Wiccan views of divinity

s or thoughtforms.

According to Gerald Gardner, the "father of Wicca" the deities of Wicca are the ancient gods of the British Isles: a Horned God of hunting, death and magic who rules over an after-world paradise (often referred to as the Summerland), and a goddess, the Great Mother (who is simultaneously the Eternal Virgin and the Primordial Enchantress), who gives regeneration and rebirth to souls of the dead and love to the living. [cite book |last=Gardner |first=Gerald |authorlink=Gerald Gardner |title=The Meaning of Witchcraft |pages=pp. 260-261|year=1988 |origyear=1959 |location=Lakemont, GA US |publisher=Copple House Books] Gardner explains that these are the tribal gods of the witches, just as the Egyptians had their tribal gods Isis and Osiris and the Jews had Elohim; he also states that a being higher than any of these tribal gods is recognised by the witches as Prime Mover, but remains unknowable, and is of little concern to them. [cite book |last=Gardner |first=Gerald |authorlink=Gerald Gardner |title=The Meaning of Witchcraft |pages=pp. 26-27|year=1988 |origyear=1959 |location=Lakemont, GA US |publisher=Copple House Books]

The Goddess is traditionally seen as having a triple aspect; that of the maiden, mother and crone. The God is traditionally seen as being the Horned God of the woods. A key belief in Wicca is that the gods are able to manifest in personal form, either through dreams, as physical manifestations, or through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests.

Gardnerian Wicca as a denomination is primarily concerned with the priestess or priest's relationship to the Goddess and God. The Lady and Lord (as they are often called) are seen as primal cosmic beings, the source of limitless power, yet they are also familiar figures who comfort and nurture their children, and often challenge or even reprimand them.

Dualism

The God

In Wicca, the God is seen as the masculine form of divinity, and the polar opposite, and equal, to the Goddess.

The God is traditionally seen as the Horned God, an archetypal deity with links to the Celtic Cernunnos, English folkloric Herne the Hunter, Greek Pan, Roman Faunus and Indian Pashupati. This was the God whom Gerald Gardner presented as the old God of the ancient Witches, and who was supported by Margaret Murray's theory of the pan-European witch religion, which has largely been discredited. [cite book |last=Gardner |first=Gerald |authorlink=Gerald Gardner |title=The Meaning of Witchcraft |pages=pp. 260-261|year=1988 |origyear=1959 |location=Lakemont, GA US |publisher=Copple House Books]

In Wicca, the Green Man is also often associated with the Horned God, though he does not always have horns.

At different times of the Wiccan year the God is seen as different personalities. He is sometimes seen as the Oak King and the Holly King, who each rule for half of the year each. Oak and Holly are two European trees. Another view of the God is that of the sun god, who is particularly revered at the sabbat of Lughnasadh. Many Wiccans see these many facets, such as the sun god, horned god, sacrificial god, as all aspects of the same God, but a minority view them as separate polytheistic deities.

The most exhaustive work on Wiccan ideas of the God is the book "The Witches' God" by Janet and Stewart Farrar.

The Goddess

Traditionally in Wicca, the Goddess is seen as the Triple Goddess, meaning that she is the maiden, the mother and the crone. The mother aspect, the Mother Goddess is perhaps the most important of these, and it was her that Gerald Gardner and Margaret Murray claimed was the ancient goddess of the witches. . [cite book |last=Gardner |first=Gerald |authorlink=Gerald Gardner |title=The Meaning of Witchcraft |pages=pp. 260-261|year=1988 |origyear=1959 |location=Lakemont, GA US |publisher=Copple House Books]

Some Wiccans, particularly in feminist traditions, have a monotheistic belief in the Goddess as One, excluding the God from their worship.

Interpretations

Gardner's explanation aside, individual interpretations of the exact natures of the gods differ significantly, since priests and priestesses develop their own relationships with the gods through intense personal work and revelation. Many have a duotheistic conception of deity as a Goddess (of Moon, Earth and sea) and a God (of forest, hunting and the animal realm). This concept is often extended into a kind of polytheism by the belief that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are aspects of this pair (or of the Goddess alone). Others hold the various gods and goddesses to be separate and distinct. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have observed that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic as it matures, and embracing a more traditional pagan worldview. [Farrar, Janet and Bone, Gavin "Progressive Witchcraft"] Many groups and individuals are drawn to particular deities from a variety of pantheons (often Celtic, Greek, or from elsewhere in Europe), whom they honour specifically. Some examples are Cernunnos and Brigit from Celtic mythology, Hecate, Lugh, and Diana.

