A White Rose
by any other name....
Ever since I first started looking into Paganism and Witchcraft, there has been a lot of debate over names, titles and labels. Well, I've never really been one to jump in on the old name debate, but here's my $.02 (okay, it's more like $1.02...):
Do you call yourself a witch? A Witch? Practice witchcraft? The Craft? Magick? Magic? Are you a Pagan? Heathen? Neo-Pagan? Wiccan? Druid?
In the end, there are two issues here: what do you identify yourself as? and what does any label you put on yourself tell others about you?
Those two things are never going to mean exactly the same thing, and only if you're lucky will they mean even remotely the same thing. In the end, you have to either decide not to use labels to describe yourself, or to choose labels which you feel say something about what you are, and then not worry about people who don't look past those labels to see who you really are. And if you do that, it never hurts to define those terms yourself.
I personally don't like the fact that many of the words which at one time would have been accurate descriptions of certain faiths and practices have gotten so many negative and inaccurate connotations in modern vocabularies. The main question was always "Do you call yourself a Witch?". Witch shouldn't be a loaded word. So, I'll use it if I think it means what I want it to say about me, but I usually try to make some attempt at indicating exactly what that is.
After all, it's a loaded word in most of the English-speaking world, and the translations in most of the rest of the world are just as loaded. If you use the "W-word", are you going to end up with a cross burning in your front yard (or worse)? Again, I find it important to define that term before I use it to refer myself. To me, a Witch is someone who uses magical practices, and who usually does so in a more religion-based or casual, kitchen/hedge-witch sort of manner. We're not talking high-magick here. No elaborate costume or ritual needed. (Those things are part of the life of the Magician.) And, to me, a really strong, capable Witch is someone who incorporates their magical nature into all aspects of their life, from their work to their home-life, and in both the details and largest aspects.
This also means that being a Witch has nothing to do with Satanism, simply because I refuse to link the term Witch to any particular religious practice at all. A Witch can be of any faith: Pagan, Christian, Jew or indeed, of none at all. (The fact that some faiths specifically outlaw magic-working is another issue altogether...) All you need to do to be a Witch is to use magic and to make it part of your life. And that is what I do....
Just to check and make sure, we can check the dictionary:
witch (wîch) noun
1.A woman popularly believed to have supernatural powers and practice
sorcery, and often believed to be aided by spirits or a familiar.
2.A believer or follower of Wicca; a Wiccan.
3.A hag.
4.Informal. A woman or girl considered bewitching.
5.One particularly skilled or competent at one's craft: "A witch
of a writer, [she] is capable of developing an intensity that verges
on ferocity" (Peter S. Prescott).
verb
witched, witching, witches verb, transitive
1.To work or cast a spell on; bewitch.
2.To cause, bring, or effect by witchcraft.
verb, intransitive
To use a divining rod to find underground water or minerals; dowse.
[Middle English wicche, from Old English wicce, witch and wicca,
wizard, sorcerer.]*
Well, excepting the hag part, sounds a lot like me.... I certainly like to think I'm skilled at my Craft... ;)
I also call myself a Pagan. I never thought there was much of a debate about that term until I was told that it sometimes had a negative connotation. You see, I learned that term in my highschool comparative religions class (yes, it was an enlightened school system...) and was taught that a pagan was a person who believed in both male and female aspects of God or whatever you called a "higher power". That certainly applies to me. At the time, I think they were referring more to followers of the Hindu faith (enlightened only goes so far...). I don't think it occurred to them that anyone could still believe in the same gods that the supposedly extinct religions of ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt and Ireland held dear, let alone even more "primitive" cultures like the Mayans or Aztecs. That fact would certainly explain while it took a few more years for me to figure out that I could believe in gods and goddesses without having to be Hindu (the undercurrent of misogyny always turned me off... I won't be throwing myself on my husband's funeral pyre unless it's my idea....)
When I learned that "pagan" came from words meaning "country-dweller" or a variation on that theme, I was even more intrigued. I could just picture myself as some lone hedge-witch living on the edge of the woods, gathering herbs and worshipping under the moonlight, with no one for company save the animal denizens of the forest.
