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The Dianic Tradition - Core Beliefs:
The Dianic tradition is a Goddess- and female-centered,
earth-based, feminist denomination of the Wiccan religion revived and inspired by author and activist, Zsuzsanna Budapest
in the early 1970's. The Dianic tradition is a vibrantly creative and evolving Women's Mystery tradition thast is inclusive
of all women. Our practices include celebrating and honoring the numerous physical, emotional and other life cycle passages
that women share by having been born female. Contemporary Dianic tradition recognizes the greater or lesser effects and influences
of the dominant culture on every aspect of women's lives. Since 1971, the Dianic movement has inspired and provided healing
rituals to counter the effects of living in patriarchy, and has worked to understand, deconstruct, and heal from the dominant
culture wherein we live and practice our faith. We define "patriarchy" as the use of "power-over" thinking and action to oppress
others, either institutionally, or within the personal sphere of our lives.
-- The Dianic tradition is based
on a Goddess-centered cosmology and the primacy of She Who is All and Whole unto Herself.
Dianics spiritually
reclaim the Goddess, both as the Source of Life and She to whom all will return in death. In seasonal, lunar, personal, and
group rituals, our approach to the practice of magik, and our liturgy, art, and personal perception lies outside of a male/female
or Goddess/God dualism. The language and primary reference for life is female.
For many Dianics, the Goddess is not
an entity but the Web of Life itself. We use female imagery as a metaphor to speak of this. This means when we address the
Goddess, we are addressing the whole web and acknowledging our part in the web at the same time. We do not pray, in the usual
sense; rather we focus our conscious awareness on the web. We invoke Her by aligning our personal will with the energies we
call to conscious awareness within and without. When we do magic, we try to focus our awareness and will on particular strands
in the Web.
-- Dianic Tradition draws inspiration from the Goddess Diana.
Inspired by the qualities
and aspects of the Roman goddess Diana and her predecessor, the Greek goddess Artemis, as a protector of women and wild nature,
Dianic witches are committed to the fundamental values of feminism: the healing and protection of the Earth Mother, safety
and human rights for women and children, and liberation for all oppressed people. Dianics use magic and ritual as a tool for
healing and to counter patriarchy within and without.
-- Dianic practices are inspired by the awareness that
the Goddess has been known throughout time by many names and in numerous cultures worldwide.
Rather than a focus
on one entity exclusively, Dianics honor the Goddess, who has been called by Her daughters throughout time in many places
and by many names. While we honor all of Her names and faces, there is also an ongoing commitment to develop understanding
and sensitivity where the lines of worship and cultural appropriation may cross. An ongoing commitment to examining and challenging
racism is an integral part of the Tradition.
-- Dianic rituals celebrate the mythic cycle of the Goddess within
the earth's seasonal cycles of birth, death, and regeneration, and as Her cycle reflects women's own life-cycle transitions.
The Dianic wheel of the year celebrations of the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter holidays are based on
the ever-changin, cyclic, and eternal nature of the Goddess. Unlike other Wiccan traditions, Dianic seasonal rites do not
focus on or celebrate the exclusively heterosexual fertility cycle of the Goddess and the God. Dianic rituals may be creatively
altered in their design from year to year, even as the seasonal theme remains constant.
The Goddess is celebrated
in Her triple aspects of Maiden, Mother, and Crone as a manifestation of the entire life cycle: birth, maturation, and death.
The Goddess has the power to bring forth life, nurture life, protect life, sustain life, and destroy life. This concept contains
nature's entire continuum.
-- Dianic tradition is a Women's Mysteries ritual tradition that celebrates women's
life cycle events.
Dianics recognize that it is within our own power to restore meaning to our lives by honoring
the rites of passage we call Women's Mysteries. We recognize that our human experience is filtered through, and informed by
our women's bodies and specifically female physiology. Dianics are commited to valuing equally all phases of women's lives,
from childhood to becoming an elder. As with the turning of the seasons, each phase in honored in its time.
Women's
Mysteries include the physical, emotional, and psychic passages that women universally share by having been born biologically
female. The five Blood Mysteries, which are the core of our ritual work and spiritual ethic, are comprised of: being born,
menarche, giving birth/lactation, menopause, and death. These Mysteries acknowledge and honor women's ability to create life,
sustain life, and return our bodies to the Goddess in death. Whether or not a woman chooses to birth children, all women pass
through the Mother phase as they choose life paths that sustain our species or other life forms.
Women's Mysteries
rituals support and celebrate female bonding, honor other significant personal milestones and transitions in women's lives,
and work to heal from the effects of the dominator culutre, both personally and globally.
In the honoring of Women's
Mysteries we also recognize that "our biology makes us human females, our culture makes us women" (Wendy Griffin). Dianic
Witchcraft helps women develop into full personhood. Our vision is to empower women and transform our global culture so that
women and men live in true equality worldwide.
-- Dianic Tradition is celebrated in exclusively women-only
circles.
Dianics recognize that the God, and all that is specifically male in nature, is a variation of the Goddess,
sourced from and contained within Her, as males and females are created, contained within, and birthed from the wombs of women.
Therefore, although the God is always present as one of Her sacred creations, He is not specifically invoked in Dianic ritual,
and there are no specifically male images on a Dianic altar.
Being a Women's Mysteries tradition, Dianic religion
is for women, not against men. We support the right of males to their exclusive celebrations of Men's Mysteries in recognition
of their unique rites of passage and spiritual journey to the Goddess. Many Dianic circles welcome male infants and toddlers
with their mothers providing that the ritual itself is age-appropriate for a child to attend.
