
Esra Free

Wicca 404: Advanced Goddess Thealogy by Esra Free
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Wicca 404: Advanced Goddess Thealogy: TWPT
Talks to Esra Free ©2006-2008TWPT
TWPT: Tell me about how you first discovered the Wiccan
path and what it was about this path that convinced you that it was what you
wanted your spiritual life to move towards.
EF: There's a great tag-line in the kid's movie Shark Boy
and Lava Girl that goes something like, "Everything that is or ever
was began with a dream." Way,
way back in the early 1980s, at a time when I was in my twenties and knew
nothing about Wicca, or even that pagan religions were still practiced in the
modern world, I woke up one morning from a dream that was so vivid and
emotionally charged that I can still call it up in shining Technicolor in my
mind's eye today, just by thinking about it.
There was no "action" in the dream at all, just a scene laid
out before me. A gigantic woman with
long, flaming red hair and a deep forest green dress that swirled around her
hips and legs and spread across the ground to become the grass stood with one
arm stretching high up into the sky. Her raised arm was somehow, at the same
time, the twisted limb of a tree… Hey, it was a dream… Anyway, I looked up to the sky to see what
she might be pointing to, but in fact, she wasn't pointing at all, she was
reaching, reaching, with tremendous passion and longing for what I could now
see was the ardently down-stretched arm of a giant man in the clouds – a man in
military uniform, who, oddly, looked a lot like Prince Charles… Silly resemblances aside, the tension between
these two giants was so erotically, romantically, ecstatically charged that when
my eyes popped opened and I found myself awake, I was literally gasping for
breath, shaking all over, physically, emotionally, even sexually alive in a way
I had never experienced before. I was on
fire, tingling all over, and most of all, ravenous with a strange, driving
hunger to find these giants in the waking world. I had not yet learned to "think like a
pagan" or what have you, but I knew in my in my heart, in my gut, beyond
any shadow of a doubt, that while, sure, a dream is a dream is a dream, this
dream was something very different from any I had experienced before. This dream was showing me a brand new
possibility for my life, pointing me toward a new way of being in the world, a
path of radical aliveness, passion, ecstasy. And this was no "gentle
nudge." This was a five alarm fire,
like, "Wake up, Esra! Don't
waste another minute! Find us now! Your life depends on it!" I literally felt that if I could not
locate these dream characters in waking life, I would die. It was that forceful, that potent.
As I said, at that point in my life, I knew nothing about
Wicca or neo-paganism. But I'd studied a
lot of things, including at that point some Jungian Psychology, and I actually
thought the thought in the moment, "These are Archetypes. These are
gods. This is how the gods speak to people." I raced to the library and spent the whole
day pouring through every book I could find referencing Classical Mythology,
ancient cultures and the like. I checked
out several of those dry, academic, but also very wonderful tomes on ancient
pagan beliefs by H. R. Ellis Davidson, and took them home to test my eyes
against their endless, tiny print, searching, searching, searching… I took in a lot of information, saw and felt
a lot of things that were definitely "in the neighborhood" of the
giants I'd dreamed about, but it all seemed so ancient, so old, so dry
and disconnected from anything my admittedly somewhat shallow twenty-something
self could identify as alive, as real, as even potentially relevant to my 1980's
single-girl lifestyle of the time. I was
not finding THEM, and to my great dismay, the tension, the passion, the
erotic fire was gradually draining out of me.
The urgent blaze the dream lit in me was fading into a memory. It was like being able to hear the telephone
ringing somewhere in the distance, but someone has hidden the receiver, and
after looking frantically around for a while you realize that, even if you find
the phone now, the caller will have probably hung up by the time you can answer
it anyway, so you start thinking about turning up the TV instead…
I gathered all the dusty tomes I'd borrowed and took them
back to the library. I plunked them down
on the circulation desk, smiled at the librarian, heaved a heavy sigh, and
turned to leave… And right there, on one
of those low display racks they keep at the front of libraries, was Starhawk's The
Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess. Of course, in the real world, it's a
normal-sized book, but I swear, to my eyes, in that moment, it appeared to be
ten times larger than all the other books around it. I think it glowed, too, though I wouldn't
swear to that one in court… It was that
word Goddess that ensnared me like a fishhook. Yes, I thought. Goddess.
The Goddess. THEE Goddess… The word rolled and danced on my tongue, and
I felt that strange, erotic, ecstatic flame rising again inside me. Goddess, Goddess, Goddess… Of course I
checked out the book! There was no
visual image exactly like my dream in Starhawk's book, but her description of
this strange new religion "Wicca," of Goddess and God in balanced
embrace, dancing and romancing the Universe into being, infusing all that is
with love and lust and passion and raw, raging LIFE so matched the feeling-tone
of the dream, the flavor that had so captured and enlivened me, that I knew I
had, in the eleventh hour and on the very brink of surrender, succeeded in my
quest. I had found THEM, and would never
again suffer their absence from my life.
I've been Wiccan ever since.
TWPT: When was it that you decided to start writing and
what were some of the forms this desire took before you wrote your first book?
EF: In all honesty, I have never considered myself a
writer. Even with Wicca 404 published
and out there in the world, I still don't.
I am a High Priestess. A humble
explorer along the Path and a weaver of the Craft, and that's enough for
me. Prior to writing Wicca 404,
in my role as High Priestess for the Cosmic Goddess Coven, I wrote a great deal
as far as our common Book of Shadows, lesson plans for new initiates, our
internal newsletter and the like. It was
in these venues that I worked out, in relationship with everybody else and
happenings within the coven, the basic thealogy that is expressed in the
book. My husband, Jack Preston King, who
actually is a writer, read all that material and at a certain point
said, "Esra! You need to publish
this stuff! The world needs this. Wiccans everywhere need to read this." Jack is not an official member of the Cosmic
Goddess Coven, but he's very Wicca-friendly, very open to all kinds of
spiritual ideas and, in the present political state of our world, he's also
very concerned about Humanity's future.
I absolutely agreed with him that bringing our coven's "Cosmic Perspective"
to the larger Wiccan community stood to benefit Wicca, and maybe even Humanity,
as a whole. I was less sure that anybody
would want to read any book written by me!
But I trust his judgment, so to the word processor I went! Readers will have to judge the results for
themselves!
TWPT: Did you find the quality and depth of information
contained in the books that you used to learn about this new path to be
adequate for teaching you the basics of Wicca?
EF: The v-e-r-y basics, yes. Traditions surrounding the Sabbats,
techniques for casting a circle, some fundamental concepts of magick and its
uses, that sort of thing. There is true
and valuable information hidden between the covers of many of those
horrifically-gaudy "Beginner's Bestsellers" that sparkle in every
imaginable shade of purple from bookstore shelves everywhere, though you surely
don't need more than one or two, at most, in your collection. They all say pretty much the same thing,
anyway. Wicca 101 is what it is – the
ground floor, a place to start, a very necessary stage of learning and
development all Wiccans must pass through.
But I think a lot of people get stuck on that ground floor and never
evolve past a beginner's relationship with the Goddess, just as a lot of adult
Christians maintain the same basic childhood understanding of God and Jesus and
the Bible their whole lives, never stretching their knowledge or experience of
their religion beyond the immature "Big Daddy In The Sky" or "I
believe because it comforts me" stages.
In Wicca, our tendency toward "stuckness" in the most basic of
the basics is, at least in part, I believe, a result of the sad dearth of Wicca
202, 303 or 404 books to be found out there.
They exist, but they're seldom purple, and there are no buxom women in diaphanous
robes draped seductively across the covers.
