Modeling Reality: A New Magickal Paradigm

Wicca or Wita

Recommend Reading:
Scott Cunningham's "Wicca" and "Living Wicca" 

Starhawk's "The Spiral Dance"

Raymond Buckland's "Complete Guide to Witchcraft"

Wiccans are more a group of similar faiths than a singular cohesive religion. All are nature-based drawing their "myths" from stories told about natural processes, like the cereal grain harvest in the song, "John Barleycorn." 

Many Wiccan sects are purely female-based as they have a goddess alone and the seasons are described by Maiden, Mother, and Crone moon phase cycles and the life of the divine child.

All practice witchcraft, literally "The Craft of the Wise," though many groups are less concerned with witchcraft than they are worshipping the Goddess. Witchcraft is a religio-magickal practice used to alter the collective reality around us. Witchcraft usually focuses on the similarities and connections between things: words, poppets, potions, tobys or hands, sympathetic magick; and tends to use ritual invocation of the Goddess and various manifestations of her such as Hetate for Magick, the mother goddess for medicine, the maiden goddess for love magick, to draw from without. 

 Some practices such as poppets, hands/Tobys, and the cone of power are more rooted in evocation, to draw from within.

Poppets are used as a sympathetic representation of the person to be magicked and they are connected indirectly through ritual or directly by a part of the person or something from the person, see voodoo doll.

Tobys or Hands are usually warding, to protect and wall off, devices used to convey magick onto another person with the witch needing to be present. A basic toby is a piece of flannel with five things bound inside. These five things are a representation of the five elements and are related to the effect one is seeking, such as coffin nails for the earth component of a toby to protect from necromancy and the spirits of the dead.