You Hit On Exactly What I Was

You hit on exactly what I was trying to say regarding labels. It shouldn't be important but it is to a lot of people. DRW is an excellent description of what I do and I accept it as what my path is, but as a "label" I don't think it will stick with most people coming into the community.

I like your idea of offering free stuff for the BOS. That would really appeal to the newcomers, I think.

Callisto said:

Getting back to the topic: The underlying issue fueling the misuse of "Wicca" is a combination of the damage done by DIY books over the past 25 years and no self-imposed insistence by the pagan community to call a spade a spade, rather eclecticism has become a hot mess. Take a look at any given eclectic board and anywhere from 50% or more of the participants can have never heard of Gardner and know next to nothing about the religion itself. What they know is what is perpetuated in those books and blindly parroted on a multitude of forums and blogs. Which is not surprising, these books often do not adequately explain Wicca-related techniques (the authors' levels of knowledge can be no better than those buying their books) so no shock there is a dearth of information on the religion as a whole. They're all geared towards stoking UPG, not actual education and self-managed training.

DRW faces an uphill battle because, frankly, the name is not catchy and marketable. Everyone (generalizing) wants to be "Wiccan" because of the name recognition and it sounds cool. "Dedicatory Religious Witchcraft" is a mouthful, not marketable and the acronym is not readily decipherable. Couple that with the fact that there is not a glut of DIY books labeled "DRW" and it is not yet a widely embraced term within the community - mainly because many for whom the term would most accurately apply would balk at giving up their "Wicca" misnomer.

I've long felt that the pagan community as a whole really needs to grow up and clean up its act. On one hand it wants to be better respected and accepted by the mainstream, but on the other has not made much progress in showing it's legit, rather it often continues to undermine itself, anything goes and every idiotic is given license because, somehow, being "inclusive" means blindly accepting everything, and to call b.s. is equated with not "respecting" another's beliefs (that is, until those beliefs need to be distanced from, say for legal reasons, "then" it's ok to call b.s.). But I'm about to get on a tangent that goes beyond the topic of the thread, so I'll just leave it there and reiterate that the above are underlying issues.

Diane said:

I also find it rather ironic that the people who want to use the tittle Wicca without being initiationed into the tradition, learning the secrets and experiencing the mysteries like to condemn Gardner as a fraud. If he is such an unsavoury character why use the tittle he conceived of for his preisthood and his tradition, why not use something less emotionally charged like DRW?

PS: I have no personal stake in this issue I am not Wicca or DRW, it simply does not make sense to me to have multiple different practices calling themselves by the same name and I have yet to come across a coherent argument that has in any way altered my position. Aislynn's blog discussion to me represents critical thinking and leadership in the neopagan community and I for one applaud it, it is so often lacking.

So once again cheers Aislynn.