Musings on Sacrifice

A friend wrote: "Thinking about my 'offering of sacrifice'. I realized this morning that my kids, made within my body, nurtured by my body, raised in the household that I set the daily tone for, [are a] long outpouring of sacrifice. To my family line, to my world."

This immediately got me thinking about the Goddess, and I don't mean a particular cultural Name, but THE Goddess, the Great Goddess, the Creatrix of all we see and are, and about sacrifice.

Wicca, and the various Wiccan-style Pagan traditions, give offerings to our Deities as tokens of affection and respect. Usually this is wine, fruit, milk, bread, honey, or other food substances and takes place a ritual context. In my tradition, it expresses love and gratitude and helps us feel that we and the Gods are participating in the ritual together. Sometimes we make bigger offerings that involve more energy and effort. We might make something and ritually destroy it in offering to the Goddess; I might bake a special cake for Her and take it out and bury it in the Earth. We call these offerings sacrifices, because we sacrifice ("make sacred") our energy and goods. 

However, I've never had the sense that the Goddess needed my offerings or sacrifices. She does not need my offerings to love me, and She does not need them to communicate with me or to act on my behalf. She loved me and spoke to me way before I ever started formal rituals or offerings. It's like when a beloved elder relative comes to visit and you offer her a cup of coffee and some cake. She does not need that coffee and cake, but it is polite and caring to offer it to her, and she appreciates the thoughtfulness. If you were not to offer them, she would still visit and love you, but she might think you were a bit rude, and some life lessons in thoughtfulness and generosity might follow.

When I was really little, my mom used to give me a bit of money at Christmas so I could buy a Christmas present for her. The idea is cute and silly, because I was using her stuff to give her stuff, but it acts as an analogy for the offerings we give our Lady. "All things come of Thee, Oh Goddess, and of Thine own have we given Thee" (to paraphrase 1st Chronicles.)

This places the Wiccan-style Pagan traditions outside of antique Pagan traditions and even some of the monotheistic traditions, where sacrifice was/is seen as necessary to forge a proper bond with the Deity, and without which, one could not have a proper relationship. The rushing-out of chi or prana in shed blood during an animal sacrifice forges a strong link with the Otherworld. The nature of the animal sacrificed "toned" the nature/quality of the power gushing forth and attracted/excited the denser spiritual parts of the Deity being invoked: like attracts like. It was believed that the bond with Deity and perhaps even the strength of the Deity depended on such sacrifice as well as great quantities of other offerings. The bond had to be renewed frequently with more sacrifice.

The point of the Christian mythos is that there came a time when there were not enough animals or offerings to satisfy Yahweh or atone for humanity's basic errors, and so the God himself had to incarnate and sacrifice himself to Himself to forge that proper bond between humanity and Deity. Because that God is considered to be outside of the limits of Time, so also is his sacrifice seen to be outside the limits of Time; it is ongoing, which is why the Eucharist (in liturgical churches) and the concept of being "washed in the Blood" (in the charismatic churches) are so important.

So we have a situation in many ancient (and some contemporary) Pagan religions, and even some monotheistic religions, where sacrifice is seen as necessary to have a proper relationship with Deity. How startling, then, are the words of our Great Mother Goddess as spoken in the inspired liturgy of the Charge of the Goddess:

"Nor does She demand sacrifice, for behold, She is the mother of all living, and Her love is poured out upon the earth."

The earlier Charge of the Goddess actually did make reference to sacrifice: "At mine Altars the youth of Lacedaemon in Sparta made due sacrifice." However, this was dropped. The sources of the Charge of the Goddess are many: Aleister Crowley's writings, Leland's Aradia, Apuleius' The Golden Ass, and the inspiration of Gerald Gardner and, especially, Doreen Valiente. I believe that the eventual omission of the line about the "due sacrifice" in Sparta was dropped because it conflicted with the Goddess-given gnosis that She does not demand sacrifice.

Because She is the mother of all living, that means Her essence is inherent within us, just as my friend's essence and nature is inherent within her children. I, you, this computer, my cat, bulls, dogs, turtledoves, loaves of bread, water, honey -- all are already of Her body, and there can be no alienation or separation from Her intrinsic form in us, anymore than my friend's children could one day decide to take out part of their DNA.**  Traditional sacrifice acts as a bridge, but why build a bridge to yourself? So we don't need to sacrifice to the Goddess, in the traditional sense. Her ongoing love, "poured out upon the earth" is the bridge to us. When we love Her back, we are herself loving Herself.

