What follows is an assorted selection of quotes from the book "Fifty Years of Wicca", Frederic Lamond, 2004, Green Magic, ISBN 0954723015.
A - Origins of Ritual
B - Ritual History/Tradition vs. Pragmatism
C - Location
D - Magical Tools
E - Seasonal vs. Calendar
F - Initiation
G - Nudity
H - Priestess Duties
I - Barriers to Ego Transcendence
J - Gender Imbalance
K - Morals
L - Parenting
M - Comments on Gardner
A - Origins of Ritual
A1 - p.89 - Ritual Origins
"Not being ritually creative himself, Gerald turned for rituals to the tradition into which he had been initiated 30 years before he discovered the New Forest coven: Freemasonry. Although I have never been a Freemason myself, the 1st degree intiation sounds masonic, including the bit where the initiate is pulled along with a towrope, and use of the term "the Craft" to describe our tradition.
Gerald supplemented masonic rituals with others taken from the Greater Key of Solomon (GKS). Gerald took those rituals because they sounded good when declaimed, and they certainly have several centuries of morphic resonance behind them. But he never paused to think whether they were compatible with the polarity-oriented pantheistic Goddess and God theology that he was teaching, and simply took them as they stood."
The remainder of this section is a repeat of the section on p.9
A2 - p.9 - Origin of Wiccan Ritual
"Forbidden by his fellow coven members from using their rituals with his new initiates, he borrowed his initiation and circle opening rituals from Freemasonry (to which he had belonged since 1909 at the age of 25) and the Greater Key of Solomon, because they sounded good and had lots of morphic resonance in Rupert Sheldrake's term."
(Continuation of previous entry)
"But he didn't bother to check whether the meaning of the words was in harmony with the spirit of Goddess worship. I was shocked during my initiation when the ritual sword was presented with the words: "With this in your hands you can command angels and demons." Angels and demons, I thought, what are they doing in what is supposed to be a non-dualistic pantheist religion? Gerald must be theologically illiterate!"
A3 - p.13 - Tradition ?
"But contrary to E. W. Liddel's Pickingill Papers edited by Michael Howard there is no evidence that Gerald Gardner ever met a genuine country wise woman or cunning man, nor did he claim to have done to his biographer Idres Shah. He did not know nor teach us any herbal lore, nor how to communicate with animals and influence the weather, which were and are the stock in trade of genuine country witches."
A4 - p.15 - Tradition ?
"It bothered Gerald that we knew that he had put the Book of Shadows (BoS) rituals together with Doreen Valiente's help, because he dearly wanted us to believe they had an older provenance."
Referring to the acceptance of his version -
"It is doubtful that he gave similar caveats to the three subsequent initiatory lines that he created. Hence the widespread belief among Wiccans descended from Eleanor Bone, Patricia Crowther and Monique Wilson that the BoS rituals do indeed have an ancient provenance."
A5 - p.88 - The Quarters
"Another ritual that was designed to bring us closer to the Earth around us is the calling of the Quarters at the beginning of each Wiccan and Pagan circle, and bidding them farewell at the end. In Gerald Gardner's original coven, we just involed East, South, West and North after checking with a compass in which direction they truly were, but it was not long before covens associated each of the four elements with one of the quarters.
Once again, most Wiccan Covens and Pagan gatherings have frustrated the purpose of this ritual by letting books rather than the geography of the place determine which element is associated with which quarter. So from Norway and Scotland to France, and from Germany to Southern California we invoke Air in the East, Fire in the South, Water in the West, and Earth in the North. Only the Australians have reluctantly agreed that to invoke Fire in the South is absurd in the Southern Hemisphere when the midday sun is quite clearly in the North, and they have therefore reversed the attributions of Fire and Earth. But it just as absurd to invoke Water in the West when you live on the eastern seaboard of the United States, or for that matter on the English east coast."
Doesn't cover doesil and widdershins in relation to direction of the sun.
B - Ritual History/Tradition vs. Pragmatism
B1 - p.12 - Tradition ?
"Gerald Gardner was also a man of his times, and all esoteric movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were still influenced by the Christian belief that all truth is inherited from the past. The Freemasons, into whom Gerald had been initiated in 1909, claimed to trace their arcane knowledge to Hiram, the architect of Solomon's Temple, whereas speculative Freemasonry first arose in 16th century Scotland. Rene Guenon, the French esotericist, saw himself as a "priest in the Order of Melchisedek." And the founders of the Order of the Golden Dawn claimed they had been given a charter to do so from a German Rosicrucian initiate - Fraulein Sprengler. No wonder Gerald or the New Forest coven felt they had to portray the witchcraft revival movement as in a long line of initiations."
B2 - p.12 - Tradition ?
(Continuation of previous entry)
"I had a tough three days before an inner voice told me: "It doesn't matter! The Craft works for you. The initiation rituals brought you into permanent spiritual contact with the eternal Goddess whom you first encountered in your first lover's arms, and the spells always seem to achieve the desired results. Does it then matter whether the rituals that brought you there are three or three thousand years old?"