Heathen was a word I already knew, and I certainly knew it had a negative connotation. Being a heathen meant you were uncivilized, wild, disreputable. That didn't describe me very well. I was nothing if not civilized, and I prided myself on my good reputation. On the other hand, being a little wild once in a while sounded pretty appealing. Maybe there was more to this heathen thing than met the eye. Sure enough, checking the dictionary,
heathen (hê´then) noun
plural heathens or heathen
1.a. One who adheres to the religion of a people or nation that does
not acknowledge the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. b. Such
persons considered as a group; the unconverted.
2.a. One who is regarded as irreligious, uncivilized, or
unenlightened. b. Such persons considered as a group.
[Middle English hethen, from Old English hæthen.]*
It looks like there was indeed more to heathenism than I had thought. Certainly there is the negative connotation of being irreligious (which I most definitely am not), or uncivilized and unenlightened (again, not something which describes me), but if you look back to the first definition, it appears that yes, indeed I am a heathen... [Smile when you say that....;)] Now I can also picture myself frolicking in the heath, rolling around in heathered meadows....
Now, going back to the term Pagan, I have to check again in our (up to this point) rather good dictionary (at least it knows a Witch isn't a hand-maiden of Satan):
pagan
pagan (pâ´gen) noun
1.One who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew; a heathen.
2.One who has no religion.
3.A non-Christian.
4.A hedonist.
adjective
1.Not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish.
2.Professing no religion; heathen.
[Middle English, from Late Latin pâgânus, from Latin, country-dweller, civilian, from pâgus, country, rural district.]
Okay, that's not so good. While I certainly do not qualify as Christian, Muslim or Jew, and we've already seen that heathen seems to be a fitting term, I hardly have "no religion". It also sits in direct contrast to what my comparative religions book said. And who are you going to trust to know more about religion, a dictionary or a college text book (it was an advanced-studies class...) on religions? I'll stick with my old definition: a Pagan is someone who believes in both the male and female aspects of the devine. And that is me. Hedonist... perhaps... dedicated to pursuits of pleasure. Why not? I'd rather not pursue pain and heartache. Okay by me.
The little differentiation between "Pagan" and "pagan" that is sometimes made is something that I usually ignore, but it does serve the purpose of allowing us to distinguish between a formalized belief system in practice and a more general, loosely-defined belief or type of faith as is most often referred to in an anthropological setting. If pressed to do so, I would be inclined to include a number of "Nature religions" into the small-p "pagan" category, versus the capital-P "Pagan" category, simply due to the lack of (or lack of emphasis upon the) personification of the Divine as "god" and/or "goddess". It's one of those things that varies from person to person, thus making it nearly impossible to make a firm line between the two, but this differentiation may be handy in cases where beliefs land in the fuzzy area between those worshipping gods and goddesses and nature-oriented systems which focus on the wisdom and holiness of nature's creatures and aspects. (However, in my opinion, these particular belief systems have more in common with each other than most other systems, and while they should never be assumed to be identical, they are more akin to identical twins grown to individual and differing maturity than to mere sibs or cousins.)
Another failing of this particular dictionary seems to be a lack of definition of the terms Wicca and Wiccan. It merely defines Wicca as a nature-religion, and a Wiccan as one who follows Wicca. So, we are left to determine for ourselves what a Wiccan is. If you're somewhat familiar with Wiccan and Neo-Pagan history, you'll know that what we know as Wicca is a modern interpretation of a number of older faiths, with some very specific beliefs as outlined by Gerald Gardner and some others. Much of what modern Pagans practice has its origins in Gardner's rituals and writings, but there comes a point where you have to say: this is Wiccan, and this is not. And frankly, I'm over that line. My practice is grounded in things that were based upon Wicca, but as much difference as there was between those and Gardner's Wicca, there is again as much difference (and often much more) between my practices and those things I learned early on. I would do both myself and traditional Wiccans a disservice to call myself Wiccan.
