Synopsis

The Study of Witchcraft is a compendium for Wiccans who want to deepen their understanding of their traditions. The Study of Witchcraft reaches beyond Wicca, delving into topics as diverse as history, psychology, divination, and lucid dreaming, The Study of Witchcraft introduces the reader to these topics, discussing each in depth and offering a one of a kind course of study including recommended reading, offering readers increasingly, solitary witches a self study guide and a rich resource.

The Study of Witchcraft includes information for all sorts of Wiccans/ traditional, eclectic, radical, groups, and solitary. Wide ranging topics also include Western occultism, myth and folklore, meditation, astrology, the Burning Times, history, herbalism, and much more. Deborah Lipp opens the book with a discussion of the past 40 years of Wiccan history and talks about the diverse people who call themselves Wiccans. Then, throughout the study guide portion, she offers information tailored to different types of Wiccans.

Essentially, The Study of Witchcraft is a veritable master's degree in Wicca in book form!

* Written for the needs of the modern wiccan, who learns primarily by self study
* Written by a noted and respected author, whose work is already used in study groups.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Lipp is an active out of the closet member of the Pagan community and has appeared on various media sources, most notably on the A&E documentary Ancient Mysteries: Witchcraft in America as well as on MSNBC, in The New York Times, and others. Deborah is also the author of several highly regarded books including The Way of Four and is the author of the forthcoming The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book. She lives with her son in suburban New York.<br /><br />

Isaac Bonewits is one of North America's leading experts on ancient and modern Druidism, Witchcraft and the rapidly growing Earth Religions movement. He is the author of Real Magic, Authentic Thaumaturgy, The Pagan Man, Bonewits's Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca, Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism, Real Energy, and Neopagan Rites, as well as numerous articles, reviews and essays. He is a singersongwriter with twoandahalf albums to his credit. As a 'spellbinding' speaker, he has educated, enlightened and entertained two generations of modern Goddess worshippers, nature mystics, and followers of other minority belief systems, and has explained these movements to journalists, law enforcement officers, college students, and academic researchers.

From the Back Cover

A veritable master's degree in Wicca in book form.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE STUDY OF WITCHCRAFT

A GUIDEBOOK TO ADVANCED WICCA

By Deborah Lipp

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2007 Deborah Lipp
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-409-5

Contents

Acknowledgments
Foreword by Isaac Bonewits
Preface
PART I THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN WICCA
Chapter 1 Wicca in the United States
Chapter 2 Modern Wicca Described
Chapter 3 Learning Wicca
PART II HISTORY OF WESTERN OCCULTISM
Chapter 4 The Ancient Pagans
Chapter 5 Western Occultism
Chapter 6 The Ritual Foundations of Western Occultism
Chapter 7 The Burning Times
PART III WICCAN PRACTICE
Chapter 8 Mythology and Folklore
Chapter 9 Divination
Chapter 10 Mind Skills
Chapter 11 Psychology
Chapter 12 Staying Involved
Chapter 13 Choosing a Specialty
Bibliography
Index

CHAPTER 1

WICCA IN THE UNITED STATES

Modern Wicca arose between the 1930s and the 1950s in England, where itcontinues to thrive. Its antecedents prior to the 1930s are the subject of muchscholarly debate, with which we need not concern ourselves here. Central to thisdebate is the role that Gerald Gardner played in the transmission, or invention,of the tradition. Indeed, Gardner himself consistently claimed that he modifiedand added to the "fragmentary" rituals he received. For our purposes here, whenI refer to Gardner's creation or origination of modern Wicca, please note that Irefer only to the transformation that changed the face of Wicca and do notintend to contribute to a debate best left to experts.

THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES

When Wicca arrived in the United States from England in the 1960s, it stayed insome ways the same; in other ways, it became Americanized (not unexpectedly). Itexisted quietly in cities and suburbs as a secret "other" life for seeminglyordinary people.

