The Goddesses
One of the most alluring aspects of modern witchcraft for me as an eleven-twelve-thirteen year old non-binary queer kid was the central reality of a Goddess, the Goddess, and Goddesses - Great Feminine Spirits. I had grown up with loose masculine language for the Divine as a passive default that also included the feminine and other-gendered realities, but did not highlight or necessarily focus on them. At the heart of my Craft then was the Goddess and reflecting as I write this now, this hasn’t really changed.
I had a distinct and conscious conversion experience at a very young age from Hinduism to this modern Pagan Witchcraft at the time. It felt absolutely fated - and still does - and I also made a conscientious decision. I stepped into something. There was even a tiny time-window in which because I had “become Wiccan” (my words at the time) I realised I could eat beef if I wanted to. I tried cow in several forms. Not long after this I became a vegetarian and have remained so since then.* My experiences and longings propelled me into the Craft and so I took what I could get at the time from the resources and folks at hand. In the late 1990s-early 2000s there was a particular kind of eclectic Neo-Pagan witchcraft easily available and at its centre was “the Goddess”. My journey since then has been one of wild initiation, deep-dive study and apprenticeship into orders and families of Traditional Craft, the midwifing of Wildwood, transformation through Reclaiming, while also stepping into authoring books and travelling and teaching magical technique, spirit-work, and witchery. Returning to live in Bali for 2 years from November 2013 to December 2015 also had me reconnect with my Balinese Hindu cultural roots in substantial ways.
When I invoked, prayed to, thought of the Goddess as a 13-year-old witch I was communicating with a primordial divine and distinctly feminine essence who was - for me - everything. Everything. I had some vague notion from books and folks online that I ought to also be relating to masculine “energies” or “the God”, but this did not make much sense to a definitively queer, assigned-feminine-by-everyone-around-me, and genderless-experiencing child. I remember watching the film The Mists of Avalon - I read the book a few years later - and being entirely engrossed by this British Old Religion of Goddess worshippers. It felt completely validating. Little did I know at the time of course how revisionist, ahistoric, and wildly without nuance much of this concept of a universal Great-Goddess cult was… and yet it stirred very real feelings, sensations, and ideas.
It didn’t take long for me to become more aware of and involved in the discourse in modern witchcraft and paganism around the Goddess and deities. I’ve written several deep-dive chapters exploring this terrain in my previous books and it’s one of the central parts of why and what I teach. In 2004 Persephone called me. In 2005 - in my last month of being 16 - I dedicated myself as Her priest.
It was Persephone (and Fortuna before Her, who led me to Persephone in what is another tale to tell) who opened the box, cracked wide the gates, and thrust me into the realms of “polytheism proper”. Soon I was studying Hellenic reconstructionism and attempting rituals and invocations in Attic Greek. This was part of my desire to be thorough and diligent to these very powerful experiences and encounters I was regularly having. And to these relationships. But on a deeper level for me - in what I think of as the labyrinth of initiation - I was being guided and propelled deeper into Mystery. Several Great Ones came to “drop the mic” on multiple occasions. And of course - they still do.
Relating with Persephone introduced me to entire families of Mysteries and Spirits. My dedication to Persephone certainly lit some light above my head because I have been completely God-bothered ever since. Luckily for the past 10 years I’ve just been able to be more mediated about it all and less taken apart each time.
The Goddesses are central to my life. Specifically when I write “the Goddesses” I am thinking and speaking of,
Brighid,
Hekate,
Our Lady of the Wildwood,
Aphrodite,
Persephone,
Kali,
The Star Goddess,
Grandmother Weaver… (although to think about Grandmother as a Deity or Goddess is a little odd…)
I have dealt with, encountered, carried and been carried by, worked with, and invoked multiple other Goddesses and Feminine Spirits in the past 21 years, but the above are the ones I have sworn to, been initiated by or to, and live in dedicated relationship with.
I could - and sometimes feel drawn to - write entire books about each of these Great Ones in my life. They are there in all my work and workings. Drenching them. I teach about them and offer rituals to commune with Them (and I have and do) regularly. They are inked on my skin and “tattooed into my bones”. They are my cosmos, I wander and dance and live within and through these Mysteries and Magics. Their names and lore are doorways to raw and rich ecstatic experience.
