The Lady of the Moon and the Goatfoot God: Witchcraft and the Zodiac

Our Lady of the Moon, enchantment’s queen,
And of midnight the potent sorceress,
O Goddess from the darkest deep of time,
Diana, Isis, Tanith, Artemis,
Your power we invoke to aid us here!
- Doreen Valiente

Hear me, Lord of the Stars,
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat
Crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for thy throat,
A scarlet bow for thy horns.
- Aleister Crowley

 

The Gods of Witchcraft are a pair, a dual deity, a Goddess and Her consort the God. Like the Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang, the Goddess and God of Witchcraft are complementary and inseparable, two sides of the one coin. This holy pair are often symbolised by such natural phenomenon as the Moon and Sun, the Earth and Sky or the human female and a mythical goat-footed male. In many modern Witchcraft traditions, the Goddess is envisaged as ‘ruling’ the Summer months of the year from the Vernal (Spring) Equinox to the Autumnal Equinox while the God rules the Winter part of the year from the Autumnal Equinox to the Vernal Equinox. This assigned rulership gives us an indication of which Zodiac signs are attributed to the God and Goddess. Being a shapeshifter the God/dess can manifest through each of the twelve Zodiac signs, however the two Solstice points of Cancer and Capricorn are their specific celestial thrones. Astrologically speaking then, the Goddess is signified by the sign of Cancer and the God by Capricorn.

Cancer, symbolised by the crab and ruled by the Moon, is the sign in which the Sun enters at the Northern Solstice point (being Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere). Solstice literally means "Sun stands still", the Sun reaches its most Northern or Southern declination at the Solstices which occur around the 21st of June and the 21st of December each year. The Tropic of Cancer, a line of latitude on Earth which marks the Northern Solstice point, is found at the latitude of 23.5 degrees North and runs through places such as Calcutta, Cuba, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The Tropic of Capricorn, which marks the Southern Solstice, point is found at the Latitude of 23.5 degrees South and runs through Australia at Alice Springs and Rockhampton.

The Zodiac sign Cancer is the least visible of the constellations and has been called by the ancients the "Power of Darkness." Cancer is the sign of the gentle darkness of the sea, the womb and the night. In the Horoscope, Cancer rules the 4th House which is the domain of family, the mother, home life and the past. In Witchcraft, Cancer and the 4th House signify the nurturing domain of the Coven. Its symbol has most often been a hard-shelled creature: a tortoise, scarab, crab and crayfish. Ancient Astrologers saw Cancer as the gate through which souls came from the sky to incarnate on Earth. The boat or Ark is an alternative symbol for Cancer. In many different cultures, the boat represented the womb that carried the child passenger as well as the vulva through which the baby passes into life, for the vaginal opening has the shape of a boat. Cancer is the Cardinal sign of Water, Cardinal signs being "beginnings" or "first impulse"; another reference to birth-giving with the amniotic fluid signalling the onset of birth. Because of the long connections of this sign with birth and fertility and its rulership by the Moon, Cancer has been associated with the Great Goddess as Mother. The writer and poet Robert Graves describes how one of the myths of Hercules emerged from an age of struggle between patriarchal and Goddess-worshipping cultures. In Hercules’ fight with the Hydra (which Graves sees as representing the Goddess religion) the crab fought on the side of the Goddess, pinching Hercules on the foot. For this service the Goddess placed the crab in the heavens as a constellation.

Cancer’s polar opposite on the wheel of the Zodiac is Capricorn, the Cardinal Earth sign, which is symbolised by a goat and is ruled by Saturn. In the Horoscope, Capricorn rules the 10th House, the area that is concerned with career, ambition, the father and the world outside the home. The constellation of Capricorn was identified by the Babylonians who saw it as a fish-goat who has a goat’s head and front legs and a fish’s tail. This image was associated with their God, Ea, "the Antelope of the subterranean ocean" and myths tell of the hero who appears out of the waters of Ea and brings the arts of civilisation to the shore: agriculture, astronomy, mathematics, reading and writing, architecture and medicine. The goat has long been regarded as holy, in Greek myth Zeus placed the she-goat Amalthea in the heavens as a reward for suckling him as an infant, European legends tell of a love Goddess who appeared to her beloved clad in a net and riding upon a goat. Goats were sacred to the Welsh Goddess Blodeuwedd and the Middle Eastern bearded Goddess Mylitta also appeared naked and riding upon a goat. The Greeks represented Pan, the great God of the wild and untamed places, as having the legs and horns of a goat. In one story he is turned into a fish-goat like the Babylonian Ea. Pan survived in medieval Europe as the goat-footed God of the Witches and the consort of their Goddess. The church fathers turned the figure of Pan into the devil and the cloven hoof, once the sign of the Goddess’s lover was regarded as evil.

