Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 27: Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice

Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice; for behold. I am the Mother of all things; and my love is poured out upon earth.

Sources and Influences

Ye Bok of ye Arte Magical: nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.

Crowley: Law of Liberty: For hear, how gracious is the Goddess: “I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death: peace unutterable, rest, ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice.” (2)

Crowley: Liber AL vel Legis: I give unimaginable joys on earth: certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death; peace unutterable, rest ecstasy; nor do I demand aught in sacrifice (1.58)

Apuleius: Metamorphoses: I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, queen of all that are in hell, the principal of them that dwell in heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the gods and goddesses (11.5)

Milton: Paradise Lost: Whence hail to thee, Eve rightly named, Mother of all Mankind, Mother of all things living, since by thee man is to live, and all things live for man. (11.158-161)  (John Milton (edited by Alastair Fowler): Paradise Lost. Longman, London, 1998, p. 607.)

The Bible: And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. (Gen. 3.20)

The apparent reference to Paradise Lost or the Bible creates a link with a different mythology from the wholly Pagan mythology used elsewhere in the Charge: Eve is the mother of all living, because she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thus inserting a reference here to the countercultural aspects of Wicca. In Christianity Eve’s act precipitated the ‘Fall’, the original sin which all humans carry with them. For Pagans this gaining of knowledge of good and evil may be seen in a different light: it approximates us more nearly to the divinity, and so may not be seen as a bad thing.

Thealogy

This passage, new (from the word ‘sacrifice’) in this final version of the Charge, introduces an idea which seems to contradict a theory and practice found in Wicca today, that Wicca is a religion which does not seek converts (this is often perceived to be one of the strangest things about it amongst those who belong to religions which do seek converts).
The apparent contradiction comes in our Goddess saying that she is the Mother of all things, which introduces a strange universalism here. If the Goddess is the Mother of all things, is she not also saying that all things must therefore owe her some recognition and obeisance?
Gardner himself certainly believed that the religion of Wicca was not for all. Patricia Crowther (who first met Gardner in 1960 ( Shelley Rabinovitch and James Lewis (editors): The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism. Citadel Press, New York, 2002.) so the conversation must have taken place after that):

‘Of course, it isn’t a thing that belongs to everybody. Some people have a sense of the old things, a desire for peace, a sense of wonder, and a sense of companionship and good fellowship, and that’s what witchcraft gives you.’  (Patricia Crowther: One Witch’s World. Robert Hale, London, 1998, pp. 23-24.)

There are two other explanations in Gardner’s own writings, which can reconcile the apparent universality of the Goddess with the lack of a requirement to convert other people to her worship: the first, found in The Meaning of Witchcraft, ( Gerald Gardner: The Meaning of Witchcraft. Weiser Books, York Beach, 2004.) is that the witches believe it right for each tribe or nation to worship their own Gods, which have been appointed by the Supreme Deity, and the other, in Witchcraft Today, that this single Goddess is a different sort of divinity from those who require obedience and submission on pain of eternal suffering:

‘The faith of the cult is summed up in a witch’s book I posses which states that they believed in gods who were not all-powerful. The wished men well, they desired fertility for man and beast and crops, but to attain this end they needed man’s help. ...’what gave pleasure to man, gave pleasure to the gods’. Possibly they thought that the gods could feel man’s pleasure. There was also the idea that the gods loved man and were happy when he was happy, as opposed to the idea that god is an angry god who hates man to be happy.’  (Gerald Gardner: Witchcraft Today. Arrow Books, London, 1975, p. 145.)

