The Gender of God

A poet whose blog I read just posted this wonderful haibun. (Go on, read it; it’s quite short and truly delightful.)

I fell in love with it.

But then, a little while later, I had the thought that it would have been even more perfect if she’d said ‘Praise God’ instead of ‘Praise the Lord’. The word Lord is clearly male, whereas I like to think of God as female.

Of course, many many people all over the world – probably the majority – believe that God is male, as the widespread book religions* teach. But a substantial number believe that God is female – or that God encompasses all genders and much more besides, whilst they personally prefer to focus on the female or Great Mother aspect. (This latter is my own position.)

Well, it’s obviously a bit much to expect that devout Christians will stop equating ‘Lord’ with God, or that the devout of any other book religion will allow their Deity to be more gender-inclusive. So, if that seems to some of us to be selling God very short, it’s up to us to find our own words.

It’s seldom necessary to make huge changes. I do use the word Goddess sometimes, but ‘God’ works for me too. In my mind ‘God’ is all-encompassing and can be interpreted as ‘Goddess’ if I choose to focus on that aspect. In fact I see the words ‘Goddess’ and also ‘Deity’ as being similarly all-encompassing. (Sometimes I say 'the Universe', giving it this same meaning, way beyond the physical universe. But that's a bit tricky, as I might sometimes refer, in another context, to the physical universe.) The reality of God, I believe, is so vast as to be far beyond our understanding. Paradoxically, each of us can have a personal relationship with the Deity – and to do that, it helps to focus on one aspect we can relate to.

‘Praise God’ works for me.


*The books: E.g. the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Vedic texts, the Buddhist sutras and shastras…. (
Individuals have written books about the Pagan or earth-based spiritual paths, but they are not ‘have to’ books of laws to be obeyed; they are not regarded as the sacred words of God which emanated from the Deity even though written down by people.)

HEALING WITH THE GODDESS

(A talk I gave to a women's circle: The Goddesses of Shining Light)

Some of my sweetest childhood memories involve being sick in bed — because my mother was so good at making me feel better. She always seemed to know exactly what I needed — the best comfort foods to tempt my palate when I was able to eat; and whether to close the blinds so I could sleep or let the sunshine in and prop me up on the pillows to read a book. 

It starts when we're very young. If a small child falls over and gets hurt, they run straight to their mother, who says, "Let me kiss it better." So when we think of the Goddess as healer, it's natural to evoke Her in Her Mother aspect — the one who knows how to give us comfort, the one who can cure a hurt with a kiss, whose hugs are a haven, the one who makes everything better. It's a beautiful experience to rest and recuperate in the arms of the Mother. It can be as simple as calling on Her in thought when we feel unwell. 

Sometimes, being human, we forget that we can do that. 

We can evoke a particular Goddess, or simply The Goddess, that overall Divine energy of which specific Goddesses are aspects or representations. It may be that a specific Goddess is particularly suited to heal a particular condition. We can choose whom to call on, or be guided intuitively.

There's the Celtic Brigid — though she's also associated with poetry, so I tend to ask for Her help more often in that aspect of my life. There's Quan Yin, Goddess of Mercy and Compassion, who is connected with various healing systems, notably the Karuna Ki  energy healing modality. There's Mother Mary, whose wisdom and tenderness continue to guide many. And a number of others. Some people think that the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost — as in 'Father, Son and Holy Ghost' — is really the female aspect of Divinity, disguised in language because the early Church was so patriarchal. If you're a Christian, it is perhaps not inappropriate to ask the Holy Spirit to help when you need healing. The Reiki Master who initiated me as a Master was also a priest in an esoteric Christian church, and she believed in this interpretation.

These and other various manifestations of the Goddess as Healer are perceived as exquisitely gentle and comforting when they're in that healing role.

