Question by Mario Religion: What do wiccans or pagans believe?
Their God/s/, their afterlife, and their meaning of life? And what is the difference between paganism and wiccans?
Best answer:
Answer by Warumono ??
this all depends on who you ask. I believe in many gods, I believe that you are reincarnated until you obtain the knowledge that the gods want you to have.
Paganism is an umbrella term, wicca just happens to fit underneath it.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
We Wiccans believe in our gods. If we worry about an afterlife, we’re missing the point, and most of us know that the only meaning of life is the meaning we give our individual lives.
Wiccans are members of one of the hundreds of religions that are Pagan, specifically, Wiccans share the religion of Wicca.
What is Wicca?
http://www.cuew.org/whatiswicca.html
You are asking for something that people write entire dissertations on. There are countless beliefs with in even the same region of an area. It was tribal most of the time. Even with neo-paganism the beliefs vary massive with in traditions and between them.
Wiccan is a pagan, a pagan is not always a Wiccan.
Pagans believe in such a wide range of different things, that you’re not going to get a definitive answer on that one. The basic definition of Paganism accepted by most of the Pagan community is a spirituality that incorporates the worship of the ancient gods in the Mediterranean/European regions, an earth-based spirituality, or a combination of the two. Wicca is one of many Pagan religion. Because of the broad use of Paganism as an umbrella term, many views of the gods, the afterlife, and life’s meaning exist within it. You’d be better off asking about specific Pagan religions separately.
However, I can answer, as one Wiccan, my views on the above mentioned topics, though you cannot generalize the views of all Wiccans by one Wiccan.
I believe in all deities seriously worshiped by humanity (I say seriously because, I’m sorry atheists, I do not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster ;)). I also believe in the Lord and Lady of Wicca as the ultimate divinity. My beliefs are semi-soft polytheistic because I believe that the gods stem from and are connected to the God and Goddess, but are still separate individuals as well. To me, the gods are like an ivy plant, and the Lord and Lady are the seeds of that plant. Each vine is a god and is completely distinct and separate from the other, but all interconnected to each other and the Lord and Lady. This is not really a typical view of deity though. Obviously, I cannot honor all of the gods because there are too many, so I honor those with whom I feel a special connection. Mostly, I honor the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian pantheons, and I honor Venus as my patron goddess.
As for the afterlife, I believe in reincarnation. I believe that we rest for awhile in the Summerland between incarnations, and as we go through life again and again, we learn new life lessons. Once we have learned all that there is to learn, I believe that we remain with the gods ever afterward. Sometimes we forget a lesson and do something terrible, and then we have to relearn the lesson in this life or in another.
I think that the meaning of life is whatever each individual person makes of it. We are here to learn life lessons, so whatever gives your life meaning IS the meaning of life.
Venus Bless
I agree with Heathen Princess, you might be asking a small question, but the answer can be long, involved and varied.
Witchcraft is a religion of Indo-European origins based in the foundation of respect and honor. Recognizing and believing that all things, seen and unseen throughout the divine universe are interconnected. I alone am not the Goddess, you alone are not the God. But you and I and all things seen and unseen make up the interconnected Divine Universe.
Many people in the U.S. think Wicca is the religion, but Wicca is a denomination of the religion. Think of it this way; Wicca is to Witchcraft what Baptist is to Christianity. Not everyone who practices the religion of Witchcraft is Wiccan, but all Wiccans are practitioners of Witchcraft. Wicca is a fairly new tradition that was established in the early 1950s by Gerald Gardner, who based his initial coven on a combination of practices he learned from other existing traditions. It’s what we call ‘hiving’. Practitioners who are not part of Wicca sometimes get annoyed with being labeled Wiccan. It insults their traditions which are based on other lines of Witchcraft which are just as old and valid as those that Gerald Gardner used to base his tradition of Wicca on.
A good way to think of this is; Witchcraft sets the foundation of our beliefs, and the denominations or what we call the Traditions (Wicca being only one of many) put those beliefs into practice. Some traditions (just like in Christianity) further define or clarify those basic beliefs and set specific actions of practice. There are a great many traditions within the religion that were established before Wicca and still exist today.
As has already been said, not all Pagans are Wiccan, but all Wiccans are Pagan.
The foundation of pagan beliefs reside in metaphysical principles. There are a great many websites on this subject, you might want to start researching as your question cannot fully be answered here.