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it's not really that weird, when christianity first came into it's propaganda power it adopted many aspects of the religions it converted to keep the people happy. ie-northern hemisphere ostara is at the same time as easter and they have the same core values/meanings.

No, what I find strange is that Wicca has been around longer than Christianity, yet they claim these idea's as their own witout stealing.....bastards

No, technically the movement of the NeoWiccan religion (us now) was indeed in the 1950's. Wicca was around far before Christianity and you are unable to find many serious historical books because during the medieval times, Pope Innocent the eigth and Pope George....the third I beleive, made a move to vie (sp?) for political power. To do this they downed the Wiccan religion, saying it was devil worship. The first step they took was the invention of the devils appearance. Horned, red, yada yada yada....well they said that the Wiccan God was obviously the devil as it fit the part. Wiccans were then prosecuted and burned just for being Wiccan. The religion was forced to go underground and into hiding until the 50's where the religion was thus revived. Wiccan books were then burned as blasphemy. And of course the Christian church denies stealing anything, why would they admit to stealing?

I think what Jace meant was technically the movement of the NeoWiccan religion (which is what we practise) was indeed started in the 1950's.

I'm uncertain how long Wicca itself has been around, but much of Wicca is derivied from the Pagan Earth Religions, which were around a long time before Christianity.

As Flames Saoirse and Helmorana said, when Christianity had its 'Take-over', it used many pagan aspects, so that its followers would be happy. However, it did change these things, ever so slightly, so that it was a 'new' religion afterall.

In Wicca, we use these same Pagan holidays- except in their (close to) original forms.*

But christianity has 'evolved' since then, and so the Holidays have 'developed' further, among the other things that they appropriated.

*Time changes all.

Teehee, finally someone who's up for a discussion. biggrin

Actually, you can. At least in a way, before you call something a relegion it has to be popular in the crowds. Per instance the Spaghetti Monster thing was just one man's personal belief... But now it's a relegion. razz Wicca untill the 50's didn't have enough following to be called a relegion, imo.

With the slate blue stone... Your point is that you can call two things by a different name and it's still one and the same thing? I already made a point like this in another thread, but what if the two things actually are different and you just think they're the same because they look alike? Or have the same attributes? I believe I used me and a friend as an example. I'm a metalhead that's in the Tolkien's society and she's a metalhead that's in the Tolkien society. Does that make us one and the same person?
And actually, the changing of the bible makes no difference to Christians. There is evidence that the bible was changed, there are three or so gospels that used to be in the bible but are no more, are known to the general public. Also, the 10 commandments they teach in Sunday school are different from those in the bible. One of the commandments in the bible, believe it or not razz , actually goes: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that isin heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: For I the LORD thy God am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."

Technically speaking, christianity is a non materialistic relegion just the same. Again I say, try telling that to a christian... And see if they care. They don't. I personally think it's cause they're not really all that relegious. Or it could be cause the pope kneels before the cross and Jesus and the pope cannot make a mistake.

As for the shrines...

I forgot, you have a point. But... Wiccans use statuettes of the god and the goddess, could those be a trace, if found?

And the folk songs, there are all kinds of folk songs from all kinds of paganistic relegions, celtic, druidic, nordic... It seems the songs are all from influences of Wicca, but none actually Wiccan. You can't know if they're fact or not, but they are usually created for something. Something the folks "knew" about, something that happened a long time ago, even if in the end it is all wrapped in nonsense. It's not to be taken as fact, but as a clue to what was once there.

I have a question though, if you need proof to believe in legends, how can you convince yourself to believe in the Goddess and the God and all of the Wiccan fairy tales? All relegions are is just a bunch of legends... is it because more people believe in them?

The witch hunts... It is aproximately known when it started. Seriously. The witch hunters kept files and forms for all the killed witches. Even in the medieval times we were far in the age of bureaucracy. And your "kind" ( rolleyes ) has been slaughtered more than 300 years ago. Start breathing, relax. I don't know what kind of a country you live in, but down here nobody gives a s**t what you believe in, except for making fun or out of interest. Nobody was scared cause of the 06.06.06, actually the only people who made any kind of a fuss about it were metalheads with the parties held on that day, the CDs coming out on that day and the day itself being proclaimed as "National Slayer Day". And I live 1 hour and a half away from the italian border... I think that doesn't have as much to do with relegion as it does with superstition... Nobody's afraid of Friday the 13th either. We just jokinly blame it on it if something bad happens to come upon that day.

And the Catholic censorship... I know about it, they burned all protestant books down here. Except the first slovene translation of the bible. But once again, that was hundreds of years ago. Down here I don't know how long it was since the last censor, the last german empire censor (censorsip with anything against the german empire) was around 200 years ago, but then you have the yugoslavian censorship and such. To me it makes no difference, if wicca was present it should have survived amongst the people too. We have old traditions and legends from the slavic paganism, if the censurship killed everything than also how do you explain the eddas or the Kalevalla? And all the folk tales and folk songs in Ireland? Or France? Or Spain... ?

Censorship killed the written word, it didn't kill the spoken word.

Lucifer (the devil) was an arch angel along with Michael. One day Lucifer's ego got out of control and he started questioning why he worked for God when he was obvously doing more work. Well, Lucifer then started to compare himself to God and since that is breaking the first commandment of God, Lucifer was thusly exiled after a long battle with Michael.