The Divine Mysteries, & Ritual-As-Worship

With our ethics as NeoWiccans, and our views of Divinity, we can naturally extrapolate that our rituals (which are different from base spell work and should not be confused for one another) should typically entail greater things. That is to say: During ritual we should ultimately be engaged in raising the soul beyond materially motivated trivialities such as power, money, and so on ... After all, the gap between ourselves and divinity cannot be breached by simply acquiring more- but by becoming more; by the conscious expansion of our subconscious.

The penultimate point is, ultimately, not only to recognize the boundaries of our material existence … But to seek to exceed these boundaries; to transcend and evolve our understanding of self in relation to the Universe, and to the Universal Divine. In order to achieve this, however, we must first explore and understand all that exists within the boundaries in which we ourselves exist. And this itself harkens back to the manifestation of the Divine as consubstantially divided before us within the binaric polar extremes of nature.

This is what it means to experience The Mysteries, and ultimately come to understand them. After all, the Mysteries are the means by which we ultimately come to know ourselves as the product of the Divine, and can come to truly understand the spark of the Divine which exists within us (and within all of nature and the world itself) … And the greatest tool we have as NeoWiccans, through which to explore these Mysteries, is spiritual metaphor made real through ritual, as a method of Divine worship.

History, culture, and myth all combine to weave a pattern which has ultimately evolved across time, from Humanity attempting to understand its place within both the Universe and the world around itself. This mythic landscape that it creates, which we traverse through religion and ritual, is one which is rich in spiritual beauty and metaphor. And when openly engaged with, this mythos plots the course towards a spiritual Truth.

Conventional roles have historically ascribed- or even occasionally limited- some of these traditional mythological concepts. However, these limitations can (in part) actually help us to facilitate this goal of Divine assimilation should we allow ourselves to understand how to properly harness these boundaries ... And so the Mysteries, and faces of the Great Divine by proxy, are taught separately in this binaric manner at first, in order to focus one’s lessons more succinctly. The intent is to later expand one’s awareness and give the proper definition to the third set of Mysteries by which the original binaries- the boundaries the Divine seeks to overcome- are ultimately destroyed and thus transcended as intended.

Ultimately to deny or attempt to alter this pattern can, at times, negate the entire mythologies upon which the system is built, and the role these mythologies and their various elements play in the dissemination of The Mysteries in its appropriate order. This can lead to a disruption of the pattern, and thus a misunderstanding of The Mysteries themselves; within this pattern, it is only through the initial study of these biased roles that this third neutral role can become truly (and vividly) understood and experienced, and thus the bias appropriately transcended.

The primary purpose of continuous ritual-as-worship, then, is ultimately to commit oneself to “an alchemy of the soul”, through the experience of The Mysteries, through regular communion with the Left and the Right faces of the Divine ... Through such actions one’s Innermost Self is unified, and their own internal Spark of Divinity is crowned as Sovereign Incarnate, so as to become congruous with (and therefore comprehensive of) the whole of the One Great Divine itself. The balancing of such polaric energies, then, is the primary mark of the truly mature and properly integrated practitioner.

In other words: We commune with the Left and Right faces of the Divine, and their unique Polaric Mysteries and Mythologies, in order to understand The Third Mystery of The Unified Divine- and, by proxy, the Divine Self Internal and Sovereign Incarnate.

To clarify this is not to 'take the mystery out of the Mysteries', however. The Mysteries themselves cannot, by their nature, ever be fully described or exposed to outsiders in words. Indeed, there are no books or words which exist, which could ever reveal these secrets, these Mysteries. And no amount of intellectualizing about the Mysteries alone will induce these experiences. In fact, heavy intellectualization and literalism seriously compromises one’s ability to experience them- and to understand their experience correctly; it is only through a careful balance of both the Mind, Body, and Soul that equilibrium can be achieved.

Regardless of their patterning, too, these Mysteries must be experienced by each individual on their own; all forms of Wicca are, at their core, a Mystery Religion, and an experiential one at that- and NeoWicca is no different.

The basics are provided through both written and oral guided study, yes. And a clear ritual structure and mythology exists across traditions to some extent, of course ... But it exists specifically in order to elicit the experience of The Mysteries- as well as to guide practitioners through understanding their experiences within the confines of the faith and its mythos. What develops through that experience is what the religion ultimately is- not what is read about it in books.

Likewise, one must never confuse ritual itself with the Mysteries themselves; though the ritual is a core and integral feature, the ritual is not the Mystery- it is a structured and guided way of contacting and experiencing them. The Truth that lies within the Mysteries are perceived only by those who earn it- not by elitism and egotism ... But by dedication, action, and surrender to the experiences, and the lessons they teach.