As a feminist-religionist,  I hold that the Goddess is the overseeing intelligence that has created the universe.  I am Woman therefore I hold that the God is Woman also.  I know only Woman. I can't know men in the same manner.  I can't relate in any way to men as I do to Woman.  I can't love him in the same way.  I do not know the physical world in the same way that man does. Although I do not discount the impact of the God on my reality, a Woman is my Ultimate Reality.  She is Whom I emulate. My creativity should be no less than Hers. 

Calliope
Image courtesy of The Goddess Art of
 Jonathon Earl Bowser

The aim of each being is to reach the realm of the Goddess; the sphere of Ultimate Creativity and Reality. The scope of the Goddess is complete unity with the body and mind of yourself.  It is complete unity with the body and mind of the society in which you live also. The sphere of the Goddess includes not only your responsibilities to yourself and to society but to nature.  To be within the element of the Goddess means that you must be alive and aware.  You must be aware of what is going on in and around your physical and mental body.  Being alive and aware is being cognizant and sensitive and, as sharing, is communication and is necessary in building character and having fun. Conversely, sharing and having fun is being cognizant and sensitive and alive and aware.  To be within the sphere of the Goddess you must use what is available from the reality in and around you 100%.  You must communicate it 100% to the reality in and around you.  "As above, so below."

Heaven and hell are ideas held in your mind.  Your mind created both the Goddess and you.  You and your mind have chosen what your character traits should be and how you will act in public and private matters.  You have chosen what to believe is heaven and what to believe is hell.  You have taken the resultant decision and imposed these ideas upon yourself.

My Goddess is neither all good nor all bad.  I'm not and I created Her and She, as my environmental reality, has created me.  My viewpoint of Her includes the view that She is not All Powerful.  I cannot, therefore, hold that She must be all bad like the god Satan of the Christian tradition, nor all good, like the Goddess Mary of the Catholic religion.

I do not hold that the world was good at the beginning of creation and it has become worse because of the free will of humanity.  The reality is that our cities are larger than ever in the herstory of Woman.  We, as people, are cooperating to a degree never recorded.  We are expressing our free will in a manner that is beneficial to the whole of society.  The world is getting smaller.  Consider the access the people of this planet have to each other through the television, telephone and the World Wide Web.

I do hold that the act of creation is the best that it can be at the time of creation.  I also hold that creation is still going on.  The Goddess is still in the act of creating now. Woman is no better or worse in evolution than a weed or a rose. We do, as Women, have what we consider a unique thinking process.  We, as Women, use it because we have it to use.  With this thinking process we make choices because it is our nature to do so.  There wouldn't be a need for a thinking process otherwise.

We, as Witches in America, live in a society that is Christian and Jewish oriented; a society of you or me.  The time has arrived for a you and me world.  The time has arrived that everyone can stop putting down everyone else. The time has arrived that we can exist in harmony. Stagnation is the only sin of humanity.

As Americans, we have presupposed freedom.  As an example, we say: "Land of the free, home of the brave."  We write child rearing books that tell us of the first five years of a child's growth.  These books not only tell us what teeth to expect when, but also when the child will exert its independence from the norms of society.  With this presupposed freedom, we are to begin to fall out of the pattern of mental growth when we reach five or so and strike out on our own.  That is, until books began to appear about adolescents, and then adult mental behavior, as sociology became popular.

My mind became uncomfortable when I got to these adult "baby books".  It felt okay not to be different in physical growth into old age, but to be within a "normal" thinking pattern at my age reduced the size of my ego.  Then I looked into astrology and herstory, and my ego got even smaller.

The freedom that we do have is how to categorize within our minds; choices.  We have made up who we are and then lived the result of that decision.  We chose how we will carry our bodies, how to act and whether or not to be a Mother.  We chose what job line to go into, how much education to allow ourselves, and even how much money we will have. 

Circe

Sometimes--out of the hurt comes good.  After time passes, all occurrences, including evil, hurtful occurrences, contribute to the good of all.  At the least, society faces the evil, and ostracizes it from the recognized good.  The recognized Good and Evil change as our society change. We change as we recognize our idea of our own possible perfection in the Goddess's universe.

Recognizing what is in the universe does not mean that what is real must be real, or the number of forms of reality is larger or smaller, or good or bad.  The diversity that we have recognized is only what we have learned to recognize as reality.

There was a time that I thought that I didn't see what I did see; that I couldn't see auras.  I went through a system of self hypnosis to enable me to overcome my own preprogramming.  My problem was that somewhere along the line of my growth I had taught myself not to see what was before my eyes.  I had learned to ignore auras somewhere in my life.  So, then, the self hypnosis was for teaching myself to recognize what I already knew.

