All of the Wiccans/pagans I’ve met became so as adults or teenagers. Many of them vehemently rejected the Christian faith they were brought up in. I was wondering about Wiccan kids and how many of them will continue to be practicing Wiccans throughout their lives.
Was anyone here raised Wiccan/pagan? What was your experience like?
Does anyone know of any articles or studies published on the subject?
(Mods, feel free to move this to Great Debates if you feel it’s appropriate.)
This sounds like a product name of some sort…
There has - Laurie Cabot, the “Official Witch” of Salem, MA has a daughter who is also a “Witch”.
I presume second-generation wiccans aren’t all that common because the first-generation eventually realize how rediculous the whole thing is and they drop the schtick before they get their kids into it. FWIW, Salem, MA is Witch City, the Witch capital of the world, etc. Blah, blah, blah. I think the whole Wiccan bit is nonsense - a rediculous pseudo-religion with as much authenticity as Scientology and all the charm of a disinterested, self-involved, malicious teenage girl.
I’ve lived most of my life near Salem, MA, so I’ve known “Witches” all my life, and let me tell you - The Church of the Subgenius is a much better fake religion.
Eh. I don’t have much respect for Wicca but only because it’s a sort of unified neopaganism, which is a silly idea. Yeah, there are emo kids who call themselves witches as part of the rebellion act, but that’s a mighty broad brush you’re painting with, Winston Smith. Frankly I wouldn’t consider Wicca “a” religion, as Wiccans worship all kinds of different combinations of deities and such.
That said, you’re much more likely to make a good first impression on me by describing yourself as “pagan” than as “Wiccan”. But that may just be my indie sensiblities.
Yeah, I know. It’s never cool to paint with the broad brush and all that. But listen: living in such close proximity to these folks for all these years has made me prejudiced against them. 
At it’s best, it’s a systematized cry for attention. At it’s worst a bunch of carny scam artists and hypocrites.
Here’s my impression of wicca: an inarticulate, foul-mouthed 19 year old girl, dressed all in black, praising the Earth goddess and flicking her cigarette butts into the gutter. And the guys are worse - think petulent, nerdy, gay bikers. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
You mean, in terms of the people you know, or in terms of Wicca in general?
[Official Moderator warning]This thread calls for information from Wiccans and former Wiccans-both of your posts are nothing but attacks on the religion. If you have a problem with the topic, take it to either Great Debates or The BBQ Pit.[/Official moderator warning]
Yes. I apologise: that was out of line and over the top. Sorry. I’ll lay off.
If we could get back to the topic at hand…
The topic interests me for a couple of reasons. Wicca and/or neopaganism are such relatively new religions. I wonder how many people raised in the new Christian faith converted back to old Roman religions during the first century AD, for example?
Wicca also seems much more of “anything goes” (or “do what you will and it hurt none”) religion than most, and while I’m sure that really attracts many adherents, I wonder how effective it is at keeping adherents for more than one generation.
I’d appreciate any thoughtful responses.
That seems like a bit of a misinterpretation of the Wiccan rede “Do as ye will an ye hurt none.” It means “Do as you wish as long as you hurt no one, including yourself” It even carries over into illwishing others.
I am pagan myself, but have no children and plan to keep it that way. I have read of cases where in divorces the pagan parent was forbidden in court from teaching pagan practices to the children. I would think these cases could be appealed but I have not kept track of them.
I would imagine that Wicca is as subject to kids rejecting the religion of their parents as any other religion, if not more so because of the negative sterotypes associated with pagan religions. If I had a nickle for the number of times I’ve been accused of worshiping Satan… My usual response is "No, dear Christian, he’s all yours. I don’t even believe in him. let alone worship him.