Still others do not believe in the gods as real personalities, yet attempt to have a relationship with them as personifications of universal principles or as Jungian archetypes. [cite book |last=Adler |first=Margot |authorlink=Margot Adler |title=Drawing Down the Moon |year=1979 |location=Boston |publisher=Beacon Press |id=ISBN 0-8070-3237-9 |pages=pp. 25, 34-35] Some Wiccans conceive deities as akin to thoughtforms.

Dryghten

Dryghten is the term used by Patricia Crowther to refer to the pantheistic deity in Wicca. [cite book |last=Crowther |first=Patricia |authorlink=Patricia Crowther (Wiccan) |year=1974 |title=Witch Blood!] . Gerald Gardner had initially called it the Prime Mover, a term borrowed from Aristotle, but he claimed that the witches did not worship it, and considered it unknowable. [cite book |last=Gardner |first=Gerald |authorlink=Gerald Gardner |title=The Meaning of Witchcraft |pages=pp. 26-27|year=1988 |origyear=1959 |location=Lakemont, GA US |publisher=Copple House Books] It was referred to by Scott Cunningham as "The One"; [cite book |last=Cunningham |first=Scott |authorlink=Scott Cunningham |title=Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner] It is somewhat akin to the Hindu idea of Brahman.

Other

According to current Gardnerian Wiccans, the exact names of the Goddess and God of traditional Wicca remain an initiatory secret, and they are not given in Gardner's books about witchcraft.Phillip Heselton, "Wiccan Roots"] However, the collection of Toronto Papers of Gardner's writings has been investigated by American scholars such as Aidan Kelly, leading to the suggestion that their names are Cernunnos and Aradia. These are the names used in the prototype Book of Shadows known as "Ye Bok of Ye Arte Magical". [Hutton, R. "The Triumph of the Moon".]

For most Wiccans, the Lord and Lady are seen as complementary polarities: male and female, force and form, comprehending all in their union; the tension and interplay between them is the basis of all creation, and this balance is seen in much of nature. The God and Goddess are sometimes symbolised as the Sun and Moon, and from her lunar associations the Goddess becomes a Triple Goddess with aspects of "Maiden", "Mother" and "Crone" corresponding to the Moon's waxing, full and waning phases.

Some Wiccans hold the Goddess to be pre-eminent, since she contains and conceives all (Gaea or Mother Earth is one of her more commonly revered aspects); the God, commonly described as the Horned God or the Divine Child, is the spark of life and inspiration within her, simultaneously her lover and her child. This is reflected in the traditional structure of the coven, wherein "the High Priestess is the leader, with the High Priest as her partner; he acknowledges her primacy and supports and complements her leadership with the qualities of his own polarity." [Farrar, J> and Farrar, S (1981). "A Witches' Bible" (previously published as "The Witches' Way". Custer, Washington: Phoenix. pp.181-2] In some traditions, notably Feminist branches of Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is seen as complete unto herself, and the God is not worshipped at all.

Since the Goddess is said to conceive and contain all life within her, all beings are held to be divine. This is a key understanding conveyed in the Charge of the Goddess, one of the most important texts of Wicca, and is very similar to the Hermetic understanding that "God" contains all things, and in truth "is" all things. [Scott, W. (transl.) (1993). "Hermetica" Libellus IX, p. 185. Boston:Shamballah.] For some Wiccans, this idea also involves elements of animism, and plants, rivers, rocks (and, importantly, ritual tools) are seen as spiritual beings, facets of a single life.

A key belief in Wicca is that the gods are able to manifest in personal form, either through dreams, as physical manifestations, or through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests. The latter kind of manifestation is the purpose of the ritual of Drawing down the Moon (or Drawing down the Sun), whereby the Goddess is called to descend into the body of the Priestess (or the God into the Priest) to effect divine possession.

The elements

The classical elements are a key feature of the Wiccan world-view. Every manifest force or form is seen to express one of the four archetypal elements — Earth, Air, Fire and Water — or several in combination. This scheme is fundamentally identical with that employed in other Western Esoteric and Hermetic traditions, such as Theosophy and the Golden Dawn, which in turn were influenced by the Hindu system of tattvas.

