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The roles of God and Goddess and why the God is not venerated in some traditions?
- Thread starter Heloise
- Start date
Aset's Flames
Viperine Asetian
I'm not a Wiccan. However I know that people calling themselves Dianic Wiccans worship the goddess Diana alone.
Sees
Dragonslayer
Most Wiccans I've known or read have a duotheistic theology with a soft polytheism aspect. Some take this to a different level though, having a monotheistic theology with a soft duotheism aspect. Sort of like a Divine Mother who expresses/manifests herself through duality. Some of the popular 80's and 90's books go over it fairly well and pretty much kickstarted people going in that direction. The earlier Dianic traditions I don't know anything about.
Still wish we had more active Wiccans.
Still wish we had more active Wiccans.
Aset's Flames
Viperine Asetian
I enjoy your short video of Wuotan.
The Emperor of Mankind
Currently the galaxy's spookiest paraplegic
It's probably an unconscious reaction to the fact the vast majority of monotheisms in the world are oriented around a male God. Also, perhaps there could be the fact that men seem to not have put as much thought into creating gender-oriented Mysteries or path-practices as women seem to have. That's just my perception though - I'm not trying to belittle the progress my fellow men have made in that regard.
For what it's worth, Dianic Wicca grew out of '70s radical lesbian feminism. It was started by Zsuzsanna Budapest (Z. Budapest), who is a rather nasty man-hater (I'm not saying that as an anti-feminist slur - she actually seems to hate men, judging from her behavior and things she's said, although that's not uncommon among 2nd wave radical feminists) and transphobic bigot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsuzsanna_Budapest
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Z_Budapest
I'm not aware of "goddess-only" Wicca before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsuzsanna_Budapest
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Z_Budapest
I'm not aware of "goddess-only" Wicca before that.
Strangely enough there is a precedent for Diana-only witchcraft in Stregheria which has been basically an Italian folk tradition since the ancient times -- they however didn't apply a feminist agenda to it so there were plenty of men and women involved. If you're interested in a history of that I can think of nothing better to read than Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by Charles Leland -- it was definitely one of the source books for Z. Budapest, but without the politics and the Wicca-contamination. Most of Wiccas are really sourced from about five or six books.... It's sort of amazing how they turned an animist non-dogmatic tradition into a duo-theistic or monotheistic religion. In this case, Wicca basically borrowed from witchcraft the way that Christianity borrowed traditions from earlier pagans. Anyway, modern Wicca has nothing to do with Witchcraft anymore other than occasionally one of them fancies to call themselves a witch.
Witchcraft is much closer to what we would call a shamanistic or folk religion -- it could exist even alongside other religions, as Stregheria has with Roman religion and Christianity... It's basically devoid of a religious view outside of an animistic context.
Aset's Flames
Viperine Asetian
I have seen many debates on this issue among Wiccans, it is apparently still a highly disputed subject.
Callisto
Hellenismos, BTW
In order to clarify the issue of deity in Wicca, we have to take a step back and identify exactly what is being referenced by the word "Wicca". Much of what claims to be Wiccan isn't, rather it is eclectic pagan witchcraft (I say "largely" because any manner of 'pagany' and new age practice has been billed as "wicca" for profit; but in terms of sincere practices, those are largely eclectic witchcrafts that have borrowed from Wicca and choose to call themselves Wicca, though not all of them do).
As a result, there's an erroneous belief that Wicca has changed to include or exclude various things when that is not the reality at all. What has changed is public perception due to misuse/overuse of the word. That is separate from whether changes have actually occurred within the religion. This distortion has made it necessary for those practices that actually maintain Wicca in its entirety to be referred to as "(British) Traditional Wicca". So, I'll use the terms "Wicca" to indicate the intact religion and "Eclecticism" for diverse independent practices to make it easier to see what applies to which.
