Real Life with Ryuei

About Wicca: For Queen Lolo

The comments on the other entry "Should I Stay..." were getting a bit long and Queen Lolo's question and observations regarding Wicca deserve an all new entry and topic - so here it is!

First off, you asked me for a good sane book about Wicca. I am far from up to date on what is out there now as I haven't been around Wiccans since I was in Philadelphia back in 94. But I did study with Starhawk when I was getting my M.A. at Holy Names College in Oakland, and I was very impressed with her. She is a sincere, humble, and courageous woman in my opinion. And her spirituality has grown over the years - and so she keeps rewriting her intro book to Wicca called Spiral Dance. That was one of the first books on Wicca that I read and I think it holds up, esp. if you get the latest version with her latest thoughts and insights. Another good book was Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler, but I am not sure if that is very up to date anymore, but it does a good job of sympathetically reviewing the resurgence of Neo-paganism in the mid-20th century.

Now, I have had a lot of luck with Wiccan groups. The Wiccans I have been involved with were all pretty together people, and I would happily join in with them again to celebrate the equinoxes, solstices and what have you. In my view Wicca and Buddhism can potentially be as compatible as Buddhism and Shinto, or any of the other indigenous earth-based (which is to say agriculturaly centered) traditions that Buddhism has always co-existed with and to a certain extent assimilated (all those Vedic and Shinto deities on our Gohonzon for instance).

There can be differences however. I say "can be" because there is no set teaching or practice for Wicca. Each coven or group has their own take, and often each individual within a given coven or group will have their own interpretation. Wicca, if not neo-paganism in general, can be highly individualistic. There is a reason so many have found a home within the Unitarian Church. But let me speak generally from this point on.

Many Wiccan traditions do speak of reincarnation - in the sense of a soul or spirit that reincarnates. And most teach some form of karma - cause and effect. These things are rarely strictly defined, but as Buddhists we should keep in mind that the Buddha did strictly define a few things based on what he claimed was his own direct insight. For the Buddha, there is no permanent metaphysical entity or "self" (atman) that reincarnates. Rather there is a process of cause and effect wherein the karmic tendencies and habitual patterns (samskaras) continue on somehow from the moment of death to participation in bringing about a rebirth elsewhere. This passing on actually happens from moment to moment within a lifetime, the passing on from death to rebirth is just a more dramatic instance of it. Within our lives we feel a continuity as we grow older let alone from moment to moment, but the Buddha taught that this is just a subjective feeling and interpretation and that if you subject your "self" to an objective analysis you will find no permanent independent entity to call a "self" within the life process - just the interplay of causes and conditions. But this selflessness frees that process to generate a boundless and selfless compassion and this is subjectively experienced as attaining enlightenment. Wicca, on the other hand, rarely (at least in my experience) speaks of the process of reinarnation as anything other than an eternal cyclic process - in other words samsara forever, though they see it as a good and natural thing. So here is a point of potential discontinuity between Buddhism and Wicca - what we call samsara they see as a natural process that is neither good or bad. Where they see a reincarnating soul that goes the rounds indefinately, we see a karmic process that can be freed from the compulsion of rebirth in the six lower realms to the freedom and compassionate activity of enlightenment.

Also, some Wiccan traditions teach things about karma that might not be compatible with the Buddha's understanding of it, esp. when magick is mixed in. But this is too large a topic to deal with here and it has been too long since I have reviewed the various Wiccan treatments of the topic. Just be aware that Wiccan teachings about cause and effect may be different from Buddhist ones.

Then there is the matter of theism. Wicca is supposedly polytheistic, which is certainly compatible with Buddhism which has assimilated polytheistic pantheons before. However, some Wiccans view the Goddess as ultimate, or perhaps as a pantheistic or even monistic ultimate reality or divinity of which the many gods and goddesses are refractions. This would be more compatible with Vedanta but not with the non-theistic view of Buddhism. But again, there are many Wiccans with many different views. Some of those views about the gods and goddesses might be compatible with Buddhism, many might not.

Well, that is enough for now.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at July 8, 2005 04:17 PM