Is Wicca/Neopaganism ruined?

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Once I flew all the way to Salem, MA to visit .y sister and I was looking forward to visiting the home of the infamous American witch trials.

Keep in mind I was never naive enough to believe those people persecuted and executed were actual "witches". I knew enough of the history there to realize nobody killed as a witch was ever an actual witch.

But Salem is still big among Wiccans, Neopagans, and other practioners of Witchcraft.

Buuut I couldn't help but feel disillusioned about the whole Wicca & Neopagan thing after I left for a few reasons.

For one it's commercialized to all hell. People selling junk like overpriced tacky tarot cards that all copy the Rider Waite Smith system but change their artwork to hide any of the old Christian Occult references like the Tetramorph just so they can have a fluffy whitewashed "pagan" feel to them . Not to mention all the overpriced crystals that may or may not be the real thing (there's a lot of fakes out there). Anyways I just don't see what's truly spiritual or self-empowering about giving into a shopping spree and falling into the trap of capitslistic greed?

I feel like a true witch who practices any form of folk magic or the occult should make due with what they have available to them.

Also politics really has ruined the wicca/neopagan community lately. People are being told which deities they can and can't work with because of "cultural appropriation". While I agree that we all need to learn to respect other's religions and cultural practices, personally I don't believe that the Gods/Goddesses of our world belong to anybody. Since Mesopotamia the gods have travelled throughout the world going by different names. Inanna/Ishtar became Aphrodite/Venus to the Greeks & Romans, Lamashtu became Lilith to the Israelites and Lamia to the Greeks, Anu probably became every supreme sky god that ever existed throughout the world (Uranus, Zeus, El, Yahweh, etc).

My point is that all of the world's religions no matter how ancient or new were connected in some way. That's how the gods do things, and nobody has the right to decide who can work with what gods. I myself have lately taken to worshipping the Shichifukujin (7 Japanese Gods of Luck). They've done better for me than Lilith or Jesus or any of the others ever did. And I try to approach them with respect for Japanese culture because I actually do admire a lot about Japanese culture.

Also Wicca itself was quite frankly founded on some bizarre bs that makes me think of the Mormon church. Gerald Gardner outright lied about a lot of things in relation to witchcraft. And I've had some older women tell me he was basically a creep who tried to start a sex cult.

With that combined with the rules of what can and can't be done in wicca changing every decade or so, how can anybody really take this crap seriously?

I know folk magic and the occult exists, and I like reading my cards for divination. But wicca has kind of ruined it for me. It dominates everything in relation to magic and at this point it feels like a cheap fad for bored edgy teenagers.

Oh and don't even get me started on the amount of misandry in this community. "Hex the Patriarchy!", "Always be Lilith! Never Eve!", "We're the Daughters of the Witches you Couldn't Burn!"

It makes my eyes roll back so hard in my head I'n afraid they'll get stuck that way.

These are anti-male-supremacist slogans, not necessarily misandrist. Of course, some of the people who adopt these slogans are misandrist, but not all. Others, for example, are just people who come from a heavily patriarchal religious background and have renounced said background.

I can understand that but at the same time it really discourages men from taking part in witchcraft. It's made me realize that wicca isn't really as warm and welcoming as the internet makes it sound.

Wicca/Witchcraft and feminist Goddess religion are just the most visible parts of a larger Pagan/occult scene, whose other sectors are not as female-dominated. For example, there are the various Pagan Reconstructionist groups that are each focused on the pantheon of some particular ancient (pre-Abrahamic) European or ancient Middle Eastern civilization. There are also various ceremonial magick groups.

Be that as it may, for sufficiently open-minded and left-leaning heterosexual or bisexual men, there are some obvious advantages to participating in a female-dominated subculture ....


Groups in general, of whatever kind, tend not to be "warm and welcoming" unless they make a specific effort to be warm and welcoming. Groups naturally tend to be cliquish, alas, requiring great patience from newcomers who want to become part of a particular group.

That's why I became a solitary practioner for so long. Too much drama in these pagan groups.

Plus for people who claim to reject Christianity, they think and behave exactly like Christians do. They see everything through black and white absolutes and are quick to judge and scold others for practicing their craft in a different way.

Unfortunately, these past couple of decades, American society in general seems to have developed an increasing tendency to "see everything through black and white absolutes" and be quick to judge. I'm not sure why. I can only guess that it might be an effect of today's social media platforms.

Before the catholic inquisition a witch or warlock was basically a village apothecary. In pre-christian times both the Anglo-Saxons and Celts had the equivalent of a shaman who made herbal remedies and cast spells. During Christianisation they became secretive and passed their skills down, often through mothers to daughters. Magic and being able to commune with the spirit world was an ability to tap into the unconscious mind using plant based drugs. I imagine this horrified the church who proceeded to brand all apothecaries as witches hunting them down (literally where the term witch hunt came from and eventually associated with catching any woman making herbal remedies).

A spiritual journey is one you take through your own mind/consciousness by yourself. these neopagans and wiccans are merely doing cosplay and are not gatekeepers to anything except their imaginations.

