Descent Into Confusion

                                by Robert Hughes



One of the celebrated "mysteries" of revivalist Wicca is the 'ritual play'
known as the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess. In my Gardnerian Book of
Shadows, dating from the sixties, the Legend is to be enacted separately at "a
meeting for preparation for Third Degree". Only third degree witches may attend
this meeting with the initiate who is to take second degree.

The Legend is enacted in front of the initiate by four of the third degree
witches. Two take the role of Narrator and Guardian of the Portal (of the
underworld), while the High Priest and High Priestess or Maiden take the roles
of God and Goddess. The term Guardian of the Portal may have been borrowed from
the rituals of the Golden Dawn.

In this enactment, the ruler of the underworld and Lord of Death is the Horned
One. The Legend begins with the statement: '...Our Lady, the Goddess, would
solve all mysteries - even the mystery of death. And so she journeyed to the
Netherworld where the Guardian of the Portal challenged her.' The Guardian
orders her to strip off her garments and jewels and she is bound with cords and
brought into the presence of the Lord of Death.

The God is so overcome by her beauty that he falls and kisses her feet and begs
her to stay with him in the underworld. The Goddess replies that she does not
love him, and she asks why he causes all the things she loves and delights in
to fade and die.

The God replies that the cause is 'age and fate' and he says he is helpless to
stop it, although he can give the dead 'rest and peace and strength, so that
they may return.' A second time he asks the Goddess to stay with him. When she
again says she does not love him, Death replies she must suffer a scourging at
his hands.

Following this scourging, and the five fold kiss, the Goddess says: 'I know the
pain of love'. It is then that the God 'taught her all the mysteries'. He also
gives her a special necklace which is 'a symbol of the Circle of Rebirth'. In
return, our Lady teaches him the 'sacred mystery of the cauldron'. The Legend
ends with an affirmation of the reality of reincarnation among the Hidden
Children of the Goddess and 'the mystery of magick which is placed between the
worlds'. The initiate is then invited to ask questions about the meaning of the
Legend.

Even anyone with only a slight knowledge of understanding of mythology will
recognize the contradictions and confusions which exist within the structure
and symbolism of the Legend. The first point of controversy is when, where, and
by whom, this ritual originated. Some (unconfirmed) sources claim it is of 19th
century origin. It is said to be a product of the famous "Cambridge" coven of
academics who revived the classical Mysteries in the early 1800s. More reliable
evidence exists to prove that Gerald Gardner sent a draft of the Legend to
Aleister Crowley for correction in the 1940s.

Kelly (Crafting the Art of Magic, Llewellyn, 1991) claims that the Legend does
not appear in the pre-1949 second degree initiation in the famous (infamous?)
Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical and says: "The content of this document probably dates
to 1953 or earlier..." (p.128). Gardner quotes from the Legend in his book,
Witchcraft Today as if he had received it from the New Forest coven. In fact he
describes it as 'the central part of one of their rituals. It is a sort of
primitive spiritualism.'. He goes on to compare its importance in the Craft to
the Christian myth of the crucifixion and resurrection. (1970, pp 44-46).
Gardner goes on to say the Legend 'upon which its members base their action is
the central idea of the cult.' He compares it with the story of Istar (sic)
descending into hell and the myth of the Hindu god Siva (Shiva) as Lord of
Death and destruction. Gardner then says he believes the Legend may be of
Celtic  origin. To support this fanciful statement, he says that: 'In Celtic
legends the Lords of the Underworld did prepare you for death and many living
people are said to have entered their regions, formed alliances with them, and
returned safely, but it needed
 great courage; only a hero or a demi-god dared to risk it.' (p.46). One
presumes that here Gardner is making an allusion to the realm of Faerie and the
widespread folk belief that faeries were the spirits of the dead.