Read Margot Adler's, Drawing Down the Moon, Raven Grimassi's The
Wiccan Mysteries, books by Janet and Stewart Farrar. Then – and this is important! – turn to those
books' bibliographies, and go read their sources, and those books' sources, and
those… The diamonds are out there, but
you have to dig for them. Or just buy Wicca
404…
(Laughs) Just kidding there. My book is not an "end all, be all"
either, of course. In truth, I can say
with absolute certainty, from many years experience as a practicing High
Priestess, that ninety percent of Wicca is not learned from books anyway. Books are the "key" most people use
to open the door to a living relationship with the Goddess and the God, but to
make that relationship real and alive, you have to put down your books and
walk through the door. You. Personally.
There's a lot of research and scholarship that goes into developing the
kind of systematic, intellectual theological groundwork any religion needs if
it hopes to root and grow as a stable social structure in our ever-changing
world, but Wicca is not, in practice, an intellectual exercise. In practice, it's about all those things writ
large in the dream that launched me onto the Wiccan Path in the first place –
love, life, passion, ecstasy, sheer erotic, interconnected aliveness. You can't find that in a book. You can't write it into a book, and I won't
claim it's in mine. My ambition for Wicca
404 is that it work as something more akin to a roadmap readers can follow
to a personal experience of living Wicca, without pretending to be the thing
itself. That's a personal discovery each
of us must make for ourselves. Wicca is
a lifelong learning process in which books certainly play a part – but the
important stuff is learned by putting your feet on the Path and walking, day by
day, side by side with the Goddess and the God.
They are real, and they teach this stuff willingly, and for free. If you let books fill that role instead, you
cheat yourself. Don't do that! Read, study, learn, of course. But don't forget to live, to experience, to be
a witch, and not just a perpetual "trainee." Don't just read about the Goddess, LOVE HER,
listen to Her, reflect Her as the Earth and Moon reflect the Sun. Don't just study Nature, put your hands in
the dirt, your feet on the forest trail, turn your face to the wind and breathe
Nature in and out of your lungs. Feel
the connection. No books required.
TWPT: You confess to a number of non-Wiccan influences on
your understanding of Wicca – Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Gnosticism,
Shamanism, Gurdjieff, Jung – Is "your Wicca" really Wiccan? How so?
EF: This is exactly why 404-level knowledge is so crucial
right now to the continued relevance of Wicca as a living religion in our
world. As long as we continue to see all
of the various Paths out there as fundamentally different, and even opposed to
one another, the result is going to be more of exactly what we see in the world
today – Christians hating Moslems hating Jews hating whoever… Ideological conflicts are not the product of
the specific things people believe, but rather of the people who do the
believing. Beliefs don't kill people,
people kill people… The great promise of
Wicca as a reconciler of all this conflict is it's – when practiced wisely –
almost scientific objectivity beyond all that either/or thinking. There's only one thing going on in the whole
Universe, and that's the wholistic, organic life of the Universe, of Nature, of
that being we Wiccans call the Great Cosmic Goddess. Everything going on everywhere, from galaxies
crashing together to birth new stars in deep space to the digestive juices
going to work breaking down my lunch as we speak are a part of that process,
are microcosmic echoes of Her body/mind/spirit that serve Her processes and
purpose, whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not. Nothing and no one is outside of this
reality. There is no
"outside." There is only the
Goddess and Her organic life processes.
Whether we are Wiccans, Christians, Buddhists or self-styled New Age
mystics is irrelevant. We are natural
beings playing our natural role in Her life.
Any insight, exercise, practice, etc., regardless of Tradition, that
awakens us to a conscious experience of this wholistic reality is a good thing,
and we ought not to push Truth away just because we're personally uncomfortable
with its source. By the same token,
anything that leads us to feel like individual, disconnected, unique and
cosmically entitled "Lords Over Nature" or what have you – and plenty
of Wiccan books preach this same sad line when they try to hook readers with
promises of "MIGHTY SUPERNATURAL POWER!!!" – is delusional
superstitious nonsense we need to discard, even if its source is a shiny purple
book with cleavage on the cover… Or a
leather-bound Bible, a Torah, a Koran, a Tao Te Ching... Keep what works, trash the B.S…
Which is a great shorthand definition of eclecticism
in Wicca, especially amongst Solitaries – and covens of Solitaries, which is
what the Cosmic Goddess Coven is. Keep
what works, trash the rest. Let you
personal experience define that word "works." There's a whole chapter on this kind of
eclecticism in Wicca 404. It is,
in my opinion, a fundamentally Wiccan concept. Other religions tend toward dogmatism. "Believe X or suffer the
consequences!" Wicca is a
pragmatic Path that knows "I'm right, you're wrong" is a waste
of time and energy. "This works,
that doesn't" makes magick. It
awakens minds. Anything less is putting
shackles on the Goddess, is saying, "Okay, I'll open to you and let you
teach and guide me, but you'd better not throw any of that freaky
Christian/Buddhist/Taoist/Shamanic/Jungian crap my way! I won't listen!" The trick, I guess, is to open to Her and stop
right there. Let the Goddess do the
rest. The great 1960s social activist
and Cultural Revolutionary Abbie Hoffman once wrote something to the effect
that we should live life like a screen door in a hurricane – let everything
wash through you. Resist nothing. The important stuff will be what sticks. That sounds very Wiccan to me. Remember that what preserves the screen door
is its openness, its ability to let the storm's fury pass through. A closed door gets blasted to
smithereens. If we think of our
personal, intimate, experiential relationship with the Goddess as the
doorframe, as that which maintains our "shape" throughout the storm,
solidly framing our identity and integrity as followers of the Goddess while
the flood of life passes through our "screen," what do we have to
fear from other Traditions? What
"sticks" will always be intrinsically Wiccan, regardless of its
original source, because that's who we are, who we have chosen to be. That style of radical eclecticism is not only
a very Wiccan concept and spiritual practice, it is, arguably, our religion's
greatest strength.
TWPT: Do you feel that the same information is being
discussed over and over again in books that are currently being published
without breaking new ground? What effect does this have on the community in the
long run and on those who are just now discovering this path for themselves and
are looking for material to grow with?
EF: "Wicca 101" has become something of a cottage
industry out there, producing a seemingly endless stream of near-identical
tomes that quote and reference each other ad nauseam until all original
thought and scholarship has been utterly obscured. That sounds harsh, I know, but come on – we
all know this. These are the
purple-covered "Beginner's Bodice-Rippers" I've been poking fun at all
along here. The effect on the community
of all this is the surrender of Wicca to the seventeen and under crowd. Ever wonder why the media always reports on
Wicca as a "teenager's religion?"
"Teens and Wicca!
Witchcraft in the classroom! Film
at 11:00!" It may have something to do with the fact that
a disturbing percentage of Wiccan books in print are, intentionally, I must
presume, written on a fourteen year old reading level, and overly concern
themselves with puerile fantasy nonsense like love potions, money spells and
self-esteem. If those books were my only
source of information on Wicca, I'd belittle it, too. "It's like Dungeons and Dragons,
right? A game teenagers play…" Of course, you and I know that view of Wicca
is the real nonsense. The problem is, it
obviously sells. To teenagers, no doubt,
but also to a lot of adults who are okay with being Wiccan on a teenage
maturity level. I'll probably piss off
some of the people who will read this interview, but that's the truth of
it. If we mature adult Wiccans want our
religion to be taken seriously by our culture and other world religions, it's
not enough to decry this trend. We have
to take charge of the situation. We
"elders" have to step forward and stand up for who we are. We have to
actively define a mature Wicca to the larger culture. We have to write, publish, purchase, read and
openly discuss the thoughtful Wiccan books intended for adult consumption that
the present free market is simply not producing. We should also consider the possibility that
it may well be less the flood of 101
books creating a problem for the Wiccan community, as it is that our
"stuckness" as a community at a teenage stage of development is
supporting the continuance of a 101-level cottage publishing industry. If it's a game of "You change first…
No, YOU change first… No, YOU…", well, then it's obviously ludicrous
to expect Capitalist publishing companies, whose stockholders do not expect
them to represent Wicca fairly, but rather to make money, to "change
first!” It's our religion! We have to take the first step!
