Fair enough, tho your OP could have been a little clearer on this. I think this is a key point posted by Angel of the Lord, tho:
My first thought, on viewing this thread is to agree Weirddave’s “gone mainstream” comment. But, upon second consideration . . .
Linkety-lonkety-link?
Let’s see:
Catechism
Crucifix
Rosary Beads
Holy Water
Miniature Glow in the Dark Statue of Virgin Mother
Prayer Cards
Saint medallions-pick and choose!!!
Miniature prayer book
Incense (yes, Catholics DO burn incense-and it stinks!)
Scapular
Reviews on the “Teen Witch Kit” at Amazon.com
:eek:
Note-I am NOT a Wiccan myself-I’m a lapsed Catholic. 
(I don’t really know much about Wiccan, but I have to say all the trend seekers are annoying-and yes, I know what Lucki is talking about-my sister wanted to seek it out and get tarot cards or something like that after watching “Buffy”…)
Question-are spells really “spells” in the traditional sense, or are they more like prayers? Just curious…
Zee looks…zey are deceiving. Actually, it’s based on one of my nicknames–Gabe. Gabe, Gabriel, Gabriel the Archangel, the Angel of the Lord. I liked the irony
And now in defense of Lucki…
It is a little frustrating to have so many people who “pretend” to be Wiccan and/or Pagan. This is because they tend to be–and I am really generalizing here–young teenage teenybopper girls.
Now, in general, I do not like that particular subset of humanity, no matter what religion they practice. Having one–or two or three or four–of them around asking questions that are–to you–simplistic gets really old, really fast. It doesn’t matter if the questions are about Wicca or Algebra or whatever. It’s just fucking annoying!
::deep breath::
However, some people take it differently than others. I take it as something that I just have to deal with (or, at least, I did when I was in high school). Occaisionally, I try to refer them to someone else; I’m really not the best person to be teaching, being all of 18 myself. Usually, though, I make a few book suggestions and tell them to come up with the rest themselves before they go looking for a teacher. I’m a solitary practicioner, and my beliefs are…um, out there…so they’re really better off without me.
Others get really pissy. These remind me of the punk rockers who declare that anything written after such-and-such a date is not punk. They might be right in a lot of cases, but aren’t always right. They come off as bitter and snobbish, but, really, they’re just frustrated, and they see this surge in pop culture Wiccanness (is that a word?) as an affront to their faith. They believe that having all these “blessed wanna-bes” somehow defiles what they’re trying to cultivate.
I think that they’re wrong, but having been annoyed many, many times, I can understand where someone like Lucki is coming from.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
**
::snort:: hehe, you can buy a used one for $15.50. Hey, I can get a discount on used Witchy Shit! OK, back to flaming me.
LC
Lucki Chaarms wrote:
The pagani are going to have to learn something that it seems to me Christianity has already learned. Nobody starts out in the faith as enlightened and sincere as you’d like them to be. Those enthusiastic young proseletyzers, the just-add-water born-agains, are brought into the flock and their faith is nurtured, rather than judged. Ideally, anyway.
Like it or not, those people you’re bitching about are the future of your religion. Dismiss them at your peril. When they go, they will end up turning sour on Wicca after a Christian who knows how to bring believers into the fold gets ahold of them. As in any religion, the lapsed will make bitterer enemies than those who never held with you to begin with. Talk to them, and try not to judge.
Or, better yet, send them my way, and I’ll take the time to talk with them, give them suggested readings and nurture their skepticism until they’ve turned into secular humanists, embarrassed that they ever called themselves witches.
Heh. I hope y’guys don’t mind if I take a crack at it, and you’re all welcome to correct me, imperfect Wiccan as I am ;).
I personally see them more as a form of prayer. There is no guarantee. The “bells and whistles” mainly serve as a physical representation of my intent. Invoking the elements and what have you remind me of exactly what word and what being I am dealing with. The incense, the light…they all remind me of what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and help me focus.
It takes energy. I’m asking a favor of the World, after all. I have to be willing to give something up. The energy it takes to focus, the time it took to prepare things…stuff like that.
Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes prayer doesn’t work. Sometimes it works in ways that aren’t really expected. Ditto for prayer.
