Witchcraft God & Goddess

“Queen of heaven, Queen of hell,

Horned Hunter of the night-

Lend your power unto the spell

And work our will by magic rite.”

From The Witches’ Rune by Doreen Valiente

Witches believe in the creative polarity of feminine and masculine principles in nature. They commonly think of deity as having a female and male aspect that exist together in a harmonious balance. These beliefs are evident in everything a Witch does. They inform the practice of magical arts and are to be seen in the way Witches set up their altar, carry out their rites and rituals, and celebrate the stages of the year.

Witchcraft’s view of the balanced nature of deity stands in contrast to other religions that either play down or dispense with the female aspect entirely. This is to be found in many forms of Christianity, where little part is played by the female in its belief systems or its institutions, as well as other faiths such as Judaism. For Witches, the dynamic creative tension of female and male is part of what may be termed the general theory of polarity, where all things rely on opposites for their existence. The concepts of day and night, dark and light, content and form, positive and negative, attraction and repulsion, North and South, up and down, each need the other for the opposite to exist.

This  attitude can be expressed by referring to the Chinese concept of Yin and Yang. Yin is the female, negative, dark aspect of creation where Yang is the male, positive, light aspect. Together they make up a whole. It should be noted here that the terms “negative” and “dark” are not used in a derogatory sense. “Negative” should be seen in the same way as science refers to an electron having a negative charge and dark as merely the opposite of light; they are not value judgments. It will also be noticed that in the Yin-Yang symbol the black half contains a white dot and the white half a black dot, showing that in the female there is a part of maleness, and in the male there is a part of femaleness.

This interplay of energies at all levels, whether it be divine or earthly, ensures the cyclic flow of creation. Witches believe that over emphasis on one, at the expense of the other, will merely ensure sterility and stagnation. That said, the emphasis given to both Goddess and God varies in different traditions and their covens.

For Wiccans deity is immanent, meaning that it is to be found in all things and pervades existence. Quite literally, the Universe is perceived to be alive and the individual is but one cell in its enormous body. Everything is therefore sacred, and this gives Witches an enormous respect for all expressions of life. On the other hand, many Witches regard the ultimate nature of deity as unknowable, beyond all names and forms and, perhaps, beyond all mortal comprehension. In this respect, it is transcendent.

Generally, Witches believe that goddesses and gods are representative of certain kinds of energy within existence. It is the energies themselves that are perceived as being real. That they are clothed in the form of a goddess or god is a way of making them intelligible to the human mind. Why not, then, use the language of science to express these forces?

There are several reasons why Witches don’t do this. On one level they feel that science only provides a partial answer to the question of existence, believing that there is much within the Universe that it knows nothing of. Further, the language of science, in its attempts to express these forces, is often incapable of speaking to the human soul (something that many scientists doubt exists anyway). Our spirits thrive on the use of poetic and symbolic imagery that generally affects us in a more profound way than science ever can.

You don’t go to a manual on sex to learn about love – rather, you might read Shakespeare. Similarly, for questions of our purpose and meaning in life, you can’t consult a book on biology and get an answer that satisfies the soul, however much it might please the intellect. The fact is that many humans are genuinely deeply moved and motivated by the various images of a goddess and a god, and feel that they have come to a more profound understanding of existence because of them. Further, using such imagery makes the forces knowable to an extent and allows the individual to work with them in their life on the material plane.

The Archetype

Although not endorsed by every Witch, the gods and goddesses can, therefore, be seen to have an existence similar to the Jungian idea of the Archetype. For Jung the Archetypes were powerful symbols that had a genuine life. They existed in the human collective unconscious, independent of the individual mind, and could include god and goddess types [1]. Jung believed that these Archetypes could be worked with to have an effect in the everyday waking world. It would seem that the idea of deity is as old as the human mind itself and buried deep within all our psyches.

Pagan theology largely revolves around dualism. This dualism is traditionally represented as a split between male and female

The God is traditionally seen as the Horned God, an archetypal deity with links to the Celtic Cernunnos, English folkloric Herne the Hunter, Greek Pan, Roman Faunus and Indian Pashupati.

This was the God whom Gerald Gardner presented as the old God of the ancient Witches.

The Green Man is also often associated with the Horned God, though he does not always have horns.

The Goddess is seen as the Triple Goddess, meaning that she is the maiden, the mother and the crone.

(The Triple Goddess is the symbol of waxing, full and waning moon.)

The mother aspect, the Mother Goddess is perhaps the most important of these, and it was her that Gerald Gardner and Margaret Murray claimed was the ancient Goddess of the witches.