Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 16: Whenever you need anything

At mine Altars the youth of Lacedaemon in Sparta made due sacrifice.

Whenever ye have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full.

Sources and Influences

Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical: At mine Altars the youth of Lacedaemon and Sparta made due sacrifice.

Whenever you have need of anything, once in the month, and better it be when the moon is full.

Leland Aradia: Whenever ye have need of anything, once in the month, and when the moon is full, (47-49)

Thealogy

D’Este and Rankine make the essential point about the youths of Lacaedaemon in/and Sparta making due sacrifice to the Great Mother: Lacedaemon was a city in Sparta, not the other way around (Sorita d’Este and David Rankine: Wicca: Magical Beginnings. Avalonia, London, 2008.), which means the Charge begins with a huge error of geography. This line is either corrected or omitted in most published versions of the Charge, and they make the point that in the portion Gardner published in Witchcraft Today, no mention is made of Sparta.

Aidan Kelly (Aidan Kelly: Inventing Witchcraft. Thoth Publications, Loughborough, 2007.) characterises the lines about the youth of Sparta as a theologising of the scourging to follow in the ritual (see Artemis above).

The Charge can be seen as describing an inward journey undertaken by the witch in search of the Goddess (this journey is shown in the form of a table in the next blog post). Here the journey begins in a purely ‘mundane’ vein, initiating what may be called the ‘exoteric’ section of the Charge. The section quoted from Aradia gives a frequency for the meetings of the witches, bringing in the concept of need, a definite time period of once each month, and when the moon is full. In BAM Gardner has already changed it to being best to meet at the full moon, and leaves the others unchanged, which they have remained.

This implies that Wicca is a magico-religious system based on the needs of its practitioners, rather than the ritual system it has since become. The Goddess is saying ‘come to me when you need anything’, and there is no mention of the eight yearly festivals presently celebrated by Wiccans. Perhaps this was because the Wiccan ritual year was at an undeveloped stage at this time, but the frequency of meeting is much more like the monthly-or-more-frequent meetings held by Wiccans now, at which magic is worked, training is carried out, and any business is transacted, which are called Esbats, as against the eight Sabbats. It is interesting that a reference to monthly meetings occurs in Aradia, and passes over into the Charge, because the nature of these meetings seems similar to the meetings between the Sabbats postulated by Murray(Margaret Murray: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. www.forgottenbooks.org , no place of publication, 2008.), who identified no set frequency, time, or place for these meetings, but feels that different covens may have had a set day of the week to meet. Murray is usually considered to be the source of the name Esbat.

So the origins of the Esbats in Wicca may that the name came from Murray, the nature and purpose are found in both Aradia and Murray, the frequency and time (night) in Aradia, and the phase of the moon found in Aradia, and taken over into the Charge with an alteration.

Why only once in the month? It is almost as if the Goddess is saying, ‘don’t come to me too often, don’t become too reliant on me, sort out most of your problems for yourselves, and solve them with magic only when you really need to.’ This may sound strange in a religious context: most religions want their adherents to depend entirely on their divinity, but I feel that in a Wiccan context it is precisely because of the religious context that the tradition of working magic only for real need and after taking the appropriate mundane action, has arisen. For Wiccans magic is a major mystery of our religion, and this is why it is treated with respect, and used with caution. The major power dynamic of our religion – that we should stand on our own two feet, seeking to live autonomously and guided by love in a university of infinite possibilities – in itself creates an ethic of solving problems for ourselves, rather than praying and attributing the outcome to the ‘will of God’. Finally this ethic is another way in which Wicca seeks to turn the values of the world around us on their head, mirrored in the kissing of the initiate’s feet in the First Degree initiation.

This practice of deliberately not using magic unless you absolutely have to is also the complete opposite of many magical traditions, where much store is set on practising magic, with the aim of becoming more adept. It seems almost like sacrilege to Wiccans to engage in ‘magical duels’ or practice working magic when there really isn’t a need for it. An example of a magical working in a Chaos Magic context, while not presented as a training exercise since it is based on personal values but the ‘target’ is not chosen out of personal feelings, and which would not be considered acceptable by many or most Wiccans, can be found in Chris Arkenberg’s account of his magical assault on Fox News (Chris Arkenberg: My Lovewar with Fox News. In Jason Louv (editor): Generation Hex. Disinformation, New York, 2006, pp. 203-217.). The shortcoming (or perhaps the strength) of the Wiccan approach is that personal magical development is bound to be slowed down, so that the practitioner may be relatively inexperienced.

It is better to meet when the moon is full. The ‘better’ is Gardner’s interpolation in Aradia’s instruction to meet when the moon is full, and contrary to Valiente’s trenchant comment that the witches probably met at full moon so that its light could enable their journey to the meeting (Doreen Valiente: An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present. Robert Hale, London, 1973.), adds a more occult flavour to this passage. In this Gardner is drawing on the ancient identification of the moon with various Goddesses, the magical correspondences of moon phases and the idea of the time of the full moon being the time of greatest power.