Introduction
Which Witch Is Which?
Origins
A Mystery Tradition
Not Devil Worshipers
Immanence
The God And Goddess
Personal Responsibility
A Cyclical View
Magic
Proselytization

Introduction
For a while now, I have noticed that many people who are not Neo-Pagans have some very basic misconceptions about Witchcraft. Most seem to think that it has the same dynamics as the Abrahamic religions (Judaism - Christianity - Islam), as if it were a carbon copy of them  with only the letterhead changed. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you take everything you know (or think you know) about the Abrahamic religions and reverse them, then you will probably be closer to the reality of Witchcraft.

Which Witch Is Which?
To start with, Modern Paganism - commonly referred to as Neo-Paganism in order to differentiate it from the ancient religions upon which it is based - is actually a collection of religions. In the broadest sense, any religion not belonging to the Abrahamic family can be considered Pagan. However, the term Neo-Paganism is generally restricted to reconstructions or modern interpretations of ancient European and Near-Eastern religions, such as Witchcraft, Druidism, Kemeticsm (Ancient Egyptian spirituality), and Asatru (Ancient Scandinavian spirituality), just to name a few.

If Neo-Paganism is thought of as a tree, then Witchcraft can be seen as one of its main boughs. Witchcraft is a spiritual path based upon a reverence for nature. Polytheism (meaning the belief in multiple deities) and Duotheism (believing that Divinity is represented by a matching of equally paired Deities) are both common, although some Dianic Witches are Monotheistic, concentrating solely upon the Goddess. Witches may practice alone or in groups called covens or circles. Most Witches practice a form of folk magic, though not all do so. In the past Witches were often known for their skill in the use of herbal remedies, though this is less common in the modern era. In fact, the word pharmaceutical derives from Pharmakis, the Ancient Greek word for Witch. To make things even more interesting, some Witches do not consider themselves religious at all, and instead see themselves as practitioners of a craft. For them it is more a way of living than a relationship with the Divine. In their case the "W" in Witchcraft should not be capitalized, as this is only done so to denote a religious path.

Wicca could in turn be considered one of Witchcraft's branches, while specific Wiccan Traditions such as Gardnerian or Seax-Wicca would be individual leaves on that branch. Because of this all Wiccans are Witches, but not all Witches are Wiccan. Many people think the terms are synonymous, and many Wiccan writers make it appear so (especially the older British Traditionalists) but in actuality they are not. Wicca is a very specific spiritual path, with well-defined beliefs and practices (such as believing in the Wiccan Rede and the Law of Threefold Return, using a common framework for ritual and myth, and having a division of roles for both deities and practitioners based upon gender).

Witchcraft does not have the formalized structure of Wicca, allowing its practitioners much greater flexibility in their spiritual practice. For example, some Witches might follow the Wiccan Rede, and others may not. Where on the other hand you can expect all Wiccans to do so. This freedom allows individuals the latitude to find their own distinctive spiritual road to follow. However this is naturally at the cost of losing the greater focus which a sharply-focused path like Wicca can provide.

It should also be noted that "Witch" is a non-gendered term, used to describe both male and female (and third gendered) practitioners of Witchcraft. The term Warlock is not used to describe male Witches, as it means "oath-breaker".

Origins
Modern Witchcraft ultimately derives from Stone-Age European Shamanism. In some cases this evolved into the religions of the Classical Era (Greek, Roman, Celtic, etc...), and in other cases it remained perhaps more closely tied to its roots in the practices of the Witches of that age (known to the Romans as Venefica, and the Greeks as Pharmakis). However, when Christianity came along it did a very thorough job of extinguishing open Pagan practice in Europe. How many Pagans survived and retained their beliefs and customs in secret, perhaps passing them on from one generation to another in the same family, is really unknown. Some believe that modern Witches descend from an unbroken chain of such practitioners extending all the way back before Christianity. Others dispute this claim, insisting it is an entirely modern revival only based upon ancient practices.

In any case Neo-Paganism is certainly not the same as the religions practiced thousands of years ago. For starters, Neo-Pagans no longer do things like sacrifice bulls or perform divinations by viewing the entrails of animals. Those things really do not work well with modern sensibilities or morals. Modern Witches also make full use of technology that did not exist before, such as computers and even spray bottles (for holy water). Furthermore, some modern traditions like Wicca have adopted many elements of ceremonial magic and Freemasonry (although it appears some of these elements - such as circle-casting - were originally taken by those systems from Witches).

A Mystery Tradition
Witchcraft is not a Revealed Religion. This means that it does not spring from a sacred text(s) that is taken literally and considered inviolate. Instead Witchcraft is a Mystery Tradition. Please note that this does not mean a secretive religion. A mystery and a secret are two entirely different things. A secret can be told to another person, and then that second person knows exactly what the first person did. A mystery, on the other hand, must be experienced in order to be understood. Witches feel that wisdom, insight, and a relationship with Divinity can only be gained this way. It is seeking out this experience with the Divine that learning Witchcraft is about.