B3 - p.12 - Tradition ?
"Recently it has occurred to me that these factual lies might nonetheless have contained mythical truths. There almost certainly was no unbroken line of initiations from mediaeval - let alone Stone Age - country witches to our coven, but there was a link between them and us at the level of the collective human unconscious. And women like Dayonis, who looked the part of the magnetic young witch so well, might have owed their charisma to earlier incarnations as a priestess or shamaness."
C - Location
C1 - p.30 - Location
"Gerald Gardner had bought the few acres of Hertfordshire woodland in 1945, on which the Fiveacres nudist club was developed, to be the cover for the witchcraft coven he would form with the initiates who wrote to him."
1945 ? Looks like Gerald was planning well ahead !
C2 - p.10 - Location - Fiveacres
"By the time I was initiated in February 1957 the coven was meeting in a re-erected "witches' cottage" on the grounds of the Fiveacres nudist club which belonged to Gerald. Since meetings could last until fairly late members without cars or with long distances to cover slept in a hut neighbouring the witches' cottage."
C3 - p.38 - Location
"We had, however, to pay rent on the plot on which the cottage and a neighbouring hut stood, for which the non-nudist coven members were reluctant to pay their share. In 1972 we started meeting at our new High Priestess' and High Priest's house in North London in the winter months, using the cottage only in spring, summer and early autumn.
Finally in 1975 we received a demand to help pay for the club's electrification, at which we decided to stop using the cottage altogether and sell its plot to another club member. This transaction closed in March 1976."
C4 - Bricket Wood coven
Connection of the area of land used by Dion Fortunes Society of the Inner Light?
Dion Fortune & the Inner Light, Gareth Knight, 2000, Thoth Publications, ISBN 1870450450
p.307
"Another property disposed of was situated at St. Albans, at Brickett's Wood, that had been part of a naturist colony and which was now used only as an occasional country retreat for residents of the London Headquarters. This had been acquired in 1948, probably in connection with the renewal of work with the Master of Medicine by Dr Edward Gellately, who had joined the Society while still a medical student, and for some time worked closely with Margaret Lumley Brown."
The date of the disposal is probably 1959.
D - Magical Tools
D1 - p.125 - Ritual Tools
"Country witches use ordinary household implements as their magical tools, and would use their kitchen knife as their athame. To reserve magical tools solely for circle work - and having a white-handled knife separate from the athame to fashion one's tools - is a hangover from ceremonial magic and the dualist separation of the sacred from the profane.
Wicca is supposed to be a monist pantheist mystery cult, in which initiates learn to see the whole of life as divine, and all everyday activities as equally sacred. Consequently the athame could very well be used also for fashioning one's magical tools and even for preparing a meal.
There is, however, a very good reason for magical tools to remain private to their owner and not to be used by anyone else, so they can become imbued only with their owner's vibrations."
D2 - p.47 - Magical Tools
"Later I read that elemental spirits do indeed fear all tools made of iron or steel, and no wonder! Aren't such tools used mainly to cut and hurt the trees and other plants that they inhabit? I now recalled the words in my initiation when the wand was presented: "This is the weapon used to summon those spirits for which it would not be meet to use the athame!" Those spirits are all the elemental spirits of the great outdoors. All knives and swords should thus be left at home when casting circles out of doors."
D3 - p.48 - Magical Tools
"The true witch's tool (not weapon) is thus the wand, assuming he or she needs any tools apart from the upraised two fingers."
E - Seasonal vs. Calendar
E1 - p.15 - Seasonal Rituals
""In Pre-Burning times the four great sabbaths" - Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas and Halloween is what we called them before the Celtic authenticity craze of the 1970s - "were great big parties in which the whole village celebrated the end of one of the periods of hard work in the agricultural cycle. Only the full moon esbats were private for initiated witches because that is when spells would be cast. It is only the persecutions that have turned us into a priesthood without a congregation."" (presumably quoting Gerald)
E2 - p.16 - Seasonal Rituals
"During the same session I asked Gerald why we celebrated the cross-quarter days instead of the solstices and equinoxes. "You can celebrate those if you want to," said Gerald, "but it would be at odds with the climate in which we live. You see: the most important festival in the witch year is the springtime fertility festival, when young couples would make love in the fields to stimulate crop growth. This could only happen when the nights had become warm enough to sleep out of doors.""
"With these words Gerald confirmed that the seasonal festivals are intended to make us more aware of the cycle of seasons in nature, and that their dates should therefore be determined by the climate in which we live - a lesson that witches in North America, South Africa and Australia should take to heart!"
It is notable that all the places mentioned are English speaking. What about Pagans on the space station ?
"We liked our feasts, so after Gerald's return to the Isle of Man in the spring 1958 we decided to celebrate both the cross quarter days and the solstices and equinoxes with feasts. Gerald did not object when he heard of it, since this brought us closer to his Druid friend Ross Nichols, who was about to secede from the Ancient Druid Order to found the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD).
