Why do wicca's call themselves witches?

Originally posted by Jakko

You allready shared that a ton of times, are you proud of it or something?
Of course there are narrow minded hypocrites in this world.
There are so many christians that it's very likely a part of them is just dumb.

You went on a generalizing tour a long time ago Lady, not all christians are like that you know.

Calm down...I know the truth is hard to learn......but you really should at least know your own religion! I understand not all Christians are like that, but the only ones I ever seem to run into are the ones like you.....other than one very nice lady here that u2ued me who was Christian, and very open minded...

Originally posted by LadyV
I know the truth is hard to learn......

The truth? I do not think you are slightly aware of the truth Lady.

but you really should at least know your own religion! I understand not all Christians are like that, but the only ones I ever seem to run into are the ones like you.....

Like me? I have never been unrespectfull in any way towards you, yet you generalize and spread prejudice and ignorance about Christianity, which is my religion. Don't act like a victim when you're not Lady, all my questions were honest and because I wanted to know more about wiccas/witches.

You are the one who decided to stop being open-minded about Christians, not the other way around.

jakko Respectfully, I strongly suggest that you do some serious study on the history of Christianity...You asked me, and then got upset at my opinion.

You can lead a horse to water but you cant make him drink LadyV. We've mearly stated well know, documented facts about the intrigration of other religions beliefs and practices into Christianity, and all about its rather bloody, manipulative, and corrupt past, he denies it and refuses to acknowledge it, oh well, he's accepting ignorance, nothing more.

you should read my post, which no one replied to

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Let the DJ spin while I BREAK IT DOWN

I have never been un(dis)respectfull in any way towards you, yet you generalize and spread prejudice and ignorance about Christianity, which is my religion.

Now here is YOUR quote, where in ITALICS you generalize her religion..WICCA as "strange" or "wierd".

The religion itself, as you explain it, seems very friendly and even combinable with Christianity for example, why bother giving the name wicca/witch to yourself when what you believe in is not so special or weird at all.

There ya are...

Jakko, christianity has no real holiday, all days are stolen from others. The son of god? Those come from the Greeks/Romans. Giant stories, also Greek/Roman and Norse. Magician doing things like walking on water or rasing dead, all Greek/Roman. Of course, christianity doesn't even have all the books that were written. The ones left out answer about every question ever asked and not answered. Like what about people who died before Jesus? Well, Jesus went to the underworld and brought the good people to heaven. If Adam and Eve were first humans, who did the sons mate with? Their sisters. What did Jesus do as a child? Several books banned for answering this. Was Mary a Virgin? Nope, a proud mother of many, 2-3 of them became Disciples to Jesus. Mary Magdeline? Not a whore like the church tells you, but the lover of Jesus and the leader of the 7 FEMALE disciples. Gee, at least Wicca/Witchcraft doesn't have books that leave out important things like that. Or that Judas did not betray Jesus, but was sent to the palace guards by Jesus to turn Jesus in. The silver? Back then there was no police, the people were expected to turn criminals in and were payed for the work. But lets not have facts banned by the church get in the way, shall we?

Whoooooah guys hang on a minute I think this is getting a wee bit too personal!

I just want to say that Christianity is my religion too, and yes Christians HAVE done horrifying things in the past but losts of people distort their religion to suit themselves. But the fact is if you look at the general message of the bible, our God is a God of love and forgiveness. LOTS of so-called Christians however are not neccessarily people of love and forgiveness, but I find it the same with most other religions. I believe Christianity has helped me to become a better person, and I believe whole heartedly in the qualities of kindess, patience, forgiveness, tolerance and respect. But then again arent those qualities taught and admired by practically all the other religions including Wicca? Sorry if they stole your holidays or burnt your kin, but the people that did that are just that-- Crappy PEOPLE. Christianity isnt a crappy religion. Or at least I dont think so anyways and it saddens me, ladyV that all the Christians you've ever come across are close minded morons. For the record I have nothing against Wiccans.

I promise we're not all that bad. I think if you look closer you'll find some of us are pretty allright people

Originally posted by Seeking Soul
Christianity isnt a crappy religion. Or at least I dont think so anyways and it saddens me, ladyV that all the Christians you've ever come across are close minded morons. For the record I have nothing against Wiccans.

I promise we're not all that bad.

