The Religion

In the beginning, before there was the exsistence of time, there was an all-powerful entity, a force encompassing everything. It is all, knows all, and sees all. It is the universe and all of precreation, known to us as The One. The One exsisted, always changing, until one day space moved. The One molded energy into two equal but opposite forms, creating the Goddess and the God.
The Goddess and God thanked The One, but realized they were surrounded by darkness. They were alone. The One had given them the power to create universes. Through their joy of being alive, the Goddess and God used their energy to form gases to make the sun, moon, and planets. Then they splashed countless stars and other worlds throughout the universe. The beauty of the light produced from their creations caused them to rejoice and love. From this love came the seeds of life for all living things, as we are one with the animals and plants. As man began to destroy eachother, the Goddess and God realized we needed to know They were there for us. So the Goddess chose the moon as a symbol of Herself, and the God chose the sun. This way, we can always see them, in case we ever forget They're there. When the thunder crashes, They dance to remind those of us who have forgotten, and those of us who remember, that They are still there and love us always.
The first known religion was called Shamanism. It exsisted before civilization or written language. They were medicine people, both male and female. They performed magick and cast spells for the things that were important to their time, such as having a good hunt, finding what they needed for food or shelter, or healing the sick and wounded. The Shamans were the first knowledgable people, this gave them power. The Shamans obtained their ritual power through natural hallucinogenic substances. (This was before man knew these were also harmful, we now use chants and dance to acheive this alternate state af awareness). Even though they mainly used hallucinogens, the Shamans also used dance, music both man-made and natural, such as the roar of an ocean. This helped them to link with the giver and taker, their fellow brother, the land. Shamanism survived for many years, always changing, as is the way of the world, until it evolved into the many branches of what we know as Pagan religions. A few of these were the Druids from the ancient Celtic world in Europe and Ireland, Buddhism from Tibet, and of course Wicca, which didn't come around for many more years. These Pagan religions exsisted for years as the commonplace religions of the time, that is, until the introduction of Christianity. When Christianity was introduced to the modern world, every other religion was seen as the enemy. They were seen as a threat to the Christians and their almighty, one and only male God. The Catholic Church ended up leading a disasterous murder spree, known as the witch trials. The witch trials began with three girls in Massachusetts who reportedly dabbled in the occult and cursed a family. This led to a worldwide fear of Pagans and Witches. This fear of the unknown kept the anti-witch laws in effect for hundreds of years. Slowly, the laws began to disappear as people began to wisen up. The very last anti-witchcraft law was repealed from England in 1951. The laws may be gone, but the fear and hatred still exsist. After the witch trials had ended, Pagans were still afraid of the discrimination they would suffer at the hands of others if they were found out. Paganism was in danger of dying out.
Gerald Gardener is the man often credited with bringing the religion of Wicca to the United States in the mid-1900's. He had a deep interest in the occult. When he discovered the secretive small group of Pagans that called themselves Witches, he knew he had found what he was searching for. Gardener was initated into the original Wiccan group by a woman named Dorthy Clutterbuck. Gardener eventually went on to form his own branch of Wicca known as Gardenarian.
Wicca has since been growing quickly. It has gone from a small, extremely discreet group of people to a huge group with many different branches and over a million different followers in America in merely the four decades after it was introduced here. As Wiccans open up to the world, new members are finding this religion for the first time. Now it is fairly easy to find people, or at least books, that deal with the subject. So, Wicca continues to grow, despite the attempt by others to keep it down.

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