The eight festivals were subsequently rationalised (I don't know by whom) as celebrating the eight spokes of the Celtic wheel of the year. Even Doreen Valiente, who should have known better, supported this interpretation in one of her books.
But the results were not entirely positive. As coven members didn't feel like meeting more than once a month on average, we ended up with eight seasonal festivals and five full moon meetings for casting spells, instead of 4 and 12 as previously. The first step had been taken in turning a spellcasting craft into a liturgical system."
Sounds like a Monty Python sketch. Connection to Druidry. The suggestion is that the purpose of the rituals is to cast spells.
E3 - p.87 - Seasonal Rituals
"The four grand Sabbats of Wicca - Imbolc, Beltane, Lammas or Lughnasad, and Samhain or Halloween - are meant to reconnect us spiritually with our Pagan farming ancestors, and at the same time make us identify more with the annual cycle of the seasons. But most Wiccans, as well as the wider Pagan community since these are open non-oathbound rituals, frustrate this purpose by timing them always on the Saturday night closest to 31 January, 30 April, 31 July and 31 October irrespective of the climate in which we live and of the weather, because those are the dates given in the Book of Shadows and repeated in books by the Farrars and others. To follow books rather than the Nature around us is a hangover from sciptural religion, that should have no place in a Nature-oriented religion."
"If the rigidty with which we time the four great Sabbats takes no accont of vagaries of the weather from one year to another, still their dates do correspond roughly to the cycle of the seasons in southern England. But they become downright absurd when transposed to the totally different climates of the southern part of the USA or of Australia."
Why the emphasis on farming? What about fishing? What about hunter-gatherers? They knew about the seasons.
E4 - p.106 - Seasonal Rituals
"If we want to reconnect with Nature we should, like our Pagan ancestors, be flexible from year to year in the timing of our seasonal festivals and let the state of Nature guide us, not any book. This may be difficult in the winter when halls have to be hired months in advance for large open Pagan festivals, but this doesn't apply in the spring, summer and autumn when we can meet out of doors."
Do many people meet, and work, out of doors?
F - Initiation
F1 - p.17 - Requirements for Initiation
"Gerald believed firmly in reincarnation, and that initiates of the mysteries can choose the time and place of their next incarnation. He knew that he did not have long to live and wanted to be reincarnated into a witches' coven, but for that to be possible there had to be witches' covens around after his death. So as time went on, he watered down more and more of the very sensible requirements for initiation in order to maximise the number of witches that were initiated."
F2 - p.116 - Initiation
"In-itiation includes the syllable "in". It is a ceremony in which a closed and secretive group admits an outsider and makes him into a group insider. It is thus only meaningful when used by groups. The term "self-initiation" popularised by Scott Cunningham in his book Wicca: a Guide Book for the Solitary Practitioner is a misuse of the language. A solitary worshipper of the Goddess and/or Horned God can dedicate him or herself to his or her deities, who may respond and help him or her to grow spiritually and protect him or her in their lives, but he or she cannot self-initiate: into what?"
F3 - p.123 - Minimum Age for Initiation
"Wiccan initiation and the two subsequent elevations to the 2nd and 3rd degrees should follow this paradigm (the mediaeval craft guilds) fairly closely. The main differences are that men and women are initiated equally, and are always a great deal older at their 1st degree initiation: the minimum age is 18."
G - Nudity
G1 - p.13 - Ritual Nudity
"Neither Renaissance magicians nor country witches practised ritual nudity, at least not in groups. According to Charles Leland that was a Tuscan strega tradition from a country where the climate is rather more conducive to it. But apart from Aradia, Gospel of the Witches it was also in line with the whole English Progressive counter-culture movement of the first half of the 20th century, as Ronald Hutton has written in his Triumph of the Moon. At the time of my initiation I already belonged to the Progressive League, which promoted pacifism, European Federalism, World Government, socialism, progressive (i.e. non-authoritarian) education, nudism and free love, and which had been founded in the 1930s by the writer H. G. Wells among others."
G2 - p.96 - Ritual Nudity - Ego Transcendence
"There are in fact several ritual techniques in Wicca that should help us transcend the boundaries of our egos: the first is ritual nudity.
Whenever we wear clothes of any kind we create personas for ourselves behind which we hide our true selves...
... When magicians wear ritual robes they also create a persona for themselves - the magician - quite different from their everyday working or family persona, but a persona nonetheless.
It is only when we cast off all our clothes that we show ourselves truly as Mother Nature has made us. This implies trust in those with whom we are naked, who in turn thereby express their trust in us. Ritual nudity is thus an important contributor to the closeness of the human relations in most covens. It also happens to be the most comfortable way in which to run around to empower spells!
There is a further reason for this: to express in practical ways our conviction that the human body is sacred and a fit embodiment of the divine energy within us after centuries of sensual repression by the Christian churches and other patriarchal monotheistic religions."
There is no equality in nature. Without our clothes we are simply exposed to a different set of inequalities.
Use of ritual is supposed to create the appropriate mindset for the task. Is this different from a persona ?
