This isnt so much about the battle of the sexes as the way men and women seem to approach magick in a very different way.

I do feel Terry Pratchett seemed to sum it up well in Equal Rites when he said that womens magick comes from the ground and mens magick comes from books.

Men seem to need formula and ceremony and structure. Whereas women less so. Am I imagining this? Ceremony and ritual and structure seem to something that men do. Men form make "clubs". From workings men clubs to trade unions to the masonic even wicca and CM are all "structured" in some way.

Now please note. What I dont want it people running in here and saying "Im a woman and I use ritual" or "Im a guy and I dont" and know there are exceptions, but generally speaking, there does seem to be a difference.

I dont think one is better than the other BTW, its just an observation, has anyone else noticed it?

Yep Deffo agree with you there Xalle.

I've Described CM as Male and Solar and Witchcfaft as Female and Lunar. (with crossover points)

Its down to the Diffrence between the sexes as well. Men feel the need to create penile monuments in order to ensure their Immortality whereas women (wether they have children or not) are instinctively more a part of the "circle of life" and have less need to make their mark on the landscape.
Vive la diffrence I say

Although I agree with this, and although Xalle did say she didn't want people to state 'yes but look at me!!', I do know a considerable amount of female CMs/Enochians/Thelemites/chaotes, whereas I know very few male witches. I am wondering if it isn't just that there are more female 'everythings' than male in the occult.

I will agree that men are more drawn to magic(k) and women seem to be drawn to witchcraft. I wonder if it is due to the lunar/terra influence as opposed to the solar influence. Dr Leo Ruickbie touched upon this in the last chapters of 'Witchcraft out of the Shadows', but his control group was only a couple of hundred people, so no concrete conclusions could be made.

lmao!

It makes me wonder you see, if that is why some members and I can never find a meeting place in how we work and view magick or what its about. I also completely agree wiht you when you say it is at its core its about the difference between men and women period.

Men have a tendancy to disassemble things, pull them appart and rebuild to see how it works. Logical. Women seem to be more inclined to make themselves a part of the matter, and work from the inside out. Empathy I guess. They both have their merrits, and both equally have their downsides IMHO.

But it is nice to know its not just me!

Thats a really interesting distinction WW and I think one I agree with. However.. would you mind expanding on the last part (underlined) its an interesting idea!

Could it be looked at in broader social terms? Early in the 20th century, when women were struggling for equality, the Golden Dawn had many women members. Today, where there is not such a struggle (not saying that fairness exists) perhaps women do not feel such a need to be seen in seeminly male-oriented systems?

Of course we are also talking in huge generalisations, and I think these generalisations have done magic a disservice. Wicca is often seen from the outside as female-oriented, when the truth is it does seek for a system of duality between male and female, where the positives in each sex are recognised. This false impression is leading to a struggle to find decent male witches, at least in my experience.

Rhiannon

What? I have to think now??

There is a bit in Witch Alone by Marian Green regarding the trinity within witchcraft, with particular emphasis on the Wiccan God and Goddess. The trinity for women is Terra - the nurturing earth; the sea - the emotion (as opposed to logic); and Luna - the celestial body that rules our menstrual cycle. With men it is the Horned God - his horns represent the logical mind, his body the human man, his legs the animistic tendencies of the human race.

The other idea I had was the custom (in England at least) that the Moon is a 'she' and the Sun is a 'he'.

Both these ideas rely on human behaviour over at least the last millenia, and our superstitions. I personally don't think that woman = nurturer and man = protector. I am both in my little family. But that may be a starting point.

Maybe it comes from ancestral roles. Hunting animals and butchering your neighbours makes you think in a certain way. Child rearing and home life in another. Your approach to the divine is different as a result. I bet you it was the men who erected the menhirs and probably women who did potions and stuff. Each appealing for clemency in different sectors. Men tend to organise (badly the wife says) to do things, to advance. Women tend to organise for stability (obviously this is a generalisation and just the fruit of my brain).
I don't know but CM and all this organised stuff smells to me of male whereas hedgewitchery for example smells more female, more subtle and less outward. Just and impression though.

There's probably a lot in that. However hard women try, we really do carry the best way to feed babies and m,aybe, back in the days of Clan of the Cave Bear, if the mother died, the baby died, which then prevented the women from high risk activities.


That sounds like every Thelemite I ever met!

Good points Woozle. Never thought of that, but I can see how it could have come about that way.



