Aitvaras - The Star of Infinity

Aitvaras Narrenturm.
The Star of Infinity: An Experiment in Wiccan

Theology.
(manuscript)
Translated from Russian by Dmitry Galtsin.
Contents
Part I. Theology..............................................................................................................................2
A Preamble................................................................................................................................ 3
A Creed of a Wiccan...................................................................................................................4
Chapter I. Introduction into the System of the Star, and of the Sole One and the start of the
progress..................................................................................................................................... 4
Of the One............................................................................................................................. 5
Of the progress to the Center................................................................................................5
Chapter II: The One in the Two, the Two in the Many, or of God and Goddess........................6
Of the Divine Couple..............................................................................................................6
God and Goddess are the Divine........................................................................................... 7
Of the Triune Goddess...........................................................................................................7
Of the Maiden........................................................................................................................9
Of the Mother........................................................................................................................9
Of the Crone........................................................................................................................ 10
Of the Dark Mother............................................................................................................. 10
Of the God of Life and Death...............................................................................................11
Of the God of Life.................................................................................................................12
Of the God of Death.............................................................................................................12
Of the Great Dragon............................................................................................................ 13
Chapter III. Of the many gods and their common godhood....................................................13
The Two or the Many?.........................................................................................................14
All is All................................................................................................................................ 15
He is god.............................................................................................................................. 15
He is the lightning................................................................................................................ 16
He is me............................................................................................................................... 17
Chapter IV: Of the True Faith, or of Co-creation......................................................................17
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Of Faith................................................................................................................................ 18
Nomos and Cosmos............................................................................................................. 18
Of the True Faith..................................................................................................................19
Chapter V. Of Magic as the Art of creating Truth.....................................................................19
Magic as co-creation............................................................................................................20
Ritual as Art, Magic as Nature..............................................................................................20
Chapter VI. Of the Spinning Wheel, or of Eternity...................................................................21
We are a Circle Within a Circle.............................................................................................22
Of the Nature of the Spinning..............................................................................................22
Of the Spikes of the Wheel..................................................................................................23
Chapter VII: Freedom, Love and Wisdom, or Concerning Wiccan Ethics.................................24
Of the Advice and the Advisors............................................................................................24
Of Freedom..........................................................................................................................25
Of Love.................................................................................................................................26
Of Wisdom........................................................................................................................... 26
Chapter VIII. Of the Smallest of the Small and the Greatest of the Great, or of Wiccan
Anthropology............................................................................................................................... 27
Again of the Progress to the Center.....................................................................................27
One in Four.......................................................................................................................... 28
Of the Mortal and the Immortal..........................................................................................29
Part II. Hymnography...................................................................................................................30
A Preamble.............................................................................................................................. 30
I. Of the One............................................................................................................................ 31
II. Of God and Goddess............................................................................................................ 31
III. Of the Gods.........................................................................................................................33
IV. Of Faith............................................................................................................................... 34
V. Of Magic.............................................................................................................................. 34
VI. Of the Great Wheel............................................................................................................ 35
VII. Of Freedom, Love and Wisdom.........................................................................................42
VIII. Of a Mortal Human...........................................................................................................42
Part I. Theology
A Preamble
This book is subtitled “An Experiment in Wiccan Theology”, and I assume that the readers of
this book are familiar with all these words in the subtitle. But I still think it necessary to
comment upon the meaning which I put into it, in case a reader’s understanding is different from
mine.
I think I’ll start from the last word of the subtitle. What does “theology” mean? It is literally
translated from Greek as “words about gods”, “the doctrine about gods”. Broadly speaking,
theology is a systematic description of a given religious teaching, its dogmas and principles. In
modern and not so modern world “theology” since at least the 13th century is associated mainly
with Christianity and most theologians known to us are Christians. But the term itself had of
course emerged much earlier than the 13th century, and even earlier than Christianity itself. For
the ancient Greeks, let us say, a “theologos” was a poet transmitting knowledge about the gods to
mortal people. Orpheus, Homer and Hesiod were all listed among the theologoi. The ancient
philosophers, on their part, saw theology as a branch of philosophy, which specialized in the
divine.
My approach to theology in this book will probably be close to the ancient one. I will not
comment upon some sacred texts, because Wicca lacks such texts. I will simply try, in a
maximally imaginative way (though not being a poet as Orpheus or Homer, I don’t shy from
metaphors), but at the same time in the maximally consistent manner, to expose those ideas of
the various manifestations of the divine, which I have. Where did I get these ideas from will be
treated below.
Next one has to say a word about Wicca. Even if it is unknown to the reader, it can be easily
learned, say, from Wikipedia. I will not deal with the history of this phenomenon or the ways of
its transmission, but will just say that Wicca is a old religious movement which roots itself, on
one hand, in the pre-Christian pagan beliefs of Europe and the Middle East, and on the other
hand, in the Western Esoteric tradition.
There are, at present, countless traditions, ways, directions and branches of Wicca. There are
hardly any dogmas common to all Wiccans, so all the authors who dealt with Wicca, presented
something unique and specific to their readers. Moreover, it can well be said that each Wiccan
has his or her peculiar Wicca. They are all somewhat united by some common images or
conceptions, but the agency of interpretation is always with the individual.
On my part, I tried to ground myself in these common, or, more correctly, more widespread
images. But at the same time, of course, as any Wiccan author, or indeed as any Wiccan, I
interpreted them individually. The Wicca I portray in this book is, doubtlessly, only a Wicca “of
my own”. Maybe, there will be a large number of my co-religionists that will disagree with some
or all of my ideas. They are absolutely entitled to do this. I’m entitled to consider my Wicca a
Wicca after all and base my theological system on my own vision of this teaching.
And, finally, the “experiment”. Gods willed so, that for quite a long time now I have been acting
in the duty of a Wiccan priest. I serve Goddess and God performing rituals in their honor at the
same time serving people, my brothers and sisters in faith, creating sacred space where each of
them can experience the divine. In the years of my service I communicated with many Wiccans
of widely different views and opinions. I learnt something from them all. I did many rites with
texts and scripts written by those who came before me, and of my own device. Each ceremony
left me with a new experience. And of course, I called on Gods, both in a group ritual and on my
own, in the privacy of my soul. And I never walked away without an answer.
This book is an experiment of sorts, to put together the experience I obtained from Gods or from
people. I wrote my own “creed” – a small text with eight keypoints of my religion. All the eight
propositions touch upon a different aspect of the divine. In the first part of this book, in the
“Theology”, I tried to dwell on each of these aspects. I started from the greatest – the One Divine
Absolute, the ultimate category of Wiccan theology, and finished with the smallest – myself, a
human person of flesh and blood.
When you tread the way from the greatest to the smallest, and see that this way goes in a circle,
then, perhaps, a strict system of Wiccan theology, as I envisage it, will rise before your mental
eyes.
A Creed of a Wiccan
I am Wiccan and I am free. No one is obliged to believe as I do, not even my brothers and sisters
in faith. No one can command me, what to believe. I speak for myself:
1. I believe in One ineffable Divinity, which is the beginning and the end where there are no
beginning and no end, consubstantial to all and abiding in all.
2. I believe in God and Goddess who are the highest expressions of the Divine attainable to
thought.
3. I believe in kindreds of gods, goddesses and spirits, who are equally faces of the Divine, faces
of the universe and faces of humans.
4. I believe in Faith which is a creative and dynamic force of the Divine.
5. I believe in Magic as a certain expression of Faith.
6. I believe in the Wheel Circle as a form of movement of the Universe and spirit within it.
7. I believe in Love, Freedom and Wisdom as the sole values of life.
8. And I believe in myself as consubstantial to all I believe in.
Chapter I. Introduction into the System of the Star, and of the Sole One and
the start of the progress
1. I believe in One ineffable Divinity, which is the beginning and the end where there are no
beginning and no end, consubstantial to all and abiding in all.
It is first of all critical to find the right word. Modern cosmological system teaches us that what
we call the universe has a beginning in time (or rather, time itself has a beginning), and is finite
in space (or rather, space itself is limited). This is not enough, so the word universe will not be
used here. I will simply say “All”: all that is, all that is not, all that was before the Big Bang,
even if there was nothing, for the nothing that is named is something, and all that is beyond time
and space.
I visualize this All as a Star. It is not a pentagram, and not even hexagram, which symbolizes the
Macrocosm in occultism. I see it as a Star with an infinite number of rays. It can’t be depicted, so
for convenience one may imagine a star with thirteen points, to honor the thirteen full moons in a
solar year and celebrate the dark mystique surrounding this number in culture.
But one has to stay mindful that this star is actually infinitely-pointed.
This star is All. Simply All, of which we can say that is “is”, “exists”, and even more – that
which we can say nothing about. All that is material and that is spiritual, energy, time and space,
the physical and the metaphysical. All that was, is and will be. In a word, just All.
On the tip of each point there is a human person. A person that lives, lived or will live – each and
every one, for the star has infinite number of rays. What we consider ourselves, what we know as
a self, separate from the rest, is the farthest reach of the ray. I will speak of this later, and now we
have to look at the center of the star.
Of the One
The center is the Absolute, the Sole One – the Only, the Ineffable Divinity, which nothing more
that can be conceived of, the final limit and source of all being. If this text is read by members of
a monotheistic Abrahamic religion, they would say that it is God. But I think that would be a
mistake. It is that which transcends the concept of “God” and all other concepts. It is hat which
can’t be addressed as Lord or any other name, for there is not a word in any tongue that fits It.
And calling It Divine Absolute, I am mistaken myself, because one can’t speak of it and not be
mistaken. It can be said that It is ineffable, and that would be lies. For it is more ineffable than
ineffability itself, darker than darkness and emptier than emptiness. It is the limit where there is
no limit and the beginning where there is no beginning. It is the Paradox of Paradoxes.
Because it transcends all existence, I will shun from speaking of It using pronouns and don’t
want to call It divinity, divine source, let alone, god. It is the divine as it is, the core of all spirit,
that which makes a soul into a soul and a god into a god. It is even more silly and naïve to
interpret it as a Creator and the Demiurge, for It is both the Creator, the Created, the process of
Creation and Creativity itself – it is all merged in It into something single and indistinguishable.
But at the same time, it is the Reason of the existence of what is created and the cause of its
destruction. It is the Creator, the Almighty and the Destroyer, and It is Creativity, Existence and
Destruction.
It is impossible to say whether It is a person or not. It is both. It is a super-person, the Person of
Persons, and at the same time it is absolutely impersonal. It is neither good nor bad, but all
goodness and all evil is in It. The question of Its transcendence or immanence will likewise stay
unanswered: It is consubstantial to All and abides in All, yet it can’t be reduced to the world, and
the world can’t be reduced to It. The term panentheism would suit such a view, if not for the root
“theos” – as I said, It is not even God, It is more.
When Wiccans try to speak about It, they may mention Dryghtyn. I think this word is as
unfortunate as God or the Almighty. So I decide to call It the One, though this word is hardly
more suitable. Yet I can’t fail to speak of It, so I have to use this euphemism, though it is also
wrong. As I am a Wiccan, it can be said that what I wrote above is my understanding of Wiccan
Dryghtyn.
Of the progress to the Center
Being an embodied human of flesh and blood, living one of my human lives, one can’t conceive
of the One, for our brain is incapable of containing something that limitless. It is also useless to
pray to it, for every time addressing It we view It as something concrete and capable to hear our
prayer and be our partner and acceptor of our pleas, while It is more than anything concrete,
more than any image. Praying to It means diminishing It.
But the fact that it is useless, doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t do it. The fact that we can say
nothing of It, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk of It. For if any word said about It is lies, then it is
equally true that any word said about It is true.
We have to put up with this paradox, for the One is the Paradox of Paradoxes, as was said
before. Never able to reach It, we are bound to eternally strive towards It, for only the way that
has no final point is worthy of being trod.
That’s why I start every ritual with a prayer to It:
In the name of the One, Ancient Providence,

