by RavensWing
(See RavensWing's homepage)
Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997 RavensWing; reproduce freely with attribution and without editing!
Prologue: This paper evolved to address a specific need. Wicca is a religion of feeling and emotion, and loses something important if approached from a purely intellectual viewpoint. But at the same time, our society generally has developed a distrust of feeling and emotion, and so we want everything to "make sense". Also, if you are coming to Wicca in this time and place you are probably coming out of a cultural religious viewpoint long built around the assumptions of Judeo-Christian monotheism. It can be hard to overcome that kind of conditioning, even if you've rejected it emotionally and have never (or not for a long time) actually been part of the dominant religion. I hope that this will help you to get your mind to where your heart is, and maybe help you to clarify for yourself just what it is that you've been looking for and why, and where you may be able to find it.
Table of contents:
(Clicking on each section heading in the body of the paper will bring you back to the Contents)
The God defined in the Hebrew Bible, Who started as God of the Jews and was subsequently adopted or taken over by Christians and Moslems, is by definition omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. By simple logic, therefore, everything that happens must be by His will. If He didn't want it to happen, it wouldn't, and if He wanted something else to happen, that would. This is an inevitable consequence of being both omniscient and omnipotent. Even if we accept the theologians' contentions that He has chosen to "permit" us to have free will, and thus to do evil, and that the various natural disasters are perhaps sent to "test" us in some way, this is still of necessity what God wanted to -- what He chose to have happen. And from God's point of view this can have no meaningful "research objective", since the outcome is (again: omniscience) pre-known.
Theologians have for millennia been searching for ways of papering over the inevitable conclusion that such a God must fit most of our definitions of evil, at least from a human point of view. If He causes and/or condones the occurrence of much that is to our detriment, then how else can we reasonably interpret it? The theological answer has consistently been that there are reasons which we "can't understand" because inherently "the ways of God are beyond human understanding". The latter statement is correct prima facia, since the ways and motives of any such entity as defined would of necessity be beyond the understanding of such a much more limited entity as a human. But the general argument that we must accept as good that which is to us obviously bad is a circular one: Because we have defined God to be both good and all-powerful, then anything that happens must in some way (even if we can't understand it) be good.
I maintain that we have the right to be more self-centered than that. We as humans can define for ourselves what is good or bad for us. A fly being chased around a room by a person with a fly swatter doesn't need to understand the motivation of the chaser to determine that the proposed action is bad for the fly, and therefore to classify that action (and the perpetrator) as "evil" from the fly's viewpoint. Given the above definition of God, therefore, I will state that from my point of view such a God either does not exist (because then the moral dilemmas would go away), or else is inimical and not worthy of adoration, worship, and respect. If He exists at all, then He is worthy of fear and loathing -- and possibly of an obedience based on such fear, but not based on His "goodness".
My statement above that such a God must be either nonexistent or evil usually leads people in this culture to believe that I must either be an atheist, or hate God. Such an analysis leaves out an important factor: The general statement applies to a God as defined -- an omniscient, omnipotent Creator of the Macrocosmic All (with apologies to E.E. Smith). If one is stuck with this definition, then indeed one is logically stuck with the conclusion -- either that, or stuck with the circular and personally diminishing position that whatever He wants must be good, by definition. And that opens up the whole problem of discovering and determining just what it is that He wants, leading us on to Saviors, Prophets, Holy Men, Sacred Scripture, and from there to Heretics and Apostates and Satanists and Sin. All in inevitable progression. So what's to be done?
Much of the problem goes away with the transformation God=>God; dropping the emphasis in this case implies at least dropping the concept of God as omnipotent. Minimally, this gives us the option when something bad happens of saying "it's not Her fault!" [Her? What's this "Her" stuff? More on that anon; meanwhile back to "Him" to avoid distraction.] I am personally convinced of my right to "reconstruct" God simply because the alternatives are unpalatable. Atheism is defensible in many ways, and I will definitely defend it over the now-standard form of deism. But for me there are still problems of First Causes and of Meaning that are more easily addressed with a Divinity than without one. Besides, I'm doing this for my own benefit, and personally life can be more fun with the "right" God in the world.
