Nah. It's covered.
Witches have existed, exist, and will continue to exist. Cultures, religions and nations will come and they'll go. As long as there are humans there will be witches.
As to Wicca, well...the downfall of Wicca is the same as plagues most of modern Paganism, and more wholly Neo-Paganism. The seemingly incessant roll of people using it as a statement of fashion. Or of teen-aged angst. Or of rebellion, (read that: excuse for bad / aberrant behavior), for one "cause" or another...ecology, politics, animal rights, whatever. Add in a hefty dose, (overdose?), of this implied malleability of tenet / dogma / scripture bordering on, (okay...sometimes crossing actively into), the profane; proffered largely by "auteurs" with fat advance checks in their hands and multi-title contracts to fill, turning that which should be a sacred circle into a fast-food drive-thru.
I can tell you...the number of people leaving Neo-Paganism going TO Christianity is not only staggering, but makes my point. People try "this", "that" or "the other" for a while and think: "I'm not as nearly fulfilled, Spiritually, as I thought I'd be...(or, as I was in that first year-and-a-day),. Shucks. Might just as well go back to church". Probably makes much better Christians out of 'em.
But that's not why we're here.
Nor should it be.
The mainstream have done a fine job of co-opting the window dressing elements of Wicca, re-packaging them in a prime time format, corrupting the message utterly and profiting obscenely from the half hour sit-coms and one hour "dramas" that resulted from this unholy cocktail. Sabrina the Teenage Witch (aghhh that creepy arsed stuffed cat!), Charmed, Paranormal, Angel & Buffy. The shyte "fiction" that crowds out the classics such as The Once and Future King and The Hobbit now on the Teen Reading shelves in bookshops.
The middle class path seeking hippies of the 60's did the same thing with the beauty and profundity of the Native American animist traditions. Invaded the Mojave in 1967 on their way home from Woodstock. Now that "path" is littered with SUV driving middle aged cherohonkees, peddling peyote to eager Alternative Lifestyle Lolitas in the hope of getting their ageing legover a bit of firm flesh. The plague of Billy Jack fanboys who rampaged through American deserts making out as if they knew what it was all about. They sicken me.
It was a deliberate ploy. I'm certain of it. Encouraged and maybe even funded by the ruling elites. They had noted a thirst in the kids. A need to re-connect to the old ways and the walk again the old paths. They knew they had to nip it in the bud or a populace with a growing consciousness, a deeper concept of Spirituality than monotheism can compete with and a widening understanding of our relationship with the earth which sustains us would have made us a much harder underclass to control.
Hollywood has always been the major tool of mind control in the western world. It's how they promote their wars. How they endorse their political ideologies. And increasingly how they mould and form the religious views of the many.
So they stole Wicca, they subverted its meanings, they polluted the lessons it has to teach and replaced them with inanity about spells and magic and what a circle or coven really is. They held out to the tween target audience visions of romantic love with immortal life forms. Homework miraculously completed by the familiar. Rivals for the football player's heart bested with nothing more than information gleaned from a well cast set of runes. Or an esp insightful Tarot reading.
Now real practitioners of the craft have an even more uphill battle to try to convey to anyone - critic or potential student - that Wicca has nowt to do with any of that tripe.
I find it difficult to maintain my patience with anyone seeking to open a dialogue about Wicca who has obviously come across it by stepping straight off the path behind a backlot in West Hollywood, still clutching the autograph they got off some smokin' hot teen
femme fatale from the shitty little show from whence they got their ludicrous notions.
My two cents worth.