Who was from the beginning and is for all eternity,
The source of all things,
All-knowing, all-pervading, all-permanent, ceaseless.
In this prayer I ask nothing of It and in no way try to interact with It, for I know that it is
pointess, and if I try – I will not meet It. Though I say “in the name”, I don’t actually name It, for
if there were a name worthy of It, I had to pronounce it for all eternity. By this prayer I simply
admit my striving towards It, though knowing I will never reach It.
These words mark the start of my progress from the farthest point of the star ray to its center.
Chapter II: The One in the Two, the Two in the Many, or of God and Goddess
2. I believe in God and Goddess who are the highest expressions of the Divine attainable to
thought.
Having postulated the paradoxality of the Divine One in the preceding chapter, we will never be
free from this paradox. All the system that follows, emanating from the center of the Star, will be
imbued with it and we’ll have to forget about the Aristotelian exclusion of the third: all that is
hot will also be cold, all that is white, also black. An attempt to speak about these things in the
language built around formal logic – and we have no other language – is certainly doomed to
failure, and is sure to look like a commonplace or even parody. Between my text and the things I
am writing about there is a gap comparable to that between a plastic figurine of a deer from a
cartoon and a real deer of the forest. Well, I can only rely on the principle of sympathetic magic
that the model is inherently bound to the original.
So, in our great daring, which among other is what makes us human, ignoring our limitedness
and bounds, we aspire to the One, thirsting to experience something that immense. We shall not
succeed as long as we are alive. But what it is that we will experience and touch?
Of the Divine Couple
Somewhere very close to the center of the Star, we see the two: God and Goddess, the Divine
Couple.
It is the honesty of Wicca which acknowledges that never the plenitude of divine splendor can be
concentrated in one being, but only the two – man and woman – can represent it. He and She,
Father and Mother in union are able to lay before our view something as close to the Divine One
as we are capable of perceiving. He and She together are It.
God and Goddess is the first “I am” of the One. Claiming to the world “I am I”, something
exempts itself from the indefinite All and separates itself from all the rest. When the Divine says
“I am”, It becomes God, and the rest, that “is not-I” becomes Goddess. And conversely, Its “I
am” Goddess posits all that “is not-I” as God. Since we are speaking about the Divine “I”, the
best formula will be “I and I am I”. Maybe this nuance will seem obscure, but here we touch the
limit of human language, beyond which it is impossible to describe a phenomenon, so I will
leave this postulate unexplained, as the explanation would only make it more inconceivable.
God and Goddess are the Divine
God and Goddess are mutually inverse in all things: each one manifests as one part of the
fundamental binary oppositions “male-female”, “light-dark”, “above-below”, “right-left”, “cold-
hot” etc. But what part of the polarity will be embodied by God or Goddess depends on their
modus: both can be hot or cold, dark or light and even male or female. Therefore, though they
are opposite they are in all things similar and mutually compatible.
Wiccan God and Goddess are traditionally symbolized by the Sun and Moon, but it would be
vastly naïve to enclose such great beings in little celestial bodies. I think that Sun and Moon for
the God and Goddess are something like huge icons or natural idols, serving to project their
metaphysical images on physical reality. However, one should not forget that according to the
sympathetic principle mentioned, the idol equals god, therefore God is the Sun and Goddess is
the Moon.
God and Goddess are usually understood in Wicca as gods of nature, but I think that nature in ths
case should be taken in its broadest meaning: all universe is nature to some extent. He and She
are gods of plants and animals to the same degree as they are gods of the stars and the black
holes. They are gods of the harvest and of electromagnetic interaction, patrons of hunting and
gathering as well as quantum physics.
Their union is often represented as a marital couple, and it is true that they are Husband and
Wife. But at the same time, like Apollo and Artemis, they are Twin Siblings, brother and sister.
On Yule we say that Goddess give birth to God and they become Mother and Son. And though it
is not reflected in our ritual, I think they can be Father and Daughter like Zeus and Persephone.
All in all, there are all kinds of liaisons possible between man and woman that exist between
God and Goddess at any given time. It makes their relations rather complex and feeds our
opponents with an opportunity to accuse us of ascribing incest to our gods. But we are speaking
about the highest Gods available to human mind, and we cannot limit them with only one model
we are used to in our lives. To make it simpler we may introduce the notion of modus and
hypostasis: in some of their hypostases they are Spouses, in others they are Mother and Son, and
so on.
God and Goddess are Love. Being both opposite and identical, they can’t do without each other.
The connection between them, their endless eternal attraction is the first force that begets
universe. The instant of their unity, their coitus is the first flash, the Big Bang. That’s why sexual
act is sacred in Wicca: according to the same sympathetic principle, any sexual encounter of
mutual will and attraction is the replication and a new manifestation of the cosmic Fusion that
created All, and is each second creating hitherto. The Act of Love, of mutual consumption and
the merger of the Two in One is the highest ritual available in our practice.
And as the outcome of heterosexual sex is childbirth, so their great Sex brings forth All, us
included. That’s why we call them our Father and Mother.
As mentioned, God and Goddess together are the fullest reflection of the Divine One available to
our perception. They are like two gigantic beacons at the point of destination that illumine and
sanctify our way from the ray point of the star to its center. If not for them, there would be for us.
But they are, and it can’t be that they were not, for then nothing would be. In the names of God
and Goddess, by their infinite Love, Mercy and Wisdom, we proceed.
Of the Triune Goddess
People have always known the Goddess. I don’t want to say “worshipped” or “venerated”, for
modern forms of religion didn’t emerged at once, and the Goddess is older than they. Modern
humans, me included, have a hard time imagining how exactly our distant ancestors
communicated with the sacred and its feminine aspect. But one can be stated for sure – they were
aware of her.
They were aware and they never forgot it. We often accuse the representatives of the so-called
Abrahamic religions of discarding Goddess for the sake of God, but often it is not quite true.
Medieval Marian worship and Sophian “heresy” in the East point to the fact that the Goddess
never abandoned human souls and the souls could never abandon her. Perhaps, only one
notorious Arabian prophet was consciously willing to “purge” the sacred of the feminine, but
even he at one moment changed his mind and inserted the Divine Wives in his yet unfinished
book. It’s a pity that later he pusillanimously rejected his own words.
So who is She, the Unforgettable, the Most Ancient of all, and Eternally Young and Full of Life,
the Start and the End?
She is Goddess, the Eternal Feminine, the World Mother – Mother of all humans and gods, as
well as their Death. She is the one who is turning the Wheel. The Eternal Maiden, Wife and
Crone, Freedom, Love and Wisdom, the Depth of Depths and Mystery of Mysteries. Thousands
of poets wrote odes in Her honor unaware that the only songs worthy of her are the cry of a
newborn, the moan of passion and the last breath of the dying. Thousands of artists and icon-
makers tried to show the world Her inexpressible beauty, oblivious that her overwhelming
majesty can only be somewhat glimpsed in the uncreated splendor of the starry sky, unreaped
field and raging sea. It would be madness on my part to try to add something to what had been
said of Her. Well, I don’t mind being called mad.
It was said above that in Wicca Goddess is associated with the Moon. The Moon is a living
symbol, an everynight reminder for us to remember Her. According to the three phases of the
moon – the waxing, the full and the waning – we distinguish in the Goddess three fundamental
hypostases – Maiden, Mother and Crone. There is, however, the fourth face – Goddess of the
New Moon, the Dark Mother. Just as that fairy-tale witch, uninvited to the festivity, the Dark
Mother is frequently put aside and glossed over by inattention. We all remember what price the
fairy-tale heroes had to pay for that, and none should repeat their mistake.
We also associate Goddess with earth and water, because everything that lives springs from these
elements and return to these elements. One may conventionally say that the fertile earth and the
nurturing water are the sacred body of the Goddess, her holy flesh. But one doesn’t have to
narrow the understanding of Her birthing womb to our mother planet Earth. Ultimately, the
ancient unnamed Star in whose bowels emerged all the substances of our bodies and our planet
to explode in a titanic spasm of labor pangs creating our planetary system among the myriads of
others was also the flesh of the Goddess.
If we abstract ourselves from the material metaphors and try to ascend to the more “spiritual”
and metaphysical level, Goddess can also be understood as the Source of Fate. It is by Her will
that the universal Wheel is turning, being the Wiccan symbol of time, both the local time of
human life and the time of the universe. The change of seasons, the change of states and qualities
and their return to their circles after certain periods are the reflection of the changes in Her. The
Goddess is the universal Priestess who is constantly performing the Ritual of Time, being both
subject to this ritual and staying apart from it.
Moreover, thinking about our Goddess it should be kept in mind that She is the Gate. It is
through Her that everything enters this world, and through Her it leaves it to come back again.
She is the transition from one condition to another, She is the one that embodies and
disembodies. Any transition between the worlds, between levels of reality, between the layers of
being happens through Her. Not “with Her help”, but literally through Her. In this aspect She is
the very possibility of movement, the capability to ascend and the way to descend. It is not by
chance that in folk Christianity Mother of God was endowed with the power to save the sinful
souls from hell: I see it as an intuition of the Goddess as Transition.
Because one day I accepted Wicca as my faith, I am inclined to agree on the Wiccan view of the
Goddess in her three (plus one) aspects – Maiden, Mother and Crone (plus their common
Shadow). I see it a true, deep and wise concept. For this reason I can’t miss to dwell on every
aspect in more detail: that of the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone and the Dark Mother.
Of the Maiden
I understand Maiden Goddess first of all as Freedom. The word “Maiden” should not be taken
here as denoting technical virginity. Maiden is an unmarried woman, free from limitations,
obligations and norms, not oathbound to anyone’s expectations, belonging to herself and no one
else. Maiden Goddess is bare-headed and barefoot, She is the raging wind, the unstoppable
movement for the sake of movement. She is a passionate huntress and an ecstatic dancer.
Wiccans often portray the Maiden as Artemis, but I imagine Her as also Salome, who has won
Power over power and become Queen over kings by the power of her incredible dance.
Maiden Goddess is also potential that is not yet spent, the start if the way. She is Innocence as
the Not-Yet-Manifest, She is the possibility to become anything, but not now. She is the Princess
destined to become Queen, but as yet reveling only in her future. In some things, She is the
expectation of a holiday, no less pleasant and joyous than the holiday itself.
Possessing all these qualities, She is also the Hidden Treasure, the Prize Most Sought After. All
the freedom, She possesses can’t leave anyone unwilling to drink from her boisterous fountain,
the well of youth, the desire of all. She is the Maid in the Tower, for whose sake the Hero
challenges the Dragon, and in a sense She rules both the Hero and the Dragon.
I consider a bell or a rattle the ritual tools of Maiden Goddess. They parallel the wrist-bells of the
Dancer and the jingle-bells of the Huntress’ horse reins, and they are used to signal the start of
the ritual, the new progress and the new way, bringing tidings of the holiday to come.
Of the Mother
It is probably the Mother image that the Wiccans and not only Wiccans most often call on. It is
not surprising, for it is in this hypostasis of the Triune Goddess that all her qualities most
important for a human meet together. Mother Goddess is the Limit, the Realization, the
Exaltation. She is the realized Meaning, the Mission complete.
She is the Universal Mother who has given birth to All, and for this reason she can’t be unloved,
as we can’t fail to love our mothers, even if this love takes on the weirdest and ugliest forms.
For this reason, Mother Goddess is Love. The reciprocal love between Mother and Child is
something unchanging, constant and unfathomable. Some think that this Love is the source of all
love in human life, but I wouldn’t judge on this point. In any case, all other ways of love are
present in the Mother, for it is thanks to her Love to her divine Husband that she has become
mother and is now enabling us to find ourselves through her.
Mother Goddess is the Queen and Mistress if the world. She is the One, for whose sake
everything started, the source of meaning and the limit of possibility. Nothing more important
than She can ever be imagined. She is the Goddess of Fertility, which is not limited to childbirth.
All birth, all creativity that enables the new things, beings or ideas to emerge, comes from Her.
By writing this text, I am giving birth to it thanks only to the power of Mother Goddess and in
her name. She is the Goddess of Manifestation and Embodiment, the Goddess of Realization. All
we can achieve and all we can interact with comes from Her.
Of all the divine images Mother Goddess is the closest to the material world, the world of
embodiment. That’s why she is the easiest to invoke among the Three Faces. She might have
been the first divine image that opened to humans at the dawn of their history.
The ritual symbols of Mother Goddess are the chalice, the cauldron and the cornucopia. It is easy
to notice their similarity to the birthing womb, but one shouldn’t focus solely on this external
likeness. Chalice is the instrument of communion with the divine through ritual wine-blood.
Through the chalice the divine is channeled into our experience, turning from non-manifest,
abstract and impalpable into visible, material and tangible. The possibility of this transition is our
Mother’s gift to us all.
Of the Crone
Crone Goddess, or the Hag is the third face of the Triune Goddess. She is the Lady of the finish.
If Mother is the gate that leads hither, She is the way hence. If the Maiden is the start of the way,
the Hag is its end.
Having made the way from the beginning to the end She is the embodied Wisdom, for there is
nothing she doesn’t know, and there’s nothing She didn’t experience. And the last Mystery – the
Secret of the Beyond – is also known to Her. All her secrets She will mercifully disclose to those
who strive to learn them and understand Herself – for She herself is Mystery.
The Crone is the withering and dying that serve to make space for new life. As an Old Hag of the
Scythe, she visits everyone in the last hour, and it is to Her only that this hour is known. We
shouldn’t be afraid of her coming, for nothing can be utterly destroyed, but only transformed into
another quality.
That Death is not the end is one of the secrets of the Crone, which she can share. It is easy to
write this idea down, but it is a hundred times harder to really embrace and accept it and I myself
can’t say I really did. I can only hope that one day the Crone will explain it to me. That’s what
should be asked of her, because the Hag is not only Wisdom, but also Hope.
And She is repose, the Harvester of our deeds. If not for Her the world would be a ceaseless
searching and longing without any perspective of finding, striving towards the goal that can’t be
reached. Maybe, some will see such a perspective attractive, but such a world would be lacking
in harmony. Where there is Beginning, there should be the Result.
The tool of the Crone, the Sickle, is seldom used in rituals nowadays. We put it on our altar once
a year – at the Harvest Feast. Like the Chalice, the Sickle is a symbol of transition and change of
condition, but if the Chalice is a transition to the birth and we draw something from it, the Sickle,
on the contrary, takes something away through the power of death and negation. For those who
tread the path of the Wise, both transitions are seen as equal.
Of the Dark Mother
As the Earth throws shadow on the Moon and the Moon throws shadow on the Earth, the
Goddess has her own Shadow. The Fourth Face of the Goddess with Three Faces, weird as it
sounds, is the Dark Mother, the Black Lady, the common Shadow of the Maiden, the Mother and
the Crone.
In the first chapter I wrote that the Divine One is neither good nor bad by its nature, but contains
all good and all evil. The Black Lady is somehow the personification of all the things pertaining
to the Goddess which we perceive as horrible, destructive and deadly.
She is the Unconquerable Horror that comes from the dark and makes us cleave to our fire and
light. She is the Lady of the sterile Wastelands, the Queen of the blackest Ocean Deeps, where
there is nothing familiar to us. She is the Merciless Fate, the Cursed Lot.
If the Crone is timely exit from this life and a long wished for end of the way, the Dark Mother is
untimely death, the Pit where the careless fall, the infinitely contracting Black Hole.
It all sounds rather repulsive, but it can be certainly said that though She is Terrible and
Dreadful, She is not Evil. Wicca doesn’t operate the terms good or evil, speaking simply of cause
and effect.
It is where what you’ve done brings you to dreadful consequences that She appears, the Requital
and the Lesson, the Divine Vengeance. Only having passed through the Nightmare she brings
you can realize what did you do wrong and what should have been done – and should be done in
future.
In all her infernal glory, the Black Lady is one of the facets of the One Goddess and one of the
sources of her power. If the Goddess had no Shadow, she wouldn’t be as perfect as she appears
to us, because there is no delight without dread and there is no love without fear. She is the trials
that make us stronger, the Storm that teaches us how to withstand the next Storm, the Furnce
where we are cooked to become perfect, the fire, the water and the mill, which passed, we can
finally hope to become whole.
And at the end of the day, at the hour of the hardest ordeal, when there is nothing left to turn to,
we can address our prayers to the Dark Mother, for who can conquer Horror, but another, bigger
Horror, and who can save from the Void, but the Void Herself?
Of the God of Life and Death
It is hard for me to write about the God of Wicca, and I know I’m not alone in this. So much has
been written and said about Goddess, but much less about God, and I never actually liked what