Because no two people are exactly alike, neither will be their experiences nor what they take away from them. So there is no dogma in Witchcraft, because that is nothing more than someone else's experience writ in stone and imposed upon others. It is of no help to us. Instead, in Witchcraft we use myths, symbols, and metaphors to guide us in our spiritual journey. These are things deeply embedded in our psyches, shared by all people in the Collective Unconscious first understood by the revolutionary psychologist Carl Jung.

To quote Joseph Campbell (who was not a Witch, btw.): "Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message."

The reason is that taking religion literally, as if it were a historical fact, cuts you off from the source of Divinity within yourself. Instead it imposes an external God-figure in the way, like dropping a boulder in the middle of your own spiritual road. You stop and pitch your tent in front of the boulder instead of continuing to travel down your path. You become focused upon one of the numerous masks that Divinity wears, and lose touch with the energies which it represents. Your religion ceases to be something from within that inspires your personal development, and instead becomes something imposed upon you from without. This is how many religions became politicized and turned into powerful tools for dominating the masses rather than a means for individual empowerment.

If instead you look at deities and their associated myths in terms of poetry or fables, you will find they inspire you rather than dominate you. They touch us emotionally, because we can see parallels to our own lives and relate to them. Not literal similarities of course, but figurative ones. Again, this is what I mean about not taking it as literal fact. Myths teach us by giving us examples we can identify with. They inform us of the strength and beauty that lies within us all, and give us hope when we otherwise have none.

Not Devil Worshipers
This has been stated many times by others, but the need to do so still persists. Witches, Wiccans, and other Neo-Pagans are not worshipers of the Christian Devil. We do not believe in such a creature. We certainly do not worship it. Only Christians believe in their Devil, as he is only a part of their religion, not ours. It is true that the God in Witchcraft is often referred to as The Horned One, and depicted as bearing animal horns, hooved feet, etc... These characteristics are derived from his role as the Lord of the Wild Beasts. In fact, the early Christian Church purposely applied these traits to its Devil in order to generate negativity against Pagans, as that was a necessary first step in wiping them out.

This is further exacerbated by many sects of the Abrahamic Religions who hold the belief that only those who worship their deity in what they consider the 'correct' manner are true members of their faith. They consider people from all other religions or even other sects within their own religion to be Devil-Worshipers. I find this not only arrogant, as it insists that no other religion exists but their own, but incredibly divisive because it splits the world into an Us vs. Them situation.

Immanence
We Neo-Pagans believe that Divinity itself is immanent, meaning that it resides within all things in the world. Everything is Divine. Including you and I. This view is known as Pantheism, and is most elegantly put by the Charge of the Goddess:

"And you who thinks to find me,
know that your seeking and yearning will avail you naught,
unless you know the Mystery:
that if what you seek is not within,
it will never be found without." 

This is a caution against looking for Divinity in some alien source outside of ourselves, and instead to look within. For that is the true source of it all.

Immanence is why Neo-Pagans tend to have such a strong reverence for nature. Because it is Divinity. It is also one of the reasons that we often practice our rituals outdoors, or even in our homes. These places are Divine. The entire world is our church, our temple. There is no separation of Heaven and Earth in Witchcraft. We have no Heaven in fact. There is no need for one when we are living within Divinity, and are ourselves Divinity. We have no sense of the Earth or the Universe being somehow imperfect or lesser or not holy. Nor do we view it as a thing for us to use and discard after we break it. The world is Divinity. We treat it with the love and respect that deserves. Likewise, the belief in immanence is one reason Neo-Pagans tend to be a little more open-minded than others. Because again, we are all Divinity. Discriminating against others is discriminating against Divinity.

Furthermore, many Witches are also Animists, feeling that all things (rocks, plants, animals, etc...) have a spirit within them that should be respected. Many Witches also believe that Divinity is transcendent as well as immanent. Meaning that it is not only part and parcel to the Universe and everything in it, but that there is some component of Divinity existing outside of the Universe as well. This is known as Panentheism, but is not a universal belief amongst Witches.

The God and Goddess
The general idea of Divinity can be a tough concept for we humans to wrap our brains around. It is a rather amorphous concept. We do not have any myths or archetypes of the Universe as a whole to inspire us. We see nothing tangible to relate it to in our everyday lives. It is just too big. So Witches take the idea of the One All (which is how many Neo-Pagans refer to Divinity), and break it down into two basic archetypes: The God and The Goddess - masculine and feminine halves of Divinity and energy. Each are equal and opposite, existing in polarity, so that their energies are balanced and complimentary. Like the different sides of a magnet. Because of this, Neo-Paganism is sometimes described as being both Polytheistic (the belief in multiple deities), and Monotheistic (the belief in only one deity) at the same time.