Or is the purpose here to create a sense of equality by those present. On the other hand Wicca has a very heirarchical structure.
Is the human body "sacred" ?
H - Priestess Duties
H1 - p.97 - The Eightfold Path
"The Gardernian Book of Shadows lists eight other techniques for raising power to cast successful spells. All of them can, if persisted in long enough, also result in a mystical experience of ego-transcendence and cosmic consciousness.
1. Meditation or concentration.
2. Trance states (actually more an aim than a method),
3. Drugs, wine and incense,
4. Dancing,
5. Chants and spells (in the sense of rhyming ditties),
6. Blood and breath control,
7. Scourging,
8. The Great Rite.
These are not meant to be exclusive. Other techniques, not listed in the Book of Shadows, might include:
9. Drumming,
10. Eastern techniques like Reiki, etc.,
11. Dervish dancing in circles around one's own axis,
12. Amerindian sweatlodges or Nordic saunas.
As a lifelong asthmatic Gerald Gardner could not dance energetically and had to be very careful with alcoholic drinks and breathing in an incense-filled atmosphere. He disapproved of drugs. He had a tin ear so that chants, spells, drumming and any other form of music wouldn't do much for him. By a process of elimination, therefore, the only techniques that worked for him were a combination of mental concentration, blood and breath control through binding, and scourging, and these were the techniques he taught us and have been perpetuated in Wiccan rituals."
H2 - p.10 - Binding and Scourging
"A lifelong asthmatic, he found the binding and scourging method the only one in which he could reach an altered state of consciousness, and he was absolutely obsessed with it. He introduced it not only into the initiation and 2nd degree elevation ceremonies - where it may have antedated him - but into a "purification" ritual at the beginning of each meeting, and into the method of raising power when working magic. When he himself was being scourged he kept on saying "Harder! Harder!" which was greeted with expressions of considerable distaste on the faces of several older members. And he introduced references to it at the beginning of the Charge of the Goddess and the consecration of the water and the salt."
H3 - p.99 - Ritual Scourging - Ego Transcendence
"But the idea that anything is achieved with a symbolic scourging that is barely felt is self-deception on a grand scale and turns Wiccan rituals into a liturgy instead of a means to achieve ego-transcendence. It gives us, in the eyes of outsiders, the dubious reputation of being an S & M cult, but without any of the spiritual and sensual advantages that we might enjoy if we really were one."
H4 - p.18 - Ritual Nudity, Ordeal and Great Rite - Ego Transcendence
"Wicca is a craft in the mediaeval sense: a skill, that of casting mental spells to ask the Goddess and Horned God to help us and others. We can become much more proficient in this if we can transcend the mental and physical barriers with which we surround ourselves to protect our separate egos. In Wicca there are a number of radical rituals to challenge members' barriers and break them down.
One of these is ritual nudity and this is generally practised by all Gardnerian covens throughout the world. But most covens shrink from the other two and perform them only symbolically. Gerald initiated this trend with the Great Rite at 3rd degree elevation, and did not object when the ordeal at initiations and 2nd degree elevations was also practised symbolically.
Few if any High Priestesses thus achieved the degree of ego-transcendence that would have enabled them truly to channel the Goddess when the Moon is called down on them, but the lowering of the requirements undoubtedly helped the movement to grow faster."
H5 - p.95 - Ego Transcendence
"At least our 3rd degree high priestesses should be able to transcend their own egos and achieve cosmic consciousness when the moon is called down on them, from which vantage point they should then be able to channel the Goddess' specific advice to their coven and its individual members. The "Charge of the Goddess" is meant to be a standby text to be recited when for whatever reason the Goddess doesn't come through. Such ego-transcendence is supposed to be a condition for the 3rd degree, which in turn is a precondition for being allowed to hive off and start her own coven.
It is easy to see why. Anyone who has ever achieved cosmic consciousness (the Hindus call it "enlightenment"), be it through a spontaneous mystical experience or as a result of meditation or other spiritual exercises, thereafter finds personal preoccupation with one's own recognition by others, prestige, power and so on insignificant compared with the wonderful immensity of the universe she or he has just experienced.
A high priestess able to channel the Goddess will thus tend to be charimatic but tactful leader of her coven, able and willing to listen to everyone's point of view before articulating a true consensus of the coven as a whole. She will also be in a good position to instruct other coven members to achieve the same ego transcendence.
I have been a member of two covens in London and have guested with three other English covens, three Continental covens as well as at least three covens in the United States and one in Canada. Yet I have hardly ever witnessed the high priestess truly channel the Goddess when the Moon was called down on her, at least not to the extent of going into trance and channeling the Goddess' own specific advice to individual coven members. Each time the charge was recited from beginning to end, a truly moving piece of ritual poetry that never fails to bring tears to my eyes, but channeling the Goddess it isn't.
My own high priestess of 20 years and several others with whom I guested were nonetheless quietly strong but tactful leaders of their own covens, able to create a loving family atmosphere in the coven. But I suspect that much of the bitchcraft between some covens and their high priestesses on both sides of the Atlantic was the result of clashes between untranscended egos."