I am firmly of the opinion that the concept, though not necessarily the reality, of God is entirely human-generated. By this I mean that people have always felt needs for comfort, for protection, for "rightness", and for a path to understanding the things that happen to them, especially the BIG things like birth and death. And they have perhaps felt by unknown means hints of the existence of something, or Someone, beyond the reach of common sensory experience. Taking these two concepts together with the reality of the world as they knew it, they generalized and magnified what they knew into its own Big Kahuna version. Patriarchal societies evolved the Big Daddy, juridically-oriented societies evolved the Fall from Grace and catalogs of Sins, medieval deeply-hierarchical societies worked up whole hierarchies of angels and devils. And those in positions of authority as representatives of God found their power enhanced by representing a bigger, more powerful, more absolute God.
Let us consider for a moment the requirements of a positive, life-affirming, personally and societally growth-promoting God model. The needs are still largely as aforesaid: We still need to know that someone knows and cares about us -- about the things we maybe can't share even with those closest to us -- and will help us if we ask. Science has continually pushed back the frontiers of knowledge of What (often against diehard resistance from religious establishments), but leaves us still wondering about Why. And beginnings and endings, both of the Universe and of each individual, are still a wonder. We want protection. We want to be challenged to grow and develop. We need to feel justifiably good about ourselves, secure in our societies, and confident in at least the possibility of a decent future for our progeny. We need to feel a connection with the broader world and universe that contains us, both threatening and nourishing us.
We do not need to feel the fear, hour-by-hour and day-by-day, of the possibility that we might "sin" either accidentally or by giving way to weakness. Nor do we really need to be self-righteous about how "they" are sinning but we are not. The more rules there are, and the more detailed they get, the more likely that they will be broken. And, since we'll suppose for the moment that someone else might have a somewhat different God concept than our own, interacting with such people could put temptations into our path or create situations where we might inadvertently break the rules. We are trying to heal society here, not continue to fracture it, and not to impose on it necessarily our idea of how God works.
So consider for a moment some possibilities in God definition that are foreign to the Judeo-descended God image: Let's say for a start that God is immanent, not transcendent. He is not "out there" somewhere, but is actually within each of us. In fact, as Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land put it, "thou art God" -- and so is everyone else and everything else. Not that each of us has (or is) his or her "own" god, but that we're all immersed in Godhood. Not only we humans, but everything else -- animals, plants, rocks -- are soaked through with and are part of and have as part of them the same Divinity. Because of this we have become responsible. Not only is it no longer God's fault when something goes wrong, but it is not God's problem to run all the details of the shop. We are all part of God, and so it's the responsibility of each of us to do our part. We get the blame -- we also get the credit.
Secondly, it is not God's main purpose to tell humanity how to behave. He does not sit around by the celestial hour making up more and more abstruse Divine Laws. But since we postulated a "societally growth-enhancing" model, there does have to be one Rule, and that is simply Harm None. Please note that this is not the same as either the Christian or Jewish versions of the "Golden Rule". These are, respectively,
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
and
Do not unto others that which is hateful unto yourself.
In other words, the "positive" and "negative" formulations. They both, however, are egocentric; that is, they are built on how you feel about a particular action, when what's really relevant is how the person affected feels about it. Maybe the formulation really should be "Do not unto others that which is hateful unto them!" Given what we've said about all things sharing in Godhood, there's a slight problem here, since the wellbeing of each of us requires things like eating, disinfecting, removing bugs, and so on. We can be a little "species-centric" (since we shouldn't harm ourselves either!) but should think about minimizing the harm that we do to everything in the environment.
