Whether it is being lovingly described by its adherents,
tallied as a social movement by impar-tial statisticians, or even decried
as "Satanic" by Christian apologists, Wicca is almost universally, alongside
its many modern neo-pagan cousins, labeled an "Earth Religion." Wicca is
most certainly, in practice, a religion closely aligned with the Living
Earth and Her seasonal changes, which lie at the root of our most important
celebrations, the Sabbats. But to call Wicca an "Earth Religion"
and stop there is to remain in that nostalgic "thatched-cottage-on-the-edge-of-the-woods"
mentality referred to in the intro-duction to this work, to seek the whole
of Wicca's thealogical foundation in, and to limit the scope of its meaning
and applicability to, the details of human existence on this one tiny planet
floating like an anonymous raindrop in the vast ocean of stars, quasars,
nebulae and galaxies we now know the universe to be.
Our ancient ancestors did not share our modern
understanding of cosmology, as evi-denced by the tendency of pretty much
every pre-science religion on Earth, pagan or otherwise, to locate this
one tiny planet at the center of physical reality, where it surely appears
to be to earth-bound humans observing the circular movements of stars in
the night sky, rather than where we now objectively know it to reside
on the insig-nificant edge of a minor galaxy nowhere near the center of
anything.
Any religion that hopes to maintain its rele-vance
in the age of quantum physics and the Hubbell Space Telescope must be able
to offer meaningful spiritual insight into the real grandeur of our universe,
on the smallest and largest scales, as it is revealed by modern science,
as well as of the Earth's place in that grand universe, and of Humanity's
role not only in the life of the Earth, but also in that of the real
physical Heavens the Earth inhabits, and of everything existing between
Heaven and Earth as well. Such a religion must be flexible enough to incorporate
new discoveries about Humanity, the Earth and the universe into its beliefs
without surrendering its credibility, to welcome new scientific discoveries
as puzzle pieces to be fit into a continuing revelation of an infinite
spiritual truth.
I believe that Wicca is the one religion on Earth
most uniquely equipped to face this challenge of modernity, for, in spite
of even well-intentioned misrepresentations, Wicca is not now, nor has
it ever been, solely an "Earth Religion." Wicca is a religion that
is centered in and reveres Nature whether that Nature be expressed
in the teeming life and wind and water of our planet's biosphere, in the
nuclear processes that energize our sun, or in the swirling push and pull
of gravity that spins our (and every other) galaxy into being.
Wicca acknowledges that there is only one Nature,
and it is everywhere. There is not anything, anywhere not in galaxies
rushing at breakneck speed through the depths of space, not in the Earthly
water cycle that brings Alaska's glaciers raining down on China's croplands,
not in the invisible bustle of bosons zinging this very moment through
my computer's micro-processor, or anyplace in between that can be rightly
labeled un-natural, outside of Nature, whose processes are determined by
any force other than Nature's sovereign power.
Wicca is not a supernatural religion like Christianity,
Islam or Judaism, although it is often condemned as supernatural by these
very institutions. These major Middle Eastern religions all posit a God
who exists outside of the physical universe, a male "Creator" deity who
is said to have fashioned the universe from dead matter just as a stonemason
"creates" a solid wall by gluing together rocks, and who is believed to
reside in a "Heaven" located somewhere "outside" the physical universe
He created. How much more supernatural can you get? Every aspect
of this belief violates the evidence to be found in real, physical Nature
as to how things are and came to be beginning, and very much to
the point here, with the supposition of an un-observable "outside" to the
physical universe. Wicca, being a natural (as opposed to supernatural)
religion, posits no such "outside," or any deity inhabiting such an unlikely
space.
Nor does Wicca posit any such wildly supernatural
notions as male-only deity or, really (though many Wiccan authors use the
term in my opinion, quite thoughtlessly), a Created universe or an implied
building-block Creator of any kind. Referring to the physical/natural
world as Creation immediately centers the discus-sion in a masculine, Judeo-Christian
context, and I feel all Wiccans everywhere should stop using this term
at once.
The central deity of the Wiccan religion is the
Great Goddess, and we see concrete evidence for Her reality and presence
in every living particle of the real natural world. If there is not
one single living thing on the Earth, from amoebas to human beings to the
whole spectrum of life between them, that can be observed being "created"
by anybody out of the "bricks" of "dead matter" (and there's really not
think about it!), then why should we assume that an opposite rule applies
to anything else in the universe let alone to everything else, as is
posited by those Middle Eastern religions?
Everything alive, here on Earth, is born of a woman,
of a female creature of its own species.3 In Wicca, we see everything that
is from the subatomic particles that make up atoms, to the molecules
atoms come together to form, to all matter and energy, and the water and
rocks and gases and plants and people and suns and galaxies that arise
from their eternal, cosmic dance as alive and conscious, varying only
in degree. For Wiccans, the physical universe is not a dead thing
constructed for Man's pleasure or control by some distant male god.
It is Her body, the real, physical, sensually vibrant, lush and beautiful
body of the Great Goddess, the Mother of All, and everything we believe
as Wiccans flows from this understanding. We exist within Her and
participate in the intimate processes of Her being, alongside every other
living thing in the universe that, like us, and following the observable
pattern to be found in real Nature (as opposed to some unlikely, imagined
"super-nature"), was never created at all, but that is rather continually
born within Her, and who is com-posed, just like us, of the real physical
substance of Her body.
To view the reality of the Great Goddess of Wicca
for ourselves, we need look no further than our own bodies, our own planet,
our own uni-verse. Our Goddess is not some distant, invisible, disembodied
spirit, nor is she "supernatural" in any way, shape or form. Our Goddess
is Nature, in all its manifestations. From the inconceivable whole
of the vast, living universe to that universe's tiniest constituent particle,
She is physically, spiritually, energetically and person-ally everywhere.
All the time. The Great Goddess of Wicca is All That Is, past, present
and future, here on Earth, in every distant corner of the physical cosmos,
and in all the seen and unseen spaces in between. There is nothing
you can look to that is not Her, that is not born of Her, that does not
bear the imprint of Her essence, or that fails to play its assigned role
in Her life.