H6 - p.100 - The Great Rite - Ego Transcendence
"Ritual sexual intercourse in the circle - not necessarily in front of other coven members - is supposed to play a major role at the 3rd degree elevation, which permits a newly elevated high priestess to hive off and form her own coven. If she has transcended her ego and identifies wholly with the Goddess she should be able to celebrate the Sacred Marriage with any Wiccan priest who had likewise transcended his ego and identified wholly with the Horned God.
But there's the rub. I know no Wiccan priestess who has transcended her own ego to the extent that she is prepared to be intimate with a man with whom she hasn't already got a relationship. A Wiccan woman with no current partner may accept to be intimate with the initiating high priest, but not otherwise, and no high priestess whom I know would elevate a male coven member in this way unless she had an open relationship with her partner the high priest."
If, as mentioned on p.100, Gerald was "too old to get it up", this would mean that he could not have raised any priestess to the 3rd degree.
The implication of this is quite stunning - there are no 3rd degree priestesses, or priests, and therefore no properly formed covens.
"The essence of the 3rd degree is not the Great Rite but the ability to transcend one's ego consciousness and experience cosmic consciousness. This should lead a high priestess to the ability to channel the Goddess when the Moon is drawn down on her. The Great Rite is one of several methods whereby this can be achieved, if Tantric meditation methods are used to delay the two orgasms until both partners have floated into cosmic consciousness: which may take several hours.
If they achieve success in this it doesn't matter whether the two partners are regular partners, or the high priestess with the man being elevated, or the high priest with the woman being elevated, although the chances of success will be much greater if the two partners feel passionately for each other. If they fail, the 3rd degree elevation has not been achieved.
Conversely, a coven member of either sex who has achieved cosmic consciousness without practsing the Great Rite with anyone, but using one of the other methods listed above for transcending the ego, should be accepted as a valid 3rd degree. For a would-be high priestess the test is: Can she channel the Goddess when the Moon is drawn down upon her?"
Has anyone who claims to have transcended their ego, really transcended their ego?
I - Barriers to Ego Transcendence
I1 - p.127 - Addiction
"In my opinion controlling one's own power should also involve overcoming any physical or chemical addictions that one may have, be it alcoholism, chain smoking or any other form of drug dependency, as well as psychological compulsions like excessive eating, excessive surfing on the Internet or excessive reading, when these are used to shield oneself from coping with everyday reality and relationships.
The 1st degree initiate should not be left to overcome these addictions and compulsions on her or his own, but be helped in this by the whole coven, and especially its high priestess and high priest."
I2 - p.84 - Smoking, drinking and over eating
"So let me make it clear that I am not trying to set myself up as an authority on what and how much Wiccans may eat, drink and smoke. I am merely pointing out that we are all part of Nature and not standing outside it."
"And if we surrender our freedom of action to one or more addictions, how can we channel any of our goddesses and gods?"
J - Gender Imbalance
J1 - p.105 - Balance
"Why do I write about the Goddess and not the Goddess and Horned God religion? As Gerlad Gardner intended it and the Pagan Federation's third principle affirms, the religion is supposed to be properly balanced between the female and male aspects of divinity, but it hasn't turned out that way. All Wiccans and those non-initiated outer court worshippers like the members of the Fellowship of Isis (FoI) have a strong feeling for the Goddess and of Her presence in FoI or Wiccan circles, much less so for the Horned God. There is no ritual for Drawing Down the Sun on a coven's High Priest in the original Book of Shadows, although some covens may have added one, and a coven's leader must always be the High Priestess not the High Priest."
J2 - p.78 - Feminism
"How has this transformation come about? Mainly through the religious wing of the Feminist movement, which adopted the Goddess as a "figure of self-empowerment for women" in the 1970s. They influenced Christian women and made them aware of the sexist language in the Bible and Christain liturgy. Since women have always represented the majority of bums on seats in churches, these had to accommodate them.
But where did the Feminists get the idea of the Goddess from? They could so easily have taken the atheist route and simply dismissed Jehovah as a thought form created by Moses to make the Israelites more repressed and warlike and to keep women in a subservient role...
...It was from Wicca that the religious Feminists got the idea of the Goddess. Z. Budapest's Holy Book of Women's Mysteries plundered the Gardnerian Book of Shadows for its rituals, especially the Charge of the Goddess. And what impressed the Feminists was the charasmatic self-confidence that so many Wiccan high priestesses exuded...
And where did Wiccan high priestesses get that self-confidence from? From the image of the Goddess as a divine power equal to the male God, immanent within themselves. From their responsibility as ordained priestesses and coven leaders - and above all, I suspect, from the Drawing Down the Moon ritual, an example of the profound effect that a ritual can have in changing human consciousness."
J3 - p.109 - The Horned God - Balance
"Why doesn't the Horned God icon or energy speak to most of us as strongly as the Goddess? As the compliment of the Goddess as Life-Force he should be the Supreme Identity, the point in time in an ocean of eternity. He should also be a role model for men to bring back the wherewithal with which to feed the family.
