Sacrificing Goats to the Moon Goddess

Sacrificing Goats to the Moon Goddess

Creative Non-Fiction by: ViolentPeace
(draft 1)

The face of the Earth beheld the dominating white-brightness of the Moon, kin to the void of stars beyond. Darkness reigns from the sky over a tribal forest long and deep.  A priestess stands before an altar, naked before a fire, awaiting the great mother’s embrace to descend into her from orbit above. The Moon is woman and the tribe calls her Hecate. She is a powerful being in all things. To the naked woman standing bathed in its radiant glow, she is all women. With her followers gathered around the ritual circle marked with sand, she awaits the inspired moment of proclamation. The only interruption to the night is the “Maaaing” of a goat.

She crosses her arms onto her breasts. They all know the words are soon to follow, their backs tingle with excitement. Their minds are fueled with awe. The moon will descend to the Earth tonight and the naked priestess will become her. She speaks:

“Goddess of the Moon, You have been known by many names in many lands in many times. You are universal and constant. In the dark of night, You shine down upon us and bathe us in Your light and love. I ask You, O Divine One, to honor me by joining with me, and allowing me to feel Your presence within my blood.”

The priestess becomes purer than the fire that burns before her. A spark rises to her chest. The Goddess accepts her and the Moon warms the priestess’ heart. Her mortal blood flows like rivers. Her eyes are wide. She can feel Hecate inside of her. It is a power firmer than oak and stronger than the weight of the world. Spontaneous words spring from her mouth invoking the waters of the Oceans and the great forgotten names of mountains and forests. She is the creator of all things and her words spread across existence to nurture and inspire it. The priestess is the embodiment of Hecate. She is a Goddess.

            Before the woman, a man kneels naked between the altar and the fire; it licks heat across his back. He places a goat upon the altar and when she signals with a wave of the hand, he cuts the goat’s throat with a jagged bronze knife. She observes the blood as it pours from the twitching creature and through the shadows of the man and the tendrils of glowing flame streaming across the stone altar, reading words written in its sea telling of prophecies only she can hear. The blood speaks of prosperity and growth. The goat’s soul drifts from its dying carcass and into the strength of the rains soon to be falling, nurturing, and the soil of the crops that make them grow strong and bountiful. The man remains prostrate before her as she steps around the altar and into his embrace. Perhaps tonight would provide a child of some great Moon blessed fate.

Centuries ago, when the structures of Christianity had not grasped the kingdoms of the world, women drew down the power of the Moon without fear from patriarchal overlords. Women brought this lunar power down to embolden them. They stood bare fleshed, bathed in lunar light, amongst a collection of tribal patrons. Often times, it would be one woman alone amongst the circle, a tribal matriarch. The woman sought the goddess whom lived on and within the Moon with chants and invocations of her name(s). The Moon has many names and depending upon the tribe, the goddess’ name may change. Sometimes a man would kneel before this matriarch in supplication, nude and subservient, often drinking milk as the woman chanted. Once the goddess’ powers infused the woman, she would mount this man and the two entered an ecstasy as the tribe watched in fascination. This ritual is called, Drawing Down the Moon. Today it remains alive and well, without animal sacrifice and (depending) without intercourse. It occurs in many backyards with varying degrees of involvement. Some commit to it clothed. Some women commit to it solitarily. Other recreations of it involve no men. It all depends on the practitioners, as with any religion. It all depends on how you want to do it. It depends on how you feel you can best invoke a godlike emotion.

            We are very aware of the denominations of Christianity. Christians can often disagree with each other about how to worship their God. We are aware of Sunni and Shite divisions in Islam, liberal and conservative Mormons, Buddhists, Taoist, and ancestor worship. Worship comes down to the personal view of the practitioners in how they can achieve spiritual ecstasy or satisfaction. It is also often passed down through family lines where parents can easily teach their children how to perform and engage in the mindset and rituals of their family’s religion.

            I was drawn to Paganism because I felt that ecstasy through the primal ancestor lens. I wanted to feel the Moon, be part of the tribe, and build stone circles to withstand the test of time. I’m very drawn to ritual; even as an Atheist I understand the power of witnessing it and taking part in it. This power is humanity. This power is the lens that changes from country to county, person to person. I grew up as an Episcopal, which still maintained the majority of the ancient rituals of Catholics. When Episcopals commit to ritual, you feel the lingering inspiration of past centuries. Perhaps it was the ritual of the Episcopal Church that drew me into more primal thinking or maybe it was just me growing up and wanting to feel something with less of what I felt to be a façade. I wanted something that did not hold back.