Thus the Goddess traditionally rules the Summer from Her throne in the constellation of Cancer, which is the Zodiac sign of the Northern Hemisphere Summer. She is the bearer of the Grail of amniotic waters, who holds the world floating in Her womb. She faces the God across the Zodiac who rules the Northern Hemisphere Winter, enthroned upon the constellation of Capricorn, reposing at the zenith of the Zodiac while the goat leaps upon the summits of the Earth. Astrology evolved in the Northern Hemisphere, as did European Paganism. In Australia the Zodiac signs of Summer and Winter are reversed; the Sun is in Cancer in Winter and Capricorn in Summer but the Zodiacal symbolism is still valid as symbolism, even though the signs are reversed.

New publication: Traces of places: sacred sites in miniature on Minoan gold rings.

I’ve got a new publication, first one for 2021: ‘Traces of places: sacred sites in miniature on Minoan gold rings.’ Here's the abstract:

Sacred sites in Minoan Crete are known from both archaeological remains and iconography. Glyptic art is the most extensive body of Aegean Bronze Age representational art and consists of carved seals in the form of engraved metal signet rings, stone seals, and the clay impressions (sealings) that these were used to produce. Gold signet rings from the Cretan Neopalatial period (1750– 1490 BCE) depict various types of sacred sites, including mountain, rural, cave, and urban sanctuaries. How should we understand the built structures depicted in these miniature cult scenes? Do they all depict variations of walls or buildings, or are they altars? This chapter differentiates the built structures depicted in cult scenes on Minoan gold rings, correlates them to archaeological remains at Minoan sacred sites, and proposes an explanation of ephemeral cult structures now only recorded in the iconographic evidence. It will be demonstrated that these miniature art forms represent Minoan sacred sites in three ways: as natural places characterised by the presence of trees and stones and the absence of architecture; as outdoor sanctuaries surrounded by ashlar stone walls; and as shrines and altars, the shapes of which evoke natural cult locations such as mountains and sacred groves through abstract form. It will be argued that representation of Minoan cult structures that evoked the natural landscape within prestigious art forms was a method whereby Neopalatial elites naturalised their authority by depicting themselves in special relationship with the animate landscape.

Tully, C. 2021. ‘Traces of places: sacred sites in miniature on Minoan gold rings.’ In Sacred Sites and Sacred Stories: Transmission of Oral Tradition, Myth, and Religiosity, edited by David Kim, 11–40. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

 

 

More Upcoming Workshops

Magical Gems and Jewelry for Healing, Honoring Deity, and Astrology   

7 March 2020  (Online workshop)

Witches regularly wear occult jewelry: pentagram pendants, amber, jet, moonstone, coral, or even acorn necklaces; magical rings with special stones or symbolic designs; and lots of silver, the metal of the moon. Wearing jewelry is a form of communication: to the wearer, to other people, and to hidden forces attracted by certain colors, substances and patterns.

Join Caroline Tully in a workshop that includes:

Magical gems and jewelry from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome

Gemstones in relation to Ancient healing modalities and gods

Gemstones and Healing astrology

Learn about the stone amulets, empowering talismans, and protective jewelry of the Ancient World, and the spells used to activate them. Through discussion and practical ritual, contemporary approaches to healing magic will be revealed. Bring a piece of your own jewelry and through ritual we will draw down the stars to consecrate it to a healing deity.

