Early 16th-century popess on the Rosenwald Sheet of uncut Tarot woodcuts. Today we refer to this card as the High Priestess, but in older versions of the Tarot, this card was called the Popess. According to legend, there was a woman who masqueraded as a man in order to become Pope, which of course was a deeply heretical subversive thing to do. People were absolutely disgusted by the idea of a woman acting as God's representative on Earth. As soon as she was found out, she met a most gruesome death at the hands of an angry religiously zealous mob. Should people have been so utterly disgusted by a female pope? Were they right to think of the sexes as polar opposites? This card is given the number two, representing duality, polarity, binary. To me it represents the illusion of separateness, of categorising things into "opposites". The female pope represents the break down of this illusion, she steps into a male role to bridge the gap between the sexes and prove that it...

This is my personal understanding of divinity in Wicca. Firstly, there is the pantheistic concept of the divine as the One and All, the very Being of the Cosmos, the Source, the Dryghten. This is an impersonal, non-anthropomorphic way of understanding the divine, but sometimes it is symbolised by a hermaphrodite, an ouroboros, an infinity symbol, or a spiral. It is the self-creating infinite oneness of all that exists, and is not an object of worship. Dryghten is the Godhead which is understood by us in the form of Goddess and God. Patricia Crowther wrote the following blessing in her book Witch Blood! The Diary of a Witch High Priestess!  "In the name of Dryghten, the Ancient Providence, Who was from the beginning and is for eternity, Male and Female, the Original Source of all things; all-knowing, all-pervading, all-powerful; changeless, eternal. In the name of the Lady of the Moon, and the Lord of Death and Resurrection. In the name of the Mighty Ones of the Four Q...