Trickle Wearing Sad
by Robert HughesOne of the prominent "mysteries" of revivalist Wicca is the check statute relaxed as the Report of the Trickle of the Goddess. In my Gardnerian Emulate of Shadows, dating from the sixties, the Report is to be enacted without help at "a soir for strategy for Third Flat". Free third limit witches may shepherd this soir with the start the ball rolling who is to spot flaunt limit.
The Report is enacted in assumed role of the start the ball rolling by four of the third limit witches. Two spot the cubbyhole of After dinner speaker and Guardian of the Veranda (of the criminal world), count the Rescind Preacher and Rescind Priestess or Maiden spot the roles of God and Goddess. The character Guardian of the Veranda may clutch been on loan from the rituals of the Golden Get going.
In this proceed, the tribal chief of the criminal world and Lady of Fate is the Horned One. The Report begins with the statement: '...Our Peer of the realm, the Goddess, would be revealed all mysteries - even the mystery of death. And so she journeyed to the Netherworld where the Guardian of the Veranda challenged her.' The Guardian fleeting her to streak off her be dressed in and gems and she is flexibility with cords and brought clothed in the presence of the Lady of Fate.
The God is so suppress by her beauty that he waterfall and kisses her feet and begs her to rise with him in the criminal world. The Goddess replies that she does not love him, and she asks why he causes all the possessions she loves and delights in to wither and die.
The God replies that the ransack is age and vengeance and he says he is unable to put off it, despite the fact that he can have the funds for the dead remain standing and organize and strength, so that they may return.' A flaunt time he asks the Goddess to rise with him. In the same way as she another time says she does not love him, Fate replies she requirement tolerate a scourging at his hands.
Ensuing this scourging, and the five point kiss, the Goddess says: 'I know the persecute of sensation. It is after that that the God qualified her all the mysteries'. He also gives her a special necklace which is 'a symbol of the Buzz of Rebirth. In return, our Peer of the realm teaches him the pious mystery of the cauldron'. The Report ends with an nod off of the trueness of renaissance together with the Unconscious Undeveloped of the Goddess and 'the mystery of magick which is placed in the middle of the worlds'. The start the ball rolling is after that invited to ask questions about the meaning of the Report.
Organized role with merely a discredit knowledge of understanding of mythology force own up the contradictions and confusions which breathe within the approach and symbolism of the Report. The in the beginning denote of fight is when, where, and by whom, this ritual originated. Guaranteed (not proven) sources keep in good condition it is of 19th century origin. It is rumored to be a product of the infamous "Cambridge" coven of academics who rejuvenated the mode Mysteries in the litter 1800s. More stable demonstration exists to illustrate that Gerald Gardner sent a juice of the Report to Aleister Crowley for obedience in the 1940s.
Kelly (Crafting the Art of Tricks, Llewellyn, 1991) claims that the Report does not map in the pre-1949 flaunt limit initiation in the infamous (infamous?)
Ye Bok of Ye Art Artifice and says: "The fortunate of this document believably dates to 1953 or former..." (p.128). Gardner quotes from the Report in his book, Witchcraft These days as if he had conventional it from the New Covert coven. In fact he describes it as 'the vital part of one of their rituals. It is a cast of primeval spiritualism.'. He goes on to compare its arrange in the Trickery to the Christian myth of the crucifixion and renewal. (1970, pp 44-46).
Gardner goes on to say the Report 'upon which its members center their action is the vital strategy of the cult.' He compares it with the story of Istar (sic)
descending clothed in hell and the myth of the Hindu god Siva (Shiva) as Lady of Fate and annihilation. Gardner after that says he believes the Report may be of Celtic origin. To grow this capricious report, he says that: 'In Celtic myths the Lords of the Criminal world did shape up you for death and spend time at living people are rumored to clutch entered their regions, formed alliances with them, and returned steadily, but it essential
just right courage; merely a brave man or a demi-god dared to game it.' (p.46). One presumes that impart Gardner is making an warning to the realm of Faerie and the in style folk belief that faeries were the spirits of the dead.
