A friend was reading some crazy stuff about polarity and asked “What is polarity in Wicca? Why should it create problems for gays and trans folk?”
OK, this is actually a big question. For one thing, it strikes at the difference between lineaged and non-lineaged Wicca, and some difference between the US and UK. And then there’s… well, let’s take it in small steps. Let’s start with the father of Wicca: Gerald.
Gerald was a child of his time. Back in the first half of the 20th century, there was almost rabid homophobia. Oh, it had existed long before then. Anal intercourse by anyone on anyone was made punishable by death in 1533. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 extended buggery laws to outlaw any kind of sexual activity between males. Remember that Oscar Wilde was given 2 year’s hard labour in Reading Gaol in 1897 for being an active homosexual. He was lucky – the death penalty for the offence had only been rescinded in 1861.
During the 1950s the government set up the Wolfenden Committee to review the law. In the teeth of widespread opposition, it recommended decriminalising homosexual acts for consenting adults (then those aged 21. At the time, consent for hetero relationships was 16. Although the recommendations of the report were adopted – but not until the late 1960s – progress by comparison with heterosexual freedoms was painfully slow:
- The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 lowered the age of consent for gay sexual relationships from 21 to 18 in the UK in November 1994.
- Equality of age of consent was finally achieved January 2001.
- The Civil Partnership Act 2004 permitted single sex couples to register their relationships legally.
- Same sex marriage was finally enabled in England and Wales from March 2014, and Scotland from December 2014.
I published that information as a credit to the work of Stonewall in my latest novel. As at today’s date, same-sex marriage is still not permitted in Northern Ireland.
So…back to Gerald. One of his published works was Witchcraft Today in which he wrote:
The witches tell me ‘The law always has been that power must be passed from man to woman or from woman to man, the only exception being when a mother initiates her daughter or a father his son, because they are part of themselves’ (the reason is that great love is apt to occur between people who go through the rites together.) They go on to say: ‘The Templars broke this age-old rule and passed the power from man to man: this led to sin and in doing so it brought about their downfall.’
Although he was being coy in attributing this to unnamed witches, there is enough published out there for me to able to state that Wicca was based on polarity. To quote from a Wikipedia article on the subject:
Most traditional Wiccans worship the god and goddess,[7] and a central part of Wiccan liturgy involves the Great Rite;[8] an act of actual or symbolic ritual sexual intercourse between the two deities. This is traditionally carried out by a priest and priestess who have had the deities invoked upon them, and the conventional practice appears to be exclusively heterosexual. When performed ‘in token’ this involves the athame (representing the masculine principle) descending into the chalice (representing the feminine).[9]
Now, let’s talk about Wicca as it’s practised among lineaged covens. I’m going to concentrate on the UK. Practice in the US is often different, but there is sufficient similarity here that this should apply on both sides of the pond.
Yes, covens are led by a High Priest, representing the god (if you believe in a single god) or a god (if you don’t) and a High Priestess representing ‘the goddess’/a goddess. (I’m not sure how pantheist or atheist Wiccans interpret this, so I can’t speak for them.) Many of the rituals have these two, or other members of the coven, acting out parts deliberately assigned to men or women.
Not unnaturally, there have been reactions against this. An all-female form of Wicca was set up in the US, in the 1970s, as was an all-male form. However, The Minoan Brotherhood is entirely gay, unlike Dianic Wicca. The Feri Tradition welcomes many varieties of sexual expression.
A lot was going on, during the 1970s, in England as well as the US. Though there were no forms of single-sex covens created here (as far as I know), things were going on in that bastion of respectability, the Church of England. The Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW) was created, to force the church to change its mind about accepting women as priests. That particular battle became complex, as many gay clergy and officiants joined the fight against the ordination of women, on the grounds of tradition.
In the late 1960s, racial discrimination was recognised as a problem, following the influx of people invited here from the West Indies, to help Britain with reconstruction following the Second World War. This resulted in anti-discrimination legislation passed on the ground of race, then sex (1970s), then other forms of discrimination, culminating in the inclusion of religion, sexual orientation and transgender, in the 2000s. The world was now a very different place than it had been when Wicca was born.
Most of this washed past lineaged Garnerian/Alexandrian covens, who staunchly held to their polarity ideals. Oh, many – perhaps most – covens could not attain the ideal of being formed entirely of matching couples. That covens would include singleton witches was recognised early on. And, by the late 90s, there were certainly some covens run by gay couples, who shared the roles of High Priest or High Priestess. Some of these people may well have received Gardnerian or Alexandrian initiation, but their covens would not be recognised. Or, if they were, they would have to be very careful about who initiated whom. Why?
Because there is one very large show-stopper. Let’s go back to Wikipedia, this time about another Wiccan off-shoot, though one that is disavowed because it broke the cardinal rule:
As in Traditional Wicca, the standard initiation practice is cross-sex initiation (female to male; male to female) but Chthonioi Alexandrian Wicca also accepts as valid same-sex initiations… Because of the acceptance of same-sex initiations, some elders of Alexandrian Wicca do not recognize Chthonioi-Alexandrian tradition as “Alexandrian”
Or, to quote a blogger on Gardnerian matters:
Yet, even today, we have people online who claim that their lineage goes back to Gardner through Michael Reagan to Ray Buckland (possibly even through same-sex initiation, which is a big Gardnerian no-no) back up the line to Gardner.
This implies that it’s possibly OK to have a coven run by a same-sex couple, but they will be hampered by only being able to initiate trainees of the opposite sex. Bit of a bummer, there. And a major stumbling block for growing any coven run by a same-sex couple. Note, I’m not saying that gays or lesbians are unwelcome in Wiccan circles… but like so much else, that very much depends on the coven. But that also provides material for the individual to think about, in terms of what an initiation represents, and whether they wish to be initiated by someone of the opposite sex.
However, there are signs that the standard of polarity is becoming part of a discourse on inclusiveness, covering queerness in Wicca. Out of this discourse has come a book offering ideas for Wiccan covens to use. As the author says:
“the gender binary is the notion that cisgender heterosexual pairs are the norm and that everything in the universe resembles a cisgender heterosexual couple. We need to expand the model to include different genders and sexual orientations.” It is common, in my experience, for people to encourage practitioners to think of this as the union of “masculine” and “feminine” energies, but regardless of metaphysical semantics, it can still feel exclusive especially since “masculine” and “feminine” are so often used interchangeably with “male” and “female.”
The discourse seems to have taken a more urgent turn, either as a result of the book’s publication or (more probably) because the book is an expression and a focal point for pre-existing discontent with the status quo. However, it is not as simple to change lineaged Wicca as it is the Church of England. It can not be done on a vote. In any case, even in the CofE, changes in favour of ordaining women and, more lately, of trying to recognise gay priests, have led to hive-offs, or whole congregations turning away.
Within Wicca, the covens are independent. However, the one point of agreement is that what is passed down, remains identifiable as Wicca. Covens may differentiate between those things which are unchangeable and those things which can be added.
It remains to be seen whether, in time, the decision is that polarity dependent upon a strictly defined sexuality is fundamental to Wicca. I have the feeling that, if that is the decision, lineaged Wicca will become a dwindling religion/practice. I hope that doesn’t happen.
Leaves from a Book of Shadows 