But healing is not always peaceful and gentle. It may involve painful surgery. It might take the form of purging to get rid of toxins. Another Goddess of healing is the lion-headed Egyptian, Sekhmet, who is associated with a system of energy healing called Seichim or Sekhem, which is similar to Reiki and has a Sufi component as well.  Sekhmet sometimes uses drastic methods, and you could find yourself undergoing a healing crisis, where you feel worse on the way to getting better. Then again, Sekhmet can be gentle too when that is needed. After all, her alter ego, the other aspect of her, is the nurturing cow goddess, Hathor. They are two sides of the same coin. So don't be afraid to call for Sekhmet if you are so guided. Trust that this form of the Divine will know and provide whatever you most need,

A simple, mental call for help will work. In an emergency, that may be all you can manage. Because you have, through this group, made a conscious, loving connection with the Goddess, your call will be expedited by that love energy. But She hears all those who call Her.

We can go further and use ritual to evoke the particular Goddess we'd like to work with. I expect you already have your own methods. Lighting a candle in an appropriate colour — or a white one, which encompasses all colours and so can substitute for any — is one simple way. Or you can be more specific. Brigid, for instance, loves flowers, so you could put an offering of flowers on an altar dedicated to Brigid. How lucky we are to live in the age of Google! It's easy to research the specific ways of honouring specific Goddesses. 

Prayer is a universal way of contacting the Deity. A mental yell of, 'Help!' Is a prayer, but if you have the time, you can make the request as long and detailed as you like. My particular path to the Goddess is through witchcraft, and I regard spells as active prayers, so I might well choose to perform a healing spell if possible. And there are many kinds of spells, some of which don't require a lot of tools or activity. Saying an affirmation is one kind, and you can do that while you're lying in a hospital bed. I might choose to cast circle — and I know that if I was lying in a hospital bed I could do that with visualisation and it would be acceptable.

Colour healing is another possibility. 'Breathe in green and breathe out pink,' my favourite colour healer once told me, when I was about to have surgery. Green and pink are the colours of the heart chakra, which again we may equate with motherly love. You can also research which colours are best for particular conditions.

Naturally I am not suggesting we ignore medical help. I'm trained in all sorts of wonderful and effective healing modalities, but I still go to the doctor if my symptoms appear serious, or they don't go away in a hurry. I see spiritual healing, energy healing, all kinds of natural healing, as complementary to traditional medicine rather than alternative. I'm a great believer in doing EVERYTHING that might work. (Which is one reason I've done so much training in so many modalities.)

So far I've focused primarily on one's own need for healing if illness or injury should befall. That's important.

We can serve the Goddess in many ways, and we don't necessarily have to be well to do so — but for the most part being well is more practical, and enables us to do more good for others. Not to mention the fact that it makes one's own life much more enjoyable. The Goddess is in favour of joy! So yes, make it a priority to take care of yourself and keep your energy replenished. Remember the saying, 'You can't give anyone a drink out of an empty glass'.

However, we can also call on the Goddess to help with the healing of others. We had an example of that only this week, when we received an email asking us to hold one of our members in the light as she underwent surgery, and in the days of her convalescence. Group energy is indeed very powerful, as we know from our meditations here when we send out light and healing,* and it doesn't necessarily require the members of a group to be physically together — though of course it's wonderful when that happens, as we are together now. 

Holding someone in the light is effective, and particularly suited to this group, as we are the Goddesses of Shining Light. When we send light to surround one of our own, naturally it is done with love. Projecting Love energy towards someone is always the most powerful thing you can do, in a group or as an individual. Easy when you happen to love someone in everyday life, but what if it's a stranger? What if it's someone you don't like very much? 

You are not obliged to give healing to anyone, and it might be better not to if you have mixed feelings about it. But if you do want to go ahead for altruistic reasons and you have trouble summoning up a feeling of love, one way is to project white light to the person, identifying that light as the energy of Unconditional Love. Another way is to put the person into the care of the Goddess with a formal declaration that you are doing so. You can speak to the Goddess concerned — 'Dear Sekhmet (or whoever), I place X within Your care in order to be healed' — or you can inform the Universe: 'I give X into the care of the Goddess to be healed.' It's nice to have someone bear witness, so you could state it aloud in a group, or to a single individual. Or you could say it, either aloud or silently, with no-one else present and ask the Earth or the Universe to be your witness.

