Wicca: A comprehensive guide to the Old Religion in the modern world. Vivianne Crowley

in deer antlers in Europe from as early as 7500 BCE.¹

      The Moon has three major aspects – waxing, full and waning. Woman’s life could also be seen as having three major aspects – pre-fertile, fertile, and post-fertile or menopausal. The Goddess too was perceived as having three stages – Virgin, Mother and Wise One or Crone, representing the three main phases of the life cycle, youth, marriage and death. The Gods too evolved. As well as being the Lord of the Animals, the God became associated with all that sprung from the Mother Goddess – the green vegetation which waxed and waned in the Spring and Autumn of the year, and with agricultural crops sown by the people themselves. The recording of time brought people a new realization, the link between sexuality and birth. They came to understand the male role in procreation. Women were not impregnated by the Moon as had been thought by earlier generations, but by man. The God was now seen as the Father God, Lover of the Great Goddess. The God of the Hunt became a phallic God.

      These early ideas of the Gods evolved throughout the millennia. Tribes merged with others through conquest and marriage. New Gods were adopted and rationalization occurred. The principal Gods and Goddesses were married to one another. Other Gods were thought of as their children. Human societies discovered new and not always desirable needs. As societies became more complex, they needed more resources. Organized warfare emerged which called for different Goddesses and Gods from those of field and hunt.

       The Celts

      Wicca is greatly influenced by the religion and culture of the Celts who, by 500 BCE, had become one of the dominant races of Europe. Unfortunately, much of what we know about the Celts is from the writings of their enemy, the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, who was not an unbiased source. However, we know that although the Celtic priesthood, the Druids, had an alphabet called Ogham, they favoured an oral tradition. The Druids believed in reincarnation and the Celts had little fear of death. There were few monsters and demons in their mythology and they were not preoccupied with the idea of evil. They had no concept of sin and punishment and believed that when they died they went to the Summerland, where they were renewed and made ready for rebirth.

      The four major festivals of Wicca are derived from Celtic festivals. Since the Celts were a pastoral herding people, their festivals revolved around necessary events in the herder’s year. At Samhain (pronounced Sow’in) or Hallowe’en on the last evening of October, those animals that could not be kept through the winter were slaughtered and their meat salted to keep the tribe. This festival was therefore a feast of death. Imbolc or Oimelc, which is also known as Candlemas, took place on the first day of February. It celebrated the first lambing; for as the Celts became a more settled people and began to inhabit the mountainous areas of Scotland and Wales, they became dependent on sheep as well as cattle for their livelihood. Imbolc was also in Scotland and Ireland the festival of the Goddess Bride or Brigid. At Imbolc, she returned to Earth from her winter’s rest and blessed and made fertile the land for the coming year. The early spring flowers – snowdrops, crocuses – were signs that the Goddess had walked the land. At Beltane or Bright Fire on May Eve, fires were lit on hills all over the land to symbolize the waxing power of the Sun. Cattle were blessed and driven through the fire to clean their hides of ticks and the people would dance deosil round the fire. Lughnasadh, the festival of Lugh, God of Light, was held on the last evening of July and first day of August. Lugh is a brilliant and many-skilled God whose weapon is the spear. Amongst other things, he is a harper, hero, poet, healer and magician. His festival was a great summer celebration with games and feasting. In the modern Wiccan calendar, this festival is also known as Lammas, originally Loaf Mass, a festival of the corn harvest.

      The Celts had two other religious concepts which Wicca retains – outdoor worship (modified for reasons of climate and privacy) and Goddess worship. Goddesses and women were very important in Celtic society. Goddesses presided over poetry and the arts, the important trade of smithcraft, and in the case of the Morrigan, over war. Women were warriors and queens and from Julius Caesar’s writings we know that disputes of law were settled by the Celtic women.

      After contact with the Romans, the Celts began to build temples, but the early Celts believed that the Gods were best worshipped in their natural environment; outside beneath the Sun and stars, at sacred wells and springs, and on hilltops beneath the sky. Altars were erected in sacred groves where none might fell a tree. All over Europe, groves were protected in this way until Christian missionaries wanting to destroy the ancient Pagan temples began to fell the groves.

       Mediterranean Paganism

      Other strands of Paganism that have been absorbed by Wicca were developed not in Northern and Western Europe, but around the Mediterranean and Near East where, around the time of Christ, there was a desire to unify the many Gods and Goddesses into a trinity of Mother, Father and Child. Over a thousand years later, Egypt saw another religious reform. Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt during his great sweep eastwards and on to India. When one of his generals inherited Egypt after Alexander’s death in 305 BCE and became Pharaoh Ptolemy I, he was keen to establish a faith which would be acceptable both to the Egyptians and to the Greek newcomers. A triad of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses was to be established who could be equated with a matching triad of Greek Gods and Goddesses. Two priests were commissioned with the task. Manetho, the Egyptian priest, was a specialist in Egyptian history. Timotheus, the Greek priest, was descended from an Athenian family who had emigrated to Egypt and was familiar with the Greek Eleusian Mysteries of Demeter and Kore.

      Ptolemy’s new system was that the chief Deities of Egypt would be the Goddess Isis, her husband Sarapis and their child Horus. Isis’ nephew Anubis, son of her sister Nephthys, became Guardian of the Dead. Isis’ original husband and brother, the more well-known Osiris, was dropped. His attributions were too complex to fit into the new scheme and the incestuous nature of Isis and Osiris’ relationship was unlikely to find favour with Greeks raised on the Oedipus myth. In theory, Sarapis was to be chief God, but Osiris retained his hold on the Egyptian population. He also retained his place in the Initiation Mysteries of Isis. Presumably, the initiates could understand the symbolic meaning of a brother/sister marriage.

      Isis and Sarapis became both immanent and transcendent. They were rulers in the Underworld, Earth and Heaven. The reformed religion also made Isis not just one of many Egyptian Goddesses, but The Goddess:

       Queen of the stars,

       Mother of the seasons,

       and Mistress of the universe.²

      On a statue to the Egyptian Goddess Neith, who in the reformed religion was also identified with Isis, was the inscription:

       I am all that has been, and is, and shall be

       and my robe has never yet been uncovered by mortal man.³

      This is the Goddess as worshipped in Wicca; immanent, transcendent and mysterious.

      The religion of Isis spread rapidly across the Mediterranean capturing the imagination not only of the Greeks, but also of the Romans. Evidence of Isis worship has been found as far away from Egypt as Britain, with London and York being principal centres. The religion of Isis contained many of the features of Wicca today. The Isis religion was a Mystery religion which promised the initiate inner transformation and expansion of consciousness. As in Wicca, there were three levels of initiation. The Goddess Isis was also a patron of magic. Often, she was paired not with her original husband Osiris, or the newer Sarapis, but with Asclepius, the Greek God of healing. Her temples, rites and initiatory system therefore combined religion, magic, the processes of spiritual growth and healing.

      Another important development in Mediterranean Paganism at this time came from Greek Neoplatonist philosophers whose ideas have influenced the Western Mystery Tradition to the present day. The Neoplatonists too were moving away from the idea of Gods and Goddesses as separate entities towards a more unified concept. The different Deities were seen as different personifications of the One, the ultimate Divine force that is beyond male and female.

      The aim of the Neoplatonists was spiritual development either through the study of philosophy, or by awakening the higher intuitive faculties through theurgy. Theurgy was a system