Firstly, Wicca is an initiatory pagan priesthood of a Mystery religion. "Religious order" is more accurate than "religion" which per the mainstream implies a combination of clergy and laity. There is no laity in Wicca, it's not and was never intended to be a revealed religion to the masses, its clergy has no obligation to non-initiates. It's a priesthood of specific deities and its obligations are to those deities. So there is no phasing out of one or the other.
Since Wicca came to public attention, there has been a multitude of practices that have called themselves "Wicca". The word carried less mainstream baggage than "witchcraft" and with most people being unfamiliar with the word, lent an air of mystery. It didn't take long before several claims were made and were fairly easy to get away with.
In the 1970s, as someone else mentioned, Feminism was in high gear and along the way practices arose focusing on goddess spirituality in rejection to the patriarchal religions. Some of these did call themselves "Wicca" too even though they did not emerge from actual Wiccan traditions.
Interestingly, there are two forms of Dianic witchcraft from that era. The first is McFarland Dianic Witchcraft (aka Old Dianic) and the more widely known Z Budapest's TERF-heavy Dianic Witchcraft. McFarland Dianic was founded by a woman and man, Morgan McFarland and Mark Roberts. They honor a goddess and consort god and will accept men into its priesthood (covens' perogative).
Callisto
Hellenismos, BTW
Most Wiccans are hard polytheists, it's far more common for Eclectics to be soft polytheists. The idea of "all gods are one gods" is not an inherent concept to Wicca but something that became popular within Neopaganism via the writings of Dion Fortune. It's possible some initiates may have adopted that view but it remains far more common for Wiccans to be hard polytheists.
Stregheria, while not uniform (there are various traditions) it is polytheistic and shows influences from ancient Roman polytheism. Their primary deities are commonly identified as Diana and Apollo (Sol Invictus). The influence of ancient Roman religion is evident in ancestor veneration and the honoring of local deities.
GoodbyeDave
Well-Known Member
There does seem to have been a change with time. Raymond Buckland, a protegé of Gardner who introduced Wicca to the USA, wrote
This is one of those books (like Graves's White Goddess) that's very dubious. Leland didn't do any research in Italy; he just relied on one paid informant. His other books, when checked, show he was also capable of adjusting the facts to fit his theories, to put it politely!
I agree with that, but so many traditions have used Leland's work for a sourcebook that it doesn't matter how factual it is. The myth became a reality, and I consider it somewhat valuable in that regard. I mean we could argue the same of The White Goddess by Robert Graves as well, in that it wasn't very factual, but Graves took the book as an inspirational model and focused on waxing poetic about various folk religions rather than doing research. Graves' book is probably responsible for more covens than any other, as it is the wellspring all of them derived from.
I consider both of those works pretty pivotal in understanding how Witchcraft, Wicca, and other related paths came into being. As long as you don't take a dogmatic tack to them or think they are research pieces, I think anyone can enjoy them.
Callisto
Hellenismos, BTW
I'm not familiar with that quote from Buckland and was unable to locate it doing an internet search. Would you share the source and context? He seems to be employing the word "wicca" in the generic Neopagan way and thus primarily referring to Eclecticism (i.e., the reference to Dianic which isn't Trad Wicca). It might well be an older comment dating from when second wave feminism began being fused with modern paganism.
GoodbyeDave
Well-Known Member
Wicca for one / Raymond Buckland. New York: Citadel Press, 2004. Chapter 4: Beliefs. pp 29-30.
He defines Wicca in the Glossary as a religion based on the work of Gardner and Valiente, with various traditions such as Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Ecclectic, etc.
He defines Wicca in the Glossary as a religion based on the work of Gardner and Valiente, with various traditions such as Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Ecclectic, etc.
Callisto
Hellenismos, BTW
Thank you for the added information! That book is not about the actual Wiccan religion founded by Gardner and which continues to be a priesthood of both a god and goddess, rather the popular form of Neopagan witchcraft that borrows from it and persists in identifying as Wicca as well. Gardnerian and Alexandrian are two Wiccan traditions, Eclecticism is not.