Opinion About NeoWicca

[Myrrdin Greyoak]

I have considered myself a a Wiccan now for twenty-two years and recently I joined a forum, which at this time shall remain nameless, anyway, after perusing some of the posts there, they seem to have the opinion that since someone wasn't initiated by another Wiccan then that person was not Wiccan, and they kept throwing around the word NeoWiccan, which is a term I had never heard before. Any thoughts on this?

[Siona]

Wicca was originally an oath-bound, initiatory mystery religion. Being initiated and actually experiencing the mysteries of the religion first hand was considered necessary to the religion - it's all what made Wicca, Wicca. There are some traditional Wiccans who still hold this opinion.

Now obviously a lot of information surrounding Wicca has been made public, and you can even read quite a bit of the Gardenrian book of shadows online, and that's lead to Wicca becoming more wide-spread and accessible. In my opinion there's both pros and cons to that. Obviously a lot of people feel a spiritual connection to these newer forms of Wicca (that's all neo means, new), and that's good. The downside is there are those who feel that Wicca is whatever they want it to be, and that leads to a watering down/muddying of the tradition, which can be problematic at times... Most traditional Wiccans I've met don't care if someone wants to practice solitary/eclectic/whatever, so long as they aren't claiming to be of a specific tradition they were never initiated into, but like I said, others feel there is too much missing from the more 'public' form of Wicca for it to really be considered Wicca, so they sort of distance it with terms like neo-Wicca or whatever else. It's one of those topics that there's been tons of debate over through the years.