Spirit of Place: Derby - In Memory of Natalie

To Derby for one of my little sorties today. I've never been there before: once I penetrated far enough (yes, the sexual imagery is deliberate) it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be when I got there. The city has been well & truly bollocksed up by the building of the Westfield Centre, so that that is what you see rather than the prettier old bit.
On the way from the station to what they call the 'Cathedral Quarter' you have to pass a tiny park with benches in. The leaving of flowers at the site of a death, usually by the side of a road, is a wholly modern phenomenon, one studied by the Folklore Society. I've never before seen one of those shrines on a park bench, & when I got there it was both too early (around 11) for the populace of Derby to be awake, & too wet to read the cards on the tributes. On the way back to the station there was a man sitting on the pavement asking people for money, so I asked him who it was for. It was for a woman called Natalie, who was found dead, from drugs, around 4 weeks ago in her nearby flat. The shrine was on the bench because she had sat there every day for about the past decade. When the weather warms up & his hands work he's going to paint her a permanent memorial. Even the council workers had deferred the planned removal of those benches out of respect for Natalie.
He spoke movingly, almost in tears, of how he was missing her. She used to help him when he went to the jobcentre & found things difficult. Did he ask me for money? You bet he didn't. Respect is worth more than money to anyone. Those who live on the (h)edge recognise others who do, & witches particularly so. I shook his hand to make a connection while mentally giving him the blessing of the witch.
Otherwise Derby & my visit were unremarkable. I found the DVD of Guesthouse Paradiso & series 1 of The Professionals, both of which I've been looking for for ages. Oh, the answer to the inevitable question about The Professionals is: Bodie for me. I don't like Doyle's curly hair, & somehow Bodie is harder. I just feel he wouldn't take no for an answer...
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Summer is here

It's official: in the Hound of Hecate wheel of the year, which only has two spokes, we have passed from the winter half of the year to the summer. The actual day this happened was yesterday, being the first morning I've gone to work for an early shift with no street lights on.
Then today I saw my first bare chest of the year: a man running. Not really my type, too ripped. Nonetheless I must write to the times with my sighting.
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Tarot de Paris

