prepared and released by Ka'l El of the
Grove of the Unicorn 07/07/88
formatted for Web use by Amy Brown 5/13/96
Technically, Witches are initiated members of a Celtic-style nature religion. In this sense (which is, strictly speaking, the proper one) a Witch is a person who has demonstrated a firm understanding of the principles of the Craft, has been trained in the meaning and purpose of ritual and the performance of ritual and in all ways seeks to live a life that is in harmony with Nature and the cycles of the universe.
The term 'warlock' specifically means 'oath-breaker': it is used to describe one whose word cannot be safely trusted. To call someone a warlock is a serious matter in Pagan circles as we hold integrity and trustworthiness in very high regard. Warlocks are generally outcasts and may be either male or female. Just so, the term 'witch' is correctly applied to both male and female.
"Heathen", that all purpose accusation, is just the old English translation of 'pagan'; both terms simply mean that the fashionable people of the Dark Ages didn't think much of the arrogant rubes who wanted to hang on to their own ways rather than disbelieve the evidence of their lives and experiences. As far as 'godlessness' is concerned, only repetition has given these words that connotation.
- Creation as an on-going process (as distinct from an event);
- Time as an ever-repeating cycle or spiral (no start or finish);
- Love as the essential nature of the Universal organism;
- Experience as the means by which the Universe becomes conscious;
- Incarnation as the means by which experience is forged into wisdom;
- God as a description (as distinct from a name or title) Although there are differences between them, Wicca, Shintoism, Hinduism, Polynesian, Kahuna, Taoism and American Indians are among those groups who substantially share this world-view. Many of those concepts are espoused as well by some 'New Age' groups. In essence, Pagans hold that spirituality and divinity are inherent in the Universe, that we live to experience and through that experience we gain wisdom and increased awareness.
Some Witches believe in a historical Jesus while others believe in the symbolic or mythic Jesus: others believe in neither, and for many, the question of Jesus is irrelevant. I have heard many of my brothers and sisters voice the opinion that Jesus was a genuine Divine being who taught a path of love and service, and who in his role as the Sacred King gave his life that the lives of the people would be renewed. For these things we honor him yet we do not believe in messiahs and I know of no Witch who worships him as the 'only son of god'.
This dual question has no real meaning for us: we see life as a school, not a lottery. In this school, we learn from the mistakes we make as we thread our way through the world, and the lessons we learn are of love, tolerance, humility, understanding and joy. We believe that we learn these lessons, in common with all life everywhere, through interaction with the 'way things are', and we believe that though these lessons are often accompanied by feelings of sorrow or loss, they are worth the learning. On the subject of salvation, we believe that Hell (so-called) is the result of becoming attached to things and people (being 'of the world' as Christians might say) taking the lessons of life personally and perceiving them as troubles and blaming ourselves and others for the problems in our lives. On the same note, the closest we get to an idea of Heaven is through accepting the pains and frustrations of day-to-day life as lessons and learning how we have caused ourselves and others pain through our errors, thereby freeing us to go on with our lives stronger, wiser and more balanced.
We tell stories of a place we call Summerland, which we think of as a place of welcome rest after the rigors of life on Earth. We expect to be rejoined with friends and loved ones who went before us. To digest and understand the lessons we have learned during our time 'incarnate'. From there we will return to life on Earth after a time, to learn and teach until we achieve perfect knowledge and understanding of this cycle of existence. Honestly, we don't much occupy ourselves with thoughts about afterlife as we believe there is nothing to fear.
No, we don't: the ways it teaches are not our ways, although we respect them as we respect all the many ways that people use to 'touch the heart of God'.
The world is our 'bible' (Latin for 'book'), and all that is on it, in it and around it. For us, the Earth is our mother, our teacher and our provider. From her we learn to survive, to sing, to create, to rest and to believe. The Sun for us is a symbol of the father, from whom we learn to dare, to question, to heal, to dance and to dream. The seasons teach about birth, death and rebirth, and about the need to live in harmony and balance with the rest of creation. For us, the Divine is all about us, befriending us, teaching and guiding us.
Both. Yet the truth is not reached by so simple an answer. We are pantheist in the sense that, for us, the gods are everywhere. This is essentially what Judeo-Christianity refers to in speaking of god as omnipresent. The gods are also within us (the Kingdom of God within, as Christians would say), because we contain the Divine Spark ("Holy Spirit") in common with all that exists. Because we perceive this ever-present spiritual manifestation around us, we are also polytheistic, meaning that the attributes or characteristics of perfection and divinity take on many forms, therefore, they can be understood in many different senses and deepen our comprehension of the Truth that is behind and beyond all Ways and all religions. To put it another way, we are Polytheist because (for us) the Absolute (which roughly equates to the Christian concept of 'God') manifests as male and female and so we worship both God and Goddess. We are Pantheist because this primary dual manifestation is reflected throughout creation and so, everything that is tells us about some aspect of the Absolute (and is therefore holy).
