How did Wicca go from being a mystery religion to the ultimate DIY-based faith?

How dare you point out the elephant in the room?! ;-)

I would say there is a good portion of highly vocal followers who, through making the biggest noise, have managed to become what people associate with a stereotypical follower ie. teen / goth / polyamourus / bi-curious / chubby / feminazi etc who tends to go by the title "Lady"

Following good old Gardner there were plenty of books published by authors who had never done more than read a book themselves (circa 1970's). By the time Wicca met the Interwebs in the 90's, it just blossomed.

There are also those who have jumped on the commercialisation bandwagon which requires that Wicca be as easily digestible and as DIY as possible, also with the obligatory sales of cheap and cheesy tat. I'm not naming any names, but a prime example of this rhymes with Cor-crellian Tradition. This has done plenty to fuel the fire of the "make it up as you go along" crowd who also believe that if it "feels right" then it doesn't matter how preposterous it is it *must* be right - and those who disagree are just being snobbish and infringing on your freedom of religion.

The fact is that there are plenty of us who have gone the traditional route and have learned "To Be Silent". We also tend to enjoy colour in our wardrobe, be employed in professional occupations and have children so quite hard to tell apart from the rest of society.

My Wicca is most certainly an Initiatory Mystery Tradition and quite a few of the people I have trained with can be found on http://avaloniabooks.co.uk/about/authors . I'm only one of many who follow this kind of path, we just don't broadcast it to the world. :)

I'd say both. Here's why: Wicca is based from what I know on fertility-related holidays, deities and workings. The Great Rite is possibly the utmost expression of those things. But it is also a Mystery religion because what I call Wicca and not Neo-Wicca are the various Traditions of the British Traditional Witchcraft branches (to name two: Gardnerian and Alexandrian) who require initiation and have hidden teachings, realizations and "revelations" (for lack of a better word).

I think it was mainly because of Llewellyn books who pretty much jumped on the Wicca bandwagon to sell books, but took very little responsibility to fact check their authors. I remember in the earldy 90's when Wicca started getting popular it was like they couldn't get enough stuff on the shelf fast enough. A lot of them just regurgitated the same nonsense.

Also, because of shows like Charmed & movies like the Craft, etc.-- and the internet started gaining popularity back then, too, which just perpetuated a lot of that bad information. We also live in a culture where many people are looking for the fastest and simplest thing they can find.

Since Wicca is not a dogmatic religion and not an organized religion, it's not like there's an overhead church that comes out to dispute it or offer some scripture or anything.

So basically, people who want to get off the light & fluffy bandwagon and learn real Wicca have to either find & join a reputable coven (which teens can't do) or really do some serious research to separate the wheat from the chaff (which most people won't bother to do).

1. The moment Gardner started publishing, he put it into the public sphere. If you want apractice to truly remain private, you don't publish about it.

2. Commercialization. As Wicca became more and more popular, people continued publishing more and more of whatever would sell more books, which included lots of stuff that didn't actually have anything to do with Wicca, even though they kept calling it Wicca.

3. Ideas of magical love spells are far more popular than esoteric religion that requires actual thought and work and effort. Esoteric thought just doesn't sell well. Promises of changing your life through burning a candle are hugely popular. And labeling it "Wicca" cashes in on a buzz word.

4.There has been some pretty goofy behavior from the very beginning. Remember that it was Gardner himelf who described his religion as "witchcraft," which led to Wicca and witchcraft beiing considered synonymous for a long time, and "witchcraft" is a heavily loaded word. Early Wiccans also taught all sorts of really silly history, which we're still having to deal with today.

Is there a lot of silliness done in the name of Wicca today? yes. But there's always been some silliness. The nature has simply changed.

Wicca still is a mystery based faith. It just isn't necessarily a secret hand-shake club any more. And so what if those who don't practice wicca want to define wicca by the hangers on, the odd-balls and the witch wannabes. A religion isn't defined by the opinions of those who think that the reason people worship goddess is so feminists can have a god with a vagina or who call people fluffy bunnies because they don't dance naked under the full moon, or initiate according to Thelemic rites designed by an exhibitionist who called himself the Great Beast and got direct-voice transmissions from a "praeternatural intelligence" named Aiwass.

I've heard this largely blamed on Scott Cunningham. He was one of the early guys to sit down and specifically lay out how to create your own faith, from choosing gods to picking religious symbols. His DIY Wicca workbooks are shoved in the face of every newcomer. They're wonderful if you have some maturity under your belt and are fairly wide-read to begin with. But yes, if a ditzy 11-year-old reads it, they'll probably walk away worshiping Sailor Moon characters. I, myself, love Cunningham's work.

Also, I blame the internet. You can get any sort of information with zero fact checkers to back it. Suddenly you get websites proclaiming that theoretical quantum physics undeniably proves to existence of magic (the very first Wicca website I stumbled upon- very confusing). Back in the old days, people had to learn stuff by talking to other people and they had to commit it to memory. Now we have Google and the copy/paste function.

Also, knowledge used to be more precious and closely guarded because it was under attack from the Church and Monarchs. Masses of old Druid writings were just outright burned. Now we have the first amendment and computers, where information can live on forever. Welcome to America and the digital age: information is just about free here. Even bad information. Especially bad information.

It happened with Christianity, too. And all the other religions. I think movies have a lot to answer for.

Wicca has become the catch-all name for neo-paganists in general. It's hard to find someone who actually studies specific Wicca. They pick what they like and call it Wicca or witchcraft and seem to use names interchangeably.

The internet is an amazing meme acceleration engine.

I dunno,to me they all look like posers who want magical fairies with sacred fountains.

I don't blame anyone for calling them satanic,you've got horned gods,magical elements,symbols and get-togethers what else do you want?