It will come as no surprise that I think a lot of rubbish is talked about the history of the tarot. The simplest explanation of its history is that card games were made reflecting the society of the middle ages (much as the Game of Life board game of my youth) which in the course of time got various moral, mythical and metaphysical meanings superimposed on it. I think the best evidence against the romantic origins of kabbalists, Romanies, etc, is that many of the early decks are what would nowadays be called non-typical tarot decks. The modern 22 trumps were by no means standard, & if you can get hold of a modern French or Italian deck for the playing the actual game & its many regional variants, you will find yourself in a very different world from our English-speaking Golden Dawn/Waite/Crowley-influenced tarot milieu.
One of these early atypical decks is the Tarot de Paris, from the first half of the 17th century, which arrived today as my birthday present to myself. It is available from amazon.co.uk & also amazon.fr.
The tarot history website summarises the little that is known about its history thusly:
It is generally accepted that this one of a kind deck was originally published in the early 1600s. If this is correct, it would mean that it is older than any existing Tarot de Marseille (TdM), (the Jean Noblet Tarot is dated to around 1650, and the Jean Dodal to the early 1700s). Of course, the Cary Sheet indicates that, (at least elements of), the TdM style has been around since around 1500. The Tarot de Paris is usually considered the oldest existing deck that still contains all 78 original cards.
The Tarot de Paris (TdP) follows the numbering of the TdM, and like the TdM has titles and numbers printed on the cards. Some of the cards are clearly related to the TdM, but many have unique designs or are related to other decks. In some ways, the deck reminds me of the Jacques Vieville, it has a crude and wild streak, but sometimes the artwork is incredibly rich and beautiful. Some of the detail in the facsimile version published by Grimaud in 1985 is difficult to see clearly as the colours used in the original have darkened obscuring some of the lines and making some of the artwork difficult to decipher.
(Source: http://www.tarothistory.com/2009/04/05/tarot-de-paris-the-parisian-tarot/ Scans of all the trumps are available there too. N.B. The colours in those scans are not as warm as the colours in the deck I've got.)
Andy's Playing cards summarises the strange mixture of influences in these cards as:
In conclusion, the Tarot de Paris may be considered as the attempt by an unknown card designer to blend the local traditional tarot with elements borrowed from other existing patterns (Italian, German, Spanish), moved by the intention of creating a fancy, unusual, attractive deck. And since four centuries later his cards still stir our interest, we should agree that his goal has been fully achieved.
(Source: http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards68.htm Other galleries of early and unusual cards may also be found there)
I want to give some first impressions of the deck I have. I have been trying to read with a Grimaud Tarot de Marseille, but unfortunately find myself totally disconnected to it, but this deck feels very much like that one. The cards are square, not over-laminated, have a simple back & each card has its chequered border. I have a heavy cold so can't smell, but I'll bet they smell of card rather than plastic. If you don't look closely they look like Marseille but when you do, oh joy, this deck is a bawdy mediaeval world populated by eccentrics & real people! Since playing cards were made to play card games with (astounding theory I know) I'm also pleased to find a deck with an indication of which card is which near the top of the deck so that I'll be able to play tarot patience with them.
Andy's Playing Cards tells me that the real eccentricity of this deck, & the thing that shows the German influence, is the aces, which show the suit symbol on a banner, but what I like best is the trumps, of which these are the highlights for me.
The fool is an actual fool. He has a head on top of his stick, which I suppose may be formed from a bladder to hit people.
The 'magician', definitely of the David Blaine type, is doing tricks for two men who watch spellbound as a dog sleeps under the table.
The Pope doesn't seem to have a face: whether this is through age or reproduction, or whether it's an original feature, I don't know. None of the other comments I've found mention it, so it may just be me.
The lovers are embracing (the woman's hand is going between the man's legs!) Without the third character in Marseille-type decks.
The chariot is drawn by geese. A boy with a cat-o'-nine-tails sits on one of them trying & failing to bring them into order, since they will insist on going in different directions.
Justice has two heads - one male, one female - facing in different directions & both blindfolded.
The hermit is shown with buildings surrounding him: leaving them, I suppose. He is holding what looks like one of those implements Catholic religious used to use to 'mortify the flesh'. Andy's Playing Cards says that this is a rosary, though.
The expression on the face of the woman in Strength is one of pure concentration. Frankly she looks like a vet trying to look at the cat's teeth, or giving the cat a pill, which brings out the aspect of subduing some great force in this card.
The Hanged Man's head rightly (in my humble opinion) comes below the level of the ground on the card. I'm very attached to the interpretation of this card as being rooted in the earth so that all the sephiroth of the tree can be manifested in your body at once. This is why it is associated with time in suspension: everything is in equilibrium so the only change will be that necessary to maintain homeostasis.
Death is numbered, a move almost designed to annoy the Tarot de Marseille fundamentalists. There is an absence of severed heads, & his scythe seems to have an unusually fancy handle, ending in a sort of T shape.
Andy's Playing Cards sees Temperance as the standard depiction. What I see is the woman actually putting a fire out with the water from her jug. You can see the flames & the smoke. I'd not thought of temperance as being the juxtaposition of two opposed forces, rather than a balance of complementary forces, before.
The Devil is similar to the Vieville pattern, has no bound minions, & holds a whip.
The Tower or Maison Dieu become La Fou(l)dre, or lightning. Incidentally this reminds me to comment that it seems the commentaries online about this deck become far too wound up by the 'non-standard' spellings of the names in this deck. At that time standard spelling was a thing of the future. Anyway this card has the vieville name but not the picture. Andy's Playing Cards seems to have the best description:
The following card is probably the most interesting of the series: inscribed LA FOVLDRE (for la Foudre, "lightning"), it is a subject that the Tarot de Paris pattern retained from earlier tarots in place of the Tower or la Maison Dieu. Burning thunderbolts or balls of fire fall from the sky (see also this subject in Vieville's edition), and while humans desperately seek shelter, a demon, the central figure of the composition, dramatically remarks the rage of the heavens with the thundering sound of his drum.
The Star shows an astrologer with his instruments. He looked to me initially like Galileo Galilei, who was contemporary & which would make this deck incredibly up to date.
The Moon is one of the sweetest cards. By the light of the moon a man with a harp serenades an undressed woman in an upstairs window. A more earthy way of expressing the theme of things that are hidden coming out into the open!
In The Sun a woman is horrified by a blue monkey. I need to think more about this card!
The LWB, which is in French only, seems to be a sensible historical summary of the tarot & this deck's place in that history. It makes some interesting points about how the cards' use in the game can reflect their place in the cosmology of the tarot world. For example the Fool can neither be trumped nor trump another card.
All in all I would highly recommend this deck for a different take on early tarot decks.
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Spirit of place: Birmingham Central Library and the World Monuments Watch