Neopagan (but not specifically Wiccan) chick checking in:
We are also curious as to this question. While second generation neo-pagans are becoming rather common, they’re still vastly outnumbered by teen/adult converts, it seems. I think the reason for this is multi-fold. First, of course, is the general teen rebellion, which leads many teenagers away from whatever religion their parents adhere to. This is exacerbated by number 2, which is that neopagans in general* are likely to share a “many paths, one destination” idea - so that when your child “strays”, you’re not too concerned about it; each person will find the path that works best for him or her. Unlike, say, Baptists, who have the “right” religion, and any strays are hellbound. Frankly, if i thought my kid would suffer eternal torment for not going to my church, I’d do everything I could to “save” him, too!
Thirdly, neopaganism is growing faster since the inception of the internet than it ever did before. Teens and adults who discover neopaganism online seem to outnumber those born to neopagans. This may change as our numbers become larger and our babies outnumber the “converts.” (I put converts in quotes because the vast majority of us don’t convert so much as find other people who believe the same wacky things we’ve believed all along. It’s not so much finding a new religion as finding a name for what you believe, and finding that other people believe the same thing.)
I personally know at least two dozen second-generation neopagans, and a handful of third generation neopagans (real third-generation, not “my grandmothers have been witches since the Burning Times” crap.) They don’t seem a whole lot different from the rest of us, although I’ve noticed less paranoia and persecution-complexes from them. They’re not so worried about being “outed” at work or to their families. I recently talked with one of them (third gen) at great length about her experiences, and she said that as a teen she did indeed rebel, stop going to festivals and rituals, start wearing clothes 
, and go rather straight-edge - no drugs, no alcohol, no sex. When she was about 19, she came back and is happier than ever at 27, with a neopagan husband and an adorable neopagan baby.
I think that the idea that we have to let our kids find their own truths will indeed mean that less neopagan kids will “keep the faith” as they age when compared to organized religions. We don’t have a great familial or social pressure to stay, as a rule. But I think we’ll still need to wait for more data (ha! As if anyone can collect clean data on pagans!) to see how many come back as they age.
*A dangerous phrase. Ask 6 neopagans any question, and you’ll get 8 answers.
I know three people who were raised as (neo)pagan or Wiccan. Of them, one is still pretty religious, one is fairly inactive in it but still maintains the identity, and the third has converted to Christianity.
Wicca proper is an adult religion. Participants must be old enough to be able to make vows as responsible adults and be trusted to keep them. When I asked a community of folks in religious witchcraft lines whether and how they intended to raise their children in their religion, the answer I got from one participant (not Wiccan, Feri) was ‘Give them the Cunningham version’ – the stuff that’s book-published (which is the stuff that most of the teenagers are basing their stuff on, and which is popularly referred to as ‘Wicca’).
The reconstructionist paganisms, in my observation, have a lot more consistent ‘children raised in the religion’ patterns than the religious witchcraft ones, but since they’re attempting to re-establish the ancestral religious patterns, that makes sense. (The first Asatru I met was second-generation.)
A fair number of pagans I know, though, do not intend to raise their children in their religion, because they associate ‘being raised in the parents religion’ with coercion and don’t want to inflict that on their children.
Thanks, WhyNot, NinjaChick, and Lilairen. I appreciate the thoughtful answers.
WhyNot, your points make a great deal of sense.
It must be such a relief to a parent when their teen chooses to rebel like that!
Lilairen, what do Wiccans consider the age of responsibility? I know that Baptists don’t baptize babies for that reason–a person must be old enough to make that commitment on their own behalf.
That’s fascinating. What do they do on holidays, etc? Do they get just get babysitters when they go to rituals and special events? What about when their kids ask the metaphysical Big Questions?
I suspect this varies wildly. I know that most reputable covens won’t train anyone who isn’t a legal adult, partly for age of responsibility reasons, partly because hostile parents can cause them legal troubles before that point. For children who were raised by parents in the tradition in question, I’ve most often heard “depends on the child”, though I think I’ve heard “thirteen” as well.