was written and said about him. Some portray him as a lifeless shadow, a weak-willed consort
and a derivative of the Goddess. Some, on the contrary, depict him as a Spirit of Testosterone,
slavishly struggling for endless dominance, as a neurotic Holdfast. I don’t approve of either
approach.
It is really hard to write about God. But I wouldn’t like to search for the reasons why. I’d better
invoke his help and try to overcome the hardness.
As the Moon is the symbol of the Goddess in the world, the God’s manifestation in our physical
reality is the Sun. At first sight, the Sun doesn’t seem to undergo so much visible metamorphoses
as the Moon with her constantly changing phases, and for this reason many Wiccans who
worship the Triune Goddess tend to consider Her divine Partner in a monistic way. Such a
monistic God is usually referred to as the Horned God. But I think it is superficial to see the Sun
as something unchanging, if one takes into account the triumphant Sun of the Zenith and the
bleeding Sun of the Sunset. If your imagination works well, you may well picture the Black Sun
of the Nadir, which will be another step towards the understanding of the God Man.
However, there are Wiccans who represent God as triple, on a par with the Triune Goddess. His
three faces can vary: Son, Father and Old Man, Warrior, Sower and Sage or other triads. As with
the three faces of the Goddess, Wiccans are far from unanimous on this point. I think such an
approach is a bit artificial, because the hypostases of the Goddess are intrinsically bound to the
lunar month, while the transformations of the God are reflected in the solar year, where the
changing period analogous to the moon phase is length of day. The God is obviously changing
more faces than three: he is a Baby on Yule, a Child on Imbolk, a Youth on Ostara, a Young
Man on Beltane, he reaches his full manhood on Litha and starts growing old, until he becomes
the Divine Dead Man, in order to begin the cycle anew. So, he is better considered Eightfold
according to the number of the Sabbaths, than threefold.
And, finally, there is another way to describe God and his aspects – the binary, and I think it to
be the most accurate and fitting. I will speak about the God as duality in this chapter. God is both
God of Life and God of Death. In our ritual these aspects are personified by the Oak King, Lord
over the bright half of the year, and the Holly King – the Lord of the dark.
Thus, I see God as the Dual Lord of Life and Death. Together with the three faces of the
Goddess, his two faces add up to a pentagram, the main religious symbol in Wicca. This is only
one of the many meaning of the five-pointed star, but I love it the most. Before I go deeper into
each of God’s aspects, I should speak about him in general.
As I said, we risk to fall into any of the two extremities when we are dealing with a Wiccan God.
We may either describe him as utterly dependent on the Goddess in the spirit of radical
feminism, or, countering feminism, project unto him our notions of “masculinity”. I think neither
is right.
Of course, God totally depends on the Goddess and doesn’t exist without Her. She is His
Meaning and His Psyche. But the same can be said about Her: without God Goddess will not be
Goddess, and will be absolutely meaningless. They are equal in meaning, honor and dignity,
both for us, their children and for Themselves.
And, of course, God is manly – totally manly for He is the Manhood as such, the embodiment of
everything in the Cosmos that we perceive as masculine. But many forget that vulnerability and
generosity, the capacity for giving oneself up for greater good is the principle trait of manliness.
This looks very different from the eternal inflation, if not the erection of the masculine ego
which is the attribute of the Holdfast.
He is King and Royalty, the Warrior and the Belligerence, the Lover and the Love, but at the
same time the Wise Man and the Wisdom, the Hermit and the Asceticism, the Victim and the
Generosity. It all shows us an image of the Shaman God, who has seen the world from end to
end, and who is free to rise or fall as he wishes. With equal willingness does He sit on the throne
of Litha and lays down on the slaughter-stone of Lammas. He desires both the Bed of the
Goddess on Beltane and the Realm of the Dead on Samhain. He is the Wolf and the Hunter, He
is the Stag and the Prey, He is the staunch Oak, that no ax can bring down, and He is the
withered Thorn, willing to become food for the flames. He is the Sweetness of Fruit and the
Bitterness of Herbs, the Medicine and the Venom, the Moan of Passion and the Groan of Pain.
Being totally manly, He is naturally totally free. He is also free from our earthly notions of
manliness. As the Huntress Goddess Artemis has no scruples to wear man’s garments and take
up arms, the God on his shamanic mission is free to put on women’s dress and femininity itself,
as did Heracles at Omphala’s, becoming the Youth-Maiden, the true Fertility God – the Mystical
Whole. And at the next moment he may turn to the Spirit of Battle, the Furious Ares, drinking
blood instead of wine, for this is also His freedom. But the ultimate act of His freedom is his act
of rejecting Freedom, as He lets go of both Desire and Pain, giving himself up and bowing His
head under the Priestess’ Sickle, no more the Lustful Ram, but the Humble Lamb. Thus He
completes the crucial mystery of his fate – the sacrifice of Himself to Himself, for only this way
can God of Life become God of Death, and it is only He who knows both Life and Death that is
truly God.
Of the God of Life
The God of Life is first of all a God Alive. He is the triumph of the body and manifestation, the
triumph of feeling and striving. He is the Hunger of the Hunter, for it is through Hunger that the
Hunter prolongs his life. He is the Flight of the Prey for it is through Flight that the Prey
prolongs his. He is the Sower and the Fertilizer. He is the energy that brings Matter into motion.
He is the Initiator, the Impetus, the Impulse.
If we return to the image of Shaman God, God of Life is the shaman of the sacred Dance, the
blessed Nataraja, the furious Dervish, the spinning Sufi. It is His swirling dance that makes the
stars and planets swirl.
A Wiccan God of Life is most often represented as a Horned One, crowned with stag’s horns.
This crown is both his Hunter’s trophy and His own defense, the badge of virility, the essential
symbol of his expansion. He is the Sun of the Zenith, the triumphal moment of Light and Life.
We draw the warmth of our bodies from Him. The storm of our feelings come from Him.
And from Him we accept the Prophetic Ecstasy, the Revelation we win in an epileptic fit of
Happiness.
God of Life is symbolized in Wicca by stag’s horns, the oak and a wreath of oak’s leaves, with
which He is crowned as the Lord of the World. His ritual tool is the magic Wand, an obviously
phallic form which emits and directs energy.
Of the God of Death
The God of Death is a Dead God. When on Lammas the king is laid on the altar to give all his
energy and power, as the land itself gives up her harvest, He dies and arises as the Lord of the
Departed.
If God of Life is King of this world, God of Death is the Lord of shadows. He is the Sun that
Sets, the Sun in its nadir. God of Death is the ultimate Wisdom and the deepest Mystery, for only
having died, one can know all that is there to know.
God of Death is the Comforter of the dead, for if they know that not even God escapes death,
their own lot doesn’t seem that grievous. And at the same time He is the Hope of the dead, for
He reveals to them the mystery of the new birth. In this sense He is the Seed, buried in the soil
and promising fruit.
He is the cataleptic Shaman, the meditating Hermit, for isn’t death the greatest asceticism and the
deepest meditation? He is the Truth that is disclosed in silence and immobility. And when there
are no more secrets, even in the Dark of the Other Place, the God of Death draws the full circle
and is born again as the God of Life.
In Wicca His symbols are an animal or human scull, His ritual attribute I consider to be the
athame, the dagger, similar to the wand in function, but with more piercing and darker qualities.
Of the Great Dragon
As I see the fourth shadow aspect in the Triune Goddess, I see the same in the God: the Dual
God has a third, destructive aspect.
I visualize him as the Great Dragon, the Ancient Serpent, embodying Chaos and Entropy. All the
destructive and the dreadful, the hostile and the harmful hidden in our God I see in the image of
a Basilisk, whose breath kills all that breaths. It is the infernal reptile, the most archaic and cruel
part of our being, which is sometimes referred to as the “reptile brain”. The Dragon is God’s
Shadow the God is doomed to fight – the struggle reflected in many mythologies as the combat
of the Hero with the Serpent.
The Dragon is destruction for the sake of destruction, the endless will to dominance and power,
the inflation of ego, a voracious and insatiable monster which must, in the end, remain alone,
because it has devoured everything around itself.
And He is the notorious Tempter, for the Dragon is cunning and treacherous, and part of his
willing to remain the only one is the willing to turn the other into itself, for which purpose He
does, like a master Harper, plays on our feelings and weaknesses, blowing up in the other the
same unquenchable Thirst that eats Himself from within.
However, as in the case of the Dark Mother, the Dragon is not evil. Being a Shadow, He is the
source of God’s power, one of the aspects of His Greatness. And it is one of the mysteries learnt
by the God in the Realm of the Dead is that the Hero will try to kill the Dragon in vain – for it is
the Dragon he is doomed to become through His victory.
It is much wiser to assimilate the Dragon into the Self.
Chapter III. Of the many gods and their common godhood
3. I believe in kindreds of gods, goddesses and spirits, who are equally faces of the Divine, faces
of the universe and faces of humans.
I suppose, my potential opponents in the theological field (who are most certain to appear) have
good chances of criticizing me. Having postulated once the paradox of the Divine I mention it
over and over again. Without it all my constructions, which the opponents will be right to notice,
go down as a house of cards. And should they demand of me to draw a distinction between the
flies and the meat, I would only shrug my shoulders and mumble in answer that at the end of the
day – on some deep, deep level – the flies are of course consubstantial with the meat. How else
can we account for the their intrinsic mutual attraction?
Unfortunately, I can offer no more. So once again I’ll have to tell you that all that is red is also
green and the celestial dome is probably made of brass.
The Two or the Many?
Wicca has always faced an implicit conflict between duotheism and polytheism. Lately, it tends
to surface more and more explicitly. There are hardly Wiccans who didn’t have to solve the
problem for themselves on their spiritual way and often at its very start.
We worship the Great God and the Great Goddess, but what do we do with the multitude of god,
goddesses and various spirits known to us from world mythologies? I never met a Wiccan who
would say they don’t exist, but then what is their relation to the Divine Couple?
The solution most often used is formulated in the aphorism, if I’m not mistaken, by Dion
Fortune: “All gods are one God, all goddesses are one Goddess”. In other words, all the crowd of
deities are the different names, hypostases, masks or avatars (whatever term you prefer) of the
primordial God and Goddess. I define this as “duotheist choice”.
The alternative view is the “polytheist choice” that all the gods and goddesses of the peoples of
the world exist as independent personalities, that can’t be reduced to the fundamental two or to
each other. Here the fundamental couple becomes some abstract metaphor in the spirit of
henotheism: every god and every goddess can be substituted for the Wiccan God and Goddess
for every individual practitioner. As far as I know, such an approach, initially less widespread, is
now rapidly gaining in popularity.
And, finally, following simple logic, we can imagine the third approach – the “hierarchical
choice”, where God and Goddess exist, and the rest of deities are their children or creations, or
somehow proceed from them, retaining their peculiar personalities. I never met the Wiccan
followers of such a choice. Maybe, it shouldn’t be set aside as separate at all, being one of the
variants of the “polytheist choice”.
If we look at Modern Paganism at large, abstracting ourselves from Wicca, we can see a
different problem. Most neo-Pagan religions are polytheistic, with various views on their gods
and goddesses. I will expound on five of such views.
The first one is the “orthodox” one, stating that gods and goddesses are powerful beings,
standing above humans in “cosmic hierarchy”, who have, perhaps, at one point in time, created
humans and the rest of the world. Humans are somehow dependent on gods.
The second view can be marked as “egregorial”, and is popular mostly in groups influenced by
occultism, which undermines its status as strictly “Pagan”, though it is dialectically bound to the
previous one. Gods are powerful entities, who were born by collective faith of large human
groups. Each individual is still dependent on the egregore gods, if he or she didn’t manage to
overcome this dependence by developing extraordinary occult power, but the egregore itself is
dependent on humans’ faith and without it can’t exist. This approach is usually considered
insulting by the proponents of the “orthodox” school, while for the “egregorials” the “orthodox”
practitioners are simply ignorant and totally under the spell of their respective egregores.
The third view can be termed “archetypalist”, where gods are fundamental images in our
collective unconscious. The archetypes can be variously seen, both in a positivist and
psychological hue, which begets a non-theistic religion, or in a more mystical vein which lean
towards any of the views cited above. The question is how “fundamental” are these archetypes,
and are we more dependent on them, or they on us? The answer to this question is what defines
the rational or the mystical approach to the problem.
The fourth approach is “personificationist”, claiming that gods are personified natural
phenomena, elements of landscape or global processes of all sorts, that we meet in our
experience. As with the preceding view, this one allows for two variants: the rational and atheist,
where personification equals metaphor, poetic image or rational concept, and the mystical, where
personification actually means ensoulment, embodiment, incarnation and endowing with
conscience. The rational variant is widespread in popular scholarly literature, dedicated to old
pagan religions of the past, while the mystical variant is often adopted by modern Pagans, ho
draw inspiration from this sort of literature and attempt to give the religious body and soul to the
rational secular theory.
And, lastly, the fifth possible view, which I call “genetic”, says that gods are in some way
humanity’s ancestors, more often ancestors of a certain people. This approach, as far as I can
judge, is popular among modern Russian Rodnovers, the Slavic Pagans. There may be many
ways the gods are portrayed as ancestors. It can be in a quite literal way (then we may have a
euhemeristic approach, claiming that gods are deified ancient leaders), or in a more metaphorical
manner, which brings them closer to any of the other four views.
It is obvious that all the five views may not be mutually exclusive. Each individual practitioner
can merge elements of different views, as, for instance, the first and the fourth, the first and the
fifth, the fourth and the fifth, the second and the third, and so on. It is also obvious that the five
views don’t cover all the spectrum of possible relations with the divine: I don’t touch upon
animism or the option of a direct, non-personified worship of natural phenomena, among others.
Because the problem that bothers me here is how we perceive gods with their own names,
attributes, rituals and myths in Wicca.
But this is all analysis. Shouldn’t we move to synthesis next? It would be arrogant of me to
propose a more “correct” attitude to the gods, so I will simply dwell upon my own solution of the
problem.
All is All
Here I have to go back to the system of the Star of the first and the second chapters of the book.
If I see the Divine One at the center of the Star, God and Goddess as maximally close to it, and
human individuals as maximally distant from the center, then all the multitude of gods,
goddesses and spirits will be somewhere in between. In other words, gods are not as absolute as
the One and not as close to the absolute as God and Goddess, but not as concrete as individual
people. They are personalities, and as such have their boundaries and can’t be reduced to a bunch
of principles, but at the same time they are not fixed to any point in space as the mortals are, and
not bound by physical limitations. Time exists for them – they may be born and die – but it is a
different sort of time than the one we know. Their time is time of myth, that is never and always.
Their space is the sacred topos, nowhere and everywhere. And, as any element of the Star, they
are always intrinsically bound to all other elements. Not being limited by the physical world,
they feel this connection much more stronger than we, the embodied, can imagine.
In my creed I write that gods are equally faces of the Divine, faces of the universe and faces of
humans. Taking into account the five views I mentioned earlier, one can say that gods are
simultaneously individual divine beings, independent of humans, personifications of phenomena
and archetypes.
Who is Zeus? He is a bearded man in a chiton, king of Gods, son of Kronos and Rhea, who sits
on mount Olympus and throws thunderbolts down. At the same time Zeus is the thunderbolt, the
lightning. He is each and every lightning that flashed across the skies anywhere, flashes now or
will ever flash. Besides, Zeus is the image of King and Father in my head, and even I myself at
the moments when I most act as sovereign or parent. Zeus is god, Zeus is lightning, Zeus is me.
And, of course, you, the reader.
This seems to be irreconcilable. Well, I warned you that all that is red is green.
He is god
The Divine One as principle is contained in all and is immanent to all. The blessedness of the
gods is that they are completely aware of their divinity, which makes them so great and ineffable
in our eyes. We are almost incapable of imagining what it is to be a god – to be aware of oneself
as self and all at the same time. It is an irreconcilable contradiction for our minds, but a
fundamental truth for them. That is why we pray to them, not they to us. But it can’t be said they
don’t need us at all: being too close to the Source it is all to easy to slip down into it and be
dissolved, losing self-consciousness. By addressing them and calling on their names we help
them to retain their personalities. The relations between humans and gods is mutually profitable
for both sides: they link us to the One, we link them to the concrete, and together we help the
Star of All to shine, staying as it should be.
The meeting of gods and humans is ritual. It happens on the border of our world and theirs,
between the concrete and the absolute, between the physical and the metaphysical. They descend
to us, we ascend to them. The Wiccan ritual circle is just such a place without place, time
without time, the border of being and other being, where humans and gods are equally
comfortable. The main aim of any ritual is to reestablish the agreement settled down between us:
we all keep the universe on our backs, we do it here, they do it there. The means to renew the
