The time has come when I can hold my tongue no longer.

Every day I see "Wiccans" defile the religion of Wicca, just as "Christians" have defiled Christianity.


I used to be Wiccan. Used to be. It's important to note that I moved on to other things a few years ago. And below are a few of the reasons why I left.

Read, take heed, and honestly ask yourself if you are part of the problem.

Immaturity

• "Christianity sucks. I quit." So, you want to rebel? You might consider a complete 180, right down to devil-worship and black magic... but you don't have the guts to go that far, since you're still secretly terrified of going to Hell. Hey, Wicca is perfect! It's actually not that evil, but your family doesn't know that. You can creep everyone out and keep your soul safe at the same time!
  
  
• "Look at me, I'm a witch!" That oh-so-dangerous leap out of the broom closet, which usually occurs within the first week you buy a book about Wicca. You want to let everyone know about your change of religion, for some godawful reason, especially parents and authority figures. Religious beliefs can't possibly live quietly inside of your own head, they have to be shared! (But you aren't pushy about it, oh no... don't you just hate those Jehova's Witnesses?) You don your little pentacle necklace and wear it in public, just -itching- for someone to walk up to you and start an argument. Then you'll be able to correct them about dozens of things you've learned word-for-word.... ("Male witches aren't called warlocks!") Oh! Don't you just love the attention you get?
  
  
• If you don't want to step out of the broom closet, there are still various ways to stick a toe out the door for each of the people you want to impress and/or frighten. (Like wearing your pentacle -under- your shirt, on a short chain, so it'll slide into view if you shift just right. Or you can wear gothed- or hippied-out clothing and say "Oh, Goddess!" every five minutes. Or you can call your cat a familiar and your cookbook a grimoire [accidentally, of course] ...the list goes on.)
  
  
• "Better not tick me off..." Sure, very few "Wiccans" would actually say this, but there are plenty who will gladly imply it. And they'll bind someone they don't like without a second thought -- always to something "for their own good" so that whole threefold thing doesn't apply.
  
  
• By the way, did you know that the Wiccan threefold law applies to everyone, whether Wiccan or not? And at the same time, Wiccans won't go to Hell because they don't believe in one.
  
  
  
  
• "Wicca is a peaceful, tolerant religion... compared to, say, Christianity." Soon you figure out that you can insult your religious supressors (who are all secretly out to get you) and feel holier-than-thou at the same time! You can blame them for everything from the Inquisition to teenage pregnancy. Impress a group of Wiccans [by saying that you were born on October 31, or that a ghost lives in your house, or that you can see auras (which you secretly suspect might be retinal burn)] and suddenly you're lifelong friends who all have something in common... Christian-bashing. And now when the kids at school make fun of you, it's not because you're fat, ugly, shy, wear braces/glasses, or are part of the wrong clique... it's because they're religiously intolerant, those unenlightened fools.
  
  
• "It's a witch thing. You wouldn't understand." You get to feel oh-so-self-righteous by knowing all the little nuances of the unseen world (even though you can't tell us anything about the Qabalah, the Goetia, or the aethyral heirarchy). Your advanced state of enlightenment usually consists of a whole lot of preaching about "balance of light and dark," "karma," "harm none," and anything else that makes you feel more holy than those plebeian mundanes. I cannot count how many times I've asked a Wiccan a question that ended up in a long string of conversation designed to find out if I'm "worthy to know that"....
  
  
• Do you have a surplus of rose petals and red candles? Get a clue. There's a reason you don't have a boyfriend, and it sure ain't the quality of your spells. Try dying your hair back to its natural color. Lower your nose and stop preaching. Try smiling for once (smirking doesn't count).
  
  
• The "witchier-than-thou" complex. Soon after you become a witch, you ask your mother, "Has anything weird ever happened to you?" And she'll tell you about the time she thought Uncle Herbert was going to call, and, five minutes later, he did! "Aha!" you'll think, "It's genetic!" In a burst of clarity, you suddenly realize that your mother was a repressed witch; your grandmother was a witch; your great-grandmother got burned at the stake in the Salem Witch Trials; and your other relatives were all Celtic, so you should probably start wearing those nifty knotwork rings.

 Immaturity  | Misconceptions  | Personal Gripes  | Stagnation