There's the rub. While the role of women in the family has hardly changed down the millennia, men's as breadwinner has. The Horned God is a hunting god, a role model for Paleolithic hunters who went out in groups to stalk and hunt deer, bison and other horned animals, and bring their carcasses back to the family table for the wives to cook."
Everything else has been about agriculture but all of a sudden we're talking about hunter gatherers? Why?
Was it the move from hunter to farmer which disenfranchised man? Did this cause the rise of the monotheistic religions?
Has man's role "within the family", rather than as breadwinner, really changed? As father?
All we're talking about here is how we get food.
J4 - p.110 - The Horned God - Balance
"The same is even truer of the God of Death and Resurrection. As god of the underworld ruling the winter months he is in a polarity relationship with the Goddess seen as ruling the fertile spring, summer and autumn months. Together they rule the wheel of the year and preserve existing species in an eternal life cycle, but they do not account for Evolution nor for our modern scientific and technological civilisation.
Lacking a divine role model for industrial and commercial work, many Wiccans and other Goddess worshipping Pagans have dropped out of administrative, industrial and commercial jobs. Those with artistic creative talent can still earn their living making robes and jewellery; those with insight as psychotherapists; others drift. It is remarkable that despite this a majority of Wiccans still manage to make a valuable contribution to society, espescially in the computer industry."
The God only rules the winter? Why? If he is associated with the sun then I would expect it to be summer? Moon winter?
Is there a list of pagan jobs? Is it in order of preference/worth? "Valuable contribution to society"?
Why would they stick with technological jobs but not industrial.
J5 - p.111 - The Horned God - Balance
"The only universal energy worthy to look the Mother Goddess in the eye as an equal is the God of Destructive Creation, the dynamic power behind Evolution, who seeks forever to upset existing equilibria in order to force at least some of the existing speices to become more highly evolved in order to survive. In a universe in which the total amount of energy is constant and can be neither added to nor reduced - although it can be converted to matter and back again - neither god nor man can create anything without destroying something else. This is the power the Jews call JHVH, the Christians God the Father, Muslims Allah and Hindu Shiva, and who has also been called Reason, History (by the Marxists) and the market."
Lack of a balancing God figure makes the edifice lopsided. The feminine has been exalted and women recognised but this has pushed the balance to the oppostite extreme. A new conception of the male deity is required. Binary 1 and 0 are interesting symbolically as well as in computing. If the Goddess was all that existed the universe would stagnate, be sterile (this is the negative side of protective nurture). Without the God there would be no new life. The negative aspect of the Goddess requires to be acknowledged and the positive of the male.
K - Morals
K1 - p.79 - Morals
"Unlike the Goddess and divine immanence, the principle of responsible individual moral autonomy antedates Wicca. It goes back at least to the philosophers of the 18th century Enlightenment, and is a cornerstone of Humanism. But in the 1950s you had to be a Humanist to meet fellow believers in moral autonomy, and that meant being an atheist or at least an agnostic. If you wanted a spiritual life you had to sign up to one of the Christian churches or to the Buddhists, and that meant surrendering your moral autonomy and following the precepts of the great founder, be he Gautama the Buddha, Jesus or Paul.
Gerald Gardner's witches were the first to break out of this artificial dichotomy. We proved that it is possible to have a spiritual life, complete with belief in reincarnation, without believing three impossible things before breakfast and without surrendering any of our individual moral autonomy. And we have been followed in this not only by all other branches of Paganism, but by most of the New Age as well."
L - Parenting
L1 - p.58 - Parenting
"The coven to which she belonged was an Eclectic Celtic one, whose high priestess and high priest had written the teachings and rituals themselves, though no doubt inspired by various things they had read elsewhere. One of their teachings had probably been borrowed in part from Orthodox Judaism's rules about the Kabbalah: "To be a priestess of the Goddess a woman need only be over 18 years old and properly trained. But to be a priest of the Goddess a man must have raised a family."
I have never come across a similar teaching in any other branch of the Craft,..."
This comes from a coven in Philadelphia in 1972.
L2 - p.86 - Love and Relationships
"In the 1950s, when I was initiated, patriarchal sexual mores still prevailed officially in Britain. Couples living together without benefit of clergy were still described as "living in sin" and had to conceal this from their parents and relatives so as not to upset them. Censorship prevailed on all forms of erotic art and literature, which were described as obscene and "liable to deprave and corrupt" those who viewed or read them.
In this atmosphere Wiccan covens joined the Progressive disciples of Bertrand Russell and H. G. Wells in being radically counter-cultural. Not only did our couples live together for long periods of time before embarking on marriage, but our relationships were very open at least within our covens. Sexual intimacy was regarded as appropriate not only in expressing the mutual love of a committed couple but also close friendships. More than 10 years before the flower child period of the late 1960s we already lived their values.
