Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Can I Call Myself A Wiccan?

Although many of my practices are inspired by Wicca, there are a couple of reasons why someone might object to me calling myself a Wiccan.

For one thing, I am not part of a coven, so Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wiccans don't think of me as Wiccan for that reason. However, I could still be accepted as Wiccan by eclectic solitary Wiccans without being part of a coven.

One thing that more Wiccans would object to, is the fact that I am an atheist. However, I could still get away with calling myself a Wiccan among atheistic Wiccans (yes those exist).

However, one potentially more convincing argument against calling myself a Wiccan is the fact that I freely ignore traditions in Wicca that do not work for me. Although I write "an' it harm none" into my spells, I find harming none to be impossible in practice. I don't set out to harm or curse people though, as I don't believe there's any way to curse someone that doesn't also cause bad consequences for the person casting the curse (but that's another article).

Even so, the Wiccan Rede is just that, a rede, which means "advice", so if I don't follow it strictly, that might not be an issue.

A more convincing argument might be the fact that my rituals are never specifically Wiccan. I never invoke the elements, as I am more interested in gods. I suppose I could remedy this by doing Wiccan rituals during Sabbats (which I do celebrate by honoring specific season-themed gods).

The biggest reason why I am reluctant to choose Wicca as my path is that I have trouble with the gender duality. Wiccans often imagine gods and goddesses as being aspects of the Wiccan God and Goddess, with the gods being aspect of the God and the goddesses being aspects of the Goddess respectively. However, if this is the case, how do you arrange hermaphroditic deities into this scheme? Is Hermaphroditus an aspect of the God or the Goddess? For that matter, what about Phanes? Could it be decided based on whether they conform more to the yin or yang principle? Hermaphroditus is the god of androgyny. Which principle does he fit best? (You could say "yang" because of his association with sexuality, but if yang=god, this would make Aphrodite (who is also associated with sexuality) an aspect of the God, and she is usually seen as an aspect of the Goddess.

I think I'll ask a Wiccan about this last question. The answer might be fascinating.

Update: I did a bit more research on Wiccan views of divinity. It turns out some Wiccans view the gods as distinct from each other rather than being aspects of the same two gods. I hold a pantheistic viewpoint in which the gods are distinct from each other, and so are we, but we are all aspects of the same pantheistic universe (the gods are probably fictional/archetypal aspects though).

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