Wicca before Christianity

Has anyone except me noticed the simularities between wicca and christianity? I have been researching wicca for well over three years and being a former christian i have noticed too many simularities. A few months ago i read a very relable article which shows that many christians began to loathe wiccans (pagans, druids, episcopalians and witches included) so they started a rumour that the wiccan God was really satan (thet said this because the wiccan God has horns to link him with the animals - the stag mainly). Also they got rid of the wiccan Goddess because they did not want women to have power as well as men. I was only wondering if anyone else knows anything about such simularities. Oh and i dated it back wicca was around many years before anyone had heared of christianity.

Please list some of the similarities as you perceive them. Wicca has nothing to do with Satan. However, Christianity has throughout history branded everything non-christian as having affiliations with Satan. It is the 'If you are not with us then you are against us' mentality.

the similaritie between pagans and christians dates back to the roman empire when empoer constantian made chritianity the national religion in rome. this was not an easy thing to do to a pagan nation so he based many of the christian feast days and celebrations around preastablished pagan feast days thus creating many similarities

Christianity has a long tradition of "demonizing" the gods of the religions the were competing with or surpressing. Some of the old pagan "mother Earth" Goddess statues were renamed to represent the virgin Mary. The one thing Christianity is really good at is adapting other religions into itself by changing pagan beliefs into christian ones ie christmas, easter, etc. Even the whole died for your sins idea is a bastardization of the pagan belief of the king of the land dieing every year so the crops will be good the next.

Originally posted by takemeout
the similaritie between pagans and christians dates back to the roman empire when empoer constantian made chritianity the national religion in rome. this was not an easy thing to do to a pagan nation so he based many of the christian feast days and celebrations around preastablished pagan feast days thus creating many similarities

This right here is exactly why Christmas and Easter are great abominations to God.

Originally posted by CmptrN3rd5

Originally posted by takemeout
the similaritie between pagans and christians dates back to the roman empire when empoer constantian made chritianity the national religion in rome. this was not an easy thing to do to a pagan nation so he based many of the christian feast days and celebrations around preastablished pagan feast days thus creating many similarities

This right here is exactly why Christmas and Easter are great abominations to God.

no,
it does not matter when the holodays are celebrated. they are just times when we remeber historical parts of are religion. what does it matter if christmas is on december 25 or july 25? it makes no difference as long as you have faith and remeber what the holodays are about.

Originally posted by Shellbabe7
Has anyone except me noticed the simularities between wicca and christianity?

This is probably because wiccanism was created in the context of christianity.

they said this because the wiccan God has horns to link him with the animals - the stag mainly).

As far as I understand it 'wiccanism' doesn't have a primary god and its a very decentralized non-authoratative relgion.

Also they got rid of the wiccan Goddess because they did not want women to have power as well as men. I was only wondering if anyone else knows anything about such simularities.

Oh and i dated it back wicca was around many years before anyone had heared of christianity.

Those are the 'many' similarities?
Anyway, wiccanism was not around "many years before" christianity. Modern wiccanism was a sort of new age attempt to recreate what was thought to be the pre-christian pagan religion. Similarly, the modern 'druids' are not descendents nor adepts of the ancient druid practices, they are both somethign that was created well into the christian era, and there are abysmally few pagan texts, in fact, outside of greco-roman paganism and the like, I don't know of very many celtic religious texts at all.

It is one thing to trace your beilfs back as far as recorded history, but another to create a belief system and say you are a part of that older belief.

Also I dont think true Cristians attack another belief, they only see it is as wrong, in how false-belief turns people away from the christian way of achieving salvation

As said before a lot of Pagen practices were changed or hijacked to promote CHristian ones.

Might want to talk about the Aztecs who stopped thier human sacrificing after learning about CHristianity, and Jesus' sacrifice to end all sacrifices

Originally posted by Jehosephat
Also I dont think true Cristians attack another belief

Nevertheless very pious christians attacked, violently, other beleifs, forcing conversions, destroying temples, and burning books.

Might want to talk about the Aztecs who stopped thier human sacrificing after learning about CHristianity,

They stopped sacrificing when their preists and power-system was destroyed.

Almost all rock and cave paintings depicting tribal hunts, or gatherings have a member wearing a deer or rams head with prominant antlers, the bigger the better. Antlers were considered magical, and believed to secure another good year of hunting. Men associated themselves with the Sun, hunting, protection of the tribe, and construction ( as it were).

At the same time, Women had great power in the tribes, and associated with the moon. Women and the Moon have been linked in the same Cycle for hundreds of thousands of years. You can find lockets and charms, of the crescent moon with a young girl sitting on the lower curve. This is a symbol that stretches back tens of thousand years or more.
PLanting crops, Sailing, hunting, celebrations including Modern Easter, are based upon the cycle of the moon to this day. Women had an innate sense of Time and probably used these inborn senses to foretell seasons and events, plan out pregnancies, and organize the tribe itself.

