Sidney Lambe wrote:
First of all, the ordinary Wiccan is not a priest. The ordinary
member of all religions are parishioners (or laypersons, etc.),
they are not priests. Priests are members of the clergy. In every
true religion they have to study for years to attain this status
and office.

To call every Wiccan a 'priest' is to render the term
meaningless. It is a foolish and deceptive practice.

Wicca claims to be the reincarnation of the Old Religion but it
most certainly is not.

Only the New Religions have gods and goddesses, and priests and
priestesses (which are supposedly much more knowledgable than
ordinary people and in close contact with the supposed gods and
goddesses and can intervene with them on behalf of ordinary
people). Only the New Religions assign magickal/creative power to
supernatural beings exterior to the Self. Only the New Religions
worship.

Gerald Gardner didn't know anything about the Old Religion. He
knew a little about a religion that was older than Christianity,
but so is Judaism, by thousands of years.

http://www.bcholmes.org/wicca/gardner.html

The "Old Religion" wasn't even a religion. During that period of
humanity's history, religion and science and culture were one and
the same thing.

People knew they were magickal beings living in a magickal
universe, just as young children still know that today (as well
as certain tiny cultures isolated from this one).

They knew that they created their own realities with their
beliefs/spells, individually and jointly, in cooperation with
the rest of Nature. They knew that their existences, and the
existence of everything, were Blessed. That all beings were
Innocent. They knew that they were spiritual beings having and
earthly experience. That Nature was supernatural. They did not
worship anything, because worship is giving your power and worth
away to something else.

Wicca as stands is an artificial _New_ Religion, not the 'Old
Religion' reincarnated.


Sid

--
AKA "Evergreen" a Wiccan Priest
and Apprentice Magician
http://tinyurl.com/7vs9zb
usenet4444 (at) gmail (dot) com


You people have to be ****ting me!! You're trolling right?