Going Deeper

Lesson 8 of 12 · 10 min

Death, spirits & supernatural beliefs

Modern Wiccan practice

Death and rebirth

Many Wiccans hold some version of reincarnation, and much twentieth-century Wiccan writing takes it for granted. Some read it literally, some as a way of describing cycles. Others hold no afterlife belief at all and find the Wheel sufficient. There is no required doctrine.

Historical context

The Summerland

A common Wiccan name for a place of rest between lives. The term comes from nineteenth-century Spiritualism and Theosophy and was carried into Wicca from there, rather than from ancient sources.

Remembering the dead

Naming the dead at Samhain, keeping photographs, cooking someone's recipe, setting a place at a meal. This is the part of the subject that most reliably does good, and it requires no metaphysical commitment whatsoever.

Traditions vary

Ancestor veneration

Ongoing devotional attention to the dead is central in many world traditions and is practised by some Wiccans. Worth noting: ancestors need not mean blood relatives, which matters for adopted, estranged and queer practitioners, and some ancestors are not people you would want to invite anywhere.

Traditions vary

Spirits, guides and mediumship

Some Wiccans believe in spirits of place, in the dead as contactable, or in spirit guides. Others don't, and consider the whole area Spiritualism rather than Wicca. Mediumship has its own separate history, largely from the nineteenth century onward. Divination and spirit communication are also distinct: reading cards is not, by default, talking to anyone.

Origins uncertain

Intuition and the 'clairs'

Clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, psychometry and precognition are a vocabulary from Spiritualism and psychical research for classifying claimed impressions. Controlled testing has not established these abilities, and the terms remain useful mainly as descriptions of how an experience felt. Treat them as language, not diagnosis.

Worth knowing

Demons, possession and 'attachments'

Demons come from Christian and grimoire frameworks and are not part of Wiccan cosmology; most Wiccans do not believe in them. Possession and 'negative attachments' are heavily promoted online, often by people selling removals. Distress, intrusive thoughts, sleep paralysis, dissociation and sudden fear all have ordinary explanations that should be looked at first, with a doctor where appropriate.

Historical context

Ouija and talking boards

The talking board was patented as a parlour game in 1890s America and became a Spiritualist tool afterwards. The ideomotor effect accounts well for how it moves. The genuine risk is psychological: it can be frightening, especially in groups, at night, and for anyone already anxious. Anyone telling you a board opens a permanent door is going beyond the evidence.

Worth knowing

Distinguish experience from explanation

This is a permanent editorial principle here. That something happened, and that it mattered to you, is yours. Why it happened is a separate claim. Pretty Little Wiccan will never tell you that an ambiguous experience proves psychic ability, a curse, a hostile spirit, a possession or an attachment. Record what you noticed, note your own reading of it, keep the two apart, and leave the question open.

In plain English

None of these beliefs is required in Wicca.

For your own notes

Write down an odd experience, then write your explanation separately underneath.

Keeping the two apart is a habit worth building early.

Worth remembering

Respect the experience, hold the explanation loosely, and be suspicious of anyone charging to remove something from you.

Use this in the app

Next: Ethics: the harder cases

Where historians disagree, this app says so. Where traditions differ, no single one is presented as the correct Wicca. Our approach

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