Yet even these archetypes are rather generic, and leave many people wanting for more. So most Neo-Pagans use deities from past and present religions to represent the God and Goddess. Sometimes people work with entire pantheons, others just one or two deities.  Eclectics like myself mix and match deities from other religions as if it were a spiritual buffet. Some people are known as reconstructionists, because they try to follow the old religions as closely and accurately as possible, while others (probably most of us) have a purely modern outlook and practice that is only influenced by the ancient traditions.

These gods and goddesses are seen as epitomizing one or more aspects of the archetypal God and Goddess, giving us something more concrete to visualize when dealing with them. For example, Kuan-Yin  represents the Goddess in her aspect as the compassionate saviouress. While Hermes represents the God in his aspects as the Magician and the Trickster (among other things). Being distinct individuals, such deities have unique histories and characteristics that make them very easy to understand. I personally work with several deities. Most notable is Hekate, the Goddess of The Underworld, to whom I am Dedicated as one of her Semnotatoi. I also work with Freja and Aphrodite in matters of the heart, and Cernunnos and Dionysos as their counterparts, who also represent my love of the wilderness. If that were not enough, I also sometimes look to still other deities for inspiration, such as Hermes for his Trickster energy, or Ares when I need the will to fight.

I want to stress again that while I interact with these deities both in and out of ritual and meditation, it is not in a literal sense. I do not believe that they are invisible people living in the sky or under the ground. They are myths, whose roots run so deeply into the depths of my mind that they are a part of me. Because of that, I stress that I work with them, not pray to them. I do not abase myself before Divinity. I do not fear Divinity. I do not ask the God and Goddess for things. These are all silly ideas to me, because I am Divinity. Instead I invoke the Divinity within me to inspire me so that I can do the things I need to for myself. For example, if I ask Kuan-Yin to help me be more considerate towards a person who is annoying me, I am focusing my own power - visualized in/through the symbol of Kuan-Yin - to soften my heart.

Because we all have a direct link to Divinity, Witches need no special priest caste to represent us. We are the priests and shamans, every one of us. The idea that only certain people are qualified to relate to Divinity is one of the most basic components of religions that seek to dominate others. The truth is everyone is connected to the Divine, no matter what their religion or their position in a hierarchy. It is just a matter of acknowledging your own spiritual ability and exercising it.

Personal Responsibility
Since there is no Heaven nor Hell, there is no carrot on the end of the stick to guide us. No promise of salvation for good behaviour or threat of damnation for bad. I do not worry that the God and Goddess will punish me, or hope they will reward me. They do not sit in judgment of me. They do not command me to do anything. They are not my parents, nor my boss, and are certainly not my owner. We are all responsible for our own actions. Witches do not blame the bad things we do on some outside force, or give away the credit for our successes to our deities. The God and Goddess are partners in our lives, guiding stars that illuminate our paths, not rulers over us.

Our incentive to be better people is simple. This is our world, it is up to us to make it the best place we can. After all, this is where we live. Every day we create the world anew with our actions and inactions. If we want things to be better, then we have to do something about it ourselves. People who are biding their time waiting for a promised afterlife have no real investment in this world, because for them this is just a warm-up for the main act to follow. So they might ignore the negative things done here in the hopes of it being better in their afterlife. This is especially so if their religious leaders tell them to ignore those negative things, or command them to do those things themselves.

Personal responsibility is something that Witchcraft stresses. The reason being that we understand that the things we do always come back to us sooner or later. We do not exist in a vacuum. Our actions affect others, and those people or things react and we are affected by them in return. It is a simple matter of physics. As Sir Isaac Newton observed: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Because of this, smart Witches consider the consequences before they take action.

Some Neo-Pagans such as Wiccans believe in the Law of Threefold Return, which states that everything you do comes back to you at three times the power. I am not convinced of that myself, though I do believe that the energy we send out always comes back to us. Wiccans and some Witches also follow the Wiccan Rede: "An ye harm none, do as ye will." However many Witches and other Neo-Pagans do not. Personally, I have always tried to hold to that ideal my entire life, as it allows for both personal freedom and the respect for the rights of others.

A Cyclical View
For Witches, time is not seen in a linear manner, but rather a cyclical one. We have no need for a Creation Story nor an Apocalypse (except perhaps as myths to help us understand death and rebirth). For us time moves in a circle with no beginning or end, but rather an endless spiral that always turns. We see this most evidently in nature's changing seasons, where the drama of birth, maturation, death, and new birth is played out over and over again. We call it the Wheel of the Year, and along it we have holidays called Sabbats that mark where we are in the cycle. These Sabbats do this by focusing on the story of the God in his role as the Year Child, being born on Yule, maturing throughout the year, and finally sacrificing himself at Samhain, only to be born anew the next Yule.

