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The primary Deities of the Wicca are the Goddess and the God, the Great Mother and Her
Horned Consort. For Wicca recognizes that the Ultimate Divine Essence manifests Itself
through the creative interaction of the Divine Polarities, the Female and the Male
Principles of Divinity. As such, Wicca is obviously not in any way related to Satanism or
the worship of evil; unlike dualistic religions which hold that the two great forces in
the Universe are mutually antagonistic, with one being "good" and the other
"evil", Wicca is duotheistic, recognizing that the two great Forces in the
Universe are necessary and complementary, each being half of the whole, and that all
things are brought into being through the creative interaction of the Divine Polarities.
The Great Law, as that wise occultist Dion Fortune called it, states that "All the
gods are One God, and all the goddesses are One Goddess." (1) However there is some
divergence of opinion among Wiccans about this principle. Some Wiccans reject it
completely, and insist that all the goddesses and all the gods are distinct individual
beings; they may view some particular goddess and god as their special patron deities,
and/or may call on different deities at different times depending on the need or the
occasion. Some Wiccans, on the other hand, hold that every goddess and every god is merely
a manifestation or aspect of the One Goddess or of the One God, being the different names
by which those "Great Two" have been known in various cultures and eras. The
latter may be termed "pure duotheists" and the former "pure
polytheists". Many Wiccans, however, take the "both/and" viewpoint that
while all the goddesses are One Goddess, nevertheless each individual goddess still has
her unique being and identity; likewise while all the gods are One God, each still has his
own individual existence. So some Wiccans are polytheists, some are duotheists, but many
are polytheistic duotheists.
Now the full text of Dion Fortune's Great Law states that "All the gods are One God,
and all the goddesses are One Goddess, and there is One Great Initiator." And in
keeping with this, Wicca recognizes that the Goddess and the God are the Two Polarities of
the single Ultimate Divine Force, or for some Wiccans, of a single, undefinable, Ultimate
Divine Being; the former are monists, and the latter monotheists. Wiccans can thus be
polytheists, duotheists, monists, or monotheists, or all of the above at one and the same
time, a position that follows the rule of "both/and", which is so often the
wisest guiding principle.
Wiccans also diverge between those who are pantheists, holding that the Divine and the
Universe are identical, and those who are panentheists, holding that while the Divine is
present in all things, and throughout the Universe, the Divine nevertheless also
transcends the Universe. In other words, the pantheist holds that the Whole is the One;
the panentheist holds that while the Whole proceeds from the One, the One is more than the
Whole. Yet both will agree that the Divine is immanent in Nature: the Divine is present
throughout the Universe, the Divine is manifest in all things, all things contain the
Divine Essence. Nature is holy, for it is the visible form and manifestation of the
Divine. Wicca teaches that harmony with Nature, and its cycles and seasons, is the way to
harmony with the Divine; and this is reflected in the fact that the Ritual Occasions of
Wicca are determined by the cycle of the seasons, and the phases of the Moon.
Dion also held that "A goddess-less religion is halfway to atheism."
THE GODDESS
The Goddess of the Wicca is the Great Goddess. She is the
Ground of Being, the Mother of All Living; the Creatrix, and the Destroyer, for She is
ever Dual. She is the Earth Mother, the Lady of the Moon, and the Star Goddess. She is
Queen of Heaven, Queen of Earth, and Queen of the Underworld. She is the Triple Goddess:
the Virgin, the Bride, and the Hag, called the Three Mothers in Celtic regions.
The three aspects of the Triple Goddess are usually described as the Maiden, the Mother,
and the Crone; it must be remembered that the connotations of age associated with those
titles derive from the experience of humans, who are subject to age and death; the Goddess
is eternal: ever-changing and ever self-renewing, She will be young or old as She pleases.
As the Virgin, She is the Creatrix, the Lady of Birth and Death, the Star Goddess, the
Queen of Heaven, the Giver of Inspiration, the Initiatrix. She is Diana, Lady of the Moon
and the Wild Things, Ever Virgin unto Pan: virgin unto the All, and therefore wed to None.
