Wiccan

Having been a practicing pagan, and at one point a devout wiccan, for several years I decided to take this course for three reasons, none of which were to actually learn anything new. I took it to see what kind of courses and what quality of courses ULC Seminary offered, to reaffirm the ideals and beliefs that I had already had and ultimately as a step towards completing the ULC Seminary Program. Having taken the course I can honestly say I learned some new things that I had not originally thought I would.

After practicing for almost ten years and doing a fair amount of research on my own I thought I knew a fair amount. However, I discovered through the course that there are different ideologies within Wiccan than those that I personally was taught and followed. In fact some of those ideologies and practices are quite different from my training and practices. I attribute part of this to my specific group following a Celtic Wiccan path and part of it to the differences between Gardnerian, traditionalists and modern eclectic Wiccans see and do things. A good example of this is the different grounding rituals. This course taught a grounding and banishing ritual based on Jewish tradition and my personal grounding and banishing ritual is based on the tree of life.

The course also brought about some new thinking and contemplation on my part. Lessons 6 and 7 on Dowsing and Lessons 8, 23 and 24 on Magic, for example gave me new ideas on spell craft and implementation. Some of the things mentioned are things I already did while others were things I had never even thought off. The magic lesson covering morality was nice to read as I know a lot of my fellow pagans do not have a strong moral compass with regard to magic use and will now have guidance on proper use and disuse.

In short, while I went into this course feeling that I wouldn’t truly learn anything and that is was just a simple step on the way toward my goal; I discovered a wealth of knowledge and view points I hadn’t seen before, which caused me to open my mind a little further and refreshed my thirst for knowledge.

by Justin M. Oles

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

Wiccan Studies

Dear Lord Starwalker, Dear Amy,

I started the ULC Dr. of Wiccan Studies Program in the beginning of January this year and received the final lesson a few days ago. Despite a little glitch of no consequence in the e-mail system, the course was very well delivered and very enlightening.

It is clear that Lord Starwalker is well-learned on the subject of Wicca and Paganism, and he is very good at sharing this information. I appreciated his down-to-earth writing style, which could describe wide range of fairly difficult concepts in a straightforward way. He went directly to the point, making risks and potential pitfalls clear.

I liked the way the course was structured, moving from the history to the philosophy, to the mythology and theology, then to rituals only at lesson 15, and to spells only in the end. I find that a lot of books on Wicca tend to pass very quickly on the more spiritual aspects of the religion and dedicate most of their teaching to rituals. This in my opinion leads people to focus too much on the magic and not enough on spirituality, philosophy and theology. Not so in this course!

I have read quite a number of books on Wicca and Paganism, and this course was at the same time covering a number of topics I had already read on and meditated about, but it also very often put them in a new light. I liked the advices on rituals in lesson 16 and 17. You don?t read very often about them, and they are important things to think about when performing rituals. I also found lesson 21 on ethics very important.

The lesson on herbalism and herbology were interesting, but I think that I would need much more reading before I delve into more than only the most risk-free basics. Lord Starwalker did well to include a warning at the beginning of the lesson.

The lessons on the holidays and the sabbats and esbats were very good. They put them into perspective from a historical and practical point of view, and I learned quite a lot there. It is true that the content of the Wiccan holidays can and does change from tradition to tradition and that their description is often different, but I think it is important to know the origins and reasons of celebration to be able to really know what we are doing at that time.

I have not been able to practice the lessons as much as I would have liked, but I have filed them all for further reference and I am sure I will go back to them regularly.

I thank you very much for your time and efforts. Again, this was a great experience.

May the Goddess bless you and everyone at ULC.

Baudouin Heuninckx

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.

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Wiccan Studies

The Introduction to Wicca is a very interesting and well-written course. I took it because I had no prior background or knowledge in Wicca. From the very first lesson it was engaging and very thorough. It was very informative and insightful and the author used humor throughout to get his points across.

All of the tools used in Wicca were discussed in detail, the reasons why they are used, and how to set up your altar properly. Lord Starwalker gave a lot of background information which I found very helpful. It not only helped me understand the position of items on the altar, but helped me be much more creative with it because I had the sense I knew what I was doing!

Information was presented on all of the Wiccan holidays, what they are, the gods and goddesses involved, the history and symbolism, the wheel of the year, and the Sabbats and Esbats. There certainly are a lot of them to keep track of! It must be fun to have these celebrations all year long. It is interesting how many parallels there are between Wiccan and Christian holidays.

Another facet of Wicca is the use of energy. We hear so much today about energy medicine for healing. Energy is something that Wiccans have always known about and used for healing and for spells. Energy healing has been around for at least hundreds if not thousands of years.

Lord Starwalker is an excellent teacher and had a great sense of humor. I enjoyed and looked forward to each lesson. I am so glad I took this course because it gave me such a great perspective on this tradition. I wanted to know more about Wicca after taking this course and have bought a couple of interesting books to further my reading and knowledge.

Rev. Patricia Buben

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The Universal Life Church is a comprehensive online seminary where we have classes in Christianity, Wicca, Paganism, two courses in Metaphysics and much more. I have been a proud member of the ULC for many years and the Seminary since its inception.