*nods* aye, thats exactly my "impression"



Ah. Ok. yep.. this also makes sense to me too.

Beware as more sweeping generalisations swishe through at ankle height:

Women tend to be more introvert and men more extravert - not in the sense of personality - in the sense of where they look for help.
A woman will look inside herself and her own strengths, a man will look outside for a tool to augment his strength.
Possibly this comes from women being traditionally physically weaker and therefore unable to use some tools?
Women are more aware of their own bodies, We have to be, bits of it impinge on us with the subtlety of a dropped elephant at certain times in our lives. Like every flipping month... and as for pregnancy, don't get me started.
Men I think are perhaps less aware of themselves and are more likely to see themselves as tool users rather than tools themselves. (stop it Tas, I can hear you sniggering there ) I'm not going to mention the whole willy thing.

I wouldn't like to claim that men are not intuitive, but I think it's an intuition that stems from the outside rather than the inside.

Sadly unless anyone on here is a true hermaphrodite we may never get to the bottom of this.
BM
xx

Load of bollocks! I never use "spells", ceremonies or any form of structure apart from: get magical, do magic, get un-magical. I am led by what I feel is right at the time, which you would have as a female way of doing it. Are you questioning my masculinity? Well now I know who's not getting any chocolate wine (which I'm just about to start)

*points to OP*

Didn't I say there were exceptions! I was speaking in sweeping general terms and if you dont give me Chocolate Alcohol I shall invoke my womans perogative and scream!

Thank the gods someone said it.

I think all this thread proves is that both the men and women in 'Magick' - ceremonial or otherwise - and witchcraft have the most ghastly case of anachronistic gender stereotyping in modern paganism. As well as large side helpings of dodgy symbolism, poor research, and cultural bias.

Seriously, are you all living in the 1950s? Or just reading too much new-age "Men Are From Mars...." trash? I haven't read this much unremitting claptrap in a thread for a long, long time - there isn't a single posting so far that I didn't guffaw at when reading it.

I'm astonished.

Caerthan

Christ what bit your ass?!

Mine is an observation based on what I have experienced, the people I have met and many of the debates on here. Now, while you might like to think its a load of balls, you cant deny my experiences much as you may like to.

You also cant deny that other people have clearly observed and felt the same.

I'm not saying ALL men or ALL women. Im saying to me, on the whole there appears to be a difference. If you dont think so, say so. I fee you could contribute to the discussion and leave out the diatribe.

Caerthan, I think it's just an impression some of us have. Bolllocks it may be but then maybe not.
I tend to agree with Xalle. IME women and men have a different approach in almost everything, why not in magick too?

Um, only since (IIRC) the Romantic period (18th century?).

For Anglo Saxons and the ancient British it was the other way round.



Yeah, I know it's my warped sense of humour, BM; but, for me, this has to be the quote of the month!

Men & women are different. Live with it. We think in different way, we operate in different ways.
No-one here has suggested that either of those ways are "better" or "worse", only different.
It has nothing to do with the roles we "ought" to play, or cultural bias, it's simply hard-wiring.
No-one has to do anything based on their gender, many women use CM and High Magick, many men use witchcraft, but frankly, I say Vive la difference!I celebrate my femininity and I'm not just talking about my primary sexual characteristics. My brain works perfectly for me because it's a woman's brain.
And while we're on the subject, can I say how disgusted I am there is no option for PINK in the font colours?!
Badger Power!
xx

I am always glad to amuse, but I hate to be typecast by examples I have given.

I do agree that there is a gender gap in magic. How could it be otherwise? 100 years is not enough to cancel out over 1,000 years of custom when it comes to gender roles. Yes, in Anglosaxon times women had more power and didn't have to stay at home washing the cooking pots. But then the meanie weenie Normans came and we were put firmly in our place. Although there were several times when women did start holding power again (especially after the plagues, when men were thin on the ground) the Church always managed to push us back again.

Until now.

Several examples have been given above, however, that refute Xalles original post, but she has a point, and no amount of guffawing will change the fact that there are more women than men in witchcraft, and there are more men than women in CM/OTO/Chaos Magic. Facts are facts, whatever anecdata we have in our personal lives.

PS I actually class myself as a magician more than a witch, as I use elements of CM and Enochian magic in my witchcraft. If that makes me anachronistic, well, poo to you!