I was a Pagan before I became an Atheist. I also considered myself Agnostic because I believed in a nebulous figure guiding the universe on some path or lesson to be learned. I invoked this nebulous being through Pagan rituals and mindset. However I realized I was an Atheist by pure definition when literature became available to me. It took a book The God Delusion and research for me to realize I had been an Atheist for longer than I had known. I was no longer feeling that my inspirations were divinely inspired, but instead I was completely responsible for it as a human being. I had always suspected I was capable of my own never ending inspiration and I realized I didn’t need a god to give me any nuance to it. Humanity was the nuance.

            Then there is God herself. She is an abstract concept today. We can commonly agree there is no man sitting on a throne in the clouds. Many believe her to be simply the embodiment of love, and why not? Love can be described as spiritual ecstasy after all. As an Atheist today, as my opinion can change, I see God as a peg to fill a space that is empty and needs definition, sitting deep inside most of us. There different ways others may describe god, but if God is felt anywhere, she is some force or feeling that resides within us and we bring this force to the surface of our being with ritual. Many of these religions require churches, temples, and mosques, but much need none of that at all and some even consider the forest as their temple.

 It is difficult to find a Pagan community in Chattanooga Tennessee. However they are out there and exist in just about every major American city from coast to coast. Neo-Paganism contains the rituals of the ancient pre-Christian tribes brought back mainly during the sixties and seventies while the US was experiencing a cultural revolution. They took away sacrificing (having never considered it viable practice in its new realization) and sought to connect with their pre-Christian ancestors, having soured to the established Christian religion.  Most aspects of the rituals remained similar to the textual accounts that still existed, surviving the fires of Christendom. Christianity more or less wiped Europe clean of ancient Paganism, however in the early to mid-twentieth century Pagan figureheads began to emerge as Christianity started to decline its strict stranglehold on culture. One of the first figure heads is the infamous Aleister Crowley. Crowley was a complete rebel to the establishment, but an undeniable forefather of the soon to be realized Neo-Pagan movement. Even HP Lovecraft, a popular Atheist horror fiction author that abhorred religion, awoke the ideas of Black Magic that Crowley was inspired from into the minds of society. Fervor for something besides what the Christian establishment could provide began to seep into the veins of many of England’s religious elite. Aleister Crowley, an upper class British citizen, provided an extreme reaction to the Christian establishment, he glorified Black Magic.

            Black Magic is inherently anti-Christian and is akin to Satanism in many respects. It is even more extreme than Satanism (I think the Church of Satan is rather mild and enjoys too much of a boogeyman aspect in the minds of Christians to be feared). Black Magic is perhaps the fundamentalist extreme of Paganism. Black Magic is the pursuit of power and Satanism is the pursuit of desire.  It wasn’t Satan, but the pure pursuit of occult magic’s power that drove Aleister Crowley to hide himself away in Sicily. He resided inside an abandoned church where orgies with man and animal commenced among rituals. These rituals were dark Sex Magick rituals (Sex Magick is still practiced in more nuanced corners of the world today with differing agendas). Crowley’s goal was to summon spirits and demons onto the Earth and bring about a new era of amoral chaotic nihilism and destruction. He sought to unleash a reality that would drive the recently “enlightened societies” insane by destroying all reason. It was invigoratingly inspiring stuff indeed. These spirits and beings can be found in the fiction of HP Lovecraft’s horror fiction (you can read it without the worry of going mad here, it’s quite good). Both were contemporaries, writing their best work along the same dates of the nineteen twenties. Any correspondence between the two is suspect, but victim to rumor.

