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The watchtowers were among the Golden Dawn concepts introduced into Wicca by its founder Gerald Gardner. The complicated tablets and Enochian names were largely abandoned, but Wicca retained the watchtowers as "the four cardinal points, regarded as guardians of the Magic Circle." [6] They are usually mentioned during the casting of the circle.
Wicca (English: / ˈ w ɪ k ə /), also known as "The Craft", [1] is a modern pagan, syncretic, earth-centered religion.Considered a new religious movement by scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esotericism, developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant.
The cone of power is visualized as a cone of energy that encompasses the circumference of the magic circle of Wiccans and tapering off to a point above the group. [1] As a group, the cone is formed by the Wiccans standing in a circle, sometimes holding hands, and focusing on a single point above the group and in the centre of the circle.
There are two separate definitions of the term Wicca that have been used in Paganism and Pagan studies since circa 1980. [1] The first developed in England during the 1960s. Broad and inclusive, it covers most, if not all, forms of modern Pagan Witchcraft, especially if they share sufficient theological beliefs and ritual practices to be considered denominations within a common religious movement.
The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, south, east, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, S, E, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at 90 degree intervals in the clockwise direction.
Vāmācāra is a Sanskrit term meaning "left-handed attainment". The converse term is dakshinachara. [10] The Western use of the terms left-hand path and right-hand path originated with Madame Blavatsky, a 19th-century occultist who founded the Theosophical Society.
A Wiccan altar is a "raised structure or place used for worship or prayer", [1] upon which a Wicca practitioner places several symbolic and functional items for the purpose of worshiping the God and Goddess, casting spells, and/or saying chants and prayers.
The modern spelling witch with the medial 't' first appears in the 16th century. Old English had both masculine (wicca) and feminine (wicce) forms of the word, [1] but the masculine meaning became less common in Standard English, being replaced by words like "warlock" and "wizard".