We have enjoyed our time with you. Blessings on your journey.

The Charge of the Goddess


Whenever you have need of anything,
Once a month, and better when the moon is full,
you shall assemble in some secret place
and adore the spirit of Me,
Who is Queen of all the Wise.

You shall be free from slavery
and as a sign that you be free
you shall be naked in all your rites
Sing, Feast, Dance, Make Music and Love
all in My presence,
for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit,
and Mine also is joy on Earth.

For My law is love unto all beings
Mine is the secret that opens upon the door of youth
and Mine is the cup of wine of life,
that is the cauldron of Cerridwen,
that is the holy grail of immortality.

I give the knowledge of the spirit,
eternal and beyond death.
I give peace and freedom and reunion
with those that have gone on before.

Nor do I demand aught of sacrifice.
For behold, I am the mother of all things,
and My love is poured out upon the Earth.

I Who am the beauty of the green Earth,
and the white Moon among the stars,
and the mysteries of the waters.
I call upon your soul,
to arise and come to Me.
For I am the soul of nature,
that gives life to the universe.

From Me, all things proceed,
and unto Me, they must return.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices,
for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

Let there be beauty and strength,
power and compassion,
honor and humility,
mirth and reverence within you.

And you who seek to know Me.
know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not,
unless you know the Mystery:

For if that which you seek,
you find not within yourself,
you will never find it without.

For behold,
I have been with you from the beginning
and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.

Hi it's meeee saying hi to all the "others" out there

Hello Jill,
Merry meet and merry chill
we hope you do what ere you will
and harm no others in your thrill
and win a trip to South Brazil

I found this since Abra posted that photo of Cerridwen

Cerridwen is one of the Old Ones, one of the great megalithic pre-Christian Goddesses of the Celtic World. Although, in her story, she embodies all three lunar aspects of the Goddess, Maiden, Mother and Crone, she is primarily worshipped in her Crone aspect, by and through her Cauldron of Wisdom, Inspiration, Rebirth and Transformation. The cauldron has an intimate association with femininity, together with the cave, the cup and the chalice, and the association of femininity with justice, wisdom and intelligence goes back to very ancient times.

There is a lot online about her if anyone is interested. I looked on a few sites and they all seem to mention that her strong hold of worship was amongst the peoples of Wales.

Hey, beautiful! Glad to see you dropped by!

That's interesting about Cerridwen. I knew she was one of the Triple Goddesses but I didn't know she was primarily worshipped in her Crone aspect. I always associate the Blessed Virgin Mary form of the Goddess as coming from her who I see as the Mother aspect.

so, I had another bad dream last night about the police department. This time I was the victim of a crime, but that part didn't scare me much. I easily overpowered the assailant and nothing bad happened. It was dealing with the police after that that was stressful and upsetting. Many of whom I knew from the past. This is weird. I'm going to have to try and figure what this is all about.

Maybe you need to confront your anxiety in some respect? Have you considered going back to the department you used to be employed with and speaking with some of the officers? Just casually? Or is that not allowed?

I could easily go back and talk to them. But, I don't want to. The mere thought of going anywhere near there makes me shudder. There is only one detective that I would feel comfortable talking with and that's because we both were severely impacted by the investigation of a very young girl who was raped and murdered. We have a connection through that and I like him. He left the department though before I did. I think because of that incident. Maybe this is a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder?

Its very possible. That is definitely something that law enforcement and firemen and hospital employees suffer with due to what they can come in contact with in their line of work.

You might need to get some counseling or an evaluation is this persists.

I hate doctors of all kinds. I think if I know why I'm having the dreams that will help. They only occur every few months. Thanks for helping me figure this out.

I find this all quite interesting myself. In Penczak's book "The Outer Temple of Witchcraft", he gives a list of names that the Moon Goddess has been called by various cultures.

These are some of them.

Artemis
Astarte
Dione
Melusine
Aphrodite
Cerridwen
Diana
Arianrhod
Brigid
(and many more he says)

Of course most people are familiar with the Greek Goddess Aphrodite, I never realized that she was associated with witchcraft too. I guess they must give a lot of leeway on these things.