This workshop will be held at WitchCon

Minoan Snake Goddess and Altered States of Consciousness Workshop    April 2021 TBD   (Online workshop)    

According to Goddess-Feminist history, the Great Goddess was the original, and only, deity of humankind from the dawn of time up until around 3000 BCE, when Goddess-oriented cultures were conquered by patriarchal, warlike worshippers of a sky god. Late Bronze Age Minoan Crete (1750–1490 BCE) is considered to be the Goddess culture’s final flowering, believed to exhibit the last gasp of the feminine values associated with Goddess culture before it was wiped out by warlike, patriarchal Mycenaean Greeks. Before this time Minoan Crete was peaceful, worshipped the Great Goddess and her Dying and Rising Consort (who was also her son), and women and nature were respected. Join Dr Caroline Tully in a workshop on ancient Minoan religion, focussing on the Snake Goddess. Find out about the claim that on Crete the snake appears in the worship of the female deity more repeatedly than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Focus will be on ancient artifacts that depict female figures holding snakes in their hands or with them coiled about their bodies, suggesting that they were an integral part of the religious rituals. There will also be a practical component on methods to achieve altered states of consciousness using techniques you can take away and practise at home.

This workshop will be held at the Magickal Women Ancient Magick Conference

Caroline Tully Bio

Caroline Tully is interested in the practical side of magic and has been a modern Witch since 1985. She has written for many Pagan and occult publications and was a feature writer for Australia’s Witchcraft Magazine for six years. Caroline is also an archaeologist who studies ancient Mediterranean Pagan religions as well as their manifestation in the modern world. She has many areas of interest including ancient religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism. Caroline is an expert on tree worship in the Bronze Age Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus, and has strong interests in the Environmental Humanities, nature, landscape, animism, ecology, ecofeminism, the Anthropocene, and posthumanism.

Upcoming Workshops

 

The Devil’s Mischief    6 Feb 2021

Who is the Devil and what is his association with witchcraft? This workshop will explain the history of the Devil, covering his relationship to ancient Pagan gods, biblical angels, special humans, and his connection to witchcraft today. Join Dr Caroline Tully in this seminar and tutorial in order to learn how to utilise the Devil’s tools of glamour, bedazzlement, wonderment and fascination via techniques of High and Low Magic. Through discussion and practical ritual, ancient and modern approaches to enchantment will be revealed.

 

Heka: Egyptian Magic   20 Feb 2021

The death of Cleopatra 2,050 years ago marked the end of Pharaonic Egypt; however, the distinctive Egyptian expressions of religion, art and culture were so strong that they still influence us today. Egyptology is closely linked to modern witchcraft and this workshop explains the connection. Tracing Egyptian influence through ancient Rome and the Renaissance, and incorporating mummy unwrapping, Egyptian Style funerary monuments and Art Déco style, the influence of ancient Egypt on our magical forbears will become evident. Complemented by practical ritual, this workshop provides the background and tools you need in order to tap into ancient Egyptian ‘Heka’ or magic.

 

Who’s Who in Australian Witchcraft: History and Practice  March 2021
Witchcraft in Australia has its own special character as a result of both its history, in regard to the various importations from Britain, Europe and the USA, as well as Australia’s physical position on the planet. Join Dr Caroline Tully in this workshop in order to discover when the Craft came to Australia, who was involved, and how witchcraft is practised Downunder. This workshop looks at who’s who in Australian witchcraft, from its first appearance to today, explains the different manifestations of the craft, and instruction in contemporary approaches to Australian magic.

 

The presenter: Caroline Tully is interested in the practical side of magic and has been a modern Witch since 1985. She has written for many Pagan and occult publications and was a feature writer for Australia’s Witchcraft Magazine for six years. Caroline is also an archaeologist who studies ancient Mediterranean Pagan religions and their manifestation in the modern world.   

 

Workshops will be held at Muses of Mystery

 

 

CFP - SACRED GEOGRAPHIES: LANDSCAPE AND RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Mediterranean Archaeology Australasian Research Community (MAARC)

ANNUAL MEETING 28-30 JANUARY 2021, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE (ONLINE)

CALL FOR PAPERS

 

SESSION 9 –SACRED GEOGRAPHIES: LANDSCAPE AND RELIGION IN THE ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN

Session Organizers: Larissa Tittl, University of Melbourne and Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne

Session abstract:

The scent of citrus and of brittle pine

suffused the island. Inside [Calypso] was singing

and weaving with a shuttle made of gold.