treaty is ritual meal, the communion, when we share our bread and wine with the gods, accepting
through it a particle of their divinity, while they accept a particle of our corporality.
At the beginning of the chapter I asked how the multitude of gods we know is related to the
primordial God and Goddess. The answer is evident and, of course, it is a paradox: it doesn’t
relate at all and their relation is intrinsic. Every god is an independent entity with his or her own
place in the universe, and at the same time every god is the God and every goddess is the
Goddess. Alas, I can’t use here any of the useful terms, like “duotheism”, “polytheism” or
“henotheism”, and, of course, that of “hierarchy” – that would have been an oversimplification.
Every one of the divinities is “by him/herself” and at the same time every one is “a face of the
Divine”.
Besides oversimplifications there are just simplifications. In order to imagine the relations
between each of the gods and the God and each of the goddesses and the Goddess, we may turn
to the Wiccan ritual of Drawing Down the Moon or the Sun. When drawing down the Moon,
Goddess Herself descends into the body of the Priestess, and for a time the Priestess becomes the
Goddess. All the participants of the ritual treat and address her as Goddess. But if a mortal
woman, even a priestess, is incapable of containing such a greatness in herself, and this is limited
by the bounds of ritual, any goddess is always in some way in a state of a “drawn down Moon”,
always containing the Goddess. So, if during the ritual we can address the priestess as the
Goddess, we have full right to address as such Inanna or Demeter. Of course, it is a
simplification, but I think, it keeps a kernel of truth.
He is the lightning
Of course, gods don’t have bodies in the sense we do. But if we project our notion of corporality
unto them, we’ll find that their bodies are the aspects of the world they are associated with. This
idea is not as simple as it seems. It is easy to imagine the field of barley as the body of Demeter.
But what will Aphrodite’s body look like? Evidently, it will be “love”, however abstract or
“incorporate” this may sound.
But here, once again, we are faced with the narrow human perception. It may be easy to imagine
that the barley field is the body of Demeter, but more difficult to perceive the field as Demeter
herself – both this field, and the field to come, and all field that there were, are and will be, even
if there’s a forest, a city, or the bottom of the sea now. As I said, time and space are drastically
different for the gods. That’s why any god can be prayed to anywhere at any time, for anyway,
he or she will be present everywhere at all times. Having once seen the lightning, you will never
part with Zeus, for you have known what lightning is. Having once met another’s death, you will
always be in company of Hades, for now you know death. But if you have the opportunity, of
course, it is best to address gods where they are present right now – pray to Poseidon at the
seashore and to Freyr in the sunshine. It is not because otherwise god won’t hear you – he will –
but because it will be easier for you to hear him answer.
The question that arises is the association of gods. If both Thor and Perun are lightning, can we
say that Thor and Perun are the same god? And can we thus “reconstruct” a sort of universal
pantheon?
You probably know my answer – yes and no. Of course, Thor and Perun are the same god and of
course, they are absolutely different gods. One person’s perception is very different from another
one’s – where one sees Thor in the lightning, another sees Perun there. It is equally true, that the
two will see two different Thors, very distinct and, maybe, having little in common. Yet, all this
will be the same lightning.
At the same time, the Divine One equally immanent to all, connects the Star into a monolith,
where everything becomes everything else. It is easy to equate Zeus, Thor and Perun, but what if
I said that Zeus is Hera and Hera – Zeus? That the twins Apollo and Artemis are one and the
same? That Persephone, ravished by Hades, was ravished by herself? And that her mother
Demeter, searching and grieving for her daughter, was searching and grieving for herself?
We are locked in our physical bodies and most of the time we comprehend our boundaries. But
the gods don’t have any. As masses of air in different rooms they are both discreet and one, for
their Divinity comes from one source.
He is me
And, naturally, being present everywhere the gods are in us. All of them in all of us. Every one
of us is in equal measure a body of the god as the lightning, the field or the sea. More than that,
our personalities are gods’ personalities, for they draw their personhood from us. We may
address the sea, but it is only through us that the sea can recognize our call and answer to it,
though common divinity inhabits the sea and us.
When we speak about the connection between humans and gods, we should recall myths. A myth
is not a story of thing that happened some time, and it is not a fiction ungrounded in reality. The
story of any myth is real and it is happening now, as it will always be happening.
Every time a man cheats on his wife, Zeus is cheating on Hera, and when a wife is unfaithful to
her husband, Aphrodite is playing Hephaistos false. Every time a scientist makes a discovery,
that benefits people, Prometheus is bringing his fire. Every con-man is Loki, every mother – Isis,
every lover – Ishtar. Myth is the fundamental law of the universe, nothing can happen apart from
myth, and as soon as it does – a new myth is born.
Each event of our life is part of myth, and we are its heroes. Each one of us in our lives was
many gods, and will be many. At first sight, it all looks deterministic, but we always have the
freedom to choose our myths. Of course, to realize that freedom, we must know the existing
alternatives and be aware of what is really going on.
All this is another reason why we should honor gods – they are the pure forms of what we may
aspire to.
They are our way from the Star’s point to the center.
Chapter IV: Of the True Faith, or of Co-creation
4. I believe in Faith which is a creative and dynamic force of the Divine.
Having finished, for now, speaking about gods, the Gods and the Divine, I should proceed from
the center of the Star to its points, and start speaking about humans, because the humans are no
less important for the All than gods. This chapter, however, is not so much about people, but
about what stands between them and the Divine in all its manifestations.
I would like to speak of Faith. When I started to write this book, I realized that this discourse will
be the least Wiccan, or, perhaps, the least Pagan of all. We meet an elaborate ontology of faith in
Christian theologians, but not among pagan writers, either ancient or modern. We may even
surmise that the very concept of faith as something consistent is a Christian construct.
Nevertheless, I think I have a word to say about faith from a Wiccan standpoint.
Perhaps, the article of my creed, stating that I believe in faith may seem somewhat redundant to
my readers. But I wrote what I feel: faith for me, faith as it is features as an object of religious
feeling no less than the Divine itself, and think it is the fundamental manifestation of the Divine
in the human world. I consider, first of all, religious belief to be not just an unthinking adoption
of some ideas or proofs (as it is too often portrayed), but a great force which enables us to create
the universe together with the Divine. And not a single universe, but many.
Of Faith
I touched upon the form-giving and co-creative power of faith in the previous chapter. I think
gods are what we believe them to be, because we believe them to be so. Indeed, there is no
reason for Earth to appear as a woman, if not because those who she appears unto see her as
female. She doesn’t have to have a name for any other reason that someone has called her
Demeter. The same Sun shines over Greece and Japan, but it is Helios in Greece and Amaterasu
in Japan, because the Greeks endowed it with a personality and name of Helios, and the Japanese
– with those of Amaterasu.
The gods themselves change with changing human faith in them. A Shepherd god can become a
Wizard god, as it happened to Hermes, later surnamed Trismegistos. This may seem like a
downplaying of the gods and extolling humans, but this is not the case. I already said that the
gods exist in themselves as phenomena and principles – it is only their aspects available foe
human communication that are determined by our faith. At the same time faith itself, powerful to
change a god, is the gift of the Divine One to the human, and is the manifestation of the Divine
in human nature.
For faith as a divine manifestation there is no bounds of time and space. All I believe in have
always existed and have existed everywhere, even if I believed in it only yesterday. Faith
changes the past and creates the future, even if this future will never happen.
Faith is the metaphysical cement of the universe, which brings it together and unites it in a
whole. All metaphysical part of the universe, in fact, everything that is beyond the five senses is
Faith itself, no less real than the physical reality, for as we feel the latter with our five senses, we
likewise feel what we believe in, or, otherwise, where would faith come from? And if I trust my
eyes and ears, why shouldn’t I trust this sense of faith in me?
Nomos and Cosmos1
I argue that all myths are true. All myths are true at the same time, even where they seem to
contradict each other. It is especially true, where they contradict our modern everyday
1
Though I promised to make no reference in my book to the authors I draw inspiration from, in this case
it would be just and honest to mention that I adopted the concept of Nomoi from Herny Lion Oldy and
Andrei Valentinov, who name it “Semenov-Susser adaptation theory”.
experience. To deal with this contradiction I employ the concept of plural Nomoi within one
Cosmos.
I believe that satyrs and centaurs roamed the woods and glens of ancient Greece, and trolls
inhabited the fiords of ancient Scandinavia. I believe in the Irish sidhe and the Indian nagi. I
believe in them literally and as they were depicted in the myths of the corresponding peoples.
Where did they all go? Why those who were neighbors to the ancients are unavailable to us now
(or, at least, unavailable to most modern people)? The answer is simple: the ancient Greeks
inhabited a world slightly different from ours. The Scandinavians, the Irish and the Indians
likewise had each their own peculiar worlds.
Such local world is Nomos. Nomos is world of myth, created by collective faith of a group that
believe in roughly the same things. Nomos is absolutely real and material, totally given to the
senses, but only of those who belong to it and co-create it. If there were a time machine and a
modern person could travel to ancient Greece, he would still see no centaurs there, even if a local
pointed a finger at one, for the modern time-traveler would not belong to the Nomos of the
Greeks. But if our contemporary stayed there for a longer time and adopted the ways and spirit
of the aboriginals, he had the chance to be accepted by the others’ Nomos and to meet a centaur.
Nomos is the whole world of its inhabitants, nothing is there besides the Nomos for them. There
was Rome in the Nomos of the ancient Celts, but not Australia. However, different Nomoi may
overlap: the ancient Greeks’ world included Egypt, but the Egyptians also had their own Nomos.
Egypt of the Greeks and Egypt of the Egyptians were two different Egypts, that for some time
existed side by side. The totality of the Nomoi forms the Cosmos – the universe as a whole.
Moving between Nomoi is possible, but is not easier than moving between planets, though it
rather requires spiritual resources than physical effort.
Apparently, the Nomoi can arise and fall. Almost none of the ancient Nomoi is now intact, and
we are living in a completely different world – in different worlds, to be exact. In our Nomoi we
have Australia and even the galaxy Andromeda, but, alas, not the centaurs and the unicorns. But
I really believe we could have them, should we believe in them. Every Nomos is a child of faith
and myth of its inhabitant. Thus, our faith creates our world. With admiration and awe I see our
own Wiccan Nomos rising, where fairies are already the denizens. They are not the fairies of the
old Ireland, but what, at bottom, does it matter?
Of the True Faith
In context of all that is said, we come to the question of the true Faith. Is any faith true, and is
there room for delusion? I think, not any, and I think, there is.
The problem here is that a person can very easily be misguided about his or her own Faith. He or
She may think they believe in something, and not actually believe in it, of believe in something
very different instead. We can pray to something and never hear the answer – just because we
believe neither in our prayer, nor in those we pray to, and that means, none of that really exist for
us.
Mostly we owe our misconceptions concerning our faith to the society. When a multitude of
people believe something, which you do not, it tempts you to determine yourself into believing
the same. This is the false way that leads nowhere. You can’t change your faith, for as any
manifestation of the Divine, it is not subject to your act of will or your desires. It is either there,
or not. And it is always as it is, not another one. It can change with time, but never by violent
acts.
I don’t define true faith as faith in something that exists “in reality”. Everything exists in reality.
It is what you truly believe in that is your true faith. In other words, I understand true faith much
as Crowley understood the True Will: it is something immanent to your nature, and yours only,
which should not in any way conform to the laws of society or its moral and other norms. Any
faith is true on condition that it is truly yours.
Thus, I think the most important, and, maybe, the most urgent tasks of any spiritual work to find
your own True Faith. Everyone must rid their souls of all that was brought in, insinuated and
insisted on by society or any other agent, to reveal in oneself something which one really,
sincerely believes in. his Faith shall be the world and the way unto him and her to walk to the
Divine, in whatever guise it may present itself to their Faith.
They who know not their True Faith – know nothing. They, who came to know it – know All.
Chapter V. Of Magic as the Art of creating Truth
5. I believe in Magic as a certain expression of Faith.
Every chapter of this book is dedicated to a separate question, but the book in its totality is aimed
at representing a comprehensive view of Wicca as I understand it. I hope that each next chapter
will more fully unfold the meaning of the previous one, for such was the initial plan. In my creed
I wrote that I believe in Faith and in magic – as a certain expression of Faith. Now I’ll try to
explain what I meant here.
Whenever you start speaking about Wicca the topic of magic is bound to come up sooner or
later. Many cultures and religions turn to magic, but it is in Wicca that magic occupies such an
important part of the ritual that it is impossible to separate it from religion as such. Many Wiccan
don’t even try to, equating both. I hold a different opinion on this point, but I also can’t walk past
the topic of magic.
There are thousands of opinions what is magic and how it works – and if it works, how should it
be used. Some consider it to be a method of solving practical problems on a rather utilitarian if
not prosaic level. On the contrary, many poetically-minded occultists reserve the title of “true”
magic only to that which serves the “spiritual growth” of the magician, seeing the utilitarian
approach as the profane. I see both attitudes plausible. Let’s be honest: back then, when magic
first emerged, it appeared in order to get a fatter ox in the kill and cure toothache – that’s what
magic has been used for ever since. Anyway, who said solving the problems of everyday can’t
contribute to the spiritual growth?
When we come to the question of how it works, for reasons unknown to me, people tend to
address natural science. A century or two ago “magnetism” was on top of the day, then
“bioenergetics”, and now quantum physics. The magical actions are often violently pigeon-holed
into scientific principles by the proponents of such attitude. Of course, these explanations rarely
have anything to do with sound science.
However, such rationalization can be accounted for and tolerated. On my part, being raised in the
humanities, I don’t find it interesting to explain or deconstruct magic scientifically. I see it as
another aspect of human spirit and culture, which is best described by the methods of culture
studies. Should I revert to such descriptions in a book on Wiccan religion, being an insider, is a
different question. But, nevertheless, if the following couple of pages will hold any reference to
the lore of established disciplines, these will be philosophy and literature. I wonder, how
interested the reader will be in such an approach.
Magic as co-creation
In the previous chapter I said that our world as we feel it and live it is the product of our faith,
and this means that every person is a rightful co-creator of the universe. But most people go
through life with their gift of this everyday creativity unnoticed – they in no way control their
process of faith. There’s nothing bad or shameful in this, for believing is as natural for people as
breathing. We don’t have to control our breath to stay alive and get enough oxygen.
But it doesn’t mean the process can’t be controlled. If we run or work out, if we sing or play
wind instruments controlled breath can be useful or even necessary, and the skill one can
develop.
The analogy should be clear: if we learn to believe in a certain way, such a controlled faith will
be magic. If you are a co-creator of this world on a par with others, why not be more mindful
about it and, even it might sound a bit haughty, more professional about it?
There is nothing wrong with making the world more comfortable for yourself or anyone else
through co-creation, a world with more fat bulls and no toothache, if you can. Of course, this is
where responsibility comes into play, as we deal here with the law of cause and effect in all its
intricacies. But any activity involves this law, has consequences and demands being responsible,
so magic and the work of faith is nothing different.
So if you can do something, if you understand where it will get you and is ready to pay for your
actions, there can be only one advice – do. Believe.
Ritual as Art, Magic as Nature
It is certainly easy to say “Believe”. If you’ve got an aching tooth, how are you supposed to
believe that this is not so or will soon be not so – to believe in earnest, for only thus can you
bring about the change. How can one harness the natural process of faith in one’s world and its
properties, taking it into control at least for a while?
This is what magical ritual is for – any symbolic action which seems unconnected to the object
of influence, at least in the direct way, but which is nevertheless used by the practitioners to
reach heir goals. How does it work? I see it this way.
As often as we hear the definition of magic as “science” we hear it defined as “art”. Often those
who say so mean the difficulties in mastering the subject and its being reserved for the
“talented”, but the proper connection between magic and art stays obscure, while it deserves
elucidation.
Art is among other things a way to make believe. In the narrow sense it is aimed at making
believe the artist’s audience, in the broad sense, to make believe Universe as a whole. Art is a
