Wicca is a Religion

Last year I found out that I am a wiccan. By blood, so is my sister. I was excited by the news and wanted to tell my closest friends, as I was telling them one of my other friends (who I had fallen out with) overheard. He was bitter and decided he was going to tell people who my friends and I were witches. I am only 13 years old now but then I was 12. We all were, a few days later there were whisperings and nasty jokes being said while we were near and people threw paper with pictures of witches on at us. I was mortified, not only to know that it was a friend who had started the whisperings but also that high school students could be so horrid.

They were especially meant to me. I was in a science class with none of my friends so I was vulnerable, there was only one person who thought it was natural and not satanic. The girls were mostly just laughing about it and stopped soon enough but the boys and some of the really popular girls made a club. A no witches club. They took my things and spread nasty rumors, they drew cartoons of ugly witches stirring couldrons and pinned them to my back. It was a living nightmare, my friends supported me but unfortunately they were getting some of the anger and hatred as well. When I told my form tutor she asked me what wicca was and when I told her she said I had brought it all on myself, that I should just have kept my satanic doings to myself. I spent days crying but enduring the horror that others forced onto me.

Some of them listened when I said it was my religion and that it was as normal as to be christian, those few looked it up and asked me with genuine curiosity about it. Whether they are still interested I do not know. There is one specific event that made me want to write this article. I was in class and we had a substitute teacher, it was one of the rare times when 3 out of 5 of use were in the room I was sat next to a boy who had a specific hatred of my sisters and I along with our religion, it was the week after the rumors started and he took advantage of the teacher not being there. He raised his hand and when the teacher asked him what was wrong he said he was sat next to a voodoo witch.

The teacher looked shocked and the other students laughed apart from my sisters, the teacher asked what he meant he said that my sisters and I worshipped the devil and that he wasn't going to put up with it. I was in tears, as were my sisters. pride at humiliating us rolled off him in waves and everyone else agreed with him. The teacher told him to take it to our head of year if he wanted something done about it. He did, you don't need to know what happened after that but my sisters and I still get a lot of hatred throughout the school. We never talk about it, it ate us up too much and we were reluctant to carry on with wicca but I said that we shouldn't go through all of that to give up.

So we carried on and now one year later we are starting a coven. I know we haven't been studying for long but we aren't doing powerful things or strenuous things. We have named our coven and will hold our first circle on new years day. At midnight. I am telling you this because no one should be treated this way, everyone is different and follows different religions, there is nothing wrong with that.

If you don't like something others you know are doing, don't say anything about it or read up on it and try to understand. Who knows, you might like it if you know something about it. Please never judge people by things like their religion, bear in mind the rule of three. (Whatever you do will be cast back unto you three times as much). I know you probably don't want to hear this from someone so young but hear me out, it's not nice and I found that out the hard way.

"We are the witches, the representatives of growth,
We are the people, the power,
And the change,
We are the spirit,
We are one. And,
We have come to take you home."

this is the writing on the picture.