Lookin’ for a Goddess, Baby!

If any of you girls out there have got a voice like a duck, I may have a job tailor-made for you!

This article is fascinating. Can you imagine what it’s like for this girl after she’s made to step down from office?

Birth, rebirth

I remember when I was first called along this path, I felt the most amazing depth of attunement to Them; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the path was there for me if only I would take it. Similarly, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I was taking the right path, the only path for me.

There was a time at the start of the call that I felt exactly like Seshat describes in her post, Hieros Gamos - an unbelievable synergy, a totality of union, a sexual, spiritual and visceral thrill, a psychic alarm and awakening, like ice-water through your bones. There was power, as much power as anyone might ever need; compressed, restrained, separated from me but still there, latent, available at some point soon, promised. Set aside for me alone.

Since that time I have come a great distance; rocky ground, at times. Stopping off along the way to take detours and to see new things; doubting, rechecking, re-reading. Going back and springing forward. Getting lost. Getting profitably lost, which is something altogether different. But at no point have I decided against this path; every day has only reaffirmed the rightness and correctness of the way I’m going.

I don’t have a destination, so the path I take is not relevant. It doesn’t have to be the shortest or most direct route between two points; and if there’s forests, bears, palaces and wonders along the way,the journey is just that much richer.

Commitment grows the further away from port you get. When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships, ensuring his men were well-motivated. Mine have been smouldering awhile - now they’re blazing and I’m chucking on oil. Commitment is the force that breaks the barrier between you and Them; which releases the power held in trust to your service. I have realised in the last months that as my commitment and effort increases, so do the rewards. And this is happening now, here; not in some indefinable point in the future, not in the Next Life; my efforts, such as they are, are being rewarded or answered in kind. I feel as though I am actually being reborn.

I want the Hieros Gamos; I had it, misused it and misinterpreted what it meant. I may never get it again - but I had it, and should I ever be so graced again I would recognise it for what it was.

I feel now as I felt then;  like John Duncan’s St Bride. Borne above the water with no fear of falling.

Midsummer Blessings

To all my dear friends, blessings, for the Midsummer times are here.

We light the fires of the Summer sun upon the Earth; we sing of the green and the darkness under the trees.

We give thanks, for the cool waters, for the waters from the sky and the waters under the Earth. Thanks for the fires of the Sun and the fires we kindle on the ground. Thanks for the cool air, that lofts the birds and the scents of Summer. Thanks for the warm and fertile Earth, that bears our weight and the life we depend upon.

Goddess, I hail you; triumphant queen of the Midsummer night. You are the subtle moon past full, the silver grasses before the wind, the whispering oak. Lead me out to know the dark and the life you hold so gently by. Cradle me in the stillness at your centre; help me know.

God, I hail you; glorious king. Stand upon the Earth, crowned by the Sun. Now one with your Goddess, spring forward and lead me, Lord of inspiration, fire and feeling. Show me new paths. 

As the year burns and the wheel turns, guide us all in love and care; help us fight and be valorous for what is good. Give us the power and the heart to choose the right path, no matter how hard it is to follow.

So Mote It Be!

Bright blessings to all this Midsummer’s Eve. 

Faces of the Goddess

Over the last few months I’ve had a lot to think about; I’ve been on this path now a pretty reasonable amount of time, perhaps 10 years, if you count all the years in which I was a substance in search of a form! In that time, I’ve spent most of my spiritual energy embracing the feminine in the divine, in the most amorphous sense, and attempting to reconcile and balance Her with the masculine Deity I have been familiar with my entire life. She hasn’t really had a name or a face; My Lady, Nature, Gaia, the World.

I’m starting to think that I need to go further. For me, I need attributes, I need a personality. I need to at least explore the possibilities more deeply. Actually, I have to thank Aleq Grai for this; had he not made a comment about possible weakness in generic ‘Goddess / God’ worship a few months back, I might not have reached this conclusion quite yet. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but there can be no harm in exploring the concept.

If we look at why Christianity accepts ‘God’ as a ‘generic’ deity (Aleq’s other point), then we see that it can stem from the belief that they have the ‘One True’ god, that others are superficial or have been superseded. It’s not a nod to a generic, all-purpose deity, far from it; it’s a clarion call to proclaim the primacy of the God of Gods, who needs no other name in this time and place. For the same reason, us humans call the Earth, the Sun, the Moon by no other names than the ones that give them their form. We don’t need to; they are the only ones we have.

In fact, the Christian god is anything but generic. He is, for a start, a triple god, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; and is worshipped in His different manifestations in different ways, as well as together.

Generic is not necessarily unchallenging, in any case. As I said to Aleq, the challenge in worshipping the Goddess, for example, is to define for yourself, or to allow to be imparted to you, the attributes that concern you at that particular time and place. Goddess / God is everywhere, is everything. If you manage to grasp the hem of the robe for a fleeting second you’re doing well.

