Kaatryn MacMorgan-Douglas
The collected works of author, educator and gadfly, Kat MacMorgan.
Wicca 333
Wicca 333:Advanced Topics in Wiccan Belief
is an upper level work on Wicca that discusses twelve topics chosen for in-depth discussion. Topics include an advanced discussion of the Wiccan Rede, Evolution, Satanism, Proselytizing and much more. Each topic is divided into five parts, and is followed by recommended reading, discussion questions and more.
Rather than a repeat of the old, tired introductory material, 333 assumes you know the basics, and offers new things to think about and new ways to think about old questions.
Who is this work for?
This work is for the advanced student or the beginning student with access to assistance. As so-called advanced books in the past have shown, the concept of intermediate or advanced students vary from author to author. I would say that the minimum preparation to read this book without assistance would be a year and a day of study with a group, or a well-read solitary practitioner with a group of friends, online or off, to bounce ideas off of. At the least, this solitary practitioner would have read, or been exposed to the main concepts of, Margot Adler's Drawing down the Moon, Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of The Moon, Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today and at least one quality introductory Wiccan text, such as Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, Gerina Dunwich's Wiccacraft, or, of course, All One Wicca. In Appendix Three you will find a "self-test." This is not a test of Witchy-ness, or of proficiency in Wicca, but represents topics you should've been exposed to, even to a slight degree. If you glance through it and find you have no idea what any of these things are, it might indicate that the material will be beyond your depth. If you read through it and are familiar with all the concepts, you may find parts of this book below your level of expertise. If you find yourself in the middle, you're probably smack dab in the center of the target audience.
is an upper level work on Wicca that discusses twelve topics chosen for in-depth discussion. Topics include an advanced discussion of the Wiccan Rede, Evolution, Satanism, Proselytizing and much more. Each topic is divided into five parts, and is followed by recommended reading, discussion questions and more.
Rather than a repeat of the old, tired introductory material, 333 assumes you know the basics, and offers new things to think about and new ways to think about old questions.
Who is this work for?
This work is for the advanced student or the beginning student with access to assistance. As so-called advanced books in the past have shown, the concept of intermediate or advanced students vary from author to author. I would say that the minimum preparation to read this book without assistance would be a year and a day of study with a group, or a well-read solitary practitioner with a group of friends, online or off, to bounce ideas off of. At the least, this solitary practitioner would have read, or been exposed to the main concepts of, Margot Adler's Drawing down the Moon, Ronald Hutton's The Triumph of The Moon, Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today and at least one quality introductory Wiccan text, such as Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, Gerina Dunwich's Wiccacraft, or, of course, All One Wicca. In Appendix Three you will find a "self-test." This is not a test of Witchy-ness, or of proficiency in Wicca, but represents topics you should've been exposed to, even to a slight degree. If you glance through it and find you have no idea what any of these things are, it might indicate that the material will be beyond your depth. If you read through it and are familiar with all the concepts, you may find parts of this book below your level of expertise. If you find yourself in the middle, you're probably smack dab in the center of the target audience.
Please note that we have discontinued the website described in the iuniverse edition of Wicca 333. The new edition will only reference this site. Thank you.