Please bear with me on this, as the question requires some groundwork.
God - male, light, heat, sky, sun;
Goddess - female, dark, cold, earth, moon;
and from these categories it is derived that the overall character of god
is active and that of goddess is passive. At the risk of oversimplifying,
I will leave this part of the discussion with a word that these qualities
of god and goddess are archetypal, rather than literal absolutes. We refer
to god and goddess, generally, as the Lord and the Lady. The Lord is the
Father of all, and his qualities of light, warmth and energy are most
often symbolized by the sun, and whose nature is most often represented by
the sky. The Lady is the Mother of all, whose patience and receptivity is
symbolized by the earth, and whose adaptability and steadfastness is
represented by the moon. Our bodies are the sign of her love and
creativity. We see this endless chain of dualities reflected in our
interactions with the world in which we live, and with our fellow
creatures, who are also the children of the Lord and Lady. We see this
chain in the eternal cycles which move the universe around its unknown
center. There is more to male and female than mother and father: the Lord
also represents our Brother, our Friend; and likewise is the Lady Sister
and Friend to us. Like each of us, they have many names, many faces, many
roles, yet they remain themselves. Our gods have grown, in a sense, as our
understanding of ourselves and the creation around us has grown, and yet
they are just as they have always been. "As it was in the beginning,
it is now, and ever shall be" is true to us, as well. As we learn
more about the divine creation around us, we learn to move in harmony with
it and the creatures that share it with us, just as sailors learn to work
in accord with the winds, the currents and the tides, in order to reach
their destination. As we learn about ourselves, we learn to rise above the
fear and frustration that can accompany life, and learn to accept
ourselves and others as we are, to experience joy and love in our lives.
As we learn about the gods, we draw closer to them and learn
understanding, tolerance, humor and thankfulness. And, for us, doing any
one of these is doing all of these.
In this light, it is hardly accidental that the whole-sale persecution of the Old Religion began during the time of the Black Death. This plague did much of the church's work for it by killing off one fourth to one third of the population. The black death eliminated an enormous number of adherents to the Old Religion. That done, and the Wiccan civilization still disorganized from the imperial Roman extermination of the Druids years before (the Druids were masters of history, ritual, poetry and law), it became a simple matter to convince the survivors that the natural world was their enemy, and women, the wanton agents of the 'Enemy'. The stage had been set for the Inquisitions, whose victims were overwhelmingly women and persons of wealth and influence in the lives of the decimated pagan community. Since those times, the Roman church and its' successors (such as the 'PTL' and '700' clubs) have used this manufactured association with an artificial Arch-BadGuy as a means of justifying the CONTINUED persecution and murder of those who still follow the Wiccan Way.
The Satanic Bible was written by a man who worships 'Satan', who is supposed to be the 'father of lies'. This suggests to me that his commitment to the truth may not be trustworthy. Essentially, by declaring his belief in the church's own image of their created Enemy, he has declared his acceptance of the medieval Christian character of the game they play; he has chosen the 'Party Line', and his place on the side of the imagined Adversary. We do not define the world in Christian terms, for we have essentially nothing to do with Christian beliefs and practices. (This is not to say that there is no common ground between Christianity and the Craft, for there is much we share.) Not so the Satanists, whose every practice is either a perversion or a violation of some Christian form (e.g., the 'Black Mass', which Witches would still consider a foolish and irreverent waste of time and energy, even if it were otherwise harmless), or the more-or-less self -conscious pursuit of evil, which cannot be seriously defended. Though we are not believers in 'Satan', we do have a concept of evil, which I will attempt to delineate: most of the problems we experience in life can be thought of as arising from the four qualities of attachment, greed, fear, and ignorance. These "qualities" cause us all great pain in life as they warp our understanding of events and cause us to respond in ways that hurt and confuse. This is 'sin' in its' original meaning of error and mistake, and often it is quite innocent of any desire or intent to hurt, mislead or abuse. Evil is the result of adding a fifth quality to the others, that of self-centeredness. When self-centeredness enters the picture, then the seeds of evil truly exist. Self-centeredness allows the self-centered one to discount, or even ignore, the feelings, the rights and even the humanity of anyone outside that narrow focus. It is just such objectification that allows truly horrendous crimes to be committed, that creates characters such as Jim Jones, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin, Torquemada, Cromwell and Hitler. The same self-centeredness, moved from individual self to the group self, allows for slavery, torture, terrorism, profiteering, persecution and genocide. I ask you to remember that this is my formulation of the Pagan concept of evil, and may not be agreed to by others. Regarding the idea that Witches are ignorant of the focus of the spirituality, I can only say that this is both false and flatly insulting, much as it would be to state that Christians do not worship Jesus, but a shoe salesman from New Jersey who they think is Jesus.
