A little more than fifty years ago, Gerald Gardner was afraid that Wicca wouldn’t make it out of the 1970s.

"I think we must say good-bye to the witch," he wrote in Witchcraft Today. "The cult is doomed..."

Boy, was he wrong. Over the past sixty some-odd years, the Wiccan/neo-pagan movement has grown from a small initiatory mystery religion to one of the fastest growing religions in the world, and with that growth come significant growing pains. Wicca and neo-paganism in general has moved from an initiatory practice to a congregational one; however, it was completely unprepared to do so.

According to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey released in March, there are now roughly 2.8 million adherents of "new religions" including neo-paganism and Wicca in the United States alone-- and, according to recent figures released by the Covenant of the Goddess, approximately 1 million Wiccans throughout the world.

However, the explosive growth of the neo-pagan and Wiccan movements brings a set of problems that were never imagined fifteen years ago, much less in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Wicca and neo-paganism first emerged.

"It’s kind of a challenge right now," said Amber K, Wiccan author and executive director of the Ardantane Pagan Learning Center. "With this tremendous growth, there are more solitaries and self-dedicated Wiccans than covens. Furthermore, there is a huge body of people who are laity— they identify themselves as Wiccan but do not have the training or the commitment and would never consider themselves clergy. The question is: what do we do with them all? As Wicca becomes safer to join and more mainstream, we're going to continue to see tremendous growth, but there simply aren't enough services to support large congregations. We were never structured that way."

Back when Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders, and others came out of their broom closets, Wicca started as an initiatory tradition where everyone was clergy. As a Wiccan, you were a priest or priestess; you understood that, devoted your life to it and were running covens of your own. Wicca/neo-paganism was difficult to enter and, once joined, demanded commitment.

Today, that's no longer the case. Now, Wicca and other traditions within the neo-pagan movement are synonymous with popular culture, teen angst, and clothing from Hot Topic. Unfortunately, many of the people or organizations that present the public face of the movement, with some notable exceptions, seem to be clueless. The need for educated, professional clergy grows stronger with every new convert, with every call for help posted on the numerous boards and discussion forums online.

"This is the greatest challenge faced by the new generation of Wiccans and neo-pagans," Amber K said. "If we don’t address the growth we’re experiencing, we will always be on the fringe. We need to be able to provide the services that this rapidly growing body of congregational Wiccans needs— otherwise, public rituals eight times a year is going to ring a little hollow and people will move on to something more fulfilling."

The key changes taking place in Wicca in particular can be summed up by the number of instances of laypersons officiating at public rituals. Ten years ago, I was involved with a Mabon ritual held by a local CUUPS. I was brought in by a local Wiccan HPs who told me the group had lost its HP a week before the ritual and needed help. So I met with the officiating priestess, expecting to see a ritual fleshed out. However, that wasn’t the case. She hadn't prepared a ritual but wanted to Draw Down the Moon and have a Great Rite and anything else it was possible to do in Wiccan Ritual. I didn’t have a problem with this until I asked her how long she’d been practicing Wicca. It turns out she was new to the craft and she didn't believe in Wicca, magick, the Gods themselves and was just there because it was something fun to do. I was stunned that someone this clueless was chosen to run a public ritual with no training, experience or the slightest dedication to the craft. Now I realize that this was held by a Unitarian Universalist Congregation, but it was also in partnership with a Wiccan group and class and billed as a Wiccan Mabon Ritual.

Ten years later, the situation has only gotten worse.

My family and I recently attended a local Beltane festival. It has been an annual gathering for about a decade and more than 400 people attended. However, the ritual components of the event were a complete joke. The circle was broken to search for "animal spirit guides" and cakes and ale was denigrated to soy milk and gluten-free animal crackers. Now some Wiccans may be wondering, "What's wrong with animal crackers and soy milk?" The answer to that isn’t so much the milk and cookies as the ritual itself. Instead of cakes and ale or wine being used to commune with the gods or even going through the motions of the ritual, there were people assisting with the ritual who would come by shouting, "We have gluten-free animal crackers and soy milk!" And then when they offered the cakes and ale— or soy milk and cookies— we didn’t hear, "May you never hunger" or "May you never thirst." Instead, we got: "You don’t have to have this but you can if you want." The people with the milk and cookies mostly went around the circle chatting with friends, excluding most of the participants.

Worst of all was the closing ritual. Not only was it ill-conceived, but it was obvious that the couple performing the ritual didn't have a clue. The newly crowned May Queen and King released the quarters and then performed a Drawing Down the Moon and Drawing Down the Sun in order to release the divine. Correct me if I’m wrong, I've only been at this for a few decades now, but that's completely backwards.

