Deity in relation to Wicca and modern paganism

Felix Collado

2013

1
 The revival in both Witchcraft and Paganism in the mid twentieth century was
stimulated by the popularisation of interest within Britain, but its recent history has its
roots with the Romantic aesthetic movement as far back as the eighteenth century.
By the nineteenth century, a surge in the interest in the occult, mythology and the
earliest religious traditions of Europe led to the creation of various groups that sought
to rediscover, like Neo-druidism, the practices and rituals of the past. By the early
twentieth century, it was claimed that part of the earliest European religion, as
practiced by the Neolithic hunter and gatherers prior to the invasion of the Indo-
European peoples and the introduction of separate religious traditions that replace
them, had survived and was being practiced in secret having survived many
persecutions through the millennia, including the Witchcraft trials and persecutions by
Christianity. Thus Neo-Paganism and Wicca, which were stimulated by the British
witchcraft revival in the mid twentieth century, claimed to be the surviving remnant of
a pre-Christian, European religion. 1 Wicca, initially developed by a British Civil
Servant in the 1940s, was envisioned as a return to an older form of religious
practice, away from the monotheistic Christian tradition which had the goddess of
fertility and the god of the hunt as its central deities. Feminist Witchcraft has many
similarities with Wicca, would later grow from the women’s spirituality movement,
viewed traditional religions as overly patriarchal and was detrimental to the way in
which women could see themselves as spiritual beings and focused on the Goddess
as a symbol of women’s lived experiences.2 Witches and Wiccans do share a number
of fundamental principles in common: the sacredness of nature, the immanence of
divinity, and the ability to interact meaningfully with Universal processes. Rejecting
the dualistic understanding of many other religions groups, modern Witches and
Wiccans locate the foundation of their beliefs in the sacredness of nature. For them,
the phrase Mother Earth is a deeply held conviction that the divine is manifest
through the natural world.3

Wicca and Witchcraft is a term used by individuals of both sexes, who identify
themselves as believers in a polytheistic religion at the centre of which is a Goddess

Da y L. Jorge se a d S ott E ‘ussell, A eri a Nepaga is : The Parti ipa ts So ial Ide tities i
1

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 38, No. 3, (Sep. 1999), p.326
Hele A. Berger, The ‘outei izatio of Spo ta eity” i Sociology of Religion, Vol. 56, No.1 (Spring,
2

1995) p.54
3
Douglas E. Cowan and David G. Bromley, Cults and New Religions: A Brief History, Blacwell Publishing,
Malden, MA, 2008, p.203

2
and/or God who hark back to what they believe was an original form of nature-based
fertility cult, identifying themselves with the figure of the historical witch as an outsider
with power.4 Due to the religious tradition of Neo-Paganism and Wicca having many
developed from many different sources, there are numerous traditions and variations
existent,5 practice is centered on the worship of the figure of the Goddess and her
consort the Horned God as the manifestations of nature and the balance and
harmony of all things. It is claimed by some practitioners that prior to the Indo-
European invasions, the common religion was female centered and much more in
tune with the natural world, referring to the cycles of nature for their inspirations and
practices. These practices, however have a strong focus on female deities, often
called the Triple Goddess, referring to the place in the fertility cycle where she
appears, described as Maiden, Mother, or Crone,6 or as the Great mother Goddess,
which symbolises a great and at times extreme respect for and worship of nature,
ecological cycles, universal power of female and male energies, and the cycle of
birth, death, and regeneration.7 The modern Witchcraft movement is understood by
its practitioners as a life affirming and positive movement, drawing on various
traditions which also have female divinity at their core, and is designed to allow
members to gain positive feelings about them as the embodiments of female divinity
as well as empowering practitioners to give them positive feelings about them and
their place in the universe,8 as well as being also drawn together by three broadly
constructed principles: belief in the sacredness of nature, belief in the immanence of
divinity, as well as the belief in their ability to interact with the subtle processes and
energies by which the universe is established and maintained,9 belief and practice
embraces the natural world, seeking a re-enchantment of human life and purpose
through a recognition of nature’s inherent beauty, worth, and divinity.10 Practitioners
of Wicca and Neo-Paganism see their faith as allowing practitioners to reassume and
to express their actual divine nature. By tapping into the flow of cosmic energy,

Lucie Marie-Mai DuFres e, Mother a d Goddess: The Ideologi al For e of Sy ols i Canadian
4

Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme, Vol. 17, N0.1, (200-), p. 101

Berger, The ‘outei izatio of Spo ta eity p. 54
5
6
James R. Lewis, Magical Religion and Modern Withchcarft, State University of New York Press,
Albany, 1996 p. 26
Jorge se a d ‘ussell, A eri a Nepaga is : The Parti ipa ts So ial Ide tities p.327
7
8
Denise Lardner Carmody, Women & World Religions, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River,1989, p.33
9
Cowan and Bromley, p. 194
10
Ibid p.203

