Wicca Wham Wham Wazzle

That's a quote from Futurama, not an insult. If I wanted to insult Wicca, I could do it much more easily.

I should have called this blog, "I Missed the Boat," because I seem to be stuck in a rut of boat missing articles. But no matter. I didn't really miss the Wiccan boat; I just don't know how to feel about it.

I belong to a religion founded in the 1950s by stoned bowlers. I have no problem admitting this. I do not believe that I can trace my faith's roots back to Atlantis any more than I believe that if I eat a hot dog bun, I will go straight to Hell (as I don't believe in Hell, this is hardly a threat, but still). Conspiracy theories are all good fun, but I don't believe that Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati have anything to do with my spiritual well-being. I can say all these things in completely seriousness, knowing full well that, should it come time to serve some higher calling, I will gleefully believe that Atlantis is located in the ruins of New Jersey (wait, strike that, reverse it) and that I am the reincarnation of a yam named Mick from Upper West Ghana (a completely separate entity from the Ghana of today). That's just how we roll.

So I find it a little disconcerting that some Wiccans seem to believe that they are druids, or builders of Stonehenge, or whatever. They didn't call it the Salem Wiccan trials for nothing, am I right? If you want to believe that kind of thing, fine, but you really shouldn't take it quite so seriously as some Wiccans (or other pagan types, and I use that word respectfully) do.

I don't know enough about it to judge, and I'm not really judging. I just find religious wackos of any stripe to be annoying. Jesus never said he hated homosexuals. The druids did not remain underground for centuries, only to reveal themselves to New Age hippy types. Native Americans are not a tribe of Israel. L. Ron Hubbard is dead and alien psychiatrists did not kill him. The ancient Greeks ate hot dog buns. The list goes on.

If it helps you to feel connected with a past spirituality, by all means, call yourself Reform Druids for all I care. My understanding (limited as it is) is that Orthodox Drus (Mel Brooks' joke, but still a good one) would be rather less welcome in modern society. But then, so would a lot of other orthodox religious practices of the past, some of them still hanging on in the present. Just don't fool yourself. I guess that's a lesson we could all stand to learn.

Me, I'm not a Wiccan because... well, I don't know enough about it to say, actually. I'm sure they're very nice people, most of them. But do they have an ancient Greek goddess? Huh? How about Atlantis? The Rothchilds? The founding fathers? I thought not.