Wicca for Beginners (13 page)

If you are drawn to a particular pantheon, one way to get to know those gods, and perhaps find the one that resonates with you best, is to visit the sacred sites of that pantheon. This is not always possible because of money or logistical constraints, but if you have the resources to do it, I highly recommend it. It is much easier to get a feel for the gods at their sacred places than it is from reading. If you do visit a site, what do you feel? Do you get any images or sensations? What does the place tell you?

If you are fortunate enough to have a museum in your city or town, another way to find out if a particular culture or pantheon sings to you is to visit displays of art of peoples of various cultures. Is there something familiar in any of the art? Does it speak to you in some way? That might be a clue to explore the mythology of the people who created it. It works the same way with music. Listen to music from cultures around the world, and see if any of it resonates with you. If it does, look into the mythology of that culture.

Yet another way to find your gods and goddesses is to shake your family tree, and explore the mythology of your family’s country or culture of origin. If you’re Irish or Scottish, the Celtic gods may resonate with you. If you’re African American, you may choose to look into the deities of Africa. The gods of your bloodline may call to you.

To make things more complicated, sometimes—oftentimes, actually—a god or goddess will choose you instead of the other way around. This can be a profound and life-changing experience, and even a little scary at times. You’ll know this is happening to you if you begin to encounter a lot of things or symbols associated with the deity in your regular life or in dreams and meditations. These symbols may pop up in conversation, on television, or other places. I know one Wiccan who started seeing owls everywhere she went. Within a short span of time, she saw a live one in a tree and images of them on jewelry, painted on a billboard, and even in an advertisement on the bus. She was thumbing through a magazine at the doctor’s office and accidentally opened it to an article on owls. She was flipping channels and ran across a documentary on owls. She began to feel like she was being stalked by owls! She took the hint and looked into gods and goddesses associated with owls.

You may even see the deity who has chosen you in dreams. Sometimes they don’t bother beating around the bush with subtle cues and simply make themselves known in showy, loud, hard-to-miss ways. They are the gods, after all.

Getting to Know Your Gods

The gods have favorite things, just like people do. As I already mentioned, they also have certain symbols and myths associated with them. Getting to know your deities means getting to know these preferences, symbols, and myths. Many gods are linked to certain animals, plants, colors, days of the week, seasons, incense, music, gestures, clothing, jewelry, stones, food, and much more. It’s important to learn about these things in addition to reading the myths because it’s the symbols and preferences that will make the gods feel welcome in your circle. If you are able to, consider learning a song from the god’s country of origin to use in your ritual. You also may consider learning a few words of the language spoken by his or her original worshippers. If you can get inside the language of a people, you will begin to get an idea of how they think, and that can shed light on their concepts of deity. I learned some Irish in order to work with a Celtic goddess, and using just a few Irish words in that circle seemed to make the goddess energy more focused and palpable. I have seen a Mexican goddess invoked in a Yaqui sweat lodge in Spanish and Nahuatl with the same result. In addition to making the gods feel welcome, exploring each of these things puts you more in tune with them. If you can’t find information on the items associated with a particular deity, try researching the culture the god came from instead. What can you find out about the people who worship(ped) this particular deity? What does that say about the deity? You can also take a pathworking journey to meet the god/dess and ask for more information.

Once you know what things are associated with the god/dess you are interested in working with, you can assemble some of them to use in ritual or to create an altar specifically for him or her. For example, the Norse goddess Freya is famous for her amber necklace, she is linked to cats and boars, and she is sometimes depicted wearing a helmet and breastplate. You can incorporate some of these things into your rite or altar setup or use them as inspiration for other symbols to include. Meditating in front of your special deity altar is a good way to tune in to the energy of the deity you’ve chosen, and it shows him or her that you are serious and respectful. There is more information on altars in chapter 8.

Four Points of Etiquette

There are four additional things you should know about working with the gods. First, although archetypes and “categories” of gods exist across the pantheons of the world, the gods are also products of the culture in which they are worshipped. In other words, most cultures have a mother goddess, but not all mother goddesses are the same, because the people who worship them are not the same. For example, the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet and the Celtic Morrigan are not the same simply because they’re both “battle” goddesses associated with death and destruction. Each has her own separate stories, characteristics, and cultural context. To deny their unique origins is to treat them with disrespect. This is not a good idea; these are two goddesses I certainly would not want to tick off.

Second, and in a similar vein, it’s important to learn all you can about the gods and their historic and mythological context and treat them accordingly rather than imposing your own ideas of what they are on them. I once had a woman try to convince me that the Indian goddess Kali was a loving mother goddess. Sure she is, in that “I’ll stomp on your body, rip it to pieces, and drink your blood so your broken, tattered carcass can be enfolded in the bosom of mother earth and you can be reborn” sort of way. Although there is a mother aspect to Kali, she is not the same type of nurturing mother the woman in question was looking for.

That said, there are few historical records for some of the gods, so if you choose to work with the ones that are lesser known, you will have to extrapolate information about them from the sources you can find. Notice that I’m saying
extrapolate
, not
make up
. You can try pathworking to get more information about them too. It’s not scholarly in the least, but it’s better and more respectful than making something up to suit your purposes.