I think if you look closer you'll find some of us are pretty allright people

My problem is that I hear how rvil I am from Christians because of my faith, from people that judge me:
��Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother��s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother��s eye.�� (Mat. 7:1-5)
From people that det & then sit up in church on Sunday
Proverbs chapter 31 (TEV)
1 These are the solemn words which King Lemuel's mother said to him:
2 "You are my own dear son, the answer to my prayers. What shall I tell you?
4 Listen, Lemuel. Kings should not drink wine or have a craving for alcohol. 5 When they drink, they forget the laws and ignore the rights of people in need.
6 Alcohol is for people who are dying, for those who are in misery. 7 Let them drink and forget their poverty and unhappiness.
Galatians chapter 5 (NLT)
16 I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. Then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The old sinful nature loves to do evil, which is just opposite from what the Holy Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are opposite from what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, and your choices are never free from this conflict. ...
19 When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: sexual immorality, impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure, 20 idolatry, participation in demonic activities, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, divisions, the feeling that everyone is wrong except those in your own little group, 21 envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other kinds of sin.

Think pornography is wonderful entertainment:
�h Matt. 5:27, ��You have heard that it was said, ��You shall not commit adultery��; 28 but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in his heart."
�h 1 Cor. 6:18, "Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body."
�h Col. 3:5, "Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry."

and in general do not follow their own religion's rules. People do not follow every commandment that God gave to the Israelites, such as not eating pork, not working on the Sabbath, not divorcing (New Testament), and not wearing clothes woven of two materials. This makes me wonder by what right we can decide which commandments are not to be followed. I believe what has really happened is that the concept of Christianity has changed to fit the beliefs of the people who practice it. Most Christians I have met have ignore issues that are raised that they can't explain. This implies that Christianity must be viewed as perfect, and that no unexplained or inconsistent areas can be allowed. Typical responses are that one can not know the mind of God, or that one can not reach God using the mind alone. People seem unwilling to address the inconsistencies in Christianity that have resulted from its evolution over the centuries. In other words, most devout Christians change the subject when they are forced to experience cognitive dissonance resulting from the conflicting assertions of their religion. I feel strongly that if you are going to follow a religion, you can not pick out what parts you want to follow, and throw out the one you don't want to, or the ones too hard to adhere to.....many of those doing the things I mentioned above, will be stone cold adamant against gays because "the bible says blaa, blaa, blaa"
It's not really that Christians aren't "all right" people......but so many Christians are hypocrites condemning others when they commit sins themselves according to their own bible. I hate to souns snotty here, but I am making a point...... many need to clean themselves up before trying to clean up everyone else. JMHO

Originally posted by Yngwie
There ya are...

Before misunderstanding and misexplaining what I said, you might want to read my post one more time and think it through.
Obviously a lot of people find wiccas strange or weird, when what LadyV says about her religion is not strange or weird at all, in fact it sounds like a happy, respectfull, positive religion.
Capiche?

Originally posted by James the Lesser
Jakko, christianity has no real holiday, all days are stolen from others.

You didn't really look into this, which explains your lack of knowledge.
It's sad people talk about things they have not really investigated, you're not only wrong, you're the reason a lot of others are wrong as well.

The son of god? Those come from the Greeks/Romans.

What? So because some other legend/religion somewhere else also had a "son of God" any son of God coming after that is imitated?
You're ignorant.
There's more than enough proof that Jesus walked on earth, he did not claim to be the son of God because he knew all the greek and roman stories, you're just full of it, as usually.

As for the rest of your post... Sad.
You are limited in your thinking, and untill you decide to actually find things out on your own instead of instantly believing all these anti-christian sites with their twisted facts and flawed wisdom, you're never going to be able to have an objective opinion about Christianity.

LadyV:

Everyone is a sinner in one way or another.
For everything we can judge someone else, God can judge us.
Some sins are worse than others, but who besides God, knows what sins are how bad exactly?
We should not focuss on eachother or God in a negative way, instead of detecting eachothers flaws we should detect positive things in eachother and ourselves.

Of course a lot of people judged you, a lot of Christians judge others a lot.
It's human nature to want to detect flaws in others so we won't have to face our own stupidities, but God did not want us to become like this.

It's not easy to break lose from the desire to see negative and wrong things about other people, but as long as we just try, God will be on our side and help us achieve a better way of thinking and being.

I am honestly sorry that a lot of Christians judge you, allthough I must say it's not weird, neither surprising that a Christian will be rather surprised when he hears someone labelling himself/herself as a witch, without any knowledge regarding what meaning this individual gave to the word "witch".
You don't have to hide who you are or what you stand for, but provoking someones "judging" is not the best way either.
As with everything, there's a way in between of those extremes, and I guess it will be your job to find this balance.

In the end Christianity is about love, and in my opinion has quite some similarities with what you believe in Lady. As I see it now, Wiccas worship "the creation" instead of "the creator".

In LadyV's defense, I've been in that situation where you become a more vocal pagan, and the barrage of hateful mailings and messages can be extremely overwhelming.

I think MOST Pagans/Wiccans realize that not all Christians are evil, but when you spend hours each day trying to justify the actions of Christians who really aren't very "Christian" it becomes easy to generalize.