But something was brewing—the cultural phenomena of the 1960s and 1970s. Duringthese decades of sweeping social and cultural change, Wicca, which hadpreviously been almost exclusively traditional and Gardnerian (see chapter 3),collided with hippies, activists, and self-actualizers. Occult consciousness,alternative spirituality, and personal freedom, all essential to Wicca, werealso all part of the counter-culture movement. The attraction between the oldtradition and the new consciousness was inevitable. An unforeseen side effect ofthis cultural collision, however, was that demand for all things Wiccan soonoutstripped the ability of Wicca as it was to meet it. Traditional Wicca isdesigned to grow through one-on-one training in small covens. The parameters ofsuch a group are:

• A maximum of thirteen members, including a High Priestess and High Priest;

• Three degrees of initiation, with a year and a day between degrees;

• Only second and third degree initiates can start their own covens.

Wiccan groups built on this model run on the maxim that "it takes a witch tomake a witch." Under these parameters and given optimal conditions (althoughconditions are never optimal), a Gardnerian couple can create at most elevensecond degree initiates (and thus five or six new covens) in no less than twoyears and two days.

Now, if you think about how small it all started in this very big country (oneor two groups in New York, one or two in California) and if you think about thesize and enthusiasm of the counter-culture that arose in the 1960s and 1970s,you can see that something had to give. It was this combination of cultural andsocial conditions that created the first big change in Wicca—the emergence ofself-created traditions.

There had always been "grandmother stories"—the white lie that someone wasinitiated by his or her grandmother into an ancient tradition reaching back tothe Stone Age. But freethinking hippies weren't all that interested in theirgrandmothers. People began proudly proclaiming that they had invented theirtraditions, which, much to the surprise of some, they discovered were veryeffective! Newly invented rituals turned out to have power and spiritual depth.Who would have guessed? The Church of All Worlds was the first openly inventedneo-pagan denomination, but many others—Wiccan and otherwise—have followedhappily in their footsteps.

So this is the transformation that took place in 1960s. In the 1970s, anotherwave of interest in Wicca washed up in the form of the emergent (second-wave)feminist movement, with its interest in female empowerment, goddesses, and self-directedspiritual growth. Once again, demand outstripped supply. Even fewerfeminists were interested in seeking a traditional path, which reminded many ofthe patriarchal churches and synagogues they wanted to leave behind. They feltmore empowered by self-created ritual, by consensus and sharing rather thanauthority and leadership. High priestesses were as irrelevant to them aspriests.

THE EIGHTIES AND NINETIES

Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing into the 1980s, the ecologicalmovement began to have impact on Wicca and Paganism. Wicca had always been anature religion, but it was from politics that it learned to be really green (orGreen).

I first started practicing witchcraft in 1981. (Remember, we used "witchcraft"and "Wicca" interchangeably then. I will do likewise here to remain true to thetime we are discussing). The enormous change that occurred over the next twentyyears is something I saw with my own eyes. Wiccans practicing during that periodwere very much aware of the significant changes underway. Sometimes it wasglorious; sometimes it felt as if the rug were being pulled out from under us.

One of the most important changes was the festival movement. I don't know (and Idon't know if anyone knows) what the first outdoor Pagan festival actually was.There are, of course, a number of early contenders for the honor. Many who werethere mention Pan Pagan as the first. The first organized modern Pagan festival,however, was Gnosticon—an indoor, convention-style event sponsored by LlewellynPublications in 1971. Sometime thereafter, someone figured out that it would beeasier and cheaper to hold this type of event outdoors, with participantscamping rather than staying in hotel rooms (although hotel events have nevergone away).

I cannot begin to express the impact this change had on the Pagan and Wiccancommunity. Before the advent of outdoor festivals, Wicca was whatever waspracticed in your circle. Unless you were in a big city, you probably never metany witches other than the ones with whom you circled. You might buy GwydionPendderwen's record (the very first music produced by and for neo-pagans) oranother early Pagan recording. These early productions made a few chants andsongs available to use. (Drumming didn't enter into Pagan ceremony in a big wayuntil the early 1990s.)

Then suddenly, there were public festivals where you could meet with dozens(ultimately hundreds) of other Pagans. You could share rituals, techniques,knowledge, songs, and fun. Domineering coven leaders who previously had astranglehold on their students were suddenly robbed of their power, whichderived from them being the exclusive source of information. The communityexploded in creativity. People who'd done ritual only for their group of fivewere now creating and learning polished techniques that were effective forgroups of fifty.