way to describe and representation of reality, any reality, even totally wrought by the artist’s
fantasy It is still represented, in art, as a living and palpable reality, maybe, even more real than
that of the everyday. Art makes as feel rain when the sun shines, make us love or hate a person
who never existed. In short – it is a way to make lies into truth.
The ability to make truth, even if it means that the sun goes up in the west and sets in the east, is
what makes art distinct from other spheres of human activity. This is where it is intricately
connected with magic. Both actually sprung from the same root.
Magical ritual is art. All the physical tools of the ritual, the props of magical work are no more
than artistic tropes: in love rituals, for instance, a red candle will be an allegory and sugar – a
metaphor. Using hair or a picture to influence a person is a metonymy. Working with ache or
illness inn healing rituals, a magician uses personification to represent the illness as an animate
being, or metaphorically calling it a worm. The structure of a magical ritual has its plot, its own
rhythm and composition. The ritual itself is a piece of art, where the magician is both an artist, a
performer and audience. The audience, however, must always also include the Universe.
As in any piece of art, all artistic means serve one goal – to lift the barrier of everyday mentality
and make believe, persuade. Persuasion is first of all performed on oneself, but through oneself
as part of the whole – on all that is, all of universe.
And if the goal is attained, belief in universe will change the universe and all that is said and
done in a ritual will become truth – which means, it has always been truth, for when it is the
whole of universe we work with (which is the only way to work, since all is connected to all and
the enchanted bulls and healed teeth are parts of the whole on a par with you), time or space
don’t really matter.
So magic, as any art, is a way to speak truth in the sense that what is said becomes truth at the
end of the day. It is an art of creating truth.
If we go back to magic as a kind of spiritual work, we can see the higher purpose of the
enchanted bulls and the charmed teeth – if working with them you learn to become not just one
of the co-creators but an artist, a demiurge, a poet and composer of the Universe, then the game
is definitely worth the candle.
And we remember that the candles are simply metaphors.
Chapter VI. Of the Spinning Wheel, or of Eternity
6. I believe in the Wheel Circle as a form of movement of the Universe and spirit within it.
When I just started getting familiar with Wiccan lore and its mythological and ritual structures,
what surprised me most was an absence of any articulate creation myth. There was no “darkness
over the face of the deep” or the abyss of the salty waters from where there came someone. Of
course, there were mythological narratives, but they clearly had authors and were rather
expressions of personal creativity than properly myths. One has to recall Starhawk’s creation
story, for instance. None of these was widespread enough, and which is more – none had any
correlation in ritual. Myth without ritual is much less than itself.
As a complex of ideas and concepts, Wicca doesn’t seem to be interested in the question of “how
the world began?” Where there is no problem of the beginning, there is likewise, no problem of
the ending. The gods just are, the humans just are, the world just is – and that is enough. I
consider my first achievement in studying Wicca as my own faith the acceptance that there is no
beginning.
We are a Circle Within a Circle
This is the starting point of Wiccan concept of time. Time does exist, and it is moving forward –
after Beltane Litha is bound to come, then Lammas, and so on. At the same time, there is no time
at all: Beltane will be inescapably followed by yet another – the same! – Beltane, then another
one, and so on. There will never be a moment when the new Beltane will not come – it will be
either somewhere ahead in time, or in the past. Naturally, the same pertains to any other Sabbath.
Wicca it totally cyclical. The only way time can move here is in circles, which means that it
boths moves and stands still.
In essence, this great endless Cycle, which is allegorically reflected in the spikes of the Wheel of
Year, is nothing else than another way to portray Eternity, the idea which most religious systems
employ. However, the Karl Jaspers’ “post-axial” religions or “religions of salvation” tend to
represent Eternity as an endless straight line, ungraspable by human mind, which makes Eternity
without beginning or end the privilege of the divine transcendent power. This power has to act in
time: it creates or destroys the world, cutting Eternity in a section with two time limits.
Wicca suggests another way of understanding Eternity, which is perfectly available to human
mind: it is not the eternity of a straight line, but of a circle. Such eternity is immanent to both the
gods and humans, the only difference being the circumference which the two cover: for you can
draw a smaller circle inside a larger one – and vice versa.
In the traditions of “salvation” there is a tendency to treat such circular structures negatively as
fatal and perilous spiritual traps, from which one has to “escape”, to “break the negative cycle”
and the like. But where should the runaway go? It is apparently to the endless existence on a
straight line or a half-line, having its beginning, but doomed forever to continue into nowhere. At
heart, it is the same eternity, but to my taste, much less dynamic and much more “fatal” than
going around in circles.
Besides, cyclical time is in my opinion Wicca’s most archaic and most “Pagan” component. One
has to recall Aristotle, who questioned whether he lived after or before the Trojan war.We
likewise can’t say, are we living before or after Beltane. Circular movement, past the moments
of creation or destruction, when both creation and destruction happen together and always, is the
view Wicca adopted from old pagan cultures, and, in my opinion, did it much more elegantly and
naturally than any other tradition which tried to do the same.
We are a Circle within a Circle – this is our wisdom and our eternity. With no beginning and
never ending.
Of the Nature of the Spinning
In light of all that is said above, we may come to the conclusion that any point of the circle is
essentially the same as any other. In some sense, this is so, for the Wheel is whole and total, and
every point or day, being an element of Eternity is equal in dignity to any other.
But here we face the limitations of our perception as embodied species. We can’t grasp the
Eternity, even having in part symbolically captured it as a circle. Our cognition which
presupposes either moving from the abstract to the concrete or from the concrete to the abstract,
requires dynamics of an ascent or a descend. So the Gods in their infinite wisdom created our
world and shaped our empirical experience here to be a living metaphor that can guide us to the
way we could best enliven this ineffable and unattainable image. We must spin the Wheel.
Turning the Wheel is the blueprint, the algorithm, the narrative that enables us to start knowing
the cycle. We only start to know it, for it is a long way before we can really know such a great
thing. Following the turning of the Wheel, we are attuning ourselves to the universe, to God and
Goddess and the One.
Our festivals, the Sabbaths, are not just memorable dates of some events in the past. The
marriage of Gods at Beltane didn’t happen in the past – it is happening right now and it is
happening everlastingly. They are not events in themselves. Solstices and Equinoxes are rather
projections of the transcendent onto the immanent, and vice versa, but the very situation of the
Sun in the sky vis a vis the Earth in its yearly progress mostly has a symbolical and
iconographical meaning. Sabbaths are the spikes of the Wheel or a designated point on the
circumference of the Circle, being an element of Eternity available to our understanding. We still
have to celebrate it once and again because it is still something that has no beginning and no
ending. Moving from point to point on the Wheel we get the possibility to accept in a more
mindful way our progress on a larger wheel – the wheel of our life, which being passed, our
immortal part will set on another, a yet bigger circular journey. From spike to spike and from
wheel to wheel we continue our eternal striving towards the center of the Star I wrote about in
the first chapter. It is hard to portray this progress visually, but I think it resembles the
converging spiral. Spiral being an ancient and venerable symbol widespread among Wiccans
(think of Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance”, for one), I think introducing it here would only make
things more complex. I wouldn’t like to superimpose the two schemes of movement – from the
periphery to the center and from one point of the circumference to another. Suffice it to say I
consider both to be an endless journey.
Of the Spikes of the Wheel
As I started to speak of the points on the circumference of the circle, representing elements of the
Eternal and the Divine partly available to our conscious, I should dwell on each of the points,
each of the Sabbaths I particular. But that could well be the topic of another book. The meaning
of each Sabbath, its symbolism, its content and its lessons are too profound to be treated in
passing.
Besides, it is not that easy to write about any of the Sabbaths, standing in a different point in
time. At this present moment in time, for instance, I’m inspired to write about the coming
Sabbath, which is Lammas, but I don’t feel the breath of Yule – so I would be much more likely
to write better about Lammas than Yule, which wouldn’t contribute to the book.
So I decided I will focus on the general process of moving along the Wheel and not on the
stations of this movement.
The Wiccan liturgical year is a ritual embodiment of our central myth, our monomyth of the
general and many-faceted love between God and Goddess and their love twards us, their
children, their reflections and their incarnations. God and Goddess, the two hypostases of the
ineffable Unity are inseparably bound together and it is in each other that they find their life,
their progress and their actualization. The Wiccan myth tells us about their changing aspects and
faces in the form we can understand and associate with.
It is important to understand that what is described in the myth are not event which happened at
some point in time, they are what is unfolding right now before our eyes. They are all happening
at the same time, at the present moment, but at any of the Sabbaths a certain event of this
metahistory is considered as more relevant to us, who dwell in time.
Each Sabbath has a deep and versatile meaning. There are both a triumph and a tragedy in each
of them, if we apply our own criteria to them. None is better or worse than any other, and none is
more important than others – they are all equal in dignity.
Through God our Goddess first becomes Mother, then – a Bride and a Beloved, then a Wife and
a Lady, and at last – the Dread Priestess and Fate, who cuts the thread of her victim’s life.
Through Goddess our God is born, grows up and dies to live as a God of Death and to be reborn
as a god of Life.
These metamorphoses are followed by nature as a visible icon of the divine being, in its cycles of
flourishing and decay. Which is most important for us, we follow the same cycles. Every
Sabbaths is a stage of the year and at the same time – a stage of our life. We are all Mother and
Child of Yule, Bride and Groom of Beltane, Priestess and Victim of Lammas. Year after year,
living through the history of God and Goddess we also live through our own history growing in
awareness of our unity with gods. We all have our own Beltane and out own Samhain.
This is the true purpose of celebrating Sabbaths – to feel our community with the Divine, to
know our common nature.
To attain this we must go through the cycle of the Year.
To go through it, we must live through a life.
And then start again.
Chapter VII: Freedom, Love and Wisdom, or Concerning Wiccan Ethics
7. I believe in Love, Freedom and Wisdom as the sole values of life.
I must confess I feel uneasy about writing this chapter. It is all right to write about hypostases
and emanations, but much more troublesome to deal with good and evil, and there is much more
at stake. At the same time, it is much more important. Ethics is the sine qua non of life. Do I
really need to know why heavens go round? It is much more important to know what shall I do
under this heaven. Of course, the former rules the latter, but to us the end-users, so to speak, it is
the latter that really matters. So this cup shall not pass me by. It’s time to speak of Wiccan ethics.
I will be honest, this chapter is also very pleasant to write. Perhaps, I feel like a mathematician
who works on a problem that tests the boundaries of his knowledge or an engineer who gets the
opportunity to tackle a device invented by a genius. I don’t know any sphere of the humanities
more difficult than ethical philosophy, which makes it so thrilling to engage with.
So I feel both uneasy and thrilled. Rudolf Otto showed the ambivalence of mysterium tremendum
and mysterium fascinans, and as we are talking about religious ethics mysterium is the right
word.
Of the Advice and the Advisors
Given the complexity of the topic, it is quite clear what should be the starting point of a treatise
on Wiccan ethics. It is the Wiccan Rede, the word translated as “council”, “advice”, or
sometimes, even “creed”: An it harm none, do as ye will.
The first thing that comes into play in this respect is the fact that the Rede is an “advice”, a
recommendation, and not a commandment or a dogma. It is not a categorical imperative, and it
doesn’t tell us what must be done, but what would better be done, in the subjunctive mood. If we
turn to metaphors, the Rede is not the jurist but a teacher, not a judge but a boat with oars always
in your own hands. The Rede offers you a gift and it is up to you to accept it or not.
Besides, there is no authority in Wicca – and will never be as long as it stays Wicca – with power
to carry out the infallible verdict on whether you followed the Rede or not and what shall be your
penance. Of course, any Wiccan group can have their own interpretations of the Rede and limit
their membership to those who accept these interpretations. But at the end of the day it is you
who are your own shepherd, and the keys of your conscience will always be yours.
So I must spell out the evident: what will follow is my own interpretation of the Wiccan Rede.
The readers must decide for themselves whether to accept it or reject it.
Next I would like to look at the ways the Rede is explained. Or, rather, at one way to explain it
which I think to be totally wrong.
Many Wiccans are certain that the Rede is a negative prescription. There are Christian
commandments – “thou shalt not kill”, “thou shalt not steal” and so on, and there is a Wiccan
commandment – “harm none”. Sounds like Hippocrates’ oath, doesn’t it? Therefore the
discourse on Wiccan ethics turns into a discourse on “harm”: what should be considered harm
and what should not, is a binding spell harm or not, will you have the harm returned to you
threefold, or once, or not at all, and so on.
I see this maneuver as a fantastic and a totally unacceptable simplification. It is absolutely clear
to me that the Wiccan Rede is not a negative, but a positive statement: it is not “don’t do”, it is
“do”! Therefore, the speculation concerning the Rede should start with what should be done, not
what shouldn’t be done. The concept of harm recedes to the background, which is only fair,
because centuries of ethical philosophy and a plethora of works written about it, have made harm
quite easy to grasp – just remember the golden rule.
Believe me, despite the widespread opinion, it is much harder to “do what ye will” that “harm
none” and to answer the question “what ye will” will take ye much more time than to find out
how to “harm none”. This is the positive, but somewhat overlooked message of the Rede: it is
what you want that you ought to do. You must understand what you want in the first place and
perform the individuating act of “Ego sum” and then find out what does it mean to “will” And
this is not easy at all.
But only when you attain this you will be able to project your “I am and I will” onto the Other
and only thus you will be able to grasp the true meaning of “harm”: hindering the Other from
doing what you have done. It doesn’t mean associating the Other with yourself or imposing your
desires on the Other, but totally accepting the Other’s “I am” with all that follows.
This is what I see in the Wiccan Rede:
1. The imperative to know thyself and act according to what you have known (do as ye
will).
2. Allow the Other to know him- or herself and let the Other act according to this
knowledge (an it harm none).
No more no less. And as I see this imperative as positive and not negative, I think it right
speaking about Wiccan ethics to focus not on sins and vices but on virtues, not on what is bad
and shouldn’t be done, but on what is good and can be done.
I can point to three Wiccan virtues, and I put them in my Creed: these are Freedom, Love and
Wisdom. I think that you can follow the Wiccan Rede only if you have these three qualities.
These are the tenets of a “good Wiccan”. Symbolically they are associated with three faces of the
Goddess: Freedom with Maiden, Love with Mother and Wisdom with Crone, which brings a
theological dimension into Wiccan ethics. The Goddess teaches us a lesson in her three
hypostases and by accepting her gift we assimilate ourselves to her and thus commune with the
Divine.
As a slogan I could put it this way: “Be free as Goddess, love as Goddess and do it as wisely as
Goddess”. However, I see little purpose in slogans. It is more important to understand what it all
means.
Of Freedom
I place Freedom first among the virtues because I see it as the beginning of any spiritual
evolution. Most people tend to think about freedom as the right to do anything you want, but I
put another meaning into this word.
I think that Freedom is not about doing, it’s about being. Freedom is the right and possibility to
say “I am I and nothing else”. It is the right not to associate oneself with anything and not being
reduced to anything, the right to be subject of the action and not its object.
Any action, any movement, including the motion of spirit presupposes the performer, the actor
and gaining the momentum for movement and action in oneself is Freedom.
In other words, if you’re not free, you don’t exist. At all. It is unimportant what is there that
substitutes you, what is it you are associated with or reduced to, be it your family, your kin, your
god, your nation or anything other – you are not present and therefore there is no movement, no
development. By denying association with something external Freedom as well denies a
concretion with anything internal, as any of your emotions, feelings or ideas. To be free you have
to separate yourself from the external and the larger and the internal and the smaller.
Despite what is the usual way of speech one can’t get Freedom from anyone besides yourself. It
is by finding this self that you become free. The circumstances of your life play a secondary role
here – it is not easy, but a slave building pyramids or a concentration camp prisoner can become
free if they find their self and succeed in keeping their Inner Temple from invaders and
desecrators.
Having purified your Self from all that is not of the Self, you will find Freedom and it is only
then you may take the next step.
Of Love
I think this next step to be the second virtue which is Love. Regardless of the section on Freedom
