When I was first asked to write an article on invoking the Goddess, a dozen or so ideas came to mind. One, however, stood out. It is a song by Alicia Bonnet set to a rock rhythm called "You Can't Hurry The Goddess." The words go like this:
You can't hurry the Goddess
You've got to wait; you've got to trust Her and give Her time;
She'll be there, don't you worry
She may not come when you want Her, but She's right on time.
Besides being a catchy tune, this song goes a long way to describing my own experiences with invoking the Goddess. Now I have been to many rituals where the Goddess was invoked and one of the people present had been designated to be Her voice. The results were often less than inspiring. Some read from a sheet of paper prepared in advance. Others delivered a mostly memorized text in a flat monotone with their eyes closed. Still others forgot their words and mumbled something until they got to the end of their message or their memory.
I'm not being critical. I have been guilty of all these faults myself. It's not easy to invoke a deity and surrender yourself to Her and to allow Her voice to speak through you. It is a lot of work. In an excellent article in Widdershins (Oestara 1998), a ritual actress described the process by which she drew down Goddesses for her performances in the Spring Mysteries Festival (see a review of the most recent SMF in this issue).
The article, called "Sleeping With The Goddess," describes the powerful impact that drawing a god-form into yourself can have. She begins studying, dedicating and preparing as much as six months in advance! The influence of the deity affects her daily life, her moods, and even her likes and dislikes. "By the time the actual festival arrives," she says, "I have already been sleeping with the Goddess for a while. I can invoke her into me with relative ease. I have an idea how she might react to a given situation. It is then that I do more than act, because I have become the Goddess."
Of course taking on a god-form for a four day festival is quite a bit more involved than invoking one during a one or two hour ritual. In ritual, we do not have to be "in deity" for as long a time or in as many different and demanding situations. Usually in our solo or small circle rituals, we invoke a God or Goddess to deliver a single, focused message that may relate to the season or to a specific need for which we have prayed. Even so, the experience is very powerful - if it happens. I say if it happens because in our small rituals, we are asking the Goddess to come at a particular moment and, like the song says, "She may not come when you want Her."
So what can we do to get the Goddess to come to us when we haven't got six months to prepare? I can relate two personal examples that helped me to find an answer to this question. The first was a Summer Solstice ritual on the beach at Golden Gardens. It was late afternoon. The sun speckled the waves like a carpet of flashing diamonds. The sand was warm and the air was uncanny still. We had come to that part of the ritual when the Goddess was to speak to us. While the other women chanted, the priestess invoked the Goddess into me. She finished by stroking my aura and repeating over and over, "Thou art Goddess!"
I had prepared a trance journey to recite and I had memorized enough that I could manage without notes. While the priestess was invoking, I was repeating to myself the outline of my speech. Then it happened. A feeling like a white light turned liquid, something like a dripping candle, melted above my head and flowed down over me. My vision blurred and when it cleared, the beach was gone. I was in the trance and I was on the journey that I had prepared to describe. Words tumbled out of my mouth but they were not guided by my memory or my will. I dimly perceived the other women around me. I concluded with a blessing upon them. When I finished, the spell broke, and the others went on with the ritual.
Unfortunately, the priestess forgot to devoke me. I felt very awkward and "in between." I was out of the trance, but the aura of the Goddess still shimmered about me. After communion I knelt briefly with my hand in the chalice and tried to encourage the aura to flow off of me and into the cup. It didn't work completely, because it was me alone devoking while it had been the whole circle's energy that went into the invoking. I was alternately frustrated and confused for several days afterwards.
My second experience of invoking is what often happens for me during my solitary worship. Every Sunday morning right after my shower when I am fresh and clean and unadorned, I kneel before my altar for ritual. I declare my intention and empty myself of distractions and concerns that block me from being present. Then I build sacred space in the usual way - casting, consecrating, calling the directions and crystallizing my intention. I pray, sing and meditate in keeping with the intention. Then I am ready to invoke.
I have been doing this for years, so the words of the invocation are part of my cellular memory by now; so much so that I can adjust the titles by which I call the Mother to fit the season and my intention without losing my way. I do not know where the core words actually came from, but they are ours now:
"Spring Maiden, who in Beltaine's fire matures into the fertile Mother Goddess, you whom I worship and adore, I do call you and invoke you. By seed and root, by bud and stem, by leaf and flower and fruit; by night and day, by life and love, by birth and death, by joy and sorrow, I do call you forth. By the rising and the setting of the sun and the phases of the moon, by the changing of the seasons, and the turning of the wheel of life, by love alone, I do call you to this circle. Queen of Beltaine, Spark of Passion, come to me now at this time of magic and mystery, reveal to me the message of this season, and do you let me know your presence, in the power of all love that is, that was, and that shall ever be. Be with me now, O queen and mother!"
At this point I fall silent for a space to let the words of invocation reverberate through my body. Then I sing the Charge of the Goddess. It is a shorter version than the original composed by the late Doreen Valiente. This one is a beautiful melody by Angie Remedi on her tape "The Mother Calls." I find it captures the essence of the longer version and has the added benefit of engaging mind, spirit, voice, breathing and emotions in a very poignant way.
In that singing, the Goddess comes. I have no idea what She is going to say, other than She usually addresses the intention for which I am doing the ritual. Sometimes She comes out with the most amazing insights. She challenges. She scolds. She opens my heart or steels my resolve. Other times She merely confirms the status quo, gives comfort, healing and blessing. When She's finished, I always devoke by sending Her into the communion drink, which I take immediately afterward to confirm Her message within me.
Of course, sometimes She doesn't come at all. Even then, however, I feel a peace and a blessing. Whether She gives me a personal message or not, the rite itself helps me to recalibrate my spiritual clock. It centers and grounds me for the week. The power of the ritual fuels my intention which more often than not manifests favorably during the next seven days. On those occasions, I like to think that the Goddess must have chosen to respond in deeds rather than in words.
There is another possibility and this is the deeper lesson that I have learned from my experiences. Since we believe that the Gods and Goddesses reside within ourselves and that the god-forms are archetypes or expressions of our own personalities, the act of invoking may actually be a turning within. It is useful, and sometimes fun, to think that we "call a god-form into ourselves" when we do an invocation, but maybe what we are really doing is calling ourselves into our god-forms. Invocation may be our way of contacting and connecting to the divine within us.
If this is the case, and for me I think it is, then all the preparations, whether for six months or within the compressed time of a specific ritual, are keys to open the doors to my inner being. The messages of the Goddess are my own needs and desires, dreams and perceptions, bidding unfettered for my attention. As I progress through the steps of ritual, releasing more and more of my mundane self, and tapping into the power of repeated practice, I prepare myself to react to the call that the invocation will trigger. If my preparation is successful, the words of invocation will launch me into my inner space where I will encounter the Goddess and receive Her message.
Understood in this way, it explains why the Goddess is always "right on time." She never left. She is always there within me. It is I, through the power of invocation, who does the traveling.
Janice Van Cleve is a writer and priestess of the Women Of The Goddess Circle listed in this issue of Widdershins.