TWPT: Is your 404 book your way of trying to introduce a
new depth to the thought, discussions and teachings of the W/P community?
EF: Yes! I am stepping
forward! One reason I am very grateful
for the opportunity to do this interview with The Wiccan/Pagan Times is
that, when it gets posted on the Internet, it is likely to be read by a whole
lot more people than will probably ever find or buy my book – and maybe, just
maybe, it will be enough to get this discussion started in the Wiccan
community. Who are we? What do we stand for… together? Do we have a Wiccan identity as a community,
as a religion, that is different from the image portrayed in the
"Bodice-Rippers" and Teen-witch tabloid news stories? Are we ready to take our place in the
Congress of World Religions? Once
seated, how will we introduce ourselves?
What do we believe that unites us?
That is universally Wiccan? Some
of the folks at that table have been there for thousands of years, like
Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam… Are we ready to speak up for the Goddess with
a strong, equal voice? I'm more than
ready. I'm downright impatient to get
started…
TWPT: What do you mean by a "systematic
theology" of the Goddess?
Systematic, how? Does Wicca
really need that kind of complex theology?
EF: Wikipedia defines "systematic theology" as the
attempt to formulate a coherent philosophy which is applicable to the component
parts of a given faith's system of belief.
If Wicca is a wholistic religion, then all the parts, all the beliefs
from which it is constructed, should serve the whole, should be at least
understandable within a larger context everyone within the religion can agree
on. There is a startling diversity
within Wiccan belief, which I by no means desire to quash. I seek, instead, to unify that diversity on a
higher level, while preserving it below, in the lives and free choice of the
individual Wiccan. For example, many
Wiccans experience the Goddess and God in a straightforward duo-theistic
way. The Goddess. The God.
Others see the Goddess as monotheistically preeminent, with the God as a
sort of internal spin-off or lesser companion.
Dianic witches don't do the God at all.
Others don't use any of these terms, focusing instead on specific named
Goddesses and Gods from Celtic, Greek, Roman or Teutonic pantheons, and the
like. Instead of seeking to "battle
it out" and name one type of belief the one and only "True
Wicca," an act which would almost certainly lead to "Organized
Wicca's" persecution of its nonconformist "heretics" – and how
many times have we seen that scenario play out, historically? – a systematic
thealogy asks, "Is there another way to look at this apparent conflict
and find a view from which ALL of these 'Wicca's' are true, connected, and
co-equal contributors to a greater truth?"
The "system" part comes in when you take the next
step. Having envisioned a Wiccan
thealogy large enough to encompass, embrace and even celebrate the vast
diversity of our beliefs, but which still makes sense, still meaningfully
reflects and coherently organizes our human experience of the real world, of
what we know about the real workings of Nature and the human mind/body/spirit,
the next task is to build a step-by-step, rational philosophical bridge from
the 101 level on which most Wiccans are functioning to this unifying view,
without sacrificing anything that is intrinsic to the Wiccan religion, or to
the real Goddess with whom we are all striving to establish a deeper
relationship, in the process.
And for the record, Wicca doesn't need a "complex
theology." But it does need
internal coherence, otherwise it too easily devolves into disconnected fantasy,
a silly game teenagers play. When
anybody can believe anything and call it "Wicca," Wicca is dead. A word that means everything means
nothing. So we want to avoid being that
nondescript about our beliefs. But we
also want to avoid fundamentalism, persecution, or placing restrictions on our
very free religion that will leach the life, fun and passion from it,
transforming Wicca into something our kids will dread the way a lot of us, growing
up, dreaded church on Sunday morning.
It's a tall order. Wicca
404 is my attempt to fill that order.
TWPT: In your mind what is it that separates 101 or
beginner teachings from the 404 material that you have included in your book?
Theoretically when is it in their studies (general time frame) that a student
of Wicca should be looking for more advanced study material in order to push
themselves to the next spiritual level?
EF: The second part of that question is easier to answer than
the first, so I'll start there. When is
someone ready for post-101 material? When
they get bored with 101 books. It
really is that simple. This could be
after a single serving of Scott Cunningham or Silver Ravenwolf, especially if
the individual has taken the initiative to actually work through those
books, and has not settled for simply reading them. All the books in the world, on any level, are
useless if you just read them. The goal
of Wicca is not book knowledge, but rather, awakening to the reality of the
Goddess, opening to Her presence, establishing relationship with
Her. Once you've cast the circle a few
times, cast a spell or two that worked,
encountered the Goddess in ritual or visualization, etc., what is to be gained
from going over and over the same old material, as if you don't trust the fruit
of your own experience? Move on! Mature!
Evolve!
I am probably coming off like I hate 101 books… Okay, I DO hate some of them, especially the
more lurid "gimme! gimme!" types that are all about gaining power
over love or money or what have you. But
all in all, 101-level Wiccan material fills a critical need within the
community. Everybody has to start
somewhere. It's a lot like learning to
drive a car. When you're sixteen,
somebody has to tell you, "Put the key here, now turn it. Great!
Now put your foot on the brake, push this button, and slide the gear
shift forward into drive…"
Without that instruction, you would never learn to drive. But once you've got the mechanics of the
thing down pat, once it's automatic and you no longer need an instructor in the
car with you, its time to get your license.
It's time to open the engine up on the highway and see what the car can
do… Wicca 101 material is exactly
analogous to driving lessons. The goal
of driving lessons is to learn, technically, how to operate a vehicle, and to
gain some minimal experience actually doing so.
The larger goal of driving, however, is to get somewhere, to
pursue a destination, to go from where you are today to someplace you want to
be. You needed the lessons, first, in
order to be capable of freely transporting yourself to a meaningful destination
later. But, as every sixteen year old
knows, to stay in Driver's Ed even one day longer than is absolutely required
is an imposition on your freedom. Why do
that? Well, as we've already discussed,
we do so, in part, because Wicca 202, 303 and 404 books are hard to come
by. Hopefully, that's changing. But we also get stuck at immature levels of
accomplishment, very often, because of unacknowledged fears and insecurities
regarding our ability to r-e-a-l-l-y drive that car, cast that circle,
work that magick… We fear testing our
skills, opening the engine up on the highway, and so we never find out what we
really know, what's really possible for us.
That's a terrible, and unnecessary, limitation. Becoming aware of, working with and
overcoming such "shadow" issues is a big part of 202 and higher
levels of Wiccan study.
Since we’re being honest here, I have to say that another
very real barrier for a lot of folks is laziness. The Internet is rife with 101 material, and a
lot of people embrace that level of things and stop right there because
clicking a few links is as much work as they're willing to do on behalf of
their own spiritual development. No
insult intended to the people reading this interview on the Internet! It's true of every topic. Whether you're studying Wicca, biology,
Shakespeare, economics or anything at all, advanced material is not going to
chase you down and beg you to look at it.
In any subject, information you find effortlessly is likely to be
commercialized, lowest-common-denominator stuff, because that's the nature of
media – and the Internet, TV, and even books are all commercial media designed
to sell you the least value for the highest price, and to thereby reap the
greatest profit. Free info on the Web is
funded, like TV and radio, by advertising.
Advertisers buy space on the sites the largest number of Web-surfer's
visit. And guess which sites those are? The simplest, most easily-digestible,
lowest-common-denominator ones, of course…
This is a real problem. Higher
knowledge must be actively pursued. If
you're not willing to do that, you're probably not even giving the 101 stuff a
fair hearing. You've probably already
stopped reading this interview…
TWPT: Is Wicca, to your mind, an "escapist religion?"
