NeoPagan Goddess Concepts Or The Goddess Is Not Yahweh in Drag! Presented by Liz La Posta

Gaia: Greek Goddess of the Earth  Oldest divine being  Parthenogenesis: can reproduce independently  Mother of all (Greek) Deities  In times of conflict She sides with offspring  Can be literally the ground we walk on  Python: a giant snake who protects the Oracle of Delphi

Gaia Josephine Wall

Demeter: Greek Grain Goddess  Granddaughter of Gaia  Focus on Agriculture  Mother of Persephone Queen of the Underworld  Inherits the snake symbolism  Persephone myth: how the seasons came to be

Demeter By Mati Klarwein By “Katlyn”

Isis: Egyptian Mother Goddess of Magick  “Queen of the Throne”  Egyptian ideal of loyal wife and mother  Used Her magick to resurrect murdered husband Osiris (God of Underworld) and bore His child Horus  In “The Golden Ass” by Lucius Apuleius, Isis is considered THE Great Goddess Encyclopedia Mythica

Isis JoAnna Cameron, “The Secret of Isis” CBS ’75-’76

Is the Divine One or Many?  Polytheism: many Gods exist and are worshiped  Monotheism: only one God/dess exists and is worshiped  Henotheism: many Gods exists, but one or few are worshiped  Soft Polytheism: one divine being with many different aspects and names  Hard Polytheism: individual separate Gods, no single divine source  Duotheism: one God and one Goddess, usually with Soft Polytheism  Pantheism: God is equal to the forces and laws of the universe  Metaphor-theism: God/dess are convenient metaphors for human qualities and issues, but are not literally real. (Pagan Humanism)

The Major Trends  In my humble experience, within NeoPaganism soft polytheism and duotheism are the most commonly practiced NeoPagan deity concepts, especially within Wicca.  The Universal Divine: “The Great Mystery”  The Personal Divine: Patron Deities  Facets of a Diamond: to comprehend the UD we break It into bite sized parts. Because of our limited powers of perception, we can not fathom the entire whole.  “The (Wiccan) God” and “The (Wiccan) Goddess”  The Great Goddess ?

NeoPagan Ideas vs Traditional Christian Ideas  Immanent: the manifest world is the offspring of the divine, we are inherently sacred (Thou Art God/dess!)  Multiple in that there are usually many different names and expressions of the divine, even if only one is believed in  Dogma is self determined, and seldom the “Only Way”  Usually the divine is not all powerful, or all knowing, but is a Higher Being than us  Salvation is unnecessary  Karma punishes  Emphasis on the Feminine  Transcendent: the manifest world is separate from the divine, we are not inherently sacred (original sin)  Single form with limited names and expressions  Dogma: “One Right Way” TM  Divine is all powerful and all knowing  Salvation from Hell  God punishes  Emphasis on the Masculine

Charge of the Goddess  One of the oldest and most widely used and adapted pieces of Wiccan liturgy.  Attributed to Doreen Valiente ( ), a Gardnerian Wiccan Priestess who was taught by Gerald Gardner, the “Father of Wicca”.  Adapted from Charles Leland’s “Aradia, or The Gospel of the Witches” (1899) and some ideas from “The Book of the Law” by Aleister Crowley, a Golden Dawn Occultist  The original version was published in “Eight Sabbats for Witches” by Janet and Stewart Farrar.

Questions ? Waterhouse