I've posted critically about Birmingham Central Library before, a building for which I have little praise despite, or because of, the hours I have spent in the reference library over the years poring over various tomes. It tickles me no end that it has been placed on the World Monuments Fund's (WMF) World Monuments Watch of buildings at risk, specifically under the heading of British Brutalism, along with the South Bank Centre in London and Preston bus station, bother seriously sexy brutalist buildings.
The image to left is the one that they're actually using to publicise their campaign and its unfortunate, because it actually shows what's wrong with it now. When it was built the area below the ziggurat in the picture, almost perfectly central to the picture, was open. That was how it was designed to be. Contemporary pictures show how it gave an impression of the library floating above the open space below. In - I think - the 1980s it was filled in completely ruining the one good thing about this building. As a building to study in  it is a disaster. You can tell it was built before the 1970s oil crisis, because it is impossible to read in there by natural light. Its treatment since built by the council has not helped: its poorly lit inside, has not been maintained well, the remaining orange 1970s carpets are not helped by the purple paint that some misguided soul thought would spruce it up. Repeated attempts to get this disaster area listed have rightly failed: it is not special architecturally, and in terms of town planning it literally hisses at the Georgian and Victorian buildings surrounding it. Listing this building would be a disaster because this year the new Library of Birmingham is opening a stone's throw away. I don't like the design, although functionally it cannot possibly be as bad as the present one. I'm hoping they'll have sorted out their catalogue, although ironically I feel that the little-known secret that all of their acquisitions before 1971 never made it on to the computer catalogue for 40 years, so that you still had to look in the card catalogue, may have saved some precious things from being filched.
I also can't think of a conceivable use for the empty building, so if it was listed it would just become a millstone around the council's neck. Don't these people understand that the important Brutalist principle of function dictating form should inform the demolition of buildings with no function anymore? WMF? WTF, more like.

Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 28: Hear the words of the Star Goddess

Hear ye the words of the Star Goddess, She in the dust of whose feet are the hosts of Heaven; whose body encircleth the universe.

Sources and Influences

Ye Bok of ye Arte Magical: Hear ye the words of the Star Goddess.

Crowley: Law of Liberty: We have heard the Voice of the Star-Goddess: “I love you! I yearn to you!...” (2)

Crowley: Law of Liberty: Then comes the first call of the Great Goddess Nuit, Lady of the Starry Heaven... (2)

Crowley: Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente: Then I beheld myself compassed about with the Infinite Circle of Emerald that encloseth the Universe. (3.17)