EF: To my mind, the
term "escapist religion" is an oxymoron. The purpose of all real religion is the just
opposite of "escape" – Religions provide individuals and groups with
a structure within which to actively grapple with personal and social
limitations, in pursuit of individual and global transformation in the image of
a higher order – in the case of Wicca, in the pattern of the cycles and seasons
reflected in the healthy organic life of the Great Cosmic Goddess. That's hard work. That's changing the world. No escapism involved. There is, however, a very common brand of
"pseudo-Wicca" out there that is not, to my mind, any kind of real
religion at all. It is quite literally a
"game teenagers play," alongside, of course, a lot of adults who are
functioning on a teenage level of maturity.
I am talking, of course, about "Weekend Witches," the folks
who read one Silver Ravenwolf title and start wearing black, don a pewter
pentacle and begin clicking their tongues and lecturing the rest of us about
the colors of the candles on our alters.
I'm talking about the many, many "Witches" and
"Wiccans" out there for whom Goddess religion is a form of
"playing dress-up," Wicca as fashion statement, with no deeper
thealogy attached at all, and with little or no commitment beyond the emergence
of the next fad. I am also, when I write
in Wicca 404 about "Escapism in Wicca," referencing the renaissance
festival crowd, and a lot of the "back to the land" folks, too, for
whom declaring oneself a "witch" becomes a free pass for releasing
the reins of the modern world, for stepping back in time to an imaginary
"simpler day" and relinquishing personal responsibility for our
planet's very real present moment environmental and human political and social
states of crises. That's not religion,
that's fantasy role play. That's a game,
and a deeply self-involved one, at that.
In fairness to Wiccans, for every "pseudo-Wiccan" in the
world, there are thousands upon thousands of "pseudo-Christians,"
"pseudo-Moslems," "pseudo-Buddhists," etc., who do exactly
the same thing within the context of their own professed beliefs. "Life was better before the Fall… So
to Hell with you all! I'm getting
Raptured out of here!" That
attitude is the exact opposite of helpful, no matter what religious imagery
it's couched in. I am only competent and
entitled to speak on the matter to practitioners of my own religion, Wicca, and
so I am. Again, I am stepping forward.
I think it's important to say, here, that, just as with
the earlier discussion of the relevance of other belief systems to Wicca, it's
not the specific beliefs themselves that necessarily cause the trouble, so much
as the intent in the hearts of the people professing to be followers of those
beliefs. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism
and Wicca are all legitimate world religions.
But the people who throw those words around as justifications for
abdicating responsibility or pursuing selfish personal agendas are not real
practitioners of any of them. They are
"pseudos." So the short answer
to your question – too late for that, huh? – is, no. Wicca is not an "escapist
religion." In fact, I believe
Wicca, as the prime voice expressing the Divine Feminine to a grossly
over-masculinized contemporary world, has the potential to positively transform
our entire planetary human culture, and may even be cosmically destined to do
so. But there are a lot of folks out there
wearing pentacles and chanting "Goddess" who are just looking to get
laid, to bolster their self-esteem, to gain "voodoo-zombie" power
over others, to be "cool," or to psychically unburden themselves of
the weight of the real present moment, in which their labors are sorely needed
if we hope to create a future worthy of our Goddess and our humanity. Too many folks are singing, "Tonight
I'm gonna party like its 1599…" Yes,
those folks are decidedly "escapist."
They are not, however, by any serious measure, Wiccans.
So, is there anybody out there I haven't managed to insult
yet? Give me time! Ha!
TWPT: You stress in Wicca 404 that Wicca is
routinely mislabeled an "Earth Religion," when, in fact, it is a
Nature Religion, and Nature is cosmic in scope.
Can you elaborate on that a little?
EF: This is a critical
distinction that I really don't think gets made at all, let alone explained
clearly, on the 101 level of Wiccan teaching.
Few Wiccans would argue against the understanding of the Earth as a living,
super-conscious planetary being. She – Gaia
– is our true Mother, the biological as well as spiritual source of all
Humanity, as well as of all the plants and animals and bugs and protozoa and
even the "invisible residents" we often encounter in Wiccan practice,
like Nature spirits, dryads, the Sidhe, etc.
We all emerge from Gaia's womb and return to it, physically as well as
metaphorically. Every moment of our
lives, of many lives, play out within the comforting confines of Her warm and
nurturing body. When most of us use the
word "Nature," we mean the Earth, forests, rivers, deserts,
oceans. We mean wildlife and wind,
thunder and rain. That's the Nature we
most directly experience, in which for thousands of generations the human
species has evolved. We are all quite
comfortable practicing an Earth religion centered in our mother's fond and
intimately familiar embrace.
But Gaia does not live on Earth. She lives in Space, in intimate relationship
with the Sun, the Moon, all the planets of our Solar System, the Milky Way
Galaxy… That's "Nature"
from Her perspective. The distinction
matters because, just as we make our spiritual journeys here on Earth, it is in
the context of that larger "Cosmic Nature" in which Gaia makes Her home
that Her physical and spiritual evolution as a super-conscious planetary being
is being worked out. And to the extent
that we remain willfully or unconsciously blind to the fact that Gaia, like us,
is walking Her own evolutionary Path, for all our love and good intentions, we
are creating a roadblock to Her development with our dependence. Our Mother loves Her children – but part of
loving Her back means accepting the necessity to grow up.
It's exactly like the transition we experience regarding
our own parents, as we age. As small
children, we see our parents as gods, all powerful, all knowing. Down deep, unconsciously, we also experience
them, with that unique, obsessive, infantile self-focus that is natural and
appropriate to early childhood, but which, hopefully, we eventually outgrow, as
ours, as extensions of our selves, as existing solely to meet our needs,
with no understanding whatsoever that they have real lives of their own that
have nothing to do with us. They say a
newborn infant believes that, by crying out, she literally creates her mother
anew every time she feels hunger or thirst or a bubble of gas moving through
her intestines. Cry, and Mamma
appears. Feeds. Gives comfort. It's like casting a spell… Older children experience tremendous
frustration as they become aware that their parents have jobs, friends,
hobbies, whatever, and that when the child's presence and these adult pursuits
conflict, here comes the babysitter.
Johnny does not get his way… Tears, tantrums. The gods must be crazy – what about me? By the time we're teenagers, we've mostly
figured out that our parents are fallible human beings – though as teens, we
seldom add the appropriate "just like me" ending to that
sentence, because we have some distance to go yet before we'll become fully
cognizant of our own foibles. We think
we're perfect, and our parents just suck.
They're wrong about everything.
Oh, how can they be so stupid?
This is the stage I believe we humans are at as a species, an adolescent
stage of development. We're like
teenagers living at home with Mamma, criticizing everything she does, rolling
our eyes at every indication that maybe our own misguided behavior is causing
larger problems for the family than we want to think about or take
responsibility for. Mom can't do
anything right. We know everything, she
knows nothing – yet we've never held a job or paid a bill in our life. We throw our dependence back in Mamma's face,
and the only reason we get away with it is because she loves us and knows we'll
grow past this stage… And as
individuals, we generally do. In our
twenties, we not only come to realize that Mom and Dad live in an outside world
we knew little or nothing about the whole time we were dependent on them, we
become independent and join them in that world.
We establish careers, find mates, start the whole process anew by
bringing our own children into the world… We become adults. If we're lucky, we then establish a whole new
relationship with Mom and Dad, a relationship of equals. When we no longer expect them to be gods or
extensions of ourselves and our needs, we are free to fall in love with them
all over again as the funny, fallible, endearing real human beings they really
are, and always were. It's not they who
have changed and matured. It's us.
What this means in relation to Gaia, the living Earth, our
true physical and spiritual mother, is that we humans have reached an age as a
species where it is no longer appropriate to see Mamma Gaia as an extension of
ourselves, as a possession, as existing solely to feed, comfort and clean up
after us. She has her own life, and it's
time for us to grow up and let Her live it.
