Publications Llewellyn - Llewellyns 2015 Witches Companion: An Almanac for Contemporary Living

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

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Llewellyns 2015 Witches Companion 2014 by Llewellyn Publications

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First e-book edition 2014

E-book ISBN: 9780738744858

Art Director: Lynne Menturweck

Cover art Tim Foley

Cover designer: Lynne Menturweck

Designer: Joanna Willis

Editor: Andrea Neff

Interior illustrations:

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Bri Hermanson:

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Contents

Provocative Opinions on Contemporary Topics

Stephanie Woodfield
Embracing the Dark Goddess:
Rethinking How We View the Darker Mysteries

Elizabeth Barrette

Raven Digitalis
A Comparative Look at
Eclectic Wicca versus
Traditional Wicca

Monica Crosson

Susan Pesznecker

Charlynn Walls

Kerri Connor

Mickie Mueller

Day-by-Day Witchcraft

Dallas Jennifer Cobb

Reverend J. Variable x/

Emily Carlin

Tess Whitehurst
Sacred Self-Care:
Interacting with Your Body in a Magical Way

Michael Furie

Barbara Ardinger
Taking Advantage of
Lifes Little Daily Oracles

Diana Rajchel

Practices, Rituals & Spells

Deborah Lipp

James Kambos

Charlie Rainbow Wolf

Laurel Reufner

Blake Octavian Blair

Boudica Foster

Natalie Zaman
Building a Childs
Book of Shadows

Everything Old Is New Again

Najah Lightfoot

Eli Effinger-Weintraub
Ready for the Reaping:
Considerations for Pagan Death and Dying

Melanie Marquis

Linda Raedisch
Brooch, Comb, and Buckle:
A Peek at the Real Goths

Thuri Calafia
My Great-Great-Grandmothers Hair: How the Power of
Language Shapes Reality

Ember Grant

September 2014 to December 2015

Community Forum

Provocative Opinions on
Contemporary Topics

Embracing the Dark Goddess:
Rethinking How We View the Darker Mysteries

Stephanie Woodfield

I have always found comfort in the dark. Whether it was calling on the Goddess under the veiled light of the waning moon or taking solace in the embrace of the wild black-winged Morrigan, and goddesses like her, I have gained strength and become whole through the mysteries of the dark goddess.

She is Kali, adorned in skulls, dancing with abandon. She is regal Hecate guiding Persephone through the darkness of the underworld, and she is the raven goddess Morrigan prophesying upon the battlefield. The dark goddess, in all her many forms, can be a difficult figure to understand. She scares us. She frightens us. She makes us look at hard truths, ones we would rather sweep under the rug and think about later. More often than not, we ignore her mysteries. We forget that there is beauty and power in the dark. Of all the faces of the Goddess, the dark goddess is one we so often shy away from, and is the most misunderstood .

The dark goddess, in
all her many forms,
can be a difficult figure to understand More often than not, we ignore her mysteries. We forget that there is beauty and power in the dark.

So who exactly is the dark goddess? And what does dark mean in connection to deity? In general, there are two main misconceptions concerning dark goddesses: first, that they are evil, and second, that all dark goddesses are guises of the crone.

Both culturally and spiritually, we tend to associate the word dark with evil. Many of us grew up in a spiritual tradition that had very clear concepts of good and evil, and light and dark. This black and white view of the world is difficult to unlearn. Culturally we are taught from a young age that night is when the monsters come out, the bogeyman creeps out from under the bed, and the horror-movie villain emerges. We even use the colors black and white to represent these ideas. We wear black to funerals and when were in mourning, and view white as the color of purity. The Celts, on the other hand, connected black to fertility, as it was the color of rich fertile soil, while white was connected to death, being the color of bleached bones. As I work primarily with Celtic deities, this is very much how I see spiritual darkness. The dark goddess is that force of nature that destroys in order to create. She breaks down the barriers we create for ourselves and guides us toward change. Like the soil that is made fertile by the decomposition of other life, she forces us to shed what no longer serves us, remaking us anew from the ashes.

P art of why we fear the dark goddess, and mislabel her as evil, is because she represents things we are uncomfortable with. Change frightens us. Sometimes we cling to unhealthy situations because we are afraid that this is as good as it gets. Taking those first steps into the unknown can be terrifying. As much as we say we want change in our lives, we cling with clenched fists to the things we should release and let go of the most. This is the heart of what the dark goddess represents: change and transformation.

For many people, the dark goddess has become synonymous with the crone. More often than not, we connect the term dark to death (whether physical or symbolic), and therefore relegate them to the realm of the crone. While much of what the crone represents can be considered the realm of the dark goddess, not all dark goddesses are crones. In fact, many of them are maidens and mothers. My own patron, the Morrigan, is often called a triple crone. While at times she appears as a hag, in the vast majority of her mythology she is described as a young, pale-skinned girl or an alluring woman in her childbearing years. Nowhere in the lore does she ever appear as a triple crone, yet the stigma remains that she can only appear as a crone based on the lessons she teaches. Similarly, Hecate, who in modern times is almost always portrayed as a crone, often appeared as a maiden. Several Greek statues show her as a youth in triple form, yet like the Morrigan, we choose to see her only as a crone based on her mysteries.