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| Goddess? Or fertility charm? Does it matter? |
This article was recently posted on Witchvox, a site that publishes the voices of Pagans everywhere. I am dancing a little dance of anthropology major joy because this information REALLY needs to be spread through the Pagan community. The basic gist of it is this: No, we did not start out as a matriarchal society full of peace and love and goddessy things, and NO the world was not conquered by Indo-Europeans who abolished the Mother in favor of a brutal Sky God. Mother HAS been shoved in a corner by many cultures, but the reasons are varied and complex.
That does not mean that the religions we practice today are not completely valid. The eight sabbats, for instance, while each comes from some kind of ancient roots, were never all celebrated by the same culture at the same time. Wicca was created just last century. Age does not make a religion valid. What makes it valid is the magic it brings into the life of its follower, the good it creates in the world, the transformation it can bring about to end the suffering of an individual. Please read this article from Witchvox too.
So please, let go of your need for ancient lineages and just accept your magic and wholeness based on its own merits. There are so many things from our history we do NOT want to repeat.
Your religion is only less than ancient if you consider time linear, anyway. The organic curves, circles, and cycles of Nature and Life should be teaching us that linear time is only an illusion. But that's a whole other post. So love your religion, embrace your fierce divinity, and let the past stay in the past. And PLEASE stop spreading the myth of the goddess culture as if it's been proven by found evidence because it's only hurting us and making many of us seem foolish to those who might otherwise be open to the healing love we could be sharing.
