“The Gods are real, not as persons, but as vehicles of power. Briefly, it may be explained that the personification of a particular type of cosmic power in the form of a God or Goddess, carried out by believers and worshippers over many centuries, builds that God-form or Magical Image into a potent reality on the Inner Planes, and makes it a means by which that type of cosmic power may be contacted.” These are the words of Gerald Gardner. It could easily have been Jung who said this, referring to gods and goddesses as archetypes – unconscious aspects of who we are that are discovered through art, music, and myth. Even Jung’s ideas dated back to ancient Athens, so the idea of love, for instance, being embodied in the goddess Aphrodite and her art and mythos is actually a manifestation of our human need to visualize the concept of Love. Thankfully we can let go of this concept during ritual which takes us back to Gardner stating that the Goddess is a potent reality. I have said that this is also true of magical tools and symbols. Religious symbols (pentacles, crosses, etc.) have no power of themselves; it is our imprinting over centuries that creates the power.
Enjoy your power!
Blessed be,
Sally
POWER IN REPITITION. I read in your book about tools finding the practicioner,
and have witnessed this to be true. I also think that there is a dynamic
between archetype – symbols of the collective unconscious – and the power
ifused into rituals, prayers, symnbols by the incredible gravitas of how many
centuries they have been used or repeated.
I think this is where part of the controversy of coven collectrive practrice
vs. solitaires comes from …; To me they are jsut different ways of the path.
Blessed BE