(I actually saw someone give the exact age differences that go in their religion once for this particular point, but I don’t remember them at all. Also, not Wiccan or a closely related religion, though still a modern paganism.)
Honestly, I have no idea. (I have not always gotten the impression that these people have thought through things as well as I would.) I suspect many of them wouldn’t consider marking their religious holidays at home to be ‘raising the children in the religion’, though the gods know that’s all that happened in my family as a kid. (See again previous parenthetical.)
I will be raising my children in my religion (though as it’s a reconstruction, it doesn’t have the same issues as the religious witchcraft traditions); I don’t have a good understanding of the motivations and practices of pagans who don’t intend to, aside from the fact that most of them had a far more hostile breakup with their birth religion than most people I know well.
Paganism is older than the hills. Neopaganism means people who aren’t dead yet are following it. Wicca is the same deal, just in a unified package. Really, “neo”-paganism is older than all of the world’s major religions put together.
The thing is that Wicca is not (as far as I understand it; I have more experience with non-Wicca paganism, which isn’t much experience either) “a religion” in the sense that Christianity, Judaism, Islam or Hinduism is a religion with a generally agreed-upon set of rules, values and customs, which vary only through differing interpretation of the same general ideas. Wicca/paganism is really just everything else. If you follow a God that most Americans don’t think about outside of a historical context, odds are you’re a pagan and you could call yourself Wiccan if you wanted to. While Christianity means basically the same thing to its adherents (give or take a wide variety in politics and means of prayer, etc.)–the crucifixion story, the savior shtick and all that–Wicca/paganism pretty much means anything you want it to mean. “Its” followers are united only by the fact that most religious people don’t understand them and they’re outsiders in the American spirit-believing scene. Thus, paganism and Wicca in particular (the latter having something of a fad status in some parts) are prone to hooking people who are used to being different from the people around them anyway and/or like being different from the people around them, who stand side-by-side in their faith with those who have been led to Wicca/paganism by the traditional means of being born into it, dreaming about it, being “inspired” etc. And their religion is no more “real” or “fake” than anyone else’s, even though the religious faiths most Americans identify with assert rather forcefully that their God is the only valid one.
It’s an interesting dynamic because Christianity and Judaism in particular are quite adamant that not only are their deities the only valid ones, but that worshipping any other deities is in fact an awful sin. Once you take this position, it’s almost automatic to either dismiss such a free and open “religion” (remember, I’m only using quotes because the definition of religion is so different) as silly (which we’ve seen in this thread) or to be terrified of every aspect of it as being evil. It’s rather funny, really. I was in boot camp when I learned all this stuff, and I used to meditate with my buddy who considered himself a pagan. Just the mention of having had a pagan friend is enough to get a horrified gasp from many followers of Western religions, even though he was a funny and very moral guy who they probably would’ve loved. Anyway, we used to meditate (fully clothed and dry) in the shower or the toweling-off room, as they were large and empty (of furniture) and mostly quiet. The more observant Christians from more “traditional” places like the Lower Midwest and the South (my pagan friend was from East Hick Town, Georgia, BTW) were really scared of us and our meditation, and asked the TIs (drill sergeants) to make us stop. We got all kinds of lectures (from our fellow trainees) about how meditation was evil and this Bible passage and that Bible passage could be vaguely interpreted to say so. But I knew for a fact that lots of “good” Christians and Jews meditated, and it was painfully obvious that the people who talked at us about this stuff were really just scared because they’d been brought up to believe that anything associated with the worship of gods other than Adonai was fundamentally evil and probably involved some underhanded work of the devil. Frankly I felt sorry for them. But it’s pervasive on our culture; Sunday school beat the idea that it was wrong to betray our Jewish god so well into our heads that I literally could not make “the switch”. My pagan friend informed me that Bacchus had told him through Athena that he (Bacchus) wanted me as a follower. I went to a Wiccan service, then went to a Jewish service and in the Jewish one I felt like I had betrayed my foundation and indeed myself. I now believe, looking back on it, that Adonai, Athena, Bacchus and Jesus were all pretty much hogwash, but it was an interesting ride and I learned a lot.
