“In the later graves of the Anglo-Saxons, silver objects begin to be numerous, and in Viking times silver appears to have been very plentiful…With this later silver Arabic coins are sometimes found in great numbers on the Continent. It is thought that the trade route was up the Volga and so by way of the Baltic to Scandinavia and Britain. If this is so, it was in use before the Viking settlements were formed in Russia for silver becomes common in later Anglo-Saxon graves of the seventh century…” – T.C. Lethbridge, Merlin’s Island (1948)
“From primal dawn to the world’s wide end, Since Time began—the blessing of Pan!” – Doreen Valiente “The Horned God”, Pentagram (March 1965)
“Creating a new Wiccan tradition can be difficult. It requires attention to detail and a bit of imagination or creativity—but this creative thought must be placed within a Wiccan context. If not, you’ll simply be creating a new religion.” – Scott Cunningham, Living Wicca (1993)
If one happens to be in “Pagan” or “Heathen” spaces for any length of time, you are likely at some point to hear about how Wiccans are “wrong” about x, y, or z pertaining to the Gods and Goddesses. A prime example of this is that Witches are often said to be “wrong” in seeing the Moon as a symbol of the Goddess Freya as the word “moon” in both the Old English and Old Norse languages is male.
There are a few things about this attitude that need to be addressed. First, is that Wicca (also a male word in Old English), is traditionally Pantheistic. As Victor Benjamin Neuburg, (author of “Carmen Triumphans” in honor of Giordano Bruno and the Freethought Congress held in Rome in September of 1904), wrote in his essay “Paganism and the Sense of Song” in The Agnostic Journal (January 19, 1907):
From the point of view of the initiate, “God” may be “love”; to those who, like the present writer, are not initiates, and whom honesty compels to be Agnostic, Love is but a manifestation of Pan, though perhaps it may be said to be the fairest of his manifestations.
Pan is even now being re-born—a birth whereof the intellectually observant may quite easily assure themselves—and, as is ever the case with the birth of gods, a new faculty is coincidently evolving amongst men; this new faculty is known by the name of “Cosmic Consciousness,” and consists of harmony between Nature and the Soul.
And as Raymond Buckland wrote in Witchcraft…The Religion (1966):
The God of Witchcraft first appeared in Paleolithic times as the God of Hunting…the first carvings were of the Mother Goddess…Not only would the Gods have different names in different countries but the same was true in different areas of the same country.
Therefore, for a Wiccan, this assertion of “wrongness” would not only serve to ignore centuries of devout Goddess-worship under Christian hegemony that occurred in the Name of “Mary” (and all the local Goddesses “Mary” became the stand-in for—including Freya), but it would also ignore the late antiquity Great Goddess worship from which “Mary” was manufactured in the first place, and which Wicca as a Goddess-worshipping religion intentionally reclaims from Christian (and Islamic) monotheism. The popular cosmopolitan Mother Goddess cults of Isis and Demeter, perceived through Interpretatio Romana as different faces of the same primordial Goddess, were once real political threats to Christianity, and the complete subordination (followed by elimination) of the Mother Goddess in deference to the divine son (and the entire elimination of the divine daughter) provided the perfect theological and political solution. Yet even as Mary is still the Lifeblood of the Roman Church, Goddess religion is preserved in the writings of ancient philosophers still with us today. The great Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, whose writings many modern Pagans turn to for wisdom and comfort, was himself an initiate of the Great Goddess religion of Eleusis. And last, but certainly not least, these comments regarding Wiccan symbolism by non-Wiccans ignore entirely most pre-Judaic and Islamic (i.e. Semitic) Goddess names, such as Ishtar or Astarte, (the latter name added to the “Drawing Down the Moon” litany of self-dedicated American Witch Gerina Dunwich in Wicca Craft, 1991)—as well as the fact that “Diana-worship” was literally one of the heresies with which medieval “witches” were historically accused.
