What Good Is Wicca As A Religion?

What good is Wicca as a religion? What good is Wicca when it doesn’t or can’t provide rote words of comfort for when a loved one suddenly passes or diagnoses of cancer? We don’t have any sacred texts that tell us what happens when we die, no central authorities to direct our religion as a whole…So what good is this religion if it doesn’t or can’t make us feel better when life sucks?

For those of us in Traditional Wiccan spaces, we often practice and center our rites around a specific mythos, and usually ones that contain the elements of Love, Life, Death and Rebirth. I do really believe that the rites we observe are more about us better understanding our places within the universe than understanding our gods. Our gods do not need our rituals, but I do believe that there’s something in us as humans that make us desire ritual. Not all of us, mind you, but many of us.

Traditional Wicca usually offers experiences through a degree system that explores what are called “The Mysteries.” The rituals and themes of these Mysteries can vary in many ways, but they largely explore themes surrounding Birth, Death, and Rebirth. These Mysteries help us orient our places in the universe and experiences as mortal beings. Wiccans condense the Mysteries into rituals that practitioners can experience and reflect upon with other members in their traditions. These rituals are deliberately designed to place the practitioner in a controlled instance of whatever Mystery is being explored. Let’s take “Death”, for example. It’s my thinking that rituals centered around symbolic experiences of Death prepare us for the actual moments we encounter real and physical Death. I firmly believe these rituals help us “practice” for the big moments, particularly Death.

Peering into the Abyss

I believe that to experience the Divine is to encounter the ineffable, so what rite or ritual can explain ineffability? Perhaps none, but they can provide us glimpses of understanding. None of us can truly understand Death until we’ve experienced it ourselves but we can prepare ourselves for the inevitable moment of our individual demises. In this way, I do think that Wicca is “good” and even great. The Wiccans that I know aren’t afraid of exploring and discussing Death and they often have a healthy way of processing it. We also have the privilege of processing it with other members of our tradition who can help us reorient our painful experiences through the lens of our tradition.

These confrontations with things and themes such as Death prepares a person better than the person who avoids thinking about Death at all. In Traditional Wicca, we are confronted with Death in nearly every rite, and so Death may come as much less of a surprise in life as a result. Practicing and observing sabbats like Beltane, Samhain, Midsummer, and Candlemas is practice for when our human lives butt up against the realities of our mortal existence. Another reality exists where I’m totally wrong about all of this but my religion makes room for error. There are no absolutes in Wicca. All that I know is that I know nothing.

Religion is for Humans — not Gods

So what good is religion if it’s wrong about Life and Death and the Afterlife? Well, it can still connect us to other people and it celebrates our very human experiences through celebrations of births, entrances into adulthood, unions with our soulmates, confirmations/initiations into our spiritual communities, reconciliations with those we’ve wronged or who have wronged us, celebrations of vocational and spiritual roles within our communities, dissolution of relationships, sickness, and eventually death. If your religion doesn’t, at least, offer something in most of those areas then what good is it in terms of it acknowledging the Human Condition? Religion is created by and for humans, not gods.

Each one of the above human experiences are transitions, and Wiccan rituals mark transitions. We move from one moon phase to another (esbats), from one season to another (sabbats), and from one spiritual role to another (initiations). Your religion should be a guiding light that leads you through your life’s transitions — those painful and sometimes chaotic moments but also those amazing and joyous ones. Otherwise, what good is religion? What good is Wicca?