WICCA Adherents view path as deeply personal

Practitioners see Wicca as a religion and lifestyle.
By CATHY SECKMAN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Sitting over coffee in a Boardman restaurant, Andrea Smith and Mary Johnson of Youngstown and Tracy Leigh of McDonald look like any ordinary group of friends.
Andrea is small and blonde, with a friendly smile. Mary is trim and neat, and looks like she could be president of Church Women United. Tracy is tall, with nicely done makeup and a mischievous air.
But they aren't ordinary women, and they certainly aren't churchgoers. They're witches.
More properly, they're Wiccans. Wicca is a polytheistic religion influenced by pre-Christian beliefs, that affirms the existence of male and female deities and emphasizes ritual observance of seasonal and life cycles. Wicca has been officially recognized as a religion in several state and federal court cases, as well as in the military.
Though Wicca is also protected under the First Amendment's tenet of freedom of religion, members often feel misunderstood and persecuted.
Andrea, Mary and Tracy describe Wicca as both a religious choice and a lifestyle choice.
"It's a calling," Andrea says. "Do we believe in God? Yes and no. We believe in the Goddess, who has a masculine side we call God. We believe in the Power of Three, or the three stages of the Goddess: maiden, mother, and crone."
"God is called different things in different faiths," Mary adds. "This is what works for us. People think Wicca is strange, but in Christianity there are snake handlers."
Variety of paths
Wicca has different paths, much as Christianity has branches such as Methodism and Catholicism.
Common Wiccan paths include Celtic, Druidic, Norse, Egyptian, Faery, Alexandrian and Dianic. Each path has its own gods and traditions. Some are more structured, and some require initiations, the term for a formal induction into a group of Wiccans, or coven.
Wicca includes both men and women, although Andrea, Tracy and Mary have encountered primarily women. Although the number of Wiccans in the nation is unknown, the three say about 40 to 50 people with Wiccan and related beliefs attend a monthly gathering arranged through Meetup.com, a site that promotes get-togethers of people with common interests.
Andrea and Tracy were raised Catholic; Mary, Presbyterian. All three said they embraced Wicca after not finding the answers they sought in mainstream religion.
Choosing a path -- deciding what one believes, and focusing on a particular branch of Wicca -- is an important decision that isn't taken lightly.
"This is my 13th year as a Wiccan," Andrea says, "and I've just now decided which path I want to take. Before this, nothing ever came right up and bumped me in the face, but now I've chosen a Celtic path."
In groups or alone
Some paths lead Wiccans to membership in covens, small, organized groups usually led by a high priestess that meet regularly for celebrations and focus on one branch of Wicca.
But not all Wiccans join covens. Mary estimates that two-thirds of the Wiccans she knows are solitaries. Neither she, Andrea nor Tracy has ever belonged to a coven, though Tracy visited one in Atlanta.
"I did not care for it," she says. "I respect the standardized ritual, but the people in charge kind of had the attitude, 'You do what I say.' Covens can be very constricting, and many times they're closed. You have to be sponsored by another witch to even attend a meeting. You don't just walk into a coven."
According to Andrea, covens often require a trial period of a year and a day before accepting new members.
Personal worship
For a solitary, the practice of Wicca seems to be a very personal and private thing. All three were reluctant to describe their devotions. They use candles, ceremonial bowls that can be filled with herbs and seeds, and an athame, or dagger. A Wiccan might ask the Goddess for safety, for guidance, or for blessings of unity, balance, or peace. Meditation is important to some Wiccans.
"You can take it as lightly or as seriously as you want," Tracy says. "Me, I'm a kitchen witch. My ceremonial bowl came from the dollar store. It just called me. And sure, I could be out there in my yard at midnight on the full moon, with the east wind behind me, clipping herbs with my athame, but I'm just as happy to go to the spice rack and take down some oregano."
Andrea says, "I do daily devotion to the Celtic goddesses and gods. I ritual on my own on the major sabbats [holidays], and then from time to time I will discuss spellcraft or problems with Wiccan friends."
There are eight holidays in the Wiccan year, according to the Web site Witchvox.com. They fall on the equinoxes and solstices, as well as on "cross-quarter" days in between those dates, and celebrate the cycles of life and the seasons.
"What I practice," Mary says, "may be completely different from what Andrea or Tracy practice. You do what's right for you. We're friends, and we might get together to make candles, but we probably wouldn't gather for Beltane [a holiday that falls near May 1 and celebrates fertility]. Not unless we became very close."
Sacred symbol
Most Wiccans, Andrea says, wear some piece of jewelry shaped as a pentacle, a five-pointed star important to Wiccan ritual. Andrea wears a ring, and Mary has a necklace. In Tracy's case, it's a tattoo on her upper chest. She kept losing the necklace.
"You develop a radar," Tracy says, "to find other witches. We're always looking for a pentacle."
Another thing most Wiccans have in common is a Book of Shadows, a blank book that they fill with meditations, rituals and personal thoughts.
Study is one of the core ways a Wiccan practices his or her religion.
"We're constantly in the pursuit of knowledge," Tracy says. "There's no witch-in-a-box kit to make it easy."
"We don't take our beliefs for granted," Mary adds. "Anything too easy is not going to work. We always read, study and learn more."
"Our religion," Andrea says, "helps to give our lives purpose.
"It's something you live with daily and with which you work to better yourself. Wicca has enriched my life inasmuch as I notice more about the earth and nature. I pay more attention to the seasons changing. It has made me much more open to everything, and it has given me inner peace."