Thealogy

This passage is much more than a mere linking passage between the two halves of the Charge. Remember that at Valiente’s initiation Gardner read the whole thing to her himself? Nowadays this and the words beginning ‘Listen...’ are the two parts spoken by the High Priest: the rest is spoken by the High Priestess in her persona of the Goddess. We have become accustomed to thinking of the Charge in terms of the ritual drama which surrounds it in its modern Craft use, but if it is only one divine person speaking throughout, there would be no reason for this interjection by the High Priest. If one person reads the Charge through, it becomes apparent that this passage actually introduces a new speaker – or a new ‘name’ for the many-named Goddess who is in the High Priestess.
I feel that this passage introduces another Goddess totally, even if syncretised into the Great Mother paradigm of the whole Charge. This Goddess is not named in the Charge, but her presence underlies a great proportion of twentieth-century magical tradition, and the changes made to this section of the Charge between the BAM version and the final version make her presence her even more apparent. She is the Egyptian Goddess Nut (or Nuit). This apparent disjunction in the Charge feels very much like the changes between sections of Crowley’s Book of the Law, heralding the arrival of different divinities.
In the works of Crowley quoted in the Charge, he refers to Nut as the ‘Star Goddess’: the use of these words makes her presence here clear alone. The addition of the lines about the hosts of heaven lying in the dust of her feet and her body encircling the universe make it even clearer that it is Nut who is referred to here, because of her connection with Egyptian understandings of the universe, which they understood both in observational and mythological terms. Anyone can see the sun rise every day, but the Egyptians explained this as the Sky Goddess Nut (her body was covered with stars) giving birth to the sun every morning, and she swallowed the sun God (who was variously understood as different Gods) at night and so he passed through her body at night, before she gave birth to him again in the morning (This information on Nut is taken from Leonard Lesko: Cosmology. In Byron Shafer (editor): Religion in Ancient Egypt. Routledge, London, 1991, pp. 116-121.).
Nut was illustrated as arching her body over the world (sometimes this position was taken by the heavenly cow or the Goddess Hathor), supported by Gods. Elsewhere the stars are seen as Gods travelling in crescent-shaped boats along the body of the Goddess: how much Greater a Mother than this could anyone want?
The literature described the sun making this same journey across her body, before descending to the place of reeds before being born again. All of these images are common Wiccan images: descent, stars, crescents, the cycle of birth and death.
The appropriateness of this Goddess to Wicca becomes even more evident in considering the names the Egyptian mythology gives to the places the sun passes on its journey across the body of the Goddess: ‘Winding Waterway’, ‘Nurse Canal’, and ‘Doors Thrown Open’, which Lesko believes refer to Nut’s female anatomy, thereby introducing the major Wiccan theme of woman as Goddess, and the fertility of her womb.
Nor is the death strand of Wiccan thealogy missing from Nut’s ancient mythology, since – remembering the sun passing across her before descending before being reborn again – she is often seen as the coffin, or the womb pregnant with a new life to be born. Her image was painted in tombs and even inside sarcophagi for this reason. The inscription on the bottom of the sarcophagus of Seti I includes the Goddess speaking (another familiar Wiccan motif) these words:

‘I have endowed him with a soul, and I have endowed him with a spirit, and I have given him power in the body of his mother Tefnut, I who was never brought forth. I have come, and I have united myself to Osiris, the king... with life, stability, and power. He shall not die. I am Nut of the mighty heart, and I took up my being in the body of my mother Tefnut in my name of Nut; over my mother none hath gained the mastery. I have filled every place with my beneficence, and I have led captive the whole earth; I have led captive the South and the North, and I have gathered together the things which are into my arms to vivify Osiris, the king, the lord of the two lands, ...the son of the Sun, proceeding from his body, the lover of Seker, the lord of diadems, the governor whose heart is glad... His soul shall live for ever!’  (E. A. Wallis Budge: The Egyptian Heaven and Hell. Martin Hopkinson and Company, London, 1925, volume 2, pp. 57-59.)

Of course we see the world differently from the ancient Egyptians, but a link may be found to the Mother whose body is covered in stars in the discovery of dark matter (Timothy Ferris: The Whole Shebang. Phoenix, London, 1998.).  It is apparent that galaxies contain much more matter than the visible, luminous matter which can be measured; the remaining matter – up to 99% - is this dark matter, which holds galaxies in being and controls their velocity. It cannot be seen – but things look different when seen through dark matter. A remarkable synchronicity occurs in the etymology of the word ‘matter’, which derives from the Latin materia – the stuff from which things are made – and materia itself derives from the word mater, which means Mother (Etymologies in H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (editors, revised by E. McIntosh): The Concise Oxford Dictionary (Fifth Edition). Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964, and J. Marchant and Joseph Charles (editors): Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (Twenty-fourth edition). Cassell and Company, London, 1946.).
Nut’s history also includes the theme of syncretism with other Goddesses:

‘As a goddess of the late historical period in Egypt Nut seems to have absorbed the attributes of a number of goddesses who possessed attributes somewhat similar to those of herself, and the identities of several old nature goddesses were merged in her.’  (E.A. Wallis Budge: The Gods of the Egyptians. Methuen and Company, London, 1904, volume 2, p. 100.)