::shrugs:: Just my personal take on it.
AHunter, Weirddave, Sister - The point doesn’t seem to be “oh, those annoying newbies - why didn’t they pop out of the womb with complete religious understanding of the true path, like I did?”.
As I understand it, the point is that certain people have a tendency to get vaguely interested in my religion because it’s become trendy; they then put on airs and assume that there is no more depth to it than what they’ve bothered to learn, which is nothing more than the most campy surface trappings that some unscrupulous person has packaged and sold at Bunns & Noodle for $20.
It’s as if they’d read a little Berlitz French phrasebook and then started prattling on to everyone who’d listen about their intimate chats with President and Mme. Chirac over pateet dayjoonair.
These are the people who clog my inbox with “hi can u plz send me a good love spel?” (verbatim!). These are the people who have the temerity to tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about because I used a word for the Spring Equinox that was different from the one that Silver Fluffbunny mentions in her books.
They are not treating the religion they purport to be totally into with anything near approaching the seriousness it deserves. And the worst part is, it’s not out of mockery - that’s truly all they think is involved.
It’s absurd to think this is a rant against newcomers to the craft. I’ve been one.
But at least when I was, I didn’t run around talking about things I knew nothing about or putting on airs, and I didn’t assume that the entirety of the faith was in the first book I read about it.
I remember when my mother asked me about the beliefs of Wicca, quite soon after I got involved in it. I tried to tell her what I knew, but gave up when I realized it was quite little. So I told her that what I knew so far felt right to me, but that I was still studying it.
I read. I studied. I conversed. I attended rituals. Gradually I developed the confidence and conviction to initiate myself and to profess my faith openly. And even now, despite having practiced and studied for about a fifth of my life now, and having led a public ritual (to considerable success), I certainly do not have pretensions to more than a partial and imperfect view of my religion.
So please understand when I get a little annoyed when some trendy little kid starts quoting “The Craft” authoritatively at me as if that constituted the articles of my faith.
Actually, no. The people Lucki is bitching about are precisely not the ones who are the future of our religion, because they’re the ones who are going to drop the religion anyway once the next Pokémon expansion comes out; the ones to whom it’s not a religion or a philosophy but a fad, consisting of a lot of pentacles and athames and “so mote it be’s” but not a lot else.
I find this book so upsetting. I want to bitchslap Silver RavenWolf for the depiction of all these “cool” teens on the cover of the book. Way to package it for all the Sabrina fans out there, you blatantly commercialised, money-grubbing hag. If I had to pick one Wiccan author who’s in it just for the money, I’d take Ms. RavenWolf. No offense to any of her fans, but I can’t look at Teen Witch and not think that it was deliberately packaged to pander directly to those teenagers who think Wicca is just so cool and so trendy and so rebellious. I place a lot of blame for the “wannablessedbes” giving Wiccans a bad name upon people like Silver RavenWolf. Before anyone says anything – yes I got that term from an episode of “Buffy”; I hate the show but a friend made me watch this one episode for the message it was sending about poseur Wiccans. I latched onto that word, finding that it nicely summed up the behaviour of people like those LuckiChaarms is talking about. I miss Scott Cunningham. 
Just in case any one’s wondering where I’m coming from, I’m not Wiccan myself, but I studied the path for two years and it’s been the foundation of my own brand of Paganism. I consider myself a Witch but not a Wiccan – many of my beliefs are similar to those of the Wiccan faith, but the religion doesn’t quite fit me and as such I’m not comfortable calling myself a Wiccan. I would definitely be a poseur if I did.
I was going to answer Guinastasia’s question about spells, but Angel of the Lord beat me to it and answered it much better than I would’ve. Nicely done. 
I will now steal this term for my personal use. Thank you.
Actually, LC, your description of Christianity does not applly to all segments of that particular religion.
**
So you can’t be a Wiccan if you happen to live in a major metropolitan area? What about cities without any forest nearby? And actually any Wiccan that claims his religion has some connection to Druids or any other ancient religion is a poser. And let’s not forget the annoying ones that like to bring up the “burning time.”
