rigid tradition based upon a hierarchy of degrees of initiation is impos-sible.
This is essentially a manifestation of an element of natural Chaos disrupting the hu-man created Law of the sect.
Play is the word often used to describe how a Witch makes contact with the All, but as with children, even play must be rational on its own level and abide by its own rules of engagement. Thus the value of the Solitary Tradition lies in the fact that no energy need be lost or wasted trying to align a number of people’s rules of engagement. In the practice of Ceremonial Magic, the use of terms and forms that were once the Pagan Gods and Goddesses revised into demons, angels, arch-demons, and archangels under an Aryan rulership is more of an insult to the Lord and Lady.
This in itself may be one reason why some people (such as Migene Gonzales-Wippler has herself experienced and discussed in her writings) report bizarre and self-injuri-ous results from their attempts. Their subconsciself-injuri-ous is offended and directs the subse-quent anger upon the conscious for the outrage of imposed ignorance. It is only after the sub-conscious is beaten into submission that Ceremonialism can begin to appear effective. The inner awareness was trying to chastise the outer, not destroy it, so it becomes a weak voice where it could have been a strong one.
Chapter 6 - Witchcraft, Wicca and Ceremonial Magic
The rigid forms of some Wiccan Traditions require the same sort of willful ig-norance, and that is also an affront to the Tree of Knowledge. So what do the Sabbats and Esbats mean to the modern Witch? The Sabbats are calls to the Elementals, who are the kin of humanity and live within each person, and to the Substance and En-ergy that forms and animates the individual. They provide a homecoming or reunion between one’s conscious mind and awareness with the transcendental forces united through one’s subconscious. When the Witch invokes (not summons) the Elementals and the Deities, the Self is opened to flow freely with the larger aspect of what forms the individual. Danielou describes the God and the Goddess in Tantric cosmological terms with Shiva being the primal explosive force which created the Universe, push-ing the particles and energy away from the source, and Shakti bepush-ing the force that brings the energy and particles together to form the stars and solar systems. These opposites are found in all of existence, and just as it is the aim of the Shivaite to bring about the union of the opposites within the individual, so to do the same is the goal of the Witch, whose religion can be traced back to Sind.
With the four Sabbats of Yule, Ostara, Litha, and Mabon (called Green Sab-bats) one may find that the Solstices and Equinoxes generate a natural desire within to join with the ebb and flow of energy and particles--like a planet drawn to a sun, the spirit yearns for union with the larger mass of cosmic energy at those times when the energies are at their greatest, equal, or weakest force. Perhaps there is a subconscious feeling that by opening the Self to the flow, one may draw the energy tides back and forth, as the sea tides are pulled by the Moon. Hence, people worldwide, expressing this sensation through different forms and different religions, become the moons for the Elementals and the Deities, who participate in the unions as much as the cel-ebrants.
Marking the Esbats brings people into alignment with their Moon essence and intuitive abilities, and thus affords the best results for doing magic. The Moon unites with one’s personal tides, both internal and external. For the other four Sabbats (called White Sabbats), internal restoration and alignment is the focus. With Imbolc, the time is for cleansing, purifying the inner temple of the Self; a time for restoring one’s balance, for rededication, or for performing an internal housecleaning. Beltane is a time for feeling renewal and the joy of life in alignment with the Earth’s spring-time. Lughnasadh brings a feeling of comfort and plenty which can be appropriately celebrated with a Bread Festival to acknowledge the Earth’s bounty with gratitude and respect. Samhain is the time when one’s spirit reaches out to unembodied souls with the instinctive recognition that all are of the same essence, no matter what the outer form or place in the corporeal world. The sepulcher of Jesus is no more than another interpretation of the similar theme from Dionysus, whose temples contained a representation of the tomb. The God of life has traditionally been associated with the
Chapter 6 - Witchcraft, Wicca and Ceremonial Magic
harvest and with death, to be like Hades, the God of the Underworld, or like Shiva, the King of Shadows. The aspect of the God as Time and Destroyer--be it expressed as Kronos or Shiva--has its place in the darkness of the turning of the seasons. Now the Goddess moves alone as the Crone, devoid of Her Shiva, until the Winter Solstice renews her as Mother with the rebirth of the God. But it is with Samhain that the Witch finds a quiet, somber mood in which to reflect upon the gentle union all beings hold together as spirits flowing from life to life through the passage called death, and to know that all are an integral and personal part of this great fluxuation of energy through matter.
Danielou sees a trend emerging in the Western world to a return to the con-cepts of Shiva, but links the return to a respect for Nature with the particularly male focused practice of the sex magics of the Tantras. This is still a reflection of the Aryanization of the religion of Sind, for the Vedic Shivan practice still does not dem-onstrate the balance of the Lord and the Lady--Ardhanari. There are Tantric Shakti practices as well, but it is the legacy of Aryanism that has left this union split asunder.
With the Tantrics, evolved from the Puranas texts written between 900 and 1000 CE, the message remains essentially the same as with the modern fundamental-ists of Judaic-Christian-Islamic traditions, namely that only those followers of the God will survive an apocalypse to create a new human race. Dravidic Shiva puts his hand to his forehead and shakes his head. This is not the message of Sind; it is not the message of the first world-wide religion of humanity, but the Aryan message of ex-clusivity and intolerance that has sullied human affairs in the Near East and Western worlds for three thousand years.
If one can accept that one is part of the universal flow of energy through mat-ter, then there is no apocalypse--for there is no “ending”, only the continual ebb and flow of all life in energy. The phases of the Sun and the tides of electrons and neu-trons between the Moon, the Earth, and Practitioners of any number of faiths are but a microcosm of the tides of the Universe itself. Danielou makes much of the compari-sons of ancient texts, but as with Kersten, the link of one set of Aryan documents with another is not sufficiently made to show that the similarity found in these doctrines should be anticipated, and that they differ from what pre-dated them in Sind. It is the message of Shakti as the Tree of Life--denied by the Aryan politicized religion--that all people are immortal that is missing. Not only may the East be able to help the West recover its lost traditions, as Rene Guenon suggests in The Crisis of the Modern World, but the West may be able to help the East in return by reminding it that it has the political exclusive elements of Western Aryanism intermixed in its ancient Dra-vidic and associated religions. Together, Orient and Occident may yet find spiritual union in the application of a purer Sind tradition.
Chapter 6 - Witchcraft, Wicca and Ceremonial Magic
Chapter 7 - Hitler and the Holocaust. Why?