The Truth About Goddesses:
I was a goddess-worshipping witch.
Excerpted from Wicca, by William Schnoebelen
©1990 by William Schnoebelen. Reproduced by permissionI was a witch. I was a sold-out, goddess-worshipping witch. When my "lady" and I chipped the ice out of a stream in the middle of Iowa wilderness to bathe and then celebrate the March equinox naked under the stars, we were totally consumed with zeal for the Wicca. We drove 170 miles one way every weekend to teach classes in Wicca in a car with a bumper sticker which said "In Goddess We Trust!"
We were kicked out of almost every apartment we tried to rent for wild circle dances and burning frankincense; and we had a firebomb thrown into one temple because we dared to publicly proclaim the goddess!
Wicca is one of the more seductive deceptions that Satan has come up with. It is the contemporary name for the cult of so-called "white" witchcraft or Neo-Paganism, which has been enjoying a renaissance in the United States.
It claims to be a "back to nature" religion which worships the sky and earth, and thus has attracted many adherents among those sympathetic to environmental and ecology issues. Yet, for all its charm and nostalgic fantasy, Wicca drew me into the deepest quagmire of satanic evil imaginable.
Almost everything we did back then raised eyebrows. Regrettably, we see people today doing things openly that we had to do in secret. We see books that used to only be available in dark, musty occult bookstores now being sold openly in shopping malls. The meditation practices we taught in secret witchcraft circles are now being taught in "respectable" churches.
Naturally, we believed we were doing good. I was a sincere devotee of the chief deity of Wicca, the Great Mother. At first I believed the rites we did were for the benefit of humanity and the earth itself. I also believed what I was told: that there was a profound difference between the Wicca and those called satanists or devil-worshipers.
I thought that the whole meaning of Wicca was beneficial rituals to nature deities like Pan, Diana or Cernunnos; and of course rites of passage and initiation. I stood, blindfolded, naked and bound at the edge of the Circle "which is placed between the worlds." I heard the words of the Great Mother and felt the prick of the swordpoint challenging my courage. I was anointed as a "Priest of the Goddess" and learned her secret name. I gave my life to her service.
I truly believed that she was the One "who was with me from the beginning, and who was attained at the end of desire." I walked the earth and felt her a living, breathing thing; and I worshiped her as "Holy Mother Earth."
It took me sixteen years of ardent devotion to her and the Craft to find out that I was terribly wrong. I had to learn the hard way that my only hope for true spiritual fulfillment in life was Jesus Christ!
I finally learned in the most graphic fashion imaginable that the difference between witchcraft or Wicca and satanism is actually non-existent. To be sure, an anthropologist or sociologist of religion might find them different, but such distinctions mean little when you are gambling with the eternal fate of your own immortal soul.
The actual spiritual difference between Wicca and satanism might best be illustrated this way: Practicing Wicca is like having a hand-grenade blow up in your face, in terms of the spiritual impact. Practicing satanism is like having a neutron bomb detonate in your face. The difference is there and discernable, but it is still an utter disaster for you, either way.
In eternal perspective, the disaster of Wicca is altogether real and no less dangerous than that neutron bomb.
Why Should YOU Believe This Warning?
Before we discuss this subject, allow me to give my credentials. I was initiated into the Alexandrian Wicca on Imbolc, February 2, 1973 and made a High Priest and Magus is September of the same year. That summer my lady and I were also promoted to the High Priestly rank in the Druidic Craft of the Wise. We also helped establish a Church of All Worlds "nest" in Milwaukee and studied under Gavin and Yvonne Frost and their Church and School of Wicca.
Wicca has many "denominations" or traditions. Some are large and well-known, like the Alexandrian, Gardnerian, Druidic, Welsh Traditionalist, Gerogian, Dianic and Church of Wicca. Others are as small as a single coven or 13, or even a family tradition.
My wife and I established covens all over the Midwest; Dubuque and Davenport, Iowa; Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Chicago. Over the years, we advanced to higher levels of witchcraft. Up to our departure from the city of Milwaukee in 1984, we were presiding over one of the oldest and largest networks of covens in the Midwest.
About a year after becoming a High Priest (1974), I was told by our initiators that Wicca was not what it seemed. Although much of the extant literature written by witches (and Dr. Margaret Murray's work) would lead one to believe that Wicca is a survival of the ancient pagan fertility cults, especially of Northern Europe and the British Isles; there is not a shred of real historical proof for any connection between Bronze Age cults and modern witchcraft.
I learned from our initiators that it seemed that Wicca is, in fact, a manufactured religion not much older than this century. There did not seem to be evidence for any Book of Shadows (a combined "bible" and ritual book for Wiccans) much older than the 1910's!
You see, Wicca is one of Satan's "nicer" creations, tailor-made for the last half of this century. Although it may have existed for perhaps a century at most, it "came out of the broom closet" in 1951, when the British laws against witchcraft were repealed. It is nothing really new, but its packaging is subtly different, tailored to a world strangling on its own technology and dying for romance, idealism and meaning.
A Cult of Deception
You may say: "So you got sucked in too deep. So what? I've been a witch for years and never got into that satanic junk. It's just a Christian myth for real losers. As long as I stay where I am, I'm cool. I'm happy!" That may be so, but do you honestly want to belong to a cult that deals in deception?
Let's look at the word, "Wicca," as an example. The OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY reveals that the word does not mean "wise one." It means twisted, bent, or warped. Even Margot Adler admits that the word has its roots in the Indo-European roots "wic" or "weik" meaning "to bend or to turn." Of course, she tries to put the best possible face on it by saying that:
Elsewhere, she asserts that:
But this is playing games, the same sort of word games most cultists play to conceal the truth. By this standard, anyone, including Anton LaVey, could say they were a witch and be right.
Yet you should hear the howls of rage among the Neo-Pagan community when even Gavin and Yvonne Frost first claimed to be witches. They couldn't be witches, they were monotheists, fakes and gay-bashers! So all of a sudden there WAS an objective standard of what makes one a witch. Yet like many things in occultism, it vanishes like mist when you try and pin it down.
In my own personal development as a witch, and the development of almost all our colleagues, I found that after about five or six yeaars it was necessary to begin pursuing the study of the "Higher Wisdom" of Satan in order to keep growing. Magick is like a drug. You keep needing more in order to stay at a level at which you feel fulfilled. There is no end to it!
If you've stayed a Wiccan or "white" witch for a long time, it's only because you don't have enough of the Promethean itch to grow. OR it may be that you have many Christian friends or loved ones praying for you. Did you ever think of that?