| Wicca 333:Advanced Topics in Wiccan Belief From Topic Two: All Paths Lead to the Same Place and All Gods are One God, right? Exerpt from:Universalism Defined, The Paradox of UPG and an introduction to our imaginary friends: Don't Steal! Wicca is best described as a Universalist religion. Universalism is not the belief that all gods or paths are equivalent, though it usually teaches all paths have some element of truth in them, but the belief that mankind does not truly need "saving." In its earliest Christian form, unaffiliated with Unitarianism, Universalism began with the acknowledgement of a paradox within Christianity: the All-Loving God who would have a hell. Universalism came to grips with this paradox in several ways that all assumed God loved everyone. The first way was the belief that persons would be given a second chance after death to be saved, presumably with more information. We can assume then, that in this version of Universalism, which has strong overtones of Christianity, the hapless Pagan would get shown the reality of Jesus before going to hell and would have a chance to admit his mistake and go to heaven with the rest of the world. Don't Steal!In the next version of Universalism, people of all religions who are essentially good people go to heaven, and people who are bad go to hell. This version settles a lot of the issues Pagans have with Christianity, especially the idea that a deathbed conversion could get a Hitler in the pearly gates while Buddha, Gandhi and billions of non-Christians roasted far below. Many extreme Christians highly object to this belief, and righteously proclaim that works don't mean a hill of beans to their god. Don't Steal!In a third version of Universalism, humanity has misinterpreted the words of god and there is no hell at all, but a place without god. Once there, a chance to be made one with god presents itself. Comparing this to the two beliefs above, you can see how this is a compromise: bad people still go to a sort of minimum security hell, but they can get out once they have a chance to be saved. Most forms all agree on one thing: Positive people go to heaven Don't Steal!Liberal Universalism, which is the type Wicca most often falls under, is the belief that mankind is "saved," as it were, by mere existence of being born. "God made me," says one Universalist slogan, "and God doesn't make junk." The mechanics of this Universalism vary. For Christian Liberal Universalists, the belief may be that Jesus died for everyone and thus everyone is saved, or that, like one of the beliefs above, second and third chances for salvation exist. For the non-Christian Liberal Universalist, hell may not exist at all, and we are not all saved so much as all not in any danger. Don't Steal!This form of Universalism, prevalent in Modern Universalist thought though fairly alien to historical Universalism, also teaches that positive things exist in most religions, and we can learn these positive aspects with a little exploration. Since it teaches that we aren't going to hell, the price of wrong turns during exploration is negligible. With no penalty for searching, we can seek in all faiths, not just our own, for the elements of truth. Don't Steal! This seeking from all faiths is called "Eclecticism," and when it occurs without any sort of moral guideline, it can render a religion nonsensical. Indeed, the babbling of dozens of nonsense Wicca books, which teach that Wicca is whatever you wish it to be, is one symptom of eclecticism without guidelines, and splinter groups hiving off of the Unitarian Universalist Church are another. Ideally, we are Universalist and Eclectic within a religious framework. Neither Universalism nor Eclectism teach that all paths and gods are equivalent, just that most things can be approached from multiple vectors. Don't Steal! Wicca accepts the existence of several paradoxes, and this idea of multiple vectors leads to one of them, the paradox of Unverified Personal Gnosis, or simply UPG. Rather than see paradoxes as flaws in the faith, we see them as opportunities for meditation and study. Our worldview says that it is best to use the entire mind in our spiritual pursuits, and things that are not easily solved (or are not solvable at all!) are not ignored or disregarded, but used as windows to personal exploration. Like the Zen Buddhist koan, a paradoxical statement or story designed to encourage thought and promote intuitive enlightenment, our paradoxes are meant to be thought upon until our need for them is fulfilled, whereupon we have either solved them at a personal level or come to see them as religious ephemera. The thought process, not the outcome, is the reason for the existence of the paradox. Don't Steal! Like the multiple correct paths and the belief in gods that are both discrete and a unified entity, UPG is an inevitable paradox occurring within Wicca; because a significant part of a religious life is dedicated to finding the secrets inside of a person as well as better knowing the divine, it only makes sense that one who lives his or her life in such a way would have several moments of epiphany, maybe even experiences of the divine. Such experiences may provide a deep knowledge (gnosis) of how the universe works, perhaps even yielding a high degree of certainty in one's beliefs, but without proof, this knowledge can never leave the mind of the person who had the experience as anything but conjecture. Don't Steal! As a rational religion, we know that we cannot expect others to believe what we say simply because we say it. We can have people look upon our other actions and determine the likelihood that we are speaking truth, but once it leaves our brain and comes out of our mouths it is no longer an experience, but a story, and stories can easily be dismissed. Even if we believe the story, what we believe to be the cause behind it might vary from that of the storyteller. When, for example, a mother presents her infant to us as the next Jesus, we may look at what we know about her and decide she's crazy, on drugs, or