If you're going to hang out on Yahoo!Answers, you have to be able to handle trolls and haters. I can deal with that. I can even deal with the non-Wiccans spouting silly stuff about Wicca. The bit that really gets me is the nonsense that comes from Wiccans, like the answers to this question.
The questioner was told that Wicca was a fertility religion with sexual undertones, and she was wondering if that was true. I'm not surprised this was a surprise to some, but I kind of want to weep at the number of people who jumped to Wicca's defense swearing Wicca had nothing to do with sex and decrying the sources of such information as fraud.
*facepalm*
Wiccans approach Wicca in a lot of different ways. No foul there. But Wicca absolutely was structured as a fertility religion. And the arguments against it being a fertility religion are just as painful as the initial claim. Things like the central point of Wicca is the Wheel of the Year. First, I'd argue against that being the central point, but let's just say for a moment that it is. Can someone, anyone, explain what the "Wheel of the Year" is?
Goddess has baby son, son grows up, goddess takes son as lover, lover impregnates goddess, lover ages, passes into the underworld, and is reborn in the spring. I'm sorry, you're right. There's absolutely nothing about fertility there. Carry on.
And then there's the warning that "Any group that emphasizes sex and not Spirituality should be avoided." True statement, but totally misleading in this conversation, since nowhere did the questioner state that these Wiccans claimed to emphasize sex over spirituality. Sex and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. That's the sort of crappy kneejerk reaction that turns Wicca into an ill-defined mush.
Is fertility all Wicca is about? Absolutely not. But it's a central theme. Also, incidentally, fertility can be a central theme without everything being about sex. Fertility is sexual but it's also generative, creative, increasing and developmental. It's the foundation from which the new springs into being and part of the cycle that is fed by the passing of the old. It's bad enough that this culture freaks out at the mention of sex or nudity, but now even related topics are being thrown into the "sex is naughty" bin. One wonders if these people can discuss, say, gardening with a straight face.
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Wicca is a fertility religion? Surely not?!?
Don't you know, Catherine, that Wicca is all light and love? Healing and peace? Just because Gardner, Wicca's founder, described it at as a fertility cult doesn't mean it is. What does he know?
Seriously, I wish it were legal to force people to read books.
But, but...we have this Internet thing now. Books are SOOOOOO old-fashioned. And the internet is always right.
Alternatively:
But, but...I'll have you know I DO read books. And, like, more than one. I've read practically everything Ravenwolf has written. PLUS some McCoy. And I've heard of Doreen Valiente, especially that bit about how all gods are one god, which, you know, make this polytheism thing SO much easier. So there. I'm, like, almost an expert.
Welcome to sarcasm day on To Know, Will and Dare. ;)
I know this post is two years old but after just reading it, I had a question. Many people see the part of the Wheel of the Year wherein which the Goddess takes her son as a lover as incestual and immoral. I get a lot of questions about that yet I can't find a way to defend it as being something that is NOT immoral. Any help?