Charge of the Goddess

The Charge of the Goddess is the central liturgical text of Wicca, a sacred poem spoken in the first person of the Goddess herself, addressing her worshippers directly with the declaration of her nature, her commands, and her promises. It is read or recited in Wiccan ritual, most often during the Esbat after the Drawing Down of the Moon, when the High Priestess has been invoked as a vessel for the Goddess’s presence. The text exists in several versions, but the version written primarily by Doreen Valiente in the 1950s is the canonical form and one of the most significant pieces of sacred literature in Western religious practice since the mid-twentieth century.

History and origins

The Charge as it appears in the Wiccan tradition has a layered authorial history. Gerald Gardner’s Book of Shadows, assembled in the late 1940s and early 1950s, contained an earlier version that drew substantially and directly on two sources: Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (1899), which includes a “charge” attributed to the Italian goddess Diana, and Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law (1904), whose voice and cadence appear unmistakably in the early Gardnerian version.

Leland claimed to have received the Aradia text from an Italian practitioner named Maddalena in Florence in the 1890s and to have published it as a genuine traditional text. Scholars have consistently questioned the authenticity of Leland’s source, and the prevailing view is that the text is largely Leland’s own literary construction, possibly built around fragments of genuine Italian folk material. Nevertheless, its invocation of Diana and its directional charge to witches provided a powerful template.

Doreen Valiente (1922-1999), who was initiated into Gardner’s coven in 1953 and became one of the most important figures in Wicca’s development, recognized that the Crowley borrowings in Gardner’s Charge made the text’s debt to Crowley uncomfortably obvious and potentially damaging to Wicca’s public standing. She rewrote the Charge, keeping Leland’s structure and some of his language while replacing the Crowley material with her own writing and drawing on her substantial literary gift. The result was a text with a distinctive voice: warm, authoritative, devotional, and suffused with the immanent theology of the Goddess who is found within all things and all living beings.

Valiente later also wrote a verse version of the Charge, less commonly used in ritual but preserving the same theology in a more formal poetic structure.

The text and its theology

The Charge of the Goddess opens with a summons: the Goddess, speaking through the High Priestess, calls her children to gather, to listen, and to understand. She names herself through her many forms: she is Artemis, Aphrodite, Diana, Arianrhod, Brigid, and by “ten thousand other names.” She is the beauty of the green earth, the white moon among the stars, the mystery of the waters, the desire in the heart of each person.

The Goddess’s commands in the Charge are few and notable in their character. She asks that her worship be conducted with mirth and reverence together. She asks that her rites be held in a place of beauty. She asks that those who seek her learn the mystery that she teaches: “If that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee.” This statement is the theological center of the text and of much Wiccan spiritual practice: the Goddess is immanent, within each person, within the world itself, not in an external transcendent realm. The search for the divine is ultimately a search within.

The Charge’s final lines declare that the Goddess was present at the beginning of all things and will be present at the end, that she is the soul of nature, that birth and joy and love belong to her. It closes with a reminder of the obligation to be free, and to have love among all beings.

In practice

The Charge is typically read or spoken aloud by the High Priestess in coven ritual, often while still in the altered state that follows Drawing Down the Moon, when the Goddess is understood to be actively present in the officiant. In this context the text is not merely a reading but an oracle: the Goddess speaking directly to her gathered worshippers.

Solitary practitioners often read the Charge at the full moon Esbat as the liturgical center of the working. Some practitioners know it by heart and use it as a meditation or grounding practice outside formal ritual. Its language repays repeated engagement: the sentences carry more meaning with each return, and practitioners often find that different lines become particularly resonant at different periods of their lives.

The Charge has inspired numerous personal adaptations, including versions that adjust gendered language, honor specific named goddesses rather than the universal Goddess, or incorporate cultural contexts different from the original’s Mediterranean and European references. The tradition of adapting the Charge to serve the particular community’s needs reflects the living quality of a liturgical text that has become genuinely foundational.

In myth and popular culture

The Charge of the Goddess draws on mythological and literary traditions reaching well before its twentieth-century composition. Leland’s “Aradia: Gospel of the Witches” (1899), one of its primary sources, presents Diana as a goddess who speaks directly to her followers in the first person, commanding them to gather and worship her under the moon. This mode of divine address, the deity speaking in their own voice, is ancient: it appears in ancient Near Eastern goddess hymns, in the “Apuleius” aretalogies of Isis in “The Golden Ass” (second century CE), and in the direct speech of the divine in scriptural traditions across the world. Valiente’s Charge participates in this long lineage while giving it a distinctively modern and personally authorial literary form.

Starhawk’s “The Spiral Dance” (1979), one of the foundational texts of the feminist spirituality movement, incorporated and developed the theology of the Charge and helped carry it far beyond strictly Wiccan communities into the broader Goddess spirituality movement of the late twentieth century. Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon” (1979) documented the Charge’s central role in contemporary Pagan communities across the United States, providing the first substantial journalistic account of the text’s significance in living practice.

The Charge has been set to music, read aloud in theatrical contexts, adapted into poetry collections, and referenced in feminist theological scholarship as an example of modern goddess-centered sacred literature. Its line “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals” has become one of the most widely quoted statements of Wiccan theology outside strictly Wiccan contexts.

Myths and facts

Several misunderstandings about the Charge and its history appear often enough to merit direct clarification.

• Many practitioners believe the Charge is an ancient text recovered from a pre-Christian tradition. It was written primarily by Doreen Valiente in the 1950s, working from Gardner’s earlier version. Its oldest source material, Leland’s “Aradia,” dates to 1899 and is itself of disputed and largely literary origin.
• It is often stated that Aleister Crowley wrote the Charge. Crowley’s writings influenced Gardner’s original version, and Valiente’s rewriting was in part designed to reduce these borrowings, but Crowley is not a co-author. Valiente’s literary contribution is the defining one.
• Some people assume all Wiccan groups use the same version of the Charge. Multiple versions exist, including Valiente’s prose version, her verse version, and numerous adaptations by other writers and traditions. There is no single canonical text enforced across all Wiccan groups.
• The Charge is sometimes presented as an exclusively Wiccan text. It has been widely adopted in non-Wiccan Pagan, feminist spiritual, and ceremonial contexts, and its theology is broadly compatible with many approaches to goddess-centered spirituality.
• Some practitioners believe the Charge must be memorized and recited from memory to have ritual effect. In practice it is commonly read aloud, and many experienced ritualists use printed or written copies in circle without any diminishment of its power.