Now the first thing people think when they hear about Witchcraft or Wicca is "Devil Worship" and this just infuriates me because Wicca is a very passive religion and intune with nature and the energies of the universe. Similar to any other religion there are those who would use it for bad purposes but that doesn't give others the right to judge the religion as a whole as evil. True witches share a deep love for the mother earth, animals, plants and fellow human beings. Wiccans believe that all of nature contains God. They are also very attached to the feminine principle or Goddess representing the nurturing, healing aspect of nature and the earth.
Witchcraft dates back to the stone age and for several thousand years the witches and warlocks were natural healers, herbalists and doctors and worshipped the nature gods and goddesses. They practiced their religion in the privacy of their homes and kept to themselves. Then came the church who didnt take kindly to those individuals whose way of life seemed odd, untraditional or heathen (which they believed was any other belief system that was not ordained by the church). Out of this came the Salem Witch Trials which was basically the result of two young attention seeking girls pretending to have fits for reasons that elude me. They were diagnosed with "bewitchment" and from this stemmed the belief that a witch's power came from the devil. The girls were asked to identify the witches responsible for the "fits" so that the witches could be hunted down and killed. From this point on things went horribly wrong. This power went to their heads and they started naming persons as witches with reckless abandon. They even named a four year old child as a witch! Can you believe it? Husbands turned in their wives as witches for minor maritial infractions and the mentally ill were coerced into confessing to be in league with the devil. Those who refused to admit these lies were tortured. One man was crushed under a pile of rocks in an effort to torture him into confession. They spread the witch hunt to areas bordering Salem.This rampage would have gone untamed if the power had not eventually driven the girls to name the Governors wife as a witch. This was a step in the wrong direction for them and the witch trials soon came to an end. By the time it was over 141 people were arrested and 19 people were hanged. Yet to this day the stigma associated with witchcraft, wicca or witches is seen as dark or bordering on evil due to the influence of the church and because people fear what they don't understand.
Wiccans are known to cast "spells" and perform "rituals" but their true knowledge stems from knowing how to use the energy of nature to bring about peace, happiness, love, fertility, abundance, protection, guidance, harmony, success and good fortune. Wiccans do not seek to harm because they follow the Three-Fold-Law which states that whether your actions are good or bad it will return to you times three. So if you are a good witch good will come back to you and if you are a bad witch bad will come back to you. So why fear them? The good wiccans do no harm and the bad wiccans will be their own undoing. We are living in the 21st Century. We should not still be judging people on how they choose to live their lives or what faith or religion they follow. We need to learn to accept people for who they are. Only then would we start our journey to enlightenment.