That's true, but the witch trials in Salem I think were a little different from what went on in Europe. Other than Tituba the black slave woman who was the first to be accused by the puritans because of her questionable home remedies and fortune telling (and these accusations against her were sketchy at best from what I was told), I think that the majority of the victims of the Salem Witch Trials, both women AND men, were in no way linked to any kind of witchcraft of folk magic. They were all probably simple Christians living under what was basically a theocracy and their leaders were exploiting people's superstitions and paranoia to hurt innocent people for whatever they got out of it.

It's also interesting to me that Tituba, being the "mystical black woman" scapegoat, was never actually hung like so many in Salem were. I don't know how she managed to do that given the time and place she lived in...

Believe me it's not just in the US, it seems to be happening everywhere in the world. I too think a lot of it is due to social media's influence on the world.

You know something ironic? Besides Lilith (who I have come to believe is a malefic goddess no matter how her worshippers slice her), there is another evil goddess who I can see as being the creator of social media. Eris the Greek Goddess of Strife, Chaos, and Discord. She's the one who takes great pleasure in causing gods and mortals alike to turn into enemies and loves to see them destroy each other in war and bloodshed (just like she did in the Trojan War).

There's even a social media app called Discord. Coincidence?

https://youtu.be/iPZbv2kbzco?si=9QafCw-A-0KN-EMU

west African spiritual practices were maintained during the slave era but again in secret and away from the prying eyes of Master and missionaries. In Louisiana, the Caribbean and Brasil the practices became so popular they were tolerated and even adopted by europeans. In Louisiana for example it became synonymous with voodoo. Voodoo or Voodou is from West Africa, specifically the spiritual beliefs from the region of present-day Benin, formerly known as Dahomey.

Ancestor worship is also still found in southern black culture and is infact a central topic of Ryan Coogler's current vampire/horror flick "Sinners". taking place in 1932 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Fun fact. the Irish vampire "Remmick" in the film was turned into a vampire 1500 years earlier and is still an Irish pagan. In his now famous Irish jig in film he laments his lost connection to his ancestors. Coogler cleverly identifies a spiritual vacuum in Remmick which alludes to loss of identity in America where Christianity erased the past creating lost souls yearning for connection. It also alludes to the forgotten roots of vampires and Halloween to Irish folklore. People have no idea that Bram Stoker drew on Irish folk beliefs to create his character Dracula. It had nothing to do with Romania.

I think in the process of dehumanising slaves it became easy to overlook what must have been strange practices as just "primitive" behaviour because slaves were (conveniently) considered primitive (this belief persists even in 2025).

Going back to the movie "Sinners" the African-American Christian pastor played the role of gatekeeper in judging the young man choosing playing blues music over playing music in the church as "playing with the devil". In contrast the puritanical christians who conducted witch trials were only interested in saving white Christian souls.

If you don't believe me check out Mormon beliefs, in their holy books a black person had no soul so could not be allowed in heaven. Many white Christians probably still carry this belief

this belief maybe so deep, people who have near death experiences walk toward the light see people waiting for them who look like them (European) or they see angels with Nordic features, heaven in their unconscious mind is racially pure. tied to this all alien abductions involving seeing humans on ships, the advanced humans always have nordic features.

Actually from what I was told the things Tituba was accused of by her masters had literally nothing to do with Voodoo. Things like getting the girls to pee and mix it into a cake to feed a family dog, that was more a British folk remedy thar would have made more sense as something one of those Puritans would have seen or heard of before.

Even if Tibuta was a follower of Voodoo I don't think we have concrete evidence of this. And she basically made everything up abouy having any kind of mystical powers to save herself from being executed

But almost nothing is truly known about her other than her role in the Salem witch trials


https://wams.nyhistory.org/early-encoun ... s/tituba/#

Actually while the OP has joined the "dearly departed", this has been an interesting thread.

What does "dearly departed" mean?

I get the aversion to cultural appropriation. Too many plastic shamen named Walking Eagle (too full of $#!+ to fly), writing new age books and claiming they became Turtle Island lore givers (After paying $500 for a dubious weekend sweat lodge ceremony).

But don't figure there's much of a problem if an individual keeps it to themself. Who'd know? Only problem I ever had with it was how they claimed their version was 'Ye Old Religion'. Go to one coven and it was the Celtic Old Religion. Go to another coven and it was the same religion, but a change in altar statues meant you were now in the presence of the Egyptian Old Religion.

On the bright side, it did energize the Reconstructionist and Reconnectionist movements.

As for the OP complaint of over-commercialisation, well, that's why we have punk. A reaction out of recognition that culture was hijacked by commercial interests. There's big money in New Age. There's big money in religion, fantasy, Hollywood, etc.

But it scratches an itch. And it's still a new old religion. Not even a hundred years old yet. So much evolution. It started with Gardner's coven model. Then Scott Cunningham's books popularised the solitary approach. But even back then you could wait a while before finding another person. Then that pop music Wiccan (Fiona Horne?) came out, and every kid was into it. Had to be careful where you stood for fear of stepping in one.

And just as this resulted in the reaction of reconstructionist polytheism, now we have the modern trend of 'Reconstructionist' (kinda) Witchcraft.

Keeps it interesting.