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

1 - To get revenge on the dead. You gloat while you start your Wiccan studies, imagining various relatives now spinning in their graves. That will show your poor dead Jewish or Catholic mom that you have the last word!

2 - To make your family angry. You announce your conversion to Wicca at the next family gathering, and sit back to watch the emotional fireworks.

3 - To scare people. You tell people that you’re Wiccan – “You know, like a witch” – and enjoy the expression on their faces from nervous incomprehension to outright fear. You refuse to explain and clarify.

4 - To look cool. You choose Wicca as the perfect religion with which to accessorize your image as a free spirit and iconoclast. Look at you, rejecting mainstream society. At last you can feel accepted at the cool kids’ lunch table.

5 - To ogle attractive naked people. You pick up a few books and start looking for a Wiccan group so that you can see for yourself what “sky-clad” means. But you will probably have to study for a year and a day before you are initiated into a real Wiccan coven. Dude, join a nudist group instead! It is a much faster and easier way to get what you want.

6 - To wallow in sex and drugs. Does anyone still hope for this more than forty years past the excesses of the 1970s? The subsequent era of safe sex has changed everything. True, the Great Rite is the centerpiece of Beltane, but it is the symbolic sex act, not literal. And Wicca has never followed the shamanic tradition of altering perception through hallucinogenic substances. If you’re hoping to meet some potheads in your new Wiccan study group, you are more likely to find cops, students, stay-at-home moms, and others with no time for recreational drugs.

7- To feel superior to others. You come to Wicca to feed your strong desire to feel more sensitive, creative, altruistic, intuitive, and environmentally conscious than others.

8 - To provoke people. You become Wiccan because you are looking for a fight. You want to ally yourself with the most attention-getting cause you can find, wear an ostentatious pentacle, file a freedom-of-religion lawsuit, and put bumper-stickers on your vehicle that read, I AM a Witch so deal with it! and Born-again Pagan.

9 - To play with pretty things. You live for the pageantry and the festivals every six weeks. If this is your primary motive to become Wiccan, you can get your fix much easier with a theater troupe or an historical re-enactor group instead.

10 - To be just like your best friend. Your spiritual path is too important to copy directly from someone else. Even if your friend introduces you to Wicca and you find it a good fit, you will probably have a different approach and different interests within Wicca than he or she does. Everyone has unique spiritual needs. You must follow your own instincts when it comes to choosing and practicing a religion. See the Ten Best Reasons to Be Wiccan.

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