Wicca: A comprehensive guide to the Old Religion in the modern world

Copyright

Element

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and Element are trademarks of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

First published by Thorsons 1996

This edition 2003

© Vivianne Crowley 1996, 2003

Vivianne Crowley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Dedication

To my initiators who have walked the way,

to Chris with whom I make the journey

and who wrote the chapter on God,

to those in many lands with whom we have danced

the Spiral Dance

and to the Wicca who are and who are yet to come:

Blessed Be.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

1 Wicca Today

2 The Roots of Wicca

3 Witchcraft Revisited

4 The Circle of Being

5 Making Magic

6 The First Initiation: Opening the Door

7 The Journey Onwards

8 The Goddess: Wicca and the Feminine

9 The God: Wicca and the Masculine

10 Invoking the Gods

11 The Second Initiation: The Quest Perilous

12 The Steep Path

13 The Third Initiation: The Gateway to the Self

14 Afterword

Keep Reading

Wiccan Resources: Where to Find Information, Books and Contacts

Notes

Bibliography

About the Publisher

Foreword

After hundreds of years of suppression and distortion, the Old Religion has exploded from the broom closet. Today, contemporary Wicca, the various traditions of Witchcraft and the related paths of modern Neo-Paganism constitute the fastest growing spirituality in the United States, England, Canada and Australia. We are doctors and lawyers, therapists and television personalities, teachers and truck drivers, soldiers, secretaries, and students – a cross-section of the culture in which we live, and we are increasingly visible not just in English-speaking countries, but all over the world.

And what does this mysterious and long misunderstood spirituality have to offer millions of modern, sophisticated people?

The birth of a new religion – or the rebirth of an ancient one – is the most profound historical phenomenon in human culture. A new religion arises when the old one no longer fulfills our spiritual needs and when it fails to provide meaningful explanations for the relationship between humanity, the Divine, and the world in which we live. At no other moment in human history are these needs greater, and is this relationship more crucial.

We are in crisis because the Western world is devoid of divinity. For thousands of years our dominant cosmologies have taught us that God (a male) is not present in the world. Both the theological view, that God created the world and left (returning, perhaps, only through the agency of a unique male prophet), and the scientific view, that God does not exist at all, have left us disoriented, alienated, and empty. This separation from the Sacred has created a terrible wound at the center of Western civilization, a laceration that gives rise to the violence, despair, and environmental collapse that threaten our future and the future of our planet.

But our yearning for wholeness is rooted in the deepest center of our collective and individual souls. Wicca has become one of the fastest growing religions in the world because it offers a very different understanding of the interrelationship between the earth, humanity, and the Divine. But Wicca is not a belief system. It is not a system of religious dogma handed down thousands of years ago by a single prophet and then interpreted by religious (and invariably male) professionals.

Practitioners of Wicca do not require faith in a transcendent God because they experience an immanent divinity that is beyond gender (being both masculine and feminine), infinitely diverse in its forms, unifying, and ever-present.

It is a spirituality of accessible practices empowering each of us, in our own unique ways, to discover the Divine that is present everywhere in the world.

Wicca speaks to the modern soul and sensibility because it honors the capacity and the responsibility of each of us to encounter this immanent Divinity. And one of the greatest discoveries on this life-altering quest is that our journey to the Sacred is a journey to our true and authentic selves. Wicca is a path to the indwelling Divine – it enables us to embrace the numinous within ourselves.

We are undertaking an initiatory journey – to the self-knowledge and transformation that occurs through our communion with this inner truth. It is an awakening to who we really are, where we are, and why we are here. Having found the Sacred within, we can emerge from the Underworld of our unconscious and our social conditioning to see the world with eyes from which the veil has been lifted. We can see with new and holy eyes that penetrate beneath the culture’s confused illusions to the ceaselessly flowing, generative and numinous life force from which all of creation springs and through which all of life is joined. We recognize the Divine embodied in the natural world around us – in the wilderness and our gardens, the eyes of a loved one and the call of a wolf, the first flowers of spring and the richness of harvest, the silver light of the moon and the golden heat of the sun, the sweet pleasures and the wisdom of the body – in all the infinite beauties and grace of life.

Vivianne Crowley describes this quest with illuminating clarity, analyzing the classic Wiccan rites that enact our pilgrimages inward to confront the Shadows that stand between the Sacred and ourselves. She skillfully brings the science of psychology, and specifically the remarkable wisdom of fellow traveler Carl Jung, to enrich our understanding and our experience of this voyage as one that expresses and nourishes our inherent spirituality. It is a perspective of inestimable value to beginner and experienced practitioner alike.