Her voice was beautiful. Around the cave

a luscious forest flourished: alder, poplar,

 and scented cypress. It was full of wings.

Birds nested there but hunted out at sea:

the owls, the hawks, the gulls with gaping beaks.

A ripe and luscious vine, hung thick with grapes,

was stretched to coil around her cave. Four springs

spurted with sparkling water as they laced

with crisscross currents intertwined together.

The meadow softly bloomed with celery

and violets. He gazed around in wonder

and joy, at sights to please even a god.

Description of Calypso’s cave in Homer’s Odyssey, Book 5, l.60-74, tr. Emily Wilson

 

The Mediterranean landscape, in both a geographical and imaginative sense, is interconnected with religion, as idea and practise, in many significant ways. The topography and terrain of both land- and seascape are the focus of ritual activity; iconographic and textual responses concerning deities, sacred places, and other-than-human beings; the building of religious architecture; the worship of or ritual engagement with natural features and phenomena: a landscape saturated with sacred elements. And all of this sits alongside and is aligned with wider social, mortuary, and memorialisation practices.

Once considered merely an inert backdrop for human activity or as a series of material affordances or constraints, landscape has increasingly come to be understood as a ‘stage constructed in the mind’ (Ashmore and Knapp 1999: 8) comprising taskscapes of nested activities, palimpsests of memory, association and affect, sites of situated in-dwelling, accumulation, and inscribed attachments over time. Phenomenologically, space and time converge in place, a dialectical position which recursively shapes and is shaped by human agents and thus anchors human ontologies in time and place. Symbolic cultural landscapes include the terrestrial planes of human activity as well as natural phenomena including diurnal and seasonal cycles, and celestial elements such as the sun or the night sky. With nature thus reconfigured as a cultural construction, ideology—political, religious—can be used to normalize or contest the social status quo, to resolve or exploit social tensions around identity and inequality.

What is the role of religion in these systems of power and hierarchy, domination and resistance, identify formation and negotiation; how does landscape fit into this nexus? How did humans in the ancient Mediterranean respond to their environment through or with a sense of the sacred? Was the landscape sentient, numinous or was it just a meeting place for humans and divinities?

This session calls for contributors who research religion and ritual in the context of landscape across the Mediterranean in both space and time: Neolithic to Late Antiquity; the coastlines, hinterlands and connected places that comprise the Mediterranean in the widest geographical and theoretical sense. We invite both theoretically informed papers—including those with new, radical or experimental approaches—and papers based in rich interpretations of fieldwork and survey data, or museum collections. Also welcome are papers that incorporate textual and epigraphical evidence alongside archaeological material. 

Session format:  20-minute papers followed by 5 minutes for questions and discussion.

 

Proposals for papers should be sent to mediterraneanarchaeology@gmail.com and must include the following information:

• Title of the Paper

• Name, affiliation and email of the proposer(s)

• Title of the themed session for your paper

• A short abstract of your proposed paper (of not more than 200 words)

 

The deadline for the submission of all paper and poster proposals is the 30th of November 2020.

 

CFP for a special issue of The Pomegranate on Pagans and Museums

Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicised Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson’s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his correspondence suggests that the first formal Wiccan coven might have been created partially to provide provenance for the museum’s exhibits. Sold to Gardner in 1954, the museum housed his collections and was the base from which he promoted modern witchcraft and published Witchcraft Today. Inherited by his high priestess Monique Wilson after his death in 1964, the museum continued for almost a decade be­fore Wilson sold the 10,000-piece collection to Ripley’s Believe it or Not Ltd in 1973. Tamarra and Richard James of the Wiccan Church of Canada purchased much of Gardner’s collection from Ripley’s in 1987. Cecil Wil­liamson, meanwhile, had attempted to establish a new witchcraft museum on the UK mainland at various locations, eventually settling at Boscastle in Cornwall in 1960. Williamson’s Museum of Witchcraft was sold to Graham King in 1996; and has been under the direction of Simon Costin as The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic since 2013.