Once you label, you are seeking to negate, no matter how you try to dress it up. By calling Goddess by a name, we are trying, even subconsciously, to limit what we need to understand so we can concentrate more effectively. It’s a filter, if you like. Trying to corner the might and the mutability of the divine in a way we poor humans can comprehend. It’s like capturing a butterfly and nailing it to a board. In our case, of course, once we’ve done this, the butterfly remains alive and we try to communicate with it.

Perhaps this analogy has been taken a little far! But I think it makes a good point. Perhaps my need for a definition, for attributes, is a retrograde step; perhaps I’m ‘wimping out’ in a spiritual sense. However, I believe the challenge is to try to see as much of the bigger picture as we can - and to fully understand the whole, we must study the parts that make it up. Hence my delve into the Faces of the Goddess.

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…and my dear Seshat’s Voice has made her point on this topic as eloquently as ever!

 

The First ‘Must-Read’ of the Year

Seshat’s Voice recommended me a book which has had me yelping with recognition at every page. I devoured its 237 pages in the space of an evening and an afternoon. I’ve read or tried to read a great many books so far this year, in anthropology, history, Wicca studies, esoterica, plant lore and general magic, and nothing has grabbed me off the bat like this. Before I get into what it is, let me tell you what it isn’t.

It isn’t a ‘how-to’. It is not a discussion about abstruse points of lore. It is not a personal encomium for one particular Tradition. It isn’t an historical fabrication based on dubious sources. It isn’t up itself. It isn’t attempting to use 10 words where one would be more than ample. 

What it is is a completely straight-talking overview of Wicca, from a largely American perspective, and it should be required reading for everyone on the Path. There’s no bullshit. In fact, there’s a refreshing air of common sense and logic, and a hard-enough line towards what Wicca is and what it certainly isn’t.

In ‘Out of the Shadows’, Lilith McLelland deals a sound left-and-right to some of the preconceptions, misconceptions and outright fabrications that surround Wicca, without seeking to destabilise the whole edifice at the same time. As she says, she couldn’t destabilise it if she tried; it’s too well-established.

For learners, there are whole chapters about what to look for, how to avoid being exploited, what’s reasonable and what isn’t. Why, for example, you shouldn’t do chores for and polish the shoes of your prospective HPS simply because she tells you suffering is necessary for growth (…how many times have we heard this old chestnut? Several forums have this as a mantra… I’ve always had an uncharitable feeling that this was a cover for a lack of adequate policing, as some of the types that seem to want you to ‘grow’ appear to lack basic manners, politeness and etiquette when dealing with an opposing point of view. Just a curmudgeonly aside from me there…).

McLelland makes the elementary but often-overlooked point that Wicca is a religion. Wicca is based on the worship of multiple deities, and may or may not involve magic - but it cannot exist in magic solely. Good question: how do you know you’re a Wiccan?

Her answer pleased me almost out of all proportion - ‘…you know you’re a Wiccan or Pagan because you believe in the gods and feel a connection with one or all of them’ (2002:39).

How simple, how clear. How well expressed! 

It follows that the central point of Wicca is the personal connection, and bargain struck, between the Deity or Deities worshipped by the postulant and the Deities themselves. Which means the argument about the inherited lineage, or lack of it, or whatever, becomes utterly irrelevant. The religion is alive here, now; in its present form and with the manifest disadvantages and advantages it possesses. We’ve got what we’ve got. We have a nascent faith which contains much harmony, quite a lot of intelligent professors, and the usual posse of malcontents, attention-seekers and power-mongers attendant on any rising trend. We can see them, so we can avoid them.

If straight talking is the theme of this book, then care is the subtext. McLelland obviously cares deeply and passionately about Wicca, and she is honest enough to discuss the errors she has made in her struggle to get the right thing done right during her time as a leader. Instead of beating herself up about it in print, she uses her experiences to enlighten and inform. Her frankly hair-raising discussion of the pitfalls of coven management (2002:82) gives one more than enough pause for thought. The point is, we’re all human and fallible - so get over it! Do better next time!

There’s a large section on persecution-complex, the ‘burning times’ and the misguided types who seek to make currency out of shouting about discrimination while going about looking like a refugee from Fields of the Nephilim. All Wicca learners need to read stuff like this; it will do more to separate the real seekers from those who are looking for the latest bandwagon to attach their personal difficulties to. The essential point here is personal responsibility. Andy discussed this subject here also. I’ve talked about this before; to me it’s of paramount importance. I cannot see how a religious or even moral life can be attempted if one does not take full and immediate responsibility for one’s actions and the results. What are the Rede and the Threefold Law about if not this?

