Mara's Musings

I had an interesting conversation with a Goddess Conference attendee yesterday in which she spoke about her concern regarding the lack of balance between the masculine and feminine aspects of deity within "modern witchcraft".  I did point out that the Goddess Temple was what it says it is, it is not and does not to my knowledge purport to be, the representative of the entirety of British Witchcraft/Paganism .  The clue is pretty much in the name.

I am not slagging off the Goddess conference or its attendees, I have never attended the conference myself so I only have my perspective from the outside.  What I don't like is the attitude that seems to permeate from many of their followers they are somehow "redressing the balance" because what they are actually doing is creating imblance within their own religion which comes across to people like me on the outside world as being anti-male, feminist dogma.

The main argument I hear in favour of excluding the God is that society is already "dominated" by a male God - in the form of Christianity, Islam and Judaism where the feminine is excluded. It's a valid point and I am not defending it, but world "society" contains many religions a lot of which do have female deities.  Even within Christianity the Virgin is venerated and prayed to in her own right.  Just walk into any Roman Catholic Church and you will see a shrine or chapel in her honour.

My question is:  how do you provide balance within your own particular faith by simply replacing the masculine with the feminine?  Surely placing the male as secondary to the female aspect of deity is equally as wrong and I don't think you can really justify marginalising the masculine in one religion to make up for the perceived lack of balance in another!

Surely we should, especially in this day an age, be able to recognise that different does not mean unequal. So called "masculine qualities" are not negative in my view, any more than "feminine qualities" are always totally positive in their expression.


This particular woman was obviously seeking to redress the balance within her chosen faith, and left with a copy of  the book The Witches' God by Stewart & Janet Farrar.  A wide choise of pagan God imagery has been hard to come by on the high street but can now be found at Herotica in Glastonbury .  The artwork is all created by Glastonbury artist Lynn Bastian and celebrates the Divine Male in all his aspects.