I am far from preaching total egotism and atomized existence. It would be strange of me who
started the book by postulating the fundamental unity of All. It is simply that I suggest not
merging of its elements that would be their destruction, but their conjunction. Love is the way to
reach this conjunction.
In their madness many people consider Love a desire to have something or someone. Of course,
this is not so. Love is the second step of the spirit’s development, the continuation of the
movement: having attained yourself in yourself you attain to the Other in the Other. Having
understood yourself as equal to yourself you do the same for the someone else, without
associating them with anything or reducing them to something, either larger or smaller than
themselves, either the inner or the outer. And, of course, not trying to merge them in yourself or
merge yourself in them.
Love is the acknowledgement of the Other’s subjectivity, just as Freedom is acknowledgement
of one’s own subjectivity. To love means to understand somebody in all aspects of their Self and
accept their Self on their own terms, as a phenomenon equal to yourself. I think it self-evident,
you can’t do it without first finding yourself, that’s why I place Freedom first among virtues.
However, if you make the first step and then another, great prospects will open up in front of
you. The merging and mutual devouring of the two drops of water will give just another drop,
just bigger than before. But the conjunction of, say, the two atoms of hydrogen produce a
molecule which is the qualitative shift, a new step of development.
Love is such a conjunction of the two equal subjects, which gives birth to something completely
different, which other more destructive ways of union are unable to produce.
It is also important to understand that it is impossible to “squeeze” love out of oneself through an
effort. You mustn’t try to love someone on purpose, even those whom you think you are
“supposed” to love, as parents or kinsmen. If Freedom springs from within you, Love can only
come from without, that’s its meaning. You can only prepare yourself for it, open yourself up to
it and try to enable it to develop, but you can’t create it yourself. Know yourself then try to know
others, and sooner or later, if you did everything right, you will see another universe beside
yourself, no less great or beautiful than everything you knew before. This will be Love.
And it is the third virtue which will help you to do everything right.
Of Wisdom
If we imagine Freedom as the start of the progress, Love – as its continuation and vector, then
Wisdom is a destination of sorts. To attain Freedom means to understand and accept oneself, to
attain Love is to understand and accept the Other, to attain Wisdom to understand and accept All.
At the same time Wisdom is also the means to make the first two steps. This is its paradox that it
both provides for the progress and is its outcome. Perhaps it may be compared to a magnet: it is
the source of movement towards itself.
If Freedom springs from within, Love comes from outside, then Wisdom appears from nowhere
and from everywhere at once, it just turns out there. It is impossible to know Wisdom without
knowing Freedom and Love, but they are also unattainable if you are not striving towards
Wisdom.
One of the names for Wicca is “the Way of the Wise”. I agree with this moniker but see it not as
a boastful statement of fact, but as a goal: gaining Wisdom is what a Wiccan should aspire to.
Wisdom can’t be received from anyone or transmitted to someone else, it is born of what you
yourself have done and stems from how much you understand and became aware of what you
have done. Of course, people may be helped in the process and people may ask for help in it, but
such help will not be of more use than pointing a finger in some direction for the traveler: it is
still the traveler that will still have to make the whole way.
In the narrow sense Wisdom is the way of living without suffering or rather being impervious to
suffering. This required understanding how the world works and how you work, being an
element of this world in a net of mutually dependent causes and consequences. All this has to be
known and accepted, for there will always be what you can do and will to do and what is not in
your power to change, and you have to learn to live with that.
In the broad sense Wisdom is the mystical condition of being aware of the All, moving from the
periphery of the Star maximally close to its center, feeling of the Unity – the Unity in oneself and
the self in Unity. This condition should be the ultimate goal of all your spiritual practice because
it is impossible to imagine a goal more ambitious and therefore giving a bigger potential for your
development. To stop the progress means to die. To keep on the progress you have to keep
moving towards that one goal which is almost impossible to achieve.
I would like to know what should be done in order to keep on this progress and evolve in this
direction. But alas, I don’t know, and I suppose no one knows but you. All I can do is help by
pointing my finger the way I think is right.
I can give an advice:
An it harm none, do as ye will.
Chapter VIII. Of the Smallest of the Small and the Greatest of the Great,
or of Wiccan Anthropology
8. And I believe in myself as consubstantial to all I believe in.
Any person having anything to do with writing texts knows how hard it is to say the first word,
to start. Some will say that it is not easier to write the last word, the end. Now I am struggling
with a double task: to start the talk of the end.
This is the last chapter of my theological treatise. I started it with a discourse of the Divine One,
the greatest of the great encompassing all that is and all that is not and what could be, then
progressed towards God and Goddess, the ultimate images of the Divine available to the limited
minds, shared my views on the multitude of divine manifestations in their more concrete and
immanent state. Now I move on to the last of those who are – the smallest of the small, the point
that closes the Circle of the Universe – a living human.
Again of the Progress to the Center
I will start this chapter with the same system of the Star I began the first one. The infinitely-
pointed star is the metaphor which represents the Universe and everything beyond it. The center
of the Star is the Divine One, the source and the result of every being, the first seed and
everything which sprung from it. At the points of the Star I posit individual human beings who
lived, will live or are living now.
Spiritual life and spiritual work, communication and communion with the sacred is the infinite
movement from the point of the Star to its center. It is the movement from the most concrete –
“this person at this moment in time”, “me here and now” – to the more and more universal,
abstract and timeless. Every new image we meet on our way – a spirit, a god or Gods – are
something more large-scale and profound, until in a moment of final exaltation we attain the
possibility to touch That, which larger than can’t be conceived of.
But what should be know about the Star is that it is monolithic. Its each point, regardless of how
far it is distant from the center, is part of the whole, and in some way equal to any other point.
The absolute One is creating the universe incarnating itself in more and more concrete and local
form, because how else can it be incarnated if there is nothing but the One? Each of the forms,
regardless of how small it is in comparison with the One, is the same One.
The reverse is also true: a living person, the final concreteness, who starts to know itself in more
and more universal and abstract form, at first together with oneself before and after a certain
moment, then together with all other people, and then together with the whole universe, finds
deeper meaning within him- or herself and in some sense repeats the process of creation
backwards, from the concrete to the abstract.
In Chapter Four I touched upon the idea that each of us is god in some sense, and even all gods
together, because all of us contain universal images, the archetypes as which gods are manifest in
us. Each person can actualize at a certain moment one of the archetypes present within him- or
herself, and in some sense become “more” of a god, one of the gods. Having found and realized
these images, which is of course, a mission difficult but possible, one can move to the next level
and assimilate oneself to God and Goddess in full splendor, becoming their incarnated
manifestation – which ideally should happen with the Priestess in a ritual. Which is important to
stress here is the difference between “to become” and to “turn into”, let alone “replace”: it rather
means “represent”, “let into oneself”.
In essence, what needs to be done is for a moment overcome one’s concreteness and localness,
being mindful and acceptable of oneself as a manifestation of something more general, making a
step from one’s Self to the Higher Self. And then It will make a step in answer.
One in Four
Speaking of such complex matters as consubstantiality of human and the Divine I must again re-
state the evident paradoxality of my metaphysics. As to the subject of the chapter, I allow for
certain equivocation in the question of the boundaries between Self and non-Self. These
boundaries are in a measure illusory, being defined by the limitations of our perception, but at
the same time it is critical to understand where they are laid. And as I am speaking of human
now, one has to mention the illusory but for that no less important boundaries within a human
being itself.
I think many people wrongly trace the boundary between the physical human body and human
soul, consigning to the latter everything that is mental, emotional and otherwise “on the inside”. I
see the picture as somewhat more complex.
It is well known that, for instance, the Egyptians ascribed to human being not one soul but many.
At the same time many Hindu teachings speak of various bodies of different level of materiality.
I prefer the fourfold scheme, where each of the elements may be equally called a soul or a body.
The first element is the physical Self, which we perceive as our physical body, our material
aspect serving us for a comfortable interaction with the physical world.
The second is the mental Self, our personality in all its manifestations, such as thoughts,
imaginations, emotions, feelings and memory. It is all we refer to as our Self, but only in our
everyday state of consciousness. “me here and now” is the mental Self. As the physical Self is
for interacting with the physical world, the mental Self is for living in the world of images and
ideas. In a way, physical Self is a fork for solid food and the mental Self – a spoon for liquids.
The third element is the shadow Self – the “dark” and the destructive principle of our being, the
“titanic’ part of our nature to use an Orphic image. I wrote about shadow aspects of God and
Goddess, and we have the same aspects – our own Dark Mother and the Great Dragon. This part
of our being usually stays unconscious and manifests on occasion bringing chaos and destruction
into our lives. There is a great temptation to describe the shadow Self in Christian terms as our
sinful nature, but of course this is not the case: the shadow is our legitimate aspect and serves as
a source of power when we need it. It is a sort of weapon which should be used for protection
though it is hard not to yield to it when it asks to be used for assault.
And finally the fourth element is the “Higher Self”, our divine part, the manifestation of the One,
the deathless eidos, undying but undergoing multiple births. As the shadow, the Higher Self is
usually not manifest to us, save for the moments when we touch the sacred, for it is the medium
that enables us to commune with the sacred. Our Higher Self is the god within, it knows the
language of the gods and speaks it with gods.
All the four elements together make up the living human. They are all indispensable and there
are none who doesn’t have at least one of the Selves, but in each of us they are present to a
different degree. Most people are dominated by their mental Selves, which is quite logical and
useful unless we start ascribing to it the functions of the other three elements.
We can’t and shouldn’t discard any of them or try to suppress them, as long as we stay alive. But
each of the four should be recognized, accepted and respected in order to be mastered in its
proper purpose, in order not to try, so to speak, to eat soup with a fork. All the four are merged in
our being and the boundaries between them are ephemeral and most of the cases irrelevant.
Nevertheless, one should try to figure them out.
Each of the Selves is the manifestation of an aspect of the Universe and belongs to it as a part to
its whole: the physical Self is part of the physical world present in our senses, the mental Self is
part of the world of ideas and abstract images, the shadow Self belongs to the realm of dialectical
contradictions and conflicts, and the Higher Self to the Divine core of the Universe. As the
physical and the metaphysical, the dark and light, the up and down merge in the One Absolute,
our four Selves merge into a whole person.
In this sense everyone of us is the Universe, a model of the Universe and a part of the Universe.
Of the Mortal and the Immortal
Tautological as this may sound, at the end it is reasonable to talk of the end. I wrote about living
humans, but what happens when humans stop living? Are my concepts applicable to a dead
person and what does it mean to die in my paradigm?
Life after death is one of the most crucial points in any religion. Wicca that stresses earthly
existence so much, is not free from asking this question. Of course, I don’t know what will come
after death. None of us living does. All I can do is deduce the answer from what I’ve said before.
I definitely don’t see death as the end in the general sense of the world. However, it is still end of
something , otherwise it wouldn’t be death and it wouldn’t have such relevance. I share the idea
of multiple reincarnation, but I’d like to specify on the point how I understand it.
I think the agent of the numerous incarnations the Higher Self and it alone. Death is first of all
death of our physical body, the moment it stops being ours and returns to nature as a
conglomerate of substances, where every part has its own future destiny independent of our
desires.
But it is also death of our mental Self, because it is inextricably bound to our physical body. The
neurons in our brain stop sending signals, and our mind in the form we are used to ceases to
exist. Death is the end of our personality as we are aware of it now.
I don’t know what happens to our shadow, but it is likely to dissolve into the world of shadows
just as the physical body is dissolved in nature.
But our Higher Self is immortal as everything Divine is immortal. The moment of death for it is
but the transition to another mode. It is important to note that the Higher Self is not our
personality, our personality is the mental Self. Our immortal human is not the one we feel
ourselves to be while alive, for while alive we are four selves altogether, but after death it is only
one that abides.
However, it will still be ours, unlike the first three. Yes, a paradox again: you will die and
disappear, but you won’t die and disappear. The Higher Self will remember and absorb all which
it was part of when the person was still alive. This is what it incarnated for in the first place. And
then it will be reborn, and that will be a three fourths different person, excuse my formalism,
made of other selves, but somewhere deep within its divine deep there will abide your life, as all
human incarnations of an archetype are contained in each archetypal god, and vice versa, as God
contains all gods, and vice versa again.
Maybe the new birth will not take place at once. Maybe the Higer Self will need a period og rest
to accept and comprehend the experience received in an incarnation, to integrate it into the
totality of experience received before. Potentially, it is a no less exciting process than life itself,
and it is in this respect we may recall a certain concept of Wiccan afterlife called Summerland,
the place where the Higher Self can get ready for next incarnations.
The picture is not that gloomy after all. Your body will continue its existence as part of nature
and other bodies, your personality will remain as an image and an idea in the hearts of those who
remember you, and your divine essence will abide where it is, haven partaken of you (though not
only you) while you, through the Higher Self partook of the Divine One.
All said death is scary and you can’t fiddle with it. The form in which we continue to exist has
almost nothing to do with what we are now, and the transition will be painful, as any transition
from something familiar and well known to something completely different. I thin it can be
compared only to the transition of birth.
There is a way to ease the pain: to prepare oneself for death while in this life. In order to do this
you ought to shift your focus from your mental Self to your Higher Self, to comprehend yourself
not as a mortal being with an immortal part, but as an immortal being with a mortal part. It may
sound strange, but I think it is possible to learn immortality.
How? By learning from the immortals, how else. By communing with the Gods and gods, we
remind ourselves that there is something besides the life we are accustomed to. That there is
another way of being, without a body, but using all the world as body, not being secluded within
your personality, but being aware of yourself as All and the All as yourself.
And if we get that right and start moving from the periphery of the Universal Star to its center,
with each new step gaining a fuller and deeper our participation with the Divine, discovering the
Divine in us and us in the Divine, at some moment we will be past going back.
And even death will not stop us, but only speed up our progress.
Part II. Hymnography
A Preamble
I may sound cunning or lazy, but I have to say bluntly that this part of the book deals with the
same subjects the first one does.
From the start I go through my theological model according to the same points. But in a different
language.
This is the principal difference of this section from the first one. The latter was written in an
idiom of classical formal narration, this one speaks in the tongue of images, feelings and
longings, that is, in a religious language of Wiccan hymn.
Each point of my creed and each chapter of the preceding section will be illustrated, I hope, with
one or several liturgical texts – a prayer, a hymn or of some other indefinite genre.
Religious hymnody is no less, and sometimes, much more a source on a given religion than a
formal theological reasoning. For instance, it is from the hymns of Rigveda that we learn of the
religion of the Vedic Indians. Why shouldn’t I refer myself to this language? Maybe, for some it
will be even more understandable.
All of the following pieces were written by me at different times, and are employed, some more,
some less, in my service as a priest and my private Wiccan liturgy.
It may well be that some of the readers find it profitable to use them in their own spiritual work,
which will be really flattering to the author. At the moment, this is the only practical tool I can
propose to anyone in order to perform the religious tasks I wrote about in the previous chapters.
Of course, I don’t insist on their use, the main role of this part of the book is illustrative.
If they will be an inspiration to something more than just getting familiar with their contents, it
means that I reached even more than I planned.
I. Of the One
Prayer to the One before the Ritual
Beyond all being, immanent to all,

