| In Wicca, we honor both a God and a Goddess. These two beings are really one general energy which is often called spirit, but we give them both a male and female side. In Wicca, the male and female is given equal honor. You need both a male and a female to make life, so it only makes sense to have both a male and female God. In Paleolithic times, the first kinds Gods were a fertility Goddess (and later, an agricultural goddess) and the God of the hunt. The popular Wiccan belief is that thousands of years ago, the peoples source of food came from horned animals, like deer and such so they honored a horned God. They also saw that females produced life, so there was a goddess of fertility. Whether this is true is still debatable. Its also debatable whether these was ever a matriarchial society where women used to rule. This too is a popular belief among Wiccans, but today this idea is starting to prove false. Many Pagans wish there was a time when the Goddess was the prime diety all throughout the world, but its very unlikely. But, those two general themes of the horned god and fertility goddess are present in many cultures, Today you can read about mythology and learn about the many gods and goddess throughout the centuries. In Wicca, we give our Gods the names of Gods from other cultures. If your interested in Celtic myth, then maybe you could use Celtic Gods, or maybe if your interested in Rome you could use Roman Gods. I personlaay don't give my dieties name, I prefer to call them Lord and Lady. When you give them names you are limiting them to to a certain correspondence (love, creativity, argiculture, etc). With my dieties, I want them to represent everything and not just a certain thing. In Wicca, the Goddess is commonly seen as the moon and the God as the sun. But in some cultures around the world it is the opposite. The Goddesses is symbolized also as the ocean, the forests, flowers, the earth, etc, and the God as the mountains, animals, plant life, etc. But it really depends on which God or Goddess you use. In Green Witchcraft, you could use earth-related Gods, such as Cernunnos, Gaia, Flora, Fauna, Pan, etc. The God and Goddess are everything in life. They are nature, animals, life, death, rebirth, all emotions and all processes of life. They are in everything, even ourselves. A quote from the Charge of the Goddess states "If that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you shall never find it without." The God and the Goddess is inside you. They are always with you, ever present when you need them. In some religions there is an all good being, and an evil one. In Wicca there is no such thing. The God and Goddess is everything. An evil being is not needed because we believe that people are the source of evil, not any God or 'devil.' I think people come to Christianity because they like the idea of the Christian God loving them and always taking care of them. It is the same in Wicca. A lot of Wiccans believe the God and Goddess always watch out for us, making sure we always do the right thing and if we dont, the three-fold rule will catch up on us, so they are not here to punish us, we do this ourselves. Some people dont see the God and Goddess as actual beings. They, for whatever reason, cannot believe in a God of any kind (myself included). Instead they just see the God and Goddess as nature, and all the natural process of life. They are symbols, and not "real" beings. Its ok to believe this if you want. |
| The God and Goddess |
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| "How do I know I'm God? I was praying yesterday and I realized that I was talking to myself." -Unknown |