It's time for Humanity to join our mother in the Cosmos, the natural
world in which She lives and moves and has Her being. It is, at the very least, well past time for
us to expand our understanding of "Nature" to include the greater
Cosmos that is Her home, and to work toward aligning our behavior with Her
needs in that context, instead of only within the scope of our own narrow,
self-involved view. Wicca as "Earth
Religion" falls short exactly the way a well-meaning child who loves her
parents but never develops the strength to leave home, who justifies staying in
the nest with "Mamma needs me!," or worse, "I just can't!" in the
end cripples her parents as well as herself.
She doesn’t grow up and move on, so neither can they. Both generations get stuck in time, they
can't move on to more appropriate roles.
This sort of thing, kids never leaving home, is epidemic
in America. I think it's symbolic of a
larger issue challenging or whole species, and through us, Gaia. Just about every real world problem out there
is a symptom of this retardation of our species – overpopulation, dwindling
natural resources, food and clean water scarcity, environmental meltdown
resulting from the burning of rain forest and uncontrolled industrialization,
militarization, etc. These are all
symptoms of outgrowing our nest. We're
getting too big to stay locked in the "Green Egg," as Otter Zell so
eloquently phrased it. Our resources are
only limited, and that limitation strangling, if we refuse to imagine life for
the human race in a natural world larger than the Earth's thin Biosphere. The whole Universe is made of resources. Belief in limitation and lack is blasphemous
on the cosmic scale. If we fail or
refuse to adopt a "Cosmic Perspective" regarding ourselves and the
Earth, the most likely outcome will be the same as when a full term human baby
in the womb fails or refuses to be born.
Mamma, baby or both will die.
That's a totally unnecessary tragedy that we can avoid, and I believe
Wicca has come into being at this time in History for the specific purpose of
ensuring that we do just that, that we avoid stillbirth and get ourselves born
as a healthy, bouncing cosmic species.
We Wiccans are the voice of Mamma Gaia, here to slap some sense into our
self-involved species before its too late…
Loving our mother, Gaia, at this stage in the game, means
growing up, moving out, and letting Her have Her own life. For humans, this may take a while, maybe
hundreds of years, but we're talking geological time here – a hundred years is
less than a blink on Gaia's time scale.
We can do this. But we won't
likely even begin to try, won't start moving in the right direction at all
until we come to deeply understand and accept the need for change, and that
understanding won't ever likely dawn while we remain content to identify
"Nature" as embodying only those processes confined to the thin and
fragile Biosphere of Planet Earth.
Nature is everywhere. For
ourselves, for Gaia, we must now embrace that truth. If we fail or refuse to do so, no matter how
much we insist we love the Earth, adore Gaia, worship Nature, our inaction does
Her harm. And you know what the Rede
says about "harm…"
TWPT: Here is a
quote from Wicca 404:
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 centers the discussion in a masculine, Judeo-Christian
context, and I feel all Wiccans everywhere should stop using this term at once.
If the universe was not "created," then where
did it come from?
This is a critical thealogical point. The real question Wiccans need to ask
themselves is, "Are planets, stars, galaxies, etc. alive? Are they conscious living beings? Or are they dead rocks and mindless fire
moving through space according to the push and pull of blind mechanical
forces? If we have no problem
understanding the Earth, Mamma Gaia, to be a living, super-conscious planetary
being, by what reasoning do we resist extending that same understanding to all
bodies in the Cosmos, to superstructures like galaxies, to the Universe as a
whole? Mostly, I think, we just don't
think about other planets or stars or galaxies at all. Our interest in Nature ends at the edge of
Earth's Biosphere – a misguided prejudice that we've already discussed at
length. One point I make in Wicca 404
is that every time Wiccans call upon the Guardians of the Watchtowers when
casting a circle, they are summoning the attention of stellar intelligences, of
super-conscious living stars. That's who
the Guardians are. That the Universe is
alive, is the physical body of the Great Cosmic Goddess, with all the galaxies
and stars and solar systems and planets and planet-dwellers like us
interconnected and working together as living organs and cells within Her body,
is a core, pantheistic truth beating deep inside the living heart of
Wicca. 101 books seldom, if ever, even
mention this, which leaves sincere practitioners who get stuck at the 101 level
for honest lack of access to higher-level teachings to walk a "path
without heart." I don't mean that
as a put-down, an insult. It's just a
fact. All the 101 who/what/when/where/how
in the world simply cannot come together into a coherent, meaningful,
life-and-world-transforming way of being in the world without this pantheistic,
unifying cosmic why. Our efforts
as Wiccans to attune our minds and bodies to the cycles and seasons of Nature
is a good example of this dynamic. A lot
of Wiccans, maybe the majority, I don't know, make such efforts because
changing with the seasons, working with seasonal ritual, living mindfully with
Moon phases, etc. makes them feel good.
It gives them pleasure, allows them to feel more connected
to the Earth, puts them in touch with the magickal undercurrents of
Nature and its forces. There's nothing
wrong with taking pleasure in these things – they are deeply pleasurable
activities, and should be enjoyed – but our pleasure is not the reason
seasonal attunement is important. How we
feel is utterly beside the point. We
work to bring our minds and bodies into alignment with the cycles and seasons
of Nature because Gaia is alive, and we are cells within Her body. By aligning our small human will with Her
greater planetary will, by synchronizing our individual and group cycles and
season with Hers, we become better functioning cells, better servants of Her
health and well-being. And when Gaia is
healthy, She is better able to align Her planetary will with that of the Sun,
and through the Solar System, with the Galaxy, and on and on all the way
up to the level of All That Is –
the Great Cosmic Goddess in Her Fullness.
Remember that Gaia does not live on Earth, She lives in Space, and so
Her work of planetary alignment and attunement is always in relation to the
cycles and seasons of the Sun, Moon, Solar planets and distant stars – and
therefore, so is ours, because we are not advancing our agenda when we
perform Wiccan ritual and magick, but rather, Hers. Note that all the Wiccan Sabbats mark cyclic
changes in the Earth's relationship to the Sun.
All our Esbats center on the Moon.
When our wills are aligned with Hers, what we want for ourselves will
very often coincide with what She wants for us – and happiness, love and
security can certainly be among those things – and so our magicks work,
sometimes spectacularly. But never
because we want things in a "gimme gimme" way. That magick never works. When we are out of alignment, out of
"tune," we can do terrible injury to ourselves and to Gaia by
struggling against all the forces of Nature to fulfill our little human ego
needs, like the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings… "My
P-r-e-c-i-o-u-sssssss…" Look at
what human greed, self-service and institutionalized unconcern for the welfare
of the environment or other living creatures has done to the Earth. We stand on the brink of global environmental
meltdown because of it. Greed and
self-involvement are ugly, ugly things.
Service to the living Cosmic Goddess is beauty incarnate. It's what Wicca is all about.
This is how reality works, and if this key pantheistic
tenet is left out of an initiate's understanding of Wicca, the 101 stuff won't
really make sense. When we don't know
why we do what we do, or what it is that we're actually being tasked to
accomplish in our lives, our rituals, our magicks, we have a strong tendency to
drift blindly into the rote repetition of empty forms, of rituals and
traditions we may repeat word for word, move for move, flawlessly, but their
impact for Gaia becomes minimal or nonexistent because our intent is not
in them, or is scattered or mis-focused.
If we are simply in it for our own pleasure, for example, chances are we
will not be directing our intent where it belongs, on Her, the Sun, the
Moon, the pathways of power that connect and unite them at a higher level. The repetition of empty forms without
understanding of their inner meaning and purpose is an almost exact definition
of the word superstition. When
Wiccans get stuck at a 101 level of understanding, their practice tends to
devolve into the superstitious maintenance of static traditions. "We must never deviate from the
teachings of our ancestors! Our
Tradition is the one and only True Wicca!
