Attitude Of The Religion To The Witchcraft In America - Essay Example

Attitude Of The Religion To The Witchcraft In AmericaScarboro, Allen and Luck. Philip Andrew The goddess and power: Witchcraft and religion in America. Journal of Contemporary Religion. 12.1, 1997: 69-79 The author’s of this article approach their subject with an open mind in the hopes of shedding new light on sociological phenomena. While subjects like Wicca, Ayurveda, Transcendental mediation and other New Age phenomena are often trivialized by the accepted sciences, the authors see that as a mistake.

They preformed a year-long study at Ravenwood, one of the largest covens in the United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia it was founded in 1976 and has taken on the role of a teaching coven to help bring their system of beliefs to others. Their research strategy was multi-staged with the intended goal to find out who the members of Ravenwood are, what they believe and what they did as witches, and what this all meant to them being members of this group on a larger scale. Wicca has one important difference with most mainstream religions, it has a, “…woman-centered, goddess-worshipping, nature-affirming, participative, this-worldly-orientated religion.” (69) This is often the polar opposite of religions that picture God as the all-powerful Male and mankind as his representative on earth with the ability to use nature as he pleases.

Their research bore this alternative attitude out among the witches of Ravenwood. While we see the typical God as separate from creation and man certainly quite separate from God, Wicca is the opposite. The set of images in Wicca are not the male, assertive, dominating ones, but rather the female, progenerative, creative ones of the goddess. Also, another important difference is how the goddes is represeted in mulitple personas. Whereas God is just God, the goddess can be seen, “…through many mythic threads through a range of guises as maid, mother, crone, as creatrix, nurturer, destroyer, as daughter, wife,…” (72) and so on.

Here instead of God being separate from nature, the goddess is a part of nature. She is found, “… in the paths of the stars and the changes of the moon, in 'rabbit-tracks in the snow', in the ceaseless run and turn of the tides. The goddess is in the world, in nature, rather than separate from the world.” (73) Furthermore, instead of their only being a few selected ones, such as priest, who can commune directly with God, in Wicca every initiate, every member is a priest or priestess who can commune directly with the goddess.

There is no need for an intermediary here. The authors feel that the view of Witchcraft in the overall aspect of the sociology of Religion has too narrow a view placed upon it by researchers. Wicca creates a living, exciting world from one that has become mundane in modern society, not something to be taken lightly. In fact the authors see Wicca as a valuable contribution in creating a “transgendered divine” (77) that can heal the absence of the female lacking in religion and society at large.

They also feel that the multiplicity of Wiccas’s representation of the goddess is an important model for our new golbal society that has to cope with diversity in all it flavors. “Finally, in a society experiencing increasing tension between its history and its increasingly multicultural character, Wicca offers a religious model of tolerance--indeed, of celebration--of difference and multiplicity.” (77) In this light the sociological contribution of such a belief system is certainly worth a much more closer look.

Works CitedScarboro, Allen and Luck. Philip Andrew The goddess and power: Witchcraft and religion in America. Journal of Contemporary Religion. 12.1, 1997: 69-79