Rose Ariadne's Chitchcraft Blog

Dear friends,

I was recently watching an episode of “Designing Women” and it immediately made me think of this blog. Although I usually enjoy Julia’s rants and raves, this particular one did not set will with me. Apparently, the firm’s phone number accidentally got mixed up with a psychic bookstore’s number and a lot of people were calling the girls thinking they were calling the bookstore. At one point, Julia answered the phone and pretended to be the bookstore. She proceeded to tell the customer that they no longer carried books on mediums because they had discovered that it was just a farce and that crystals were “just rocks.”

Of course, the audience laughed and everyone assumed that Julia was right. It was just a reminder to me; however, of how little respect Wicca actually receives from the general population.

But that’s really an aside. Today I wanted to focus on a prevalent concept in Wicca-the triple Goddess. Dating back to the legend of Persephone and Demeter, the triple Goddess consist of the maiden, mother, and crone. (Not to be confused with the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit.) So who are these people and what do they do?

The maiden, also known as the “new moon” in the cycle, is the youngest of the three. She is the innocent, the virgin, the seeker. In terms of my own life, I think of myself as the maiden up until the point that I had children. The maiden asks questions, is sometimes lead astray, and is full of passion. Her love is quick and powerful, but not always long-lasting. She is not flighty, but she moves.

The maiden is also fierce and strong. She can be gentle as well as a warrior. Diana was a maiden, with her horses and her weapons. The maiden belongs to no one and to everyone.

The mother is the nurturer. This is the face that you see as you are dying. The mother is not always kind, but always takes care of you and makes choices out of love for you. The mother is the creator and is often referred to as “Mother Earth”, “Mother Nature” and so on. A tumultuous relationship often exists with the mother, but that’s the way it goes in child/parental relationships.

The mother holds the keys to a lot of life’s mysteries. As the person who gives birth, she is all-knowing and is able to offer comfort and love, but can also seem cruel and unkind. She is the full moon.

The dark moon is the crone. The crone is often the image that we get of witches at Halloween, and it’s not an altogether inaccurate depiction-except for the black hat and warts. The crone is considered an older woman, although she doesn’t have to be decrepit. There is no certain age that pertains to this phase.

The crone is the vessel of life. She holds the traditions, knowledge, and secrets that have been passed down for generations. She is a healer, a fighter, and at peace with the world. She is no longer a young maiden or a mother, in a sense that she has performed the duties that were required of her, yet she still holds onto those aspects as well. She is all-knowing. She judges and watches over time.

A lot of women, and men too, fear the crone. As women, we don’t really want to age. Yet, the crone is as essential as the maiden and the mother. In the cycle of life, we must have death before we can have rebirth.

In effect, the Triple Goddess is merely the cycle of life. You don’t have to be A mother to be THE mother. The different stages don’t come at set time period or ages, either. Every women is capable of being all three, just as every woman holds the Goddess inside of her.

As I get older, I find comfort in the fact that the Goddess exists in three forms. I have many friends who say that you couldn’t pay them to return to high school again, and I kind of feel like that with the maiden. As for myself, I am the mother now and I am content in that. I miss being young, feeling like the warrior, and having the carefree nature that comes with the maiden, but I also like the more womanly feeling that I get at this stage in my life.
I do sometimes fear the crone-not just becoming her but of the idea of her in general. Sometimes I feel her eyes watching me and judging me and this makes me nervous. On the other hand, I know that when I reach that point in my life I will undoubtedly find peace within her, as I have found it in the other two as well.

In the meantime, enjoy the person that you are. You won’t be able to go back to that again. And perhaps you won’t even want to.

Brightest Blessings,

Rose Ariadne
Your Warm and Caring “Resident Witch In Charge”

Dear friends,

Trying to stay on topic here as far as Wicca goes, but a subject has been coming up fairly often within my group of friends lately and I wanted to touch on it. There are many people who choose not to vaccinate their children for health reasons. I have come across a variety of reasons, from fear of developing allergic reactions to autism. Of course, for every piece of evidence I see supporting these claims, I see just as many proving that they do not exist.

I am not here to tell you to vaccinate your children or not. I’m not that political, nor am I a doctor, and I think it’s a personal choice. What I was interested in, however, was what qualified as a “religious exemption.” If you’re not familiar with this concept, it basically excuses children from having some of the vaccinations that are required for school, daycare, and other things due to religious preferences.

I was curious as to whether or not Wicca or Paganism or other earth-based religions would qualify for this exemption and if not, which religions did. In addition, when one fills out such a form I wondered if you had to write down what specific religion you were. That could lead to some interesting things, since not all areas of the country are as open-minded about some religions as they are others. So I did some investigating.

Apparently, all of the states have the exemption to vaccinate per religious exemption. However, the actual rules vary from one state to another. It is also encouraged that you only practice this if you do, indeed, have a religious objection to the vaccinations. Not a medical objection, but a purely religious one. Although a lot of the people that I know that have objections are indeed religious, for the most part their objections are medically based.

Interestingly, in the states in which the religious exemption is restrictively worded so that the person must belong to a church that has a written tenet that opposes the vaccination, there have been challenges at the state level. I rather like this idea because if people weren’t able to challenge it then it would effectively be saying that if you weren’t a member of a church or didn’t practice organized religion you wouldn’t be able to take the exemption.

This answered my biggest question-do you have to belong to one of the “major” religions such as Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Buddhism in order to qualify for it? No, you do not. However, most states do require that you produce some sort of documentation or demonstration illustrating your beliefs and how they are in opposition to the vaccination. Evidence has to be of a religious nature, which means that you can’t just go in there and say that you don’t want your infant to be vaccinated because you’re afraid that it will increase their chances of dying of SIDS. (Didn’t make that one up, it actually is an argument that many parents have, although he medical community states that there is no direct link.)