Tarot cards must be kept in a silk-lined wooden box in the Northeast
corner of the house…" Blah,
blah, blah. All of that is meaningless
superstition. Utter empty nonsense. But without the whole truth, how can
falsehood be discerned? So, again, the
broad dissemination of 202, 303 and 404 knowledge is crucial for the survival
of our religion.
You asked about origins.
I haven't answered that yet, have I?
But this discussion has been a roundabout way of getting to a place
where a meaningful answer is possible.
The Earth is alive. The Moon,
Sun, planets, stars, galaxies and on and on are alive and function together as
the interconnected and interdependent cells and organs of the body of the Great
Cosmic Goddess. Okay, we've established
that, the fundamental pantheistic Wiccan view of reality. Now look around, right here on earth, right
here in the Biosphere, the green world we share with the plants and bugs and
beasts that cover Earth's surface like a living, interwoven tapestry. Can you find even one single living creature
amongst the great steaming brew of life on Earth that was created by
anybody? Fiction aside, Frankenstein's
Monster aside, can anyone, anywhere point to a single living being that has
ever been constructed from "dead matter" the way a stonemason builds
a wall, brick by brick by brick? Of
course not. A wall can be created, but a
wall is not alive. Living things come
from the bodies of female beings of the same species. Always.
We can see that with our eyes every day we are alive in this world,
watching real Nature in action. This
insight forces on us a fundamental thealogical choice. Either the Earth, the Milky Way Galaxy, the
Universe are alive, and were therefore in some way born in this
deeply natural, organic sense, or they are dead matter, cosmic
"bricks" to be stacked by some transcendent stonemason deity out
there. You can't have it both ways, you
have to choose. Even if you envision a
transcendent female deity crafting the dead matter of the Universe, you
still kill the body with this view. The
Universe cannot be both created and alive. A dead Universe does not interest me. It kills the magick, and I know from personal
experience that the magick is very much alive in Nature on every level. The Goddess is alive and magick is afoot, to
paraphrase Buffy Sainte-Marie. And
living things are born, not created.
TWPT: Let's take a
dim view of the whole process and consider that the level of material never
increases beyond 101 in the near term future. What would this mean for the next
generation of Wiccans that are coming up behind those of us who have been on
the path for a number of years now?
EF: One reason the
human social and political situation, on a global scale, is such a mess is that
a disturbingly high percentage of self-professed followers of all the world's
established religions know nothing about the inner teachings of the Traditions
they claim to follow. Christians,
Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews… Everywhere on earth, most religious people
memorize dogma and enact rote, empty rituals in service to the voracious
maintenance of superstitious nonsense.
The fact that people all over the world routinely kill each other over
nuances of belief is proof of this. No
one whose will is even marginally aligned with anything truly Divine would take
part in such horrors. Only ego would
kill someone for being different. Only
self-worshipping human ego needs that kind of crazed defensiveness in order to
justify and protect its existence. In
the real world, Wicca is still a far cry from being an "established
religion" like Christianity or Buddhism.
This is a good thing because, at this point in our development, we still
remember our soul, our truth, our inner teachings. Taking a dim view, if Wicca grows to become
an established world religion, but only at the 101 level, disconnected from the
higher level truth in which the basics are and must remain embedded, well… watch
out. Expect 22nd Century
Wiccans to be praying on a schedule, selling indulgences, burning effigies of
Popes and Imams who are perceived to have insulted the Goddess. Expect one sanctioned Holy Book of Shadows
everybody has to live by. Expect
persecution. That's what happens to all
religions when the inner truth dies.
But I abjectly refuse to take the dim view. I have dedicated my life to ensuring that
Wicca does not go down that path. The
inner truth of Wicca will not be lost because, by the Goddess, I'll
write the damned books myself if I have to!
I will teach. I will shout the
truth of Cosmic Wicca from the rooftops!
TWPT: How does
Cosmic Wicca differ from the more Traditional Earth-centered Wicca most pagans
are familiar with?
EF: The central
difference is understanding Gaia as a being whose home is the Cosmos, and who
has Her own evolution to attend to, Her own Path to walk. It's also understanding that Gaia, as much as
we love Her, is not the Great Cosmic Goddess, the whole enchilada. Gaia, like us, serves the life and inner
processes of the Great Cosmic Goddess, whose body is the Universe. We human beings are not planets, so our role
and destiny in all of this is not the same as the Earth's. We need to willingly play our part in
ensuring Gaia's health and evolutionary success, but we also need to be
planning to move on, to mature into fulfilling our own unique role in the
greater Cosmos as an ascended species.
TWPT: Are you
talking about Humanity moving physically out into Space? Like Star Trek?
EF: Let's say StarTtrek: The Next Generation. But, yes, I'm talking about Space. We must become a mature, Cosmic Species, or
we are going to die in the "egg."
Look at our world, our society, our global human culture right now, in
the present moment. Everywhere we look,
we seem to be running out of something – oil, energy, land, food, water. When we break into open hostilities, we
usually try to justify our actions ideologically, telling ourselves and others
that we are defending the integrity of our religions, our governments, our
sacred "way of life" or what have you, but we all know we're really
squabbling over "stuff" – oil, energy, land, food, water. If the world's stuff is running out, and I
want more stuff, then I have to take your stuff. You have to die to make more room for me. That's the equation if we remain locked in
the "egg." But resources are
only limited from the perspective of the Earth as a closed box we're stuck
in. If we focus on a vision of the Earth
getting more and more crowded as the human population grows, imagining
everybody's slice of natural resource pie getting thinner and thinner, day by
day, genocide becomes a no brainer.
Expect global plans for achieving "sustainability" to include
murder on a mass scale. Expect billions
to die. Over "stuff."
But that is a completely false worldview. Earth is not a closed system, and once
you come to understand Her relationships with the Sun, Moon and stars, that
becomes obvious. Once you enter into
personal relationship with the Great Cosmic Goddess whose body is the Universal
Cornucopia of All That Is, such visions are exposed as the heinous blasphemy
they truly are, as the criminally narcissistic navel-gazing of a species bent
on self-destruction. If it turns out to
be our human destiny to fight to the last man standing over the last drop of
oil or grain of rice, it will be solely the result of a terrible failure of
imagination on our part. It will be
because we "failed to launch," refused to grow up and leave home when
the time for that stage of our development came.
We need to replace this failed "closed system"
vision of reality with one that stands a chance of successfully launching us
into the next phase of our biological and spiritual evolution as a
species. We need a vision of the Cosmos
as a grand table with a place reserved for Humanity, as a frontier in which we
are valued, and in which we are free to expand and grow without
limitation. We need a vision of
ourselves as magickal creatures entitled not only to survive, but to thrive,
as beings capable of meeting the Universe head-on and of making a place for
ourselves in it. We need a vision
capable of leading us to establish an adult relationship with Planet earth, to
fall in love again with Gaia as the funny, fallible, endearing real planetary
being She is, and has always been.
Cosmic Wicca meets all those criteria. Now… Make it so!
TWPT: Do you think
that this 101 mentality is only an issue with Solitaries or does it also extend
into covens and groups as well?
