Goddess worship and a celebration of women’s mysteries have been garnering more and more attention lately. The activism of those before us has led us to this point in time – where many women, especially in the West (but also globally) are questioning and rediscovering their histories (or rather, herstories), and that is a powerful thing. As mentioned in other places in this blog, religion is a powerful tool for control, information and indoctrination. Because religion touches so many aspects of people’s lives, the fact that most of the world’s conventional religions are male-focused is important. It is critical to be aware of what it means to be a woman living under the patriarchy, and what it means for half of the world’s population to not be able to find herself in leadership positions within religion. Witchcraft, Wicca and pagan practices are viewed as liberating for this reason – here women take on the role of not just practitioner but priestess, not just one of consumption but control, and that is empowering.
Wicca is a religion of orthopraxy – meaning it focuses more on practice than belief and faith. This is why, whereas many people believe you have to be duotheistic to be Wiccan, this is simply not true (in fact, there are atheists that are Wiccan, and they are valid). In any case, the conventional duotheistic model places at the center a God (usually representative of the Divine Masculine) and a Goddess (usually representative of the Divine Feminine). Dianic Wicca focuses on only goddess worship and the divine feminine.