| Religion, Nature and the City |
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| Written by Meredith Barton | |||||
| Wednesday, 01 February 2006 | |||||
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Uniting Wicca, Judaism, and Urban Culture Most ancient religions were built on agricultural traditions that seem largely irrelevant to fast-paced urban communities fully equipped with climate control cars. One wonders why many agrarian aspects in modern religions have failed to become obsolete to the western, educated, urban religious consumer. My answer to this question lies somewhere between Wicca and Judaism. At first glance, these two religions seem so diametrically opposed to one another as to be antonyms. One is a polytheistic religion with no strict dogma or religious text, that embraces everything from Greek mythology to magic, while the other is the originator of monotheism and published a book supposedly written by God. If my descriptions of these religions seem tongue-in-cheek, it is only in response to the absurdity of essentializing something as complex as religion. And believe me, I understand religious absurdity. I am the child of two United Methodist ministers, and religion in my family ranged from a business to a burden to a source of arguments over dinner. It did not take long for my brother to lapse into a benign atheism and for me to search for a religion where I didn’t know all of the magician’s secrets. Enter Wicca. When most people hear “Wicca,” their first thought is witchcraft. For me, it was more about reading old recipes for making dandelion wine and memorizing uses for stones and crystals (if you put obsidian in your wallet, says Wicca, you’ll never run out of money). It wasn’t spells and frog’s eye potions that enchanted me; it was about noticing the present amidst the changes one experiences in the world. Like in most moral systems, the central saying of Wicca has a sense of reciprocity: “And it harm none, do what thou will.” It’s the simplicity of Wicca that draws practitioners to it. I cannot completely call Wicca a personal phase, nor can I relegate it to the broken and used up box of “primitive religions.” As a recent convert to Judaism, most of what I learned in Wicca has carried through to my current religious outlook. No modern religion embodies the transition from rural to urban worship better than Judaism. Its yearly cycles openly pay homage to spring and harvest, an incredibly significant feature considering that from the Second Exile until relatively recently, Jews were forbidden to own land throughout much of Europe. From Rosh Hashanah’s apples and honey (also a favorite Wiccan food) to makeshift huts on Sukkot (and the requisite “Hookah in the Sukkah” Hillel events), from singing Shabbat prayers to standing under the wedding chuppah, Judaism for me embraces the gratitude, spontaneity, and sense of humor necessary to thrive on earth. Although the differences between Shabbat dinner and a full moon ritual are significant and obvious, Wicca and Judaism share a resiliency that comes from finding the sacred in the mundane and the spontaneous in the expected despite today’s creature comforts of electricity and computers. After all, no one is surprised when spring comes, but that doesn’t stop us from rejoicing.
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