Wicca 101 - section 2

Witchcraft is by its own admission nonpolitical. It doesn't proselytise, nor does it think itself unique, either spiritually or magically. It accepts the validity of all paths and traditions, recognising the maxim "All Gods are One God". It is Pantheist (literally "all-god") in theology: believing that there are many faces to the Divine. (I actually prefer the term Panentheist: meaning "all-in-god", but that's a philosopher for you).

The Craft doesn't have a creed in the traditional sense, although we do have a body of common rituals and Charges which are usually contained in our "Book of Shadows". In some traditions this is a personal collection of material, gathered from various sources; in the British Witchcraft Traditions this body of work is the accumulated knowledge of the predessors in our line, and is passed on complete to each new initiate. Some parts of this Book of Shadows have since entered the public realm - with a minimum of research you should be able to find the most famous: "The Charge of the Goddess"...

Ours is not a prescriptive path either, what code of conduct we do have can be summed up by our Rede - "And it harms none, do as you will" (which does not mean "do whatever you feel like"...). This and a recognition that all things are sacred, and everyone contains the God and Goddess within.

In the Craft the Divine is seen as manifesting itself through two great principles: the God and the Goddess. They are reflected in the material world around us, as well as the psychic world within us. Every man and woman is a star, governing their own orbit. They are a manifestation of the Divine as Male and Female, and take part in the interplay between them. Every man can be seen as a manifestation of the God, every woman a manifestation of the Goddess. But within each is the seed and reflection of the other. Jung expressed this in the concept of the Anima and the Animus: the image of the individual's soul as the opposite gender to themselves. Taoism expresses it in the Tai Chi: opposites who create a whole by their relation, and who contain the seed to the other within them.

Spirit itself contains both masculine and feminine as parts of a scale, or extremes in a process. To understand ourselves and the divine it is every witches duty to understand not only that aspect of which they are a manifestation, but also that which they contain as a reflection within. Every man must strive to understand the Goddess within, every woman the God. As gay witches, we feel that by our very nature it easier for us to understand the God and Goddess both within and without. With all gay people the traditional boundaries of sexuality and gender are blurred: we are men who love other men, and women who love other women. (For more on this, please see our "Gay pagans, gay witches" section)