A number of small museums today focus on contemporary and historical witchcraft and magic: The Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick in Cleveland, Ohio was founded by Raymond Buckland, one of the first Gardnerian Wiccans in America. Others include the Witch History Mu­seum in Salem, Massachusetts; The Hexenmuseum Schweiz in Gränichen, Switzerland; Strand­agaldur, The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft; the Museo de las Brujas in Zu­garramurdi, Spain; and HEX! Museum of Witch Hunt in Ribe, Denmark. Temporary exhibitions of objects belonging to the “mother of modern witch­craft,” Doreen Valiente, were held in Brighton, UK, in 2016; the Academy of Arcana in Santa Cruz, California, ran for two years between 2015–2017; and objects loaned from The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic to The Last Tuesday Society & The Viktor Wynd Museum of Curiosities in London were displayed in 2018. There are also museums dedicated to stage magic such as the American Museum of Magic in Michigan; the International Museum and Library of the Conjuring Arts in Las Vegas; The Magic Circle Museum in London; and the Musée de la Magie in Paris.

Exhibitions of objects pertaining to Paganism, witchcraft and magic also feature in large “univer­sal” museums, galleries and libraries. Occult walking tours of London include the British Mu­seum; the “Witches and Wicked Bodies” exhibition was held by the National Galleries of Scot­land in association with the British Museum between 2013–2015; the British Library presented the exhibition “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” in 2017; which was followed by “Spellbound: Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft” at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in 2018. In 2019 “Second Sight: Witchcraft, Ritual, Power” was held at the University of Queensland Art Museum in Aus­tralia; and “Waking the Witch” at the Bonington Gallery at the University of Nottingham. Most recently (2019–2020), the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery held “Do You Believe in Magic?”

Beyond Wicca, museums have played important parts in other magical and Pagan revivals. The late nineteenth and early twentieth-century members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn sought to commune with the collections of large public museums such as the British Museum and the Louvre. Today, ancient Pagan objects are often the focus of quiet reverence by contemporary Pagans in museums, although in early 2020 the Witches of New York conducted a vocal “pop up” ritual to the goddess Hekate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. British Druids have been active participants in the controversy over the storage and repatriation of human remains held in museums; Pagans hold rituals at prehistoric archaeological sites which can be considered outdoor museums; and go on Goddess tours to experience sites and museums in locations such as Ireland, Crete, Malta and Turkey. “Witch City,” Salem, is a tourist/pilgrimage destination where public witchiness is encouraged; the Witch House is used as a backdrop for evocative Instagram photos and offerings are left at the Witch Trials Memorial. In contrast, Salem’s Essex Peabody Museum is often ignored, although perhaps not for much longer with an exhibition on the Salem Witch Trials scheduled for September 26, 2020 to April 4, 2021.

The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies invites submissions of articles (5000–8000 words) for a special issue on Pagans and Museums, edited by Caroline Tully (caro­line.tully@unimelb.edu.au). How and why do contemporary Pagans engage with museums to­day?

Possible topics include:

1. The role of elite museums in the creation of contemporary Paganisms 

2. The role of small museums: e.g., the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic; the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft; Salem witch museums

3. Pagan perceptions regarding the agency and enchantment of museum objects

4. Material and sensory aspects of Pagan experience within museums

5. Pagan use of museums and preserved historic or archaeological sites for religious purposes: e.g., the replica Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee

6. Pagans and Witch Trials Memorials: e.g., Bålberget Memorial, Sweden; Steilneset Memorial, Norway; Paisley Witches Memorial, Scotland; the Salem Witch Trials Memorial

7. Pagan attempts to change the narrative in museums, including efforts at removing ancient human remains from display, for example, the efforts of the Honouring the Ancient Dead movement in the UK

8. Memorializing contemporary Pagan history: e.g., the Doreen Valiente Foundation

Abstracts by Dec. 31 2020. Finished papers by March 31 2021.

For information on the submission process see: https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/POM/about/submissions

Please note that The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies uses the Univer­sity of Chicago Press notes-and-bibliography citation style: http://www.chicagomanualof­style.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

 

*Image from the exhibition, Préhistoire, une énigme modern, at the Centre Pompidou, 2019.

The Minoan Snake Goddess Workshop at the Australian Wiccan Conference 2020 Online

I'll be presenting my lecture-workshop, The MinoanSnake Goddess and Altered States of Consciousness, at the Australian Wiccan Conference ONLINE on Sunday 13th September at 10.00 am.