Each one of these Mysteries has called me to confront entire landscapes of self, experience, and reality. Each one of these Goddesses has helped to aid and transform me utterly. I wouldn’t say I am a priestess or priestex to all of Them, but these are among the Great Ones I honour and relate to in fundamental ways. They stand strong within my “inner court of Spirits”.
I offer the Goddesses - my Goddesses - these words, these invocations, these deep acknowledgements:
Persephone, my Soul-Goddess, where you begin and I end I can not always discern. We have walked together through lifetimes and lands and still we sit back to back in the caves, among the stars, in the deep places and silently we remember each other, whispering secret things into the darkness of time. You wield the Sword of Light that cuts cleanly flesh from bone and bone from nothing and nothing from space and space from darkness and darkness from light. You are the Great Teacher of Being, you are Being.
Kali, my Great Mother - Maa! The One who with flashing steel and lolling tongue - with spinning fire and shining blackness - consume and devour the illusion of separation. With You I learn that Love is in the Surrender and in the Dance, that furious Dance of Bliss and Terror that unites me with my deepest self and other and suddenly we are together. You have brought me back to the Mystery of Self in so many ways.
Our Lady of the Wildwood, Crescent-Crowned, Rosy Queen! Your Secret Name is written on my heart. You are the Mighty One, the Raven Queen, the Serpent-wrapped Sister to Fate, you have taught me the mysteries of the Heart Broken Open and you have revived me, called me into the Bower and reminded me that along the thorny roads there are wells, places to pause, sing, soften, call, sup on honey and wine, and dance my way back through, spiralling ever inward, inward to You. I have always seen and marked you and been marked by You.
Brighid, St Brigid, I know you as both Goddess and Saint, and you have taught me that - for you - there is no difference. You are the great body of Éire, Exalted and Deeply Honoured. I know you as Smith, as Poet, as Healer, as Prophet, as Judge, as Peace-Keeper. You are the One who stands by the Tree, the Well, and the Forge and harmonises and sustains synergy between worlds, realms, souls, kin, and those who are born, and those who die. Ever I feel you walking with those of us who toil and till and laugh and live - alive. It is you who once told me - Sometimes we just get up, sometimes we just write an e-mail, sometimes we just feed the cat, sometimes we just kiss our friend, sometimes we just cuddle our partner, sometimes we just open the door, sometimes we just clean the bathroom, sometimes we just sit and watch our favourite show, sometimes we just write a letter, sometimes we just pay a bill - Sometimes.
Aphrodite, more and more I am shy to say - I am a priestess of Aphrodite! You claimed me under that Biblical Sycamore of Syria, that Ficus sycomorus, through the voice and body of my beloved coven-kin and I willingly came to You. You have said No to me when I thought going to you would mean you’d say Yes. You have taught me of what “giving from the overflow” actually implies. You are Golden and Black and wild as the ocean, you stalk the shadows and move through infinite realms of wonder unknown. It is You, Great Lady of Life and Love, of Truth, Rhythm, and Beauty, who bestows on those who dare the gift of intimacy that undoes expectation and initiates the head to the mysteries of the heart and flesh.
Mighty Hekate, I have learnt so much from You. Within your titanic being I have been initiated, unravelled, and renewed whole and complete unto myself. You are a wondrous work of great magic and a tutor par excellence in the Mysteries. You have profoundly blessed and charged my work in the world as a Witch who travels and spirals through the seasons, cultivates spaces of sorcery, spirit-work, journeying, and self-knowledge. Hekate you have given me what you hold and I hope that I wield it well with You at my side.
Star Goddess… to whom I am wed… whose name cannot be spoken - I have been with you from the beginning, from the beginning I have been with you.~ This is it. This is so.
And Grandmother Weaver, Old One of the Wildwood - who is neither a world nor a word, and yet each thing goes into you, comes forth from you, describes your endless infinity of being and becoming… I honour and acknowledge that I am spun of Witch’s Fate just as I spin Witch’s Fate and wander the woods as Ara, the First Witch.
*There was a strange 6 months in my early 20s in which I was eating fish, but that ended dramatically.
~“I have been with you from the beginning, from the beginning I have been with you.” Chant by Ravyn Stanfield.