Think about it: At one stroke here we've gotten rid of ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths percent of all sin. It isn't a "sin" unless you do actual unwarranted harm to someone. Also gone are the fear and worry, which have never served any useful purpose to people themselves. The only good they have ever done has been for those who build their own power and prestige on our need for someone to tell us what to do, and to judge us and forgive or condemn us for failing to meet requirements that are usually impossible anyway. Yes, we still sometimes need to be judged and forgiven, because we still are not perfect people. But forgiven for much less, and it is our own conscience and our friends' opinions with which we must be at peace. God, after all, is us.
How do we relate to the God within?
All of the concepts introduced above on how to live a "good life" and be happy and at peace with ourselves and our communities in fact do not require a god at all. They are "Ethical Humanism", which is a perfectly respectable approach to the problem and quite satisfactory for some people. This is, in a sense, the logical "cool high plateau" of thought on the issue. But many of us want that relationship, that spirituality, that mysticism. We want God to be real in our world, and connected with us. How then do we relate personally and emotionally to this God?
For most of us who have had any religious or spiritual involvement in our lives up to this point, God has been on some sort of Big Daddy model -- a father and possibly an abusive one. We have been in the mode of children trying to be good, to please our parent, to live by the rules. But there have been so many rules, and things keep happening that we just don't understand. That's one model, and it's a familiar one not just religiously but psycho-socially. We know how to live in such a model: parents, teachers, school principals, bosses -- all of these have taught us how to be obedient, cheerful, reverent, clean and neat. And if we didn't like it, we learned to hide it, which we do with God too, except we know it doesn't work since He is omniscient. It may not be a very happy model, but we understand it and so are in some way comfortable within it. What is proposed here is new and strange, and thus uncomfortable, for that reason if for no other.
Also, building a new God concept can be a lonely endeavor. Our old familiar God had His synagogues, churches, mosques, congregations and congregants, as well as rabbis, priests, imams and ministers. We could have co-religionists, fellow church members, who at least in theory lived their lives by the same rules and thought about things the same way. Are we now going to be alone with our God?
Well, maybe. And this is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that your God concept stays clean and healthy and doesn't become a "me" versus "them" arena. Your view of and relationship with the universal God can be very personal, unique. Only keep in mind that other people have their own views (even traditional ones!) of the same God, Who is in all of us. And remember to Harm None. This is fine if you are comfortable in this mode, but there also is another way.
"Pagan" is an interesting word. It has become an epithet through two thousand years of Christian domination -- the equivalent of "unbeliever", or even "heretic", with the connotations of "evil" and "damned". But it comes from the Latin paganus, meaning simply "country person" or "rustic". In the same way, "heathen" came from "person of the heath". This happened because the countryfolk were more conservative and slower to adopt the hot new religion being exported from the big city. So there were frequent references to the "pagani" continuing to practice the "old religion", and as Latin became mainly an ecclesiastical (as opposed to a common) language, pagan came to mean someone practicing the Old Religion. Since doing so was wrong by definition of the established Church, the word acquired its negative implications.
Leaving aside the history of just who the pagans really were, now they are all sorts of people -- including neighbors and folks you see in the supermarket. There are witches among us now as there always have been, but there is very little in common between the real witch of today (or any day) and the picture created by the Church during the Renaissance. A generic definition now would probably be simply folks who have a god concept different from monotheism. Generally it is a wider concept, allowing to others the freedom to look at religion and divinity any way they like, so long as they don't try to impose their own views on others.
More specifically than pagans are witches, or Wiccans. (Note that the word "witch" is also used by groups other than Wiccans, who have a perfect right to do so.) The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon verb "to bend" or "to form". These modern witches are constantly creating something new, but they are doing it working with the very old. The foundations of their (and now I'm going to own up and start saying "our") god concept go back not just the two thousand years to before Christianity, nor even the thirty-five hundred or so to before Judaism. We go back to a base that predates the Aryan invasions of Europe, to an involvement with the Goddess and the God that is evident in the Paleolithic, over thirty thousand years ago. No, this isn't the same religion today as it was at the time of the Lascaux cave paintings. It isn't even the same religion today as it was yesterday! But it does descend in a direct line. We recognize in the Goddess and the God primal archetypes who express on a most basic level what the Divine is all about.