These festivals also made it much easier to meet likeminded people. Instead ofreaching out slowly by word of mouth, or through writing dozens of letters(that's on paper, kids!) that usually went unanswered, Wiccans and Pagans couldhook up and exchange phone numbers. At festivals, everyone was out of the broomcloset (at least until they packed up the car on Sunday).

Groups came and met other groups. Solitaries came and connected with groups, orwith other solitaries, and formed groups from those meetings. And then somethingnew happened: Solitaries came and found other solitaries with whom they couldcircle, while still remaining solitary. The festivals were responsible for thephenomenon of public sabbats. Now, in communities all over the United States,and indeed around the world, there are open or semi-open rituals eight times ayear. Many solitaries attend these rituals, while remaining solitary for therest of the year and never joining a group. The idea of being solitary-by-choice,or solitary supplemented by public ceremony, first became possible inthe 1980s through the advent of public festivals.

I mark 1987 as the high point of the festival movement. In the summer of thatyear, I traveled to a large number of festivals all over the United States, fromCalifornia to Massachusetts and places in between, accompanied by IsaacBonewits, who was then my fiancé (and is now my ex-husband). It seemed that, inthat year, every festival doubled in size; those that had previously attractedaround 90 people a year were flooded with 200 attendees; those that used to havea mere fifty celebrants now had a hundred. The festivals, which had previouslybeen attended by 200 to 250 people, were now squeezing in 400 or more. Nineteen-eighty-sevenwas the year that some festivals actually had to shut down, becausethey were no longer able to handle the demand. Others capped attendance based onavailable land and personnel, and/or required preregistration so that the atthe-doorarrivals wouldn't overwhelm the event. It was a trying, yet glorious,time—a time that changed Paganism and Wicca forever.

Another very cool, very influential thing that happened in this period was thePagan publishing boom. In 1980, the occult bookshelf was limited: What WitchesDo by Stewart Farrar, The Spiral Dance by Starhawk, Drawing Down the Moon byMargot Adler, Real Magic by Isaac Bonewits, a few books by Doreen Valiente,Gerald Gardner's work, and the early work of Raymond Buckland (although his mostfamous book, Buckland's Complete Guide to Witchcraft, didn't come along until1986). You could find the work of Sybil Leek, Paul Huson, and Gavin and YvonneFrost, as well as older stuff by classic authors like Aleister Crowley, DionFortune, and other pre-Wiccan occultists of an earlier generation. That wasabout it. You could clean out a bookstore of its Wiccan and neo-pagan materialwithout having to buy a new bookcase at home.

The publishing boom of the 1990s changed all that. It used to be that everyonehad read just about everything to do with Wicca. This isn't much of anexaggeration; there were so few books on the subject that everyone involved inthe religion for more than a year or two had probably read the majority ofavailable books, and was buying every new one as it came out. Obviously, it isno longer possible to buy every new book on Wicca, nor is it desirable. Yourtime as a beginner is a joyous time, and books for beginners are wonderful. Butthere's only so much Wicca 101 a soul can abide! In the 1970s and early 1980s,many of the books in print weren't very good.

In the 21st century, a lot of them still aren't. Whether you're talking aboutoccultism, murder mysteries, popular psychology, or science fiction, themajority of books published just aren't all that great. But the increase inquantity in Pagan publishing has meant that, with the percentage of excellenceremaining about the same, the pool of great resources has increaseddramatically. In that pool are books that contradict each other, forcing readersto make choices, to interpret, and to stretch themselves. This is good. The sametrend, however, has also allowed people to excuse themselves for actuallyreading less. This is not so good.

In 1980, most Wiccans had read all or most of the twenty or thirty basic texts.Furthermore, they'd expanded their reading far afield, dipping into a range ofsubjects that could supplement the meager supply of Wiccan texts. Now, with manydozens of good books on Wicca available in mainstream stores (no more huntingdown occult shops), a beginner has no way of reading them all, and no need toseek beyond them. This sounds paradoxical, but it's true. If I go to a bookstoreand find three titles I want, I may well buy all three. If I go to a bookstoreand find fifty titles I want, I may only buy one because I am overwhelmed.Today, I find fewer beginners reaching into other topic areas; there are so manybooks directly related to their interest that books only peripherally related toit get short shrift. This is exactly the situation, in fact, that inspired me towrite the book you're holding now.

