The ritual to which I was invited took place in the afternoon a few days later. Some people described it to me as a ritual celebrating the union of the Goddess and God; others called it a marriage to the Goddess. Straight couples, especially those planning their own rituals of marriage or handfasting, tended to focus on the former view, while gay members of the village focused on the latter. Everyone else either claimed some variant between these two views, or didn’t prejudice their experience with pre-set expectations.
I was surprised to learn that even among themselves, Witches kept very fluid definitions of what they believed. I asked several people about the seeming lack of agreement and got as many answers, and more. Witches considered diversity a much greater asset than uniformity. Large group rituals, such as this one, were designed for inclusiveness. Direct experience mattered, not names and labels; words were considered inadequate to describe spiritual truth. This last I got from Riajii, not surprisingly, since she’d already made clear her disdain for words.
The ritual clearing was decorated in bouquets of flowers, which hung from the tree boughs surrounding a grassy, level area that overlooked a lake. Participants, dressed in their festive finery, wore as many colors as the flowers. Men and women both wore flowered wreaths on their heads. A woman offered me a wreath, and I accepted with a smile. The sense of celebration and festivity built as more people gathered. We were a very festive sight.
The ritual space and participants were purified, centered, and grounded. The circle was cast, the quarters called, and the divinities invoked. In this ritual, each step was performed by a different participant, not by a High Priestess or High Priest. But when all was made ready a woman walked out to the center of the circle. Though she had not had a lead role before in this egalitarian ritual, her presence now proclaimed “this is the High Priestess!” I had seen her among the others earlier, and knew her name to be Willow. But I had never seen her like this. Everyone around her caught their breath in awe.
I had heard of aspecting before, but I had never seen it. Willow was a priestess aspecting the Goddess, but those words were too limited express the truth. She was the Goddess, walking amongst us. She was radiant, and she was powerful. She had infinite grace, and beauty, and wisdom.
At her side another priestess, named Evergreen, began to play the harp: beautiful music to accompany the beauty of her presence and her words. While Evergreen played, the Goddess spoke to us.
“Come unto me. I call unto your soul, arise and come unto me, the Queen of all Witches.
“I am the beauty of the green earth, and the white moon among the stars. My law is love unto all beings. Mine is the secret that opens upon the door of youth, and mine is the cup of wine of life. I am the mother of all things, and my love is poured out upon the Earth. I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. In the stardust of my feet are the hosts of heaven. I have been with you from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
“Come unto me, and rejoice; for all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Come unto me with beauty and strength, with power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you. Join with me, heart to heart, and hand to hand.”
She spoke for a long time of her love and its magnitude and abundance. Many of the phrases she spoke were from the Charge of the Goddess, and familiar to her listeners. But it was as though we heard the words truly for the first time. We sat upon the lawn, spread at her feet, and cried with the hearing of her words and her love.
The ritual became an invitation into marriage to the Goddess. Other priestesses directed us to go now, each in our own way, to find our individual connection with the Goddess. We would be called back together in the circle, after a time, by the beating of a drum.
I, for one, was ready to marry Willow. Not before or after this ritual did she look as incredibly beautiful as she did at this moment. I felt so full of yearning to pour out my heart that I didn’t know what to do with it.
Into the green forest I went. My steps took me downhill to the edge of the lake, and I stepped out upon a large boulder surrounded by still water. The heavens lay upon the surface of the lake; I looked down, but saw upwards into blue infinity. I wanted to pour myself out as the waters did across the earth, as the sky did across the waters; I wanted to give all of myself to the Goddess. My breath labored tight in my chest with the feeling that I was too tightly constricted within bounds.
I longed to find her; I had to join myself to her. If I lived without her, I would have only an empty pretense of being alive. I wanted to pledge everything to her. I whispered promises upon the wind, promises that I would make my works shine in her honor.
A small voice of caution within warned me not to be rash in my promises, that what is pledged must be done. All promises made must be kept. But I so wanted to give everything I had that I could not abide by caution. I must find my way her. Now. I turned my attention within and at the same time opened it outward, seeking my way.
“Goddess,” I whispered.
My inner eye saw the way for me. I imagined myself swimming out across celestial waters as clear as the lake. I held a flaming torch aloft, a flame made of the fire within me. Far from land, I turned onto my back and gazed across the flame of my torch into the endless depths of the indigo sky. I held my arm upright, like the mast of a boat. The flame rose up to the stars.
Voices of the sea people sang in my ears, whispering “Give yourself to this path of light.”
I agreed.