Yes, men and women are different. In what ways their brains are different, we don't know yet. I think to say the differences have nowt to do with cultural bias and then go on to make a remark about the colour pink is....interesting.

Not everything is hard-wired and genetic.

To posit a difference in activities based on the notion that there are certain characteristics which are 'hard wired' in is to construct and edifice on sand until we know what those differences may or may not be. To also remove cultural and geographical variables makes this a very dicey proposition indeed.

Just as an example. It used to be thought that girls had a slower development in their innate ability to do mathematics, while boys were slower at verbal work. I was talking with a colleague the other day (a Developmental Prof.) who was telling me that the new studies coming out now show no...differences...at....all in school aged children. And so another female vs. male idea falls.

Therefore it would be my opinion that it would be difficult to predicate 'favoured' magic styles on information which we simply don't have about how men and women differ.

This brings me to my next question: What samples are people using and how, where and when did they get those samples? How large are the samples?

Marto

Hmmmm. I see your points Marto but I wonder...

We know that when it comes to sex, men are far more visual. When it comes to map reading, men and women orienteer differently. I even remember being given some test to do YEARS ago, about leaning with head on wall and lifting a chair (dont ask ) women couldnt do it! Men's competitiveness linked to their testosterone is higher than most womens.

Oh bugger it.. some physical differences too...

The frontal lobe, which is proportionally larger in women. Controls decision making and problem solving.


The limbic cortex, which is also proportionally larger in women controls emotional responses.

The parietal cortex , which regulates how we move around is proportionally larger in men. (spatial awareness)

The amygdala, which is proportionally larger in men, means that when men remember an emotionally charged scene or memory, men use the right side, women the left. Men remember the gist of the scene, women remember the details.

There are others, but you get the idea.

It is not unreasonable to believe these differences would make a difference to how we percieve and use magick is it? Thats not be being sarky BTW its a genuine question!

It's not whether there are differences or not, it's whether those differences matter.

There is no correlation between brain size and intelligence (or capability), either within or between genders or between members of the same species. Nada.

Also, one must be careful not to 'box' certain functions into one very specific area. Like the saying about it taking a whole village to raise a child? It takes a whole brain to carry out neural functions even of different kinds ( otherwise it wouldn't all be wired together, if you see what I mean ).


Someone can develop different numbers of receptors in certain areas dependent on activity. This can just as easily be changed.

I'm not saying men and women aren't different. I'm saying one must be careful what they attribute to presumed differences or those we don't know about yet.

So it's not unreasonable to wonder about such things, but I think it unreasonable to draw any conclusions about it.

Marto

I know far more women who are Wiccans (Garderian, Alexandrian and derivatives thereof) than men. They all tell me that in their covens the men are far outnumbered by women (indeed, some covens are out there actively recruiting men because it's such a problem, even though recruiting is supposedly against coven rules). If that isn't ceremonial magic, what is? So, are these exceptions to the rule, or could that be used to prove that women are more structured than men. I think all it shows is that some people are more structured in their approach to magic (and other things) than others, regardless of gender.

No-one but Caerthan is saying they do!

Don't get me wrong. I am the last person to subscribe to 'me man you woman, get in the kitchen' nonsense, but it seems we are picking fights where none were intended. There are differences between men and women, and there has been studies as to why there are so few men in nursing and childcare, and so few women in construction and commodities trading. I suspect the results from that research could be easily extrapolated to see where and why there is a tiny amount of gender disparity in the occult.

Sometimes, observable phenomena is acceptable where testable is thin on the ground.

Which is why my earlier 'sampling' question is important. I don't think a fight was intentioned but as soon as one makes distinctions based on such things as gender, that leads to the possibility of assumptions being made or 'conclusions' being reached which cannot be supported. One should first have the best information available in order to ask a question. It's not simple.

Say I know 4 men who are 'ceremonial magicians' and 2 women that are. Well, that seems to settle it. However, what if those 4 men know 8 women that practice it but only 1 other man and the women know 4 more women that practice it and no men. That's 5 male C.M. types and 14 women. Or cut it up any way one wants.

Gender differences are a fundamental in our lives and cultures so it's easy to use apocryphal information which can lead to misrepresentation or down-right offense. That's why I always ask for details rather than generalities. Generalities are by nature tinged by each person's own beliefs which are influenced by such things as their gender, age, environment, experiences, abilities, etc., etc.. A generality is also going to contain within it any misinformation someone might have. So if someone believes that there are proven and identified differences between how men and women 'think', that misinformation will compound the problem .