THE LATE 1990S AND THE 21ST CENTURY

Let's review: In the 1960s, Gardnerian Wicca arrived in the United States andmet up with the emerging counter-culture. In the 1970s, it encountered feminismand the ecology movement. In the 1980s, we changed and grew in response to thefestival movement and the publishing boom.

The most recent influences on Wicca are the Internet and the media. The formerhas created unprecedented access, and the latter unsurpassed familiarity. Inother words, now anyone can find out about Wicca, and just about everyone hasheard of it.

The Internet provides access to enormous amounts of both information andmisinformation. It allows people to learn Wicca privately, often secretly. Ithas spawned the creature known as the "online coven"—something we old-fashionedtypes find a bit bizarre, but that many people report works quite well. TheInternet has vastly increased the mutual self-teaching of Paganism and Wicca—inother words, newcomers sharing what information they have with each other.Sometimes this creates a powerful support group that increases everyone'sknowledge; sometimes it amounts to the blind leading the blind. Many Wiccansbegin online and use the Web to find in-person contacts; others are satisfiedwith solitary practice and find that the Internet provides all the outsidecontact they want or need.

It seems to me that the Wiccan media wave began with the movie The Craft in1996. Although any person knowledgeable in Wicca can readily see that the Craftportrayed in the film was not Wicca, it was the first major release to use atleast some accurate terminology (including the film's title) and ritual styles.The Craft was a horror movie, though, in which empowered girls were punished forusing their power. More positive was the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, whichintroduced the "techno-Pagan," Jenny Calendar. Although having no pretense ofaccuracy, Buffy offered the world positive Wiccans who used their powers to helpand protect. It made the word Wicca familiar to the general public and made theCraft "cool" to a certain segment of the audience.

Many Wiccans object to the younger generation of Wiccans who first heard of theCraft through Buffy, but as long as newcomers to Wicca learn that Willow'sversion of witchcraft is as much a fantasy as Samantha's nose-wiggling wasthirty years earlier, I see no harm in it, and plenty of potential good.

CHAPTER 2

MODERN WICCA DESCRIBED

I use the word "described" in the title of this chapter because "defined" wouldruffle too many feathers. As discussed above, modern Wicca has gone throughmassive changes during each decade of its existence in the United States. Theresult of this rapid evolution is that there are different types of Wicca activein the world today, sometimes with only glancing familiarity with one another.Thus, when people try to define Wicca, someone inevitably disagrees. In fact,Wicca is now represented by roughly three broad streams. While there is overlapamong those streams, there is also enough difference between them that it isdifficult to generalize about the religion without specifying which version isbeing discussed. I will present them chronologically, more or less in the orderthey appeared over the years, to avoid any appearance of bias or priority.Before I do that, however, let's look at what all Wiccans have in common.

WHAT ALL WICCANS SHARE

This is a tricky subject. There are some people who say that Wicca is whateveryou say it is—that, if your practice is eclectic, it defies definition. Idisagree with that. Wicca is a specific religion, even though it is an extremelyopen-ended one. I would say that, if you are not closely aligned with thefollowing principles, you are perhaps Pagan, or perhaps a witch, but you are nota Wiccan as I understand it:

Polarity: Wiccans may be monists, meaning they believe all gods are ultimatelyOne. They may be duo-theists, meaning they believe that, in Dion Fortune'swords, "All Gods are One God, and all Goddesses are One Goddess." They may behard polytheists, meaning they believe that each individual deity is preciselythat, an individual and not an aspect or component of a larger One or Two.Whatever they believe, however, they work with polarity—ritually andspiritually. However many deities a Wiccan may worship, there is always only onegoddess and one god on the altar during ritual.

Immanence: The sacredness of the human being is essential to Wicca. This can bedescribed in many different ways: "If that which thou seekest, thou findest notwithin thee, thou wilt never find it without thee"; or "Thou Art God"; or "An'it harm none, do what you will." Not everyone will embrace every description,but a Wiccan will always have some creed that includes the idea that thegods/goddesses within us are our truest guides.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE STUDY OF WITCHCRAFT by Deborah Lipp. Copyright © 2007 Deborah Lipp. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1578634091
• ISBN 13: 9781578634095
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192