| Talking to Goddess By: Ayla Recently I've been wondering how my fellow Wiccans & Pagans communicate and view the Goddess. I see Her in a similar way to the people in my life, as a being with Her own Will, likes & dislikes, beliefs and style. Or at least that is how I view Her individual representatives. Is she a single awesome being who shows different faces to different people? Or is She the collective consciousness made up of thousands of female deities across the Globe? Is the true Goddess in fact a wholly different being to whom our own deities also pray?
In our community we speak of Her as a constant, no matter to which "archetype" a fellow Witch is dedicated when we say "Goddess" we expect that we are talking about the same being. As though somewhere inside Hecate, Bastet, Kwan Yin and Persephone lies an ultimate Oneness which is them all.
Yet, when we communicate to a Goddess we are very aware of Her nature, Her favourite incense, colour and Consort. We do not go to Kali to speak of harvest, or to Demeter to speak of war, we choose to call on Freya on a Friday and Diana at the full moon. Why would so many people go to that much trouble just to speak to the same Goddess?
Perhaps we believe that in doing so we are appealing directly to an aspect of Her personality, or letting Her know what our prayers and rituals are going to be about. However, it is just as likely, if not more so, that each and every Goddess is a unique individual.
Think first of "thought forms"; how it is possible over a period of time to create a new being that is independent of ourselves. Often Witches create thoughtforms as guardians, just like mythological Gryffons or the Egyptian Sphinx may have been.
If a single person can do that, there is no reason to think that a large group of people from a community may not have made Goddess and God beings in the same way.
Perhaps we formed the Gods from the "stuff" of the original chaos and birth Mother, characterised by Gaia, Tiamat & Neith, and gave them personalities through our faith and love, and hope.
One argument against this is that Goddesses such as Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte and Aphrodite truly "are" the same being, since they are just different incarnations of Inanna who was first among them.
In response to this I would argue that when you appeal to Astarte you are speaking to a Goddess who has absorbed and represents the culture of the people who called Her by that name.
As has been pointed out to me, Inanna's people and beloved city were conquered by Ishtar's people. Ishtar is Babylonian and Inanna will always be angry at what they did to Her home.
If, for the purposes of this paper, we accept that all Goddesses are independent beings, created by the love and faith of communities from the "body" of primary being such as Tiamat, we raise another question...
If humanity created them all those years ago, can we change their natures now? I would say that, yes, we are able to influence the natures of the Gods, but that it is much harder now than it was centuries ago. Even the more recent deities have had hundreds of years to be who they are, it takes a strong community to "evolve" a God, and we just don't have enough open, pagan communities (towns or cities) in the modern world to do this; we don't have the influence any more.
The same principle applies to attempts at creating new deities; the further in time we get from the point of origin, the harder it is.
Having said that, anything is possible. With care and love, faith and magick, we may discover aspects in our Goddesses that have been forgotten in the mists of time, or bring out in Her a new character.
For me, the Goddesses are very ancient, wise, powerful and dutiful beings, but a great part of them is human. The ways into another person's heart are often also the ways into a Goddess's. |