maybe a member of a strange cult. Her UPG does not match our experiences, personal or shared, so we probably dismiss her story as either an outright lie or as some sort of delusion. Don't Steal! We quickly come to the realization that we do not give all UPG the same merit. We develop rules for it fairly quickly as the amount of it in our life builds. We may speak of it very little, or only with those with UPG that matches our own, or we may keep silent about it, developing the quiet wisdom of the sages, answering about it only when asked. We understand, of course, that UPG is completely out in religious debate: If someone says that the Bible says, "thou shalt not kill," we can't say that the vision of Jesus we had last night told us otherwise, even if it did, and expect the person to disregard the tangible book in their hand because we said so. Likewise, a Christian cannot come up to you and demand that you see the Bible as the word of God simply because his preacher told him so and he agrees with his preacher. The quality known as "word of god" is not verifiable, and if that quality does not match your experiences, and cannot be verified, it is unreasonable for you to be expected to believe it. Don't Steal! This is, as I mentioned earlier, a core element of Wicca's theology: If you were meant to believe it, you would not find it impossible to believe. You may need proof, or to do some serious seeking, but it is unlikely that any deity worth following would expect you to believe those things that elicit a visceral negative reaction within you. Contrary to the beliefs of a few, being religious does not make you gullible, and being concerned with the spiritual does not mean you must become ignorant of the material. The genuine practice of a reasonable religion requires following it with every ounce of your being, and the nagging doubts and internal fears must be explored in order to do so. Don't Steal!UPG and Universalism are inextricably linked. Practiced properly, Universalism allows UPG: all beliefs that people hold are possible, even if not probable, and are treated equally. Restrictive Universalism discounts not just personal gnosis, but communal gnosis as well, it says, quite simply, that any belief that falls outside of the Universalist belief is wrong. From Topic Eight:Wicca and Creationism Exerpt from: an Evolution Primer Don't Steal! Since we need to know a bit about evolution in order to defend ourselves from people because they assume it is holy writ to us, and because, as a theory based on natural observation, it should closely mirror some of our observations, it's best to know a little bit about it. We'll begin with the fundy's first method of attack, proclaiming it is "only a theory." Don't Steal! The ignorance of this mode of attack is apparent if you understand what a scientific theory is. Like the word myth, which means completely different things when speaking of things like Hesiod's Theogony and the materials of urban legends, the word theory has two distinct meanings. The first meaning, the one used by creationists, is that a theory is a guess. This demotes things like the theory of evolution (and also the theory of gravity, big bang theory) to some scientists guessing about things, maybe even making educated guesses. The problem is that scientists have a name for these educated guesses, and they aren't called theories but hypotheses. Don't Steal! A hypothesis is often the first step in the development of a theory, but it is not a theory in and of itself. A scientific theory is an interesting phenomena in that while definitions of it very slightly, it's generally assumed that a student or scientist with a firm basis in the scientific method will know one when they see one, leaving the common defense to the claim that a theory is a best guess simply stating "no it's not." My own definition combines elements from Steven Hawking, stacks of biology and statistics textbooks I was forced to read over the years, scientists I've met and my personal experiments, but is right in line with these other theories. Put shortly, a scientific theory is an explanation of a large quantity of data that is shown to be predictive of future actions by that data that makes a fairly broad claim, but not so broad as to become nonsense. Don't Steal! For example, I may theorize, based on my observations, that the moon grows and shrinks as the month goes by (a theory that could easily be proven false). A good version of this theory would be fairly broad, I'd say all moons do this, and thus if I found even one moon that didn't, my theory would be proven false and I'd have to create a new one. My theory's level of falsifiability would be equal to the number of every moon in existence, and thus, if we had discovered a billion moons, that would be a billion chances for my theory to be false and if my theory was never shown false, a pretty strong indicator that it was true. If I made a theory just about our moon, there would be only one chance to prove it false. This can seem complicated unless you imagine it in less stellar (or lunar) terms. Don't Steal! Imagine you have an 8-year-old son, or brother. Imagine he is the most annoying child in the world. Your boss is wondering why you are constantly being called away from work, and goes to meet this child. In the 5 minutes your boss meets him, he is gracious, sweet and pleasant. You wouldn't think it fair for your boss to consider him sweet and pleasant based on those five minutes, and you wouldn't find my theory on moons that convincing if it was based on only one moon. Don't Steal! A good theory has had many opportunities to be proven wrong but has not been proven wrong. The absence of proof of a theory being wrong doesn't prove it to be true, but it proves it to be much more likely than unlikely. This is the basic difference between unscientific and scientific thought- scientific thought deals in terms of likely and unlikely, possible and impossible. Unscientific thought accepts without questioning and scientific thought promotes questioning. |