This is classic Gardner at his most confusing and, perhaps, deliberately
misleading and mischievous. The version of the Legend as presented by Gardner
is both patriarchal and mythologically inaccurate. It seems to be based on a
hybrid combination of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the Middle
Eastern myth of Inanna-Ishtar. Gardner does not mention the Demeter-Persephone
myth in his speculations, instead sidetracking the reader into the realms of
Celtic myth, although he does devote a chapter of his book to the Greek
Mysteries - basically as a means of justifying the practice of scourging.

In the Middle Eastern myth, Inanna is the Goddess of the Moon and Venus. She
was probably, 'one of the three great goddesses of the Bronze Age' (Baring &
Cashford, 1991). Inanna was known by the title Queen of Heaven and Earth and
her myth is an archetypal form of the eternal story of the mourning
widow/mother goddess and the savior god, who is her son/lover, dies, descends
to the underworld and is reborn. This myth is found in most Mediterranean
cultures and in northern Europe, and it formed the 'pagan' basis for the new
religion of Christianity.

The Demeter-Persephone myth is a post-patriarchal variant on this ancient
legend with the daughter (Persephone) being kidnapped and held prisoner by
Pluto, the Lord of Death and the ruler of Hades. In recent years some feminist
mythographers have re-written this classic story and produced alternative
versions without any patriarchal overtones (see Spretnak, 1978).

Gardner was correct to refer to visits to the underworld by heroes and
demi-gods (sic). However, in the majority of the extant legends and myths, such
as the descent of Arthur to Annwn to capture the Cauldron of the Goddess, and
Baldur's ritual death and descent into the realm of Hel, it is a male mortal or
god who is involved in the descent and is "reborn". It is the Goddess, in her
'dark aspect, who rules over the realm of the dead, controls the power of fate
and grants the hero/god the supreme initiation of transformation and rebirth.
In the Gardnerian Legend of the Descent we are led to believe that the Goddess,
who is represented in The Charge as an all-powerful deity offering her
worshippers 'upon death, peace unutterable, rest and the ecstasy of the
Goddess', and is described by Gardner himself as 'the Great Mother, the giver
of life' (1970, p.45), visits the underworld knowing nothing about the
mysteries of life and death. She allegedly knows nothing about the natural
process that makes 'all the things that I love, and take delight in, fade and
die' until she is taught these mysteries by the God. In fact in response to her
question the God replies 'tis age and fate'. Significantly these are both
concepts associated with the Dark Goddess of the Underworld, who has no role in
Gardner's version of the Craft.

It is not difficult to see the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess in terms of
'a theologizing of the scourging' (Kelly, 1991), which was such an important
aspect of the rituals in Gardner's time. Taking this argument a step forward,
as Kelly does (1991, pp 28-29), it could appear that the content of the Legend
was based on Gardner's sexual fantasies and his personal concept of the
Goddess. He imagined the Goddess as 'a sweet, lovely woman', while in the more
traditional branches of the Craft she is a darker deity ruling fate, death and
the underworld as well as sexuality. This alternative archetypal image of the
witch goddess has largely been ignored by revivalist Wicca. It will continue to
do so while Gardner's confused and mythologically incorrect Legend of the
Descent of the Goddess remains the 'central idea' of the modern Craft.

References and further reading:

Witchcraft Today    G B Gardner (Arrow paperback edition 1970)
The Witches' Way    J & S Farrar (Robert Hale 1984)
Crafting the Art of Magic: Book I
A Kelly (Llewellyn 1991)
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece
C Spretnak (Moon Books 1978)
The Myth of the Goddess
Baring & Cashford (Penguin 1991)
The Mysteries of Eleusis
G D'Alviella (Aquarian Press 1981) The Derivation of the word Witch
by Doreen Valiente

Strangely enough, the derivation of the word witch is a subject on which
scarcely any two authorities can be found to agree. The most frequent
explanation is that it is akin to the word wise, and that witchcraft therefore
means The Craft of the Wise.

It is widely believed that Gerald Gardner originated this derivation. However,
this is incorrect, as it appears in Hugh Ross Williamson's book, The Arrow and
the Sword, first published in 1947, before any of Gerald Gardner's books on
witchcraft. But is this the right derivation?