The following very traditional correspondences for the God and Goddess, in the names of Frey and Freya, are taken primarily from the founder of the Saxon tradition of Witchcraft—Raymond Buckland, himself. The book Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham (1988) has also contributed to these correspondences.
Scott Cunningham was a man who was initiated in August 1973 into a Witchcraft tradition which originally had no name, but which he would later call “American Traditionalist”, by a Priestess named Dorothy Jones (see Whispers of the Moon by deTraci Regula and David Harrington, 1996). In his hugely influential book on Wicca, Cunningham shared his solitary adaptations of this tradition as “The Standing Stones Book of Shadows”. Cunningham’s Priestess was described by him as a “feminist” whom he met in a high school drama class when they were fifteen. In his unfinished autobiography, Cunningham wrote that he began to study with Dorothy in late September or early October of 1971 and that it was she who taught him an egalitarian version of Witchcraft in which the Sun was understood to be a symbol of the God, and the Moon, Earth, and Sea were understood as symbols of the Goddess. When Buckland founded Saxon Witchcraft only a couple of years later, he also explicitly identified the Sun as a symbol of the God of the Seax-Wica (Woden), and conjoined this Sun, (and “The Wheel of the Year”) with the Moon as a symbol of the Goddess of the Seax-Wica (Freya), writing in his 2005 introduction to The Tree’s republication as Buckland’s Book of Saxon Witchcraft that these two names may be changed to others, so long as they remained Saxon. For these other possible names, see Buckland’s primary source text for Saxon religion The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston (1957), a book which also discusses the modern religion of Witchcraft/Wicca, a religion of which Buckland considered himself an adherent from his initiation in 1963 until the very end of his life. The astute student of Saxon Witchcraft may have also noticed that Buckland was not only a father of two sons and divorcé, but a Virgo (ruled by Freya according to Gardner’s primary source text on Saxon religion: Wilhelm Wägner’s Asgard and the Gods, 1886) and a man with a living widow—if anyone was for some reason tempted to think, despite Buckland’s own words on the matter, that an autonomous Wiccan choosing a Saxon name other than Woden by which to venerate the Horned God of the “Wica” was in some way a “betrayal” of the Saxon tradition’s Father. It was not in love of his own Father that Buckland chose the name “Woden” for the Wican God, after all. In love of his own Father, Buckland asserted the rightness of the name Gana for the Wican Goddess, in honor of his Romani ancestry.
The last historical, i.e. written evidence, humanity has regarding the tribal Gods common to the Germanic ethnic peoples are the Old Norse Eddas and Sagas composed by Christian monks in Iceland. The earliest historical evidence humanity has regarding the tribal Gods common to the Germanic ethnic peoples are the writings of pagan Roman men, (and the term “Roman”, like the term “Viking”, it must be remembered is not strictly speaking an ethnic category, as a man of any ethnic background could become a Roman—or a Viking).
Humanity has absolutely nothing regarding these tribal Gods common to the Germanic ethnic peoples written by heathen or pagan women. And, likewise, most of the burdens of illiteracy in the world still fall upon women.
What humanity does have, is a great deal of archaeological evidence that women, or at least mothers (matriarchy of course technically means “rule of the mothers” as contrasted with patriarchy or “rule of the fathers”), had a much higher status in Germanic tribal cultures prior to each of their tribe’s respective conversions to Christianity than they were to have after it. It is one of history’s great ironies, however, that it was in large part converted women of the aristocracy pushing for the conversions of their men, who were otherwise (much like many modern men today), happy to keep to their ancestral traditions unless there was a real political and economic advantage to be made by conversion. And therefore, marriage itself, being a primary means of forming political alliances in the heathen world already, undoubtedly presented its advantages as a medium of conversion. For Christian priests, converting the women (largely through the idea that their lives would improve through doctrinal monogamy), and thus breaking the matrilineal ties by which a woman’s brothers remained responsible for their nephews, and with this doctrine being proselytized by sexually non-threatening men, (which an aristocratic maiden’s heathen betrothed would undoubtedly not have been) thereby put, through marriage, these high status women in a position to influence the masculine culture of a society through their husbands and sons. Where this far more peaceful process that capitalized on natural bonds of love among members of the aristocracy was unsuccessful, as the history of the Saxons attests, the hierarchy of conversion became a matter of direct violence and conversion by force. Christian knights of course being the cultural descendants of pagan Roman knights who before them had also brought the “Peace of Rome”. The religious feeling of the common people was, either way, irrelevant.
