A recent article about our long long legal battle with
the Town of Catskill pointed out
“the views and practices of their organization (the
Maetreum of Cybele) vary widely from those of many “Pagan” and
other minority religious groups”
This is true and it occurs to me a lot of
misunderstandings actually surround that basic statement that should
be discussed. I was the principle founder of what we call the
Cybeline Revival and it does differ in many respects from most of the
category it is lumped in with, neo-Paganism. First of all it is a
theology based on historic research that tries to re create the basis
of the Mother Goddess traditions of the ancient world. It is not
about “the craft” as so many modern neo-Pagan groups are. That
is not to say our priestesses are not skilled in the craft, most of
us are. Rather that witchcraft is not the focus of what we do, what
we believe and how we practice.
We are not reconstructionists. We started off with the
history we had readily available, primarily the practices common in
Greece and Rome during the classical period and our Season of the
Tree celebration does reconstruct much of the body of ritual done in
Rome as the Meglamensia as a celebration of that. Our goal, from the
start, was to restore Mother Goddess theology and practices as if
they had not been interrupted for some 1600 years by the attempt to
erase us from history by the Catholic church. In order to do that we
had to dig deeply into the prior Mother Goddess traditions stretching
far back into pre-history, extract the essence and build from that.
It is an ongoing process that although I started, is being continued
by some of our younger priestesses, one of whom is pursuing that as
the basis of her Doctorate.
We are not “Dianics”. Living in a patriarchy and
coming from a history where the priestesses were required to be
female bodied many confuse us with Dianic practice. Unlike Dianics,
we encourage men to participate in our rituals, share our lives and
undergo our Mysteries. Yes, we are decidedly pro woman, feminists
and about female empowerment but we also acknowledge the historic
fact that every single Mother Goddess tradition had transsexual
priestesses as well as non-transsexual women priestesses. Dianics
can be quite opposed to this fact. Dianics do not allow men to
participate in their rituals.
And let's be frank, we are NOT Wiccan. Modern Pagan
practices are often confused with Wicca as established by Gardner and
later Alex Sanders. I won't get into my own opinions of that
practice today which frequently has little in common with it's own
rather late to the party roots and is quickly becoming a generic term
rather than a specific one. Wicca depends on “the craft” at it's
roots and if it has an actual theology, I have failed to find it
because it was reclaimed for the most part from European folk magic
and middle ages ceremonial magic that arose as opposition to the
Catholic church. The so called rede came directly from Alister
Crowley, the self styled most evil man in the world. The so called
law of three fold return to discourage so called left hand path work
(dark magic) is a hold over of the carrot and stick theology of
Christianity and based in fear that the quite old association of
cursing and witchcraft not be revisited upon them. And finally, in
the original Wicca, one had to be initiated into a coven and there
was no such thing as solo practice and self initiation, ideas
introduced by Scott Cunningham.
The Cybeline Revival is unique in modern Paganism. We
are basically monotheistic which I would argue Christianity never
was. We re-introduced the ancient practice of Pagan monasticism, but
just as in the ancient times not a cloistered monasticism, but very
much a part of the world. One does not seek the priestesshood in our
tradition as some sort of spiritual merit badge but rather a life
long commitment to service towards others so our congregants are just
as important in their own right as the priestesses. We don't serve
up answers because we believe the Goddess is eminent in all so we
teach people to awaken the Goddess within themselves. That means you
have to do the work yourself, we just help you do so. Not a recipe
for those who were raised in a world that encourages instant
gratification to flock to us so we expect our growth to be slow. We
believe in balance in the world, in spirituality, in all things so
there is a place for light work as well as dark and a time and place
for both.
Many Pagan writers have talked about the things that
are at the root of our theology, we practice it.
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