It may seem I obsess about 'detail' when what I'm really trying for is clarity

Marto

It seems I am finding the current Mercury Retrograde much harder than the previous ones, so I may be a bit more snappish on here than intended.

However, as important as detail and clarity are, I sometimes wonder if we get too bogged down in minutiae on here. If it was a feminist forum then I would understand research and sources regarding this subject being pretty important, like I would understand requests for scientific studies regarding the environment on a forum given over the climate change. But I am a bear of little brain, and I dropped out of college. If I do need to refer to something scientific, I can Google, but even then we are left very much with 'what did the scientist want to prove?', as many studies are contradictory.

My personal experience is that I know more men than women who do OTO/CM. I have asked at least one guy in the OTO if there are more men than women who attend his Gnostic Mass and he said yes. I have been to many many pagan camps and conferences, and have noted the gender discrepancy. Neither of those experiences are testable, but they do back up Xalle's post somewhat.

Maybe some boffin could expand on Dr Ruickbies studies some day. If Isaac Bonewits could base his thesis on magic over 30 years ago, it is about time someone else tried it.

I don't believe in astrology - maybe that's my problem

I have no problem with people saying things like " It seems there are more women than men (or men then women) that appear in 'X' group, is this a general experience for others?

Where I start to get a bit itchy in the face is when people start giving reason 'why' for something that hasn't even been shown to be true and that's where I think problems can creep in. For instance, if someone is making physiological distinctions between men and women and positing THAT as the reason men do one thing and women do another in terms of cognition or certain types of events NOT linked to actual physiological things ( like men have more muscular strength most of the time, etc.) it does tend to make me cringe. Especially if people are passing on misinformation in order to further their point.

It doesn't mean the point is not interesting, but when I see some real clangers in terms of 'received wisdom', my 'clarity seeking' thing kicks in. Some kind of weird reflex action

I don't have a problem with 'what if' games, I have a problem with " This is why because of 'X' " ( and the info. is wrong or unknown at this time) speculations.

Marto

In Soviet Russia, Mercury retrogrades you! (Seriously, it doesn't matter how sceptical someone is, there is always an effect. More so than when other planets go retrograde, certainly.)


Oh well, that's fair enough. There will be a reason for the disparity but, unless someone sits down and interviews all occultists, it will be difficult to find out. I doubt that the disparity will have anything to do with our gonads though.

The best magick of all is when men and women work together, in all things, including magick. That is what it is all about. Who contributes what doesn't matter once you grow up a bit and I am glad we have differences, especially in the warm and wet bits. Makes magick really fun and mates the simple physical to the sublime.

There have been some exceptional Male Witches, Gardner and Saunders spring to mind and there are some exceptional Female CM's too Blatslasky, Marj Fuller.
But arne't they the exceptions that prove the Genral rule? (thats not meant as a sexist comment btw) To prove a Genral rule/Truism/Fuzzy Logic you need to have exceptions.

Somtimes you need to deal in absoulte truth, Sometimes you need to deal in truism's It depends on the circumstances.

Going to wander off topic here but bear with me.

In a lot of the skills/pracices I have learnt in my life, Martial Arts, Driving a Car, My long forgotten Schooldays I leanrnt from a set of truisms, a way to do things or a way to process the information that was the same as everone else. As my skill progressed I found that the Trusims didn't quite work as well and as my skill became more preosnal to me I developed my own Absolute Truths or my own habbits.

Trueisms work till you Evolve past them them. However for the sake of functioning society we have to have truisms. Else we will end up mass debating everthing-Think Bill Bailys routine on Car Insurance.

The problem with 'truisms' is they are so often not true , though. I would read your post as one of someone finding their individuality amidst a sea of cultural bromides which are frequently passed down without thought as they are easier to fob off on kids then to work out the kids individual 'truths' from an early age. I mean, Shock, horror! That would mean actually taking the trouble to find out what and who your child is as an autonomous human being. Much easier to say " Early to bed and early to rise" and all the rest of that shite until the child grows up and realizes it doesn't apply to them.

Marto - who thinks we could do with a lot less 'truisms' and a lot more " what does the world look like to YOU" approaches.

Not anssacarily True , But as a way of imparting a genral grounding in infomation and skills they are usfull and valid.
If schoolchildren were allowed to argue every point how much education would actually get done?
If everone was encournged to drive their own way, how many would pass their test?