Good examples of Christians become few and far between when you are openly Pagan.
How can these people be so evil while telling me I'm the bad one?!? If you have to keep asking yourself that about anyone, you get defensive. It is like all the people who are now seeing terrorists and speaking out against all muslims because they are all evil and trying to destroy non-muslim groups. (there are many christians who act in similar ways every day, killing and all...)
It is easy to start seeing that mindset as a Pagan, but the people attacking you are Christian, so sometimes unfortunately you have to prove your worth as a good Christian, just the same as we have to prove our worth as a good Pagan.

Originally posted by Seeking Soul
Whoooooah guys hang on a minute I think this is getting a wee bit too personal!

I just want to say that Christianity is my religion too, and yes Christians HAVE done horrifying things in the past but losts of people distort their religion to suit themselves. But the fact is if you look at the general message of the bible, our God is a God of love and forgiveness. LOTS of so-called Christians however are not neccessarily people of love and forgiveness, but I find it the same with most other religions. I believe Christianity has helped me to become a better person, and I believe whole heartedly in the qualities of kindess, patience, forgiveness, tolerance and respect. But then again arent those qualities taught and admired by practically all the other religions including Wicca? Sorry if they stole your holidays or burnt your kin, but the people that did that are just that-- Crappy PEOPLE. Christianity isnt a crappy religion. Or at least I dont think so anyways and it saddens me, ladyV that all the Christians you've ever come across are close minded morons. For the record I have nothing against Wiccans.

I promise we're not all that bad.

I think if you look closer you'll find some of us are pretty allright people

Not all Christians are bad, just like not all Islamics are bad. It seems like the problem with people is they take these fairly good morale goods, and they start reading these books constantly, and they pretty much go crazy. You got these zealots running around ready and willing to start new cruscades and practically start crucifying "heathens" on site

And you know, people start becoming so fanatical in their beliefs, they end up fighting eachother over whos beliefs are right. I think Chris Rock said it best. "The problem is, you take a good idea, and make a belief structure over it. An idea can always be changed, but beliefs can't, people die for it, kill for it, all over a belief."

Yes Jakko, imitated. They are not a new religon, they are a bunch of old things rolled into one. And guess what? Why do you think Christmas is only 2 days away from Yule? Why Easter is only 2-3 days from Ostara? A coincidence? No. The church used those dates to try and get followers. How? You don't celebrate those days, you can celebrate ours. You have shown nothing but "My god's dick is bigger then your gods dick" as proof of anything. It doesn't work that way. It has been discussed on ATS countless times how christians have no real holidays, stories, or ledgends. I think if you do a boolean(sp?) search it will help you.

Only thing original about christianity is, hmmm, the dark ages? No dark ages when jews in power, just when the church takes over and kills millions in a few invasions. Oh I'm sorry, "Holy Crusades"/ "Holy Inquisitions", not invasions/mass murder.

Originally posted by James the Lesser
Yes Jakko, imitated. They are not a new religon, they are a bunch of old things rolled into one. And guess what? Why do you think Christmas is only 2 days away from Yule? Why Easter is only 2-3 days from Ostara? A coincidence? No. The church used those dates to try and get followers.

You truly understand nothing of how history led to the situation we have today. You use your own ignorance to trashtalk christianity.
What a joke.

It doesn't work that way. It has been discussed on ATS countless times how christians have no real holidays, stories, or ledgends. I think if you do a boolean(sp?) search it will help you.

Pffft, you obviously did not pay attention in any of those threads.
I could find loads of sites for you that explain why your narrow mind is wrong once again. ( www.comereason.org... and www.comereason.org... )

Only thing original about christianity is, hmmm, the dark ages? No dark ages when jews in power, just when the church takes over and kills millions in a few invasions. Oh I'm sorry, "Holy Crusades"/ "Holy Inquisitions", not invasions/mass murder.

Heh, you're truly and ignorant, disrespectfull, fruitcake, just out to insult christians and spread lies about Christianity.
Let's not keep on wasting time on you, go play with your guns.

[edit on 4-9-2004 by Jakko]

Oh no, how dare I bring up the what, 4 crusades into the Middle East. How dare I bring up the Dark Ages where people were killed left and right for things like Round Earth, or not the center of the universe, or for owning a cat. How dare I bring up the Spanish Inquisition. Jakko, Witchcraft does not have a bad past, Christianity has a huge horrible past, couldn't go 10 years without a new war/inquisition/slaughter.

And again, you prove nothing, just come up saying how I know nothing and you are right because you said so. You have no proof, I do. Boolean search ATS, it is all over it. Would post some of it, but ATS has rules about posting the same thing over and over and over and over.

BTW, I will go play with my guns. Take my .22 and test the sight on it, make sure it still accurate at 100ft.

You know, I usually don't beat a dead horse, but just to help Jakko open ignorant eyes, I'll actually provide some nice little reading material about the theft of pagan holidays

www.biblicalunitarian.com...

