                    Wiccan Shock Value?


To be quite honest <grin>, I couldn't care less why he chose or didn't choose
to use the words!  I use Witch and Wiccan because that's what I am.  To me,
Witch is a more hereditary title, it's something you ARE rather than something
you DO.  Wiccan has to do with my lineage, and the fact that most of my rituals
are based on the information taught by Sanders and Gardner.  Why SHOULD I
change them?  I've been using them for 5 years now, I'm quite comfortable with
them, and have no negative feelings from them.  People have,
for the most part, been using them such at *least* since GBG began using them,
possible earlier.  I use the term coven because that's what my group is.  I
dislike the term Grove, and a group is just a group of people...it's such a
generic term.  We are a coven, pure and simple: a group of people who practice
the same basic precepts together.  That's what it means to me.

          Although I use a crystal ball, cauldron, tarot cards, and such
other "witchy" implements, I tend not to overstate that fact.  In fact,
personally, I see my use of all but the cauldron as being *outside* of my
practice of Craft.  I've been taught that one can use whatever tools one feels
comfortable with, however they are STILL only tools.  I can certainly do a full
Circle and be happy with it, even if I don't have an athame, or candles,
or altar, or anything!  Anyone who is bound to working with those things is
definitely not being taught right IMNSHO.  It's FINE to work with tools...I use
them all the time, and I *like* using them.  I enjoy the drama of ritual,
which for me evokes a sense of child-like wonder which I find necessary for a
good ritual.  But I'm not bound to use them...and I teach that to my students,
too.  I had one recently get really upset because she had to do a Circle at
home and had no athame.  She was convinced that she couldn't Cast because of
it.  It took me quite a while to explain that it's only an extension of self.
It's important, I think, to show the difference between using something because
you LIKE to, and using something because you NEED to.  I refer to my ritual
tools, robes, and regalia as my Dumbo's Feather...meanwhile admitting that in
*some* categories I still need that confidence booster <grin>!


Allyson Taylor.