I maintian its a case of time and place, Basic grounding is important we need to learn the "rules" so we can know what we are arging agaisnt.

Sometimes as a Parent you have to say "Because I say so." Not for a easy life, not because you want to grind your childs free will into the dust, But because its the correct time and place to do so.

As WW said, I didnt say they mattered, I just said they were.

And I really want to make a point about the second comment. I wasnt saying that one was more capable than the other I was saying, I feel women and men, in general, connect differently to magick. Given that we use our brains slightly differntly, and given that physically that can be observed in the brain, is it unreasonable to assume that the connect differently to magick?

I dont think it is.



Which is, I think, exactly what I was doing no?

Dear Xalle,



I don't know if men and women approach magic in a very different way, or rather in a way that differs more between the sexes than within the sexes. Almost any generalisation on grounds of sex is going to face a barrage of counter-examples. And sex is always going to be complicated by assumptions about gender, which is a much more nebulous and less useful concept. I don't know if Ceremonial Magic etc are predominantly practiced by men, but that's simply because I've little experience of that side of things. But yes, there can really be no argument against the very common observation that Pagan Witchcraft (Wicca included) is practiced by many, many more women that men. But would that be explicable purely in terms of the approaches to magic involved, or might other factors be equally or more significant?

Looking at Wicca (I'm deliberately ignoring your placement of Wicca within the more 'structured' paths as that could be a whole different, but equally fun, debate ), it's a bit surprising I suppose, that while - as Rhiannon's pointed out - much of it works with forms of dynamic equilibrium between female and male - female Wiccans outnumber male ones to an even greater degree than women outnumber men in Paganism as a whole. This doesn't necessarily seem to have been the case back when Wicca was emerging and CM was probably more influential within it, but it's certainly the case now. Another factor here, in addition to approaches to magic (which covers a broad range in itself), might simply lie in attitudes to leadership. Such authority as there is within Wicca is traditionally exercised by women, and even within 'balanced' covens the point of balance is still going to be much further towards the female side than is the case in the wider society. That might be a 'non-magical' factor in why Wicca attracts som many more women than men.

Possibly related, Wicca also seems to include a larger proportion of 'out' Gay/Lesbian/Bi. or otherwise 'Queer', folk than the Pagan community as a whole, let alone the wider society as a whole. So the preponderance of women in Wicca might be part of a more general tendency for some groups of people who are still marginalised and/or discriminated against by social conventions to feel comfortable within it.

I'm really not sure whether men need formula, structure and ceremony in magical practice to any greater degree than women. To some extent, even purely personal, self-developed, approaches to magic are going to have these to some degree, even if only in completely internalised forms. Perhaps this distinction is more about 'group' and 'solitary' approaches to magic than about men and women per se? From what I know of very emphatically female-oriented group approaches to magic, such as Dianic or Reclaiming forms, they still have formula, structure and ceremony even when they include no men at all. The forms may be very different from those found in CM groups but they are still very much there.

I guess I've a very serious problem here . While sex is probably the most significant characteristic of personal identity within humanity, the magical practitioners I know well enough to provide useful evidence for this don't fall into anything that much ressembles conventional gender stereotypes, and group work - even where it's explicitly built around female/male dynamics - very much reflects that. So in theory, I can't see any reason why Wicca and other forms of Pagan Witchcraft should not attract roughly equal numbers of men and women. But in the world as it is, this is so clearly not the case that no amount of sophistry can fudge it. So there's obviously something wrong with reality .

BB,

John Macintyre

Dearest John,



I really enjoyed reading that John. And you are right in so many ways.

Regarding Wicca, I suppose I was being presumptious. The mere fact that someone thought, "we should really get this whole thing organised" kinda threw it into the "structured" category for me. Also note the person who decided to pull it all together was a guy

The fact that it now attracts more women is, I feel, possibly more down to how it is now "sold" please excuse the word I appreciate that can be a little offensive, I intend none! It is sold as a female centric faith, not really that surprising then that women garvitate to it.



*nods* and there is the rub. We cant deny it and reality is what we make it... so... IMHO there has to be something to it.

Oddly... (appart from the wicca comment *blush*) I dont think we disagree.

Dear BM,



And of course, an intelligent, lazy and pragmatic man will look for a woman to augment his strengths and generally sort things out for him....