An obvious explanation for Nut’s tacit retention in the Charge could be that for much of Crowley’s Book of the Law, from which most of the Crowley quotations used in the Charge ultimately come, it is Nut who is speaking. The two pages of The Law of Liberty from which Gardner took so many of the quotations he used in the BAM version of the Charge, contain the whole revelation by the Goddess Nut of a new age, which is altered slightly in the thealogy of the Charge. Crowley sees the age of the fear of sin and gloomy asceticism passing away to be replaced by an age of joy, in which people will follow the precept to drink and dance, granted by ‘...the Peace that passeth understanding. Do not embrace mere Marian or Melusine; she is Nuit Herself; specially concentrated and incarnated in a human form to give you infinite love, to bid you taste even on earth the Elixir of Immortality. (Aleister Crowley: The Equinox Vol. 3, No. 1, March 1919 (The Blue Equinox). Weiser Books, San Francisco, 2007, pp. 48-49.)’  This idea of the Great Goddess granting a new age, in which the slavemaster-gods of the past pass away, and humans can rejoice in their dignity of their humanity, is an idea which has passed over from Crowley into Wicca. And it was revealed to Crowley by Nut, by means of Aiwass.
The strange dislocation in the middle of the Charge may simply be explained by an overlooked glitch in editing it, and particularly in its change of use from an address read by one person to its present use. However in terms of Wiccan thealogy Nut’s unnamed presence, which is nonetheless there for those who can look under the surface, is more than adequately explained by a passage from Budge, a passage which could almost have been written by Gardner himself, since it contains almost every essential of Wiccan thealogy (it was first published in 1899):

‘Nut was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite every evening, and to remain embraced until the morning, when the god Shu separated them, and set the goddess of the sky upon his four pillars until the evening. Nut was, naturally, regarded as the mother of the gods and of all things living, and she and her husband Seb were considered to be the givers of food, not only to the living but also to the dead. Though different views were current in Egypt as to the exact location of the heaven of the beatified dead, yet all schools of thought in all periods assigned it to some region of the sky, and the abundant allusions in the texts to the heavenly bodies – that is, the sun, moon, and stars – which the deceased dwells with, prove that the final abode of the souls of the righteous was not upon earth. The goddess Nut is sometimes represented as a female along whose body the sun travels, and sometimes as a cow; the tree sacred to her was the sycamore.  (E. A. Wallis Budge: Egyptian Religion. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, p. 94.)

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.

Commentary on the Charge of the Goddess 26: Upon earth I give knowledge of the spirit eternal

Upon Earth I give the knowledge of the Spirit Eternal; and beyond death I give peace and freedom; and reunion with those who have gone before;

Sources and Influences

Ye Bok of Ye Arte Magical: I give unimaginable joys, on earth certainty, not faith while in life! And upon death, peace unutterable, rest, and ecstasy, 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: Thou shalt live blessed in this world, thou shalt live glorious by my guide and protection, and when after thine allotted space of life thou descendest to hell, there thou shalt see me in that subterranean firmament (11.6)

Thealogy

The Beatific Vision, revisiting the Circle theme

It is plain that in the thealogy of the Charge, plugging into the Goddess ‘current’ has implications in both life and beyond death. The change of this passage from the BAM version of the Charge appears to be a complete change of meaning from the original Crowley quotation, however Crowley’s own commentary, referred to in the previous section, on this passage indicates several similar ideas, and indicates that the change introduced for the final version of the Charge relates to what happens after death:

‘These joys are principally (1) the Beatific Vision, in which Beauty is constantly present to the recipient of Her grace, together with a calm and unutterable joy; (2) the Vision of Wonder, in which the whole mystery of the universe is constantly understood and admired for its ingenium and wisdom. ...
‘The certainty concerning death is conferred by the magical memory, and various experiences without which life is unintelligible. “Peace unutterable” is given by the trance in which matter is destroyed; “rest” by that which finally equilibrates motion. “Ecstasy” refers to a trance which combines these.
‘”Nor do I demand aught in sacrifice”: the ritual of worship is Samadhi. ...’  (Aleister Crowley (edited by Israel Regardie): The Law is for All. Llewellyn Publications, St Paul, MN, 1975, pp. 142-143.)