Church history shows a gradual assimilation of Pagan ideas into Christianity, brought about mostly by the Roman or Western Church, which became a political/religious extension of the Roman Empire. Foremost among the pagan ideas was the adoption of the trinity doctrine into the dogma of the church. Pagan holidays (holy days) were also incorporated into tradition by "Christianizing" them, thus we end up with Christmas being celebrated on Dec 25th; Easter, which combined the resurrection of Christ with the pagan goddess Ester, and Halloween combined with All Saint's Day.

z.about.com...

A very popular spring holiday, Easter has roots not only in Jewish and Christian traditions, but also in ancient pagan beliefs as well. As a matter of fact, although Easter is ostensibly viewed as a Christian holiday today, much of it is arguably more pagan than Christian - and even many of the Christian elements have pagan parallels as well. As a consequence, some Christians don't really celebrate Easter, believing that the Christian takeover of this pagan holiday resulted in an unacceptable adoption of pagan themes, beliefs, and practices.

theres just two links of hundreds, look it up, stop embracing your closed minded ignorance of your own religion. And I'm not even going to bother to going into how brutal and evil the churches past was during the middle and dark ages, it was more like a terrorist group then a religion.

Don't forget the damage the church did to the advancement of humans. They banned everything. Banning books started with the church. Think about what would be without the church. Galileo never would have been threatened with death unless he lied about the fact the earth is not the center of everything. If the church never slaughtered thousands of scientists and inventors for things that were ungodly. hell, they ket that up even with things like the radio, plane, car, and jazz music. All declared by the church to be satanic. Hell, in the bible itself it talks about people living to be hundreds of years old. Then the church is in power and lucky to live to the ripe old age of 20.

Medicine, those poor witches. Witches were the first doctors, pharmacists, psychologists, surgeons, so forth. Church wiped them out.

Women use to have power, if the church never happened women would probably be equal to men. Hell, no church bet that there would have been countless women presidents. But they weren't even allowed to vote till the 1920's. But church in power, women become the slaves they are told to be in the bible. In fact, Bush appointed a judge that has written and teaches that part of the bible. Also believe in can't get pregnant unless you enjoyed the sex, so all rape victims are sluts if they claim to be pregnant after being raped. The bible was also used to keep slaves slaves.

Lets see, witches, no slavery, no wars, nothing. Tried using google, they didn't find anything. Only bad things I find are from christians stating the same things they always do. "Witches worship satan! They are evil, they casted a spell on me!" Of course, witches don't believe in satan, only chrsitians believe in satan.

Oh no, how dare I bring up the what, 4 crusades into the Middle East

actually i think it was 5, with 1 that only got as far as Byzantium, and another
that took place in the south of France against other christians from which the
much misquoted saying " kill them all let God sort them out" comes. as i recall
there was also a crusade contemplated against Scotland.

No, not all Christians are bad. I don't think anyone was trying to make that point. It's always the nutcases of a religion that make the rest look bad. But lots of us who are open with being a Witch, Wiccan, druid, etc. have been stalked, harrassed, had our property vandalized, and/or lost jobs because of fanatical Christians. We're the first ones they turn to when they need help, healing or divinatory advice, and they condemn us as "evil" immediately thereafter, conveniently overlooking their own hypocricy. So yes, Witches and pagans tend to get prickly when the "evil" and "devil worshipper" labels start flying, as RL experience has proven that persecution is quick to follow.

The pentagram is a symbol. Like any symbol, it can be twisted to evil purposes, as the Nazis did with the swastika (a sacred symbol in Hinduism). If you claim the pentagram is an evil symbol merely because it is inverted by some people, then the cross must also be called such for the same reasons. Arguments about who uses the pentagram upright or inverted are ultimately irrelevant, as in magical operations, the pentagram is dynamic, always in motion and operating in more than just two dimensions. There is no "upright" or "inverted" in space. And if a spell affecting the material were represented by a two-dimensional pentagram, it would have to be inverted.

Ok, 5. Also, the first christian Emperor, he had the Library of Alexandria DESTROYED! This had thee greatest literature of mankind in it, but destroyed for no the bible. Had thee greatest Art of mankind, but destroyed for they didn't just show Jesus or Mary and etc. Had thee greatest maps in existence of that time, destroyed. Alexanders body/casket? Well, body destroyed, the casket melted down.

Also, christians like to whine and cry about what the jews did to early christians. But guess who started the man vs lion? Chrisitans. When they took power there was no more gladiator vs gladiator, but gladiator vs jew with no weapons. Also, who was it that declared the Indians heathens and gave them small pox blankets? Sure as hell wasn't the witches or jews or mauslim or buddist or hindu.

Damn, for only being around for 2,000 they have a bad history.