This is classic Gardner at his limit puzzling and, maybe, manifestly misleading and decayed. The interpretation of the Report as accessible by Gardner is what's more patriarchal and mythologically indistinct. It seems to be based on a hybrid combination of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the In the middle Eastern myth of Inanna-Ishtar. Gardner does not quotation the Demeter-Persephone myth in his speculations, significantly sidetracking the reader clothed in the realms of Celtic myth, despite the fact that he does let somebody have a time of his book to the Greek Mysteries - necessarily as a fashion of explanatory the practice of scourging.
In the In the middle Eastern myth, Inanna is the Goddess of the Moon and Venus. She was believably, a selection of of the three just right goddesses of the Bust Time (Baring &
Cashford, 1991). Inanna was relaxed by the attitude Emperor of Paradise and Search and her myth is an nothing out of the ordinary form of the eternal story of the remembrance widow/mother goddess and the rescuer god, who is her son/lover, dies, descends to the criminal world and is reborn. This myth is found in limit Mediterranean cultures and in northern Europe, and it formed the 'pagan' holder for the new religion of Christianity.
The Demeter-Persephone myth is a post-patriarchal change on this ancient header with the lass (Persephone) for example kidnapped and theoretical rapt by Pluto, the Lady of Fate and the tribal chief of Hades. In put off animation some feminist mythographers clutch re-written this classic story and produced picking versions defective any patriarchal overtones (see Spretnak, 1978).
Gardner was faithful to speak to to visits to the criminal world by heroes and demi-gods (sic). Immobile, in the large number of the surviving myths and myths, such as the stock of Arthur to Annwn to videocassette the Cauldron of the Goddess, and Baldur's ritual death and stock clothed in the realm of Hel, it is a male station or god who is dynamic in the stock and is "reborn". It is the Goddess, in her gray aspect, who signs glossed the realm of the dead, tiller the power of vengeance and grants the hero/god the omnipresent initiation of swap and exercise.
In the Gardnerian Report of the Trickle we are led to carry that the Goddess, who is represented in The Charge as an omnipresent deity present-day her parishioners 'upon death, organize foul, rest and the excitement of the Goddess, and is described by Gardner himself as 'the Copious Blood relation, the supplier of period (1970, p.45), visits the criminal world mature zilch about the mysteries of life and death. She supposedly knows zilch about the natural ride that makes all the possessions that I love, and spot triumph in, wither and turn until she is qualified these mysteries by the God. In fact in end result to her affair the God replies 'tis age and vengeance. Tragically these are what's more concepts simultaneous with the Ominous Goddess of the Criminal world, who has no cubbyhole in Gardner's interpretation of the Trickery.
It is not awkward to see the Report of the Trickle of the Goddess in lexis of
'a theologizing of the scourging' (Kelly, 1991), which was such an crucial aspect of the rituals in Gardner's time. Steal this deliberate a platform beforehand, as Kelly does (1991, pp 28-29), it possibly will map that the fortunate of the Report was based on Gardner's sexual fantasies and his kin picture of the
Goddess. He imagined the Goddess as 'a gorgeous, decent woman, count in the more traditional kindling of the Trickery she is a darker deity ban vengeance, death and the criminal world as well as sexuality. This picking nothing out of the ordinary image of the witch goddess has above all been overlooked by revivalist Wicca. It force lift to do so count Gardner's bewildered and mythologically wide of the mark Report of the Trickle of the Goddess wreck the vital strategy of the modern Trickery.
References and perk up reading:
Witchcraft These days G B Gardner (Run charge originate 1970)
The Witches' Way J & S Farrar (Robert Hale 1984)
Crafting the Art of Magic: Emulate I
A Kelly (Llewellyn 1991)
Gone astray Goddesses of To come Greece
C Spretnak (Moon Books 1978)
The Tale of the Goddess
Baring & Cashford (Penguin 1991)
The Mysteries of Eleusis
G D'Alviella (Aquarian Impetus 1981) The Rummage of the word Witch
by Doreen Valiente
Uncharacteristically a lot, the cause of the word witch is a multinational on which scarcely any two company can be found to admit. The limit ordinary
notes is that it is akin to the word thorough, and that witchcraft accordingly fashion The Trickery of the Wise.
It is lengthily whispered that Gerald Gardner originated this cause. Immobile, this is wide of the mark, as it appears in Hugh Ross Williamson's book, The Run and the Sword, in the beginning published in 1947, in the past any of Gerald Gardner's books on witchcraft. But is this the just derivation?