Why bother? Why "personalize" the divine into anthropomorphic form? Who needs male gods and female goddesses anyway? And what makes them "real"? We in the West have had for a long time this traditional God image that was declared real as a matter of faith and doctrine, often with horrible penalties for any disagreement. But here we've been talking about constructing a god concept! How can one worship or pray to or have some relationship with a "thing" or an idea that one admits to having created? Isn't this the essence of idolatry?
It can be, if one confuses the representation with the meaning. Idolatry is, for example, worshipping money or position as the representation of success, rather than getting down to real issues of what it really means to "succeed". Many Wiccans use goddess and god images (statues, fetishes) as focal points or reminders; none of us think that this piece of wood or stone or pottery actually is the Divinity that it represents. The concepts of Goddess and God are the same thing, one step back. We visualize and personalize them because we want to relate to them, to talk with them, to feel them around us. I see Him in a beautiful sunset, and Her in the loveliest full moon. She is the fertile world around me, Gaia, the Immanent Universe; He is the Hunter, the Pursuer, who builds upon Her. The fact that we make up these images, though, does not stop them from representing something real, any more than a sculptor modeling a tree makes trees "unreal".
There are many reasons for the primacy of the Goddess in modern Wicca. For one thing, historically (and prehistorically) She was the Center of All. The Great Mother is the source of life and love, but is also the Reaper, because life and death are inseparable from each other. Today there are sociopolitical reasons as well, since it's time for some balance against the god-image that has for too long slighted and repressed women. I personally find it easier and more satisfying to focus my love and desires on a feminine principal; others may do otherwise, but usually in balance, yin and yang. And you can generalize, thinking simply of "the Goddess", or particularize. All the pantheons of all the world's religions are available to you to find the image or personality that -- at that particular moment or for a lifetime -- represents the way that you need/want to relate to the divine. Or build your own "image".
Interlude: Here ends the basically philosophical part. Below, we consider structural issues, addressing more particularly the question "Why Wicca, as opposed to some other specific practice? Why not follow the Buddha, or Hare Krishna?" In general, by the way, the answer would be that it's a matter of taste and personal comfort -- of what you feel good doing.
So what is Wicca, or Witchcraft?
The word "witch" makes some people uneasy, because of the tremendous cultural and historical cargo it carries with it. It's really just an alternative pronunciation, but centuries of use by those who have hated the Old Religion and whose business it has been to stamp it out have made it a loaded word. It is time to rehabilitate the word, in connection with getting rid of the distortions and outright lies that have become connected with it. Unfortunately, it is true that some non-Wiccans have adopted "witch" along with its negative implications as a label for themselves. But as used here "Witch" and "Wiccan" should be considered synonyms. This is a somewhat dangerous statement, since there are many non-Wiccan neoPagan individuals who also lay claim to the title "witch", and with equal justice. But consider it shorthand for this particular case. So "Witchcraft" (which we also call "the Art" or "the Craft") is the practice of Wicca -- the belief system, life mode, ceremonial and ritual. The word Witch, by the way, is gender-neutral. Where "warlock" came from is a long story, but it doesn't apply to us.
It is actually much easier to begin by describing what Wicca is not than what it is. It is not Satanism or "devil worship". How the name got that meaning is a fascinating historical study, but well beyond the scope of this paper. The concept is meaningless within this context, unless you want to visualize and personalize (and therefore create) a god that personifies Evil. There is occasional debate within the Wiccan community regarding the utility and desirability of invoking Satan/ Lucifer/ Beelzebub as a representative of certain aspects of reality, as we do with other god(desse)s. This isn't quite the same thing as Satanism, although the difference may seem hair-splitting to some. There is no thought here of setting the Christian-created Satan up as the Big Boss; he is just one aspect of the Divine among many. This approach does not have a lot of support, because of the difficulty we have in making this difference clear to others (or sometimes even to each other!), but you should know that there is an issue here.