Wicca is a profound spiritual process by which ordinary life becomes extraordinary and our everyday lives become infused with holy meaning, empowerment and pleasure. It is a path bridging the gap of false consciousness that has separated us from our true and sacred selves and from the sacred world in which we live. It is a spirituality that enables us to live in a sacred manner because we live in a sacred world. This is the knowledge that heals all wounds and restores spirit to the world and world to spirit. There is no greater expression of love, and no greater magic.

PHYLLIS CUROTT, NEW YORK 2003

Introduction

Over the past 40 years, many books have been written about Wicca. At Imbolc 1989, the first version of this book was published. Since then, Wicca has been rapidly evolving. New generations have been initiated into the Craft, many of them coming from countries whose first language is not English. My husband and I have spent much of our time teaching Wicca in England and overseas. The students who have passed our way have become our teachers. In seeking to answer their questions, our own understanding of Wicca has deepened. The time was therefore ripe to take another look at Wicca in the light of what we have learned.

This has resulted in changes from the first edition. The Wiccan community’s understanding of its own history has evolved and a newer and clearer picture has emerged of the enduring Paganism that underlies European culture. Our understanding of the processes of inner change has also evolved. As each of us travels on our own initiatory journey, our understanding of the path which we have walked evolves. We can look back and ponder our own journey. We can watch those whom we initiate and train grow and develop. This does not mean that I now have all the answers. As each year passes and the turning wheel of the seasons unfolds the mysteries of life and death, I learn still more.

I wrote in the last edition that there are difficulties in writing about Wicca. No book can ever fully capture its essence. Wicca is not a religion or Craft that can be taught through and learned from books. It is a living, growing system of thought, belief, ideas, knowledge and experiences, each part of which is built upon the next. It is also essentially an oral tradition. It is only in recent years, with the development of literacy, that Wicca has been recorded. Wicca is still something which we must learn from others, by observation and by doing. A book can only be a shadow of the reality. This is why, in Wicca, our ritual books are called Books of Shadows.

Another difficulty is our oaths. The words of the oath of the first initiation bind us to secrecy. Wicca is a Mystery religion and if the Mysteries are to effect inner change, they must always contain elements that we cannot understand; elements which confound but also tantalize the conscious mind and force it to work on them until realization comes. The power of the Mysteries lies in maintaining their ability to mystify. If too much is explained about a mystery, it is rationalized and becomes a product of the finite conscious mind, not a product of the infinite unconscious.

When writing about Wicca, we must balance the desire to reveal where the Mysteries can be found, so allowing greater access by a greater number, with maintaining the essence of the Mystery. The decision about what should or should not be written must be a decision for each individual; but the decision is made easier because the true essence of Wicca cannot be expressed in words. The world of Wicca is the world of what is sometimes called Dionysian truth. This is truth that is intuitive and non-verbal; truth which is communicated through symbols and myth. Words and books cannot convey the full essence of this truth. Whatever we write cannot therefore convey what we can only experience by being in Wicca, working its rituals and participating in its myths.

There are, however, other difficulties in writing about Wicca. One of the beauties of Wicca is its lack of dogma. This allows Wicca to evolve. The danger of writing about Wicca is that people will accept too readily what we write and will not seek to find the answers, and more importantly the right questions, for themselves. Another danger is the egotistical one of writing about Wicca because we believe that our view of Wicca is the right one. Any book about Wicca can only be the personal view of the individual priestess or priest who writes it. It will contain truth and error, good bits, excellent bits and bad bits. It will please some of the people some of the time and none of the people all of the time. Other, and sometimes opposing views will be equally valid and right for those who hold them.

So why write at all? I write because I believe that Wicca has important messages for the world today. These messages are not just for those who decide to follow a Wiccan path, but also for all those who are concerned about the fate of our planet and ourselves. Wicca speaks to those who honour the Gods of our ancient past, because they hold the keys to truths that will guide us through the darkness of the future. Wicca speaks to all those who believe that the Gods are within us all and also in-dwelling in the Nature that our species seeks to destroy. Wicca speaks to those who believe that a purely masculine Deity is only part of the mystery of the Divine: that the truth is found in both God and Goddess. Lastly, but not least, Wicca speaks to those who are on the quest to draw nearer to the Gods.

