It's hard to define what Wicca really is, and it's even harder to define what it is to 'be Wiccan'. It's easy enough to list off what being Wiccan is Not, but trying to explain to someone what this path is really like; this is where words fail. How do you explain something that is, by its very nature, both intuitive and deeply personal? Intuition, like empathic communication, is inherantly non-verbal. And yet this is the medium by which we must express our deepest emotions.
Wicca is an emotion. When I was a child, it was a feeling in my gut that there was magick in the trees. When I was in my teens, it was the determined sense that I AM NOT SEPERATE. As I grow older and more accustomed to the word, it becomes a quiet sense of the undefined.
And just as it's hard to explain Wicca, it's even harder, sometimes to be Wiccan. Endless questions about 'spellz' and dirty looks from strangers are one thing, but friends turning away is something quite different altogether. Sometimes it would be so easy to just forget it and walk away. But then you look in your heart and you know, and you know, and you know that this is right for you.
Wicca is the feeling you get as you walk along the edge of a forest in the evening with a gentle breeze caressing your face. It is the smell of fresh-cut grass and rising dew. It is what causes you to take in your breath as you catch a glimpse of the full moon. It is standing in your backyard and feeling the Goddess come stand beside you. It is looking at something socially taboo and saying 'Yes, I see the validity of that', and then feeling the movement within you.
But it is more than even these. Wicca is a way of life; a sense of being. It is the screen through which you look at the world. And these things can't be described and can't be explained. It is something you just know, and feel, and understand.
The most common mistake to make is thinking that Wicca is 'more logical' than other religions. It isn't. Wicca is an emotion, and as such, can only make sense to the person that feels it. How would you explain the colour 'blue' to a blind person? How would you explain Beethoven to a deaf person? Both can be explained empirically, in terms of photons and sound waves. But to even begin to approach what they are you must use emotional language. That's not to say that others are incapable of understanding what it is to 'be Wiccan'. But it is inherantly difficult to express an emotion with any clarity if the audience does not share in it.
As a community, we lack even the fundamental unity of belief. We cannot decide if we are a religion, a belief system, a personal spirituality, or a part-time career. Some believe in one All-encompassing 'god'. Others believe in seperate, individual Gods. Still others believe in only a Goddess. Some cast the circle this way, others cast it that way. There's Sun God/Moon Goddess, Earth Mother/Sky Father, and Earth Father/Sky Mother. It's a wonder we can say Wicca is anything! And yet gather 100 Wiccans into a room together, and all will be able to both express and understand what 'being Wiccan' is. Gather three people of different religions together, and even with a thorough understanding of the others you will be hard pressed to have each truly understand the others' spirituality. This is because each does not share the emotional syntax of the others. Each one has their own overtones, and that cannot truly be shared.
It is very difficult for an emotion to exist if you do not believe in it (in that deep subconscious place you can't control). If you don't believe in a given religion you can never truly understand what it means to 'be' that religion. You may implicitly understand the religion itself, but never as a member, if you are not. This is only common sense.
So when accusations and half-truths fly overhead, there is no need to spew forth facts and documentation. We can't be understood by our rituals or our beliefs or whether we cast the circle this way or that way. Wicca must be defined in terms of our emotions. And these we cannot name, for we are more than the sum of our parts.