Not according to Professor Jeffrey Russell, who gives an appendix on this
subject in his book A History of Witchcraft (Thames & Hudson, London, 1980).
Professor Russell rejects any connection with the Old English word witan,
meaning to know, as he also does with the Old English wican, to bend. In his
opinion, the real origin comes from the Indo-European word weik, which has a
general connection with religion and magic. From this very ancient root-word
came in turn, among other things, a word wikk, meaning magic and sorcery, and
this eventually produced the Old English wicca, a male witch, wicce, a female
witch, and the verb wiccian, to bewitch or work witchcraft.

It will be seen from the above that "Wicca" does not mean "witchcraft" and
never did, in spite of its widespread modern use. So how did this usage
originate? In his biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, it describes his initiation
in "Old Dorothy's" house, and says, 'It was half way through when the word Wica
was first mentioned: "and I then knew that that which I had thought burnt out
hundreds of years ago still survived."' It will be seen that at this time
Gerald didn't even know how to spell the word. Its correct spelling is as
above. Nor, unfortunately, does this account state in what context the word was
used. It might have been that Old Dorothy's coven was simply proclaiming Gerald
a male witch, in which case this would have been an accurate use of the word.

So where did Gerald get the idea that "Wicca" meant witchcraft? I would like to
advance a theory of my own. I must emphasize that this is just a theory, and I
may be wrong. But I believe that this idea originated from his reading of a
book which I know that he possessed, namely An Encyclopedia of Occultism by
Lewis Spence. This very valuable work of reference first appeared in 1920,
according to the mention of it in the bibliography at the end of Gerald's book,
Witchcraft Today. It has recently been re-issued by Bracken Books under the
title of The Encyclopedia of the Occult. The entry referring to witchcraft
begins: "Witchcraft: (from Saxon Wicca, a contraction of witega, a prophet or
sorcerer)." This could have been read and misunderstood to mean that "Wicca"
meant witchcraft, and this misconception has been carried on through the ranks
of modern witches ever since.

It has to be said, of course, that the word Wicca has its uses to define the
present-day revival, especially in the USA, where a number of associations
using this word have gained legal recognition as religious bodies. Personally,
however, I prefer the term The Old Religion, which is the English equivalent of
the Italian term used by the followers of Aradia, namely La Vecchia Religione.
(See Charles Godfrey Leland's book, Aradia: or the Gospel of the Witches, first
published in 1899.)

(Incidentally, there is a legend in witchcraft circles to the effect that the
reason why the original edition of this book is so rare is that old Gerald
bought up all the copies he could find and destroyed them. Whether there is any
truth in this or not, I cannot say.)

In spite of Professor Russell's opinion, as quoted above, there is an older
derivation of the word witch that may perhaps be worthy of consideration. This
may be found in A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by
the Rev. Walter W Skeat (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1901). This book discusses
the above-mentioned derivations from wicca, wicce, etc., and then in turn
connects these old words with the Norwegian vikja, which means firstly 'to turn
aside' and secondly 'to conjure away'. Thus, speculates the Rev. Skeat, the
word witch possibly meant 'averter'.

He also mentions that the Anglo-Saxon word witega, a prophet or seer, comes
from the Anglo-Saxon witan, to observe, which he says is 'cognate with witan,
to know.'. We have seen that Lewis Spence regarded witega as the origin of
wicca. So who is right? In spite of all claims, it seems to me that it remains
a matter of opinion. One thing we do know is that the word came to Britain with
the Saxons, who at the time of their arrival on these shores were pagans. I
believe that to them, the word witch (or whichever of its forerunners they
used), did not necessarily have any derogatory meaning. A witch was a seer, a
knower, an averter of evil.  The word only took on a negative meaning with the
coming of Christianity, which taught that all the gods of the heathen were
devils. So anyone who clung o the old ways and the Old Religion was a devil
worshipper.  And annually, around Halloween, we still see the same old charges
being made in the same old spirit of bigotry. Isn't it sad that these good folk
haven't learnt anything since the Dark Ages?