Shakti-Wicca: Where East Meets West

My wife and I are a study in contrasts, and I guess that's why we are so passionately attracted to each other. I am of Indian heritage and stem from an old Sikh family - that's the guys with the turbans and the long beards. I love my family, scattered as it is over at least three continents. I love them dearly. I've even eaten at the Sikh holy of holies, the Golden Temple in Srinagar, marveled at the majesty of that impressive structure. But I feel most comfortable in a gray sports coat, pressed shirt, and slacks. I think the Poetic Edda, Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, and Bernard Cornwell's medieval battle epics make for truly fascinating reading. My wife, on the other hand, can't wait to slip out of her nursing scrubs at the end of the day and wrap herself in an intricately embroidered sari. She even wears it to the grocery store. She could care less about Lugh and Queen Mab or Cuchulain's exploits in The Cattle Raid of Cooley; her Scots-Irish heritage and its rich body of folklore just doesn't seem to do it for her. But I think she owns every Yogananda book that's ever been published. In our house, you can't take two steps without stubbing your toe on an idol of the elephant-headed Ganesh, or bump your head into yet another framed print of Krishna and Radha sitting on a swing. What's so interesting about this strange mix is that we follow the same religion: we're both Wiccans.

On second thought, it's not such a strange thing after all, because in the kennel of world religions, among the purebred "great Danes" and "Tibetan Shi-Tzus" of faith whose lineage and purity are proven to go back hundreds and thousands of years, Wicca is that lovable, scruffy looking mutt: one really has no idea just what the parents looked like or what kind of pups it will produce. Ray Buckland, author of the famous "big blue book," whom I've had the privilege to interview a few years ago said that much of what's billed as "Wicca" these days doesn't look much like Craft at all. That's true. Present-day Wicca is a very different animal than what Gerald Gardner publicized in the 1950s. When we spoke, Buckland agreed that we Wiccans have the curious habit of not burning our heretics at the stake. Instead, we assign them their own tradition. Some Wiccan traditions worship the Gods of Ancient Greece. Others pay homage to the Celtic deities. And quite a few choose their deity du jour to suit the occasion, like goodies at the salad bar. There are, of course, some ornery temperaments in Wicca who feel that burning heretics isn't such a bad idea, after all. I'm not one of them.

Three days ago, I found out there's actually a name for my wife's brand of Wicca: Shakti-Wicca. She has known that for almost as long as we've been married. Talk about a Ray Romano moment!

Shaktism, so the wikipedia tells us, "is a denomination of Hinduism that worships Shakti, or Devi Mata -- the Hindu name for the Great Divine Mother -- in all of her forms whilst not rejecting the importance of masculine and neuter divinity (which are however deemed to be inactive in the absence of the Shakti)."

Europeans have looked to the East and its culture for a very long time. In Eliphas Levi's Ritual and Doctrine of High Magic, we see a beautiful engraving of the Adda-Nari, which compares quite nicely to the European Sophia and the Tarot card "The World." Levi's work is well worth exploring when investigating the compatibility of Hinduism and Wicca; his writings had a tremendous impact on Aleister Crowley. No matter what one's opinion may be of him, Crowley is an important forebear to Wicca. His influence on Gerald Gardner cannot be denied. The study of Crowley's work requires that the lurid rumors the British tabloid press spread about him must be ignored in favor of his important contributions to Western mysticism. It was Crowley who popularized the concept that a religion's magickal formula is its driving force -- and not its vernacular. A rose is a rose by any other name. The hero may have a thousand faces, but the underlying archetype is the same no matter where one goes.

In Eurocentric Wicca denominations, also called traditions, one may call on Cernunnus and Diana, Lugh and Cerridwen, Zeus and Hera. The Hindu pantheon offers similar archetypes: there are Radha and Krishna, for example. The story of his birth and childhood offer many parallels to European deities. He was the eighth child of a cruel demon king, who killed his children because prophecy foretold one of his offspring would usurp him. Placed in the foster care of a cow-herdess, he would eventually grow up to do just that. Hindus revere him as a harbinger of divine joy. Interestingly, Krishna is a passionate flute player who loves to seduce cow-herd girls. His favorite, legend has, is Radha, who later becomes his wife. Radha is not the shy type, and one of her nicknames translates to "She who gives pleasure to Krishna." There we have Pan, the lusty piper, and Zeus, the father slayer, rolled up into a blue skinned package, blue being a color signifying divinity in Hinduism, although much more happily married than Zeus.

Shakti Wicca focuses on the creative interplay of Shakti, the divine feminine principle, and Shiva, the divine male principle. The Shakti Wicca Encyclopedia (http://shaktiwicca.tripod.com) states that is the active force, which creates, whereas Shiva is passive, organizing, destroying, and recreating the universe. Both forces are dependent on one another to form a dynamic, vibrant whole.

Critics often complain that Wiccans scavenge other religions for legends and deities, because Wicca doesn't have much to offer. Others call Wicca the shopping cart approach to religion; Wiccans are accused of picking and choosing what they like from whatever spiritual path they see, conveniently avoiding commitment or spiritual discipline. Nothing could be further from the truth. Wiccans realize that, no matter under which guise the Gods present themselves to humans and their limited scope of comprehension, they are still the same Gods. Wicca's central liturgy, the Charge of the Goddess states it quite eloquently:

Listen to the words of the Great Mother; she who of old was also called among men Artemis, Astarte, Athene, Dione, Melusine, Aphrodite, Cerridwen, Cybele, Arianrhod, Isis, Dana, Bride and by many other names

And interestingly, Wicca is now establishing itself in the Far East. Ipsita Roy Chakraverti (http://ipsita.hellorosetta.com/index.htm) is a Wiccan activist operating in Mumbai, India. She was introduced to Wicca while studying in Canada. Chakraverti believes that Wicca was a global movement at one time. To her Wicca compares well to Dakini Vidya, a Goddess based mystery tradition. But more importantly, she recognizes that Wicca contains an element that won't allow it to be confined to a single pantheon or a set of religious practices. On her website, she writes,

In India, I have researched Dakini Vidya which draws its strength from the Goddesses Kali and Durga. Just as I have wrapped myself in the black cloak of Isis and stood like a queen among my peers, arrogant and beautiful, so also I have walked with bare feet on the cold grey stones of the Yogini Temple in Orissa, India, and felt them warm with a sudden pulsation under my feet. The same Goddess force which goes by the name of Isis, Athena or Minerva in the West, manifests as the Yoginis in the East.

Would Gardner turn in his grave, if he could see what has become of Wicca these days? Some hardcore Gardnerians would certainly see it that way. But considering that Gardner himself cobbled this dynamic religion together from many sources, he might just as well sport his famous impish grin and say to himself, "How wonderful. These kids finally got it."