The Crone, the Reaper... She is the Dark Moon, what you don’t see coming at you, what you don’t get away with, the wind that whips the spark across the fire line. Chance, you could say, or, what’s scarier still: the intersection of chance with choices and actions made before. The brush that is tinder dry from decades of drought, the warming of the earth’s climate that sends the storms away north, the hole in the ozone layer. Not punishment, not even justice, but consequence.
Because everything is interdependent, there are no simple, single causes and effects. Every action creates not just an equal and opposite reaction, but a web of reverberating consequences.
Wisdom and knowledge can best be understood together. Knowledge is learning, the power of the mind to understand and describe the universe. Wisdom is knowing how to apply knowledge and how not to apply it. Knowledge is knowing what to say; wisdom is knowing whether or not to say it. Knowledge gives answers; wisdom asks questions. Knowledge can be taught, wisdom grows from experience.
Mary Daly, author of Beyond God the Father, points out that the model of the universe in which a male God rules the cosmos from outside serves to legitimize male control of social institutions.
The brush that is tinder dry from decades of drought, the warming of the earth’s climate that sends the storms away north, the hole in the ozone layer. Not punishment, not even justice, but consequence.
The Judeo-Christian heritage has left us with the view of a universe composed of warring opposites, which are valued as either good or evil. They cannot coexist.
Helping the terminally ill to consciously end their lives is a crime, while denying health care to the living is seen as sound fiscal practice.
May the wind carry her spirit gently May the Fire release her soul, May the Water cleanse her, may the Earth receive her, May the Goddess take her in her arms and guide her to rebirth.
An initiation is a symbolic death and rebirth, a rite of passage that transforms each person who experiences it.
Decide what is sacred to you, and put your best life energies at its service. Make that the focus of your studies, your work, the test for your pleasures and your relationships. Don’t ever let fear or craving for security turn you aside.” When you serve your passion, when you are willing to risk yourself for something, your greatest creative energies are released. Hard work is required, but nothing is more joyful.
Finally we learn the Mystery – that unless we find the Goddess within ourselves we will never find Her without. She is both internal and external; as solid as a rock, as changeable as our own internal image of Her.
Witchcraft is fun. It offers us a chance to play, to act silly, to let the inner child come out. Out of foolishness and play, creativity is born.
If thoughts and emotions alone could cause things to happen, thousands of my contemporaries would have married the Beatles in 1964.
The three core principles of Goddess religion are immanence, interconnection, and community.
A real relationship with nature is vital for our magical and spiritual development, and our psychic and spiritual health. It is also a vital base for any work we do to heal the earth and transform the social and political systems that are assaulting her daily.
In fact they were looking for weapons eager to find something they could justify the millions of dollars and massive deployment of personnel, the collection of stun-guns, tear-gas guns, pepper-spray guns, M16’s, horses, clubs, and armored personnel carriers with which they intended to protect the city from our hordes of puppet carriers and potentially illegal gardeners.
There are many methods of trance induction, but all seem to function on one or more of four related principles: relaxation, sensory restriction, rhythm, and boredom.
The Mysteries are teachings that cannot be grasped by the intellect alone, but only by the deep mind made accessible in trance. They may be conveyed by an object – a shaft of wheat, as in the Eleusinian Mysteries – by a key phrase, or symbol. The secret itself may be meaningless when out of context: only within the framework of the ritual does it take on its illuminating power.
And so we learn the Mystery: the feared Shadow, the Guardian of the Threshold, is none other than the God, who is named Guardian of the Gates, in his aspect of Death.
Witchcraft has always been a religion of poetry, not theology. The myths, legends, and teachings are recognized as metaphors for “That-Which-Cannot-Be-Told,” the absolute reality our limited minds can never completely know.