How different the situation is today! Western society has become much more tolerant. It is taken for granted that couples will live together before getting married, and a diminishing minority of people take offence at gay or lesbian couples. But if society as a whole has moved in our direction, Wiccans and other Pagans have met it half-way.
Like our non-Pagan neighbours younger Wiccans and Pagans practise serial monogamy before marriage, with only one intimate relationship at a time. A new love must be preceded by breaking off the previous relationship even if this was going well, and despite the hurt this can cause the deserted partner. Only in California do some Pagans still experiment with polyamorous relationships and explore concepts like religious orgies and sacred prostitution."
Where do pagans stand on erotic art and literature, or porn? Censorship?
Is a mystery religion censorship?
The feminist movement is against what it sees as the expoitation of women.
Pagan attitudes to same sex couples. Duality of Gods leads to closed mind thinking about heterosexual relationships.
Pagan marriage? Why is it necessary? What is its purpose? Does it advocate monogamy? Is it only for child bearing and rearing?
Why do people want to own one another?
The equality of orgasm.
L3 - p.84 - Children
"If in looking after our own health we are no better but no worse than our non-Pagan neighbours, when it comes to raising families we seem to be worse. Not in the treatment of our children, whom all the Wiccan and Pagan parents I know treat with respect, affection and tenderness, but in our willingness to have them at all."
"What concerns me is that only a minority of mature Wiccans seem to be child lovers, which is one of the signs of feeling part of the life-stream."
(on the possibility that Pagans are avoiding over population by not having children)
"Do you really think that it is in Gaia's interest that the best educated and most tolerant sections of the population should remain childless, and leave all the breeding to fanatical monotheists fundamentalists and the illiterate poor?"
It would be interesting to apply this argument to religious officials (e.g. priests) who do not breed.
Elsewhere he states that his children went to boarding school - don't want them getting in the road off material ambition.
M - Comments on Gardner
M1 - p.8 - On Gerald Gardner
"The man who welcomed me to his Holland Park, London, flat in June 1956 was a very lovable unassuming old gentleman with a great sense of humour, an excellent raconteur with a fine feeling for the absurdities of human life."
M2 - p.9 - On Gerald Gardner
"Gerald cultivated a somewhat demonic appearance with a narrow barbiche and by combing his white hair upwards on both sides to make them look like horns. But for a man claiming to revive the awesome mysteries of witchcraft I found him surprisingly lacking in charisma. Doreen Valiente, with whom I corresponded in later years, disagreed with me on this: she found him charismatic when she first met him in 1953."
M3 -p.10 - Sex
(Continuation of previous entry)
"Gerald liked to cuddle up with whoever had been his high priestess: he was too old to engage in penetrative sex but would have enjoyed affectionate caresses."
M4 - p.11 - Sex and Deviousness
(Continuation of previous entry)
"Doreen Valiente found this embarrassing. Temperamentally monogamous she was also married to a very jealous Spanish husband who did not belong to the Craft. She obviously didn't inform him of what happened at coven meetings - her oath of secrecy would have forbidden this anyway - but she must have imagined that any knowledge of cuddles with Gerald would have endangered her marriage. So she frequently stayed away from coven meetings: she was not present at my initiation and it was the Maid Dayonis who initiated me.
Dayonis had no such inhibitions. She had a very open relationship with Jack Bracelin and was temperamentally warm and affectionate. Cuddling up with her must have been much more enjoyable for Gerald than with the reserved Doreen, and he became very fond of her. Early in 1957 he wrote a letter to Doreen in which he stated that "according to the Laws of the Craft" there comes a time when an older High Priestess must hand over to a younger more nubile one.
This was an abuse of a tradition that the Beltane fertility ritual - and only that one - must be performed by fertile partners, and it is most unlikely that Doreen had already had her menopause in early 1957. That letter probably accounts for Doreen's absence from my initiation."
The suggestion is made that it was the attempt to replace Doreen as High Priestess which led to the split in the coven. It may have been a practicality if Doreen was frequently absent. How do you run a coven if your high priestess is frequently absent ? It is worth remembering that Gerald was frequently absent too.
M5 - p.11 - Deviousness
"Gerald's invocation of the "Ancient Laws of the Craft" in his letter to Doreen suggesting she step down as High Priestess is only one example of a devious creative attitude to factual truth.
After the break Doreen's coven asked if they could continue to meet in the witches' cottage at the Fiveacres nudist club until they had found their own premises. Gerald could have replied: "The nudist club and the cottage are my property. If you are not prepared to circle with me anymore you can't circle on my property!" Instead he replied: "There is an ancient law dating back to the Burning Times" (a favourite expression of his) "that for security reasons no witch coven may meet less than 25 miles from another witch coven's meeting place.
The new High Priestess Dayonis had an elfine face that looked as if she had come straight out of an Arthur Rackham drawing. Gerald told reporters that she came from a hereditary witch family whereas her family were Armenian Jews living in Cardiff. Having learned from her a few more of Gerald's porkies I wondered a mere eight weeks after my initiation whether the old fraud had invented witchcraft altogether."
