Rae Beth - Lamp of the Goddess

LAMP

OF THE

GODDESS

RAE BETH

ROBERT HALE

First published as Reincarnation and the Dark Goddess in

1994 by Robert Hale, an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury,

Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

Rae Beth 1994

ISBN 978 0 71982 688 7

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

The right of Rae Beth to be identified as author of this

work has been asserted by her in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

LAMP

OF THE

GODDESS

Rae Beth is a solitary witch and an ordained priestess within the Fellowship of Isis. Author of the popular Hedge Witch and The Hedge Witchs Way, she is enthusiastically committed to the new Paganism, feeling that it contains the healing message we need to live well in our world today.

By the same author

Hedge Witch

The Hedge Witchs Way

Spellcraft for Hedge Witches

The Green Hedge Witch

The Way into Faerie

As it was,

As it is,

As it shall be

Evermore,

O Thou Triune

Of Grace!

With the ebb,

With the flow,

O Thou Triune

Of Grace!

With the ebb,

With the flow.

Anon

(collected by Alexander Carmichael)

Appendix A

F or anyone seeking to learn about Goddess worship in the present day, it is worth contacting the Fellowship of Isis. Membership is free and is open to all, regardless of race, gender or religious affiliations. There are teachings available concerning the Goddess from many countries, throughout the world. For Isis is the Goddess of ten thousand names. The Fellowship acknowledges Her as the beauty and truth of Rhiannon, Tara, Aphrodite, Demeter, Persephone, Iamanja - or the Virgin Mary, to name only a few. The approach is eclectic and yet members are encouraged to find their own spiritual direction and to worship or become an ordained priestess or priest of any Goddess of their choosing, or of a Goddess and God. Emphasis, as appropriate for this time, is on Goddess mysteries, yet the importance of polarity is stressed. The principles upheld by the Fellowship as a whole are Love, Beauty and Truth. Rites can be studied and performed by friends and families. These consist mainly of spoken invocations and offerings (for example, of flowers or incense), followed by a meditation and channelling of healing. They are easily adapted for solitary worshippers.

Appendix B

The following are some prayers, given by my inner guide, to the Dark Goddess and the God who partners Her.

Dark Mother of All Life
Great Goddess of the Tides
from your eternal womb, that deep inner sea,
may each human soul be reborn in harmony.
So may we live with one another
and with all Earths creatures,
in wisdom and health.
Take from us our cruelty and falsehood.
Let these ebb and die.
Let flow in us love and truth.

Bright Lord in the Darkness,
All Father, we call on you
to quicken all our dreams
of the harmony and beauty
of Earth restored.
Make fertile all our visions
of the peace that could be,
and of the Earth again radiant and unspoiled.
Healer and guardian, by your law of love,
So may this be.

Introduction

O ne of the tragedies of the age which is now drawing to a close has been the loss to communities in Europe and the West of all those who had the temperament and skill for the priesthood, but were disqualified in some way by the Church. For a start, no priestesses were permitted to work, since all women were ruled out by reason of their supposed spiritual and intellectual inferiority. Some men, also, have been excluded, either for social or political reasons, or because of their non-Christian or heretical beliefs. But now, there are signs that this situation is changing. A new Goddess-worshipping tradition is establishing itself, a new Pagan faith, alongside and even blended with a new expression of other faiths, including (in some circles) a redefined Christianity. People are having new thoughts about what makes a priestly or priestessly life, and deciding it has to do with mediation of the Spirit (however we choose to name this) and not always with tradition and formality. It is also about counselling and advising, or facilitating, when people are going through rites of passage, like birth, puberty, marriage, spiritual initiation or death. This is based in celebration of the cycles of nature, in respect of their subtle and psychic effect upon us, as well as in terms of the old agricultural year. But it is not about laying down the law nor assuming a moral superiority over people whose beliefs or experiences differ from our own. Instead, it is unassuming and gentle and exploratory.

From this, it will be seen that many are already doing the work, who perhaps would not lay claim to the title. And there are many more who could be doing it and, as they may sense, have often done so in past incarnations. This book is for them, the priestesses who are unknown (and the priests, too) because it is about my own past lives and present day knowledge. None of it is vindicated or affirmed by the culture that we live in (yet) but is nevertheless of interest, I hope, and a potential encouragement to others on the same path.

This book is also for all those who acknowledge the new priestesses, and alternative priests, without necessarily wanting to be amongst them. For in rethinking what we mean by or expect of the priesthood, we can free our own spiritual selves to choose our direction.

Since it is my belief that, to do this work, we must first reclaim words like spirit and holy and psychic from the land of hypocrisy and clich, and because my own ministry concerns word-magic and the mysteries of divination and prophecy, and because of my ordination, I have here written about the Dark Goddess of Spirit Realms, rather than about Mother Goddess as natures wisdom, in the concrete and physical sense. This is a dimension where personal experience counts for everything - or should, if we are not to establish another kind of dogma! It has been, in its unconventional manifestations, relegated to the lunatic fringe of mediums and fortune tellers - seen like that and despised for it! But what treasure is hidden in the world of our individual psychic experiences and inner senses? These are things that most people dont usually talk about, yet they are sacred and can contain deep knowledge. If we all started to share our experiences with each other, not to try and impress or pull spiritual rank, but humanly and sympathetically, the world might begin to change. At the very least, our collective feeling about the meaning in it all could become enhanced. But first, we need to uncover our buried knowledge that the Deep Feminine is not a realm or a quality of dubious morality nor of superstition. We need to reapproach the Dark Goddess, knowing Shes the Presence of the Otherworld and spirit communications and all visionary and psychic experience and neither fearing Her nor misunderstanding Her. I offer this book as a contribution to the sharing of inwardness, by which we can help each other along this exciting and challenging path.