Posted: 03 October 2006 at 3:28pm | IP Logged

Emeraldlady45, what I am DOING is trying to get in touch with my heritage, as I have already mentionned, I have not actually incorporated native beliefs into my practice of Wicca.

Redlady, after reading through the links you've posted and giving some thought to them and what you said, specifically about the role community and tradition, I've come to wonder about a few things.

Wicca is part of the New Age movement. Yes, I agree. But that is only the newest form of wicca. That being the solitary practice and the abandonment of the "rules" set down by Gardner and Buckland. Gardner pre-dates the New Age movement by quite a lot, and his form of wicca was very community-oriented. Hence the necessesity of a coven. The New Age movement has bastardized Wicca almost as much as the Native religions. The only real difference is that wicca has more questionable origins.

If a religion like wicca can be practised alone, why can't native american spirituality? I know there are differences, but upon reflecting on the matter, I'm more convinced that practing wicca in a coven is right than I am convinced that incorporating native spirituality is wrong.

Posted: 10 October 2006 at 1:37pm | IP Logged

Firstly, a coven is not a community in the sense of the communities of the Native Americans. If one lives, travels, hunts, and depends on ones coven as your society then it does, but I doubt many people have that relationship. The bases of Wicca, i.e. Gardnerian Wicca, was not community-oriented in the beginning, in fact it was secretive due to the Witchcraft Laws. Afterwards when it became public it still did not have the community place that the Native American traditions would have had. If a Wiccan coven lived in a neighborhood of farmers I doubt they all got together to help the non-Wiccans and build community bonding. By community-oriented I mean it serves the community. Though Wicca is open to everyone, there is, and has, very much a sense of “us versus them”.

Secondly, the place of religious traditions in Native American life, one varies from tribe to tribe, and two, is based off Native American life. If a Wicca found him or herself to have some Dakota heritage how would they go about incorporating the beliefs of the Dakota? They are rooted in the life of the plains and the buffalo, while it is one thing to respect and look to those beliefs as inspiration, it is another to think you can live in a city, never eat buffalo meat, and practice the ways of the Dakota. I, myself, am Apache. I know of the ways and beliefs of the Apache, I have read the stories and myths, but I am not a nomadic person in the deserts of the Southwest. The rituals and ceremonies, of which there are few, have little use for me going to college and living in Northern California.

Posted: 03 November 2009 at 5:58am | IP Logged

I think that you'll find that its entrily possible. Both of them are forms of Magick and as far as I know Native Americans pratice a kind of Tribal or Earth magick.

I hope that helped.