M6 - p.19 - Idres Shah
"In 1959 the charismatic Sufi grand master and writer Idres Shah appeared on the scene and took an interest in the Bricket Wood coven. He was wont to hold court for anyone interested in Sufism at a table in the Cosmo Restaurant in Swiss Cottage (North London) every Tuesday evening. Jack Bracelin attended these and was soon questioned by Idres about his background and interests. When he mentioned that he was the right-hand man to Gerald Gardner in the witchcraft revival, Idres asked to meet Gerald and then offered to interview him and write his biography. This duly came out in 1961 under the title Gerald Gardner, Witch but signed by Jack Bracelin because Idres did not want to confuse his Sufi students by being seen to take an interest in another esoteric tradition."
The book was also published by Idres company.
M7 - p.34 - Bindings as Black Magic
"It appears that Gerald's long time friend Arnold Crowther warned Gerald against this arrangement (Jacks attempt to transfer Five Acres), because at one coven meeting Jack, looking tense, told us that Arnold was bothering Gerald, and that Gerald had asked us to do a binding on Arnold. This was almost certainly a lie: Gerald had no reason to wish to bind his friend Arnold: the initiative must have come from Jack himself.
As I was such an effective power channel for the coven, Jack asked me to be the transmitter of the binding to Arnold. In later years I would never have agreed to such a request, but I was inexperienced and eager to make myself useful. So I knelt in front of the altar and focused on Arnold's picture while the rest of the coven started moving widdershins around the circle.
Suddenly without losing consciousness I lost control of my body, and was made to cackle with a fiendish laugh while belabouring the altar with my athame. Fortunately, we had an experienced Kabbalist named Omar in our coven. Realising what was happening he placed himself behind me, put his hands above my head and declaimed: "In nomine Patri, Filii et Spiritu Sanctu..." Whatever had possessed me fled the circle immediately and I regained control of my body. "That was a Catholic formula you used then", I said with surprise, "are you Catholic?" "No," replied Omar, "I have just found it a very effective banishing spell."
That ended the binding spell on Arnold Crowther, who probably didn't feel anything at all. I have never since then participated in any binding spell nor any other form of black magic on anybody, and would never do so in future."
M8 - p.35 - Charles Cardell
"In 1958 Charles Cardell, a rich psychotherapist with a flat in Chelsea, set out to discredit Gerald Gardner with a view to taking over the nascent Goddess worshipping current."
M9 - p.36 - Publicity
"This experience with the popular press made us very shy of any sort of publicity thereafter. In order to be left alone, Jack launched a rumour that the coven had broken up in the wake of the People expose. This explains why after Gerald's death it was Eleanor Bone and Patricia Crowther who carried the torch of publicity for Gardnerian witchcraft, and not the older Bricket Wood coven."
M10 - p.54 - French Wicca
The problems with French wicca and negativism.
M11 - p.61 - American Pagans
"The American Pagan scene is vibrant and dynamic. The name "Wicca" is used more broadly as a euphemism for all types of witchcraft, and thus covers also totally different spellcasting traditions such as Victor Anderson's Feri or Faery tradition (derived from Hawaiian Huna), Starhawk's related Reclaiming tradition, Robert Cochrane's 1734 tradition, the "New Reformed and Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn" (NROOGD), the Church of All Worlds (CAW) based on Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land, Santeria derived from the Yoruban orisha religion, Circle, Dianic and Eclectic witchcraft, not to mention joke traditions like the Erisians.
Traditions derived from Gerald Gardner's Book of Shadows are called "British Traditional Wicca" (BTW) and there are many more of these than in Britain. In addition to Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, there is also Algard (a mixture of Alexandrian and Gardnerian), Moshian and Central Valley (of California) Wicca, which includes the Silver Crescent, Majestic, Kingstone and Daoine Coire orders, and whose outer court is called The New Wiccan Church. Gardnerian Wicca is still the largest and most influential tradition and is divided into a number of initiatory lines, the leading ones being Long Island, Kentucky and California."
M12 - p.63 - Line of Succession and Dogma
"As a measure of spiritual quality control Gardenrian covens recognise only Gardernian initiations performed "in a circle such as I am now in" according to the Book of Shadows. To guard against fraudulent claims from unknown candidates the Long Island family has devised a rather bureaucratic system of checks. Every initiate is given a Certificate of Initiation signed by his or her high priestess as well as photocopies of the high priestess's own certificate and of every other high priestess' in the chain of initiations going back to the first American Gardnerian high priestess Rosemary Buckland. These are irreverently nicknamed "puppy papers". A computerised database of all initiations in the Long Island family is also kept in New York, which Long Island Gardnerian high priestesses can consult if a claimed Gardnerian without the required certificate lands on their doorstep.
To qualify as a Gardnerian initiation every step listed in the Book of Shadows must be followed no matter how symbolically. Covens may add rituals and teachings to their Book of Shadows but must on no account take anything away."
M13 - p.126 - Ritual Tools
Athame
Wand
Scourge
Cup
Magical mirrors - black backed and silver backed.
Plate.