Goddess Temple Central Coast Manifesto

1) Devotion to the Mystery

We honor spiritual inquiry, discovery, growth and healing as an ongoing process. We honor the question over the answer, and locate the existence of truth within our own hearts. We seek truth and authority within the earth herself and our bodies. We honor that there is a divine intelligence and causation of all events within our lives and that of the earth, and we trust the source of intelligence within the greater universe without having to understand it.

2) Spiritual Foundation

Goddess Temple Central Coast is rooted within a foundation of Celtic Ancestral and Otherworld spiritual tradition. This foundation is one of the most ancient indigenous traditions of Europe that there is record of today. 

This tradition is based on four primary understandings: 1) The source of Divinity exists within the earth and our bodies as children of the earth; 2) The earth is made of many different worlds and spiritual dimensions; 3) The path towards spiritual enlightenment is a downward descending journey through the earth’s dimensions which eventually lead to the stars; 4) The presence of the ancestors are our earthly guides along this journey.

We embrace all indigenous and earth-based spiritual traditions worldwide that hold the feminine and the body as sacred and divine. We integrate aspects of Wicca, the Magdalene Rose priestess lineage, neo-paganism, worldwide shamanism, worldwide mythology, ancient tantra, the western mystical tradition, new age energy medicine, quantum physics, and others harmonious to a goddess-centered, embodied approach.

3) Worldwide Expressions of the Goddess

We acknowledge that there are thousands of faces and expression of the Goddess and Divine Feminine from cultures all over the world. We celebrate all expressions of the Goddess and welcome her as a limitless being. We recognize that the presence, faces and expressions of the Goddess have often been buried by predominant patriarchal cultures for sometimes thousands of years, and we seek to rediscover, remember and reclaim her as a guiding divine source once more.

4) The Nine-Fold Sisterhood of the Goddess

At Goddess Temple Central Coast we celebrate the Goddess through eight priestess and goddess archetypes—living, organizing principles of energy that we may learn and remember to embody through the cycles of our lives. Their names and celebrations are: the Emerald Priestess (or Great Mother) at Imbolc, the Rose Priestess (or Magdalene) at Spring Equinox, the Golden Priestess (or Lady Sovereignty) at Beltane, the Silver Priestess (or Great Healer) at Summer Solstice, the Fire Priestess (or Lioness) at Lughnasadh, the Sapphire Priestess (or Gatekeeper) at Mabon, the Obsidian Priestess (or Dark Goddess) at Samhain and the Holographic Priestess (or Venus Inanna). The temple offers opportunities to embody all eight Divine Feminine frequencies.

5) Belief and Practice of Holism

We believe that every form of nature is intelligent and conscious. We engage with the natural world with respect, ask permission and use open communication. This includes creature kind, plant kind, as well as the stones, waters, mountains, forests and valleys—like us, they are all children of Mother Earth. 

We perceive the inward and outwards, spiraling movement of life as limitless. There is life within life. Just as there are trees within a forest, and insects within a tree, and bacteria within an insect, there are forests within a continent, and continents within a planet, and planets within a solar system. 

We perceive that each life form is a holism of the larger system it is contained within. Therefore, our bodies are a holism of the earth, the earth is a holism of the universe, and we contain all of this intelligence.

6) Honoring Ancestors of Place

We honor that we are founded upon the land of the Chumash and Salinan indigenous tribes and that they and their ancestors continue to be the stewards and guardians of this land. 

We recognize that this land was stolen by Spanish colonizers and that we are settlers upon this stolen land. We honor the trauma that still lives within the hearts of the Chumash and Salinan people and that exists within the land itself for the murder, enslavement and exile of its indigenous people, animal stewards and plant stewards, as well as the loss of their practices, rituals, and ceremonies. We endeavor to make reparations, respect boundaries and be allies to the indigenous people when and where possible.