Dianics support all
people in finding their path to the Goddess. However, we do not recognize hormonally or surgically altered men (m-f transsexuals)
as female, and therefore hormonally and surgically altered men and transgender men who self-define as women are excluded from
participating in our tradition. Women's Mysteries cannot be understood nor experienced through chemical or surgical alterations
to a male body. As women, we honor the ways that we are informed by our female physiology, cellular memory, and our ability
to work power from within our wombs and outward. Even if a woman has had her womb removed later in life, her body of wisdom
has been informed by her physical experiences of girlhood and womanhood. She will continue to work power from her womb-space
all her life. Because Dianic Tradition focuses on rites to heal women from the effects of personal and global oppression,
we deal with growing up female in woman-hating cultures worldwide. The depth to which patriarchy has shaped and affected our
lives as women cannot truly be understood unless one has experienced it from birth. In light of this basic value of of our
tradition, it is simply not appropriate for male-to-female transsexuals to attend our events. Our tradition is not about them,
and it does not address nor include their unique experiences. The only exception to this exclusion are those rare, true hermaphrodites
who have been raised female in our culture. Many other Wiccan traditions do not share this fundamental requirement, and most
of them welcome transsexual persons as participants. Women who self-define as male would, by their own definition, exclude
themselves from Dianic circles.
-- Dianics honor our foremothers' voices, thoughts, and ideas.
The
Dianic tradition is committed to uncovering, examining, reclaiming, or ascribing contemporary meanings to the lost or forgotten
legacies, traditions, and magical practices of our foremothers from earliest times, and to recover herstory. We recognize
that women's practices of the past are time- and place-specific, and that it is up to us to ascribe and reconstruct new meanings
for spiritual practices within today's cultural contexts.
We honor our ancestors, and the wombs from which we sprang,
understanding that without honoring our past, we have no present or future. We honor our foremothers whose courageous pioneering
efforts forged the way for us and made our path easier.
-- Power is sourced through our wombs.
Our
wombs are literally and metaphorically our personal cauldrons of creation, our centers. Power, defined as the ability to do,
comes from within and with, not from exercising power over another. We recognize that womb-space is still the energetic source
of power, even if a woman has had a hysterectomy.
-- Dianics honor the body of a woman as a manifestation
of the Goddess.
Dianic believe that it is healing and joyous for a woman to have a personal and direct experience
of herself as a sacred manifestation of the Goddess, not just intellectually, but on an ecstatic cellular level. Dianic tradition
promotes the spiritual, religious, and celebratory use of female imagery as one of the many manifestations of the Goddess,
as we recognize ourselves and all our children as born in Her divine image.
-- Dianic ritual and magical practices
honor women's creativity, intuition, and ability to improvise.
Rather than scripted or set liturgy as the consistent
or expected norm, Dianics encourage improvisation (authentic creative expression in the moment)in the arts, dance, writing,
inspired speech and song in ritual design and during the ritual itself. Beloved songs, chants, poetry, and invocations often
become tradition when repeated over time and as they continue to provide meaningful ritual experiences for a group or a solitary
pratcitioner.
-- Dianics recognize that women's magic is a sacred trust; therefore, Dianics do not teach their
Women's Mysteries and magic to men.
"Until the equality between the sexes is a reality, Dianics are opposed to
teaching women's magic and mysteries to men (Z Budapest The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries, 1989, p.3). However,
most Dianics are pleased to discuss the Goddess with interested men, or refer men to books or other traditions that will encourage
their own journey to the Goddess and address their life experiences and issues. Some women who practice in the Dianic tradition
also share a different co-gender ritual practice with their male partners, family, friends or sons.
-- Sexuality
is sacred. When lovers meet in mutual love, trust, and equality, these expressions of love and pleasure are a gift to, and
from, the Goddess.
The Dianic tradition is committed to a feminist paradigm of true sexual liberation. We are
work to free ourselves from the effects of patriarchal, woman-hating culture that equates sexuality, sexual expression, and
eroticism with sadism, masochism, dominance, and subordination. Sexual practices that dehumanize, and whose purpose it is
to cause pain, humiliation, or suffering, whether consensual or not, are inconsistent with a new paradigm for an egalitarian,
peaceful, and healed world where power shared means empowerment for all. We support nothing less than a revolution from within
and without, both in the world and in the temple of the bedroom.
-- Sacred play is a form of spiritual practice.
Finding ways to enjoy and appreciate the gifts of life offered by the Goddess daily is a way to worship Her. Partaking
fully of these pleasurable moments counters despair and fuels our courage and activism.
-- Dianic tradition
is a teaching tradition.
Women teaching, sharing, and passing down knowledge is an act of sharing power. Teaching
the next generation will help ensure that the Dianic tradition will endure and women's wisdom survives.
--Adherence
to the Wiccan Rede.
Dianic tradition stands in accord with the Wiccan Rede, which states, "An it harm none, do
what you will." We honor free will, with the intention that our magical actions be for the greater good of all.
This
Wiccan guidepost supports full consciousness with regards to the use of power in magical workings and in daily life, and promotes
critical, ethical examination of one's actions or inaction.
(excerpted from Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries:
Intuitive Ritual Creation by Ruth Barrett, 2007, Lewellyn Publications, pp. 306 - 311)
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