Getting Started Tips
Read these 10 Getting Started Tips tips to make your life smarter, better, faster and wiser. Each tip is approved by our Editors and created by expert writers so great we call them Gurus. LifeTips is the place to go when you need to know about Wicca tips and hundreds of other topics.
Books For The Beginning Wiccan
Margot Adler's book "Drawing Down The Moon, Witches, Druids, Goddess Worshipers and Other Pagans In America Today" (Penguin 1997) Describes the life of Wiccan and other pagan practitioners in modern America.
Scott Cunningham books: "Wicca A Guide For The Solitary Practioner" (Lwellyn Publishing 1990), and "Living Wicca:A Furthe Guide For The Solitary Practitioner (Lwellyn Publishing 1993) are a great resource for Wiccan's, with spells and descriptions on how to foster a healthy spirit.
Silver Ravenwolf is a respected author in the Wiccan community with four titles that are easily located on Amazon.com. Most Wiccan practitioners highly recommend this author.
New Wiccans
Wicca is an ancient religion of natural beauty and grace. It surpasses the strict conventions of other religions to accept all persons who wish to learn without restraint. At its core, Wicca is more than a set of prayer-spells. It is becoming one with the forces of nature in an honest manner. To truly become Wiccan, one must learn to shed the conventions and constraints of formal religions and accept that we know very little about the forces of life. Formal religions deliver rules on how to live life, where Wiccas simply believe in living your life as a natural force.
New Wiccans
Wicca is an ancient religion of natural beauty and grace. It surpasses the strict conventions of other religions to accept all persons who wish to learn without restraint. At its core, Wicca is more than a set of prayer-spells. It is becoming one with the forces of nature in an honest manner. To truly become Wiccan, one must learn to shed the conventions and constraints of formal religions and accept that we know very little about the forces of life. Formal religions deliver rules on how to live life, where Wiccas simply believe in living your life as a natural force.
Wicca: Find Your Familiar
There are many spells in Wicca available on the Internet to find your familiar. However, it is better if you create your own prayer-spell to find your familiar. This is part of the Wiccan discipline, the ability to develop your own spells. You may not be ready for this yet, so please proceed with caution. Very often Wiccans find that their familiar-spell leads them to an animal they considered their favorite or they already have as a pet--the most common familiar is a feline. In some cases, your familiar will come to you without you even knowing it, or even casting a spell. This is because familiars are spiritual creatures that know to seek us out. If you have an animal hanging around your home that just won't leave, this may be your familiar.
Check out "SpellWeaving" by Sally Morningstar
Devil-free Craft - Is devil worship part of the Wicca religion?
One of the most common misconceptions about the Wicca religion is that it involves devil worship. On the contrary, there is no satanic form in Wicca, no evil to blame for life's low points. Wiccans believe in balance, not dichotomy, meaning that everything has its place and purpose; nothing is "good" or "bad", per se, except perhaps on a situational basis: for a mundane example, food is neither good nor bad, but it is "good" when you are hungry and "bad" when you are full (or perhaps on a diet). Practicing Wicca involves putting one's life (including the environment) in good order, and the concept of evil or a devil figure does not enter into this way of life at all.
The Wiccan Rede
Most Wiccans follow a principle called the Wiccan Rede, which states, "An it harm none, do as you will."
This means that the religion puts no limitations on the practitioner except for the obligation to not hurt anyone - including the practitioner!
Wiccan or Witch? - Are modern witchcraft and wiccan religion the same?
A lot of people harbor the question, "Is being Wiccan the same as being a Witch?" The answer to this is both yes and no.
The wicca religion is generally thought of as a form of modern witchcraft. However, there are some people who consider themselves Witches that don't consider themselves Wiccan. Likewise, some Wiccans don't like the term "Witch" because they feel it connects them with a negative stereotype. Still others use the term interchangeably.
Really, it is a matter of preference how you use them for yourself. Just be sure not to interchange these titles when speaking to someone else who practices unless they do it first ... otherwise, you could unknowingly offend a Wiccan by calling him or her a Witch, or vice versa.
Wicca in a Nutshell
Wicca is a gentle, earth-based religion. While there are many different paths within this religion, most Wiccans believe that Divinity is both masculine and feminine, and all Wiccans revere the earth and nature as sacred and divine.
Beginning Wicca
No matter what you may have heard, there are two steps that are important to get started with Wicca, and these do not involve spells, tools, rituals, or initiation by a coven or coven member.
1) Read! This is incredibly important. In Wicca, knowledge is power. Whether you are a member of a Wicca coven or a solitary practitioner, there is always more to learn about Wicca. The more you know, the more powerful you are, so the more you know about Wicca traditions and Wicca practices, the more success you'll have with it.
2) Spend time with nature. Get to know it and respect it. Watch it, breathe it, learn from it. This is a hands-on type of study, the results of which you won't get from books.
If you follow both of these guidelines, you're well on your way!
Sex and Wicca
Sexuality for Wiccans is a sacred thing. Wiccans believe that sex is a gift from Divinity to be shared in love and trust, and to be reveled in as a pleasurable experience. However, Wiccans do not abuse sex. While Wicca allows sex before marriage, its main tenet is that sex (as all things) should be practiced out of love between consenting individuals. Therefore, forced sex (rape, sexual abuse of children or animals, etc.) and other misuses of sex (such as using sex to gain a position of power) are never tolerated.
This means that Wiccans do not practice perverse sexual orgies in their rites, nor does any legitimate Wiccan group require sexual acts for membership. Clothing is sometimes optional at Wiccan/Pagan gatherings (you may hear the term "skyclad" to describe nudity in these situations), but this is symbolic of freedom and of connection to nature, and does not take on any sort of sexualized meaning.