7) Reverence of Divine Feminine Leadership

We uplift, advocate and endeavor to embody a feminine form of living and leading. This involves honoring the body as a sacred vessel of the divine, our hearts and intuition as our guidance system, and our sisters and brothers as equals. We endeavor to eradicate hierarchy, competition and comparison. We endeavor to walk with compassion towards ourselves and others, and learn to listen and hold space for all points of view and personal experiences. We endeavor to cycle with the earth in her solar and lunar phases, honoring periods of release and rest as much as creation and activity. We honor our emotions as sacred messengers and celebrate the full spectrum of our human experience.

8) Re-Balancing Feminine and Masculine

We acknowledge that patriarchal leadership of our planet for the past four thousand years has led us into over-saturation and cultural preference of masculine energy and a diminishment, eradication and demarcation of feminine energy. We name masculine and feminine as separate from sexual assignment and gender expression, and rather as two powerful forces of energy that move within us all, regardless of gender. 

We name the masculine energy as our doing, pro-active, and intellectual side, as well as our aggression, persistence and our strive for progress. We name our feminine as our being, contemplating, and feeling side, as well as our surrender, relationship-building and instinct to nurture. 

We acknowledge that the crises that we face as a collective humanity will only be resolved if we can rebalance the feminine and masculine and bring these two equal yet different forms of our human expression into harmony.

9) Multi-Dimensional View of Reality

We acknowledge hat we live within a multi-dimensional universe and that reality is what we have collectively made of it. Furthermore, we acknowledge that earth is a multi-dimensional place, and that there are worlds upon and within her surface. With this understanding, we acknowledge that the reality that is taught to us by the dominant culture is not the only reality—far from it, and that we are free to explore and create new realities through the multi-dimensions. Goddess Temple Central Coast offers opportunities to explore other worlds.

10) Location of Divinity

We acknowledge that orthodox religion has often taught us that the source of the divine, Great Creator, or God exists above us and outside of us in a place called heaven. We endeavor to unlearn this indoctrination by orthodox religion, which has separated us from our own innate divinity. We endeavor to remember that divinity exists inside our bodies and the earth all around us, and that our bodies and the earth are ensouled. We learn practices, rituals and ceremonies to discover this source of divinity within us.

11) The Presence of the Soul

We understand it as truth that we are all souls having a human experience, and as souls, life is eternal, though this current human emanation is not. Our body will eventually die and our soul shall live on. We also believe in the presence of past lives and that as souls we have been on a journey of learning from one lifetime to another. We call this “karma.” We advocate for the healing and completion of karma so that the soul may be free to live out its greatest destiny. Goddess Temple Central Coast offers a foundation and spiritual path to do so.

11) Healing the Shadow

We honor the presence of “the Shadow” as a crucial aspect of healing within our spiritual lives. The shadow contains all the parts of us that we have rejected over the course of this lifetime and others. This may be a part of ourselves or another person that we disdain or fear. It may be emotional memories that feel too painful to bear. Our shadows extend into our past lives and ancestry, too. We welcome any and every opportunity to bring the shadow into conscious awareness with love, compassion and understanding. We acknowledge that it is through the process of healing our shadows that we come more greatly into an expression of wholeness and authenticity, and extend our ability to hold unconditional love and compassion for ourselves and others. Goddess Temple Central Coast offers safe spaces to explore and heal the shadow with love.

12) Healing the Core Wound of Separation

We acknowledge that there is a core wound that the collective of humanity shares: separation from the earth and loss of knowing we are her and she is us. This core wound extends into a separation from our innate, embodied divinity, our souls, one another and all life including creature and plant kind. 

We acknowledge that great harm has been and continues to be leveled upon the earth’s body, humanity and creature kind in the form of domination, destruction and control because of this core wound. It is our passion and purpose to heal this core wound so that we may come fully home to Mother Earth as our Divine Creator and Creation, and thus form a new future for us all. 