I was like a boat of flame floating along a path of moonlight through the waters of the firmament. Then the world turned upon its back as I had done, and I looked down into the sky. I fell. Flaming as I sped, I fell from an untold height. And the sky grew darker and darker, and wrapped its cloak of night around me.
With a jolt, I opened my eyes upon a green expanse of grasslands. I felt disappointed that I was not in her arms. During the journey I had lost the intensity that had brought me this far. I sat up, confused. I twisted and turned my understanding of the world and myself, hoping to bring back the understanding that had led me onward before.
I heard the chirping of some small bird, and suddenly the bird and I were transported from the wide-open plains to the edge of woodland. The scenery of the world leaped again, and we were standing in an open dell, surrounded by the trees. Someone in a hooded black cloak stood in the deepest part of the dell, looking into a large cauldron. The small, wrenlike bird whose song had guided me here flew up to perch upon the top of the long staff with which the cloaked one stirred the cauldron.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and find that I had turned into a frog to leap forward through locations, or wore those faery tale boots that travel seven leagues in one step. But when I looked down, I still saw a man holding a fading torch. When I looked up, the cloaked figure had turned toward me, and I could see her face within the dark hood. That is, I could see it, but it shifted like a running brook, ever before me, but ever changing, moving through all the forms in the universe. I couldn’t hold my vision to seeing her surface; impressions of her poured through my mind like shifting kaleidoscopes of the experiences that lay behind her. My vision of her was underlaid with images of places she had been, forms she had known. But for a moment of suspended time, I met her here, in this form and this place. I approached slowly, transfixed by the changes. At times her form reminded me of Aramet. At other times her contrast of silvered age and raven-haired youth, reminded me of Joan. Step by step, I came near in wonder.
“Lady,” I addressed her reverently.
“Set your torch to feed the fire under my cauldron,” she said.
I did as she bade, and reached down to thrust my brand into the thatch ringing her cauldron. As I looked up again, my eyes followed her from her feet to her head. My mouth opened in a silent plea, for I knew not how to say even the smallest part of what I meant. Inside myself, I was crying, “Take all of me, draw it out of me, make it yours.”
Such a large thing to ask. Even I did not accept all of me, nor want it. Although I could not remember my past, I felt certain that vile things had been a part of my past, and that I was a part of them. Acceptance of all this was more than I could expect of anyone.
“Yes,” she said softly.
Joyous amazement blossomed within me. Gently, she bid me, “Enter my cauldron.”
The fibers of my being reached forward, tumbled, parted, re-melded into blackness –but this time the blackness was her cauldron, not an empty longing in my soul. This time it held me in her shape, hot with rekindled fire. The juices within intoxicated all my senses. My own shape turned and molded to hers. I sent my incandescent fire and hers out into the swirling universe. She loosed me from my solitary bounds to become a twined being of infinite scope. My senses could not contain it all; I exploded out of the shape I’d held.
I became a creature in flight, a small bird like her wren, ascending into the blue sky. I became a swift hare, bounding across golden meadow toward the dark green of the forest ahead. I became a fleet-footed stag, leaping through the deep secret places of the greenwood. I became a silver fish darting in the dark waters, shaded by the hazel trees. I flitted and bounded and shimmered with changes, just as she had done when I first saw her in the wood. I tasted a drop of her shapechanging magic, and my spirit spiraled outward to encompass her essence, to find it in every leaf and creature of the world. My awareness merged with the essence within everything I moved through. Like her, I had no fixed surface, keeping me separate. I saw beyond the surface of all I encountered.
In time, my awareness drew back to acknowledge my human form, and I felt a pang of separation. I knew this subtle ache would always be with me, the longing to find union with her again.
The drum began to sound from the center of the ritual field. It called my banked flame of longing to rise up and come to her. It suggested I might draw closer to her in ritual. I stood up from the boulder extending from the lakeshore and made my way back to the sacred circle. From every direction we gathered together again.
The priestesses said, “Whisper to the ground your pledge, your wishes, your message to the Goddess.” The words came jumbled from my lips to the green earth. “I swear, for you I will bring forth all that I can be, drawn from the dawn of time, and poured into today and tomorrow.”
We rose and linked hands. The single drumbeat of summoning was joined by other drummers, and poured out irresistible dance music. We began to move the circle and sing: “Pour it out for me, pour it out for me. Everything you send me, I will drink.”
The dancers broke free of the tidy circle into individual movements of ecstasy, and the drummers rose in crescendo at the center of our swirling celebration.
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