I am more than a little wary of people who decide how things are and never revisit those decisions.
Back when I was a new witch, I essentially ignored male deity and kept my eyes on the female aspects. Seeing an external expression of my immanent deity was very much what I needed to remind me of my sovereignty and power. Later, as I grew more confident in myself, I added god back into my practices, but it was perfunctory and superficial. A big moment came when the HPS who gave me formal training called me on my lack of true devotion. (This was an especially big deal because I and the group I was a part of identified as Wiccan, which is big on duality and the equal status of the God and Goddess.) Back to basics for me! and I came to know and understand Him as much as Her.
JaguarMoon (which is not Wiccan, nor am I) was founded with this duality at the heart of its teaching, and training. Yet it has always included Aspects that were not gendered, specifically the Dark Deity and Warrior. (We have five faces for Deity, the above two and Youth & Maiden, Mother & Lover, and Crone & Sage.) And we’ve always had a strong base of inclusivity — one of our Founders transitioned while in a leadership role and I was proud to write the ritual that marked that metamorphosis back in 2008.
Then, back in 2016, we decided that our ritual roles needed to step out of the High Priestess/ High Priest dichotomy. It felt too rigid to place those roles within gender and was restricting who felt comfortable in those roles to physical “plumbing.” We started using Lead and Second in all of our rituals and it was interesting to watch how this shifted energy and perspectives both within our circles and classes. People felt more inclined to try on different roles, AFAB people being the Horned God for example or AMAB the Crone.
Some members of the coven are inclined to write rituals and our next shift came when the coven was presented with a proposed ritual to honor the Muses that called upon the God, the Goddess, and the Liminal — a being entirely without gender. Here, the ritual roles became Primus, Secondary, and Tertiary. It was an incredible ritual, with the third being palpably felt and present to all of us.
We haven’t decided to re-write our rituals to include the Liminal, in part because we aren’t sure how it will affect our sabbat mythos and aren’t ready to tackle that just yet. But when new rituals are written to include the Liminal, we are happy to add them to our repertoire.
We’re looking at twenty five years very soon, and it feels like some interesting shifts are coming. I’m excited to see what will happen.