Melusine was a kind of mermade type of God, or half-human, half-serpent maybe. I didn't read much about her but all the photos have her lower body to be sepent-like.

~~~

I found this strange because the name Cerridwen called to me. And after looking into her I discover that she is the Goddess of the witches of Wales.

This is interesting since my mother's family originated from Wales. So this is part of my heritage.

I also feel that Cerridwen is one of the names on the list that is most strongly associated with witchcraft.

I'm building a pantheon of my own making and I've been seeking a Goddess deity. I'm also drawn to both Artemis and Aphrodite, but they are both Greek Goddesses. Cerridwen is somewhat attractive to me personally because she is associated with Wales which is in my own geneology.

As far as the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aspects go, this is another area of great interest to me. It is unfolding for me in interesting ways.

A while back (I think in part 1 of these Wiccan threads) I posted a dream I had. In the dream I envisioned the Goddess as a young maiden who looked like the Goddess in this picture:



The crone was also present (at least I think), although she was like an elderly witch, and reminded me of my own mother.

The mother form of the Goddess was not in my dream.

The horned God appeared as one of my uncles and was also in his aging years. He even acted like he was at the end of a cycle.

This Yule season when I cast my first circle I will imagine the God to be a newly born baby, and the Goddess to be in the Mother form since she will have just given rebirth to the God.

The interesting thing is that as the year progresses the God will grow to manhood (or Godhood) and then around about April he will impregnate the Goddess. So the Goddess must tranform into the maiden during this time. Then over the summer the God and the Goddess both age. But the Goddess can hardly become a crone, since she must give birth to the new God at the Winter Solstice.

So there's never any time for the crone.

The cycle starts all over again.

I'm just trying to get the whole myth to make sense in my mind with a single Mood Goddess that takes all three forms. I do know that many people just think of multiple Moon Goddesses, one for each form. Maybe that's the best way to go.

I was actually using this painting for the image of the Goddess as the Mother.



I have no idea who this Goddess is supposed to be. I just found this picture under a search for 'Goddess'.

I think I'm going to 'create' three seperate images for the Goddess. The Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, and just assume that all three forms are always available for communiqué at any given time.

I'm kind of doing this with the God too.

The God takes on at least two form. The Horned God, and the Sun God. I think of them as being the same God in different form.

There is also a reference to the "Great Spirit", which is kind of interesting too. I actually see this as kind of a mixture of both the God and the Goddess, and for me it represents the ulimate spirit of oneness and nature. The genderless "God" so-to-speak. I guess this would be akin to the Holy Spirit of the Mediterranean mythology.

So I'm working on creating a double trinity of sorts.

The Goddess as the maiden, mother, and crone.

And the God as the Horned God, the Sun God, and the Holy Spirit which is actually the genederless form of the totality of spirit.

This is where I'm going with my own intuitive pantheon.

As I've said many times, there's only one spirit, and all of these additional forms are mere facets of the spirit for the purpose of adoration and communiqué.

I'm building my own mythology in a sense, but I'm using foundational principles of various folklores.

This must be seriously difficult for a coven. I mean a coven would need to become an organized religion where everyone pretty much agrees on the construct of the pantheon. Otherwise everyone would have a different idea of what's going on.

This religion 'Wicca' is so abstract which is one of the things that draws me to it. But at the same time I can see why it would drive other people away because their first thoughts would be, "You're just making this stuff all up!", I need a 'real God' who has a concrete book and message.

And thus they go running off to the Mediterranean mythology. But what they don't seem to realize is that there were MANY Mediterranean mythologies and all they are really doing is falling for the one that become most popular simply because it was forced onto people by threat of death if they dared to speak out against it.

All religions are 'made up'.

So you may as well make up your own.

That's how I feel about it.

The different aspects of the goddess are available at all times and they do tend to cross over a bit through the seasons. Just as the seasons cross over into each other. It can be technically winter but still look and feel like fall. It's not exact.

