PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

I ran into the goddess yesterday. At the farmers' market, no less.

You know how it feels when you suddenly see the face of a friend in an unexpected place? The surprise, the delight?

That's just what it was like.

Heading back to the car with my bags of baby beets, new peas, and the season's first daikons, I looked up and lo! there she was, low in the southwestern sky.

The Moon, approaching her setting, now in the 21st day of her lunation: sun-washed and pale as a cloud.

But no cloud she. Oh no.

The Moon surprises us. We think of her as Lady of Night, but the night cannot contain her. She wanders at will wheresoever she please, ruled by her own inner life. The all-seeing Sun sees what is done by day, but the wandering Moon knows the secrets of both day and night.

Dion Fortune was wrong.

Not all goddesses are one goddess.

There's Earth, Mother of all Life. She and her family—Sun, Thunder, Fire, the Winds, the plants, the animals—live out our lives together. Her story—our story—is what we call the Wheel of the Year.

And then there's the Moon.

Moon is the wayward daughter, the child who goes off and has a life of her own.

She has her own cycles, but they're not synched with those of everyone else. She has her own changes, powerful and independent. She's still Earth's daughter, part of the great family of the gods, and part of the life of that family, but very much on her own terms.

There in her sky (L. M. Boston) she wheels, independent of Earth's cycles, wandering the horizon in her Great Cycle as she will: ours but always her own.

That's why we worship her.

There is a way that the desert breaks me down to my essential self

a way the desert wind tears away that which is no longer necessary

Ye shall be free from slavery.

Witchcraft begins with a slave revolt.

C. G. Leland tells the story in his 1899 Aradia: Gospel of the Witches.

In those days there were on earth many poor and many rich.

The rich made slaves of all the poor....many slaves escaped. They fled to the country....[I]nstead of sleeping by night, they plotted escape and robbed their masters, and then slew them. So they dwelt in the mountains and forests as robbers and assassins, all to avoid slavery.

The Moon, as all-seeing Lady of the Night, witnesses her people's troubles and, in her mighty ruth (mercy), she sends her daughter Aradia to teach them magic and herbcraft, so that they can hex and poison their oppressors.

This month's Full Moon brings us a lunar eclipse as well, and arrives hot on the heels of the Spring Equinox. Known variously as the Worm Moon, the Sap Moon, or the Crow Moon, March's Full Moon calls us to seek out the areas of balance and imbalance in our lives. It is very much in harmony with the overall energies of the Spring Equinox -- the time when we begin to turn from the inner work of the Winter to the outer work of Spring and Summer, when we move from contemplation to action. This Full Moon propels us to action, but gently so -- inviting us to examine the areas where we are still in need of nurturance and healing, where we have gotten out of balance and harmony with ourselves and our world. 

To make is hard. To make takes skill. To make is godlike.

To break is easy. Any bully can do it.

This the desecrators, the icon-breakers, have never understood. Nor do they understand that, smash as they will, in the end they cannot win.

Shown above are three of the greatest gods of ancient Palmyra. In the center is Thunder: Ba'al Shamin, “Lord of Heaven,” here shown without his usual attributes of thunderbolt and eagle. To his right stands Moon (see his crescent horns): Aglibol, “Ba'al's Calf.” To his left stands Sun: Malakbol, “Ba'al's Messenger” (or “Angel”).

The breakers of the world can smash Their images, they can blow up Their temples. And let us make our due and worthy laments for such lost and broken beauty.

But the gods Themselves they cannot touch. Thunder, Moon, and Sun stand in the heavens as They always have: our very makers, givers of life to maker as to breaker.

We call the people of ancient Crete Minoans thanks to the whim of the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, the man who excavated Knossos over a century ago. He knew the Hellenic Greek myth of King Minos of Crete, took it for historical fact, and named the civilization after the king: Minoan. The thing is, Minos is more likely a god than a historical king.

Of course, it’s possible that priests in ancient Crete took the name or title Minos when they took on certain governmental responsibilities. Some people call these men priest-kings, though I’m not sure the term is terribly accurate, since none of them ever ruled more than just a single Minoan city and its surrounding area; ancient Crete did not have a unified, island-wide government during Minoan times. And it’s probable that priestesses as well as priests took part in the governing of the temple complexes and the cities.