“For I am the Soul of Nature …”

This is the next in a series of blogs I am have decided to do, providing textual analysis for the ritual prose known as The Charge of the Goddess.  Each quotes a section of material which I presented, with my co-author David Rankine, in the book Wicca Magickal Beginnings.  For your convenience, all posts on this subject has been tagged with “charge analysis” here on my blog, and I ask that comments and other remarks be posted directly onto the original blog http://www.sorita.co.uk/?p=996 — keep comments to the lines discussed in this blog only please (there are separate blog entries for the rest!)

The Golden Dawn, a magical order which was founded in the late 19th century is often cited as being one of the key influences on the development and emergence of the Wiccan tradition.  In our research we found that though they may have been an inspiration and of course provided one of the key parts of the revived interest in the occult and the practice of magic, not all that much was actually directly derived from them – not in comparison to the amount of material taken from say, for example Crowley or indeed the high percentage of material from grimoires which did not pass directly through the Golden Dawn, but instead seems to have its origins instead in something parallel and a lot more private.  The following line in the Charge of the Goddess represents one of the borrowings from the Golden Dawn which did become part of Wiccan liturgy.  It continues the strong pantheist suggestion in the previous lines and the emphasis here is more specifically again on the Earth itself, or more specifically the divinity of Nature as the Goddess.

It would be interesting to explore the percentage of Wiccans who are pantheist in their beliefs, but that is a matter for another day and another study!  Anyone out there who have looked at this in recent years?  Would love to hear about it!

“For I am the Soul of nature who giveth life to the Universe;

From me all things proceed; and unto me, all things must return.”

Uniquely this part of the Charge appears to come from the Ritual for Transformation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, in which we find “O Soul of Nature giving life and energy to the Universe. From thee all things do proceed. Unto Thee all must return.” Alternatively it is possible that the author of the Charge took the line, “From me all things proceed; and unto me, all things must return”, directly from Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was the probable source of inspiration for the Golden Dawn.

(c) 2010 Sorita d’Este.  This blog was written by Sorita d’Este for www.sorita.co.uk, allrights reserved.

Comments welcomed at http://www.sorita.co.uk/?p=996

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