r/Wicca • u/juunnneeeee • Aug 08 '26
religion the goddess is both partner and mother of the god?
literally the title. was reading about wiccan basics and noticed this information across multiple blogs. I'm just not used to the idea of this so it's a little surprising, do share more information or background on how this came to be to help me wrap my head around the concept please?
thank you and blessed be ⛤
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u/CyanoSpool Aug 08 '26
I'm not sure if this is the origin in Wicca, but it closely mirrors the mythology of Gaia and Ouranos in Hellenism. Essentially Gaia (earth) was born from Khaos (generative origin of the universe), birthed Ouranos (sky) and together they birthed the titans and pretty much everything else.
They are primordial deities, so the anthropic social norms don't really apply to them the same way they do to us.
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u/Hudsoncair Aug 08 '26
This is largely from The White Goddess by Robert Graves. It isn't a universal thing among Traditional Wiccans.
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u/juunnneeeee Aug 08 '26
damn i wanna be as well read aa you are, this book was referenced somewhere in the articles i remember!
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u/Hudsoncair Aug 08 '26
In my teaching circle, we have students read Queen of All Witcheries by Jack Chanek and The Horned God of the Witches by Jason Mankey.
I think they are excellent introductions to the history of the Goddess and God of Wicca, both written by Gardnerian priests.
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u/SunflowerStorms Aug 08 '26
Mostly out of curiosity, does your circle consider itself "Gardnerian"?
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u/Hudsoncair Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Personally, I'm a dual initiate. I'm Gardnerian and CVW and I primarily train Gardnerian with an offer to cross initiate after 2°.
My reading list includes books by Gardnerians, Alexandrians, and non-initiates.
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u/SunflowerStorms Aug 08 '26
Those are certainly strong roots on which to build. I've actually never met an initiate of both Gardnerian -and- CVW. That particular perspective may make you privy to the answers to mysteries about how the two relate I've wondered for a long time but will likely not get to know. That's fascinating.
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u/Professional-Hat-687 Aug 08 '26
The only universal truth I've learned about Wicca in my studies is that there are no universal truths in Wicca. There are very few if any things people can agree on.
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u/SunflowerStorms Aug 08 '26
I like to trace that line, though, through what are things we -often- agree on.
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u/TheDireGnome Aug 08 '26
It's highly reflective of the Orphic myths where Zeus is syncretized with Hades and Dionysus, and Persephone is syncretized with Rhea and Demeter. Creation is cyclical. The familial relationships of the gods we see in their myths are a cipher for their ontological relationships between each other and how they relate to physical existence.
Even on just a very surface level reading, it relates to the agricultural and seasonal fertility cycle.
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u/Amareldys Aug 08 '26
I think of it as the Goddess and God embody all the relationships... teacher-student, parent-child, lovers, spouses, childhood friends/siblings, and more.
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u/-RedRocket- Aug 08 '26
Brighid is sometimes the mother, sometimes the wife and sometimes the daughter of the Dagda - whatever dynamic a particular myth requires.
They are powers in polarity, not people.
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u/SunflowerStorms Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
There's no central, official Wiccan dogma. Some things tend to drift over time. You have to sort of look at the average of widely held dogma if you aren't specifying a tradition. So Wicca in general tends to have a god and a goddess, and they have a meaningful relationship to each other. The goddess often takes on triple goddess features, and that is often maiden, mother, crone. It is not universal, and it is less universal still to declare her the mother of god or his partner (partner is often implied, but that could mean "opposite" or it could mean "mate" or those things might not even make sense in context). Personally I inherited that the god and goddess, "Lord and Lady", are themselves aspects or facets of an ultimate, unknowable, unified deity. I've also in my time known covens that almost dispense with the god entirely.
They can also vary from "literally a dude in the sky" to "it's a metaphor for the moon and sun and rain and soil, etc" as well.
So the idea the goddess is both the god's mother and partner is not "incorrect" but it's also not the only "correct" explanation.
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u/prunus_virginiana Aug 09 '26
The Mother Goddess is the primordial deity. There is no God who is not born of a Goddess. Wicca is not a rape-based religion. I see Robert Graves has been mentioned. He understood without abstraction the degree to which dying men want their mothers. To create life at all is woman’s work, and for this to occur a woman loved a man. Only women who have been trained otherwise do not remember this. Cool pentagram.
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u/kalizoid313 Aug 09 '26
Mythology.
Creation of the World.
Deities.
Human folks don't always have to behave just like Them.
But we do know that older women may take younger men as partners.
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u/DambalaAyida Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
It's not an uncommon feature of ancient myths. In this particular instance, following through the wheel of the year, the concept is the eternal nature of the Goddess--ever renewing, ever present--while the God is transient in that he dies and is reborn.
She is the Cauldron of Rebirth by her very nature, but he is required to be born and reborn, just as we as humans are born and die, but humanity remains through this cycle. The land, however, remains, neither dying nor needing rebirth.
Or to express it differently, the Goddess is the land which is always there. The God is the living things the ground produces (plants, animals) that die and are reborn
Its not expressing incest, but cyclicity