Every month, usually on the Full Moon or the New Moon, we also celebrate other holidays called Esbats, in which we observe the same cycle played out in the phases of the Moon. Unlike the Sabbats, which are typically purely spiritual celebrations, the Esbats might be considered working holidays in that they are times when many Witches perform magical workings as well as celebrate our relationship with Divinity. Where the Sabbats focus upon the Mysteries of the God, the Esbats are geared toward the Goddess, who like the Moon is ever changing, yet eternal.

The Pagan belief in reincarnation stems from this cyclical view. Yet while this is a common belief, I must stress that it is not universally held in the Neo-Pagan community. For those who do believe in reincarnation, the general theory is that after death the soul travels to an Otherworldly place most call the Summerlands. A sort of spiritual waiting room. There the soul reflects upon its past life, rests, regenerates, and then finally returns to life on Earth in a new body. Many feel that while in the Summerlands the soul sets a goal for itself to achieve in the next life. Usually some wisdom to learn or failing to overcome. Then the person is reborn in a situation where they will face the trials necessary to meet that goal. This should not be considered the same as the concept of Karma, in that this is not a form of Divine Justice being meted out upon the individual. Rather it is a matter of personal growth motivated by oneself.

Personally, I have always liked the idea that people are the Universe trying to figure itself out. Given form and individuality, we spend our lives learning (often whether we want to or not, or even realize it), and when we die we take that knowledge back with us to the Universe. In this sense we might be thought of as cosmic explorers, ever seeking out and discovering new wonders, and a better understanding of our own place within the worlds.

Magic
Then we have magic, which many in the Neo-Pagan community write as 'magick'. The latter practice was popularized by Aleister Crowley in the beginning of the 20th Century, adding the 'k' to separate it from stage magic and sleight of hand. Magic is not about flying around on brooms or turning people into frogs. That is the stuff of movies. Magic is something far more subtle and ultimately much more powerful. For real magic is the power to create change in accordance with your will. It is really as simple as that. Magic is the power to reshape our lives and our world. That power is in the hands of every single individual.
 
Magic is not a supernatural force. It is entirely natural. It must be, for it is part of the natural world, and is found within all of us. Even the people who insist it does not exist. Its use is dependant upon the individual focusing their energy (and the energy in the world around them) to create a specific effect. Magic does not derive from reciting specific invocations found in special manuscripts. It is not about making sacrifices to or pacts with otherworldly entities. It is not about finding and using special magical items. It is about using the power within us all.

Now it is true that many people do use invocations or tools while working magic. However, these things are really just external symbols. We can do ritual without any of them if we choose to. However, because they are symbols they are useful in focusing ourselves. The mistake is thinking that the energy derives from the chant or tool, rather than from the individual using them. Just as in the case of individual deities, it is the power the mask represents, not the mask itself, that is important. Because of this, anything can be used as a ritual invocation or magical tool. A stick you pick up in the woods can be a wand. A big gulp cup from 7-11 can be a chalice. A poem you write yourself is no less valid than a chant written by priests two thousand years ago. What matters comes from ourselves, not from the item. It is just a collection of atoms after all. The item has power because we give it that power ourselves, in our imaginations and in our actions. 
 
Proselytization
Lastly, I am not out to make anyone else a Witch. Our religion does not proselytize. We do not win a free toaster for every person we convert, or believe that the deity who dies with the most followers wins. All positive spiritual paths lead to the same place. The House of the Divine. We acknowledge that each person must walk their own path to reach that place.
   
Many Witches do not want to even talk about their religion for fear of proselytizing. I think this is an over-reaction, and one that is ultimately self-defeating. The reason being that people fear what they are ignorant of, and tend to invent their own ideas of what it is when left with no real information. So if no one tells the truth about Witchcraft, then the misinformation about Witches being devil-worshipers who eat children will never be challenged and can never be dismissed.
   
There is also the fact that unless Witchcraft is made accessible to people, then people will never be able to find it if they truly want it. If it were not for the Internet I would have never become a Witch. I never could have learned any facts about it otherwise. I would never have sought out a group of Witches to learn from on my own. Even if I had desired to, there is still no surety that I would have found a teacher, as there are far more people out there who wish to learn than there are groups to accept them or individuals to guide them. Nor would I have plunked down $20 for a book on Witchcraft if I had no idea what I was really spending my money on in the first place.
   
In fact, I think that much of Neo-Paganism's explosive growth in the last decade and a half (mostly in the form of solitary practitioners like myself) can be linked to the growth of the Internet. It has made the information available to any who wish to learn it. That in turn fuels the desire for people to go out and put down the money to buy books to gain more knowledge or seek out covens to join. I think this has (rather appropriately) created a balance, making Witchcraft available to anyone who wishes to learn, yet at the same time not intruding into the life of anyone who does not desire it.