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Charge of the Goddess

The Charge of the Goddess (or Charge of the Star Goddess) is an inspirational text often used in the neopagan religion of Wicca. The Charge of the Goddess is recited during most rituals in which the Wiccan priest/priestess is expected to represent, and/or embody, the Goddess within the sacred circle, and is often spoken by the High Priest/Priestess after the ritual of Drawing Down the Moon.

The Charge is the promise of the Goddess (who is embodied by the high priestess) to all witches that she will teach and guide them. It has been called "perhaps the most important single theological document in the neo-Pagan movement".[1] It is used not only in Wicca, but as part of the foundational documents of the Reclaiming tradition of witchcraft co-founded by Starhawk.

Several versions of the Charge exist, though they all have the same basic premise, that of a set of instructions given by the Great Goddess to her worshippers. The earliest version is that compiled by Gerald Gardner.[2] This version, titled "Leviter Veslis" or "Lift Up the Veil", includes material paraphrased from works by Aleister Crowley, primarily from Liber AL (The Book of the Law, particularly from Ch 1, spoken by Nuit, the Star Goddess), and from Liber LXV (The Book of the Heart Girt with a Serpent) and from Crowley's essay "The Law of Liberty", thus linking modern Wicca to the cosmology and revelations of Thelema. It has been shown that Gerald Gardner's book collection included a copy of Crowley's The Blue Equinox (1919) which includes all of the Crowley quotations transferred by Gardner to the Charge of the Goddess.[3]

There are also two versions written by Doreen Valiente in the mid-1950s, after her 1953 Wiccan initiation. The first was a poetic paraphrase which eliminated almost all the material derived from Leland and Crowley. The second was a prose version which is contained within the traditional Gardnerian Book of Shadows and more closely resembles Gardner's "Leviter Veslis" version of 1949.

Several different versions of a Wiccan Charge of the God have since been created to mirror and accompany the Charge of the Goddess.

  1. ^ Shelley Rabinovich and James Lewis. Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism, p. 41. New York: Citadel Books, 2004
  2. ^ Orpheus, Rodney (2009). "Gerald Gardner & Ordo Templi Orientis". Pentacle Magazine. No. 30. pp. 14–18. ISSN 1753-898X.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference serith1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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