BB,

John Macintyre

And a woman will look for a man to pick up the tools and mend the boiler...
BM
xx

About the Wicca thing, I'm going to have to be the exception here... most of the other covens I have come into contact with have many more women than men, but the one I belong to has the opposite problem. For as long as it has been going, there have always been more men than women, and while we have always had at least one or two blokes knocking about who are looking for initiation, we struggle to attract female members.

At the moment, we are better balanced with equal numbers of each. But we are approaching a period of change, and I will soon find myself hiving off and taking two of the priests with me... and I have two possibly three more blokes interested in joining. But no women!

I would much prefer to have equal numbers of each, but for the time being it looks like we will have a shortage of women members... not sure why it seems to be the other way round for us when I hear other covens complain about the lack of men wanting to join, I guess we just had to be awkward, lol

I think you had the answer - not gender, marginalized people. I won't go totally boring with a historical summation starting from the reasons historians have given for the rise of the 'mystery' cults in Late Ancient Greece and Rome to the formation of the Christian Church, but suffice to say that those that became marginalized when the 'Bible' ( and the other holy books of the 'bigs' of religion ) gelled into their present forms - remain marginalized.

Let me ask you a hypothetical. What if one of the 'bigs', say the Anglicans, declared that all humans were equal in the eyes of God, men and women, regardless of race, colour or sexual orientation? Do you think the rise of paganism would have been so dramatic?

Here's my 'sermon that never happened' that I believe, would have kept people of the Anglican faith (or any other) in the pews:

Verse 1.

" For it pleaseth God to love and receive love from all manner of persons, men and women, people of all colours , where ever their home is upon this earth and whom God considers equal to each other in all manner of their doings. Men that taketh a wife or women that taketh a husband, men who loveth and lay down with men and women who do so likewise, all these are considered equal and worthy of God's love .

(Verse 2)

And God looked down upon the earth which had been created without his aid and saw a beautiful land and wished to abide near it and watch the unfolding upon it a paradise for all creatures that lived there for it seemed to God that all manner of things required for a paradise were contained upon this planet. As time passed, God noticed that the human creature used the mind which had evolved differently from other creatures. To these creatures he gaveth the commandment: Because though has assumed power over other creatures upon this earth and upon the earth itself, I give it to you as a sheep to a Shepard . As Jesus took humans for his flock, I do so give earth and all it's majesty and creation to be the home and care of humans who must be stewards of this planet, not as rapacious rulers but as those who would care for a child which is the future. Take thou now care of this your home and allow no harm to come to it lest it be taken from you by powers which you may create to it's harm. Make this solemn promise unto me for as much as I will try and care for thee, thou must care for that which thou has't taken for thine own. Beware therefore thou doeth the earth no harm, either in my name or your own.

(Verse 3)


And God, knowing that the human creature was a creature of infinite curiosity also decreed that humans should use the minds which had developed within them to examine the manifold mysteries of the earth, both corporeal and incorporeal. No hinderence did God set in the way of humans seeking both seen and unseen entities, nor did God forbid humans to take unto their heart other gods and goddesses or be without deity even God. For God declared "Did I not see that humans have this great curiosity? Did I not know that one idea or creation would not seem a righteous answer to many different humans? Did I not rejoice in their diversity and the free will to choose their own destinies? For out of such comes greatness. Do I not take joy in their seeking and finding which is proof to me that their minds are worthy of their existence?
Therefore, worship what thou wilt, take care of all things upon and within your home never forgetting to care for one another and all that liveth upon this earth, be they humans, other creatures ,yae, even that with groweth from the ground and who are all equal in mine eyes.

Verse 4

Take care thou mindest these ideas lest thou destroy thy own life and even thy only home by forgetting these commandments. Even as a God I cannot grant you freedom or protection from all the manifold events which is the story of the universe, I can only give you love and my blessings on your seekings and findings, for all things are holy unto me . If thou findest comfort in those things which you find, be they other creatures of the earth or those things which the universe has provided from the smallest spirit and breeze to the immensity of the universe itself, thou haveth mine blessings.

One thing only will displeaseth me: that thou doest any harm in my name.

Oh, by the way, I am greatly pleased thou humans created the internet, it's made my infinite life a little more interesting. Go now with my blessings and seek thy happiness which is in thy hands.

Yours truly, etc, etc., and Amen.

Marto

If only.

I think you make a really good point Marto.

