A Witch Alone. Marian Green

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       TWO Meeting the Goddess and God of the Witches

      I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea.

      All tides are mine, and answer unto me.

      Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth,

      The secret, silent tides of death and birth.

      Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destiny –

      Isis Veiled, and Ea, Binah, Ge…

      DION FORTUNE: The Sea Priestess

      The pagan religion of witchcraft is one in which each seeker sets out on a personal inner quest to meet and communicate directly with various aspects of the goddess or god of their chosen tradition. It is not a faith, so ‘belief’ in invisible deities, and orthodox dogma should have no part in the matter.

      In this chapter I will try to set out some of the widely held ideas about the Goddess and about her consort, the Sun God, so that you can make your own choices as to whether they have any validity for you, if their attributes appeal to you, or if you feel drawn towards their myths or their symbols. No one, inside the Craft, would ever insist that someone has to accept these Great Ones in a particular form, or that they have to be worshipped in only one way. The seasonal festivals celebrated by coven witches often act out the life cycles of the Goddess in her various guises, and her Son/Lover. In some cases the High Priestess and the High Priest raise their own consciousness to become united with these deities, and so perceive them and show them to the rest of the coven in a very intimate way. Those who follow the Old Ways alone will come to know each aspect as a real being, as a friend and guide.

      What is said about the nature of the Old Ones by someone other than yourself can only ever be their own personal description, just as another person may try to describe a piece of music or the flavour of a rare delicacy to someone who has sampled neither. Words are inadequate, and can at best only be vague impressions of what can often be a very deep and emotional experience. Because there is no ‘bible’ of witchcraft, there is no single source of inherited myths and religious stories, shared by all neo-pagans. It is felt that the gods are continuing to live out their own lives, and so with each cycle of the Earth among the stars, there will be a slightly different version of their story. The pagan gods and goddesses are not fixed and completed beings, whose will is immutable and whose actions are distant. All of them are immanent, close to us, accessible. If we make the effort of prayer, invocation or magic, we will be able to perceive them, in a way we can actually comprehend, seeing them as great beings of power. All that can really be taught is the simple ways in which this meeting, on another level of our being, can be brought about, so that seekers can see for themselves how that religious relationship will best fit into their own concepts and philosophy.

      Firstly, though, we do need to understand something about the eternal, ever-changing, many-faceted and varied guises in which the Great Mother and the Sky God are perceived among those who try to walk in their ways. The Goddess is an undying, threefold being, who can be understood as our original starborn Mother. She is commonly associated with the planet Earth, as Mother Nature, the Earth Goddess, Gaia, the First Parent, self-fertile, bearer of all living creatures, human, animal, and often all plants and other sentient life forms. We know that all living things are born of the Earth, made of its substance, taken in with food and water. We know, too, that the Earth is a small scrap of star stuff, captured by the nearest star, our Sun, so our own original heritage is from the stars, at the birth of creation.

      The Goddess in many of her pagan pantheons is also the Moon Goddess, triple-faced and triple-phased. The young Moon Maiden, child sweetheart, beloved mistress, growing daughter of the night, is her waxing form. Full-bellied Moon Mother, full-blown rose of light, travellers’ joy, guide and companion on the magical paths, she leads our monthly revels. In her waning phase, she is the dark-visaged hag deep-steeped in wisdom, crotchety and sharp, but she is the giver of knowledge to those who will face her in the darkness, and as a dutiful grandchild ask for help. The Moon Goddess also has a hidden face, at the dark of the moon, when the night sky is empty and the light of the stars alone illumines the wild places. This aspect of her you will need to discover for yourself, man or woman, for this is part of the Mystery of moon magic, and is not spoken of in words.

      The Goddess is also Ocean, the great sea from which arose the evolving forms of life, third mother to us human beings. The first mother is Earth, the second the moon awakening mind, and the third mother, all the sacred waters, from spring and pool, to lake and river, to mighty sea and moon-led power of the tides. Those who become her children will find her in all her aspects, alive in wild places, and in those magic rings, circles out of time, between the worlds, created by ritual and controlled desire.

      The Goddess is nameless, yet she has many names in many lands and pantheons. If you examine their mystery you will find not names but titles, attributes, ‘job descriptions’, even, spelled out in many tongues. The Goddess is the Ruler of Change, of Times and Tides, and as such she is the Mistress of Magic, for that is ‘the art of causing, controlling and shaping change, in this world and the inner worlds’. She is the Giver of Oracles, for nearly all the ancient sacred centres had their sybil, or oracular priestess, working under the thrall of the Goddess to offer wisdom to those who came to ask. She is the Birth-Bringer, the Death-Taker and the Rebirth-Giver also. She is the Initiator of the magician, the Inspirer of poets, who have drunk from her magic cauldron or heard her singing in the light of dawn. She is the Enchantress, the Spell-Weaver, the Charmer and Binder, the Measurer of Life’s Thread and She Who Cuts the Thread. She is Our Lady in Darkness, ruler of the СКАЧАТЬ