The monotheistic faiths seem generally to have perverted sexuality, making it into something "dirty" or that at least can't be freely discussed. This may have something to do with their apparent fear of the power of women. Wicca is a frankly sexual and sensual religion. Indeed, we are all products of a cosmic copulation, and it is our joy to continue that process. Love, and joyous lust, are examples of the attractive forces that hold the Universe together. It is the electron's love for the proton that keeps matter in existence, Earth's love for the Sun that keeps us in this zone of warmth and light. The Goddess tells us that "all acts of joy and love are my sacraments". This is not license, because Harm None is the unbreakable rule, and Responsibility is inherent in this world view. Our "Rule of Three" says that whatever you do, for good or ill, will return upon you three-fold. This does not presuppose any particular model -- such as the heterosexual missionary position -- just as long as it is mutually enjoyable and does no harm.
Witchcraft is also an earth religion, an eco-conscious religion, because we love our Mother and have a duty to protect Her. Remember, we/She/He are all interpenetrating, overlaid, together. We are Her, and share Him with all other life and the ambient world.
Witchcraft is also a magical religion. In Wiccan writings you will often see it spelled magick (or some other variant spelling), to differentiate what we do from the tricks of a stage magician. Magick is using ritual techniques to achieve an altered state of consciousness, through which it is possible to gain knowledge or to effect one's Will in the world. "Casting a spell" is performing one type of rite of magick. Scrying and Divining are others, with the object of gaining knowledge of happenings in a far place, or of paths and choices in the future.
The outsider or newcomer may find this hard to believe, but Witches generally are very practical people. We perform magick simply because it works; it's one way of helping ourselves and others to get things done. Just how and why this is so is not yet well understood in any way acceptable within the "rationalist" model, but that's okay. We don't mind the research being done, but meanwhile we practice techniques that have been developed empirically and handed down traditionally.
It may be that the main effect of magick is on the performer -- that its "real" impact is to generate a different viewpoint or sensitivity within the practitioner. Or it may be that by ritually-enhanced concentration and focus we are tapping into a shared universal consciousness and using that connection to effect change in the world outside ourselves. It may be that a crystal ball or a deck of cards is a support for some inherent power in the user. Some of it -- particularly traditional healing and herbal magick, for example -- turns out to have acceptable "rational" explanations. Many of us are academically interested in these questions, but we don't let the questions interfere with the practice. Magick works. It is a tool among other tools for making life better, more interesting, and more fun. Parts of religion being fun may be a strange concept for a Monotheist, but our Goddess is fundamentally one of Joy in all things.
I'm tempted to just say "Wicca doesn't have a structure," and leave it at that! But that's actually far from true, so the topic needs to be addressed. It is true that the structure is loose and even chaotic, and with good reasons.
There is no "orthodoxy" in Wicca in any meaningful sense. There is no hierarchy or power structure to impose or enforce one, and such a thing is contrary to all that we're about. The fundamental building block of the Wiccan community is the individual, who can choose -- as opportunity and personal preference dictate -- to form small voluntary groups for mutual support and sharing of experience. These groups are the famous "covens", limited by tradition to a maximum of thirteen members. Covens come and go, and can fission (mostly by agreement, sometimes of necessity) to form new groups. Covens can sometimes continue for decades, and long-term coveners can become very close. An individual can belong to more than one coven at a time. But equally valid, and equally Wiccan, is the Solitary witch.
