Misconceptions About Wicca.
The media plays a huge role in how people come to create their own understandings, ideas, and opinions on certain subjects and Wicca is no different. Most people know Wicca though watching shows like Charmed or hearing about it through little snippets in movies or, sometimes, even on the news. Movies like Harry Potter make witchcraft look so grand, but what people fail to realize is that most of these shows and movies exaggerate the truth and/or draw from the myths and tales about witches. Movies like Harry Potter hold almost no truth, because it’s fantasy. No witches cannot point their wands at something and make it turn into glass or levitate. If we could, well, that would be pretty darn cool. Fantasy is fun to watch and fun to read, but that’s all it is, fun, not truth.
On the other hand, there are shows like Charmed which draw heavily from the actual religion of Wicca and even make the religion a big part of the show. In one episode, a coven of witches were shown reciting some of the actual Witches Creed, and yes most witches do keep a Book of Shadows or Grimoire, but a show can’t survive just on that. To draw an audience, you need to interest them, and therefore you have to exaggerate the truth…a lot. No we do not fight demons that pop out of no where, we do not have the ability to freeze time or blow things up with a motion of our hands. (Once again, if we could, that would be reeeeally cool.) In another episode there was even a joke I found pretty funny where one of the Charmed sisters (Phoebe) grabbed a broom and another sister (Piper or Paige, can’t remember) asked her “What’s the broom for?” and Phoebe answered, “For flying silly”. No, in the show they don’t fly on brooms and neither do real witches, that part of the episode was in Piper’s delusion and it played on some of the fictions about witchcraft, like flying on brooms.
Charmed is one of my favorite shows, but I know that most of it’s not true. Sometimes shows like Charmed help to show Wicca in a positive light, but some shows and movies just add fuel to the fire against Wicca. That is when people need to think logically. Is it really possible for what’s going on in a movie/show to be true? If it isn’t humanly impossible, then of course it’s not, because when it comes down to it, that’s what we all are, human.
Filed under: Opinions, Wicca/Paganism | 1 Comment
Tags: charmed, harry potter, misconceptions, pagan, paganism, wicca, witch, witchcraft, witches
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