Though I've focused on the obvious connection between healing and mothering, the Crone aspect of the Goddess, with her wisdom, also has a place in healing. While mothers are the obvious nurturers, grandmothers can also be very nurturing, sometimes in less obvious ways. They're good for a cuddle, but they may also encourage their grandchildren's self-reliance, intuition or creative thinking. In those difficult conditions which doctors have trouble explaining, it could be helpful to ask a wise Crone goddess for assistance. 

Old age leads to death, always. The Crone may transform into the Dark Goddess — Kali, Lilith, Hecate, the Morrigan. As my Reiki Master used to remind us, healing and curing are not necessarily the same thing. 'Death,' she used to tell us, 'Is the greatest healer.' 

On this plane we can't always see the bigger picture. Miracles do happen. People with terminal diagnoses don't always terminate. But sometimes it is indeed a person's time to go. This can happen at any age, with or without warning. A friend of mine in Melbourne recently lost her son to a quick and unexpected cancer. He was still a young man. She's an extraordinary woman. While deeply grieved, she has also been in touch with him since his death and understands that in his last few years of life he had lost connection to his own soul, and he needed to die in order to recover it. I hadn't seen him since he was a schoolboy, so I don't know how his soul got lost. But I trust the mother's insights because she's always been highly spiritually aware.

Death is hard on those left behind, but it may be a joyous blessing to those who move on. In that case, as healers we can seek to keep the person's quality of life as high as possible, as long as they have life, and to ease the transition when that time arrives. We can also recognise that our primary healing role in such a case might be to comfort and strengthen the bereaved.

You may be familiar with the practice of 'drawing down the moon', which witches sometimes do on full moon celebrations. It means that we invite the energy of the Goddess in Her Moon aspect to enter us and fill us for a time, to empower us in our magickal workings. 

We can all do that at any time, with a request. We can most certainly do it for healing, so that the Goddess works through us as we speak to a sick person or touch them with soothing hands. When we are done we can say thank you to the Goddess and ask for the energy to withdraw, or simply let it fade as it will over time. 

Above all, remember that the Goddess is available to you at all times. If you or anyone else needs healing, ask. A way will be found.

Perhaps there is no healing that does not come from the Goddess.

* When the circle meets, healing is sent not only to individuals who need it at the time, but also, always, to the whole planet — and in particular to places where there is disaster or conflict. 

Esbat and Sabbat

For those who don’t know, Esbats are our full moon celebrations, and Sabbats are the eight seasonal festivals on the Wheel of the Year.

The night of the Supermoon on the 19^th was wet and overcast here; there was never a chance of seeing that full moon, which was so unusually close to the earth. Yet the rain was timely, as that night had been designated worldwide, by an environmentally conscious online group, as a time to honour water and perform rituals to bless the world’s water. We were advised to go and fill bottles with water from a river or lake, then put the full bottles on our altars to receive blessings ongoingly.

I’m too old to go traipsing around the countryside looking for the nearest accessible body of water! Instead I stood out in the rain, cast circle, spoke a blessing, and held out a small blue glass bottle for the rain to fall into it.

It was very fine rain that night, so the bottle didn’t fill up. I stood it upright in the garden against the wooden boundary of a herb bed, resting securely in a little hollow in the soil.  We have had several sharp showers since then, but they have been brief; the bottle is only about one-sixteenth full — and it’s a tiny bottle. This is going to take time. Never mind; I can bless it where it stands. The herb garden, private and enclosed, protected by the neighbours’ trees, has become my favourite place for ritual. That corner of it can be a special altar to water for the time being.