Our task as walkers on the Wiccan path must be to rehabilitate the beliefs of our ancestors and to let the truth and beauty of Wicca shine forth through the murk of the misunderstandings of others. We must put Wicca in the context of what we know about humanity’s spiritual aspirations, so that we can see the shape of the child which has been brought forth. Wicca can then take its true and special place amongst the religions and spiritual paths of today, a link between the past, present and future – the Old Religion in the New Millennium.

1

Wicca Today

What is Wicca?

Wicca is the religion of Witchcraft or Wisecraft which is at the forefront of the Pagan revival. Wicca has many strands. It is a religion worshipping ancient Pagan deities. It is also a Mystery tradition to help us grow in understanding of ourselves and hence nearer to the Gods, a system for developing and using psychic and magical powers, and a body of natural lore which is often called natural magic.

Wicca is called the Old Religion because it is based on the religious practices of our Pagan ancestors. Wicca worships Goddess and God using those symbols found deep within the psyche of humanity. Their antiquity and universality give them a power that more modern Gods will always lack. This is not the worship of devils, as sensationalist newspapers and those who should know better seek to claim, but the worship of two of the oldest forms of deity – the Great Goddess and her consort the Horned God.

In Wicca, although the Divine is seen as ultimately One, within the Divine we see a duality. The Divine is energy; energy is movement and change. Where there is movement and change, there is active and receptive, ebb and flow. The Divine is therefore seen as male and female, Goddess and God. Within different covens and traditions the emphasis on the Goddess and God may vary, but all traditions believe that for wholeness our image of the Divine must comprise both male and female. To worship either aspect alone will produce imbalance.

The Goddess is often depicted as triple and in her aspects as Virgin, Mother and Wise Woman or Crone is associated with the waxing, full and waning aspects of the Moon. She is known by many different names. She is honoured variously as Aradia, Arianrhod, Bride, Cerridwen, Diana, but beneath her many faces we find the enduring essence of the Divine Feminine; that which is mysterious and paradoxical, ever the same but ever-changing.

Wicca and the other Pagan traditions are the only religions that worship the Goddess. The Gods we worship embody ideals to which we aspire. If we are to realize the fullness of our human potential we must worship both the male and female aspects of Deity. Many women today are hearing the spiritual summons within them and are seeking to enter the Christian priesthood; but what part can a woman play in a patriarchal religion that denies her the title of priestess? The Goddess orientation of Wicca is also important for men. If men are to find their own inner wholeness they must practise a religion which recognizes the inner feminine that leads a man to his spiritual destiny.

This is not to diminish the importance of the Horned God, for in this image is a key to the understanding of human nature. This ancient Deity which is animal, human and God symbolizes that to which humans must aspire; the three aspects of our nature integrated in harmony. Like the Goddess, the God is worshipped by many names as Herne, Cernunnos, Karnayna; but all of his names have the same root – hornèd. His image contains the essence of human perfection. He is no remote dweller in some insubstantial heavenly realm. He is hooved and in touch with the world of Nature, but his horns are a sign of Divinity, for they reach to the stars.

While Wicca provides signposts for those who wish to find it, it is not a religion that seeks to make converts. It does not offer a form of exoteric religion that is suitable for the many, but a spiritual discipline and path which is the way of a few, albeit an increasingly large few. This is because Wicca differs from other religions in the status of its adherents. Wicca offers not entry into a congregation of followers, but initiation into the priesthood of the Mysteries. But what is a Mystery religion? Carved above the doors of Mystery temples were the words: Know Thyself. This is also one of the aims of Wicca. The Pagan mystery religions were systems through which their initiates came to understand the true nature of reality and also their own inner nature: who and what we really are. Through exposure to teaching, ritual and symbol, the doors of perception were opened; the windows of the soul were cleansed; and unto the initiate were revealed the mysteries of the Gods and of their own inner psyche: all they were and all they had the potential to be.

In offering entry to the priesthood, Wicca offers a spiritual training which develops our self-knowledge. We come to an understanding and awareness of our own spiritual needs, so that we can in turn facilitate the spiritual growth of others. In explaining this spiritual growth, I refer often to the theories of the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung. Jung sought all his life to come to an understanding of the Divine. The son of a Christian minister, at an early age he rejected orthodox Christianity and sought through the study of Western and Eastern mysticism, through Gnosticism, Alchemy, Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, to find the answers to the eternal questions of humanity: who and what am I and what is my place in the scheme of things? Jung’s psychological theories were strongly influenced by his study of occult, mystical and alchemical texts. They are therefore compatible with the esoteric view of humanity, and are indeed partly derived from it.

