inclusive Wicca

The inclusive Wicca symbol

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How the inclusive Wicca logo happened.

I was making a poster for a LGBT+ ritual in 2014, and trying to think of a symbol that expresses LGBT+ Wicca. So I took the standard Wiccan triple Moon symbol and added a heart.

🌛🌝🌜 + ❤️

I didn’t really think about it — the symbol sort of came down my arm, bypassing my brain, and manifested on the paper.

The heart could be seen as an hommage to the Sufi winged heart or Tughra Inayati symbol (and there is a connection between Sufism and Wicca, via the friendship between Gardner and Idries Shah).

The Sufi winged heart image (public domain version)

The Sufi winged heart image (public domain version)

The heart mainly represents the idea that love (in all its glorious diversity) is the central mystery of Wicca. Also that Love is love, or “All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals” — hence also the title of my 2014 book on inclusive Wicca.

Towards an inclusive Wiccan theology

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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]

The goddess Artemis.
Photo by Jason Youngman [Public Domain, CC0]

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An inclusive wheel of the year

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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.

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Creating inclusive rituals

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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?

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