GREENLEAF MAGAZINE

We all come from the goddess
And to her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean

Like a spark of fire
Rising to the open sky

Hoof and horn, hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again

Oak and pine, oak and pine
All that falls shall grow in time

The laws of copyright would certainly apply in the case of anyone making use of composed lyrics as part of a commercial product. The open pagan circle, or gathering around a campfire is a very different milieu. Here songs that may have once been written by someone are combined altered and added to, so that they become part of a new folk culture. I've chosen a modern pagan chant which is very important, because it's popular, is good for raising energy, and raises interesting ideas about pagan belief.

The verse at the top left is attributed in a book to Z. Budapest who was a feminist and was Starhawk's teacher of magic, so it comes from a tradition in which women learnt to empower themselves. The verse at the top right is attributed to Ian Corrigan and has the same melody for its even lines as does the first verse. I can't say when they were first sung together as part of the same song, but now they nearly always are, and the images are similar. It is a standing joke among modern witches that singing the first verse tends to bring on the rain, always an easy trick in the British climate. Interpolating the alternative words at bottom left at every other round of the song may help. The verse at bottom right is just a suggestion, it hasn't been sung very often, even by me. The history of these fragments and how they come to be used by pagans illustrates the idea I introduced that they have become a new folk culture - and No, they haven't been handed down at whispered initiations from before the "burning times".

What about their meaning? These are words of a religious belief, but hardly a dogma, they are mythical poetic and imply a mystery not a doctrine or creed. If you think of the body of the Goddess as the earth itself, the words speak of the cycle of nature, of birth and death, and we, all our organic material, will indeed return to her. And even if we do not survive, life will survive, is that not perhaps enough? But maybe also we partake of the spirit of the Goddess, so we are drops in her sea, and will unite in her, like the golden lotus that slips into the sea in an image from Indian mysticism. And maybe we and the animals and the plants are reincarnated, are spiritually reborn. Maybe modern pagans believe in both cycles of renewal, physical and spiuritual, so we are Ecologists as well as Mystics.

In a cynical mode I also penned a heretical version, this goes "we all come from the Goddess like water from a main, we shoot right out of her spout, then we trickle down into her drain". You may make what you will of that.

Blessed Be!
[PUBLISHED in GREENLEAF August 1998]

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