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To be Dianic is to be empowered by the Divine Feminine all around us. It is to know that time moves in a never-ending spiral of energy and love. It is seeing the Mother's face in the world all around us--in the elements of Gaia, the darkness of Hecate, the wildness of Kali.
First and foremost, we envision the Earth that birthed and nourishes us as female. We revel in all aspects of life on the planet and feel unbounding joy in living a Pagan life. The Earth is our mother and sister but, perhaps more exactly, she is our Grandmother. Wise, ancient, full of deep mysteries and ultimately unknowable. The Earth is a Woman and she is Goddess. We honor Her as home and womb/matrix of all life. We also respect her as an immensely complex system that is constantly engaged in the dual act of creation and destruction. This is an awe-inspiring power with which we are suitably awed. Structurally, Dianic Wicca is affirmingly non-hierarchical. Consensus building is a conscious part of our decision-making and our spiritual practice. Magical workings are only undertaken with the unanimous consent of the workers. We meet in circles, groves or covens and our work is as inclusive of all present as possible. A High Priestess often functions as the ritualist of the group and as group mother. A Priestess may work with a priestess-in-training (sometimes called the Maiden) or she may work at the altar alone. Dianic ritual often includes a talking stick with which we check in, honoring the speech of our circle sisters and brothers as they tell where they are (both emotionally and physically) at the time of the ritual.
Unlike the three-tiered system of initiation common to some Wiccan traditions, Dianic as we practice it has only two "levels" of clergy. When a seeker feels led to make a commitment to Goddess-centered spirituality, he or she may choose to make a dedication. The dedicant speaks vows or promises about their Goddess life. Some groups have set liturgy for initiation but most develop unique rituals for each set of dedicants. Many people prefer to remain life-long dedicants(equivalent to a first degree in most traditions). Others choose, usually after many years of study, ritual and service‚ to be ordained as a High Priestess or High Priest. This is equivalent to a third degree
in most traditions. It means that the priestess or
priest is ready to take a leadership role in the
community, to teach, to lead a group, to take an advocacy role for the community within the dominant
culture. We have no second degree equivalent. On the subject of names...It is very popular in the
general Wiccan community to take on a new name at the time of initiation, and totally up to that indiviual if they would like to take a "magickal" name or not. We am often asked about the question of duality, of balance. We have been told that Goddess and God reflect the ways of nature where all things are balanced as female and male. We think Dianics perceive energy in different modalities. We find the ideas of "male and female energy" to be uncomfortable and limiting. Our concept of energy flows from the world around us--in the tides, the seasons, the jetstream. We perceive it in the Wheel, the Spiral, the triskele. It is an energy that surges and retreats, again and again. We see it in our human cycles of birth, growth, death and rebirth. It is reflected in the phases of the moon and the silver wheel of the stars, in orgasm and the cycle of menstruation. We see few things as linear, preferring the Wheel and spiral. As all Wiccans do, we follow the cycle of the agricultural year. Most of us end and begin the year at Samhain when the Goddess in her aspect as
Crone/Grandmother reaches the height of her power. We celebrate the same holy days but sometimes we take a different, decidedly woman-affirming, slant. The first on the Wheel is the celebration of the Winter Solstice, which we call Yule. It marks the rebirth of the sun as Sacred Child and is a 12-day festival of giving and receiving gifts, dancing the ring and singing. Our group is organized as a clan-family and we come together to celebrate this dark and holy night.
Next is Bridnasadh, sacred to the Goddess Brid and
marking the beginning of spring. We make Brigid
wheels, bless the candles for the year, make Brid
promises (like New Year haÂs resolutions) and give each other new brooms. The children prepare a special bed for Brid and invite her to bless the house. They do a special ritual where they are the Goddess and knock at the door for entry. We eat yeasty baked goods in her honor and drink beer which is important in the Goddess/saint folklore. We spread a cloth (called BridÂs mantle or bhrat) on the ground to catch the first spring dew.
The third day on the Wheel is Ostara, sacred to Eostre and the East. We dye eggs (I do red only, the children do a rainbow of colors, one covener and his family make elegant Ukrainian-style eggs) and exchange them. The Goddess' sacred Hare brings basket of candy to the children and we balance an egg on its end. In our ritual, we turn the Wheel by planting seeds in soil from the cauldron.
Beltane is a time of creativity and fertility. We
decorate the Maypole and dance the ring, as well as
refurbishing the decorations at our outdoor circle.
Our ritual includes a purifying fire, which we jump,
shouting and clapping. It is the beginning of Summer
and we delight in the long warm days.
Midsummer finds us feasting on watermelon and fried
chicken (we are southern Pagans, after all!). Our
coven pyromaniacs fill the sky with fireworks. We
listen to the frogs and catch lightning bugs in jars. Our rituals include gratitude for the exuberance of the season. We are sunburnt, well-fed, dreaming lively dreams of gardens and sprites. We also acknowledge this as the longest day and shortest night.