She is also the Virgin Mother; and Her blue and white colors, and title "Queen of
Heaven", were borrowed by the Catholic Church for the Virgin Mary. Hers are the
Waxing Moon, Venus as Morning and Evening Star, and all the vast starry realm; Her sacred
color is White.
As the Mother, She is the Preserver, the Lady of Growth and Fertility, the Earth Mother,
the Goddess of flocks and herds, and the fertility of the land; She is also the Bride, the
Lady of Love and Fruitfulness; as the Goddess of the Land, She is the Goddess of
Sovereignty, and only by sacred marriage to Her does the King hold the right to the
Throne. Hers are the Full Moon, the Earth, the fruits, and flocks, and fields; Her sacred
color is Red.
As the Hag, She is the Destroyer, the Lady of Decay and Death, the Goddess of Night and
the Underworld, and also the cave and the tomb. For that which is born must also age, and
decay, and die; and out of that which is dead and decaying arises new fertility, for life
feeds ever on life. She is the Sow who eats Her own young, the "Nightmare Fertility
and Death in One", the Great Necessity by which the food chain and the cycle of life
continue. Hence She is also the Goddess of regeneration. Hers is the Waning Moon, the dark
night, the silence of the shadows, the midnight crossroads, and the wailing of the widow;
Her sacred color is Black.
The Goddess is the Queen of all Witcheries: She is the Enchantress, the Shape-Changer; She
is Isis, the "Lady of the Words of Power"; She is Cerridwen, the Sorceress at
Her Cauldron; She is Hecate, the Mistress of the Magick of the Dark Moon. She is the Great
Lady. She is the Goddess.
THE GOD
The God of the Wicca is the Horned God, the ancient God of
Fertility: the God of forest, flock, and field and also of the hunt. He is Lord of Life,
and the Giver of Life, yet He is also Lord of Death and Resurrection. For, like the
Goddess, the nature of Her Horned Consort is also dual. For the Horned God is not only the
Hunter, He is also the Hunted; He is the Sun by day, but He is also the Sun at Midnight;
He is the Lord of Light, but He is also the Lord of Darkness: the darkness of night, the
darkness of the Shadows, the darkness of the depths of the forest, the darkness of the
depths of the Underworld.
The Horned God is the group soul of the hunted animal, invoked by the primitive shaman and
the tribe: and as such, He is the Sacrificial Victim, the beast who is slain that the
tribe might live, a gift from that group soul, who was often revered as the tribal totem
or ancestral spirit. The Celts believed they were the descendents of the God of the
Underworld, who was also the God of Fertility: the Latinized form of His name was
Cernunnos, which means simply, the Horned One.
The Horned God is also the spirit of vegetation, of the green and growing things, whether
of the vine or of the forest or of the field. Dionysos, Adonis, and many other vegetation
and harvest Gods were all often depicted as horned, wearing the horns of the bull, the
goat, the ram, or the stag: of whichever of the horned beasts was held sacred in that
place and time. This aspect is the Dying and Resurrecting God who dies with the harvest
and is rent asunder, as the grain is gathered in the fields; who is buried, as is the
seed; who then springs forth anew, fresh and green and young, in the spring, reborn from
the Womb of the Great Mother.
The Horned God is Osiris, who was often depicted with the horns of a bull. Osiris was
believed to be incarnate in a succession of sacred bulls, and worshipped in that form as
the god Apis. (1) This was yet another form and manifestation of Osiris as the God of
Fertility and also of Death and Resurrection. And Osiris bears the marks of a lunar,
rather than a solar god, for Set tears the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces, the number
of days of the waning moon; and then Isis, the Great Mother, gathers those pieces together
and restores Osiris to life again.
The Horned God is the Great God Pan, the Goat-foot God with a human torso and a human but
goat-horned head, the God whose ecstatic worship was so hated by the Church that they used
His description for their "Devil" and called Him the lord of all evil. Yet, to
the ancients who worshipped Him, and to the modern Pagans and Witches that worship Him
still, "Pan is greatest, Pan is least. Pan is all, and all is Pan." (2)
The Horned God is not "the Devil", except to those who fear and reject Nature,
and the Powers of Life and human sexuality, and the ecstasy of the human spirit. The
Horned God is the God of the Wicca.
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