The Thing About Labels is that Sometimes They Stick

In this day and age, we have names for everything. Wicca is no exception to this. What magickal labels do you give yourself? For example, I am an eclectic, Wiccan, Witch. What do your call yourself? A Wiccan? A Witch? Pagan? What makes one a Wiccan and not a Witch? Or in order to truly understand how magick and force of will works...are you automatically a Witch as well, even though you may not cast circles? Where do we draw the lines with the labels? Why have you chosen the labels you claim?

In this post I will be tackling another of the Pagan Blog Prompts. I find this an interesting one because there seem to be two types of people in this world: those that abandon the ideas of using labels for ourselves and, by contrast, those that peel and stick to themselves (um, metaphorically...) whatever labels they can come up with. To begin, I don't think either one is necessarily wrong. After all, we're each individuals and should have the autonomy to decide for ourselves what we share about who we are.

For me, labels make everything easier. You just have to go back to your biology class days to know that classification by phylum, order, and species make the scientific world function. There is no shame in that. I think the hesitation of labeling oneself for some is the fear of not being able to escape those classifications down the road, and perhaps that is justified. Quite simply, I also worry at times that to certain people I look more as the labels themselves rather than using them.

I call myself a Celtic Pagan. I sometimes use the term Celtic Wiccan, though there are a few aspects of Wicca that I don't agree with. Those concerns sometime make me wonder whether or not I am a Wiccan in the sense that I do not subscribe to the plausibility of he threefold law and Wiccan Rede in my practice. Science tells us that there is an equal and opposite reaction and yet we are to assume that a negative deed will have three times the repercussions just because we are Wiccan and not Catholic or of some other denomination? I don't buy it, but that is a topic for another post entirely.

I associate with other labels as well. I am an American, a writer, a human, gay, alive, and caring. I am actually more than each of those individual things, although combining all of them into one category does give another a closer idea of who I am. The words that we choose to associate with ourselves are powerful, much more than the words that others would choose to classify us with. The label system works because we embrace those labels and discard the terms that we aren't comfortable with. To some I would be called a sinner. Since my spirituality has no concept of sin I would denounce that label. What we choose to associate with who we are is the key, not what others try to push onto us.