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Eclectic Wicca is a type of Wicca characterized by the use of a wide variety of sources for inspiration, and the quest to build a unique, personal religious path. The basic structure is generally Wiccan, but may vary widely among individual groups and practitioners.
Adherents are often people leaving formalized religions such as various forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or the more structured Wiccan or Pagan religions. Generally speaking, Eclectic Wiccans are individuals who incorporate various forms of Wiccan ritual into their spiritual paths. One of the central tenets, if Eclectic Wicca can be said to have any tenets at all, is a belief in personal freedom and the refusal to be "restricted" by any particular doctrine or form.
Eclectic Wiccans may believe in the deities of ancient Pagan religious, such as those of the Celtic, Greek, Norse, or Egyptian pantheons. Generally, Eclectic Wiccans "invoke" any number of deities from these and other cultures, often in the same ritual. They may also hold to the Wiccan theological perspective that "All gods are one god, all goddesses are the same goddess", and see all deities as "aspects" of a larger, duotheistic pair.
Eclectic Wiccans generally feel it is acceptable or even desirable to change or invent ritual in any way that they deem appropriate, and to incorporate deities and traditions from any and all cultures that appeal to them. Since they are not "constrained" by "Wiccan church" or any other traditional religious practices, there is little interest in formal religious training or initiation into a particular group or lineage. The commonality that defines an Eclectic Wiccan, as opposed any other type of Pagan or Neopagan, is the use of basic Wiccan structure and cosmology and the incorporation of many Wiccan assumptions about theology (even if the resulting practice may not be considered Wiccan by one of the established traditions like Gardnerian or Alexandrian Wicca).
Some Eclectic Wiccans combine elements from Judaism, Buddhism or Christianity into their rituals and personal belief systems, while others are hostile to those religions. Knowledge and inspiration are drawn from many different spiritualities and traditions and amalgamated into an individual system of belief. Many Eclectic Wiccans consider their beliefs to be in a continual state of flux, while others settle into a pattern after a number of years
References
- http://www.wcc.on.ca/faq/ accessed online 24 June 2006