It is also not insignificant to the historical and archaeological record that Sweden, where the unashamedly phallic God Frey was particularly revered, was the last heathen kingdom to officially convert. The cult of Magna Mater “Great Mother” (Cybele) in Rome was of course just as pagan (i.e. pre-Christian) as a heathen Swede was—but not only was it not matrilineal, and certainly not matriarchal, (pagan Rome being traditionally very patriarchal, as were all of its official state cults, imported or otherwise)—it was a cult lead specifically by castrated priests, much as the Christian cult of Rome must have first appeared to be to these remote Northern European heathens. And their Lord in particular could not have been more different than the “Lord” of Christian belief. The closest analog in their own heathen culture to the Christian idea of a sacrificed criminal being the One True God was really only culturally translatable at all through a God like Odin (Woden). Very little in a God like Thor (Thunor), and even less in a God like Freyr (Frea), could theologically support such a strange cult of infertile-patriarch-magicians worshipping a human sacrifice.
To the extent that autonomy of “choice” in God and Goddess names for the self-dedicated Witch—(just as the coven-based Witch takes a new name upon initiation)—helps the Witch better identify with: “the (horned) God of Hunting—later to become a (foliate) God of Nature generally—and a Goddess of Fertility” Buckland wrote in 1974:
The worship of a God and a Goddess ties in Saxon Witchcraft with other traditions of the Craft as being essentially a Nature religion. Everywhere in Nature is found a system of male and female; because that is the way of the Gods—a God and a Goddess—believe the Witches. No all-male or all-female deity. It is, then, a duotheistic religion.
And:
As Man needs Woman, so does Woman need Man. So it is with the Gods. Let us all be joined as one; at one with the Gods.
The re-birth of real, explicit and unapologetic Goddess-worship in the cultures that had officially completely eradicated it (not to be confused with veneration of the Queen of the Sabbath in Judaism, or Mary in Christianity and Islam—all three of these being theologically monotheistic, rather than theologically duotheistic, religions)—most directly derives from the freethought and feminist movements of the 19th century. Of Scott Cunningham, a man who personally identified Baldur (Balder) as another possible name (among many others) for the Wican God, it can be said that he and his Priestess were working partners for six years, with Cunningham writing, “…the last ritual I performed with Dorothy occurred on October 31, 1977.”
It can also be said of Cunningham, that a good friend of his, a Native Hawaiian who attested to his belief in Reincarnation, stated that it would be wise to look for him now among the native peoples of Hawaii, particularly as someone writing warmly of the island culture. Cunningham had also written of the “American Traditionalist” tradition: “In coven workings the High Priestess is equal with the High Priest.”
