Many are just as likely to dress in utterly innocuous ways-in the daily uniforms of, say, a single mother driving her kid to track practice, a grade school teacher, a tech entrepreneur, or a cashier at Trader Joe’s. They don’t wear pointy black hats or carry magic wands. But the women and men who consider themselves witches or pagans don’t always announce themselves in goth gear, tattoos, and piercings. Here are some facts about witches that may surprise you Some might honor specific gods and goddesses like Athena or Isis, while others may honor a nonspecific “god” and “goddess.” There isn’t “sin,” but there is an idea of karma: Good and bad things you do will come back around, one way or another.Īlthough traditions vary, many Wiccans and pagans follow something called the Wheel of the Year: an annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals, called sabbats, that take place on important astrological events like solstices and equinoxes. Some believe in reincarnation or an afterlife realm called Summerland, but there is no heaven or hell. There are many, many strains of paganism, but most share some core beliefs: They are polytheistic (meaning including multiple gods and goddesses) and nature-worshipping, and they believe that male and female forces have equal sway in the universe and that the divine can be found all around us.
Some pagans subscribe to new religions, belief systems invented out of whole cloth some practice traditions that claim ‘ancient’ roots but can be traced back only a few decades some found the Goddess through second-wave feminism, eager to place a Creatix at the center of the universe.” “Contemporary practices pieced together from the salvaged scraps of pre-Christian European religions, Western occult and Masonic societies, and forms of witchcraft. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play But wait, what is paganism exactly?Īs I write in my book, since the 1960s, the term “paganism” or “neo-paganism” has been used to refer to: In a survey published in 2019, sociologist Helen Berger found that approximately 800,000 Americans identify as Wiccan. Additionally, 140,000 identified as pagan in 2001, increasing to 340,000 in 2008. As the blog Wicca Living explains, “Wicca is technically classified as a pagan religion, though not all Wiccans would identify as pagans-and plenty who identify as pagans are not Wiccans.”) According to Quartz, one Trinity College study found that 8,000 Americans identified as Wiccan in 1990, which increased to 342,000 in 2008.
(BTW, Wicca is a modern spiritual practice with roots in pagan traditions. More and more people are identifying as pagan and/or Wiccan in the United States. Today, when people talk about “witches” in this country, they are often talking about members of the pagan movement, a group of perhaps as many as 1 million Americans whose practices draw from a combination of pre-Christian European religions, Western occult and Masonic societies, and forms of witchcraft.
Witches are among us-and far more of them than you think.
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