The night of the full moon was closely followed by Mabon (we being in the Southern Hemisphere). The loosely-knit group of Pagans we’ve been celebrating Sabbats with this last year has gone into temporary hiatus, as we and others have found ourselves dealing with pressing personal matters all at the same time.  We think of each other at such times, and send greetings, but for those without easy access to other gatherings, our celebrations at present are solitary or in couples.

LightStar and I kept things simple. It being Mabon, a harvest festival, we each made a list of the things we were glad to have harvested in the last little while. Most but not all of them were intangibles. We have arrived at much enjoyment of life on a day-to-day basis.

Mabon takes place at the Autumn Equinox, when the light and dark are evenly balanced. After that, the lengthening of the darkness into Winter begins. Darkness is a time for spells of banishment, so it was also appropriate to list the things we wanted to release and be rid of.

Then we went out into the herb garden, again in very fine rain, cast circle, and declared to the elements our thanks for our harvest and our intention to release the unwanted items. My cast iron cauldron, which lives outside, had a little water in the bottom even though it had been under shelter. I tried to burn the harvest lists; it was difficult as they got wet. So I made a virtue of necessity, thanking the fire and water which had already touched the paper, then crumpling what was left of it into a tight ball and throwing it into the air, finally burying it in the earth, thanking air and earth too.

My cauldron is an old Dutch oven with a lid. The lid was dry, so I inverted it and burnt on it the lists of items to be released. I wanted just fire for that, to release them without delay. Fire is the quickest energy. They burnt right down to ash. Two tiny bits of paper took more time to burn after the rest had gone. I looked, and saw that they were the single items from each list which the person concerned had most trouble letting go of! But burn they did, all the way, taking only a little longer than the rest.

LightStar thought of another thing to release, so he shouted it confidently into the air, arms outstretched in the appropriate gesture.

Then we opened the circle, came inside and made love. No, it wasn’t Beltane, but lovemaking is always an appropriate conclusion to magickal work. ‘All acts of love and pleasure,’ says the Goddess, ‘are My rituals.’

Just now I brought the cauldron inside, scrubbed it, coated it inside and out with olive oil, and put it in a slow oven to re-season.  It shall live indoors in future, when it’s not in use.

Say Her Name

© Michele Vassal (from her MySace blog, with permission) 

I heard her calling from folds of dreamt 

stones

cupped for solstices and fossilized stars

saw

the cairns of her nubile breasts

erect

and the flece of her mound welcoming

curlews

I heard her roar rivers and hurricanes

lilt

soft saplings and pebbled beaches

teacher of dancing heresies

guardian of dark bestiaries

where she-wolf and seal mate

with the sins of men

witch of wrens and frosted sloes

sassy whore giving herself

to the impotent and the poor

nurturer of bog blackened bodies

feel her rip

feel her burn

feel her veins

poisoned

her flesh

her blood

dark harvests

and say her name

like you mean it

Mother

Experiencing the Divine

Pagan Magic asked:

The town that I live in has quite a few churches, as I suppose many towns do - and each of them have posters which change weekly, asking questions such as 'Find God through Jesus', 'Have you found God?' - as a pagan I've always felt in touch with the divine spark - but these posters make me question the experience of Christians - do they connect to God like we do to ours? and then that got me to thinking, what experiences have other pagans had with God/Goddess/Creator.

Very much a musing question this week, but I hope that you'll get involved as I do enjoy reading the comments each week.

I said:

Well, I suppose Christians must answer for themselves, and that it would depend on the individual Christian. I see those posters as advertisements addressed to unbelievers, part of the evangelical impulse of the Christian churches. It also seems to have to do with the Christian concept of being 'saved', of finding God in that sense, involving a renunciation of 'sin'. These are all concepts which feel very foreign to me.

As for me, in childhood I was unquestioningly aware of the divine spark in all things. It was just there, part of what is. It was a surprise when I realised others didn’t always share that awareness. I learned not to speak of it but never became unaware.  That, I think, would have been impossible.