**
I thought Wiccans always found their own path. They can practice their religion in many different ways. Are you the final authority when it comes to Wicca? Are you in fact the Grand Poobah?
Ooo, you have “magickal” powers or something? I’d like to know what they can do wrong. Are they going to crash while flying a broomstick or will they accidentally turn someone into a frog? Maybe we should have 5 day waiting periods on spell books.
Marc
MGibson, I wish I had your ability to totally ignore context, explanation, and clarification. My existence would probably be quite a blissful one.
I understand Matt. And I wish I had your intelligence and the guts to waste it on dead end jobs and then whine about it to everyone else.
Marc
matt_mcl wrote:
Plus, they’ll also end up being Christian, because Christianity takes phonies and works with them. Phoniness is endemic, but Christians methodically turn faddish impulses into sincere belief. They don’t always succeed, but it works a lot better than telling the posers to piss off.
I’ll tell you something about Christians. Those bible-clutching, conspicuous-cross-wearing born-again-yesterday teenagers think they’re cool, too. They may sometimes deny it, claiming with smug pride that “It’s hip to be square!” but the emphasis is always on `hip.’ They’re as certain of their coolness as any poser of any cloth. But the Christian community doesn’t tell them to fuck off until they’ve really given it some thought. They guide them on their journey to enlightenment.
Marc, I really think you could have found a better method of attack. You know, one that, while crippling the intended target, wouldn’t manage to piss everyone else off.
Oh, wait…that’s your goal! :eek:
:rolleyes: Way to show your depth, cariad.
Good grief. How mean-spirited. You’ve come into this thread with an attitude (like Angel of the Lord has already noted). I don’t get it.
This thread has been very educational for me, since I know almost nothing about Wicca. But, I think I understand the frustration of Lucki. There are “posers” in many areas. I immediately thought of vegetarianism when Lucki was ranting. There are SO many “poser” vegetarians. They really don’t want to give up eating meat, they just want to piss off their parents, look “cool”, and preach and nag self-righteously about how “meat is murder” to everyone they meet. (But they’ll eat a burger the moment they get hungry.) And then the sincere veggies (I hope I can include myself in that category) have to deal with all the bullshit and misinformation they spread.
There’s nothing wrong with “dabbling” in anything, whether it be Wicca, Christianity, vegetarianism, or whatever. But it is irritating when you immediately act as if you are the “expert”, and are too outspoken and overzealous. Best to be honest, and say “I’m just getting into it, still learning.”
Well, a bazillion people beat me on the Christian statement but I’ll say something anyway: Being a Christian means being “Christ-like”. Attempting to live, spiritually, the life of Jesus in both thought and actions akin to what he did. If you’re not going through the effort of doing so, you’re as much a Christian as I am a fireman just because I want to call myself a fireman. And for the record, I’m not calling myself a Christian, I’m saying what the Bible says a Christian is according to the Epistles.
Anywho, I still empathize with you. I’m hardly a Wiccan in any sense of the word, but I’ve always thought those silly Llewellyn books must be doing the faith more harm than good. The few I’ve leafed through seem to either have no direction or contradict each other. Now you might say “But being Wiccan isn’t about dogma in a book” and that’s fine but in that case there’s no need to have a zillion softcover books telling me how to be a Wiccan cluttering the shelves of Barnes & Noble.
Books on magic and whatnot again seem to make no sense to me. Restating that I’m no Wiccan, I would think that you start off on some spiritual path and grow into magic as an extension of your faith and belief in whatever natural powers you hold sacred. A book of “magic” (and I say it in quotes because I don’t believe in spells cast out of a trade paperback) is about as useful to the spiritually dead witch wannabe as a book of chemical formulas is to someone without a chemistry set. Hell, even those witches in Dark Dungeons made sure Elfstar had a solid D&D background before they gave her a book of spells
Erm, coming to some sort of a point: Stop knocking Christianity and Barnes & Noble carries a lot of silly books that sell well to teens thinking Charmed is a nifty show. Don’t let it get you down.
Man, and I thought 7th Heaven would make my Teen Generic Non-Denominational Christian set sell like hotcakes.
So saith Angel of the Lord
What about Michael, I want Mike. [sub]Mike![/sub]