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practitioners believe that they can consciously direct that energy to influence the
world around them.11

Practitioners of Witchcraft take their teachings from nature, “…reading

inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon, and stars, the flight of birds, the slow
growth of trees, and the cycle of the seasons…”12 Belief in the sacredness of nature
and belief in the immanence of divinity is an underpinning foundation principle of
Wicca and modern Witchcraft: belief in the ability to interact with the subtle processes
and energies by which the universe is established and maintained. 13 Wiccans are
also practitioners of religious ecology, which is founded on the belief that the natural
world is part of, not apart from, the deities that created it. The physical world overlaps
the spiritual world, yet is separated and the goal of Wicca is to bridge the gulf
between the worlds and discover self-realization in the process of doing so. 14 The
symbolism of the Goddess is not to be seen as a similar of even a parallel structure to
the symbolism of God the Father in the Christian sense, as the Goddess does not
rule the world, but is the world. She also does not legitimize the rule of the world and
nature or of either sex by the other and lends no authority to rulers of temporal
hierarchies15 and is both darkness and light and to worship the Goddess is to also
reconcile dualist opposites,16 as she is also diverse. The Goddess is immanent in the
world in the world and in all forms of life.17 Since each person is a part of the natural
order, each in turn is an expression of the divine and as a result, every individual has
the capacity to interact with the flow of energy that structures the universe, and to
place themselves in harmony with the underlying, ordering rhythms of life.18

Rites are practiced so that Modern Pagans and Wiccans attune themselves to
the natural cycles of life forces marked by the passages of the moon as seasonal
Quarters and Cross Quarters.19 Goddess and God are invoked or awakened within

11
Ibid p.208
12
Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, Harper Collins,
New York, 1999, p 27
13
Cowan and Bromley, p.205
Ly e Hu e, Creati g Sa red Spa e: Outer Di e sio s of I er Worlds i Journal of Contemporary
14

Religion, Vol. 13, No. 3, 1998, p. 311

15
Starhawk, p. 33
16
Lewis, , p. 26
17
Starhawk, p.35
18
Cowan and Bromley, pp.208-209
19
Ibid p.203

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each participant and are considered to be physically present within the circle at the
time of ritual, and are also present within the bodies of the worshipers.20The universe
is seen as an intricate web of dynamic, interconnected relations in which every
individual is connected to every other individual as well as to every other component
of nature contained within it, this then is an expression which constitutes the ever-
changing body of divinity, which in turn gives an expression to the divine through the
existence of every individual; thus every individual is an expression of divinity itself.21
This understanding of the complex interrelation of all existence is the main driving
force behind the respect for nature and the natural world. This concept of sacredness
is seen as having emerged from and paralleled Neolithic indigenous perspectives on
and approaches to certain places, natural and manmade and theorising that their
ancestors may have approached such sites in similar ways, pagans have also begun
to use them in this way 22 as places where discourses with deities can be made
directly or as a location where human and other people enter into negotiations and
other relationships. 23 Unlike sacred places of the Semitic religious traditions which
have a definite, sacred place at which members go to worship, the whole earth is
itself seen as sacred and as such the idea of a sacred space can be created
anywhere, Wicca engages its followers in both physically and mentally creating
sacred spaces which are neither bounded by territorial fences nor dependant on
geographical locations 24 with the idea of remembering a place into being, which
resonates in the thinking of many Neo-Pagans and Wiccans as it is a suggestion of
an intimate, participatory relationship between people and land and a continuous
process of creation in which both are entirely and cooperatively involved.25 Through
their bodily performances at ancient sacred sites, modern Neo-Pagans and Wiccans
call upon the deity and it becomes the subjective interpretation that defines subjective
experience and the relationship between what has been imagined and memory is
similar.26Rituals often are the result of intuitive, somatic responses to a sacred space

20
Starhawk, p.38
Kathry ‘ou tree, Perfor i g the De i e: Neo-Paga Pilgri ages a d E odi e t at Sa red Sites
21

in Body and Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, 2006, pp.102-104

‘o ert J. Wallis a d Je y Blai , Sites, Sa red ess, a d Stories: I tera tio s of Ar haeology a d
22

Co te porary Paga is , i Folklore, Vol. 113, No. 3 (Dec., 2003),p. 315

23
Ibid p.311
Hu e, Creati g Sa red Spa e: Outer Di e sio s of I er Worlds , p.312
24

‘ou tree, Perfor i g the De i e: Neo-Paga Pilgri ages a d E odi e t at Sa red Sites , p.102
25
26
Ibid, p.112

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that include imagination, interpretation and performance and each has a part to play
in connecting the ritual to the Divine,27 and to travel across sacred landscape is to
remember it into being, full of meaning for the participants and loaded with the history
of past rituals.28

