Wicca is so painfully misunderstood.

I've been doing a little of research after reading the Da Vinci Code (an 11-year-old, reading the Da Vinci Code, imagine that). It's fascinating.

I've heard from multiple sources that the left-hand side was associated with evil. It's real origins? The sacred feminine and the goddess.

The medieval Christian and Catholic church fabulously twisted nature-based and pagan religions, saying that they were devil worship. PAGANS DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN THE DEVIL.

I'm not a Wiccan, in the sense that I worship only one God. But in many Wiccan religions, there is only one divine being, split into masculine and feminine parts. That's two halves of a whole, I suppose. I share a lot of the same thinking, I guess. Male and female, yin and yang, harmony. Unintentionally, my login name references the sacred feminine--the moon is considered symbolic of the goddess.

Wiccans have a reverence for nature. Nature, in my Christian belief, was created by God. Having reverence for God's creations is to have reverence for God Himself, I think.

Wiccans perform spells--the gathering of energy, giving it a purpose, and releasing it to acheive an end. The Christian word for this is prayer.

And the pentacle, one of my favorite topics.

Da Vinci fans, leave now, you know all this already.

1.618 is known as the Divine Porportion, the building blocks of the universe. There are TONS of examples of it in nature--divide the number of female honey bees in a hive by the number of male bees, and you will ALWAYS get 1.618. The pentacle--the five-pointed star--is the ultimate representation of it, because the lines automatically divide themselves into a ratio of 1.618. Did you know that the planet Venus (Roman name for Aphrodite, who was the goddess of beauty, fertility, and love) draws a perfect pentacle in the sky every 8 years? Our Olympic games are based on the cycle of that pentacle. It very nearly became the symbol for the Olympics, but it was changed at the last moment, it being decided that five intertwining circles better representing the unity they were trying to convey.

In Wicca, the pentacle is considered to be something like the equivalent of the cross in Christianity. It's not the sign of the devil. It stands for te five Elements of the Craft--Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Spirit.

I'm done ranting for the day.