all be personified as Goddesses.Some Neopagans stop at the worship of the feminine Divine. Others go on to include the Divine male. He can be called a Father and yet is not always represented as a father. The Sun is often personified as a God as well as plant life. The grain God is also a common masculine divinity who is represented as a dying and reborn God and is common to all agricultural myths. Some name him the Horned One and others call him under the names of the ancient, as with the feminine Goddesses. Apollo, Osiris, Adonis and Tammuz are just a few of the many.Nature is central to the Neopagan belief system. Elements are interrelated to deities and are interchangeable with the word deities. The belief is that all that is, is sacred. And this includes nature, and humans. Their deities are both transcendent and immanent and are therefore difficult to describe. During the Samhain ritual attended in Los Angeles at the Onion, many different aspects of deity was seen. At the start of the ritual, the practitioners first cast a circle. This involved the invoking of nature spirits from the North, East, South, and West and Center. This was the beginning of the ritual and was said to aid the practitioners in meditation. Then chanting began and the people leading the ceremony called upon Hecate, the Goddess of the crossroads. She was said to have the power to guide the practitioners into the underworld so that they may be with the dead. Hecate was known as a Goddess who traveled with a pack of wolves on moonless nights and dwelled in graveyards with ghosts. The person leading the ritual spoke of an ebony moon which would mean a moonless night, and invoked her by asking her to guide us to the Isle of Apples (the underworld). At this point a meditation began that included breathing, dancing and relaxation, and during this time it was said that the practitioners had a chance to meet with their deceased loved ones. The ritual climaxed with a S...
