OK, first, read about the lives of famous occultists:
http://usminc.org/famous.html
It's obvious they didn't have magic powers.
If there is any truth to the old saying "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.", that truth is found in the occult, and Wicca in particular. Silver Ravenwolf has written close to a dozen books on the subject of "The Craft", and claims she has been studying it since about 1969, which is almost as long as I’ve been alive. She has written a book on how to cast money spells, and includes a chapter on how to do so in her Teen Witch book. But the thing is, she doesn't particularly sound all that prosperous herself. Ravenwolf writes,
" For years I couldn't afford to go to a hair stylist (still can't, it's shop and chop for me). I got pretty good at stying my own hair from looking at magazine pictures" [SOURCE: Teen Witch, Llewellyn Publications, 2003 edition, page 145]
OK, she so rich she can't go to the hairdresser. Hey, get me a copy of that Prosperity Spell book!
Silver Ravenwolf seems to have inadvertently discovered that Wicca makes things worse, but won't ever admit it as such.
In Teen Witch she says
"A lot of people tell me how bad their lives have gotten after casting a spell and tell me they won't do Witchcraft anymore. I tell them their lives would have been much worse for not having cast the spell".
Gee Silver, you would think a lot of people would be saying things like "Hey, Silver Ravenwolf, my life has improved tremendously with Wicca!" if Wicca is as great as they claim. Instead it makes lives much worse, and even Silver Ravenwolf admits she hears this a lot!!!
Why? Because sometimes, things are just as you think they are. Most average people will tell you the occult deals with black magic and demons, and demons are evil beings who wish us harm. This is how it is my friend. The occult is evil, and brings bad happenings into a person's life, and Wicca is an occult religion. When you stop trying to rationalize it with inaccurate data and just use common sense you will realize this. Some occultists are of above average intelligence, and I think part of the problem is they have book smarts but not common sense. There are two forces at work in this universe: the counterfeit and the genuine. Wicca’s source of power is not the genuine. There’s just simply no way Wicca (and thus the copycat Neopagan religions) can be created from the black magic writings of “The Great Beast 666", the bizarre sexual practices of Gardner, the spiritual “guidance” of the Watchers (fallen angels) and still be a source of good!
Wicca was started by Gerald Gardner in New Forrest England circa 1950. He was a nudist & masochist and basically created Wicca as a sex cult. Followers nowadays like to forget that part, and instead fantasize they have magical powers.
Adian Kelly wrote a book on the history of Wicca called "Crafting The Art of Magic" in the 1980's. Wiccans had a fit when it was published, and pressured Llewyllyn to take it out of print. It was supposed to be the first in a series of books. I think Adian Kelly probably summed it up best when he said this about the Gardnerian "Book of Shadows", the closest thing Wicca has to a sacred book:
" [M]any of the Book of Shadows rituals did not exist in 1954 (when Witchcraft Today was published) but instead were still being written. [T]he major sources from which the rituals had been constructed included: (a) Mather's edition of the Greater Key of Solomon; (b) Aleister Crowley's Magic in Theory and Practice; (c) Leland's Aradia (d) some Masonic rituals akin to those described by Duncan and those of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (aside from those transmitted by Crowley; and (e) Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult in Western Europe. There were also bits and pieces from other works by Leland, Jane E. Harrison, Gilbert Murray, James Frazier, and other great classicists from the 19th century. That accounted for EVERYTHING in the rituals! There was nothing left that differed in any important way from what you can find in those sources- - but that is NOT at all what Gardner had claimed!"