Another "in-between" aspect of the emerging Craft was the idea of some that the Third Degree celebration of the Mystic Marriage is best done between a priest and priestess, as it was a celebration of fertility. But fertility in nature is not limited to heterosexual means! All forms of this ritual, whether done alone or with a partner of either gender, symbolise the essence of this ritual, which for me is a celebration and realisation of the union between the human and deity. This is the source of our spiritual fertility. It can be equally expressed by gay or straight love. Most covens are today very open to all aspects of love.

This stress on the heterosexual goes back far. According to hostile Christian sources, the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated for millennia in Greece had at its heart a ritual coupling of the high priest and priestess. Bishop Asterius of Amaseia just before the Eleusian Mystery temples were destroyed by Christians at the end of the 5th Century, alleged that during 'the descent into darkness", what happened was '"the venerated congress of the Heirophant and the Priestess, of him alone with her alone" and that the initiates regarded what was done "by the two in the darkness is their salvation." (Ref. 382 Myths). A sacred celebration of human sexuality was obviously revolting to him.

What did happen was sealed in oaths of secrecy, but the few published pagan comments talk of symbolic acts such as eating and drinking the sacred food, of a sacred drama enacted in near darkness to recall the Goddess of spring from the underworld of winter and a final calling on the rain to fertilise the earth. Through this rite the initiates experienced symbolically the death of winter darkness, their own rebirth and their oneness through the sacred food with the divine. The rite concluded with the rebirth of the divine son, seen symbolically as a head of wheat.

The bishop of course may have been right in his description of part of this rite. Even if so, it is good to celebrate human sexuality. In earlier centuries even St Paul saw the bonding of humans as a sacred symbol of God's union with the community. Nowadays in the Craft a sexual union is sometimes privately ritually celebrated by a regular couple as a way of celebrating the union of divinity with humanity - thus adding another deeper celebration to that which they did on their marriage day. In this celebration the woman is again the Bride - but now explicitly representing the Goddess or the Sacred Earth. On this day the man is the male God in his joining with the sacred female Earth. For me obviously such a rite can be done whenever both desire it and a suitable occasion comes.

In the Renaissance period, the members of the magical orders, forced to be secret because of the Church's opposition, included alchemists who celebrated this same union between genders as a process that was likely to produce the "gold" of alchemic transformation by for a moment lifting the couple to a knowledge of a divine ecstasy. At their climax, male and female for a moment knew what it was to be bonded into one being, to be beyond male and female, to be the Deity beyond gender, to know what it was to be, as some put it, the sacred Hermaphrodite. (Ref. poem on p.)

Hildergard of Bingen, the forerunner of the Beguine of the 11th Century, wrote: "It is the power of eternity itself that has created physical union and decreed that two human beings should become physically one." The Alchemic text called "The Crowne of Nature" has the alchemic couple: "wrapped in each other's arms in the bliss of connubial union merge and dissolve as they come to the goal of perfection. They that are two are made one, as though of one body." (Q in Johannes Fabricius's Alchemy.) An early alchemic school, founded by "Maria the Jewess" wrote: "see the fulfilment of the art in the joining together of the bride and the bridegroom and in their becoming one." (203Trev). Such old Western Alchemic knowledge was passed on from the Renaissance secret societies to such groups that revived magical practices in the 19th century as the Order of Templars of the Orient (OTO) and Golden Dawn - and thus to Gerald Gardner and the modern Craft - rather than from the similar Indian Tantric practices.

I will not speak here of how others do these rites today in our private circles For us they are "copyright" - private to those who compose the rituals and perform them. Our circles are safe spaces where we support each other, places for intimacy and trust. What I can share is what I myself have created in circle.

Initiation is essentially something that happens between the individual and the God and Goddess. The others in the Circle, including priest and priestess, are best man, best woman, magical aides, givers and protectors of magical energy, facilitators, witnesses and .friends - but not the chief players in this ritual.

My own experience of this Mystic Marriage Initiation or "Great Rite" was utterly transforming, something I will never forget. It was a rite in which I as a woman became one with the Goddess to celebrate my bonding to the male God.