Again, I am not trying to sway to do one or the other. Honestly, I don’t feel as though I have enough information on either side to make an educated decision or to even take sides. I was merely interested in the political “how to’s.”

I was also wondering how a Wiccan would support this. Would you use the argument that you only use homeopathic or herb-based medicines and therefore are opposed to the synthetic quality of the vaccine? These are not questions that I have been able to ask fellow Wiccans, but I am very interested in them.

I did find a website that had links to states that had online forms. Most of these had to be turned in at the local health department, although some could be turned in directly to the school itself. They were fairly simple forms and most did not ask for anything specific, such as what particular religion you were practicing. I liked this, as I felt that to ask was a little bit of an invasion of privacy.

Of course, private organizations might still ask for the child to be vaccinated. I haven’t had that much time to do that much research. But on a public school level, it appears that the religious exemption is a valid one.

I was concerned that perhaps there wasn’t enough leeway for a Wiccan to participate in this exemption, but from what I have gathered, it seems to apply to anyone who has a religious objection to it. Of course, what applies to theory might not apply to practice. I welcome any comments regarding this subject matter and am curious if you have taken the exemption and under what grounds your objections were. I am also curious as to whether or not you had to explain your religious preferences when you did, indeed, take it.

In the meantime, I hope that everyone remains healthy and safe.

Brightest Blessings,

Rose Ariadne
Your Warm and Caring “Resident Witch In Charge”

Dear friends,

I thought I would talk a little bit about history today. Most major religions have historical texts that give followers an idea of their background and history but because Wicca is so new in terms of using a specific term and because even if we do practice in groups we’re still a fairly unorganized religion, we don’t really have one major text to read about our past in. Instead, we have to more or less gather bits and pieces here and there. So this is my “Cliff Notes” version of witchcraft…

Witchcraft is older than Christianity and every other patriarchal religion. It is also separate and independent of them. As you are probably already aware, most of the Christian festivals and holidays that are celebrated stem from Pagan and Wiccan traditions in an attempt to replace the Goddess with the Christian God. So why did this happen in the first place?

I’m not here to get on a soapbox about anything, but a lot of was done in order to take power, both political and spiritual, away from women. It’s interesting to note that in horticultural societies, women often enjoyed just as much power as men. It wasn’t until we went agricultural that men really started to gain the upper hand and a lot of that had to do with the fact that because women breastfed their children, they were tied to the home more.

In the beginning, it made sense to worship a higher being and to perform rituals and spells in order to encourage the environment to adapt to your needs. Think of it this way…if you lived a thousand years ago (or even 200 years ago) and had to depend on the climate, weather, and natural world for your well being, wouldn’t YOU try to appease it? Because women gave birth and are the creators of human life, worshipping a Goddess made even more sense. Some might refer to her as “Mother Earth” and that’s not far off from the idea of a Goddess.

Although we often trace our roots back to the British Isles, it’s important to remember that many of those beliefs stemmed from the Chaldeans and Egyptians. Traders and scholars passed information along from India, the Middle East, and Europe. As a result, traditions meshed and changed and grew over time.

Throughout the years, witchcraft has received a stigma. In the beginning, it was considered evil because that was a good way to convert people to Christianity. Later on, there was a very real fear of those that dallied with the occult. People always seem to be afraid of that which they cannot explain.

Somewhere along the way, witchcraft became synonymous with Satanism. Remember the Salem witch trials? It’s important to keep in mind that Satanism has nothing to do with real witchcraft. In fact, it can be argued that Satanism, with its “Black Mass,” is a corruption of Catholicism. Witchcraft, on the other hand, doesn’t follow Christianity-although Christianity takes a lot from witchcraft and paganism.

There is a lot of research that proves that at one time women were celebrated and worshipped. Take a look at the goddesses of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythologies and even the Mystery Cults of Egypt and Greece.

As I said earlier, although we all share common beliefs, not all of us practice in the same way. I know many Wiccans who are stout feminists and only worship the Goddess and do not recognize a male figure. I know some Wiccans who do not consider themselves feminists and still don’t recognize a male figure. On the other hand, I know some Wiccans who recognize a Goddess as well as a God. Some of the Wiccans I know really identity with the Persephone and Demeter legend and recognize the triple Goddess-the maiden, the mother, and the crone. Others do not.

Regardless of the different beliefs, we can all pretty much agree that Wicca is a celebration of life and that witchcraft is tied very closely to the natural world.

Witchcraft enjoyed a surge in the 1960s and 1970s as feminism rose to power and more and more women started looking at a less patriarchal and more natural way of celebrating their spirituality. There also seems to be surges here and there amongst teenagers who sometimes get witchcraft confused with the romanticism and mystical aspects of vampirism, psychic powers, and the paranormal.

While you won’t get hung in public anymore for practicing witchcraft and it is somewhat more accepted these days, there still seems to be a stigma attached to it. Unfortunately, although it’s not necessarily an evil stigma, it does seem to be a foolish one. I encounter a lot of people who simply dismiss my beliefs as a “phase” and something that I will grow out of.

In terms of worldwide religions, Wicca is still not as respected as other organized forms. However, in most countries we do have a certain amount of religious freedom, at least by law, and for that I am grateful.

I urge you to read up as much as you can about your chosen path. A knowledgeable witch is an informed witch.

Brightest Blessings,

Rose Ariadne
Your Warm and Caring “Resident Witch In Charge”