EF: Okay, here I go getting ready to piss off your readers
again. I'm sorry! But I have to be honest. One major self-deception the Wiccan Community
perpetrates on its own members is the strange legend that modern Wicca is
somehow the creation of an invisible, unbroken lineage of covens that have
preserved ancient magickal knowledge in their "secret circles" and
carried it forward to the present day, intact, all the way from the Paleolithic
era. It’s a beautiful story, and I've
heard it told with great passion and eloquence by people who, I am sure, genuinely
believe it to be true. In my work as
High Priestess for the Cosmic Goddess Coven, however – which, as I have said,
is a "Coven of Solitaries," a band of sisters and brothers bound
together by a common desire to explore magick, heal the Earth and maybe even
save Humanity, if we can… – I have interacted with dozens and dozens of covens
across America, and if you count e-mail correspondence, all over the world, and
I have never, even once, encountered anything close to the kind of coven
described in that legend. Not once. Ninety percent or better of all the working
covens in the world are groups of Solitaries who have banded together to work
in concert toward their common spiritual and magickal development and toward
bettering Wicca and the world. What an
amazing ambition! The truth of who we
are as a religion, as a social movement should be celebrated, not hidden away
behind some silly legend as if we're embarrassed by who we really are. Ninety percent of Wiccans, all over the
world, are Solitaries, some of whom create or join groups or form covens who
agree by common ascent to follow one denomination of the Craft, one Tradition
or another – none of which, by the way, are genuinely older than 1951 and
Gardner's publication of Witchcraft Today – or to launch a new Tradition
of their own, grounded in the personal studies and experiences of the coven
members. The other ten percent… Well, you know what they say about masturbation. Surveys asking people if they masturbate
reveal that ninety percent do, and ten percent are liars…
So, my point is that the common dichotomy within the
Wiccan Community – Solitaries VS groups or covens – is a red herring. It's nonsense based on some kind of cultural
low self-esteem, some twisted psychological need a lot of Wiccans seem to have
to find the roots of our religion sunk deep in the ancient past instead of in
our own present-moment experience. We
don't trust ourselves. If our religion
is not more ancient than Christianity, we can't take it, or ourselves, seriously. What utter bilge. We are all Solitaries in the sense that we
are all simultaneously learning and creating our Craft as we walk our unique
life Path with integrity and grit, and that's one great beauty of Wicca that
the more established religions no longer enjoy.
It's a big part of what makes Wicca a living religion instead of a dead
form. We ought to celebrate our
aliveness instead of trying to cover it up!
Back to the "101 mentality" question. Would everyone reading this interview who is
not learning Wicca from books, or from someone who themselves learned it from
books, please raise your hand. I didn't
think so. Wicca is a religion that is
anti-hierarchical, in the sense that, unlike any other religion on Earth –
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc. – it is not being handed own from "on
high." Starhawk writes about the
necessity of moving beyond the "great man syndrome," our common
belief that if spiritual truth is not handed down to us by some Buddha or
Christ or Prophet somewhere, it can't really be "Truth." We Wiccans are pioneers pushing back the
frontiers of spiritual truth daily by our own courageous efforts of
exploration. We are our own Christs, our
own Buddhas, our own Prophets. Since, at
present, we are largely disconnected from one another, geographically, we reach
out and share the fruits of our explorations with one another by writing them
down, reading each other's words, communicating across the distance by way of
books, magazines, the Internet. Isn't
that amazing? Isn't that the most
wonderful kind of religion imaginable?
It's a whole new metaphor – religion as conversation, instead of
pronouncement. Experience over
dogma. A circle in which the center is
everywhere. And in the context of that
amazing conversation, if we want our religion to live and grow and thrive and
change the world, we must, I repeat must – let me say that a third time
for emphasis, MUST – make sure 202, 303 and 404 knowledge is included in
the conversation.
Who came up with all these hierarchically-arranged levels
anyway? All these "degrees,"
and such? The people pretending their
Traditions flow from unbroken Paleolithic lineages, that's who. I say we just chuck all the nonsense and get
busy loving the Goddess, get busy evolving, get busy saving the world.
TWPT: Could you explain your organic theory of magick as
outlined in Wicca 404?
EF: We've already covered a lot of this. When we recognize the Universe to be the
physical body of the Great Cosmic Goddess, and all the galaxies, stars, planets
and people within Her body to be the living internal organs and cells from
which Her greater life is woven, magick becomes a science of understanding the
scalar relationships and organic connections by which the life and health of
all bodies – that of the Great Cosmic Goddess, of Gaia, of individual human
beings, of plants and animals – is maintained.
Cut your finger, and all the resources within your body are activated,
routing coagulants and anti-bodies to the site of the wound, releasing
endorphins in your brain to help manage the pain. Similarly, drawing the attention of the
greater body of Gaia to a human need is a matter of communicating that need
effectively. That's exactly what good
ritual does, communicates need to the Goddess, on the appropriate scale – for
human needs, Gaia, for Gaia's needs, the Universe – in such a way that a
healing response is initiated. Resources
rush to our aid. Our need is met. This is also why performing rote rituals with
unfocused intent produces nothing. It's
why working greedy, self-centered magick that attacks or seeks to steal
resources from other cells within the body always backfires. Magick is not hocus pocus. It's cosmic biology. It's a science.
TWPT: In the end, you do come "back to Earth"
in your exploration of "Gaia and Her Daughters" in Wicca 404. Does that make Cosmic Wicca an Earth religion
after all?
EF: We humans are, first and foremost, cells within the body
of Gaia, and it is to Her that we owe our first loyalty and obligation. We do not exist to please ourselves, but to
fulfill our designed function within Her body.
No one has a choice about this.
Our existence is inseparable from our function. When we breathe, we transform oxygen into
carbon dioxide, so plants can breathe it back into oxygen. When we eat, we turn calories into
compost. We move resources in every
direction across the planet, working to meet each other's needs without
recognizing the underlying life-flow driving us. On a more subtle level, when our brains
process sense impressions, sights, sounds, touch, when we participate in
conversations, dream dreams by day or by night, we are constantly transforming
energies for Gaia's use, though, again, we seldom recognize what purpose our
actions serve. Our real choice in life
is whether to serve Gaia willingly, to work to align our small human will with
Her larger planetary will, to make Her health and well-being our priority and
seek to function as cells within Her body at peak efficiency, or to deify
ourselves instead, to worship our own little human personalities, our egos, as
gods and, in our focus on greed and need and "gimme gimme," to make
Gaia extract our obligation from us forcefully.
Phrased that way, why would anybody ever choose the later course? And yet, that's exactly what the majority of
humans on planet earth do, they fight Gaia instead of serving Her. They pursue their own pleasures and the
accumulation of "stuff" at the expense of the planet, and everybody
on it – including, in the end, themselves.
Yes, Cosmic Wicca is an Earth religion in the sense that its
practitioners love and willingly serve Gaia.
What makes it cosmic is the extension of that vision to include
unselfishly serving and supporting Gaia in the pursuit of Her needs that have
nothing to do with us, Her needs on the scale of the Cosmos in which She lives,
in which She walks Her own Path of biological and spiritual evolution.
Cosmic Wicca is in no way about abandoning our
mother. It's about honoring Her by
choosing to grow up, to make Her proud, to mature beyond our species' troubled
adolescence and get busy making our own way in the larger cosmic reality She
inhabits. Cosmic Wicca is Earth religion
with future-vision. Its less about discovering
who we are than it is about becoming who we need to be in order to effectively serve Gaia's real
needs and to become capable of fulfilling our highest potential as individuals
and as an evolving species.
TWPT: Your theory of the God is likely to be very
controversial. Are you saying in Wicca
404 that the God, as Wiccans and Pagans know Him, not to mention
Christians, Jews, Moslems, etc., is merely a symptom of Gaia's having lost Her
balance (or even Her marbles)?
EF: The chapter in Wicca
404 about the God has actually proven to be a lot less controversial than I
expected it to be. In a nutshell, the
chapter explores, in Jungian terminology, how the fact that Gaia is a female
planetary being necessarily obscures our ability to correctly understand the
God. Most or all of our cultural
representations of male deity – Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, and even Thor,
Odin, Ra, etc. – are burdened by this unavoidable obscuration. The chance of our ever catching a clean
glimpse of the real Wiccan God from the surface of a female planet are slim to
begin with, for reason I lay out in great detail in the book. Add to that thousands of years of cultural
"noise" and misogynistic nonsense being added by angry or misguided
humans to these already skewed images of the Divine masculine, and really, it's
time to just chuck the whole business, to toss out every image of male deity we
have and start over. It's time to begin
again from scratch. I thought that idea
would piss a lot of people off, would bring the angry townsfolk with torches
and pitchforks to my door, but in fact, the vast majority of the people I am
hearing from are not reacting strongly to that chapter one way or the
other. They're mostly saying, "Yes,
that's true. Let's do it! Out with the old, in with the new!" We're definitely not afraid of change, we
Wiccans! Another great strength of our
religion!
