Dowsing for Divinity

I’ve said before that tradition arises when someone does a thing, find it useful and helpful, and either writes it down or passes it on to the next generation. Rather like writing down a recipe. And tradition changes and evolves as people find new ingredients, or when tastes change. But what is the purpose and function of tradition?

When we are following a spiritual path, it is very easy to ignore “difficult” practices in favour of the easy ones. No-one wants to spend three days hanging upside-down in a tree if they could achieve the same result with a sitting meditation. Very few people want to get to grips with difficult scriptural exegesis if they can get someone else to tell them what it means. A lot of people find the concept of ritual nudity difficult to get to grips with, because it makes them feel vulnerable. (Some people feel that it’s too difficult and choose a tradition that doesn’t involve the practice of ritual nudity, and that is their choice, but I feel that they’re missing out on something amazing and transformative.)

But there are some practices that people find difficult for entirely valid reasons. One of these is upholding the gender binary in every aspect of ritual and symbolism. The gender binary doesn’t even reflect reality — neither people’s lived experience of gender, nor how magical energies work, nor how polarity and fertility work, nor how the underlying biology works (hormones and genes are hugely complex).

When inclusive Wiccans adjust or expand a traditional practice in Wicca, it is not just a slapdash or arbitrary change. First we think about the purpose, and the magical and symbolic intent of the practice. Then we try to figure out how the same result can be achieved in a more inclusive way.

For example, if the magical purpose of an activity is to create polarity, there are multiple ways to create polarity that work better than using gender (at any rate, they work better for me). I’d also suggest that much of the time, power is raised in Wiccan rituals using synergy (everyone’s energies coming together).

Traditions are like discourses: a series of symbols, connotations, metaphors, and meanings which flow from a starting premise or way of understanding the world. In Wicca, I’d suggest that the starting premise is that divinity is immanent in the world (not that divinity is divided into two genders). You and your coven might decide that your practice of Wicca has a different starting point, and that is your choice and prerogative.

Within a discourse, certain utterances flow naturally from the assumptions of the discourse, and certain utterances are unthinkable within it, or just don’t make sense. The same is true of a tradition. But moving away from the gender binary is very thinkable and doable whilst remaining within the Wiccan tradition. And the needs of the people practising a tradition are always more important than maintaining the “purity” of the tradition.