Abstract

This semester we have discussed initiation rituals and how they are perceive by others. We have looked at how they are practiced and shared with in their culture and surrounding cultures. While discussed the symbolism that is use to express an idea and how people use symbol to gain power and create movements and change in their own lives and environment. For our final project we are to explore a religion we are not formulary with and using the skills we have learned in class give an analyze of that religion. I have chosen Wicca, or “Neo-Pagan,” religion to explore. Helen Berger in Voices from the Pagan Census (2003), states “is an umbrella term covering sects of a new religious movement, the largest and most important form of which is…Wicca” (Berger et al. 2003: 1). This Blog examines the relationship between rituals and religion by analyzing the material and culture that is part of Wicca. 

Attention is paid on gender when viewing a ceremony from the objects used, to who use them and how they are used during a ceremony. Wiccans find divinity by their two most important Gods: The Goddess, and God (or consort) and there supplementary deities that are found through out other religions. Practitioners may associate with one set of gods: Greek, Roman, Celtic or deities found in other culture, or the practitioner may be eclectic in that they draw from all culture.  What is sought between the Goddess and the God is a union that represents fertility this right is elaborate ritual called the Great Rite. The High Priestess and Priest represent the feminine and masculine aspects of the Goddess and Consort as they manipulating specific objects, which they believed to be strongly gendered orientated. There are those that are Wiccan that believe the “rituals reflect, construct, and reinforce the Wiccan precept of a gender-balanced cosmos through

the interaction of these primary ritual actors and the gendered objects they manipulate.”