Wicca

By Riley Star

The choice to walk the path is personal and the journey will vary. For the beginning Wicca practitioner many questions arise. This guide aims to answer your questions and help you on your path.
•What is Wicca
•Basic Ethics and Principles of Wicca
•The History of Wicca and Witchcraft
*Modern Wicca
*Wiccan Traditions
*Covens and Coven Life
*Solitary Practitioners
*Other forms of Witchcraft
*The Wiccan Deities
*Deciding to Become a Witch
*Dedicating Yourself to the Craft
*Choosing Your Magickal Name
*The Magickal Cabinet
*Exploring Magickal Tools
*Common Wiccan Tools
*Storing Magickal Tools
*Herbs and Crystals
*Understanding Ritual
*The Wiccan Personal Altar
*Points of Ritual Etiquette
*Wiccan Terminology
*And Much More
Blessed Be!

• Language: English
• Publisher: NRB Publishing
• Release date: May 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781941070147

Riley Star

Riley Star swears she did not make it her life's mission to shock her mother, but admits she's doing a fine job all the same. A solitary practitioner of the Wiccan religion, Star writes in the fields of religion, New Age, the occult, and all types of spirituality.Her "day job" working in a metaphysical bookstore gives her access to plentiful reading and research material, but she also meets a lot of questioning people daily. "Learning where people are on their own path is so fulfilling for me," she says. "The questions people bring to their personal quest fascinate and motivate me. There are so many ways of being in the world, and I want to understand them all."Deeply influenced by the work of comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell, Starr still lists The Power of Myth as her favorite book. "We all have forces at work in our daily lives we try to understand," she says, "and we all tell ourselves stories to get through the day."After caring for an elderly aunt who was a dementia patient, Starr was shocked when someone suggested the experience might have left her open to demonic possession. "That really sent me digging into demonology to try to understand where that explanation would come from!" she said. "That's when I discovered a powerful trove of demon lore and of course, I had to write about it."Actually, Star admits that she writes about everything. "I'm never without my notebook," she laughs. "I fill up book after book with journal entries, sketches, and ideas. One day I looked at the shelf over my desk just bulging with all those notes and thought I'd try to share some of my ideas."Now Star sees writing as part of her personal path, likening the gathering of information and the sharing of the material to a kind of active meditation. "If we get back what we put out into the universe," Star says, "I want to make sure I'm sending the clearest signal possible."She keeps herself open to all ideas and all philosophies. "There's just no one way to express or experience this miracle of existence," she says. "I really don't know who or what is running the show, so I try to be nice to priests and oak trees. That's not a joke. All life and all belief is sacred."Above all, she holds to the key moral tenet of her Wiccan faith, The Wiccan Rede, "An Ye harm none, do what ye will."

Book preview

Wicca

The Practitioner's Introductory Guide

Symbols, herbs, history, spells, shops, supplies, clothing, courses,

altar, ritual, and much more all covered!

By: Riley Star

~~~

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Foreword

My mother found the deck of tarot cards under my pillow. They were wrapped in a black cloth. The cloth was emblazoned with a pentagram. Need I describe just how far downhill the ensuing conversation went?

It was useless to try to explain to her that the Major Arcana cards depict the classic hero’s quest as portrayed throughout generations of myth, legend, and literature — and now even in film.

There was no point saying that the black cloth was to shield the cards from unwanted energies. Or that I was sleeping with them under my pillow so they would pick up my own positive energies as projected by my psychic mind during sleep.

Discussing the pentagram was a complete lost cause. She saw that as an emblem of Satan, and flat outright called me a liar when I said the symbol was used by the Christian church in the 12th century.

She was convinced I had taken up devil worship, when in reality, I had just finished reading the transcript of Joseph Campbell’s interviews with Bill Moyers compiled in the book The Power of Myth.

Campbell’s explanation of universal themes had captured my rather precocious teenage attention (which is a nice way of saying I was a nerd), and touched off what has been a more than 25 year love affair with the study of comparative mythology.

My interest in Wicca, in fact in all pagan, earth-based religions is directly attributable to that one book. My very elderly mother still grouses about that stuff you read, but I think she has finally come to the conclusion I’m not bowing down to Beelzebub - something of an impossibility for a Wiccan anyway since practitioners of the Craft don’t believe in Satan.

As a solitaire or solitary practitioner, I have my own way of walking the path, which is acknowledged as a completely valid spiritual journal in the non-dogmatic world of Wicca.

The emphasis in the Craft is on personal responsibility and living in harmony with nature, connecting with the universal divine through the Goddess and God, and following the ethical principle of the Wiccan Rede.

Popular culture, both television and the movies, makes a perfect hash of all things witchcraft and Wiccan and has done little but perpetuate existing ridiculous stereotypes or give birth to new ones.

Writing about Wicca should always propose something of a conundrum since Wiccans do not solicit members into their covens and will not take prospective members under the age of 18 without the express permission of the individual’s parents.

Some people are vastly disappointed to find out that Wiccans don’t throw sexual orgies, but they do have fantastic pot luck suppers. There’s no turning lousy boyfriends into toads, but plenty of meditative work to learn how to focus and direct energies — in other words, work magick.

By their very definition, Wiccans are nature-loving, green, earth advocates. They do worship the Goddess and God, as a manifestation of the All, but they do not reject the Christian concept of God outright, far preferring to live in harmony with all other faiths.

Wiccans understand that there is no one, right spiritual path and they’re not interested in damning anyone to a hell they don’t even believe exists. They don’t see the world as locked in a cosmic struggle between good and evil, and although they acknowledge the potential of darkness inherent in all beings — including the gods — the emphasis is on the bright and the positive.

This book is,

Reviews for Wicca

[Casper Shortreed · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very nice all-over look into Wicca practice for a beginner wondering if Wicca is the right path for them.

[Lauren · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great introduction to practicing Wicca. Not enough to decide what practicing Wicca will look like for oneself.