At Lughnasadh, we gather tomatoes and cucumbers from
our gardens. We feast on salads and fresh peaches. We honour Lugh'Âs foster mother Tailtu with arts and
crafts competitions, in which we all take part. The
ritual gives us an opportunity to forgive old enemies (and ourselves) and forge new bonds of kinship.
At Mabon, we tell the story of Mabon, the son of
Modrona and honour the Goddess in her aspect as
Mother. We celebrate the bounty of our Mother Earth
and honor the darkening of the year. We offer thanksgiving for the year that is rapidly passing. We dance a spiral dance and begin the deep dreaming and divination of Samhain. The children and some of the adults bob for apples.
Samhain honors our Ancestors, the beloved Long Dead
and the Goddess in her aspect as Crone. The Crone
joins us in our ritual circle, as do the Ancestors,
for whom we light beacons at the four directions. Our particular group also hosts "Earth Religions Awareness Week" in our city during this time.
We expect a high standard of conduct from our Dianic
sisters and brothers. We affirm that life in all its
mystery is sacred, follow the Rede in all things and
try to be ever mindful of the Law of Return. We believe it is important to take responsibility for our actions as well as our reactions. Because it is
difficult for us to separate our spiritual life from
our political one, we are active in local politics,
especially on any issue which affects freedom of
religion as well as the environment. We believe that
the Earth is all sacred space and we refer to the cast circle as "ritual" space, being mindful that every space is sacred.
We acknowledge that centuries of living under an
autocratic and misogynistic culture has left gaping
wounds in the human psyche. We accept that we must all be healers as well as ritualists, that we must salve spirits that are hurting and feed those that are hungry. We do this through ritual as well as activism on behalf of oppressed people within our own communities and the world.
We believe in rearing our children in our spirituality, but still allowing them to find thier own paths if they fell Wicca or the Dianic tradition itself is not right for them as young adults or adults. We honor their transitions in several rituals. Following the birth of a new member of our clan-family, we hold a ritual called a saining in which the child is presented to the Goddess, to the Ancestors, to the Spirits of the Place and to the clan-family. When our children reach puberty, we ritualize the moment with the First Blood for girls and Green Manning for boys. In this rite, we accept them as Young Elders in the group.
Our other rites of passage are similarly Wiccan. We
unite persons in love through a handfasting. We mark
eldering through a Croning or Maging ritual. And we
bid our beloved dead bon voyage to Tir Nan Og with a
service of Passing. We do other Life Passage rituals
as they arise. A woman with children gone to college
might need a special celebration. A man who has lost a job may need something else entirely.
To sum up the story of who we are and where we've
been, we Dianics acknowledge a great debt to our ancient forebears, to those who lost their lives,
properties and will during the European Inquisitions
and to the people who kept alive a glowing ember of
the Goddess through generations of Christian veneer.
We thank those people who worshipped the Goddess in
her aspect as Mary (along with all the "saint") as
well as those who kept their ancestral and household
deities, passing them (often in secret) to the next
generation. We also thank the women and men in the
early 60's and 70's who gave the modern American
Pagan movement its firm foundation, especially the
MacFarlanes, Mary Daly, Starhawk, Z. Budapest, Marija Gimbutas, James Mellaart, Sybil Leek. From Inanna and the Goddess of Laussel, from Malta to
Africa to the Ring of Fire onward through the
priestesses and warriors of classical times through
the midwives of Europe and America and into the present day where we enjoy, at last, the return of the Great Mother in her glory. This is our history as we see it. A wide web, a long thread that reaches back from the modern priestess standing at her American altar to our Ancestors at the dawn of human time. A connection that has been strained and frayed but never truly broken.
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male and female engergy working together to work majack and work spells is over all more effective then an all male or all female session.. or one alone..even though all of these are effect... personally, I don't think that the god should be worshiped SOLELY on his own.. but some sabaths are more about him then the Goddess.. this is only a few sabaths where the horned one plays a more dominant role.. it's kinda like with some of the kings of old (ie Scotland, England) .. expecially ones said to be the"sacred king" ... the king would be the one that repects are being paid to but at the same time thewoman who is supporting him, loving him, advising him, providing his nasecities for him, keeping his castle in order, and protecting him with her (possible)majack is also being paid respects to at the same time.
It's the same for the few sabaths that the horned one is the "deaty" of honor.
The Way
There is a way of life for mankind that allows him to remain man and yet also be an intergraded part of nature. This way if life was abandoned not yesterday,not even in the space of many hundreds of year. It was disrupted and given up thousands of years ago. The Way once existed in the world. It had hardly survived infancy when the urban hierarchical-militaristic culture of the different Neolithic phases of human history abruptly ended it. However, the Way survived and smolders, imaginably in the collective depths of the human psyche. If one taps these depths, dredges up the lost images of the Way, and takes them seriously, she or he is usually stigmatized as hopeless romantic, or worse: a Pagan or a Witch. Which in this modern era these three stigmas are three of the worse that an individual can be names rather true or not.
Email
morgannalunacoven@yahoo.com
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