There’s one point with which I couldn’t concur more strongly. I’ve been wanting to say this but didn’t have the balls. Well, I should have:

“I’m going to tell you this right up front; do yourself a favor and read Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon right away…. Hutton has done a superb job of pulling together all the legitimate scholarship concerning Wicca, and has added his own work, and there’s no better overview of the history of the Religion” (2002:79-80)

If this book (and Hutton’s, for that matter) does nothing else, it provides a polemic against which other critiques of Wicca should be measured. It gives ample food for thought. It will polarise opinion, and this is expressly the intention of the author. She wants us fighting politely about these issues, because without discussion there’s no resolution. She wants pseuds, phoneys, freaks and the frankly mentally ill to be recognised for what they are and thereby rendered incapable of preying on new seekers and continuing learners alike.

Of course, it does a great deal more than this. It provides a sourcebook of what not to do, and it gives useful practical advice on dealing with issues such as discrimination, family pressure, children in Wicca, and the means by which we seek to promote our faith. Public relations, if you will. Something she freely acknowledges (well, who could deny it?) that we are lousy at.

Throughout, there is a strong, simple, elemental message - this deal is between you and your Gods. Pick the right ones, or listen when they pick you, and the rest isn’t worth a fig. The single best lesson to be learned here is that you can spend all your cash on accoutrements, kneel at the knee of a teacher, dance like a dervish, wave a banner and yell as loud as you like, but the Gods won’t listen unless you talk to them. McLelland’s message appears to be: effort, dedication, faith, learning, self-improvement. Oh, and cut the bullshit, what do you say?

Highly recommended. 

 

Embodied, Embedded Mysticism

We’ve all been discussing recently, both here, on other blogs and on several forums, how to reach the Divine, how to approach it. How do you seek to be closer to your Gods and Goddesses? I’ve managed to answer this question, but not well; and I feel the people who asked for an answer on this cannot have gone away wholly satisfied with the ideas I shared.

Some do it through ritual, some by complex mantras, some by theatre and music, some by throwing off the robes and dancing, some by fasting and asceticism. Some do it by going apart from the race of man and being still, being quiet.

My idea has always been that the divine is all around, that by seeking to calm oneself and still the internal monologue one can always tap into the constant rill of power that courses through every part of everyone’s life. So the hermitry I joked about several posts ago isn’t as funny as I thought! Of course, there’s no requirement for us to relinquish the world at large; all that is needed is an ability to let it go when required.

This idea has been given a name by Carol P Christ in this post; I think a great many pagans and people of other faith feel this way about the world around us; perhaps it will become a legitimate means by which we seek to align ourselves with the Divine, if it isn’t already. My humble attempts at communication find a label!

Goddess, God; You are everywhere, but I worship You here.

This beautiful thing…

A friend, whom I have never even met, has made this amazing gift for me. She would take no payment.

I really wonder at the goodness of the people I’ve met on my Path; I’m just going to have to work harder on paying it forward and spreading the wealth a little!

It is an altar top for my temple, and it fits precisely into the frame I already possessed for it. I have yet to stain and lightly varnish it; it’s so wonderful and perfect that I’m almost afraid to.

When I opened the parcel, it filled the room with the smell of smudgesmoke and incense. Truly, amazing.

I love the grain on the wood, it looks like clouds around the tree. Marie - I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Beltaine

Loreena McKennitt- Huron ‘Beltane’ Fire Dance

As a symbol of hope, of growth for the future, nothing beats Beltaine. The fires of renewal will burn, and the Goddess and the God will meet in the wildwood and become one.

I will be praising Them, and making offerings, tonight. Red thread on the Rowan tree, milk and cakes below, a small fire with prayers for those who have troubles, and wishes for the future twisting up from the bowl in the smoke and sparks to meet with the Moon above.

I’m posting this uplifting and purposeful piece of music after being inspired to do so by beweaver. This should get us in the mood! Blessings to all on this great day in the year.

The ‘Loving Attempts’ to Convert Us

While reading on The Wild Hunt today, I noticed that Jason Pitzl-Waters brings up an interesting topic. I have been discussing elsewhere the calmness that witchcraft brings me; not least in the fact that I am not called upon to either convert others to my way of thinking nor required to engage in theological disputation. The pact is simply between me and my Deities.

Rabbi Yehiel E. Poupko, Judaic Scholar at the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago discusses his dislike of the aim stated by the Christianity Today editor, Stan Guthrie, to call for a new push by Christians to undertake the conversion of all Jews to Christianity forthwith, using what he terms ’loving’ and ‘respectful’ attempts.

I’m not sure I have words to express what this brings up in me, but I’m going to try.

Elementarily, there is nothing loving nor respectful in attempting to encroach upon another person by seeking to change their view of their religion. Never mind that Jews are born Jewish; it’s not a lifestyle choice, it’s a way of life as well as a religious conviction.

