What form of God do Wiccans recognize, worship or honour?
This is an important question for any spiritual path and there are multi-layers of answers for a non-dogmatic religion such as Wicca. Our first response may be that we honour the forms of a Goddess and God, because Wicca is a duo-theistic belief, but which Goddess and God? How do we choose? How do we work with them?
Wicca is a Pagan path, so the deity forms come from the five pantheons of the Old Gods: Norse, Celtic, Egyptian, Roman and Greek. Different forms of God are chosen, depending on which branch or tradition of Wicca we practice. In Greenwood Celtic Shamanic Wicca, my tradition, we honour the Celtic pantheon which could include Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh, French and other traditional Celtic deities. However, this does not mean that a Greenwood Witch does not honour or worship Gods or Goddesses from other pantheons in her private spiritual practice. One thing that we don’t do though is mix and match. We wouldn’t do a ritual or create an altar to honour Thor and Brighid together, because their energy doesn’t mix.
Another way of looking at Wicca is polytheistic, which means many Gods. So rather than honour just a God and Goddess form, the practitioner may honour many God-forms, and they may change according to the time of year. Our seasonal festivals, called Sabbats, attune us to the rhythm of the earth, so Deities in winter, may not be the same as Deities in summer. An example would be the Oak King and the Holly King who are seen as Gods that are predominant during light and dark. After the winter solstice, when the light is returning, the Oak King also called the Newborn Child of Promise, rules the wheel of the year. At the Midsummer Solstice, he is replaced by the Holly King, who rules the waning year as the days grow shorter and the night gets longer.
Our belief is that the Divine is immanent in nature and therefore we also connect with the presence of God and Goddess within the sacred earth and within ourselves. This form of God is consciousness and has no form. While it is present in the earth, we also see it as present in the universe as a cosmic consciousness. At the same time, we accept that this Divine Consciousness is Transcendent, so that even if the earth was destroyed or the universe ended, the Divine would still exist.
The answer to the question of which form of God do Wiccans worship has many answers and each of us gets to choose. When starting our spiritual path, or as children, we may have favourite God forms that we love and venerate, but later our practice may reveal to us the formless source of all that resides within and without.
This is an important question for any spiritual path and there are multi-layers of answers for a non-dogmatic religion such as Wicca. Our first response may be that we honour the forms of a Goddess and God, because Wicca is a duo-theistic belief, but which Goddess and God? How do we choose? How do we work with them?
Wicca is a Pagan path, so the deity forms come from the five pantheons of the Old Gods: Norse, Celtic, Egyptian, Roman and Greek. Different forms of God are chosen, depending on which branch or tradition of Wicca we practice. In Greenwood Celtic Shamanic Wicca, my tradition, we honour the Celtic pantheon which could include Irish, Scottish, English, Welsh, French and other traditional Celtic deities. However, this does not mean that a Greenwood Witch does not honour or worship Gods or Goddesses from other pantheons in her private spiritual practice. One thing that we don’t do though is mix and match. We wouldn’t do a ritual or create an altar to honour Thor and Brighid together, because their energy doesn’t mix.
Another way of looking at Wicca is polytheistic, which means many Gods. So rather than honour just a God and Goddess form, the practitioner may honour many God-forms, and they may change according to the time of year. Our seasonal festivals, called Sabbats, attune us to the rhythm of the earth, so Deities in winter, may not be the same as Deities in summer. An example would be the Oak King and the Holly King who are seen as Gods that are predominant during light and dark. After the winter solstice, when the light is returning, the Oak King also called the Newborn Child of Promise, rules the wheel of the year. At the Midsummer Solstice, he is replaced by the Holly King, who rules the waning year as the days grow shorter and the night gets longer.
Our belief is that the Divine is immanent in nature and therefore we also connect with the presence of God and Goddess within the sacred earth and within ourselves. This form of God is consciousness and has no form. While it is present in the earth, we also see it as present in the universe as a cosmic consciousness. At the same time, we accept that this Divine Consciousness is Transcendent, so that even if the earth was destroyed or the universe ended, the Divine would still exist.
The answer to the question of which form of God do Wiccans worship has many answers and each of us gets to choose. When starting our spiritual path, or as children, we may have favourite God forms that we love and venerate, but later our practice may reveal to us the formless source of all that resides within and without.
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