Wicca and Christian History

When you decide that you may want to try taking the Wiccan and Pagan path, you should know a some of your history.

Please keep in mind, that warm-hearted people and cold-hearted people can be found inhabiting every walk of life, every gender, and every culture. However, an important shared aspect of Wiccan and Christian history has led to exhaustive animosity between Wiccan practioners and members of various Christian groups.

I come from a primarily Catholic family, the members of which I love and respect very much for their humanly kindness and wisdom. It is also important to note that the money it took for me to acquire this site from its progenitor comes from my kind in-laws who belong to the United Methodist Church. When I discuss with the open-minded people I know, the history of Wicca and Christianity, they acknowledge where the misconceptions have come from, and are open and accepting of me.

It is important to respect the often hidden fact that for many decades before the ethnic cleansing known as the "Witch Burnings", Christian monks had peacefully established themselves across the Western European countryside. Wiccans and Christians spent a multitude of decades helping each other and living together peacefully, as truly Spiritually viable cultures will do.

There came a time when greedy and cold-hearted people came to manipulate the teachings of Christ(one of the most important being TOLERANCE). Succumbing to the sickness of greed, lords and kings chose to forsake their traditional and sacred roles as protector, mediators and providers for their people (Father-figures), and began to participate in theft of land that was mandatory to their being accepted and "spiritually protected" by the Catholic church. Most, if not the majority, of the private landholders were from Wiccan families (including the lords and ladies, kings and queens) and had histories of such spiritual practice which dated back at least a good 20,000 years.

Under the guise of spiritual cleansing and salvation, while so obviously being an ethnic cleansing, what we call "The Burning Times" began. So ensued centuries of ethnic cleansing that culminated in the near annihilation of the Wiccan people. However, like many other indigenous peoples we adapted for survival. Camoflaged in the Catholic church, and relying on oral history quietly passed from Wiccan to child, as well as everyday forms of resistance (I will present an essay on this topic at a later date) Wiccans remained constant.

Modern Christians should not be held accountable for the genocide their ancestors committed against our ancestors. Like any person, they must be held accountable for their present behavior; and, in my opinion, are obligated by following Christ's teachings to attempt tolerance and gain understanding of ways strange to them before formulating opinion, or expounding negatively prejudicial rhetoric. We must all learn from mistakes made in past and present, but sometimes forgiveness can be a hard nut to crack.

Witchcraft has been traced back to at least 25,000 years ago. It has been traced as an unbroken line through to the present and as a fully organized religion throughout the western portions of Europe long before the beginnings of Christianity. The Wiccans ("those who know") were the healers and counselors of the communities. Being in tune with the Earth, the elders chose cultivation sites for the community as well as cultivating the land itself. Like most humans they tried to raise their families in a peaceful and prosperous environment.

When Christianity began to spread through Europe, there was not an instant mass conversion that is often assumed. Christianity is a man made religion, with a political agenda. It had not evolved the way Wicca had, over thousands of years, gradually and naturally. During the early years of conversion only the rulers, not whole countries adopted Christianity. Many times these very rulers were Wiccan, and many times their conversions were superficial. They did their people irrevocable damage by choosing to undermine the very nature of the people, culture, and spirit of land. These politically powerful natives, and the and people from the communities who chose to enact the violence against their own kin, are as much to blame as the establishment in Rome itself. The legenary King Arthur is one of these kings who promised to live by the "Old Ways", but chose to sell out his people's freedom to the newly established Church. It find it scathingly funny how the stories credit Arthur with the idea for the round table. Its design is obviously derived from the concepts and spiritual practices around the cosmic Circle of Life, which his Wiccan community and elders would have taught him about. As for answers concerning the Holy Grail, please keep your eyes open for my essay "The Three Cauldrons"!

