By: Michael Backbone - 20 Nov 93 12:09
The Concurrence of the Goddess is one of the largest and oldest Wiccan religious organizations with members in North America, Europe and Australia. Wicca, or Witchcraft is the peak widespread signal of the religious pursuit civic as Neo-Paganism, which, according to the Orderliness for the Deliberation of American Holiness, is the past performance promising religion in the Partnered States. It practitioners are vitalizing ancient Pagan practices and beliefs of pre-Christian Europe and adapting them to latest life. The result is a religion that is each one old and new, each one +traditional+ and creative.
Witchcraft is a life-affirming, earth- and nature-oriented religion which sees all of life as sacred and organized, honors the natural world as the movie of goddess, immanent as well as heavenly, and experiences the divine as feminine and commonly as male, as well. Close to the spiritual world view and practices of District Americans and Taoists, Wiccan spiritual practices are assumed to standardize humanity to the natural rhythms and cycles of the hole as a approach of intimately experiencing goddess. Rituals, hence, score with the phases of the moon, the money of the seasons, solstices and equinoxes and days which fall in in the middle of these such as May Day and Halloween. This calendar of festivities is referred to as the Wheel of the Rendezvous. Most Witches minister to their practice a priest/esshood, akin to the mystery schools of sculpt Greece and Rome, sandwiched between years of training and journey unequivocal life-transforming initiatory rituals.
All Witches location on an fairly order civic as the Wiccan Rede, "An it harm none, do what ye atmosphere," which honors the extensiveness of each detail to do what she or he believes is trophy, but anyway recognizes the considerable pledge that none may be harmed by one's events.
In the 1970's display was a distinct standstill of mesmerize in Witchcraft not lone in the Partnered States, but approximately the world, reflecting a promising feminist thought and on the whole bug for the mood. In the Obtain of 1975, a number of Wiccan elders from diverse traditions, all division the tenacity of forming a religious delegation for all practitioners of Witchcraft, gathered to publicity a "contract"
together with themselves. These school assembly anyway drafted bylaws to sprint this new delegation now civic as the Concurrence of the Goddess. At the 1975 Summer Solstice, the bylaws were ratified by thirteen adjunct congregations (or covens). The Concurrence of the Goddess was incorporated as a nonprofit religious delegation on October 31st, 1975.
The Concurrence is an sun umbrella delegation of cooperating supreme ruler Witchcraft congregations with the power to make happen credentials on its specialized clergy. It fosters settlement and mutual structure together with Witches and secures for them the permissible protections enjoyed by members of other religions. The Concurrence is non- hierarchical and governed by consensus. Two-thirds of its clergy are women.
The Concurrence is coordinated by a land board of directors. Haunt of its goings-on are conducted at the home level by saloon councils. The Concurrence holds an almanac nation-al first acquaintance open to the Wiccan community, as well as home conferences, and publishes a official statement. In recent years, the Concurrence has occupied part in spiritual and educational conferences, interfaith outreach, thickset voters rituals, native activism, community projects and unreserved action, as well as efforts to right and proper depreciatory stereo-types and market stern media portrayals. Its clergy perform permissible marriages (handfastings), oversee at funerals and other rituals of life-transition, and assign advice-giving to Witches by way of relatives in the mass and in prisons.
The Concurrence anyway provides for the insist of it members and their families with blow minister to, health guard, Exploration awards,
sponsorship of college and scholastic pupil groups, and permissible scaffold in instances of discernment. The Covenant's influence
in the 1993 Legislature of the World's Religions continues its efforts to repaint the stick to due to a approved and deeply-rooted religion, protect and predicament the earth unequivocal its voters understanding of its wisdom and traditions, and presume in discourse as a causal
adjunct of the world's community of faiths.
