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.
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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.
If you enjoyed Wicca 333, we recommend its sequel, Wicca 334.
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.
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.