Wicca and the modern craft

The teaching

As Wiccan teaching from Gardner and Valiente to Cunningham teaches it.

The Goddess and the God

Wicca worships the divine as a Goddess and a God. The Goddess is the Lady of the Moon, the earth and the sea, mother of all living things, and many Wiccans honour her as maiden, mother and crone, the waxing, full and waning Moon. The God is the Horned One of the woods and the beasts and the lord of the Sun and the grain, who is born, grows, loves, dies and is born again with the turning year. Behind both, many Wiccans hold, is one source beyond naming, and the Goddess and God are the faces in which it can be known.

Nature is holy in this faith, not fallen, and the body and its pleasures belong to that holiness. The Charge of the Goddess, the best loved of its texts in Doreen Valiente's words, has the Goddess say that every act of love and pleasure is a rite of hers, that whoever does not find her within will never find her outside, and that she asks no sacrifice, for she is the mother of all living.

The Rede and the law of return

The Wiccan Rede gives the faith its one rule of conduct: whatever harms none may be done freely. It is read as both freedom and burden, since every act must be weighed for the harm it might do, to oneself included. Many Wiccans add a law of return, that what a person sends out comes back to them, and some say threefold. Both teachings rule out any working against another person's will or good.

The circle and its tools

Wiccan rites take place within a circle cast for each meeting, a space set between the worlds. The priestess or priest walks it with the athame, the black-handled knife, which is a tool for directing power and is never used to cut, while a white-handled knife does the cutting work of the craft. Salt and water are blessed and sprinkled round, the circle is censed and carried round with fire, and the guardians of the four quarters are called at east, south, west and north. Members enter the circle in perfect love and perfect trust.

The tools of the altar stand for the elements: the athame and the wand for air and fire, which traditions assign differently, the chalice for water, and the pentacle, a disc marked with a five-pointed star, for earth, with the censer, the candles and the cords. Gardner's covens work skyclad, unclothed, as a sign of freedom, and many other Wiccans robe. Fire is part of nearly every rite, and a candle in the circle is watched as any flame is watched.

Drawing down the Moon

At the full moons, the esbats, the coven meets to worship and to work. In the rite called drawing down the Moon the high priest invokes the Goddess into the high priestess, who then speaks as her, often in the words of the Charge. Cakes and wine are blessed, the cup held by the priestess and the athame lowered into it by the priest, in token of the union of Goddess and God, and shared round. Work for a purpose is done by raising power with chant and dance, the cone of power, and sending it to its end, and the circle is closed with thanks to the quarters.

The wheel of the year

The year turns on eight festivals, the sabbats. Samhain, on the last night of October, is the Wiccan new year, when the veil between the living and the dead is thin and the dead are remembered; the God has gone down into the underworld. Yule, at the winter solstice, keeps his rebirth as the returning Sun.

Imbolc, at the start of February, keeps the first stirring of spring and the Goddess as a maiden, with candles and the fires of Brigid. Ostara, at the spring equinox, is the balance of light and dark tipping toward the light, with eggs and new growth.

Beltane, on the eve of May, is the festival of fertility and of the union of Goddess and God, with the maypole and the bonfire. Litha, at the summer solstice, is the God at the height of his strength on the longest day.

Lughnasadh, also called Lammas, at the start of August, is the first harvest, when the God as the grain gives his life so that the people may eat. Mabon, at the autumn equinox, is the second harvest and a thanksgiving, as the dark begins to win. South of the equator many Wiccans turn the wheel to fit their own seasons.

The degrees and the solitary

Covens in the lines of Gardner and of Alex Sanders give three degrees. The first makes a person a witch and a priestess or priest of the craft; the second brings more of the teaching and a share in leading the rites; the third makes a high priestess or high priest, who may found a coven. The teaching passes in a Book of Shadows, copied by each initiate from the book of the one who brought them in. Others practise alone, as Scott Cunningham taught, holding that a sincere person may dedicate themselves to the Goddess and the God without a coven.