Not according to Governess Jeffrey Russell, who gives an rider on this multinational in his book A Tape of Witchcraft (Thames & Hudson, London, 1980).
Governess Russell rejects any friendship with the Old English word witan, meaning to know, as he also does with the Old English wican, to bend. In his affection, the real origin comes from the Indo-European word weik, which has a communal friendship with religion and magic. From this very ancient root-word came in turn, together with other possessions, a word wikk, meaning magic and sorcery, and this finally produced the Old English wicca, a male witch, wicce, a female witch, and the verb wiccian, to bewitch or work witchcraft.
It force be seen from the expert that "Wicca" does not mean "witchcraft" and never did, in ill will of its in style modern use. So how did this avail yourself of originate? In his biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, it describes his initiation in "Old Dorothy's" hold, and says, 'It was half way as a result of when the word Wica was in the beginning mentioned: "and I after that knew that that which I had plan dried out out hundreds of animation ago stopped survived."' It force be seen that at this time Gerald didn't even know how to spell the word. Its faithful spelling is as expert. Nor, calamitously, does this reason direct in what context the word was used. It might clutch been that Old Dorothy's coven was frankly proclaiming Gerald a male witch, in which explosive this would clutch been an suitable use of the word.
So where did Gerald get the strategy that "Wicca" hypothetical witchcraft? I would would like to advance a belief of my own. I requirement strengthen that this is totally a belief, and I may be muddled. But I carry that this strategy originated from his reading of a book which I know that he possessed, namely An Listing of Occultism by Lewis Spence. This very valuable work of bring up in the beginning appeared in 1920, according to the quotation of it in the bibliography at the end of Gerald's book, Witchcraft These days. It has truthful been re-issued by Bracken Books under the attitude of The Listing of the Occult. The keep details referring to witchcraft begins: "Witchcraft: (from Saxon Wicca, a jolt of witega, a psychic or sorcerer)." This possibly will clutch been read and misunderstood to mean that "Wicca"
hypothetical witchcraft, and this misreading has been carried on as a result of the defenses of modern witches ever such as.
It has to be rumored, of course, that the word Wicca has its uses to define the offering revival, curiously in the USA, where a concern of family
using this word clutch gained legal glory as religious bodies. Separately, calm down, I delight the character The Old Theology, which is the English make equal of the Italian character used by the cronies of Aradia, namely La Vecchia Religione.
(See Charles Godfrey Leland's book, Aradia: or the Gospel of the Witches, in the beginning published in 1899.)
(In relation to, offering is a header in witchcraft circles to the effect that the disagreement why the primordial originate of this book is so sole is that old Gerald bought up all the copies he possibly will find and shattered them. Whether offering is any truth in this or not, I cannot say.)
In ill will of Governess Russell's affection, as quoted expert, offering is an dull cause of the word witch that may maybe be noble of comprehension. This may be found in A Remit Etymological Dictionary of the English Dialect by the Rev. Walter W Skeat (Clarendon Impetus, Oxford, 1901). This book discusses the above-mentioned derivations from wicca, wicce, etc., and after that in turn connects these old words with the Norwegian vikja, which fashion primarily 'to turn state and secondly 'to extravagant notwithstanding. So, speculates the Rev. Skeat, the word witch feasibly hypothetical 'averter'.
He also mentions that the Anglo-Saxon word witega, a psychic or seer, comes from the Anglo-Saxon witan, to save, which he says is 'cognate with witan, to know.'. We clutch seen that Lewis Spence regarded witega as the origin of wicca. So who is right? In ill will of all claims, it seems to me that it wreck a affect of affection. One thing we do know is that the word came to Britain with the Saxons, who at the time of their put back on these coast were pagans. I carry that to them, the word witch (or every of its forerunners they used), did not essentially clutch any damning meaning. A witch was a seer, a knower, an averter of evil. The word merely took on a gloomy meaning with the coming of Christianity, which qualified that all the gods of the heathen were devils. So role who clung o the old ways and the Old Theology was a devil worshipper. And annually, about Halloween, we stopped see the exceptionally old charges for example made in the exceptionally old spirit of excess. Isn't it sad that these good folk haven't learnt whatsoever such as the Ominous Ages?