However, I was actaually talking more about how men and women connect to magick as opposed to the genetic make up of paganisim. If you see my meaning.

But yeah. Interesting thoughts.

Do you think I'm ready for the pink fluffy dog-collar yet? ( no, not to minister to BDSM furries).

Now that I've registered my caveats about making generalized startements regarding gender and paganism in other places *cough*, it's time to play 'what if' type of games.

I actually do believe that there is a difference. For one thing, there do appear to be more women than men in the pagan 'scene'. I think this can be put down to culture as women cannot 'rise' within the structures of the major religions, but due to historical precedent, they can 'rise' within the pagan culture. By historical precedent ( and no, I don't mean the mythical 'peaceful matriarchy lost in the mists of time ), I mean starting way back with such archetypal characters as Circe and Medea, ( not to mention the Pythia) were roles usually assigned to women.

I also think that cultural influences aside, there are many differences between men and women which could play a role in the 'type' of magic or ritual different people prefer. (Nota Bene: this is not hard and fast as both men and women have different distributions of things like hormones and other admixtures of physiology - it takes two different kinds of DNA to make a human outside the lab. - male and female).

(please keep in mind these are HUGE generalizations and there are variations between and among both men and women).

Men (both by virtue of historical cultural roles and physiology) are in general more 'controlling'. I do not mean that in the pop psych. way. For instance, men were traditionally the hunters. We can see in the superiority in general of men in 'figure ground' perception tests ( those detail heavy pictures where you have to spot the lion in the jungle kind of thing) and also a difference in arousal ( not in the sexual sense) which is altered by testosterone levels that some differences in behavior may be innate. Not all and not always. These are general findings.

Women on the other hand, do better with 'wholistic' environments, which makes sense if you need to keep track of kids, food and things around the cave in general.Women also tend towards more nurturing behavior ( women caressed by their infants will experience an upward release of endorphins and enkepahalins: this effect is not shown in men ).

Men, probably by virtue of a combination of cultural expectations and physiology, tend to prefer and to work better independently and are more competitive. Women tend to prefer to work in groups and tend to work better co-cooperatively. This could also be traced back to the High Savana type of living arrangements.

So just take these items. What can be deduced from them? Well, not much in the 'truth of all' category, but maybe a few guides.

It would make sense to me that there would be more male CM types of magic workers just by virtue of the kind of processes involved. Also, it tends to be a more solitary pursuit where only one person is in 'control'. Women might gravitate to areas of magic which allow greater freedom rather than tighter control. Because women work better in groups does not mean they prefer them. However, they may bring the same kind of 'attitude' or perceptions to solitary work. For example, in a walk in the woods, a man would be more likely to pay attention to specific details, while a woman would be more likely to take in the ,hmm, whole scene? . This does not mean women are not good with different types of detail. For instance, a female ( and this is seen in many species ) can pick out the sound of her own infant's distress cries from a huge group of other infants. ( Guys just run ). What it does seem to indicate is that women respond differently to emotional needs then men. I would think that given this, women would seek out the kinds of 'magic' or ritual that has a greater emotional as well as intellectual component , while men might seek out more 'information rich' but lower emotive involvement types of magic.

I'm just throwing this stuff out here, people. Please feel free to throw tomatoes or ideas back.

I could go on, but I have a strong sense of survival. This is a human trait not tied to gender .

Marto - playing 'what if' games

Interesting. I've never thought of Wicca as ceremonial magic. I have always thought of it as extremely feminine, though.

Well the men I do magical workings with are gay and as a woman, I can relate to the Horned God.

I'm not quite sure where that leaves us all...........

Write a description of what constitutes ceremonial magic and see how well it fits Wicca. you'll see that Wicca is ceremonial magic, not that either side would admit to it.

Dear Gawain,



With respect, I'd disagree with that to a fair degree. Ceremonial Magic certainly influenced Gardner & Sanders (particularly the latter) and some of their associates, no question about that. But I think the similarities have dwindled considerably since the fifties and sixties. Of course there are still elements that are clearly derived from CM, and there are certainly some Wiccans who are also Ceremonial Magicians, but even allowing for all that, I don't think the spirit, the group-mind, of Wicca nowadays (insofar as you can generalise about such a thing) has very much in common with CM. Even when similar terminology, or some similar-seeming ritual forms, are being used.

BB,

John Macintyre

Gawain is Correct

I think I'll print that out and frame it