The One, the Sole, the Ineffable!
You are nowhere, for you are Place,
You are never, for you are Time.
You are not god, for it is through you that the gods are divine,
You are nothing, for there is nothing beside you.
I can speak from birth to death,

And not utter your name, for it is the Name of Names, the Nature of Things, the Beginning and
the Outcome.
Through the power of this unutterable word,

I begin my ritual,
Nowhere and at no time, everywhere and always, here and now!
II. Of God and Goddess
Hymn to the Triune Goddess
You who are White, Red and Black.

You who was, are and will be.
Thrice will I lift my eyes to the sky
And see you thrice – each time a different one!
I see you face turned left,

O, Maiden of eternal youth, Rider of a milk-white stead!
I see your face turned towards me,
O, bountiful Mother, Queen of scarlet garments!
I see your face turned right,
O, Wise Crone, the Reaper of somber thought!
I will turn away and recall,

It was you who opened the gates for me to come in.
I will close my eyes and see
You leading me where I go.
I will look forward and sense
You opening the door for me to leave.
For thou art Fate.

I sing through Thee and I keep silent through Thee,
I laugh through Thee and I grieve through Thee,
I love through Thee and I fear through Thee.
I live though Thee and I will die through Thee.
By our common Will,

By our single Nature,
So mote it be!
Hymn to the God of Life
My Lord, the ancient Hunter in a crown of stag’s horns,
Who hast pierced the Old Boar with a flint-pointed spear!
My Father, the long-haired Shaman dancing in prophetic ecstasy

Where the vertical axis forever unites earth and sky!
My Brother, the wandering Youth in a wreath of vine,

With a wand of tarry pine-wood, mixing equally
Madness and vision!
My Friend, the beast-legged Flute-player, oozing in passion like sweat,

Whose pipe moans and weeps so tenderly under your fingers,
That envy all they that hear!
You, the thousand-eyed Peacock Angel,

The Green-haired Master of secret glens,
The Golden-palmed Chairoteer in Triumph,
Which I blindly see as the sun!
You, the Serpent-Slayer, the Milk-White Steed,

The Bull of brazen horns!
May your semen spill over each pasture,
And every stalk may be filled with your light!
May every heart blaze with the pulse of fire,
That proceeds from you and gives strength to go on our way.
By our common Will,

So mote it be!
Prayer to the God of Death
(for the dark time of the year or of the soul)
Lord with a Sombre Face,

Dead but not lost.
First Fruit reaped before the world began,
And reaped every year still!
You, who descended to the Deep
Lord of the fallen,
Guide of the departed,
King of the Other Realm!
Now I find myself in darkness

And I cry to thee desperately!
Don’t leave me alone in the dark,
Don’t abandon me in time of sorrow.
Be my support and comfort,
Come and help me, give me your hand!
So that at Sunrise,
When you return from your Deep to your Height,
You took me with you, I pray.
By our common Will,

So mote it be!
III. Of the Gods
Prayer to all gods
From the horizon to the horizon,

Higher than stars and lower than ocean bottoms,
In the depths of my soul and in the oblivion of death,
Nowhere I am alone!
Mothers and Kings,

Archers and Thunderers,
Lovers, Shepherds, Wizards,
Teachers and Tricksters!
Wherever I look – it’s you I see!