Pope Gregory the Great *did* make a largely successful attempt at mass conversion. He thought that one way to convert the Pagans was to build the Christian churches on the temples of the Pagans, where the people were used to going to worship. He instructed the bishops to destroy any "idols" in the temples and sprinkle them with holy water(as if all water wasn't sacred) to cleanse them. As successful and clever as he thought he was, Gregory wasn't aware of how smart the Pagans really were. When the Christian churches were being built the only people in the villages that could do the construction were the Pagans. Whilst decorating the churches, the Pagans cleverly incorporated figures of their own deities. They figured that if they had to go to worship in these churches, they could at least worship their own dieties.

One of the foremost weapons used by the papacy against the established spiritual system of Wicca was the ridiculous claim that all nature-oriented spiritualists, including Wiccans, were worshipping the devil. The God of the Old Religon was a Horned God, and for their political purposes, so became the Christian devil. In order to legitimize and rationalize its religious war, the Catholic Church expounded its politically contrived accusations of pagan devil-worshipping. Such a large scale was this smear campaign that these unfounded and completely contrived beliefs still exist and continue to haunt world-wide Pagan communities today. As previously stated, all people who's religious structure found strength through honoring and orienting towards to natural workings of the world were and still are labled as devil-worshippers because their are made to dieties much older and more established than the God represented in the bible. Too bad that they forgot the foremost teaching of Christ, which was tolerance. However, if Truth be recognized the real issue behind the anti-Wiccan movement was usurping land and water resources (NOT SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE), so it really didn't matter to the authorities in the Catholic church that the indigenous people were content with themselves, and had at least 20,000 years of historical foundation upon which emerged a solid Spiritual system incorporating high moral standards and strong ethics. So, for the sake of land rights, the Church authorities and their enforcers murderously pushed people to conversion.

The long running charge of devil-worship, so often aimed at Witches, is absurd. The devil is purely a Christian invention. There wasn't any mention of this devil before the New Testament. The association of evil to devil was due to an error in translation. The original Old Testament Hebrew HA-SATAN and the New Testament Greek DIABOLOS mean "opponent" or "adversary". Not Satan or Devil. Remember that the idea of dividing Supreme Power into good and evil is a relatively young idea. The Old Gods were "human" in the sense that they had a good side and a bad side. It was the idea of an all-good, all-loving deity which then required an antagonist. This idea was developed in Persia in the 12th century BCE. The idea was later picked up by the Christians.

During the time of the of the persecutions, Christianity had strong political footholds and institutional footholds were growing. Coinciding with this expansion, the invention of the printing press took place. This not only opened the written word to the less financially endowed, and allowed for The Bible to be distributed on a larger scale, but also allowed a plethera of anti-Wiccan proganda to be distributed simultaneously. Much of it caused hysteria to the towns people and made the cry of Witch that much more known. Millions were burned, hung or tortured to death on charges of Witchcraft. Not all of these people were actually followers of Witchcraft. This truly was a war of prejudice and politics; and, it was the perfect time to off anyone who might stand in the way of the New Religion's institutional claim to land and taxes.

To many the tales and deaths are years behind them, covering the pages of a dusty history books somewhere. But the truth is, the proverbial burnings are still taking place today...and, world wide the scourging of nature-oriented belief systems is still occuring right before our eyes. By knowing some of the history before you begin to seek out the Goddess and God, it is imperative that you have a greater understanding and respect for the people who have sacrificed to bring us to a place where I can write these words and you can read them without fear of imprisonment, torture, and death. Always respect the dead, especially those slain as martyrs. These are the people that came before you and died for their devotion to their Spiritual beliefs. And, there are millions of indigenous people around the world today, who suffer at the greedy hands of land developers and government policies.
In the light of this ongoing and profound historical reality, the Wiccan community can take minor comfort in the fact that, in the U.S.A. Witchcraft has been legally recognized since 1985; so, by the letter of the law, at least, we have to suffer these Burnings no more! However, it was only a few years ago that a Wiccan mother had her child removed from her custody because of the known fact that she considered herself a "witch". Custody was returned to her by the judicial system, but for the child and mother to go through that is outrageous. So, who really knows what you may be up against. It is important to abide by your rights to worship as you see fit, without harming another. give thanks to those that passed before you, and remember to greet each day and night with heartfelt gratitude.

We've made it through the flames!