As a religion, Wicca offers what all religions offer: a philosophy of life, a sense of the place of human beings in the cosmos, an understanding of our relationship with the plant and animal kingdoms of our planet and home, and a form of worship through which we can participate in the mysteries of the life force and fulfil our needs for shared human activity by doing this with others.

As well as entering a priesthood, those who enter Wicca are also initiated as Witches. Witches practise what is known as the Craft, a tradition of wisdom and ancient lore. The word Witch is a difficult one, full of negative connotations. Recognizing the fear that the word conjures in the minds of many ordinary people and reading the excesses of some Christian fundamentalists and the tabloid press who persist in equating Witchcraft with black magic, it is a word which it might be thought tempting to discard. However, most Witches think this would be a mistake and an affront to those of our ancestors who died for their beliefs.

People come to Wicca by many routes. Some come seeking the ancient faith of Goddess and God. The Gods may have spoken to them in dream or vision; or it may be that they have visited sacred sites, read of Pagan deities and come to feel and believe that the Way of the Wise is their way. They are seeking to enter a Pagan mystery tradition both to worship the Gods and to grow nearer the Gods through inner evolution and change.

Some come to the Craft from Witch families, having been raised in one of the family traditions. Others come to the Craft having had psychic and mystical experiences. They may come from other religious backgrounds, or from no religion at all; but often they will have felt since early childhood that they were Witches. Yet others discover the Craft through chance contact with a Witch, from reading a book or article, or from a television programme. By whatever route people come, they tend to share a common feeling of having arrived home. They experience a sense of déjà vu when hearing the rituals. Learning the Craft is really a re-learning; a remembering of something ancient that is buried deep within their psyche.

Traditionally, Witches are considered to have special powers, but most people who enter Wicca have no more ability in clairvoyance and magic than the average person; nor is this necessary. The average person’s capacity is more than ample once he or she learns to use it. Most of us do not use one tenth of the capacity of our minds and much of Wicca is about developing and training the mind and spirit.

Wicca honours the Divine made manifest in Nature and many who have turned to Wicca have done so as the result of a deep commitment to green issues. Wicca considers that the focus of many religions on non-material reality has had unfortunate effects on what is seen by Witches as the representation of the Great Mother – this planet, our Earth. Wicca teaches us to value our planet because it is sacred soil. It is not ours. We do not own it. We inhabit it by the grace of the Gods and we must honour it, care for it and reverence the life force manifest within it. Wicca teaches us that we must respect our environment.

In Wicca, the Gods are honoured at eight important seasonal festivals or sabbats throughout the year. At these we reverence the ever-changing life force through the changing cloak of the seasons. The Gods are also honoured at monthly Moon rites called esbats. The word esbat is thought by many to derive from a French word meaning frolic1 and both esbats and sabbats are joyful occasions. Wicca honours its Gods but, like our Pagan ancestors, Witches believe that our religion should be a celebration of the life force. Wicca also teaches that we should not fear death; for Wicca teaches reincarnation. We will live not just once, but many times. Life is considered to be a journey of many stages, not just one. Death is not the end, but a new beginning.

Like other religions, Wicca accepts that there is a non-material as well as a material reality, but it does not believe the non-material is superior to the material. Matter is not regarded with horror and the emphasis is on the joy of the flesh rather than the ascetics’ view of flesh as sin. This is not to say that Wicca is hedonistic, but rather that we are followers of a middle way. Our time in physical incarnation is a gift from the Gods. However, we must also seek spiritual growth that expands our consciousness and allows us to live on levels beyond the physical.

Wicca is a religion that looks to the good in human beings rather than to the evil and seeks to bring out that good rather than dwelling on people’s faults. It does not seek unrealistic sainthood, but rather makes the best of what is there. It does not divide people into the chosen and the damned but sees people as being in different stages of struggling towards the same end – that of unity with the Divine.

Wicca does not lay down a set of rules by which to live. Since life decisions are rarely black or white, the onus is on us to make decisions between various shades of grey. This moral sense is developed by seeking to adhere to certain basic ideals of love, joy, truth, honour and trust, and making decisions which are most in accordance with them. There is no book of rules, but there is one meta-rule by which we live our lives.