Third, and this is related to the second, if you are working with a god or gods that are not from your culture, be sure to examine what you are doing and make sure it is done with appreciation, not appropriation, of the other culture. Sometimes respecting another culture means leaving its gods alone because calling them into a Wiccan circle would not be appropriate. For example, I know Voodoo practitioners who think it’s insulting for Wiccans to invoke the loa (Voodoo ancestral spirits) out of the context of Voodoo. Since Hinduism is still practiced actively by millions of people today, some Hindus believe it is inappropriate to invoke a Hindu deity into a Wiccan circle, since those deities have rites of their own that have been done for generations and fit into the Hindu cultural context.

Last, but not least, many Wiccans (but not all) consider it bad form to mix gods and goddesses from different pantheons in the same circle. For example, I would not call the Morrigan, Aries, and Sekhmet into the same ritual, and not just because of their temperaments. The words, gestures, and symbols that work for one would probably not work for the other two. Although they’re all warriors, they don’t speak the same language, whether literal or metaphorical. You can take the chance that they’ll all sit around sharing war stories and comparing notches in their belts, but they might clash, and that’s one catfight you do not want to be in the middle of. Similarly, don’t call two gods or goddesses from the same pantheon who don’t like each other into the same ritual. Do your research; the myths tend to be pretty clear about who gets along with whom.

As I mentioned earlier, Wiccans have a very personal relationship with their gods. Learning all of this stuff—their myths, cultures, and preferences—only helps deepen the relationship, which is rewarding in itself, but it also makes for better ritual and magic. Once you have chosen a particular god or goddess you would like to work with, and have studied him or her, you can use a variation of the “Introducing Yourself to the God and Goddess” ritual at the beginning of this chapter to introduce yourself. Just modify the exercise by incorporating some of the symbols of your chosen deity.

Calling the Gods into the Circle

There are two main reasons for calling the God and Goddess or another specific deity into a circle. You may ask them to be present for the ritual so you can honor, commune, and communicate with them, or you may ask them for something, such as guidance or help with a magical working. Or you can do both. Many Wiccans call the God and Goddess into every circle they perform simply to hang out with them and have them present—like family almost—for their rituals and workings. Others only call them for the eight Wiccan sabbats, or holidays (see chapter 9).

The God and Goddess are usually called once the circle is up and the quarters are called (if the quarters are going to be called). There is no set rule as to which you call first. Some Wiccans call the Goddess first because she gives birth to the universe. Others call the God first because he is the spark of life. Which you call first is entirely up to you.

Although in the “Introducing Yourself to the God and Goddess” ritual you lit a candle when you spoke to the God and Goddess, you do not have to do this every time. It is common, however, to have one candle for the God and one for the Goddess on the altar, and light each one in turn when you are calling them. For the purposes of the following example, we’ll say that you do have candles, and that you’re starting with the Goddess. We’ll also say that you have an altar (see chapter 8). For the example, it can be simply a table with a tablecloth and the God and Goddess candles on it. The God candle should be red or gold, and the Goddess candle should be white or silver. In this example, we’ll also pretend that you’re not going to be asking the God and Goddess for help with magical work.

1. Clean and clear your ritual space.

2. Ground.

3. Place your altar in what will be the center of your circle.

4. Cast your circle.

5. Call the quarters, if you’d like.

6. Stand before the altar, light the Goddess candle, and with your arms raised in a Y formation, palms facing forward, say something like:

Great Goddess, Mother of All Things, Lady of the Moon, grace my ritual with your presence here tonight.

7. As you speak, feel the Goddess’s presence fill the circle. Feel her energy flow into the sacred space. In your mind’s eye, it might look like moonlight. Know that she is there. Do not pull her energy into your body.

8. Then light the God candle, put your hands in the Y position as before, and say something like:

Great God, Father, Lord of the Sun, Lord of the Forest, Lord of the Hunt, grace my ritual with your presence here tonight.

9. As you speak, feel the God’s presence fill the circle. Feel his energy flow into the sacred space. In your mind’s eye, it might look like sunlight. Know that he is there. Do not pull his energy into your body.

10. At this point, you may wish to speak further to them, or, if it’s a sabbat, you may do your sabbat rite (see chapter 9).

11. When your rite is concluded, stand in front of the altar again and say something like:

Great God, thank you for blessing my ritual with your presence. Farewell.

12. Put out the God candle. Then say something like:

Great Goddess, thank you for blessing my ritual with your presence. Farewell.

13. Put out the Goddess candle.

14. Dismiss the quarters if you called them, draw up your circle, and ground.

You can modify this simple formula for a circle that includes magic. You might change the invocations and farewells to something like:

Great Goddess, Mother of All Things, Lady of the Moon, grace my ritual with your presence here tonight and assist me with my healing (or other type of) spell.

Great Goddess, thank you for blessing my ritual and my healing (or other type of) magic with your presence. Hail, and farewell.

Great God, Father, Lord of the Sun, Lord of the Forest, Lord of the Hunt, grace my ritual with your presence here tonight and assist me with my healing (or other type of) spell.

Great God, thank you for blessing my ritual and my healing (or other type of) magic with your presence. Hail, and farewell.

You can be a lot more poetic than I am being here. These bare-bones examples are just to get you started. If you are working with a specific god or goddess, you can (and should) also tailor the calls to him or her. For example:

Great Mother Isis, Goddess of the Earth,
Protector of the Dead, be here tonight to
bless my ritual and magic.

Lord Apollo, God of Light, God of Music,
God of Prophesy, lend your great power to
my ritual and magic tonight.

Cerridwen, shape-changing goddess,
Patroness of Poets, shine your bright
inspiration on my ritual and magic.

Thor, God of Thunder and Lightning,
God of the Sky, protect and bless this
circle and all within it.