When we create something to give to Her, we are participating in Her inherent Power of Creativity; She is the source of creativity. When we offer something back to Her that is beautiful or sweet or fine, we are acknowledging Her beauty and and sweetness and fineness. And, She is acknowledging those qualities in Herself. We are also growing our spirits by mimicking her generosity. (We can learn a lot about right love of self from the Goddess.)

Finally, offerings can act as a language, a means of conversation, and there are offering techniques that are very powerful in this regard. These things create more of an awareness of Her in us, and strengthen our awareness of Her in our lives; they are very worthy to do, and powerful, and meaningful, but She does not need them anymore than my mother needed that 25 cent figurine I bought for her with her own money, and our relationship is not predicated on the offering.

I am comforted by the idea that I do not need to do anything in order to be loved and nurtured by the Great Mother. It makes me love and appreciate Her even more.

**(Which they would never do because my friend is AWESOME.)

The Goddess' Athames

A few years back, a Pagan man wrote an essay and published it on Witchvox in which he called him "the Goddess' athame." The point of this striking metaphor was that he considered himself to be an instrument of the Goddess' Will in all the ways that an athame works the Will of a Witch.

Last week, I got to experience the marvelous effects of several dozen "athames of the Goddess" all pointed at me in Love and Grace, and today, I sing that Love and Grace.

Since my initiation into an American Craft tradition in 2002, Lord Death has visited me and mine all too often. Now, I understand Lord Death's role in the greater scheme of things; life without death is cancerous, toxic, and miserable. For several Samhains I have enacted the Mystery of the Descent of the Goddess  into the realm of Death, the sacrifice of the Sacred King, and sung "Hoof and Horn / All That Dies Shall Be Reborn" with gusto.

Nevertheless, the deaths and the endings and the mournings and the letting-go-of-things have piled up and especially in the past two years, it's been relentless. Not only with the passing of people and beings I love, but the death of relationships I cherished; the death of my priestess role within my community, and my place in the community; and of the hopes and ambitions I had for my tradition. All gone. All failed. All faded away. 

It's been a lot of Winter. 

And so when Freya, my beloved and most special cat, my L'il, the Tiny Baby Kitty I helped feed unto life as a kitten, when she sickened, it was too much. Too much. All the grief of the past two years recapitulated into this one big grief. I reached out to the Goddess in confusion, asking, what should I do about Freya, what decisions should I make? And I felt nothing whatsoever except a blank and terrifying silence. My Goddess, why has thou forsaken me?

I was wrong. I was not forsaken at all.

Going public with my despair, I was astonished at how many people, dozens of people, took time out of their busy lives to read my posts and offer their words of  sympathy, consolation, and heartfelt advice. It was easy to see that every one of their messages was sincere. Some of these people I have never met face-to-face. Others I have not seen in over 20 years. 

It was an astonishing outpouring of Love and Grace, and through it I found great healing, and through it I found and felt once again the Goddess. 

I realized several things:

1. There comes a point where sadness morphs into depression, and the biological markers of depression often include a deficit of that marvelous spirit of connection that is the neurotransmitter "serotonin." Without adequate levels of serotonin, it is very hard to perceive, to feel viscerally, any kind of connection. That is one the reasons I had a hard time feeling the Goddess directly.
2. The Goddess, however, does not have to manifest directly into neural networks that may be misfiring at the time, but She can and does work through other people, who are not really Others at all, because we are all cells linked in the body of Her greatness, and love given is love shared.
3. That in this case, the Goddess very much implemented Her Will through these dozens of people who took the time to say a kind word, or many kinds words, to me. Every one was an athame of the Goddess, pointing a stream of glowing Love at me, and at Freya.

I have not felt the Goddess' love this tangibly in many years. It reminded me so powerfully that nurturing and cherishing the web of connection we have with one another is the highest form of service one can give the Goddess. Every single thing else pales in comparison, falls utterly away into insignificance. Status, "witchiness," tradition, form, praxis, all of them are meaningless unless they are subsumed into the service of Her Love. Without this Love, all these forms and items we Pagans cherish are like those decorative athames you hang on a wall: pretty and interesting, but ultimately useless. I know that is going to be a lesson I'll be unpacking for some time to come, and in that realization will come Spring, and the healing of my heart.

It may seem irreverent to quote a pop band at this point, but once again I marvel at the Awen of the Beatles - perhaps not surprising since they were, after all, Celts: "And in the end / the love you take / is equal to the love you make."