| I cannot rightly say "all," or even "most," but certainly | | | | rather than the conscious creation of resolutions to |
| many of the Wiccans I have known or observed over | | | | those ills and a brighter future for everybody.But I |
| the years appear to find in Wicca a unique brand of | | | | understand those nostalgic feelings, I really do. Society, |
| escapism from the travails of our modern world, a | | | | at this present moment in history, is frighteningly |
| safe haven from the uniquely complex moral, | | | | unbalanced in favor of violence, fascism, corporate |
| environmental, social and political issues that define our | | | | hegemony, misogyny, the Industrial rape and pillage of |
| era. They appear to seek to turn back the clock, to | | | | the Earth and its parallel attack on the human spirit in |
| retreat into a pagan agrarian culture that no longer | | | | the form of rampant consumerism, etc. We are clearly |
| exists, or to "resurrect" a Medieval, | | | | headed at break-neck speed toward almost certain |
| "thatched-cottage-on-the-edge-of-the-woods" society | | | | disaster. Faced with our present real world situation, |
| that is far more a product of Renaissance festivals | | | | who wouldn't "Look homeward with longing?"There's |
| and paperback fantasy novels than of anything to be | | | | an episode of the old 1960s Star Trek television series |
| found in real, recorded history. This nostalgic (from the | | | | in which Kirk and company beam down to help |
| Greek nostos algos, or literally, "To look homeward | | | | evacuate a planet whose sun is about to go |
| with longing") brand of Wicca generally embodies an | | | | supernova. But when the "away team" reaches the |
| abdication of responsibility for the ills of modern society, | | | | planet's surface, they find nobody home. |