"This is one of the reasons Ardantane exists," Amber K said. "We need to ensure that clergy is properly trained, so they can get it right."

How many people new to the craft have read Starhawk or Gardner, the Farrars or Fitch, or have access to a decent Book of Shadows and a teacher? Not many, it seems. Instead, they get hold of Bigger Boobs for the Teen Witch by Silver BuffaloChip, put a butterfly on their MySpace page, and claim to be from an ancient line of witches with secret knowledge that only their special imaginary friends have.

I was taken aback by the first Wiccans who told me they aren't interested in magick, being clergy or anything else that makes a witch a witch. I asked them what they are doing and the answer was: "We're here for the fellowship and the community." I was absolutely floored— that's not what witches do.

I was young. Please forgive me.

This happened in the early 1990s. I was raised in fairly unique circumstances in that my mother was a Dianic Wiccan HPs (now she's serving with a group of eclectic Wiccans in north Texas.) The first book I ever read on the craft was The Spiral Dance and what’s more, I was initiated into a number of traditions as well as a self-dedicated Seax Wiccan. I had spent years in covens, familial and others, as opposed to solitary practice and I took the concept of witch as clergy very seriously. It had never even occurred to me that there were alternatives. Scott Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner was still a new book, and my thoughts were along the lines of "solitary practice is what you do if you don't have access to a coven or group, not as an alternative to it." Today, solitary practice is pretty much the norm. After almost twenty years, that doesn't bother me. I've practiced as a solitary off and on since that time, but have never considered myself a layperson— maybe a hermit at times, but never laity. What does bother me is the lack of resources for these new Wiccan Congregationalists, as well as the dearth of serious theological discussion and debate caused by the lack of clergy. This in turn is responsible for the inability to build a nurturing community that ministers to or supports this vast congregation of new Wiccans with anything more than eight public rituals a year, and maybe an esbat or two.

I've seen people leave the craft for its utter lack of depth. One of them was the high priestess who officiated at my handfasting.

Fifteen years ago, there wasn't a need for professional clergy within Wicca or the neo-pagan movement. If you were on this path, it was assumed you were clergy. This is no longer the case, and professional clergy has become vital to ensure the growth is sustainable. Today, professional clergy is needed for handfasting, funerary rites, prison and hospital ministry and chaplaincy in the Armed Forces. However, we as a religious movement are woefully unprepared for any of that. The strictures within British Traditional Witchcraft prohibit charging for any services or training within the craft, and this has influenced the views of many people within the movement. When the question of whether to charge for training in the craft or for professional clergy was posted as a discussion on PaganSpace.net, the answers varied from "Charge for training for your faith— are you nuts? The Craft is a gift. I would never charge to teach or pay to learn," to this: "Professional clergy? Absolutely, we need teachers who know what they are doing and we need to offer them compensation." Of the more than 100 people who responded, those influenced by the BTW restrictions on charging for services responded negatively, while those without the BTW influence were in favor of professional clergy. This makes sense, given the stark differences in training and other factors between coven-trained and initiated Gardnerians and Alexandrians (clergy) and the rapidly growing eclectic Wiccan laity (non-clergy).

"I think I would be more comfortable with paid clergy in terms of, say, military chaplaincy— where it’s more than a full-time job," Amber K said. "I’m leery of professional clergy, as are most of us. I'm not sure I'd want to see it attached to a coven with a large outer court. I have this fantasy of buying a building in a large city and becoming priestess to a large congregation of Wiccans. But I never have. It just doesn't seem right. As to Ardantane, my salary as executive director is only ten dollars a year. It's not income and I don't make a living from it and have stayed true to my oaths. But I'm in a position where I don't have to make a living at it. I understand that's not the case with many people."

As Wicca and neo-paganism continue to grow, fundamental structural and organizational changes have to occur to accommodate that growth. The question: How does the movement accomplish that while holding true to the tenants and practices of what is largely an experiential mystery religion with a constantly evolving liturgy? Is that even possible?

"I don’t think any of us have an answer for this," Amber K said. "Wicca thirty years ago was very different from what Gardner started with, and Wicca today is very different from where it was thirty and even fifteen years ago. The Wicca of the future will be very different. She changes everything she touches. We can be sure of that. I’m just not sure what it’s going to look like when she’s finished."

Howland-Davis has practiced and taught Wicca for more than 25 years and is an award-winning journalist. He owns a boutique public relations firm in the southwest.

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