Finally spring! My favorite season is beginning to bloom with all shades of green and bright flowers around us! My favorite holiday, Beltaine, is here, and with it all the many rites of spring. Both people and animals are catching scent of one another in anticipation of coupling up to celebrate the ancient rites.
We can see that the God, divine male energy, and the Goddess, divine female energy, come together at this time of year to enact the sacred sexual cycle of the turning of the wheel. We honor them as a recognition of the creative force of the universe and us. Sex and creativity are big parts of the cycles that drive the wheel of the year.
Most pagans revere the divinity in one another and to us, sacred sex is making love to the Goddess. It is love, magick and reverence. It sees the divinity in others and worships that divinity with respect and consensual freedom. In that vein, some of us held special "Goddess worship rituals" to honor the divine in one another, and to worship the Goddess, as in the Aphrodite shrine at the latest Spring Mysteries Festival. Melanie interviews some of the cast members from SMF about what it's like to be invoked with Greek Gods and Cody writes about her experience as a first time attendee at the festival. Whether or not you attended SMF, it doesn't take extraordinary perception to see the God and Goddess, sex and all things divine around us.
This issue focuses on the invocation of that divine energy; bringing the God or Goddess directly and consciously into a person for the purpose of communing directly with that deity. In addition to the interview, an article about Pan and several Goddess stories explore this concept. A fanciful historical story by one of our long time favorites, Bestia Mortale, is a departure from the everyday reality that we all live in. Other pleasurable departures are to be had by listening to music and attending events, and we have reviews of some wonderful spring music and an interesting local magickal rite.
As of this issue, we have been calling upon the creative energy force by creating Widdershins for eight years! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support, recognition and loyalty!
As a section of the Charge of the Goddess goes: "All acts of love and pleasure are My sacred rituals!" and this is the holiday for us witches and pagans to honor that wisdom. This Beltaine season, go out and commit a random act of sacred pleasure, whatever that means to you. See the divine in those around you and treat them as such, and the Gods will smile on you.