Ch.10 Drawing Down the Moon (WMB 10.e)

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr.

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Drawing Down the Moon begins with the High Priest invoking the goddess into the High Priestess. He does this with a combination of words, gestures and intent. The invocation to the goddess used for the Drawing Down the Moon ceremony, now widely published, goes something like this, with minor wording variations:

“I invoke Thee and call upon Thee, Great Mother of us all,

Bringer of all fruitfulness,

By seed and root and bud and stem,

By leaf and flower and fruit,

By life and love do I invoke Thee

To descend into the body of this

Thy servant and High Priestess.”

This was clearly part inspired by Crowley’s Gnostic Mass which contains the phrase “By seed and root and stem and bud and leaf and flower and fruit do we invoke Thee”.[1] It is likely that Crowley took at least some of his inspiration in writing this piece from the poem Song of Proserpine by the early nineteenth century poet Percy Bysshe Shelley:

“Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom

Gods and men and beasts have birth,

Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,

Breathe thine influence most divine

On thine own child, Proserpine.”

Another possible source for some of the wording in this opening invocation of the goddess is the Qabalah. The phrase ‘mother of us all’ which is used in the invocation refers to the Shekinah, or divine feminine, and may be drawn from MacGregor Mathers’ nineteenth century work The Kabbalah Unveiled:

“From Her do they receive their nourishment, and from Her do they receive blessing; and She is called the Mother of them all.”

[1] Gnostic Mass, Crowley, 1913

Extract from: Wicca: Magical Beginnings written by d’Este & Rankine, 2008 (Avalonia.) PB / Kindle @ https://amzn.to/3Ay4HJr. Shared here with the intention to inspire and inform the now and future generations interested in Wicca and other Pagan traditions inspired by it.