Would be my pleasure Chrys
This will take two postings...one about what it is and another for the history and the reasons why it is differant now.
its a hard question but I will give you a overview and a history on why it is as it is today.
Wicce' or wicca is a earth based religian and its true that many wiccans call themselves witches.
Wicce' is unimaginably old there is no date in historc finding to find were it started..just evidence it has always been.
Howver wicca..todays version is just as easly be called a new religian.
I will give the reason why in my historic overview.
There are many differant paths of wicce'.
All follow one single way of life and all tied to our one commandment to use a word you would understand.
That being do as thou wilt so long as ye harm none.
Now while we have no heaven or hell punishment for going agasint our creed is brought upon yourself by what is known as the karmic three fold law.
Basicly if you do good ..then life will return good to you three times as much as you put out.
If you do evil then well it comes back on you three fold as well.
Much like they christian saying of do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
We are a pagan belife of course and in being a pagan belife pretty darn accepting of others belifes.
We belive in a god and goddess and depending on your following of wicce'
Wicce' is a religian of poetry not theology the myth's and teaching must be recognized as metaphors for that which can not be told.
Now I dont mean its some secret I cant tell but simply a inner knowlage that cant be exspressed by words but only convoyed by exsperiance.
As to say while praying and we all pray you do..I do pretty much everyone does.
If you get them in a group and all pray the same words together and then you ask them what did you feel?
One might say they felt love.
Another may say I felt we all blended together and became one voice.
Niether is wrong and in fact though the answers are differant both are right.
This is the only way to really describe it the goddess has infinite aspects and names.
She is the reality behind many metaphors, she IS the reality , the manifest deity omnipresent in all life, in all of us.
The goddess is not seperate from us and the world she IS the world and all things in it.
Satanism...while techincly a rebel form of the christian religian has nothing to do with wicca as the religian has no belife in a satan.
However....that being said there IS such a thing as the satanic witch.....this religian is not part of wicce' and is in fact a new one sprung up by mixing christian and pagan belifes to form what is deemed to be a rather evil religian in the eyes of most wiccans as it teaches how to manipulate and use other humans.
Which goes agasint our creed.
On the other hand there has been a huge surge of people beliving in the one christian god and replacing our god with the christian god and omiting the goddess and folowing wiccan traditions....confuses me but hey if thier happy so be it.
Let me exsplain our seasons/religious holidays as it gives much insight into the religian as a whole.
The christian calender by which is the world standard now is not the calender our holidays follow.
Our year ends on samhain the day of death and the new year.
Samhain marks the death of the year when the summer ends and the world begins to be griped by the death of winter.
This is a time of unmesureable spiritual energy and they day we honer our dead.
This is a joyous occasion not a mornfull one because of our belife of rebirth and the knowlage that our love ones are moving on to a new birth.
So naturaly we feel happy for them.
Imbolc or the begining of spring is rarly celebrated anymore it was renamed to St.Bridgets day and was celebrated on febuary second to acknowledge the comming of the suns warmth back unto the world.
The holiday was abolished by the Pope in the ninth century and to appease the pagans was replaced by the Feast of Purification of the blessed virgin which is known today as candlemas.
Beltane is I belive the most famus of our holidays.
It marks the second half of the year and is a holy day.
Depending on what path of wicca you follow it marks the comming of the goddess's children and or the conception of the goddess's son and our God.
Its a fertility holiday and I think thats whats most well known about it.
Its the day a woman would choose her husband and of course being a fertility holiday there was a bit of sex involved however unlike the views it was a mass orgy..it was rather hommage to the goddess and the promise of marriage to a mate.
Today Beltane is called May Day and is still celebrated all over the world.
The month of May is a scared moth and marriage is forbidden in this month as its a month for worship and homage to the gods.
Many people mistake this holiday as a sexual free for all however this is a far cry from the truth.
Virginity is a honor and to be a maiden is a status of high respect and beltane is when most maidens made the transition to becomming a mother which was also held extreamly sacred.
Yule...its hard to explain yule anymore its been so intermixed with christianity.
As jesus was born sometime in the month of june or july and the christian religian christmas was also born.
So our god was born in the dead of winter but when christianty first took power they could not convert the pagans and as a result desided it was best to move the christian holidays to the same time as the pagan holidays to make it easier on the pagans to convert and still be able to celebrate familer holidays.
Therefor Yule and Christmas were mixed and have been mixed for over a thousand years both religians celebrate the birth of teh child of thier god/goddess and because of that the customs have been mixed to the point they can not be taken apart anymore.
The christmas tradition of giving gifts comes from the christians.
The pagan tradition of decorating a tree and drinking mulled wines still is here today as well although the burning of the tree afterwards is becomming slowly exstinct as is the worship for christians due to the comertialization of the day. I have no idea how to spell that word.
We have our other holidays of course midsummers eve and such but the ones I listed are our big ones.
I will continue with history in the next.