response 2 of 25:

Feb 25 04:58 UTC 1999

Aaaaarrrrgh!  (sorry- overreacting, not actually upset)
1. Wicca is not Celtic, although it borrows some Celtic holiday names, etc.
Really.  And "Celtic Wicca" isn't.  Although some folks practice a hybrid
which uses Wiccan forms and Celtic deities, imagery, etc.
2. Witta is utter bullshit.  It's not even a possible word in any Celtic
language.  The book was Wicca with vaguely Celtic overtones, once again. Grr.
The Celtic pagans I know call themselves Celtic pagans or Druids or Filidh
or some such.

Now, to answer your question, Misti- I think you've got the right of it;
you're an eclectic pagan, a "hearth witch", and a very good one. 
*Technically*, a Wiccan is an initiate of one of the traditions descended from
Gerald Gardner's work.  I'd include "gardneroid eclectic" in that mix,
although "stuffy traditionalists" <g> would not.  So the Crafters are Wiccan,
to my way of thinking, since their basic training is pretty straightforward
Wiccan, even though they are not currently a recognized tradition. (Who
knows...<g>) Another local group, "The Wyrd Roots of the Sacred Forest" (I
think) are *not* Wiccan in their practice, although the influence is certainly
there.  Nor do they call themselves Wiccan, they are their own tradition (I've
forgotten the name, <sigh>) with its own intitiatory process and ritual
structure.

If you want to be more specific, you could certainly say you're "pagan with
Wiccan leanings" or "Wiccan-influenced pagan", but why worry about it? You
know what you do and believe, and who's job is it to judge you, beyond that?

response 4 of 25:

Feb 25 13:27 UTC 1999

Pagan is an all-encompassing label that embraces many different paths. Its
a lot different than the denominations of Christianity. Christians believe
in God, Jesus, Heaven, Hell, etc. while Pagans can have many different beliefs
and worship different pantheons. The fact that not all Pagans choose to follow
the Wiccan Rede and choose instead the Norse Rede of Honor (or something else
entirely) is a good example of this.

response 6 of 25:

Feb 25 17:20 UTC 1999

Re Witta - Nope, you're not mispelling it, there's a book titled
"Witta" which claims to be based on Irish traditions, which is
probably where that group got its inspiration.  It's one of the
cheesier books out there - in addition to the word "Witta" not
making any sense in Irish (I'm told that it's makes as much sense
in Irish as the word "xyqueph" does in English), it also mentions
that the ancient Irish made offerings of potatoes to the Fair Folk.
Pretty impressive, given that potatoes are a New World crop that
wasn't grown in Ireland until the 16th century!  They must have
been great magicians, to make those potatoes fly across the
Atlantic and into their offering bowls.  >8)

I'll let Kami do her "Wicca is not Celtic" spiel, she's so much
better at it than I am.  >8)

response 8 of 25:

Feb 25 18:40 UTC 1999

re: resp:3 and resp:4

I didn't mean to imply that "all pagans share a belief set", but rather that
"Pagan" is an umbrella term much like "Christian" is an umbrella term.  I'm
very aware that there are many differnt (sometimes conflicting) belief sets
that fall under the umbrella Pagan -- and I kind of like it that way.

But it felt to me like calling myself Wiccan was not unlike someone having
read the bible and deciding that they liked the term "Baptist" to describe
their belief systems without ever having attended a Baptist Church, being
baptised, or studying exactly what it means to be Baptist.  They may have many
beliefs in common with Baptists -- but they probably have a lot of beliefs
in common with every Bible following group.

Sure, I've read some Wiccan texts.  And I like some of what I've read.  I've
also read Buddist, Hindi, Taoist, Druidic, and other texts.  And I've liked
some of what I read there, too.  But I've never, to my knowledge, been to a
Wiccan circle or studied with or been initiated by a Wiccan group. Instead
I read broadly and trust my instincts.  There's a feeling I get when I read
something or hear something that's "true" (for me).  I trust it because it
happes whether I'm familiar with a concept or not, whether I like the
implications or not.  It feels very satisfying -- even if it makes me question
the way I've been living or something I want to do.

re: resp:1 and resp:2  Thank you.  You both put into words what I felt
but hadn't found words for.