TWPT: You close Wicca 404 by defining Wicca as, "…
a life of conscious eclecticism, lived in awakened personal relationship with
the super-conscious intelligence of the Earth and Moon and planets and Sun and
stars, and wholly devoted to spiraling, evolutionary growth up the ladder of
being toward eventual union with the Great Cosmic Goddess." Define "awakened" in this
context. What is "Wiccan
awakening?"
EF: As we use the term in the Cosmic Goddess Coven, to be "awakened"
means to live every moment of your life intentionally, eyes wide open, a
screen door in a hurricane, not babying yourself, making excuses or throwing up
mental or emotional blockades against knowledge that challenges preconceived
notions of yourself, the Goddess or reality in general. To have a personal "Wiccan
Awakening" is to come to understand the reality of the Goddess, of the
living, intelligent Earth, of the validity of magick and of the cosmic-scale
interconnections and interdependence that makes magick work on such a deep,
personally-experiential level that it permanently changes the way you
live. It changes all the criteria you
used to use when making choices and taking actions because all the
self-centered terms in which you used to interpret the meaning of life are
shone up to be the sad ego-games they really are, and always were. That's one point Jesus got very right in the
Christian New Testament – "Judge a tree by its fruit." The best way to tell an "Awakened
Wiccan" from a "pseudo-Wiccan" is to observe their actions,
the choices they make, the "fruit" their life bears in the
world. Anyone calling themselves
"Wiccan" whose values remain centered on service-to-self, to the
glorification of personality and ego, to "gimme gimme" thinking and
greed-driven choice is not only not "awakened," they're not
really Wiccan, either. Anyone whose
values are clearly rooted in the Earth, in service to Gaia and the fulfillment
of Humanity's highest potential is an "Awakened Wiccan" to my
mind, regardless of the Faith they ostensibly profess. I'd say Al Gore qualifies as an "Awakened
Wiccan," though I doubt his advisors would ever let him stray far from
his politically-safe Baptist label…
Nobody comes to Wicca already "Awakened." It
is our job, as the "elders," as the teachers of this Path, to guide
new Wiccans to experience their own "Awakening." If we fail to do so, they will, in their
turn, become "elders" who personally lack the experience, who don't
know '"awakening" is available and cannot therefore pass it
on. Wicca devolves into superstitious
empty forms. We must not let that
happen!
TWPT: What is it that you hope to accomplish with your
404 book in regards to this cycle of 101 level teachings?
EF: With a little luck,
I hope to bust the cycle wide open! To
put higher level knowledge into the hands of as many 101 Wiccans as possible,
and to single-handedly transform the
whole nature of the conversation…
That's the dream. My much more
realistic goal is to at least get the conversation started, to get people
talking about these supposed levels of knowledge, who assigned what information
to which, and what price the Wiccan religion stands to pay for maintaining such
strange, antiquated distinctions. Even
more, I hope to get folks thinking and talking about the future. Do we have a common vision? As Wiccans?
As humans? Where are we going, as
a species? When will we get there? The original working title of Wicca 404
was FutureWicca, and I may someday go back and expand on the book to
make it worthy of that title. Since I
already mentioned Al Gore, remember the Clinton/Gore concept of "Building
a Bridge to the Future?" I
believe Cosmic Wicca can be that bridge for Humanity, granting a powerful
thealogical framework within which to, first, actively re-imagine who we are
and what is possible for us as magickal creatures embedded in a living
Universe, and then to live up to that vision.
To make it so.
TWPT: Do you plan
on expanding on this book with future books aimed at creating a repository of
material that caters to those who are seeking to go beyond what they learned
when they first stepped onto the Wiccan path?
EF: Let's see how Wicca
404 does, first! I am really not a
writer by nature. I'm more of a counselor. I can talk talk talk these ideas all
day, I can listen and guide with compassion and grace, but the moment I sit
down in front of a blank computer screen, I might as well be in the dentist's
chair pulling my own teeth. Yes, I will
write more books along these lines if no one else accepts the challenge, if Wicca
404 fails to light a fire of change within the Wiccan Community and start a
movement. I'll surely try again. Or maybe, since talking is more my gift than
writing, I'll go a different direction, and do "talking books,"
lectures on CD, or even start some kind of podcast Internet radio program. The technological possibilities for reaching
out to people these days are truly amazing.
TWPT: Has the
reception of this book been what you had hoped for in terms of folks eagerly
looking to move beyond 101 teachings? Any feedback that you've received from
readers in regards to this book that you'd care to share with TWPT's readers?
EF: I don't think it's
been out long enough to have been "received" yet, one way or the
other. News travels slowly. The one review that I have seen of the book,
posted by a reader on the Lulu Publishing website, says my sentences are too
long – an observation anyone still reading this interview would probably
second! But he also calls Wicca 404 a,
"Much needed book," and concludes his review by writing that "Free
sounds a call for us to 'get serious' about true study in our faith, for
internal consistency to our system of belief. It's a call worth
answering." I felt pretty good,
reading that. My first review, and the
reviewer definitely "got it."
That's great!
TWPT: Any other
observations you'd care to make on how a practitioner, be they solitary or coven,
can help themselves get off the 101 dime and begin to grow as a Wiccan towards
their full potential?
EF: It may sound strange coming from a person who has just
published a book they hope lots of people will buy, but stop relying solely
on books for direction in your Wiccan Path.
Wicca is not an intellectual exercise, not something you can get a
PhD in and hang a diploma on your wall and announce, "I'm a Doctor of
Wicca! Respect me!" Wicca is a way of being in the
world. Becoming Wiccan is a lifelong process,
the long-term fruit of full engagement with life, of life lived in radical
openness to the Goddess. Accomplish that
opening, and She will teach you. You'll
never need another book. It is in that
living, personal relationship with the Goddess, with Gaia, with the Cosmos,
with Nature at every scale of being that our full potential as human beings is
revealed. No book can tell you who you
are or what is possible for you. Books
can play an important role as maps of the terrain ahead that we must personally
explore as we evolve and grow in our spiritual journeys, but don't confuse the
map with the territory! Put down your
books and walk your Path!
That said, if Wicca is to survive as a world religion, as
a global cultural movement, if our Faith is to evolve to become a potent force
for positive change in the world, a shaper of human destiny, then, by golly, we
need better maps. 101 level
"Beginner's Bodice-Rippers" are not going to take us where we need to
go. Anyone out there with the knowledge
to do so, PLEASE! Write your 202,303
or 404 level Wiccan book! I promise
to buy a copy and to share it with everyone I know. The most important thing, when talking about
books, and this is true for everybody at every stage of understanding and
development, is that we must actively seek out challenging, higher level
material. When we are swimming
upstream, we have to swim, which means we have to work for
it. If we flip over onto our backs and
float effortlessly, we'll wind up right back where we started every time, maybe
even further downstream. Spiritual
development is hard work. Don't
shortchange yourself, your friends, your species or your Goddess. Do your homework!
TWPT: Well Esra you have certainly given the readers of TWPT a lot to think about and a lot to discuss with one another in the coming months. I think that ultimately this is a good thing and will encourage the community to start thinking in terms of the future of Wicca and how the next generation of leaders is going to move beyond 101 thinking and encourage those along the path to use their minds and their relationships
with deity to forge a path that is contantly evolving and never stagnating. Good luck with Wicca 404 and with any future projects that you might endeavor to undertake.
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