OOOHH. you expected me to be able to comprehend ENGLISH.

yeah, sorry - i was a bit spacy last night and misunderstood. :o

Senor, tu vives en el Arizona. Necesita que comprender espanol, gringo.

no habla

tu madre es una...

see? i know the important stuff.

Nessicito hacerle por favor un examenacion del recto. Comprende Ingles?

We used to have a phrase book for simple medical Spanish. This was the only useful sentence in the book.

wicca isn't bad,
 

I've been into the studdy of wicca scince I was 12, oh my goodness boy am I old! At first for me ot was just a phase, something I showed of to my friends, but then I met a women who was a true witch, when I told her i was wiccan and she began to ask me questions that I didn't know the answers to, I fealt like what you may call a poser. But I began to study it, and to really BELIEVE it, and its not dark and evil like people think it is, its the study of nature, and helping, casting spells and preforming rituals for things like healing a friend who is sick, or partAY-ING with the lost loved ones of the past one more time. It's the celebration of life, and not the worship of the oh so sacred death. It's the teachings and learnings of appreciating a breath of clean air (with the way our economy is t may not be around long so appreciate away! :p ) If anything at all yo should encourage your daughter in this study, it may lead to a future in the Peace Corps. also in wicca there are different types of beliefes, really if you poke at it a bit Wicca is more a philosophy (excuse my spelling please, I never learned to spell very well) then a religion, this is because there are different ways to practice it, in Wicca there is often seen a God a Goddess and A child, sometimes onle a God and Goddess, different combinations of things. If your family is as some people put it 'A traditional Catholic Family' or anything like that, she can incorperate that into the religion. My best friend Worships the lord as the God, Mary as the Goddess and Jesus as the child, and on his altar he has a statue of Jesus and Mary, and A candle for the lord. He feels exetremely close to them, and he didn't want to give them up when he converted. It's a choice, and besides if you don't want her to do it, she may end up practicing in secret anyways, but I'm only reasuring you, you have nothing to worry about. But just to let you know, from my description you should be able to tell Wicca is exetremely different from that TV show, although it is a very interesting one isn't it... I'd love to be able to teleport and Zap things and stuff, that'd be pretty cool... lol

Dear, you're 18.

Not that I have any greater authority or better directions on the path to enlightenment than you, or anything like that, but I've been involved with Wicca and other alternative religions for longer than you are old. So has at least one other person here.

Yeah, but wolf? You're like Yoda. The Force is with you.

That does help.

BH - What you are experiencing is an increasingly common concern in the world today (as has been pointed out in a couple of different ways). First and foremost, I would advise you ask yourself *why* you are concerned.

Non-Christian religions are dismissed out of hand and stigmatized by the predominantly Christian society in which we live, shunned as being everything from misguided, eccentric humanism to outright service of Satan. However, sensible people such as yourself can easily look at the evidence at hand and decide whether or not a reasonable course of study and practice is being undertaken by your child.

First...if your child is claiming to go around casting spells on others to get something that *she* wants - she's not learning properly. If she appears to be masking other sociological shortcomings by becoming a witch, she's not learning properly. If she drops all her other friends, withdraws, starts drawing pictures of Beelzebub on her bedroom floor...*then* you need to step in and get some counseling.

On the other hand, if your daughter keeps her grades up, continues to be socially adept and doesn't start becoming outright delusional, then consider that she might be growing up and beginning to make decisions on her own that truly reflect her increasing sense of empowerment in her own life and the world as she sees it. For young girls especially, Wicca is an attractive path, and rightly so. It is a religion of female empowerment and responsibility, a religion which reveres both goddess and god. It is a path of reflection and discipline, of learning and, yes...faith.

Wicca is indeed a valid religious path. Like any other religious path, it involves belief and visualization of things that others might not see (Christian example - big serious invisible man in the sky...and son). Wicca, however, involves some more concrete things at its core. It involves a reverence for the Earth and all of Creation. It involves knowledge of the bounty of Nature, her plants and stones and energies. It involves respect for your fellow beings and other living creatures. It involves tolerance and acceptance of different races, gender preferences and religous paths. You'll never have a Wiccan knocking on your door at 8:30 on a Saturday morning trying to sell you magazines or insisting that you are going to writhe in eternal agony if you don't believe what they believe.

The most critical thing, IMHO? Find your daughter a good teacher. I can probably help you with this to some extent as I have a couple of contacts in your home state, and could possibly drum up a good class or two for her. Use the Web, but use it with a grain of salt...there is a great deal of incredibly stupid crap out there. A good starting point is www.witchvox.com. The operators of this, the largest and most popular of Pagan web sites, are vey grounded, educated and extremely pleasant people who dedicate themselves to the dissemination of sane and accurate information.

The same codicil about quality goes for books. There are both good ones and drivel. Our coven degree system maintains a good reference list of required reading (for our own members, that is - we make no claims on the contents being the be-all or end-all), and I'd be happy to send it to you.

My wife and I have run a coven for many years now, and my wife is only the third teacher of the fundamental Wicca classes here in KC which go back some 20 years now (and both of the other teachers are our very good friends). Most of our discretionary time is concerned with spirituality through Wicca, serving our local alternative religious community, and providing open public access to rituals and community socialization on the eight major sabbats of the Pagan year. All this to say that I have more than a little experience with all of this, as does Wolf.

As with any undertaking your children may become involved in, parental involvement and attention is essential...even if you don't approve or agree. Only *you* will know if your child is safe and sane. If you need counseling or advice, or simply to talk about what's going on so you can be more well informed, there are a few people here on The Cellar who will be more than happy to serve as a resource for you.

The third eye thing is a derivative of Hindu practices, based on the Chakras of the body. There's a lot of crossover with Wicca and other practices. That being said, "Charmed" is *not* Wicca...it isn't even witchcraft as practiced by our ancestors. It is fictional television.

I have met several young people who became interested in Wicca via "Charmed", "The Craft" and "Practical Magic". Although elements of Wicca exist in all of these entertainments, *none* of them reflect the truth of the matter. However, serious-minded individuals have come to Wicca through these harmless amusements and grown into serious practitioners.

My son's girlfriend calls herself a "neo-pagan" and today my son asked me what that is.

It seems she doesn't even know or can't explain it.

*sigh*

Ouch. Will you be explaining it to her? Starting with the word "neo"?

Well, there was recently a spat that I'll write about in a new thread in a moment, but the the short answer is I will explain my views on the subject if it comes up.

She's one of those people that LIVES by astrology and tarot, rather than using it as a guide.

I will, however, educate my son on the proper use of tools and various methods of divination and spell casting. More than likely he'll be interested for a few days, then when he realizes he's learning something, his interest will wane.

I think that makes her a new age whack-job rather than a neo-pagan.

It's hard to tell the difference without all the pertinant information. What does she drive?

And, more importantly, what do the bumper stickers say?