There is no consensus as to the exact nature of these elements. SomeWho|date=July 2007 hold to the ancient Greek conception of the elements corresponding to matter (earth) and energy (fire), with the mediating elements (water, air) relating to the phases of matter (fire/earth mixtures). Other exponents of the systemWho|date=July 2007 add a fifth or quintessential element, spirit (aether, akasha).

The five points of the frequently worn pentagram symbolise, among other things, the four elements with spirit presiding at the top.cite book |last=Valiente |first=Doreen |authorlink=Doreen Valiente |year=1973 |title=An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present |publisher=Phoenix Publishing, Inc |location=Custer, Washington |id=ISBN 0-919345-77-8 |pages=264] The pentagram is the symbol most commonly associated with Wicca in modern times. It is often circumscribed — depicted within a circle — and is usually (though not exclusively) shown with a single point upward. The inverse pentagram, with two points up, is a symbol of the second degree initiation rite of traditional Wicca; some Wiccans have alternatively been known to associate the inverted pentagram with evil. [ Crowley, Vivianne "Wicca: The Old Religion in the New World."] In geometry, the pentagram is an elegant expression of the golden ratio phi which is popularly connected with ideal beauty and was considered by the Pythagoreans to express truths about the hidden nature of existence.

In the casting of a magic circle, the four cardinal elements are visualised as contributing their influence from the four cardinal directions: Air in the east, Fire in the south, Water in the west and Earth in the north. There may be variations between groups though, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, since these attributions are symbolic of (amongst other things) the path of the sun through the daytime sky. For example, in southern latitudes the sun reaches its hottest point in the northern part of the sky, and north is the direction of the Tropics, so this is commonly the direction given to Fire.cite book |last=Batten |first=Juliet |year=2005 |title=Celebrating the Southern Seasons |location=Auckland |publisher=Random House NZ Ltd |id=ISBN 1869417348]

Some Wiccan groups also modify the religious calendar to reflect local seasonal changes; for instance, most Southern Hemisphere covens celebrate Samhain on April 30 and Beltane on October 31, reflecting the southern hemisphere's autumn and spring seasons. [cite book |last=Batten |first=Juliet |title=Celebrating the Southern Seasons |location=Auckland |publisher=Tandem Press]

ee also

* Magic (paranormal)
* Magick
* New Age
* Witchcraft

Notes

Further reading

;Bibliographical and encyclopedic sources
* Raymond Buckland, "The Witch Book: The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism" (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 2002).
* Anne Carson, "Goddesses and Wise Women: The Literature of Feminist Spirituality 1980-1992 An Annotated Bibliography" (Freedom, California: Crossing Press, 1992).
* Chas S. Clifton and Graham Harvey, "The Paganism Reader", New York and London: Routledge, 2004.
* James R. Lewis, "Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan Traditions" (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1999).
* J. Gordon Melton and Isotta Poggi, "Magic, Witchcraft, and Paganism in America: A Bibliography", 2nd ed., (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992).
* Shelly Rabinovitch and James R. Lewis, eds., "The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism" (New York: Kensington Publishing, 2002).

;Academic studies
*Nikki Bado-Fralick, "Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A Wiccan Initiation Ritual" (Oxford University Press, 2005)
*Chas S. Clifton, "Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America" (AltaMira Press, 2006)
* Ronald Hutton, "The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" (Oxford University Press, 1999)
*Laura Jenkins " (Otago University press, 2007)
*Zoe Bourke" (Otago University press, 2007)
* Helen A. Berger, "A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States" (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).
* Jon P. Bloch, "New Spirituality, Self, and Belonging: How New Agers and Neo-Pagans Talk About Themselves" (Westport: Praeger, 1998).
* Graham Harvey, "Contemporary Paganism: Listening People, Speaking Earth" (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
* Lynne Hume, "Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia" (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997).
* James R. Lewis, ed., "Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft" (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
* T. M. Luhrmann, "Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England" (London: Picador, 1994).
*Sabina Magliocco, "Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004)
* Joanne Pearson, Richard H. Roberts and Geoffrey Samuel, eds., "Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World" (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998).
* Sarah M. Pike, "Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and the Search for Community" (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).
* Kathryn Rountree, "Embracing the witch and the goddess: Feminist Ritual-Makers in New Zealand" (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).
* Jone Salomonsen, "Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco" (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).
* Allen Scarboro, Nancy Campbell, Shirely Stave, "Living Witchcraft: A Contemporary American Coven " (Praeger Publishers, 1994) [http://doi.contentdirections.com/mr/greenwood.jsp?doi=10.1336/0275946886]