            In the 1950s, Crowley was dying from a syphilitic infection, going insane like Nietzsche had. Others took the works of Crowley and reinvented some of his ideas in England. One of them was Gerald Gardener. Gardener invented something known as Gardenian Witchcraft and what set this witchcraft apart was its strict adherence to nudity. Nudity unleashed them from what they felt to be the oppressive shackles of society and to become sort of primal in a way that made them feel closer to their ancient ancestors who would draw down the moon naked in the forests of old. Today Neo-Paganism also enjoys other rituals such as Beltane (May Day), Samhain (Halloween), and observes equinoxes and solstices with communal ritual that tend to be more mainstream.  Gardener never sought to unleash evil unto the world through bestial sexual rituals. They did not engage in the harm of people or animals. What Gardener helped to create was the new emerging religion known as Neo-Paganism, which has just as many more varied traditions as varied as Protestant Christianity denominations. This tradition was to connect the rebellious British elite to non-Christian ideas. Neo-Pagans, or simply Pagans, invoke the names of ancient deities to gain powers or blessings for themselves and is different from its extreme version known as Black Magic. More traditions began to emerge with various different beliefs and practices (most are more clothing friendly) and in the sixties and seventies, what started in Britain, found itself on the shores of Hippy American culture. It has spread out since then making even Gardener (let alone Crowley) the extreme.

            But here underlines the point. Religion is the pursuit of spiritual ecstasy. When Christians go to church they want to feel Christ in some way. They want to feel something move inside and give meaning and when this feeling occurs, they attribute it to God. I can’t blame them. Ritual is inspiring. From lighting the candles at Mass, singing religious songs or chants amongst friends, to a feeling of the communal, ritual is committed to inspire emotion and a connection to a self-identity. This is what God is. It is the inspiring moment of any ritual. I do not consider her to be a supernatural being, but something we create inside and amongst ourselves.

            Perhaps it was no coincidence I moved away from my belief during my heavy drug years of my mid-twenties. I was fueling the inspiring moment of ritual inside of me. I saw it as chemicals entering my body and taking me away. These chemicals are created in labs, even bath tubs, and wherever else. It is a scientific formula that can inspire my mind to reach out and touch alien beings that live in some other plane of existence or delusional part inside of my mind. I was in control, more or less, of my LSD laced ritual that at first I thought it might be “spiritual” at the time. This spirituality turned into reasoned inspiration, a place somewhere in my mind, inside of me. My inspiration is the God of my brain, my creator. Me. Thou art.

What or who controls the ritual creates the religion. When the ritual is under control, control begins to spread outward and into societies often corrupting minds that originally are alien to such ritual formats.  There are activities that are very real to us as humans and when we take control of those rituals and dictate how they should be administered to others, we walk the line of creating religion. Not all of religion is corrupting to humanity, but where I find my inspiring ritual is different from just about everyone else. Where I was able to fill that hole inside of me may not be true for others. What is true, is say for example, when Christianity (or any religion) has control of the ritual (in various shapes and sizes), it controls the society to a degree that it imposes its will on others, usually without consent, subversive. The idea of controlling the ritual spreads out into mundane areas like politics or education. The will of religion is to make the followers of similar minds. To often try to enforce the followers to believe what the leaders believe or at least make them of the susceptible minds. They seek to make the ritual easy and accessible to the perceived mainstream. Some religious practitioners could not give a flying flip, but control exists in religion to degrees, some good and bad. Often many do not realize the control of the ultimate self-ritual has happened or if it had ever taken hold. Sometimes we are not aware that we can find happiness outside of dictated religious practice. Christianity is not the one true religion, none are. Christianity is one religion out of many. It is a control mechanism for a certain type of spiritual ascendance people find in ritual. If the religions are able to fill that inspirational void that humanity, in and of itself seeks to practice and gain some meaning from, then great. Not everyone will get the same effect from the same rituals. Every mind is unique.

            My definition of spirituality is not a supernatural one. As humans, we seek to be inspired. We read books, watch movies, act in plays, watch plays, paint, and participate in just about anything else. In fundamentalist countries, they have strict control over all rituals, even secular ones. Religion ultimately attempts the addressing of the most revered ritual of all and attempts to control all rituals that may affect it. Religion dictates the ritual of ultimate self-actualization or self-awareness. It can also be a ritual of community, bringing the tribe together once a week to make sure all is fine. It still seeks to maintain its control over the populace in some degree, wanted or not.

            Often we struggle with the idea of where our spirituality or inspiration comes from so we attribute it to some abstract idea like a god when I could say it is the DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), a natural chemical in our minds that spurns our creative process. I will admit describing inspiration doesn’t explain the creation of the universe, unless the universe is ultimately a thought that was birthed in a ritual from some universe in a mind our primitive ones cannot comprehend. Something we are ultimately all capable of.

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