This is not only a far cry from a single, vengeful, jealous God, but is also different from Crowley’s axiom that the Law was for all, and indicates a major area in which Wicca differs. So while the Goddess is Wicca states herself in the Charge to be the Mother of all, she is not a jealous Mother, she does not lay down a list of rules to be kept at the risk of Mother’s wrath, and merely wants her children to be happy. The functions of this aspect of divinity in Wicca can, however, extend far beyond how Wiccans approach their Goddess, and relate their religion to other people. This model of divinity can also serve as a different model of family life from the model of paterfamilias and obedient wife. It could even come as a welcome example of a new model for those who have experienced abuse at the hands of parents, or grown up in the families marked by extremely inconsistent parenting, which often results in difficulties of identity and functioning in later life.
This aspect of how Wiccans relate with their Goddess is sufficient explanation of why the Goddess does not require sacrifice. This is one of the things which differentiates Wicca from ancient paganisms, in which the Gods continually had to be propitiated with ‘due sacrifice’. Sometimes this passage is seen as a contradiction of the passage at the beginning of the Charge, about the youths of Sparta making due sacrifice, but it is not. The passage at the beginning of the Charge is in the perfect tense (they made due sacrifice), and this is now ended. This passage is in the present tense: but now I do not demand sacrifice, which implies that even though sacrifice was offered in ancient paganisms, what is proposed here is quite different entirely. Neither can the sacrifice made by the youths be seen as a ‘theologising’ of the scourging in Wiccan ritual, which is quite different from that undergone by the Spartan youths. Sacrifice in ancient paganisms was in blood. The very life force of (usually) an animal was given to propitiate the divinity. In our sanitised days when we can become remote from the animals killed to become the meat we eat, and most of us rarely if ever see a human who has died, we can forget that this was the point of sacrifice: it was about life. The symbol of a particular religious sacrifice – a cross or a crucifix, remembering that in that religion the divinity himself made one sacrifice which ensured future sacrifices would not be needed – can be seen in many places in the modern world, but the nature of the representation can make us forget that the nature of ancient sacrifice was more like an abattoir than most religious services seen in the western world.
Perhaps the eight theories of sacrifice identified by Joseph Henninger  (Joseph Henninger: artlcle ‘Sacrifice’. In Mircea Eliade (general editor): The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1987, volume 12.), together with an understanding of Wiccan thealogy, best explain why sacrifice is absent from the Wiccan tradition. Possible explanations for sacrifice in religion see sacrifice as a gift, an aspect which is totally absent from Wicca, where no impetus is placed on giving gifts to the divinities; as homage to the divinity; as a communal meal, an idea present in Wicca, but a meal which takes a different form from an animal; as a link between the ‘profane’ (we would say ‘mundane’) and sacral worlds, not needed in Wicca because in our monistic cosmology there is no such division, we would only differentiate between us and non-crafters; as magic, where sacrifice is seen as an exchange of the life-force of the offering with the divinity for the release of power, another idea not present in Wicca, where the power we use is seen as resident in our bodies; as a re-enactment of mythological events, whereas the mythology of Wicca does not place any emphasis on sacrifice as an act to be re-enacted; as an anxiety reaction, a ‘neurotic’ reaction, where success (for example in hunting) has to be somehow qualified by the ‘failure’ of losing the offering, although in Wicca this type of psychological reaction would be seen as something to be resolved in the light of the responsibility placed on the witch to take control of events; and finally as a mechanism for diverting violence, that is, focussing the community’s violent impulses on an external object, such as a scapegoat.
Henninger does not feel that any one of these possible explanations alone explains the presence of religious sacrifice in human life, but that together they can explain aspects of why it has happened. Together they also show that Wicca deals with each of the reasons for sacrifice in a different way, obviating the need for sacrifice.
Rather, in Wicca the idea of sacrifice is replaced by the idea of the continual circle of the dying and rising cycle of life, involving a certain element of inevitability, which is embodied both in our lives, and in the ritual re-enactment of this mystery yearly:

‘Through the symbolism of the corn harvested at Mabon, I discovered the truth behind another dark stereotype of sacrifice at a Witches’ Sabbat. We learn from nature that before we can harvest the seeds of new life, we must be willing to cut away that which we have outgrown – this is the Wiccan form of sacrifice. The sacrifice is from and of ourselves – our life is our offering to the divine. But contrary to the common misconception, it is not meant to be relinquished on the altar of death, but realized on the altar of life.’  (Phyllis Curott: Book of Shadows. Broadway Books, New York, 1999, p. 251.)

Nor is the scourging of Wiccan ritual a sacrifice. The Spartan youths were scourged in a quite different way from the light ritual scourging of Wicca, which has as its purpose either the changing of consciousness or raising the power, and in some cases becomes a token gesture which is present in the ritual ‘because it always has been.’ The reference to due sacrifice made by the youths of Lacedaemon in Sparta is not a theologising of Wiccan ritual scourging, because the youths of Sparta were scourged in such a way that they bled. Their sacrifice was the spatters of their own blood landing on the altar of the Goddess.