Wicca - etymology (Earth, followers, translation, choice, pagan)

[Lavinia-Alexandra]

What is the correct translation of the word " Wicca" ? Please explaine you`re choice !

[YamiB.]

I can't find anything about Wicca translating into something or about the origin of the word. The best I would be able to give is a brief definition.

[michel]

According to the online etymology dictionary:-
Wicca An O.E. masc. noun meaning "male witch," curiously taken by Gerald Gardner's followers (c.1954) as an abstract noun meaning "witchcraft" and thus becoming the title of a modern pagan movement. See witch.

[Green Gaia]

The great gods of Google search have spoken!


Etymology

Gerald Gardner is credited with re-introducing the word Wicca into the English language, although he himself used the spelling 'Wica' in his published work of 1954[1], and that only sparingly, usually just calling his religion 'witchcraft'. The spelling 'Wicca' is now used almost exclusively, Seax-Wica being the only major use of the four-letter spelling. The word's first appearance within the title of a book was in Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner in the late 1980s.[citation needed]

Wicca was previously an Old English word (pronounced 'witcha'), meaning a male witch or wizard; wicce was a female witch (see also Völva), and wiccecræft was witchcraft. Its earliest known use is in the circa 890 Laws of Ælfred.[24][25][26] Earlier origins of the word are uncertain, however, and are much disputed.[27]

The most likely derivation is through the Old English word wigle (sorcery, divination) from the Indo-European root *weg (liveliness, wakefulness).[28][29] Gardner and other writers on Wicca have proposed a relationship with the Old English words wita 'wise man' and witan 'to know', asserting that witches had once been regarded as the "wise" people;[30][31] Wicca is often called the "Craft of the Wise" in allusion to this derivation. Still others claim a derivation from the Indo-European root *wei which connotes bending or pliance (from which we get the words 'wicker' 'willow' and 'witch-elm'), suggesting the concept of magic as a "bending" of forces of nature.
The word wicca is associated with animistic healing rites in Halitgar's Latin Penitential where it is stated that

Some men are so blind that they bring their offering to earth-fast stone and also to trees and to wellsprings, as the witches teach, and are unwilling to understand how stupidly they do or how that dead stone or that dumb tree might help them or give forth health when they themselves are never able to stir from their place.

The phrase swa wiccan tæcaþ ("as the witches teach") seems to be an addition to Halitgar's original, added by an eleventh-century Old-English translator.[32]

[YamiB.]

I figured the best place to look for this would be the Gardnerian Book of Shadows. It pretty much used Wicca to mean people belonging to the religion Gardner describes. I think this would be the best definition to use for Wicca in a modern sense. Though the common person may like to group all modern witchcraft groups with the word Wicca in the modern language it really only refers to the religion started by Gardner.

[Fluffy]

It has been used to describe all of the things in the poll. I have never heard it used to describe specifically a female witch. Normally when a woman describes herself as "Wiccan", she is not using it as a gender specific adjective although I have come across instances of this being true in the male gender.

An additional definition, and the one which is most commonly used today, is "A neo-pagan religion".

I personally find the link to "craft of the wise" to be suspect but I don't really think it matters. It is only a word and as long as everyone in a particular conversation is sharing the same definition of that word then it doesn't matter what it means. I only ever use the word to describe the religion and use "Wiccan" to refer to a follower. I do consider it to be an entirely seperate entity to witchcraft since this, in modern times, is used to refer to magick whereas 60 years ago, their meanings were almost identical.

[MaddLlama]

I voted none of the above, since linguistically speaking, Gardener made the word up.