People come to the Wiccan religion at all stages in their lives and for many different reasons. Consider the following ten best reasons to become Wiccan:

1- To deepen your connection with nature. Wicca pulls you out of the dusty halls of worship and puts you under the stars to cultivate herbs and live in harmony with the cycles of the growing season and the phases of the moon.

2 - To explore the old ways. You might have British ancestry or otherwise feel a deep connection to, and overwhelming curiosity about, pre-Christian northern Europe.

3 - To help heal the planet. You want to do more than just recycle. Wicca enables you to raise life-affirming energy that you can pour onto the earth like water. You can bless, protect, nourish, and celebrate the land with your own personally written spells and rituals.

4 - To heal yourself. Wicca can soothe the emotional wounds from a traumatic experience with mainstream religion, and it can restore your physical health through its emphasis on spiritual balance and natural living.

5 - To reclaim your relationship with the Divine Feminine. Perhaps you deeply dislike the tendency of the religions of the Book (that is, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to present women as responsible for Original Sin. You may miss the presence of the Goddess. Wicca offers a balanced relationship with Lord and Lady.

6 - To practice an active form of spirituality. Other religions may center on gathering once a week to listen passively to the word, but you want to DO stuff. You want to perform your own rituals and live according to the phases of the moon and the passing of the seasons.

7 - To have a one-to-one relationship with Deity. You refuse to accept the spiritual authority of anyone other than the gods and your instincts to determine your spiritual path, nor do you trust a central text, which may have been mistranslated and distorted through time. Through Wicca you bypass text and external religious hierarchies to allow the gods to guide you intuitively.

8 - To blend creativity with spirituality. What could be finer than melding the arts, crafts, and gardening that you were going to do anyway with a higher spiritual purpose? Wicca is a religion in which creativity is an intrinsic part of the spiritual path. You can always buy your candles, herbs, oils, and incenses but they will be more powerful if you charge them with your energy by making them yourself.

9 - To practice an accepting, inclusive religion. An intuitive, individualistic religion such as Wicca is often a haven for nonconformists oppressed by the traditional patriarchal paradigm.

10 - To answer the call of the gods. You might have experienced a direct call to the service of one of the gods. Most traditional religions would regard this as something like a distraction (Buddhism), a psychotic break (liberal western religions), or the Devil grabbing at your soul (conservative western religions). If you know otherwise, the clearest religious path with which to explore your new relationship with your god or gods is Wicca or some other form of paganism with its emphasis on one-to-one communication between you and the divine. See Ten Worst Reasons to Be Wiccan.

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