![]() In America those who practice initiatory Wicca tend to stick very closely to the original texts and rituals, whereas in Britain the ideologies are generally more fluid and evolve rather than ossify the practice. In the United States "Wicca" has come to mean any Wiccan based Pagan religious system, whereas in Britain "Wicca" remains the title for a practice of a religious tradition that is passed down any initiatory lineages descended from Gerald Gardner, with Alexandrian Wicca as a subset within this category. There are emergent differences in practice and ideology of Wicca on both sides of the Atlantic. These branches currently include the "Alexandrian" "Traditional" and "Feminist" Craft, with various offshoots stemming from each branch. Each divergence or new form of the Craft reflects a slightly different ethos and way of practice. However no concrete facts have yet been uncovered that fully prove the argument for any angle of the debate, and since Gardner’s death the Craft has branched into Europe, America and the Antipodes, as well as diverging in several directions. Arguments about the history of the Craft still fuel bitter debate as hotly as when Aidan Kelley first posited in 1991 that Gardner had created the faith himself. There has been much controversy over Gardner’s story of his initiation, and the antiquity of the group or "coven" into which he was initiated, as well as the authenticity of the tradition he taught. Gardner wrote as an anthropologist and Wiccan initiate. The Old Religion had apparently survived intact over millennia despite the triumph of the Christian Church, the Witch hysteria and Witch hunts of sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and even despite the modern age of secularism and science. They were members of a mystery tradition which worshipped ancient Pagan deities, in a nature based faith that celebrated the seasons of the Nature and cycles of the moon with ceremonial, ritual, festival, feasting and magic. The members of this religion, also known as "the Craft" and "Wica" (sic) were apparently very different from the evil Witches of folklore and fairy tale. Margaret Murray in The Witch Cult of Western Europe. He claimed to have discovered and been initiated into a lost Pagan Priesthood which was the remnants of the ancient Pagan faith first written about thirty years earlier by Dr. The birth of Witchcraft in its modern form can be dated from 1954, when a retired British gentleman called Gerald Brosseau Gardner, published Witchcraft Today. It is a religion that has not yet been studied in any depth, but is steadily gaining membership and recognition in Europe, the United States and the Antipodes. ![]() Neo-Paganism does not fit easily into any of the typologies yet created to examine religion, it is a faith that has all the ingredients that one would expect of a post modern creation, yet leans heavily on retraditionalization and earnestly cleaves to a pre-Christian heritage. Wicca is a branch of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, a subset of the religious faiths that make up Neo-Paganism. This paper discusses conversion and Wicca. All religions have different requirements and criteria for accepting a convert as one of their own, these vary considerably while the Christian faith has historically been quite happy with the concept of enforced conversion, the Zoroastrians do not traditionally have any mechanism accepting converts, not even a spouse Lamb and Bryant (1999). ![]() It also has legal, political and cultural implications that vary in significance depending on the convert’s chosen religion and the country in which they practice their faith. Indeed there is so much diversity, with so little advance on the front of finding evidence which conclusively counts either for or against particular claims, that some academics have suggested that the best strategy is to be agnostic for the time being - on the matter of what exactly generates change" (Heelas 1996: 186).Ĭertainly "conversion" has meant different things historically in different social and religious settings. Advocates of different theories are committed to different accounts of human nature, ranging from the behaviouristic to the voluntaristic. Theories abound, ranging from the psychoanalytical to the cognitive. Heelas asks "How is clear cut conversion, when it occurs, to be explained? It must immediately be noted that the academic community is far from agreed about what could be taking place. ![]() Study of conversion is as complex and many faceted as the study of religion itself. The long journey home a study of the conversion profiles of 35 British Wiccan men Melissa Harrington ![]()
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