The Goddess of Sovereignty must, unavoidably, be a warrior.
Where was there ever a kingdom that was never threatened from without or within,
by those wishing to acquire power and wealth? A God or Goddess of Sovereignty
who could not also be a God or Goddess of War would be powerless and impotent
in the face of such crises and the integrity of the realm would be easily
compromised.
The
revival of Goddess religions in our times is frequently ignorant of, and impatient
with, historical traditions. We live in times where supreme importance is
attached to the “reinvention” of history and traditions so as
to make it ‘relevant’ to times, as if former ages had nothing
to contribute except for the broad outlines of an old fashioned symbolism
that we now market with trendy chic. If the Goddess is real, then reinventing
her is a preposterous idea, to say the least.
She was, and always will be, here as well as there. Our task is to discover
the timeless and to learn from it. Such a commitment mandates a deep and serious exploration
of history, not solely to collect ‘facts’ and document dates,
but to discern the metaphysical truths ancient times contained. After truly
contemplating this vast accumulation of knowledge and insight, then and only
then, may we cautiously experiment with the modification of tradition. Impulsive
and unthinking “reinvention” is a game for children and the results
will be cartoons of the real. They will only have meaning to the immature
who are forever infatuated with their own egos and the need to personalize
anything and everything in order to acquire an imagined psychotherapeutic
benefit. Our cultural obsessiveness, with the reinvention of ritual
only reflects our ignorance and immaturity. It is as if forcing a simplistic,
contemporary image on archetypal styles and forms will somehow reveal the
most profound of meanings. Furthermore, the fringes of contemporary New Age
rhetoric is myopic. It easily mixes social theory with a “politically
correct” theology and thereby subverts an accurate perception of what
actually existed in the past.