I was always aware, also, of spirit beings of various kinds. Only I didn’t think of them in that way; they were just people who were around. Some of them were maybe a bit different, but the main difference was that, again, other people weren’t aware of them. There was one who seemed particularly protective, though not in any way that curtailed my freedom. He was humorous and wise (still is). It was many years later that a magician friend described his Patron Deity, Thoth, and I recognized that he was talking about the dude who’d been around me forever. That was pretty exciting as Thoth is, among other things, patron of poets. But mainly he’s a friend.

I have since met others on a personal level, usually — though not always — when 'journeying' (including Jesus, btw; he’s been around a long time too, as a friend, and in later years as my 'Master of Healing'). But the question was about God/Goddess/Creator, the Source of all, whom I sometimes refer to as Great Spirit or The Universe, and like to address as 'Mother'. I can’t think of a time when that energy hasn’t been present in my life. There has never been any need to 'find God'; God’s never been missing.

How do you view the Gods and Goddesses?

Pagan Magic  asks:

Do you see the Gods and Goddesses as individual entities, each with their own power? Or are they universal archetypes? Do you even believe in a divine entity? Are the Gods and Goddesses aspects of the whole? How important is it to you to worship them? What experiences have you had? We'd love to hear your views.

My answer —

I think we are all sparks of the Divine fire, metaphorically speaking, i.e. expressions of God — or like one point that expands out and out into many. I tend to see deities and angels as somewhat closer to that original source, but we are all aspects of that. We are in God and God is in us. And when I say we, I mean everything. I'm monotheist, polytheist and pantheist all at once, seeing no inherent contradiction in that. It is, instead, a paradox.

I sometimes say The Universe when I mean God or Deity or Source or Great Spirit — and I experience that Universe / God etc. as having a personal connection and relationship with me. (Much as I might look after my own finger, say, if I also related to that finger as sentient and autonomous.) This Source I see as beyond gender, and surely beyond our comprehension in many ways. When you realise that there are colours our physical eyes cannot see, how much more is there that we cannot in this form apprehend?

For everyday purposes I prefer to focus on the female aspect of Deity, and have no problem meaning that when I say 'God', although I do also use the term 'Goddess'. I think the individual deities are as real as you and me, though not in physical form in this dimension in the same way that we are. I have personal relationships with a number of them. I also see them as embodying archetypes, and again perceive paradox rather than contradiction.

Years before I identified as Pagan, a magician friend who was clairvoyant told me that this own patron deity, Thoth, was with me. He described Thoth, and I realised that this was the same dude who had been hanging around me since earliest childhood. (I always had awareness of the spirit world.) So I knew him as a friend, guide and guardian already, and knowing who he was simply deepened the relationship. I regard him as my patron deity too.

Then, when I first self-dedicated to this path, that morning before I did the ritual I kept being presented with spiders, both in the flesh and in mental images. I got the message and dedicated myself specifically to the Goddess in her aspect as Great Mother Spider. I identified her by the name Arachne, though also aware of the Native American version. It seemed appropriate, as Spider is the Creator (as weaver) and I'm a poet. But then I came to know what a great gift it was from the Universe, that I was directed that way. A witch with hubris tried to attack me and some of my friends and helpers. (The ultimate target was someone else we were close to, but even so, we all felt the effects.) She had some Native American heritage and her totem was Spider, so many of the attacks came via venomous spiders. They were all averted: close calls, and frightening, but not fatal. We soon worked out where it was coming from, and were able to raise enough protection that she gave up. But my point is, just before the attacks began I had been guided to put myself, in effect, under the protection of Spider — and so, while she could mount the attacks through her own connection with Spider, they were then turned away (not only from me but also my allies) by the same agency.

Later again, forming a coven with some like-minded friends, I participated in a journey meditation for each of us to find our specific deity to guide us in this venture, and Ariadne came to me.

There are others I relate to also, in various ways and through various circumstances. Their personalities are distinct and individual.