I've been contemplating the future of Wicca lately, and have come to a few conclusions.

First, Wicca today often has little in common with the Wicca of fifty years ago. I see this as both a positive and a negative. It is positive because it is due to growth and flexibility. Change proves that Wicca is contributed to by everyone who comes to it.

On the negative side though, it sometimes feels like we are losing touch with our roots, and not only that, all too often what is passed down to the next generation is a watered down version of the religion.

It remains to be seen wether I am right or not of course, but I believe that eventually a middle ground between evolution and dilution will be found. At some point the growth will slow down enough for the weakened strains to either die out or be fortified.

Wicca today is also a far more commercial religion than that of Gerald Gardner. This I see as an almost purely negative change. Sure, the proliferation of "Wicca 101" books has made the religion far more easily accessible than it once was, but they have also contributed to the watering down of key concepts. A person can walk into Barnes and
Noble and find entire shelves of Wicca and New Age type books, but the majority of those books say pretty much the same things, and many teach things that were never Wiccan as if they always have been. Personally, I see nothing wrong with building upon the original framework, or even removing things from it if they do not feel right, AS LONG AS THAT IS MADE CLEAR, but these books don't make it clear that the author has changed anything at all and seekers often take them as the final authority.