These are theological basic texts that we recommend to all Wiccan Priestesses and Priests interested in public group ministry. These are books that we would consider essential to developing an effective theology. You may agree or disagree, if you have good reasons – there are other options, but the perspectives discussed in these texts are essential.
The Spiral Dance by Starhawk is a book that probably everybody already has. Published in 1979 although there have been a couple of editions since then. What’s really useful with her is that in the new editions she has reflected on some of the dated material in the original, particularly around gender essentialism and polarity. Good poetry, good writing, a lot of really valuable exercises for developing skills and understanding and on the whole it holds up very well. It’s one of the essential, foundational, beginning theology texts.
There’s a movement called Deep Ecology that is very important to Paganism. It begins with the idea that human beings are animals like other animals, and we are part of the natural world. So long as we separate ourselves from the natural world we are doing damage to it and also to our own natures as human animals. There is an author in this stream of things, Dolores LaChapelle, whose two essays “Ritual, the Pattern that Connects” and “Sacred Land, Sacred Sex” have been reprinted widely, notably in Deep Ecology for the 21st Century edited by George Sessions and Deep Ecology edited by Michael Tobias. There are other useful pieces in these two anthologies but LaChapelle in specific is helpful.
She Who Changes; Re-Imagining the Divine in the World by Carol P. Christ. This is a fundamental work of feminist Process theology. Process theology is an approach to theology that sees the divine as being part of the universe, incorporated completely into the universe, although it may also have some separate qualities that are not part of the universe. This is an extremely good book, a little bit chewy if you do not have much formal theology background. Her writing is good, thoughtful, and the ideas that she is dealing with are essential to a Pagan theology. The immanent deity, rather than transcendent, the emphasis on Goddess rather than God as images of the divine. In some ways she’s trying to talk about monotheistic deities in drag rather than developing more thoroughly in the polytheistic direction that is implicit in immanentism. If everything contains divinity and is in some way divine, then reducing it down to a single character seems mistaken.
Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow. Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, were friends for all of their adult lives and founders of feminist theology, in the United States at least. They were the people who pulled together the first conferences, edited the first anthologies, wrote many of the key early texts, and continued to be significant forces in feminist theology since the early 1970s to the present. Both of them are brilliant women, good friends, and they also have some significant theological differences which they air in this book in a compassionate, caring, and intellectually rigorous fashion. In many ways this is theological joint autobiography, commenting on each other’s work while talking about their own spiritual evolution and giving some of the history of the developments in feminist theology throughout all of this time.
Method In Ministry; Theological Reflection and Christian Ministry by James D. Whitehead and Evelyn Eaton Whitehead (revised edition). Theological reflection is a process of taking your theology seriously and trying to understand the world through a lens that includes the gods. To do this you need a method to do it in a rigorous, coherent, consistent, fashion. The Whiteheads’ method uses various tools and sources of information and insight: religious tradition, culture, personal experience, sacred stories, ritual, different techniques of reflection on the kinds of messages and ideas that you might receive directly from the gods or through engaging with these materials. It’s a standard text for much Christian seminary work in theological reflection, something that our clergy need to consider as well.
Pagan Meditations: Aphrodite, Hestia, Artemis and Pagan Grace; Dionysos, Hermes, and Goddess Memory in Daily Life both by Ginette Paris. These two books are wonderful polytheology – she talks at some length about what a life lived as the embodiment of, in the service of, particular goddesses and gods would look like. There is so much more complexity and richness to a life lived in conscious service of the deities. We often have these stereotypes – “Aphrodite in her nighty” and the like – but there is so much more going on and our lives lived in service, as embodiments, are so much richer and more interesting when we understand what we’re dealing with, or whom we are dealing with. Paris gives a wonderful window int that kind of exploration.
A Terrible Love of War by James Hillman. Hillman’s brilliant book talks about love and war – the mythological relationship between Aphrodite and Ares, what the relationship between the goddess of beauty, sexuality, love and the god of rage and war amounts to. What is there that is beautiful and loving in war, and what is there that is terrible and dangerous in love and in beauty? His exploration is rich and deep and beautiful, and it gives us, as polytheists, a set not just of examples but a disciplined working through of some of the issues involved in polytheism, in the way that deities necessarily are part of each other and relate to each other in a polytheistic approach.
When God Becomes Goddess by Richard Grigg. This is a fine summary of some of the underlying principles in various feminist theologies. In particular he deals with how in feminist theologies the goddesses are made real through our relationships, or involvements, and our actions. They don’t emerge out of nothing; they exist as we express them. He develops this notion of enacted divinity very well.
In Praise of Polytheism by Maurizio Bettini. A very good work of theology contrasting the monotheist worldview (particularly Catholic Christianity) and the polytheist one (particularly Roman polytheism) and using comparable examples drawn from Winter Solstice celebrations and other places. The most important issues Bettini deals with concern tolerance and diversity – in his argument monotheism is foundationally not tolerant while polytheism is so by its nature. He outlines polytheist forms of theological reflection aiming to include and harmonize different deities and pantheons.
How God Becomes Real; Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others by T. M. Luhrmann. She starts from the premise that people come to believe in deities by worshipping them. By engaging in religious activities we come to develop relationships with deities and that enriches our lives in so many ways and that is a key function of religion – teaching people how to make relationships with deities. She breaks the process down into seven steps, talks about each of them eloquently and effectively, based in a substantial amount of fieldwork – she is an anthropologist and sociologist. She bases her conclusions very strongly in the evidence of people actually doing religion rather than just theorizing about it.
If you want to be a Priestess or Priest, you really must have a theological base and these few books are valuable places to start.
Edmonton Wiccan Seminary 