#The chalice and the blade summary full#
We started by pouring a full cup of wine into an empty cup and then someone had the idea of passing the now empty cup to the next person in the circle, and filling it again. The breakthrough came in 2015, when I shared the ritual with a group of LGBTQIA+ Wiccans at a workshop. It was some time before I was able to try out consecrating wine with two cups in a Wiccan circle I think the first time was around 2002. After that I did it a few times whenever I was working magic with another woman. When we pull this card in a reading it is an indication that a healing is in need or is taking place. The Temperance card is a call for us to recognize the flow in our own lives, and observe the nature of energy. There is a lot of power in this card, and the “flow” is the source of that power. The esoteric meanings of the Temperance card are about flow, balance, harmony, blending, and connection. In many decks, the person is a winged angel, usually female or androgynous, and stands with one foot on water and one foot on land. Historically, this was a standard symbol of the virtue temperance, one of the cardinal virtues, representing the dilution of wine with water. Temperance is almost invariably depicted as a person pouring liquid from one receptacle into another. Temperance Tarot card by Pamela Colman-Smith (1909). This reminded me of the Temperance card in the Tarot. What if there was a way of consecrating wine for two women? As the chalice symbolizes the vulva, it was a fairly obvious move to have two chalices.
But the whole experience got me thinking. I can’t remember now which of us held the athame and which of us held the chalice. But, as the saying goes, asking a same-sex couple which one is the man and which one is the woman in the relationship is like asking a pair of chopsticks which one’s the knife and which one’s the fork. So whichever one of us ended up with the athame or the chalice, someone was going to jump to conclusions about which one of us was being the ‘man’, and which one of us was being the woman in the usual ceremony. If a man holds the athame, it represents his masculine energy. If a woman holds the athame, it symbolizes the idea that everything contains its opposite, like the little dot of yang in the middle of the yin, and the little dot of yin in the middle of the yang.
The athame is generally considered to be a masculine tool, and the chalice is generally considered to be feminine. Some traditions give the athame to a woman in the rite of Cakes and Wine others give it to a man. (Regular readers of this blog will know that I am bisexual.) So we scratched our heads over the whole business with the athame and the chalice. The person I chose to do it with was a lesbian. It started life as a ritual for women-loving-women, and evolved into a ritual for everyone, but retaining its original symbolism.Ĭhalice, by AnaTerate on Pixabay īack in 1995, I was asked to call a quarter and consecrate some cakes and wine with another person. This has evolved over a couple of decades to become something more than I originally envisaged, as is often the way with traditions, which are evolving and fluid. One of the rituals of inclusive Wicca is the two chalices ritual.