First, a confession...I've never read Margaret Murray's "The God of the Witches", without question one of the most significant--and controversial--books of the 20th century Pagan revival movement. I finally bought a copy the other day, and, as I sat down to read it, the significance of the title hit me head on. At the heart of a spiritual movement largely devoted to reclaiming the place of the goddess at the center of human understanding of the divine is a book about the primacy of the god in primitive religion. Written by a woman no less.
As one whose spiritual path is devoted to the balance of male and female energies, I am often uncomfortable when talk turns to the "Goddess". Many Wiccans strike me as having merely substituted a female supreme being for a male one, without serious introspection as to what the difference really is. Organized religion--Christian or otherwise--has always struck me as a crutch, and many Goddess-worshippers do the modern Pagan movement no credit by doing little more than changing the trappings of their childhood religion to escape the taint of "patriarchy".
The world--for whatever inscrutable reasons--reveals itself to us in a myriad of polarities. Yin and yang, matter and anti-matter, energy and entropy...and male and female. The ultimate mystery of the "Big Bang"is what induced the cosmic seed to sprout. Potentiality and actualization are at the core of the universe and, for me at least, the subjects of endless fruitful meditation.
So why the fear of the God. Christians demonize him (literally); many Goddess-worshippers struggle with his energy. Many Dianic Wiccans seem to feel an abiding need to escape the aggressive presence of the masculine divine. Small wonder if one limits the worship of the male mysteries to patriarchal monotheism, which has bred so many conflicts and so much slaughter over the centuries. But there is so much more to contemplate.
It seems to me that one's spirituality ought to be able to embrace all of the manifestations of the cosmos. To fear or, worse, to run from the dark, the aggressive, or the fearful is to limit oneself to a small corner of a most wide and curious Universe. Seek out the Horned One--whether at a bloody altar, testing the limits of a community's willingness to give all for the commonweal, or in the pasture, dancing with the lambs and the fawns. Like it or not, he is a part of us at our very core.
Just like the merciless Fates or savage Morrigan, exultant over the battlefield.
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