These things have nothing to do with us, and we have nothing to do with such practices. We find the reports of such things disgusting and horrifying, for we have and maintain a deep respect and reverence for all life: the suggestion that we are involved in such things causes us great pain, for to be so involved would run counter to everything we hold sacred. It would be, quite literally, "against our religion". Episodes of such anti-human, anti-life behavior are attributable to derangement and insanity, or to Satanists, who make no pretense of their worship of Christianity's manufactured 'prince of darkness'. So much the worse for us, because of the original program of opposition against Wiccan (and by that extension, all) Paganism, all Satanists are assumed to be Witches by definition. It is interesting to note that in the days when Christianity was new, the Romans accused them of many of the same vileness: blasphemy, killing and eating of children, trafficking with demonic spirits, ritual sacrifice. It is also interesting that in the hey-day of the Roman church, Jews were subjected to these appalling charges, which fueled anti-Semitism right up to the Nazi exterminations. Indeed, such accusations seem almost to be a 'traditional' means of discrediting and destroying political/economic enemies (witness the naming of the USSR as "an evil empire"). Perhaps the day will come when peoples of different ways can live together without accusing each other of abominations.
Our religion is the wellspring of our joy; it is the sharing of the knowledge that we are endlessly in the radiant presence of all that is holy, all that is sweet and uplifting. It warms us and fills us and makes us whole, strengthens our minds and clears our spirits. It is the knowledge of the love of our Mother, the Earth, who provides for us even in our thoughtless and destructive ecological folly, and who is more beautiful and more patient than praise can express. It is the knowledge of the guidance of our Father, the Hunter, who quickens us, who teaches us love and laughter, wisdom and prudence. It is the awareness that we share this world, this life with countless others; that each of us both deserves the respect of and owes respect to the other children of the Lord and Lady.
Type Two, which has been called 'revealed', believes in a literal beginning and ending of Creation - a linear concept of time, with life considered as a one shot ordeal. Type two religions encourage detachment from the world of Nature and a reliance on authority (beyond the initial choice of whether or not to follow orders); they will have a dualistic and antagonistic image of Godhead, representing polar aspects of Creation as good and evil. Monotheistic religions such as Christianity are Type Two religions. Type One and Type Two are so called because they are the first and second types, respectively and sequentially, to show themselves in human affairs. The typical American is raised Christian, has virtually no contact with members of Type One religions and little meaningful interaction with members of the other monotheisms (Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism). As a result, most opinions are formed based on the images that are provided by the culture, and today this means the images provided by movies and television. From the beginning, these images have been selected to amuse and shock rather than to enlighten or inform. Truly, after nearly 2,000 years of exceptionally bad press, Pagans of any sort from the 'superstitious' Hindu to the 'savage' native American to the 'wicked' Witch, are notoriously easy targets for caricature. One can only say, "Please don't believe everything you see and hear !".
So, why at night ? There are several reasons: after dark, people go indoors & get quiet - this enhances the peacefulness (as almost everyone knows) and the serenity of our outdoor communion, which is important to us, also, the moon for us is a symbol of the Goddess, and our rituals are synchronized with the lunar phases - this makes nighttime appropriate to us, for night is when the moon is most prominent. there is one more reason we hold Circle (our worship) in the woods at night - in practice, the more isolated we are, the safer we are. In our Circle in Lithonia, we were too close to go unheard, and too far to be understood. The sad result of that incident was that we were driven away by wild rumors and fears of the unknown.
We are afraid of ignorance and of the violence that too often accompanies it. To draw an example from history, the church-inspired inquisitions caused the murder of 9,000,000 (approx.) people. these people met their ends through torture, starvation, burning, drowning and hanging, their property was seized by the church, and their families were scattered. Many of them were forced to watch laved ones suffer agonies while they awaited their turns. The only accused who survived were those who 'confessed' to the most loathsome crimes and outrageous - even nonsensical - acts, and recanted their 'heresies'. All who protested their innocence died. Today, in the 20th century, members of the Craft have been fired from their jobs, have been beaten, harassed, and sometimes murdered. Some have lost their children in ugly legal battles, homes have been looted and burned and perfectly wholesome people have been declared anti-social and a menace in the community. Yes, all these things do go on now, today, often perpetrated by "well-intentioned" Christians in a state of great fear and utter ignorance. This is the reason for this pamphlet, to bear a lamp in the darkness, so that this holocaust may finally come to and end, and the innocent people may go about their lives unafraid. As an example of why we're afraid, the next question is pretty good.
