There is much talk in initiatory Wicca of things being “oathbound”. However, a piece of knowledge cannot be oathbound. Oaths and vows are binding on those who swear them, not on the things they swear to protect or keep secret. A person is oathbound, not an item of knowledge.
Ritual
Rituals for moving home
I have just moved from Oxford, England, to Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. As you can imagine, this will cause some emotional upheaval. I feel very rooted in England, and am concerned about the issue of land stolen from Indigenous people in Canada, and the effects of colonialism on their wellbeing and way of life.
Beltane fires and maypoles
Beltane is coming, and with it, the celebration of love. Spare a thought for those who are left out of all the joyous coupling, and those who are marginalised by less inclusive ways of celebrating love.
Fertility can be re-purposed into a theme of caring for the environment, or of general creativity. And as Doreen Valiente wrote in The Charge of the Goddess, “All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals”.
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Spring Equinox
After several years of excellent research by Adrian Bott, we now know the following things. Spring Equinox was not actually celebrated by ancient pagans in the British Isles; nor was it a fertility festival. There was probably a festival at the fourth full moon of the year, at which cattle were sacrificed. Eostre was most probably a goddess local to Kent, although her name is cognate with various other goddesses of dawn and light, such as Austriahenea and Ausrine.
Various animals are associated with the festival of Easter in folklore (none of them are associated with the goddess Eostre): the Easter Hare, the Easter Fox, the Easter Stork, and the Easter Cuckoo, all of which bring eggs. None of them are particularly cute and fluffy, so didn’t work too well on Easter greetings cards, unlike chicks and bunnies. And none of them are fertility symbols.
Ritual roles and archetypes
Ritual roles are often allocated according to gender, but this doesn’t need to be the case. Allocating roles by gender seems a lazy shorthand for the archetypes you want the ritual role to express. There are so many different archetypes, and not all of them are gender-specific. How about if we allocated ritual roles according to the archetype they are intended to embody, or the skills that are needed for the task at hand?
Towards an inclusive Wiccan theology
Wiccans can be polytheist, animist, pantheist, monist, duotheist, atheist/archetypalist, or “all of the above depending on the day”. Most Pagans believe that the divine is, or deities are, immanent in the world; and that includes most Wiccans.
This theological diversity works in ritual settings as long as everyone can “translate in their head” and have a certain amount of flexibility as to practice and the wording of rituals.
![The goddess Artemis. Photo by Jason Youngman [Public Domain, CC0]](https://dowsingfordivinity.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/goddess-2774132_960_720.jpg?w=400&h=225)
The goddess Artemis.
Photo by Jason Youngman [Public Domain, CC0]
Imbolc
Imbolc is the time of year when I like to start new projects and endeavours. Imbolc would be an excellent time to celebrate a transition from one gender to another. It’s the time when the first signs of spring appear (at least in my neck of the woods – your local climate may vary). The goddess most closely associated with Imbolc is Brighid, goddess of smithcraft, poetry, and healing.
An inclusive wheel of the year
Some versions of the Wheel of the Year (the eight festivals of Wicca and Druidry) can feel excluding, particularly those that focus on the God and the Goddess interacting through the cycle of the seasons. This mythological construct excludes both polytheists and LGBTQIA people. Some versions of the story are uncomfortable for feminists, as they don’t exactly promote consent culture. It is worth noting that the “cycle of the God and the Goddess” doesn’t appear in any early Gardnerian Books of Shadows (e.g. November Eve, 1949, February Eve, 1949, May Eve, 1949, August Eve, 1949). The solstices and equinoxes were added to the Wiccan year-wheel in the 1950s.
For all sorts of reasons, then, I prefer to go back to the original mythology and symbolism associated with the festivals.
Wassailing
One of my favourite folk rituals is the practice of wassailing. This is done in apple-growing districts to wake up the apple trees and encourage them to produce plenty of fruit in the autumn. I love it so much that I planted an apple tree in my garden so I could wassail it.
![Apple blossom. Photo by Maky Orel on Pixabay [Public Domain, CC0]](https://dowsingfordivinity.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/apple-blossom-2300177_960_720.jpg?w=300&h=200)
Apple blossom. Photo by Maky Orel on Pixabay [Public Domain, CC0]
Creating inclusive rituals
It is a useful magical and intellectual exercise to examine each segment of your ritual structure, and ask yourself why you do it in the particular way that you do. Why do we sweep the circle, consecrate it with water, salt, and incense, cast it with a sword, and so on? What is the function and symbolism of each of these actions? Can they be improved – either in the sense of making them more magically effective, more reflective of reality, or more inclusive?