I firmly believe in "embroider your own" religion and philosophy.  Not because
it means I can do whatever I want.  If I'm true to my beliefs, I most
certainly *can't* do whatever I want.  But it seems to me that we're each here
on our own path and we have to find our own way.  We can read other people's
maps for an idea of the terrain -- but just taking everything some great
teacher says at face value is not only lazy -- it also means you won't be
following your path, you'll be following someone elses.  The lessons we need
to learn are on our own paths and the longer we put them off by trying to
follow a great teachers map instead of our own, the harder those lessons will
ht when we do.

*sigh*  OKay, I think I have an answer to my question.  Wicca is a specific
path with specific teachings and one is unlikely to be a Wiccan "by accident".
Therefore, I'm a Paganus Genericus with Wiccan influences.

Thanks, folks!  <grin>

(My how I do go on about these things ... one of my tenets, you see, is that
few criticisms are completely unfounded.  When someone criticises me, I
examine the possibility that they may be on to something.  It keeps me
honest.)

response 10 of 25:

Feb 25 23:35 UTC 1999

        I would like to retract my earlier statement that even the Pagan
Community can't agree (somehow capitalization doesn't look right; neither does
non-capitalization, so I think I'll alternate).

response 12 of 25:

Feb 26 03:27 UTC 1999

Brighn-
you said:
>people who've said that Wicca isn't Indo-European, which is silly. So I won't
 Who said that?  It's not a *traditional* Indo-European religion, but it's
certainly European-American in much of its population and a fair bit of its
underpinnings.

>*should" include Yoruban traditions (Voudon, Santeria), native American
Perhaps, but most practitioners of those traditions don't *want* to be lumped
in with neo-paganism, with Wicca, etc. and pretty strongly reject the term
"pagan" for that reason.  Ethnic Religion or Culture-based religion seems to
be more toward their taste, in some cases.

>"Wicca" refers to a specific cluster of traditions, but has also come to
refer
You give a pretty good, brief overview.  Thanks.

response 14 of 25:

Feb 26 05:17 UTC 1999

OK, then I just said the same thing more precisely; Wicca is *not* an ancient,
traditional, Indo-European religion.  More, since it incorporates plenty of
non-Indo European deities, and practices (Cabala, for one...), it is not
really consistent with ADF's purview- which was probably the context of the
original discussion.  
Would you say that modern Europeans are an "Indo European Culture"?

response 16 of 25:

Feb 26 16:14 UTC 1999

English has Yiddish words, too. That doesn't mean it's not an Indo-European
language. In general, I would say that cultures whose primary language is
Indo-European are Indo-European. Seems fairly straightforward to me. (That's
implied by Michael, too, since his non-IE European cultures speak non-IE
languages.)

MD> The letter "k". Isn't that obvious? =} Many people prefer to use the
spelling "magick" to refer to supernatural and metaphysical workings, leaving
"magic" to refer unambiguously to prestidigitation, that is, what David
Copperfield and Penn and Teller do.

response 18 of 25:

Feb 27 19:44 UTC 1999

(Is magick pronounced differently from magic, or do you need to resort to
fingerspelling to get the distinction across in conversation? :)

response 20 of 25:

Feb 28 19:59 UTC 1999

I've heard people pronounce magick as "Mage-ick" to separate it from magic.

response 22 of 25:

Mar 9 01:23 UTC 1999

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "wicca" is simply one out of about
20 different ways of spelling "witch." The small type is blurred, but it seems
to give the first use in the year 1000. I suspect that a lot of people use
it as a less-confrontation name than "witch" -- for example Raven Grimassi's
"The Wiccan Mysteries," which is a hodge-podge of stuff from all over. Or
Vivianne Crowley's "Wicca," which includes Egyptian deities (but not Native
American traditions). Scott Cunningham's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary
Practitioner" includes an invocation to Isis. I suspect that you can call
yourself anything you want. For myself, I'd prefer to say I'm a Witch, and
not worry about what the Thought Police tell me I can or cannot call myself.

response 24 of 25:

Mar 10 01:28 UTC 1999

<grins>  Yeah, why not?