The "King James Version", on which virtually all English-language translations are based, was begun and completed during the Burning Times (our term for the anti-Pagan holocaust in Europe). Several terms were rendered as 'witch' in the final version. These terms were roughly, 'evil-doer', 'poisoner', 'one who works harm in secret'. We shall probably never know whether this substitution was a matter of political calculation or honest error. I think it likely that there was a healthy portion of each at work. Further, the context of this passage is significant. At the time, the Israelites were preparing to invade and conquer the land of Canaan. In this light, it is highly possible that the original warning was against Canaanite saboteurs and/or infiltrators, partisans working against the Israeli occupation. It would take a deliberate decision to apply such a stricture against a different people of another time in another land. It may be interesting to note, in this context, that the warning (often quoted) against soothsayers, magicians, etc. was specifically aimed at foreign practitioners, Jewish soothsayers , etc. were not mentioned.
There are many precepts that help us learn to live in harmony. One of the most important of these is personal responsibility. We hold that each of us is responsible for choosing any and all words, deeds, opinions, thoughts, feelings and responses. Another is called the Law of Three-fold Return. This teaches us that we directly experience the results of our choices, deeds and behavior. It works much like the 'golden rule'. From these two arises one that almost might be called 'the Witch's Motto'. -An it Harm none, do what ye will- This one carries much of the weight that the Ten Commandments carries for Christians. It means that we are free to act as we see fit providing that no other person suffers injury, pain, anguish, loss or corruption as a result of our actions. Also, there are the 13 Wiccan Virtues, which also guide us in our growth and spiritual development. These Virtues are Tolerance, Charity, Humility, Devotion, Patience, Kindliness, Forbearance, Sincerity, Courage, Precision, Efficiency, Discrimination and Wisdom. These are taken to a rather highly-developed point in application, but not changed from the qualities one would assume. I would like to point out that 'discrimination' refers to the skill of recognizing the fine points that make one person/place/situation/moment different and unique from any other. It has nothing to do with segregation or with injustice.
Simply, it represents the 13 lunar months in a year; we celebrate the passage of these months or 'moons' in our rituals.
We then share bread and wine as a sign that, as children of the Gods, we share in the bounty of nature and receive our nourishment from them. Thanksgiving is then offered to the Lord and Lady, and to the Creation in which we take part, and we receive their benediction. A ritual is frequently followed by food and fellowship. Most of our rituals are for worship, for spiritual focus and development and to harmonize with the Divine Purpose (the "Path"). We also perform rites of passage and sanctification: namings (christening/baptism), handfastings (marriage), and memorials (funeral rites) among others.
Magick is a way of approaching situations that allows one to bring all one's abilities and internal resources into play. It is similar to Positive Thinking, combined with self-awareness and clear understanding of exactly what one hopes to achieve. All this is done from within a focused, prayerful attitude to ensure that the effort is in harmony with the Divine Purpose. Magick, done properly, does work, and harmlessness is a major part of doing it properly. It can be powerful, which is why no true witch will attempt to teach magick to a person who is unstable or immature (remember, we consider ourselves responsible for our acts and choices !), nor will any true witch use magick to impress others, nor to enrich herself or himself at another's expense.
Witches are human, like anyone else, therefore, they are not perfect. A true witch, however, will be actively involved in becoming the best, most complete and well-balanced person that she or he can become. As a result, you should be able to see all 13 of the Wiccan Virtues active in the person, though you may not see them all at once, and perhaps not in their perfect expression. A true witch tends to be active, good-humored, perceptive of her own faults and tolerant of faults in others. There may in fact b no clear way of recognizing a witch as a witch, but if you know a witch or someone who claims to be a witch, my advice would be "By their fruits shall ye know them, for an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a good tree bear evil fruit."
The Masks of God, in 4 volumes
by Joseph Campbell
When Mr. Campbell died earlier this year, he left behind a treasurehouse
of researches and reflections on the nature and essence of religion on
planet Earth. This massive work is well worth the time to read it, as
there is brilliance on nearly every page. While he does not deal with the
Craft as such, he provides superb insight into the world-view we share
with other pagan and monotheistic religions.
I have tried in this article to give respect to religious faiths other than my own. Some of the historical facts regarding the relationship between the Craft and Christianity are not pleasant to relate and they may not be flattering to hear, yet these things are matters of record and they are crucial to an understanding of a Wiccan position, so I have included them. I have also, at times, used a 'voice' that is basic and direct, at the expense of formal correctness, in an effort to give as clear and unambiguous a picture of the Wiccan 'side' as possible. I have done so without malice and I intend only real communication. If you find some of this offensive, therefore, I ask you to consider the 'gentleness' with which we have been treated over the centuries and find it in your heart to forgive me.
If you feel moved to respond to this
effort in some way, please contact me in writing at:
PO Box 13384, Atlanta, GA 30324.