Wicca

[Vivienne O'Regan]

No: HPFGUIDX 1215

On Fri, 08 Sep 2000 07:43:44 -0000 "Rita Winston" <catlady at wicca.net>
wrote:

>While the religion named Wicca is also called Witchcraft, it has
>NOTHING to do with the 'witchcraft' in HP. If only JKR had called the
>females wizardesses instead of witches, she could have skipped the
>word 'witchcraft' altogether. I cannot emphasis enough how wildly
>different it is for a person to do magic by praying to the gods and
>building a strong mental concentration on a set of symbols, than for
>a person to do magic because they have a rare inborn magic power
>and a wand with a realio-trulio dragon heartstring!

It's important to keep in mind that JKR is writing fantasy and unlikely
from a perspective that has any real awareness of 'Wicca' as a
religion, which in the terms you put it appears to have little to do
with magic and spellcraft. She is drawing from popular lore as well
as a good imagination. I doubt anyone except a few strange Christians
think there is anything more to it.

If anything, what she is writing about links more to traditional
witchcraft, where the notion that a child can be born
with an innate talent for magic remains.

However, the idea of a wand or other magical tool (and they are
tools in the Harry Potter books as well) being suited to the
individual, is so. Certainly within the British magical
community there are a number of tool-makers who learnt their
skills from traditional sources and they stress the
importance of there being resonance between tool and user.

(as someone with a fondness for dragons the idea of a wand
with a dragon heartstring is most upsetting. One would hope that
any bits of magical creatures within wands would be given willingly
by the creature.)

>Therefore, what Wiccans believe about names is basically irrelevant
>to HP. What matters is what JKR believes about names.

>However, for the record, while individual Wiccans are welcome to
>believe in numerology and so on, the most common idea about names in
>Wicca is that your birth name doesn't particularly matter at all,
>except for legal documents, and your self-chosen name matters only as
>much as you make it matter. Some people have been given new names by
>the gods, which is a whole 'nother story.

I think this echoes somewhat my posting about the spiritual significance
of names and not only from a numerological point of view. A name can 
have power in itself whether conferred by parents, (in some instances 
creating a link with an ancestor), taken with self-consciousness or 
conferred from another source.



Vivienne