Tag Archives: genre: religious eduction

Wicca For Beginners: Fundamentals of Philosophy and Practice

non-fiction, religion June 29, 2014 Leave a comment

I read Wicca For Beginners: Fundamentals of Philosophy and Practice by Thea Sabin to gain a better understanding of Wiccan philosophy. While the books I’d read previously did a good job explaining what Wiccans do, but most did not explain the “why” very well.

Sabin does a lot of good explanations of the “why.”

I found Sabin’s style particularly easy to read – conversational, friendly. I appreciated that, particularly after reading Scott Cunningham, whose style I found rather dull. Really dull. Informational, but dull.

Sabin also goes further into depth about topics that helped me gain a real understanding of what goes on during a Wiccan ritual, both for groups and for individuals. She also described a process of visualization that reminded me of Sherlock Holmes’s ‘mind palace’ technique on BBC’s ‘Sherlock.’ Basically, you build a path for yourself to follow in your mind, detailed, to take you to a certain place. While Sherlock’s mind palace is for storing information that he can recall at any time, Sabin’s is for spiritually growing and meditation.

I love ‘Sherlock,’ so to discover that these things were similar was a huge bonus for me.

Sabin also talks a great deal about how to find a practice right for you. One of my favorite things ever is when someone tells you what to avoid. That way, I can work backwards. If you meet a “teacher” who wants sex as payment, get the hell out of there. If you are uncomfortable with the group you join, leave it. It can be like any group – gossipy and they can snipe at each other, and not get along. Leave it.

Another bonus that I haven’t had the fortune to read before: the best known “orders” of Wicca. Even though Wicca isn’t a centralized religion with one all powerful church, there are a number of different traditions to choose from when choosing a path that is right for you. For example, any thing where members practice skyclad – naked – wouldn’t be for me. Aside from the fact that I don’t want to force my being naked on anyone – nor do I want anyone to force their being naked on me – I’m someone who is cold a lot. I’m fairly certain I would be cold the entire time. How could you effectively do anything? Ever.

Anyway, if looking for a more in-depth look at neo-pagan and Wiccan practices, I’d highly recommend this Thea Sabin’s book. Her conversational tone and personal anecdotes make what is very foreign to a lot of people friendly, inviting, and easier to understand.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft // Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner

non-fiction, religion April 17, 2013 1 Comment

I started reading two books on Wicca at the same time:

The first book was The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft by Denise Zimmermann and Katherine A. Gleason and the other was Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.

I should premise this by saying I am not Wiccan and I am not looking to become one, however, the topic has fascinated me since I was a teenager, and so I decided to learn a bit more about it.

I enjoyed The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft. It was cheerful, informative, and fun to read about. If I was looking to become Wiccan, it would be very useful. It gave a strong foundation of what Wicca was about without going overboard on philosophy and detail that can get tedious if one is only looking for the basics.

My favorite thing about this book though was that it gives you a lot of basic knowledge about folklore, which I enjoy both as someone who likes to read and write stories.

I read Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner because just about every site on the web said that if I wanted good books about Wicca for beginners, this Cunningham book was the gold standard.

Well. I didn’t dislike Cunningham’s book, but I didn’t find it as interesting. It was informative, very solemn, and it was a little dull, although it got its points across. It was very useful in that I could take a look at its Book of Shadows and it had some valuable information about Sabbats and such, but it I found it almost too basic. It was heavy on the details of rites and rituals, and but lacked a lot of the interesting philosophical foundation stuff that the other book had.

If I was going to actually be Wiccan this might be more useful, but since I’m not, I’d rather go with more of the broader interesting stuff than the less interesting details.

As a side note, I found Cunningham nowhere near as eloquent as I was led to believe. His style was fine, but not beautiful the way a lot of people said it would be.

I read a criticism of Cunningham on Goodreads that his approach to Wicca lacks balance and is unhealthy because good needs to find a balance with evil and some other such crap. No.

Wicca is about finding balance with nature and the Earth, not about finding a balance between good and evil. The one thing Cunningham and Zimmermann and Gleason and every other person who writes about Wicca I’ve ever read says over and over again is that a Wiccan is never to use their religion to harm others, and using the religion to help others without their knowledge is unethical. There is no “evil” in the sense that you can call demons from Hell to attack people (many Wiccans don’t believe in Hell), but when you work magick (respect the spelling, kids), anything that impugns anyone else’s free will is considered wrong.

Speaking of demons, Wicca is not nearly the devil worship your uber!Catholic grandmother would have you believe.

People may think Wicca itself is strange, but it’s really not any stranger than any other religious beliefs I’ve ever heard. My family is Catholic, and Catholics believe that Christ died on the cross, rose from the dead three days later, and is now consumed every week in the form of a cracker. A Jeez-it, if you will.

All religions have stuff that doesn’t make any sense to any kind of rationalist.

So overall, I’d recommend The Idiot’s Complete Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft over Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner if one was just interested in broadly educating themselves about Wicca.