Were it another religion in the frame, it would make little difference. By seeking to convert someone, you are at one stroke denying the right of the person to choose, denying their vocation, denying that their essential humanity is on a par with yours. In short, you are saying that they don’t know what they’re doing. But that you do.

And who the hell died and made Christians the guardians of the world’s one true way? A young, historically ambivalent religion, piggybacked as it is on the weight and gravitas of thousands of years of Judaism, ruthlessly promoted by the Romans, by the missionaries, by British Colonialism, and now by the mindless, inexorable, blindly multiplying clap-happy weight of the Christian Right?

I seek actively to avoid discussing my religious convictions with people unless they have expressly asked me, or have come here to read what I have to say; I consider the information intensely personal and I would be mortified if I thought something I had said had influenced a person to act a certain way in this regard - morally, it would make me responsible for them.

It is not given to mortals to guide other mortals to the gods. It is not our job on this earth. It is certainly not our job to do so under the guise of feeding, watering and educating those who have nothing, as so many Christian organisations do. Blatant, unrepentant arrogance and cultural hegemonising.

I’m not keen on any form of witness, on any form of proselytising, of any form of mission to convert. It seems utterly wrong. In Christianity, ‘no-one comes to the Father except through Me’ does not me ‘me’ the worshipper. It means ‘Me’ - Jesus. And there’s plenty of people out there who can read and make up their own minds. Including the Jews. Who we must assume, have largely made their choice already!

Ronald Hutton talks in ‘Triumph of the Moon’ about our ‘post-Christian’ society. Balance is certainly required. I can’t pretend to be anti-Christian - the precepts are good, and I was brought up in the faith and regard it fondly but not with outright reverence. I do, however, freely admit that I am anti-evangelical. I actively want interfaith discussion, where every faith can dispute respectfully and learn about each other’s beliefs. But I agree with Rabbi Poupko when he says that ‘mutual sacred rejection’ is required.

We must have the strength to see the strength in other faiths, without surrendering what is unique, special, irreplaceable in ours. We must be prepared to learn from other faiths what is similar to our own, to realise that perhaps, we are not so widely divergent as we would like to assume. But nowhere, nowhere in this bargain do we get floor-time to pitch our manifesto. That would subvert the entire process of learning through faith, and would largely make the efforts meaningless.

 

Prof Hutton, Dillington House

This afternoon to Dillington House, Somerset, to a lecture on the pagan religions of the ancient British Isles by Ronald Hutton. He spoke for an hour, without notes, with great enthusiasm and erudition, encompassing all the latest scholarship. Interestingly, recent re-evaluations of the excavation at Paviland Cave, South Wales have shown the ritual burial of a young man with red-dyed cloth and broken ivory ‘wands’ to be the earliest ritualised human burial anywhere in the world.

At around 30,000 BP, human intellectual evolution seems to have taken an extraordinary leap forward; the human mind turned toward the afterlife, the spiritual and the intangible; burial began to be ritualised and musical instruments, implying song and dance are found. At around 6,000 BP we see the advent of the adoption of farming, a paradigmatic change of enormous proportions for the previously hunter-gather populations of North-West Europe. This change included the importation of completely new species, such as goat, sheep and cattle, and new crops, encompassing nearly all the cereals grown in Britain today. People were thinking bigger; this is seen also by the emergence of earthworks and covered mounds in profusion; almost 40,000 are found around the North-West European facade, and no two are precisely the same. Hutton nevertheless sees potent possibilities for a formal religious idea behind these constructions; they took a great deal of time and effort, which might have been better spent seeing to the necessities of life. Clearly, these mounds were important, in a way that surpassed everyday living.

3,000 BP saw the end of construction of these large structures - climate took a downturn, sending Britain from temperatures comparable to that of the South of France to that of northern Germany. This, added to the deforestation practised by Neolithic man against the almost total forest cover which overtook Britian during the last interglacial, caused a reconcentration on the business of living once more, this time focussed outward onto trade and the demarcation of property - bronze requiring tin and copper, which was hard to come by.

Traditional sources for information about pagan religious practise have been largely discounted. Both the Welsh bardic records and the Irish epics have been judged to be inaccurate or at least unverifiable accounts. The best information we have comes from Roman sources - everyday people, some born British and assimilated in to the Empire, some posted here with their husbands, never to see their homelands again. One woman, Vibia Picata, put up an altar to ‘the celestial goddess of the woodlands and the crossroads’ - this is Hecate.

Perhaps it’s enough to acknowledge that the information is there; there is no more rich ritual landscape in Europe than Britain. There is more evidence to be found here than anywhere; and historic excavations can be re-interpreted, as Paviland shows.

The question is not really what the archaeological evidence can prove, but how far the extant evidence can support the weight of assumption placed upon it. Have we got any right to hark back to an earlier pagan religion at all?

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