Samadhi refers in Hinduism to a state of consciousness beyond dreaming or deep sleep in which there is no mental activity and the individual is absorbed in the object of meditation, or in which union with the divinity is achieved (Stephen Schumacher and Gert Woerner (editors): The Rider Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion. Rider, London, 1989.).  A synchronicity with the idea found in the Charge that the Goddess is found at the end of desire.
This passage raises one of the most characteristic aspects of Wiccan thealogy, one not present in the BAM version of the Charge, nor in the Crowley quotations underlying the BAM version: Wicca’s understanding of what happens to people when they die. Gardner stressed this belief: he stated that the witches, when he first knew them, were insistent that they had known him before; he attributed this to the fact that one of his ancestors had been accused of witchcraft (Gerald Gardner: The Meaning of Witchcraft. Weiser Books, York Beach, 2004.).
The belief in Wicca that after death we will see and know and love again, those we have known before, is a variant on the common belief in western occultism in reincarnation, usually as mediated by the influence of the Theosophical Society. Hutton believes it to be genuinely new to Wicca(Ronald Hutton: Dion Fortune and Wicca (Address given at the Company of Avalon’s Dion Fortune Seminar 2009). <www.companyofavalon.net/documents/RonaldHuttonaddress.DF.doc> Updated 2009, Accessed 8.3.10.).  Wiccan eschatology also includes the idea of a time of rest between incarnations, often described as being in a place called the Summerland. The Wiccan understanding of the last things cannot be stated by than by an unnamed witch quoted by Gardner in Witchcraft Today:

‘When we die we go to the gods’ domain, where having rested awhile in their lovely country we are prepared to be born again on this earth; and if we perform the rites correctly, by the grace of the Great Mother we will be born again among those we loved, and will remember, know and love them again, while those who do evil will have a stern schooling in the gods’ domain before they are fit to be reborn again, and then it will be among strangers. Being reborn again we ever progress, but to progress we must learn, and to learn ever means suffering. What we endure here in this life fits us for better in the next, and so we are heartened to endure all the trials and troubles here, for we know that they but help us to higher things. Thus the gods teach us to look forward to the time when we be not men any more, when we become one with the Mighty Ones.’ (Gerald Gardner: Witchcraft Today. Arrow Books, London, 1975, p.166.)

Another aspect of this reunion, as described in the Charge, is that even while on earth the Goddess gives the knowledge of the Spirit Eternal: the witch lives with an awareness of what she believes to come beyond death, and, as commented elsewhere here, with an awareness of the impact both of previous lives on this present life, and of the impact of this life on future ones. At the risk of over-dramatising the case, the witch can see her life in almost epic terms – I can agree with Terry Pratchett’s account of the ability of witches to know about the story and see how it is playing out in the present events! In his novel Witches Abroad  the witches journey to a distant part of the Discworld, and in the course of this journey fall into various stories (Terry Pratchett: Witches Abroad. Corgi Books, London, 1992.). There are occurrences of wicked sisters, fairy godmothers, farmhouses falling on witches (who wear red shoes), wolves preying on grandmothers, and so on.
These may appear merely to be the trappings of the fairy story type of witch, but the knowledge of the Spirit Eternal involves us in dealing with how the common stories of our culture play their part out in our lives. This knowledge is esoteric and brings power – in this case knowledge really is power – as Mircea Eliade writes, referring to Australian totemic myths:

‘We see, then that the “story” narrated by the myth constitutes a “knowledge” which is esoteric, not only because it is secret and is handed on during the course of an initiation but also because the “knowledge” is accompanied by a magico-religious power. For knowing the origin of an object, an animal, a plant, and so on is equivalent to acquiring a magical power over them by which they can be controlled, multiplied, or reproduced at will...’  (Wendell Beane and William Doty (editors): Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader, Volume 1. Harper Colophon, New York, 1976, pp. 139-140.)

