I think sometimes people forget that witchcraft isn't strictly religious. You can practice and not be wiccan, you can practice and be atheist, you can practice and be christian, witchcraft is not inherently tied tonone religion
I think the reason people make this mistake stems from older (1990s and before) books a lot of us were “raised” on, so to speak. For years, every single “Witchcraft 101” book tried very hard to drive home the idea that Wicca was a religion (which it is), but also that all witches were Wiccans, follow the “Threefold Law,” clean your room, don’t do drugs, etc.
It was, for the most part, an attempt to “clean up” the public perception of witches by inextricably tying the concept to a religion with rules and (according to the books) a strict moral directive. A lot of great, magical things were lost in the process, though. I’ve never been Wiccan but I’ve also had Wiccans tell me that this grossly misrepresents their actual beliefs and practices.
I remember watching on TV when a bunch of Wiccans met with a Satanist and kept screaming at her that she couldn’t be a witch because she didn’t worship the Goddess. It’ll probably be another decade or so before the community fully regains what was lost during that period.
Fuck this gets on my nerves. Every "baby witch" (I also HATE that term) is wholly convinced they are Wiccan from the get go and I'm just like plz stop. Tiktok and tumblr also feed hugely into popularizing absolute bullshit for asthetics. A lot of overly asthetic books are Wiccan and there in lies the trend.
Now, that's to say if you are Wiccan and practice the actual closed religion of Wicca and follow its rules, I have no issue with you whatsoever. But people get on the internet and read a single post or watch a 60 second tiktok and think suddenly they are the authority on magic and want to sell their services, and become a trendy witchy influencer and spread even more misinformation. Not trying to sound like a gate keeper but for someone who has practiced secular witchcraft for a very long time wading through peoples bullshit online is exhausting.