Well, I worship Celtic gods (we'll take this as a given, since I'm telling you this straight-out...), therefore I must surely consider myself a Druidess, right? Wrong. And for just the same reasons I cannot and will not call myself Wiccan. The mold does not fit. And I think a real Druid would be the first to tell you that. I don't belong to the ADF or the OBOD, and beyond a lingering desire for the increased historical knowledge that the OBOD would provide (the more appealing of the two to me for a few small reasons), I don't have any interest in joining. And that is in large part due to the fact that, preferring both solitary worship and magical practice, I'm rather dedicated to doing things the way I want to do them, down to the smallest detail. I can't follow someone else's prescribed ritual once, let alone learn an entire system of magic well enough to feel accomplished at it. Now, my own system, that I can handle. I can handle it well enough to teach it to others, even. And I make no pretense of thinking my system is anything to rival Druidry or any other traditional system of worship, learning or magic. But it works for me, and that is all that counts in my book.
Now, I have, from time to time, jumped in on one debate of terminology: "magic" versus "magick". I have the same pet-peeve about this issue as I do about "the Witch thing". It angers me to no end that time and prejudice have changed the way we feel about such valuable terms. While I can easily say that there is a need to reclaim "the W-word" just because its maligning has been part of the whole campaign of prejudice against non-Judeo-Christian faiths and women in general, the magic/magick issue is even closer to my heart for the simple fact that needing to differentiate between the two is a silly thing. Look at the definition of magic:
magic (màj´îk) noun
1.The art that purports to control or forecast natural events,
effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.
2.a. The practice of using charms, spells, or rituals to attempt to
produce supernatural effects or control events in nature. b. The
charms, spells, and rituals so used.
3.The exercise of sleight of hand or conjuring for entertainment.
4.A mysterious quality of enchantment: "For me the names of
those men breathed the magic of the past" (Max Beerbohm).
adjective
1.Of, relating to, or invoking the supernatural: "stubborn
unlaid ghost/That breaks his magic chains at curfew time" (John Milton).
2.Possessing distinctive qualities that produce unaccountable or
baffling effects.
verb, transitive
magicked, magicking, magics
To produce or make by or as if by magic.
[Middle English magik, from Old French magique, from Late Latin
magica, from Latin magicê, from Greek magikê, from
feminine of magikos, of the Magi, magical, from magos, magician,
magus. See magus.]*
(Ignoring that little zinger about "purports"), it seems clear to me that we have a definite trend here of defining magic as being related to the supernatural (not so much outside of nature, but beyond it). And we have defined "stage magic" as being "slight of hand or conjuring for entertainment". I've always found legere de main (French for slight of hand) to be a fine name. It certainly sounds more mysterious and dramatic than "magic". When things going beyond "simple" slight of hand, we call it "conjuring" or "illusion". Then let's use those terms. I really fail to see why we need to call these things "magic". And if we're not calling them magic, then we are free from any confusion when we call the practice of "supernatural" arts in conjunction with rituals and spells and such, "magic". And thus there is no need to add the extraneous "k" to the word.
While you're perusing this site, you will notice that this is indeed the convention I use in discussing my magical practices.
None of this is meant to indicate to any person or group of people that they must or must not use a given term as I have defined it here. Mine is not the only dictionary in the world. But, having seen these issues debated many a time by many groups of people with widely diverse opinions, and having myself remained silent (for the most part), I've given them a considerable amount of thought. And indeed, I would like to some day in our (hopefully) not-so-distant future have the luxury of rewriting every dictionary on the planet so that there would be no more days of someone going to the dictionary in their public library and being told that a Witch was a "handmaiden of Satan". But as I have discovered, it is as difficult for any one word to cover all of the many variations of people and beliefs that it would need to cover, as it is for all of those people to give up who they are to perfectly fit those definitions.
So, I'm in whole-hearted agreement with anyone who says people should use the terms they feel are appropriate. Just as long as I don't end up with someone telling me that I am something other than what I am, or that I am not something, when I believe I am.
In a way, it would be nice to be able to identify myself as neatly as saying: I'm a Southern Baptist or an Orthodox Jew (or a Druidess). But that would also mean that I would have to define myself by those same concrete terms, and I refuse to do that. I'll take the middle road and hope that it will always be my choice to say who I am, even in the details.
A rose (white or otherwise) by any other name should smell as sweet....
*Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.