Wherever I go – it’s you I meet!
I speak with your words, for I know no others,

I walk your paths, for I see no others,
I act with your power, for I have no other.
All who are gods,

All who are the world,
All who are myself,
Bless and blessed be.
IV. Of Faith
Words on Faith
There was nothing in the beginning, but Someone came and called the non-being to Being.
I was there, I saw, I believe.
And the Egg floated in the waters, but Someone came and split it into Heaven and Earth.
And there was cold and sorrow everywhere, but Someone came and brought Fire.
And what are the words of the ignorant to me,

What is the uttering of the slanderers
And the doubts of the confused?
For I do believe and they do tremble, for stronger than stone is my faith, for it is with me from
my cradle to my grave.
I was there, I saw, I believe:

There came Someone and will not leave forevermore.
For He is the Faith.
V. Of Magic
A Prayer for the Blessing of a Spell
(at the start or the end of a work of magic)
The two roads crossed,

Enclosing the four horizons.
At the heart of hearts there arose a pillar of marble,

And three worlds converged into one.
I call on you, o, Goddess of the Crossroads,

Who make the world one, and I pray:
Bless my spell!
I call on you, o, God of the World Axis,

Who make all similar unto all, and I pray:
Fill my work with your power!
May the part be the whole,

May the color be the meaning,
May the sign be the essence!
In every word of mine – the world entire,

In every gesture of mine – the world entire,
In every thought of mine – the world entire!
By our common Will,

So mote it be!
VI. Of the Great Wheel
Yule Prayer
I rejoice over thee, for I know your Mother.

She is the Night of Nights,
The Queen in the blackest cloak,
The uncreated and sempiternal,
And you are Her child.
I rejoice over thee, for I know your Father.

He is the Black Capricorn,
The Lord of Dissolution and Coagulation,
The Shadow of all things past,
And you are His child.
Your Father’s son, your Mother’s babe,

I rejoice over thee, for you are so different,
The fire that enlivens the coals!
The light that breaks from the dark!
The life that springs from dust!
My newborn God,
Thou art a Child,
And I dare not ask you of strength,
But promise to be strong for you!
For thou art Child,

And I dare not ask of wisdom,
But promise to be wise for you!
For thou art Child,

And I dare not ask of love,
But promise to love for you!
At the moment of your birth,

At the dawn of the new year,
At the start of a new world,
This I ask of you:
Be my hope!
Imbolc Prayer
Before the beginning there was the Star.

And there boiled in that Star the flame of creation:
And the flame breathed with Air,
And the air fell down in Moisture,
And in the moisture there hardened the Stones,
And from the stones there rose all Flesh.
You, my Goddess, are the Star:
The Lady of artisans,
The Inspiration of poets,
The Insight of the seekers.
You made me of steel,

You gave me my form,
You sharpened me.
But now my weeping gave me rust.

Now my battled made we cracked.
Now my oldness made me blunt.
So I pray, give me your flame,

And crush me on your anvil,
And steel me in milk.
Goddess the Smith, may I be reforged by you!

Goddess the Poet, may I be inspired by you!
Goddess the Nurse, may I be strengthened by you!
What you wished me, what you brought me forth,

Let I become.
By our common Will,

So mote it be!
Hymn for Ostara
Youthful God in a helmet of brass with curved horns.

Warrior God with a spear as a ray of the rising sun.
Wanderer God standing before the threshold.
What is your threshold? She is.

What awaits you there? She does.
What is your lot? That’s Her.
On the tilt pastures from the seed of thunder your body rose,
The furious tempest brought your spirit from darkest woods.
And the heaven cracked with the sound of your laughter,
And walls of rain fell down on earth to quench your passion,
But couldn’t.
So step over the threshold – to Her.
So step over the threshold and go as a fire the delirious will throw themselves into.
So step over the threshold and go as a mist the wise ones will lose themselves in.
So step over the threshold and go as an avalanche silencing cowardly prayers
To stop in your way
And rid them of your acrid gift.
But you are the Healer of Healers and you burn away all wounds.
You are the Merciful of the Merciful, though bitter is your Mercy.
You are the King of Kings, and they punish themselves who reject your rule.
You are sweeter than honey, more bitter than wormwood, the point of the Arrow.
You are now Passion embodied.
Go, and I will follow you

In your steps.
Hymn for Beltane
I sing to you, o Goddess with thousand names,

But all forgotten for now.
And only one sits in my head like an arrow,

And only one stuck in my throat like a bone,
And only one comes from my mouth like a groan.
Your name is Love.
Of Heaven’s blood in the Salty Deep were you born,

You emerged to the shore foam-washed in the shining noon.
The Sun stopped its course blinded by your light,
Beauty-struck, it couldn’t resume its way.
The pines of the shore bowed low to your feet
And the birds of the air sang the chorus to you,
And those who by will of gods were endowed with speech
Went dumb with delight
And silent fell as flowers mown with the scythe.
For you are the Slaughterer of Slaughterers, and all bow their heads under your sword.
You are the Warrior of Warriors and every city opens its gates before you.
You are the Queen of Queens and thousand hands every day bear you on the shield.
You are more precious than Life, you are more desired than Nurture, you are more dreadful than
Death.
You are Love.
Litha Prayer
Here comes this day – but why my voice trembles?

I see thou, o, my King, in thy glory
In a robe of emerald green
With a verdant branch in your sword-arm
And a rotting scull in your shield-arm.
Here comes this hour – but why dare I not lift my brow?
I see thou, o, my Father, in the throne
In a cloak of scarlet red
With a staff of pine in your sword-arm
And a drawn dagger in your shield-arm.
Here comes this moment – and why do I kneel?

I see thou, o, my God, in zenith,
Crowned with golden flames,
With a bronze torque in your sword-arm
And a live serpent in your shield-arm.
But may my voice strengthen,

May I look thee in the face,
May I stand upright,
For I know:
You are gold – but silver is in your heart,

You are flame – but the Moon is in your heart,
You are the Lord of what is and what will be,
But She is in your heart.
Now I praise my God, Lord of the World!

And I praise Her who is her Lady!
Bless and blessed be!
Lammas Prayer
Maiden of the golden fields,

Whose braids are golden
And so is the sickle.
You are the Reaper – he is your bread.

You are the Priestess – he is your sacrifice.
You are the Goddess – he is your God.
I would pray you to spare him,

And you would grant me my wish,
But he wants no mercy.
For he is the vine,

Crushed under your feet
To gush forward and quench our thirst.
For he is the sheaf,

Cut by your sickle
To give grain and fill us.
For he is our King,

And he laid himself willfully on your altar,
And we will accept his sacrifice, and it will strengthen our spirit.
Now shall we see:
Who was happy, gave away his happiness for more.

Who was strong, abandoned his strength for more.
Who was alive abrogated his life for more.
I pray you, Goddess!

May not your hand shake,
For it is mine that will uphold yours,
May your blade be sharp,
For it is I who will edge it,
May your heart be strong,
For it is I who shares your grief!
What should be done – be done!
By our common Will,

So mote it be!
A Mabon Prayer
My Beloved Lord, Wanderer God,

Hearken to the words of your sojourner,
Who stands behind your back
Faithful as your shadow.
A prophetic river streams before your feet,

Flowing from nowhere to nowhere,
Submerging in its deeps every thought,
Whose waters are lucid as dreams,
But obscure as oblivion.
And a silent Ferryman awaits us,

On his boat swift as heart,
Whose oar reaches to the very bottom.
There, behind we leave your Kingdom:

Forests of emerald, full of life,
Fields abloom, lush and sensuous,
And the sweet light of heaven, warming our hearts.
But across the river she is waiting,

Beautiful as gleaming sky of the north,
Cold as the breath of icy seas,
Dark, as a Moon eclipsed.
White as the milk of sacred cows was your body,

And now it shall be black as coal of the deeps.
Your song rung as a thunder in spring,
And now shall it fall silent as a broken flute.
Like scarlet lava was your blood hot,
And now shall it freeze like a tear in the wind.
The dice are cast.

You made your choice.
And I made mine.
It is time with a sickle of gold

To reap the crops of our deeds.
But know thee, my God!
There, in the Dark, it is She who awaits you.

There, in the Void, it is She who calls you.
There, beyond death, it is She you will meet.
So step forwards,
Into the darkness!
And I will follow
In your steps.
Samhain Prayer
Welcome beyond the Threshold,

Welcome to the Darkness,
Welcome, my Goddess.
There is only one way –

Down.
Submit, o, my Goddess, submit!
Oh, how pretty are your eyes,

Which the haughtiest of stars
Don’t dare to rival!
But here, in the Realm of the Dead
There’s nothing to see.
Close your eyes, then enter.

Down.
Oh, how sensuous and fragrant is your breath,

Which neither the breeze of noon, nor a furious tempest
Can match!
But here, in the Realm of the Dead
There’s nothing to breath with.
Stop breathing, then enter.

Down.
Oh, how hot is the passion of your heart,
Not a thousand suns together
Can’t blaze thus!
But here, in the Realm of the Dead,
There’s no place for heat.
So put your heart off, then enter.

Down.
But the biggest prize of all

Your Beloved, the greatest of men,
Has laid himself up to your feet!
And now he is here, in the Realm of the Dead,
a Dead Man and a Dead King.
Forget what he was, then enter.

Down.
And when
You become blind and breathless,
Empty and bodiless,
You will see him again
And know him from head to foot,
In his Light and his Dark,
In his Glory and his Grief,
In his Life and his Death.
And then
You shall know the final mystery,
Unveiled nowhere, but here:
Death is new Life.
And you shall take this mystery,
And bear it in your womb
And bring it forth to the world.
Then shall you see another way –

Up.
VII. Of Freedom, Love and Wisdom
Prayer to the Triune Goddess for freedom, Love and Wisdom
This is the truth that was revealed unto me: Maiden, Mother and Crone – are One.
Maiden-faced Goddess, I beseech thee!
No veils has your hair known,
No fetters and ties can bind thee,
No obstacles are set before the eyes of thy daring spirit.
I beseech thee, Maiden Goddess, teach me your Freedom, for thou art Freedom!
Mother-faced Goddess, I beseech thee!

Sweeter than grapes and honey is your tenderness,
Farther than all horizons spreads your loving care,
Hotter than Sun and all the stars is your loving heart.
I beseech thee, Mother Goddess, teach me your Love, for thou art Love!
Crone-faced Goddess, I beseech thee!

Sharper than all blades are your wits,
Deeper than the ocean is your understanding,
No secret in the universe escapes your mind
I beseech thee, Crone Goddess, teach me your Wisdom, for thou art Wisdom!
This is the truth that was revealed unto me: Freedom, Love and Wisdom are One.
VIII. Of a Mortal Human
A Hymn to Semele
Blessed are your eyes,

Blinded
As His glory they saw.
Twice blessed is your flesh,

Incinerated
As it touched Him, Shrouded in Flames.
Thrice blessed is your womb,

Torn apart
As it gave birth to God, son of God.
I praise your daring, O, daughter of Kadmos!

For by daring were you exalted.
I praise your love, O, daughter of Harmony!
For your love you made a miracle.
I praise your death, Semele the Earth,
For through death you opened the gate
between the Height and the Depth.
You descended the depths of Hades a lifeless shadow

And emerged back to the world an immortal goddess!
In your suffering and mine
I rejoice,
In your death and mine
I rejoice,
In your resurrection, also promised to me
I rejoice!
Kolpino, Russia
2015 – 2017

Aitvaras - The Star of Infinity

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Aitvaras Narrenturm.

The Star of Infinity: An Experiment in Wiccan

Translated from Russian by Dmitry Galtsin.

4. I believe in Faith which is a creative and dynamic force of the Divine.

5. I believe in Magic as a certain expression of Faith.

7. I believe in Love, Freedom and Wisdom as the sole values of life.

8. And I believe in myself as consubstantial to all I believe in.

Of the progress to the Center

In the name of the One, Ancient Providence,

Of the Divine Couple

God and Goddess are the Divine

Of the Triune Goddess

Of the Dark Mother

Of the God of Life and Death

Of the God of Life

Of the God of Death

Of the Great Dragon

Chapter III. Of the many gods and their common godhood

The Two or the Many?

Chapter IV: Of the True Faith, or of Co-creation

Nomos and Cosmos1

Of the True Faith

Chapter V. Of Magic as the Art of creating Truth

5. I believe in Magic as a certain expression of Faith.

Ritual as Art, Magic as Nature

Chapter VI. Of the Spinning Wheel, or of Eternity

We are a Circle Within a Circle

Of the Nature of the Spinning

Of the Spikes of the Wheel

Chapter VII: Freedom, Love and Wisdom, or Concerning Wiccan Ethics

7. I believe in Love, Freedom and Wisdom as the sole values of life.

Of the Advice and the Advisors

8. And I believe in myself as consubstantial to all I believe in.

Again of the Progress to the Center

Of the Mortal and the Immortal

Part II. Hymnography

Prayer to the One before the Ritual

Beyond all being, immanent to all,

I can speak from birth to death,

Through the power of this unutterable word,

II. Of God and Goddess

Hymn to the Triune Goddess

You who are White, Red and Black.

I see you face turned left,

I will turn away and recall,

For thou art Fate.

I live though Thee and I will die through Thee.

By our common Will,

Hymn to the God of Life

My Lord, the ancient Hunter in a crown of stag’s horns,

My Father, the long-haired Shaman dancing in prophetic ecstasy

My Brother, the wandering Youth in a wreath of vine,

My Friend, the beast-legged Flute-player, oozing in passion like sweat,

You, the thousand-eyed Peacock Angel,

You, the Serpent-Slayer, the Milk-White Steed,

By our common Will,

Prayer to the God of Death

(for the dark time of the year or of the soul)