You will find that you are called by one goddess or just a few. I have never been able to escape Hecate. And, I have a very strong attachment to the BVM. I have called upon others for specific needs....Venus for my love spell, that kind of thing. But, generally you are called by one or two specifically.

I do believe that in the Triple manifestation of the Goddess, the Crone aspect is always considered the most powerful. All three have separate attributes of course but the Crone has collected the first two of Maiden and Mother so she is the absolute at the end and then she is reborn as Maiden once again.

Yes, the Crone is considered to be the most powerful. And, any goddes who embodies all three aspects is also considered to be very powerful. Cerridwen is one, Hecate is one, The Morrigan and there are a coupld of others I believe.

I think that's pretty normal to have bad dreams related to stressful careers.

Believe it or not I was a cop once myself. Just breifly. I discovered very quickly that it wasn't my cup of tea. The main thing that turned me off was the predjudice of the other cops. And everyone was so 'hardened off'. I mean, they had no compassion for anyone truly.

I just couldn't get into that mindset.

I mean, it's true. If cops arrest a completely innocent person, they treat him like a convicted criminal right off the bat. Then when they discover that they have made a mistake they never apologize to the 'victim' they arrested. They act more like, "Well, you were lucky this time!"

I mean, what kind of an attitude is that to take with an INNOCENT person?

However, even though my career was extremely short it still had adverse affect on me and caused me to have bad dreams too.

One reason why I quit was that I realized that I'm not cut out to be a cop. One time I was called to a burglar alarm and the place had been broken into. I went in and started going through the offices, I swung a door open and standing there in front of me was a man pointing a gun right at me. I hesitated to shoot because I needed to intellectually assess the situation. Who is this man? It was somewhat dark. Hard to see. I didn't want to shoot the owner.

I also felt like you have to say something before you can shoot. I mean, you can't just shoot at everyone who points a gun at you.

Well, it turned out to be a full length mirror!

There was no one there but me!

I've had nightmares about blowing that mirror away. I've had nightmares about being blown away by the fellow in the mirror.

But none the less, I realized that if that had been the actual criminal he very well may have shot me whilst I was contemplating who he might be.

Many burglaries are done by drug addicts who are looking for fix money. They don't care who they have to shoot to get their fix. I was a cop in the late 60's early 70's and LSD, cocaine, and heroin were rampant.

I finally decided that the job just wan't worth it.

Turn the other cheek I say.

I decided to become a scientist, and later a teacher. Although I guess nowadays even teachers are at risk of getting shot by crazy students.

But I had nightmares over my police work. There were times when I did have shootouts. I never shot anyone. I carried a 41 magnum (Dirty Harry I guess ), But my reasoning wasn't to kill. I figure that when they hear that cannon go off they'll give up. And it worked too.

One time I was involved in a shoot out with some drugies. The other cops had 38 Specials, and the drugies had 9mm automatics.

They were trading fire in a large abandon warehouse.

The shots were loud but tolerable.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

I pulled out my 41 magnum and aimed it at an empty 55 gallon trash drum.

BOOM!

One shot.

The building echoed liked a bomb had just gone off. Dust fell from the rafters.

The drugies threw out their guns and starting yelling. "Don't Shoot! Don't Shoot! We're coming out!"

Sometimes a little bit of sound can make all the difference in the world.

You were a cop Abra? Oh my. I didnt realize Ruth was one in her past either till she mentioned it a while back. I have a tremendous amount of respect for law enforcement believe it or not. The few times I have been arrested and detained, I've always found that the less grief you give them, the better it goes for you overall.

Unless one singles you out which can happen.

Ive had that occur also with a local cop that was giving me a hard time in California. They are human and there are bad ones who clearly abuse the authority that the badge allots them.

Wow, James. I had no idea. That's really interesting. It is a very stressful environment and it is only partially because of the actual dangers of the work. I don't like police officers in general, but you have to become just like them in order to survive in that environment. Individuality is strongly discouraged and it is very much an "us vs. them" mentality. Cops are good, everyone else is bad. I adopted the mindset 100% and I did well. It's a matter of survival. But, I pay the price now.

I shot one guy.....it was a "suicide by cop" attempt. I didn't hesitate, though. He was going to put an axe in my head.

Btw, I almost shot one of those sewing dummies on a house search after a burglar alarm went off.