You are right, but in name only. The oldest religion is the study of nature that the people of the time found overwhelming that could include water, soil, the sun and moon, fire, lightening....things that were beyond their capacity to understand the basics of, but they understood the pieces of. Fire burned, water drowned but tasted good, the more impressive things. So they considered this akin to magic and before the establishment of a God theory we use today in other religions.
But even today’s efforts to define things of this nature are not within the concept. The Oxford dictionary defines witchcraft as “the practice of magic, especially black magic; the use of spells.” They’ve been watching too many movies as this definition puts black magic in and makes it associated with evil that way. The only correct part of that was the last part about the spells as they have spells for about everything. So they have magic, Hollywood has black magic.
Witchcraft is over a thousand years old: Old English formed the compound wiccecræft from “wicce” (”witch”) and “cræft” (”craft”). The word witch was also spelled “wicca” or “wycca” in Old English, and was originally masculine. I somehow can’t see too many men on brooms.
So it is very easy to relate Wicca to witchcraft as it looks so similar and many people understand it that way. Wiccans worship “the mother goddess” and her companion “the horned god.” They say both of these deities manifest themselves in nature, which is the same as that original religion that is untitled.
rwood
I said “If wicca is taking obscure hindu gods, it isn’t a continuation of European paganism.
Wiccan is a modern, made up religion like Scientology”
you write “but in name only”
Huh?
And your point of “the oldest religion” is unprovable - we don’t know the “oldest religion” — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism,etc. claim to be the “oldest religion” or the “original religion”
Full disclosure - I’m Christian so I’m going to be biased for Judaeo-Christianity.
“witchcraft is over a 1000 years old” — err.. no. Witchcraft was a catch-all phrase used for stuff that was local gods, herbology etc. it was never a united set of beliefs until the 20th century.
Wiccans take 20thcentury ideas and earlier century fairy tales and make them into a religion - no different than Scientology or Jedi-ism