The Great Goddess represents the divinity of the entire natural world and her
consort, the Horned God, the principle of fertility. Modern Pagans recognize that the
divine reality in the universe is beyond gender, but believe that this reality is
immanent in the polarity of male and female principles. Whilst most ritual working
groups privilege the Goddess over the God, some eliminate the God from their ritual
practice entirely,29 which can be to the detriment of the male members as they begin
to feel as though their place in the worship is lessened through the alienation of their
part of the process. Deities are worshipped at the celebration of the sabats and
essabats, festivals that celebrate the changing of the seasons and changes in the
cycles of the moon, as well as at the height of the full moons.30 Rituals created by
each coven for the celebration of sabats and essabats are creative acts as
celebration of worship, involving dance, music, art and poetry and other creative ways
of interacting among group members,31 which have resulted in marked differences in
the practices between groups, though many similarities have also come into being as
groups share chants, incantations, and rituals among themselves.32

Christian counter cult propaganda remains firmly grounded in the dogma that
the Devil lays at the heart of all Pagan belief and practiceand stereotypical
representations of witches as evil old hags, bent on destruction remain a ready
component of Halloween celebrations and horror cinema. Drawing on a history of
misrepresentation more than 500 years old, Witches and Wiccans are often accused
of worshipping Satan at worst, or of being unwittingly in league with the devil at
best.33 To Christianity Witchcraft came to be associated as the heretical practice of
Satanism, servants of the personification of evil to whom they had made a religious

27
Ibid, p.104
28
Ibid, p.102
29
. Cowan and Bromley, p.204
Berger, The ‘outei izatio of Spo ta eity”, p.54
30

Ly da L. War i k, Fe i ist Wi a: Paths to E po er e t i Women & Therapy, Vol. 16, No. 2-3,
31

1995, p.123
. Berger, The ‘outei izatio of Spo ta eity” p.55
32
33
Cowan and Bromley,, p.193

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commitment, and whom sought to elevate the Lord of Darkness and epitome of evil in
the Christian tradition to eminence in the world, as per the tradition of Zoroastrian
Dualism.34 There are those that claim that the Pagan heritage is one that has roots
stretching as far back as the Palaeolithic and has had a continuous heritage of
practice, where as there are some who stress the importance of the 1960s
counterculture in spurring people to look for spiritual alternatives more in keeping with
the developing green, anti-war, ant-patriarchal leanings and their antipathy to
hegemonic institutions.35 The image of God as a force that is outside of nature has
given a rationale for the destruction of the natural order, as well as justified the
relentless plunder of the earth’s resources.36

The Goddess movement as practiced by Neo-Pagans and Wiccans lays bare

the orthodoxy of patriarchy, including the masculine conceptualization of God, and
they criticize the characterizations that reiterate and validate a model of oppressive
power.37 Wicca is a nature religion, but nature is understood as a complex reality with
its own sense of being and a part of the human experience with the purpose of the
rituals to achieve harmony with the natural cycles of the universe.38 Neo pagans have
a fluid understanding of divinity, and while most might agree that all of creation-nature
probably emerges from a single source, it manifests itself in a multiplicity of forms. 39
The female principle represented by the goddess is described not only as culturally
creative but also more intimately as the only true connection to an individual’s inner
self. If a person wants to become whole and live up to their potential, the connection
with the goddess is essential.40Adherents in the Goddess movement often believe
that it is inconsequential if the theory of the pre-historic past where women were
valued and the concept of the divine female was celebrated is disproven41 as it is the
practice itself and the reverence of the Goddess as Nature and life which is important

‘o ert Li a The Ar a e Paga is of Celesti a: Pluto i Magi Versus Satanic Witchcraft in

34

Tragi omedia de Cali to Meli ea” in Neophilologus, Vol. 82, 1998, p.222
‘ou tree, Perfor i g the De i e: Neo-Pagan Pilgrimages and Embodiment at Sacred, p.97
35
36
Starhawk, p.34
Kristy S. Cole a , Who s Afraid of the Goddess Stuff? , i Feminist Theology, Vol. 13, No.2,
37

2005,p.228
Ka ila Velko orska, Wi a i the USA: Ho a British- or ‘eligio Be a e A eri a ized i
38

Theories and Practice: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on English and American
Studies, Tomas Bata University in Zlin, Czech Republic, September 7-8, 2010, p.246
39
Carol S. Matthews, New Religions, Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia, 2005, pp. 115-116
Velko orska, Wi a i the USA: Ho a British- or ‘eligio Be a e A eri a ized , p.250
40

Cole a , Who s Afraid of the Goddess Stuff? , p.217

41

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and in the rich mythology of feminist Wicca, men and women can find affirmation for
discovering and deepening all aspects of themselves as a part of the greater
universe, and in their own process of healing and becoming empowered.42

War i k, Fe i ist Wi a: Paths to E po er e t p.126

42

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