Some Solitaries are such because they haven't yet found any others with whom to group -- a coven to join, or individuals looking to form one. They just may not know any other witches, or any with whom they want to form so close a bond. But many are simply solitary by preference, choosing to follow their own Path within the general framework of Wiccan thought and lifestyle and practice.
Similarly, there are a wide variety of Traditions within Wicca, each with its own approach to rituals and to the Goddesses and Gods and to the Universal Structure. Names like Celtic, Diannic, Faerie, Gardnerian, Alexandrian and others refer to these Traditions -- some with roots in dim prehistory and some newly created. But here again, many witches choose to be Eclectics, picking and choosing those things that fit into their own views of the All.
In parallel to the "traditional" structure of covens and Traditions is a "modern" structure of support groups of various kinds. There actually are Wiccan "churches" -- legally established to take advantage of benefits available to religious bodies. There are various loose membership associations, many of which publish newsletters. There are both regularly established and ad hoc groups that get together (by individuals and/or by covens) to share celebration of the Sabbats (sacred days in the calendar, see below), and sometimes to arrange public celebrations. There is growing representation of the Craft in computer networks and bulletin boards.
There are any number of non-Wiccan pagan Traditions as well -- in this country particularly the various Native American Traditions. These are not Wiccan per se, but arise out of the same universal human experience and share many of the same views and practices. We all honor each others' traditions, and often welcome each others' presence and participation in ritual workings.
I said above that the Craft was an eco-conscious religion. More than that, it is one attuned to the natural order of which we are all part. This will only be the briefest and most cursory look at a fascinating subject, but even this brief paper would not be complete without some mention of the days and times we celebrate.
We measure our cycles by both the Sun and the Moon, representing as they do the God and the Goddess. The Wheel of the Year revolves around the Sun, as it does in nature. The two Solstices, the two Equinoxes, and the four days halfway between each of these (the "cross-quarter days"), are all days of sacred significance. These eight "Sabbats" do not represent historical events, but are interpreted according to the cycle of birth, new life, growth, love and mating, maturity, age and death, and waiting for rebirth, through which all of life passes. The mythic story of our Lord -- child, lover, and consort of our Lady -- traces the never-ending repetition of this cycle and its meanings.
The Moon represents the Lady's cycle, coinciding as it does with the ebb and flow of the menstrual cycle (of "moon blood" as the Craft would put it). This is a round of Power, from Maiden to Mother to Crone (an honored title) and round again. We draw power from Her in Her fullness, begin new endeavors with Her youth, and review and plan for later in Her age. (Most covens celebrate the Full Moon as an Esbat -- a celebration that is not a Sabbat. Some celebrate the New Moon also/instead.) Her sweet clear beauty and Her Consort's warmth and light bring joy to our lives and life to our world.
Being a Witch in today's world
Historically (and this is even recent and current history) those practicing the Craft had to do so in close secrecy. The chance of being tortured and burned at the stake (or of losing job, apartment or children) could be a powerful disincentive to publicity. Although it was the "dominant" religion for some tens of thousands of years, Goddess worship during the Christian era became a risky business. Even in the New Age, coming "out of the broom closet" may not be something to be taken lightly.
Nevertheless, it is easier now than at any time in the last few centuries to move out of the straightjacket and into the Light, whether you do it publicly or privately, in company or alone. There are books, bookstores, newsletters, newspapers, associations and computer networks. There are groups working for religious freedom for all people, and for fairness in such issues as child custody that have traditionally been particular sore points. There is at the moment in the United States little public and no legal support for discrimination against Wiccan practitioners.
Being Wiccan is a matter of choice. Being publicly Wiccan is likewise. Being supportive of others' rights to involve themselves with the Divine (or not) in whatever way they choose, so long as they do not do harm to others, is more in the nature of a public duty.
Merry meet... ...and merry part,
and merry meet again!
Thou art God.
Blesséd be!
Touch here to go back to the Table of Contents, or here to go to RavensWing's homepage.