Someone would tell me the information that I needed, or I would find agreement elsewhere in the universe, through books, radio, television and so on.  I would get confirmation that what I was seeing was what was really there in front of me.  I found that the vision I was seeing I put out of my mind.  I did this because I had no previous verification. Having the ability to see auras is neither good nor bad.  It is just something that I decided that I wanted to know about, like speed reading; moving towards my 100%.

Why isn't the universe gray? Why isn't the universe without evil?  Life would be dull without gradations of good. Differences in quality are the same as differences in type and kind.  Categorizing is fun, no matter what your Mother said about judging books by covers.  The reality is that even mountains have a driving need to grow as differently as they are different from one another.  Is the diversity that we meet any better or worse than that which we have right now? Are the differences necessary?

Again, I have chosen to believe that the Goddess created and is still creating this universe.  I am a part of that creation with a personality that is unique.  I hold that the Goddess did not wish to deny existence to any possible creative instinct that She may have had.  Her creativeness produced every kind of being imaginable and some not imaginable, until found alive in some strange forest, city sewer or crack in the sidewalk.  If you look at the universe, nothing is entirely bad.  It adds goodness somewhere. Its existence adds something to human philosophy, science and religion, as well as the ecological cycle when it dies.

I hold there is evil.  Evil is evident. Evil, pain, is physically and mentally all around.  You feel pain when you are in the wrong marriage or job, or from a blow to your body.  Some people deny that evil exists because if the Goddess created it then it can't be evil.  That theory can work only if the Goddess is all good, which is not the way I see Her.

Being and aliveness are the same as being good.  The more you do what you like to do, the better you will do it, and the more you will want to do it.  The more you do what you like, the more animated you become in your expressions and in your communications with others.  The better something is, the more it is.

Nymphs
The Nymphaeum 1878 - William Adolphe Bouguereau

I hold that the Goddess is good and evil combined.  She has no independent parts.  She is reality unified into one complete whole.  On a microscopic scale she would be akin to an amoeba.

Creation is the cause of good and evil.  In the act of creation there is inherent error and change.  Evolution means that something is "becoming" (as in art, mountains or babies, for example) and that this "becoming" is continuous; ongoing.  Consider the construction of a clay pot.  We, as rational beings, categorize what we believe to be good and evil.  Therefore, we are the originators of the creation of good and evil.  If we did not recognize and categorize what is good and evil, then good and evil would not exist.  Yes, I am saying that we are the Goddess. Anything that we say is not good is evil, and that is the way it is until we change our minds.

The more we think of the existence of the Goddess the more we see two things.  One, a Goddess that is just thought would not keep our attention and devotion.  Two, if the Goddess does exist, then belief says that She will make Herself felt by Her creatures.  She shows Herself then through our thinking and emotional processes.

By making a choice and choosing your own best good your next series of best good choices are unveiled.  You as the Goddess has received a revelation from the Goddess, a process of revelation through evolution; thinking.  It is the act of communicating divine truth from the Goddess to Woman.  This act of revelation (seeing what is good) communicates the creating genius of the Goddess and gives evidence that the Goddess is indeed the Goddess. Evolution shows the complexity of Her genius every time a new rose shows its face, every time a new thought evolves and every time the societies of this planet get together with the purpose of agreement. She is reality as it is right now.

At any rate the only reason to have a Goddess first is because it's good to have a Woman you can talk to.

If you have a Goddess that you can reach in the future then you must have one that evolved from somewhere in the past.  Reincarnation implies that this place and time that we are now occupying is a place to make ourselves better.  It said that because we had a bad past, we must evolve into something better.  The objective being that we must eventually occupy the ultimate place of being with our Ultimate Concern, Omega or Goddess at the completion of this time and place.  Concern right now and here, calling that place or time Nirvana.  Growing does not imply that you will be in a better state of Nirvana.  It just implies that you are be more enlightened within that state where more is fun.  Enlightenment is having fun. Having fun is learning. Learning is enlightenment.

Hindu theologians say that our present reality is for the purging of our bodies and souls of past evils.  We don't necessarily know of the evils though.

I hold that this place is this place.  We don't have any idea of why we are here.  We just have educated guesses made from systems that we've created.  There have been may different types of systems, governments, religions, etc. since the creation of Woman.

Yet, being who I am, I hold that life that is energy, cannot dissolve.  I hold that it is as everything else within this reality we calls a universe in that it progresses by changing its form.  Cake becomes cake with a mixture of lesser yet complete ingredients; eggs, butter, milk.

Evolution is irreversible or it would not be evolution.  If the Goddess exists, then evolution exists.  The whole idea of theology is our evolving to reach Her sphere of existence whether in this life or the hypothetical next.

Blessed be all, both great and small, and have you a joy full day.

Serpentine Grove		Witchcraft
Table of Contents