>>I have a minor in World Religion.
I have a mayor in Psychology. I guess we are both educated people.

>>1) It did not exist prior to Gerald Gardner’s invention of it
Indeed. We are a new religion, that tries to reconstruct ancient beliefs, but mainly, reinterprets them and creates new ways to approach our Gods. Anyone who claims we are the “old Religion” is a fluffy bunny.
BTW Christianity did not exist before Christ, and that does not make it less valid, right?

>>2) Margaret Murray’s writings on the religion were proven false by her own contemporaries
Of course! The days of Pre-Modern Wicca are over. Murray was a seriously bad scientist, manipulating evidence and using the marvelous poisoning the well trick.

>>3) Some scholars do believe that the lost Hebrew Tribes were the ones who actually moved north to become the Druids
Sounds like a very interesting theory and I have to say it is logical in a certain way. Still…who cares? We are not Celts or Druids. We are Wiccans. So, if Hebrew tribes were the founders of druidism nothing changes. Humans change as their cultures evolve, it is natural and expected. Migration created new religions all the time, look at the Egyptian Aset and the Greco-Roman Isis. Aset herself might be a reinterpretation of Yemaya or Ishtar.

>>Modern Wicca is a fun fantasy religion
This pisses me off…mainly because a cosmic zombie saving my soul form some sin I did not commit is not fantasy? I mean, please. Don’t insult other people and expect them to shut up.

>>but it is not a historical religion that combines New Age beliefs from the 1970’s hippie movement with Celtic fantasy themes, and Hebraic Festival requirements.
Yes and no. If you have a minor as you say perhaps you could know the hippie movement happened in the 60′s, dear. And indeed, there was a lot of ceremonial magic involved in the creation of Gardner’s wica coven, but we are not New Agers. Some of us might incorporate some of those practices, but our religion has a very clear set of beliefs based in the idea that Nature is sacred and that only we are responsible for our actions and consequences. The Celtic thing is not Wiccan, as you might like to read here http://www.clannada.org/wicca.php
I might also suggest you reading Triumph of the Moon by Hutton or Drawing down the Moon by Adler.

>>It is also a way to personify science with characatures
That is called animism, for your information.

>>It draws people to two general moral rules, that have conterparts in every religion, including Christianity (the Golden Rule matches the Wiccan Rede; The Three–Fold Law of Return matches Christ’s statement “you will sew what you reap”…
Of course.
But….Wiccans have actually 5 general ideas revolving around ethics and the Divine. UEW enlists them as the Wiccan Rede, the Ethic of self responsibility, the Law of Return, the Ethic of constant improvement and the Ethic of Attunement, or “the act of becoming in-tune with divinity is the purpose behind the majority of ritual.” (cited from UEW website). But even when other Wiccans don’t call them such, they follow them. All religions follow the same basic principles, so I don’s see how this is some sort of negative argument against Wicca. If it is it should also be a negative argument against all religions.

>>And most of the symbols in Wicca (chalice, double edged blade, pentacle, cakes and ale) have their Biblical counterparts as well.
Because they are symbols in many religions, and this is also no argument against Wicca.
But back to the point: Wicca is highly influenced by Jung’s theory of Archetypes. We analytical psychologists know that symbols are expressions of archetypes, and each archetype might express itself diferently. For example, the womb might be represented by a chalice, a cave, the ocean, the grave.

>>Traditional religions would frown on this, however from an anthropological standpoint, this may well be how religions have taken shape through the millennia.
Indeed. That is the wisest way to see it.

>>The positive is, it gives people a fantasy outlet to get away from the world.
Again this bothers me.
All religions have their share of fantasy: virgin mothers, holy children, divine messengers…you name it.
The point is that the positive side of Wicca, as of any religion, is that it is a path to develop personal spirituality in whichever way one needs.
I apologize if I sounded rude, but as I said, don’t insult and expect to go unscathed. I think you are biased in some of your comments. If you have a minor, at least try not to put your belief before your scientific criteria. That is exatly what Murray did and it sucked.

Now…on to the article…I absolutely LOLd.

The adherents appear to be ex-Christians for the most part who either did not have a good personal experience in church, or the doctrines just did not “ring true” for them personally. Other reasons people leave is that they would rather participate in the worship ritual than to just sit and watch it. Further, churches used to offer pot-lucks and permit people to help more, but more and more churches are hiring professionals in every direction, leaving the lay-person out. Personal morality is another problem – the church snubs everyone based on scriptures that teach one thing or another is a sin – Jesus never snubbed anyone, but welcomed sinners, fixed their problems and loved them unconditionally, unlike many church members.

So Wicca is really more than just a re-creation of an ancient religion, it is a grass roots type group that reaches out in genuine care to others in small group format.

Unfortunately, I also learned a few negatives about Wicca:

1) It did not exist prior to Gerald Gardner’s invention of it; Scholars can not prove that he received anything from an elderly group of siblings who passed down an unbroken chain of Celtic religion from the stone or Bronze Age; Scholars did, in fact, debunk the faith in many areas based on inaccurate interpretations of archeology (for example, no symbol used by Wiccans has a sure meaning from an archeological viewpoint – no ancient person left notations on what a spiral meant), and Gardner’s use of Freemasonry, and the degree system is clearly borrowed from a different group.

2) Margaret Murray’s writings on the religion were proven false by her own contemporaries – scholars who worked at her university where she was a professor of Egyptology; Murray had no knowledge of Celtic Antiquities and when professors who did have knowledge of European history looked into her thesis, it was clear that she made many mistakes. She lost accountability when later scholars revisited her work, only to discover that on top of accidental mistakes, she deliberately mis-reported witch-trial records and skewed data in order to gain converts to her new proposal of a Bronze Age or Stone Age religion in Britain.

3) Some scholars do believe that the lost Hebrew Tribes were the ones who actually moved north to become the Druids – these tribes were exiled because they combined Hebraic rituals and festivals (8 festivals that match the Wiccan festivals, required worship at full and new moon, days the begin at sundown), with Caananite worship of a Goddess, moon, and sun as deities. Ancient Hebrew most closely matches Ancient Irish and Welsh as languages, they are so similar it can’t be a coincidence. Further the Druids embraced Christianity when it came and were first to offer their Druid Colleges as the first Christian churches. Any Freshman College Classics student knows that European (as well as Greek, Roman, Maya and other) tribes embraced many deities, but never combined them into one God and one Goddess – this concept was completely foreign to ancient peoples. Unifying all abilities into one deity was a purely Mosaic idea, which separated Moses and the Hebrews from all other world religions. In Europe each tribe had their own pantheon – there was no sense of unity in what pantheon to worship either.

Modern Wicca is a fun fantasy religion – a “what if” type of thing, but it is not a historical religion that combines New Age beliefs from the 1970′s hippie movement with Celtic fantasy themes, and Hebraic Festival requirements. It is also a way to personify science with characatures – to make the scientific/inanimate elements like earth, wind, sky, fire, water, have “personalities” – a sense that “if” they could speak, this is what they would say.

It draws people to two general moral rules, that have conterparts in every religion, including Christianity (the Golden Rule matches the Wiccan Rede; The Three–Fold Law of Return matches Christ’s statement “you will sew what you reap”…

And most of the symbols in Wicca (chalice, double edged blade, pentacle, cakes and ale) have their Biblical counterparts as well. It is as if someone took the best of many religions, made them generic and now presents them as a new and modern faith. Traditional religions would frown on this, however from an anthropological standpoint, this may well be how religions have taken shape through the millennia.

The negative about Wicca is that it is made up. The positive is, it gives people a fantasy outlet to get away from the world.

It is more likely