But generally the decision is coerced anyway, even though the Church (any Church) officially says that you’re old enough by 13/17/19/whatever to make your own decision. I don’t think there’s any age at which you’re considered by some central witch council to be independent enough to choose, or at least I hope there isn’t. That’s the kind of stuff that gets a lot of people believing in wild Phelpsian theories; they get the decision made for them and everyone around them tells them they’re making it themselves (and probably believe it, too).
Really, anyone can learn about their god of choice and follow him/her, and whether or not they’re recongized by some Wiccan organization is pretty much irrelevant IMO.
I need a cite for this because so far as I’ve been able to tell the pagans I’ve met don’t really have any connection to the pagans of old. I don’t say this to invalidate their beliefs, I mean who cares if their faith is 150 or 5,000 years old, but I don’t think we can say that modern pagans are the same as old school types.
Marc
There are Spiral Scouts in the US, which is an organization for children presumably being raised in Pagan family units.
I have to agree. There’s no evidence of an unbroken line of pre-Christian worshippers of any gods or goddesses. There’s Wicca, which is about 60 or so years old, there’s Thelemic and Ceremonial Magick, which has its roots in Rennaissance England, and there are various re-construction paths, like the one **Lilairen **is part of (Egyptian, IIRC), but they are not actual religions of old, as far as we know. That is, **Lilairen *and I might chose to do a ritual invoking Isis or Sekhmet, but we’d do so with chants, incense and prayers mostly created in the last 100 or so years, quite possibly created by us in the moment (although there are a few translated hieroglyphs we’d probably incorporate as well.) We wouldn’t actually be doing an Ancient Egyptian ritual, 'cause we don’t even really know what those were.
The stories of utopic societies of generally matriarchal Goddess worshippers who were wiped out by the patriarchy and its Sky Gods are just that - stories. Likewise the stories about The Burning Times where <insert ridiculously large number here> of herbalists and midwives peacefully practicing Earth based religions were wiped out by Christians in a Holocaust of our very own. Like the stories in the Bible, they teach us important lessons about our world and give us a common identity, but no serious scholor or practitioner past the Cunningham Stage believes them to be literal truth.
*assuming we knew each other IRL, of course!
Like Lilairen says, it varies according to the teacher. I won’t take on formal students under 15 or so, and then only with clear and written permission from both parents. Before that, parents and their kids are welcome to come to my Sabbats (seasonal rituals) together, and they can all participate to their own comfort level.
There’s lots of circles that don’t welcome children at all, mostly 'cause they can be a pain in the ass. Then you have to get a babysitter, or occasionally a bunch of people will hire a babysitter together who watches the kids in another room, much like child care at church.
Oh, and as for my own kids, I answer questions as they come up, and always end with “and what do you think?”
Kid: Mom, why do people die?
Me: Well, I think it’s because there’s only so much we can learn in one lifetime, and then we need a “do-over” to give us a new life where we can learn new lessons. It gives us another chance to learn new things. After all, I’ll never learn in this life what it’s like being a little boy, but maybe in my next life I will. Other people think you only get one life, and when that’s over, you go to heaven. Some people think there’s nothing at all after you die. What do you think?
I’ve always invited my son to rituals. Sometimes he participates, sometimes he doesn’t. Most often, he’ll hang out on the edge of circle and watch. This is pretty much how he lives his entire life, so it’s not surprising that religion is the same way for him.
I just asked my husband (who’s a published scholar in this stuff) about people writing on children in neopaganism. He recommended the chapter “The Next Generation” in Helen A. Berger’s A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States as “a place to start, but it’s certainly not exhaustive research.”
While looking that one up on Amazon, I also found this on hubby’s wish list, which seems germaine to the tangent: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future