I would imagine tens of thousands of years ago these two belief systems existed side by side, complementing each other. as time passed, they began to outgrow and compete with each other.
The goddess Diana, was turned into the hunter ( huntress?) Diana by patriarchal systems. The Moon became servant to the Sun, and science replaced inborn senses.

was this wicca..? who can say. But Christianity is about 2000 years old...If you wish to call it witchcraft, Nature worship, doesnt matter. This belief system was here and recorded on caves, rocks, and bone engravings over 40,000 years ago.

Actually, Wicca, in its current incarnation was started around the mid 1960s. It is based, however, on a few religions that do predate Christianity, such as the Norse and Celtic belief systems.

Much of the Christian belief structure is based upon beliefs held within these ancient "pagan" religions. This is not an uncommon practice in upcoming religions. The leaders of the religion want followers, and therefore present to potential converts a religion not entirely dissimilar from what they currently practice. This familiarity makes people more apt to be open to the change. As a result, the new religion becomes a conglomeration of many religions.

If one can acknowledge that a religion is based on earlier religions, why can't one make the next step and see that this religion cannot be the one true religion?

Originally posted by toolmaker
This belief system was here and recorded on caves, rocks, and bone engravings over 40,000 years ago.

There is nothing of the practices in modern wiccanism that is 'recorded' in the cave cathedral cultures of europe, and it appears that there was a struggle between the shamanistic culture and the venus cults, not cooperation, or at least one replaced the other.
There is no way to know what teh religious beleifs of the celts were, and the celts can't be said to be the people paiting on caves in france and the rest of europe. One can make some reasonable speculations about the beleifs of the early celts, and extrapolate from the few primitive shamans that do still exist, but that still doesn't allow one to say that modern wiccanism has very much, in the details, common with those old beleifs.

Hmm I wonder what LadyV has to say about this.

...are explained in this thread which was posted by Shadow Ghost 7, Shellbabe7:


www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Masonic Light
Actually, Wicca did indeed evolve indirectly from Freemasonry. Contrary to the original poster's assertions, Wicca is actually one of the youngest religions, having been formed by a British author named Gerald Gardner in the early 20th century.

In the late 1800's, a group of members of the Masonic Rosicrucian Society of England founded an occult organization in London called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was divided into the same degrees as the Masonic Rosicrucians, but the G.D. degrees had much more emphasis on ceremonial magic.

In 1898, a young journalism student named Aleister Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn, becoming an Adeptus Minor in late 1899. In 1900, the Order disintegrated due to internal schism, with several of the members, including Crowley, forming there own organizations, based on the Golden Dawn.

Gerald Gardner joined both of Crowley's occult organizations, the A.A. and O.T.O. While organizing the hierarchy of Wicca, he drew heavily from these Orders, which in turn drew heavily from Masonry. He even divided Wicca up into three degrees, as in Craft Masonry.

Although many of the tenets of Wicca are drawn from ancient sources, its outward form is derived from Masonry. Some Wiccan Rites even invest their Candidates with the Apron.....

Here's a lecture on the origins of Easter(Ostara/Ishtar) as well:


www.gnosis-usa.com...




Peace




[edit on 14-3-2005 by Tamahu]

Well Christianity is pretty sexist

Originally posted by ufo_believer
Well Christianity is pretty sexist

Current incarnations of Christianity, yes, have a heavy dose of anti-feminism, but there is some evidence to suggest that such was not always the case. In fact, one of the things that got Jesus in so much hot water with the Judaic elders was his practice of allowing prominent women to actively participate in his ministry. In Judaism, men and women worship in separate surroundings, but Jesus removed these barriers, and there is some evidence to support the idea that women flocked to early Christianity because it afforded more room for feminine involvement in the heirarchy than Judaism.

Many early martyrs were women, which would seem to suggest that females found something in the religion that they found important enough to die for.

OK I know Jesus was NOT sexist, it's not his fault a lot of his followers were/are corrupt mysogynists.

Okay, as someone who has devoted their life to learning about issues such as these here's a couple nice little facts for you about syncratisms in Christianity:

~The idea of the "Body and Blood" comes from the Cult of Dyonisus, except they ate reall body and blood

~The divine conception, virgin birth, and three wiseguys from the east is from the Cult of Mythris

~The christian notion of heaven and hell is from Plato's Republic

~Most of the major holidays are from old pagan traditions

~St. Brigid, for all you Irish out there, is a Christianization of their earth goddess

~Most, if not all, of the book of Genesis is ripped off

Try to remember everyone, the reason that Christianity has survived is because it was the state religion of Rome. It started out as just another kooky cult, just like most people see the Raelians or Moonies today. We all gotta start somewhere.

~Astral

Originally posted by ufo_believer
Well Christianity is pretty sexist

Yeah, but Dianic Wicca is feminist - nay, feminazist