Cunningham, given his depth of independent research—(Edward Carpenter’s Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society is just as important a read for many Wiccans as Sex-Love and Its Place in a Free Society, but especially so for those who may find themselves prone to ignore differing expressions of same-sex romantic love in cultures they may personally deem, by political standards, to be “homophobic”)—was someone Buckland personally respected and “vouched” for, both as a friend, and as a reputable teacher of Wicca. Not only did Cunningham share Buckland’s vision of the importance of self-dedication, Buckland also appreciated Cunningham’s efforts toward making Wicca more accessible to those who could not personally identify with the names of Woden for the Witch God and/or Freya for the Witch Goddess. Cunningham also emphasized that Witchcraft for him was a matter of religious knowledge, not of abstract “belief” and that one way of perceiving the Wiccan God and Wiccan Goddess was as twins, (see the 1986 television appearance of Scott Cunningham and Raymond Buckland on Twin Cities Live currently up on YouTube). Other ways of perceiving the Goddess and God, as the Witch’s mother and father, wife and/or husband, and/or mother and/or son, being religious understandings of the Lady and Lord also common among Wiccans—the manifestation of each aspect really only as relevant as they need to be for each autonomous Wiccan, and each autonomous Wiccan coven.
Additionally, it is worth noting that in Cunningham’s discussion of rune magic it is clear he was influenced to some extent by the same divinatory rune stone tradition being taught in the early ‘70s by American Witch Sara Cunningham (1935-2016). Buckland of course included multiple historical runic alphabets in The Tree (1974) when founding the Saxon tradition of Witchcraft, but none of these alphabets were really actively being used in Witchcraft divination at that time. The system of rune stone divination taught by Sara is therefore both uniquely Wiccan, (the commercial success of the “Elder Futhark” only occurring later with the 1984 publication of Edred Thorsson’s Futhark), and a tradition which she taught directly to her primarily female students—somewhat of an outlier in the primarily male-to-female/female-to-male system of Witchcraft teaching predominant in America at that time. One of her rune students was the Witch Priestess Dana Corby (see The Witches’ Runes: A Traditional Divination System, 2018).
The holy day for both Frey, (added to the “Drawing Down the Sun” litany of self-dedicated American Witch Gerina Dunwich in Wicca Craft, 1991) and Freya is Friday, so this would be a good day to hold a weekly Esbat meeting. In reality, however, the best day (or more properly night), is simply the one that works best for that particular coven. Currently, our coven likes to observe our weekly Esbat on Wednesday (i.e. Woden’s Day). A shared symbol of the Lord and Lady is the “Elf Cross” (another name by which the Pentagram became known in Christianized Sweden), and this is the symbol with which modern Saxon Wiccans consecrate one another at Witch meetings. Likewise, the traditional colors for the Lord and Lady in Saxon Witchcraft are the same for both the God and the Goddess, the Earth-oriented colors of White, Green, Yellow and Brown.
While technically any incense that is pleasing to the worshippers may be used in Wiccan ritual, considering the small size of Wiccan temples, incense cones crafted in the tradition of Hindu home worship are in our belief the most appropriate practically and philosophically. Hinduism is the only world religion that, like Wicca, formally involves explicit Goddess-worship. Given that Wicca is a modern Goddess-worship religion with deep philosophical roots in the 19th century, it is worth doing what research you can to ensure that the women crafting whatever incense you buy are doing so not only with sustainably sourced ingredients, but with ethical wages and labor conditions. Our coven currently buys our Frankincense directly from Maroma. Maroma also sells Myrrh in the form of joss sticks. For more historical context about the role of incense in Pagan religions, here is a particularly good article on the topic:
And here are some additional correspondences for Deities of Saxon Wicca:
Frey: Antlered Helmet, Priapic Wand, Seed, Salt, Ale, Copper, Pine, Barley, Cinnamon, Frankincense, Ginger, Clove, Bay Laurel, Rosemary, Stag, Boar, Horse, Sunshine
Freya/Frig: Flower Crown, Silver Circlet, Earth, Water, Mead, Apple, Dandelion, Yarrow, Rose, Damiana, Daisy, Mistletoe, Myrrh, Strawberry, Rhubarb, Pumpkin, Cat, Bee, Sow, Falcon, Rabbit, Corn Dolly
Woden: Horned Helmet, Spear, Salt, Wine, Ash, Fly Agaric, Raven, Wolf, Bear, Wind/Storm, Runes
Feel free to add more according to your own ingenium.
Lincoln Green 