The knowledge of these stories can help us to understand what is happening in epic terms, but of course being witches a mere understanding of these events is not enough for us, we have to be actively involved in them as well. As people who call themselves witches, we are ourselves part of these stories, even though in Wicca the image of the witch is turned on its head to create a benign, misunderstood creature. So while as witches we gain an understanding of the Spirit Eternal, we also take the opportunity at times to intervene in the story to create a slightly different ending.
But what are these stories we are involved with? And why do they resonate so strongly with us? This question is related both to the idea of knowing and loving those we have loved before, and the feeling of familiarity that people often have on coming to Wicca for the first time. There are two explanations other than  reincarnation for these phenomena, one psychological and one biological.
In the context of stressing the importance of repetition in magical ritual, Vivianne Crowley talks about the concept of morphic resonance (Vivianne Crowley: Way of Wicca. Thorsons, London, 2001.).  This is the term by which the biologist Rupert Sheldrake refers to the phenomenon that each species appears to have one collective memory, to which all members of the species have access. Crowley also refers to this happening with such things as crystals and molecules. Once a change has been made for one member of the species, for example performing an action for the first time, or an evolutionary leap is made, this information is also available to every other member of the species. Crowley uses this theory to explain that once something has been done once, it is always easier for it to be done, even by somebody else, a second time. The member of that same species who repeats the action is drawing on the ‘collective memory’ to help do it again.
The psychological explanation, to which Crowley compares the idea of morphic resonance, is the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious. She writes that this collective unconscious is based at a lower level of our minds than the normal conscious everyday level, where we are all clearly differentiated from each other. Below the consciousness the divisions between us are less clear, and we can access a mind which is common to all humans. It is at the deeper unconscious that such things as clairvoyance and telepathy occur; some people can engage this level all the time, some can work with it at will, and for others it is only accessed at times of trauma, which explains such things as seeing the recently departed.
What does this have to do with Wicca and fairy stories? Fairy stories, myths, and legends often have similar content, the world over. We know how they ought to work. For example, anyone brought up speaking English in Britain will be familiar with the story of Cinderella (deliberately choosing a story with magical elements). If someone were to refer to ‘ugly sisters’, our collective unconscious will refer the ugly sisters to the story of Cinderella, and look for a poor sister who is kept cleaning in the kitchen. We all know this. Somebody brought up speaking a different first language may not recognise the allusion to ugly sisters at first glance. They may do if there is a similar fairy story in their own language and they can relate Cinderella to it.
So some things provide ‘scripts’ as it were, which are present in our systems of explanation in our minds. They are common to us, and we know how they ought to work. By referring events in our lives to these myths, legends, fairy tales, and folklore in our mind, we can begin to understand the roles we are playing (Goddess help you if you realise you are acting like an ugly sister). Magically, we may be able to change the story slightly. Of course, in the fairy stories the witch never succeeds in manipulating the story her way, but we can still try. Seventy years ago, who would have thought there would be thousands of people in Britain calling themselves witches?
As for knowing and loving our dear ones again, and the familiarity of Wicca, this may also be explained by morphic resonance and the collective unconscious. The rituals of Wicca touch some deep points in our unconscious, as Crowley puts it:

‘For many newcomers to Wicca, its rituals are both new and yet familiar: novel but somehow not. It is as though we have been there before. While the words used by different traditions may vary, or we may create our own, the archetypal ritual pattern of the circle guarded by the four quarters, into which the powers of Goddess and God are invoked, seems ancient and deeply rooted. By the process of morphic resonance, when we perform our rites we connect ourselves with all those who have performed them before – a stream of spiritual ancestry. We in our turn are adding to the collective memory field of the rites and others in their turn will draw on our experience when they in future generations perform their rituals.’ (Vivianne Crowley: Way of Wicca. Thorsons, London, 2001, p. 147.)

Having seen what the powers of the Goddess give to the witch, the next section of the Charge goes on to describe whether these powers need to be ‘paid for’, making it plain that they do not: no pacts with the Devil here!