13) Balance of Light and Dark

We honor as universal spiritual truth that a balance of light energy and dark energy is needed in all levels of existence. We reject antiquated orthodox notions that dark equates to “evil”, “sinful” or bad in any way.

We define light energy as moving upward and outward, creative, anabolic and uplifting, and dark energy as moving downward and inward, destructive, catabolic and grounding. We honor the endless cycles of life, death and rebirth that the balance of light and dark energies affords us. We honor the sanctity of the dark as a state of primordial rebirth and becoming, like the mother’s womb. Everything is born out of the dark.

14) Honoring Individual Sovereignty

We honor the truth that as humans we have free will. This means that we get to choose the paths we take in life and that there is no spiritual power greater than ourselves that writes the story of our lives. We endeavor to know the ways we have given our power away to externalized sources of authority and we commit to reclaim that power. We look inward and locate the spiritual source of authority that lives within us as ensouled humans, and by doing so, we respect the spiritual source of authority within Mother Earth and all living beings, including other humans, creature kind, plant kind, stones, the earth’s body, faerie kind, and energetic beings that do not have physical form.

15) Ceremony, Ritual and Rites of Passage

We celebrate the truth that when we come together in ceremony and ritual, we are more powerful and have the capacity to move collective energy, heal previously unhealed wounds, and feel a greater spiritual connection. We have learned from the indigenous ancestors and stewards of place that the earth Herself calls us home to her through ceremony and ritual. And that her loving and healing frequency is amplified and balanced by the very act of ceremony and the collective raising of vibration. 

We endeavor to gather in ceremony upon the land, honor the rites of passage of our personal lives within loving community, celebrate the turning of the solar wheel through cross-quarterly rituals, and pay homage to our emotional lives through the waxing and waning of the lunar cycles.

16) Dismantling Colonialism

We acknowledge the pervasive presence of colonialism within the dominant cultures, institutions, economies and governments world-wide, which endeavor to dominate through greed and violence, concentrate wealth among multi-national corporations and their stake holders, and to strip indigenous and less wealthy people of their rites to land, wealth, information, safety and health. We acknowledge the tremendous harm colonialism has done to the earth and all her indigenous stewards and ancestors.

We acknowledge that due to its pervasive nature within cultures worldwide, we must actively take a stand to dismantle colonialism, both within our institutions and our consciousness. We open ourselves to any and all opportunity to learn of the presence of colonial beliefs and behaviors so that we may dismantle them and return to a reciprocal way of living with one another and Mother Earth.

17) Gender Inclusivity

We understand gender to be a social construct, not a fact based on birth assignment or biology, and of being a spectrum rather than a binary. We welcome all forms of gender expression, and view a diversity of gender and sexual expression as a strength and gift to our temple.

We hold exclusive spaces for women and femme-identified folks to explore their divine feminine expression, and we welcome into these spaces all transgender women, femme non-binary folks, and cisgender women. 

18) Recognition of cultural inequity and white supremacy

We recognize that we live within a dominant culture that maintains gross inequities in regards to culture, class, race, age and ableism. We also acknowledge the pervasive impact that white supremacy has had upon us, living within this culture. At Goddess Temple Central Coast we seek to learn how these inequities exist within our own consciousness and spaces so that we may dismantle them and lessen the harm that they cause within our communities.

19) Commitment to accessibility and diversity

We are committed to making our gatherings and learning opportunities as physically and financially accessible as possible. We welcome a diversity of human expression in terms of gender, sexuality, culture, race, age, physical or mental ability, parental or marital status, belief and style, and view it as a strength to host a full spectrum of human expression within our temple doors.

20) Community sustained, maintained and supported

We are a community-led spiritual organization that will eventually seek non-profit status within the state of California. We sustain our financial support through community contributions and our events are organized and led by temple priestesses, apprentices and volunteers. All funds raised by the temple through community contributions go directly to the maintenance, growth and well-being of the temple and its volunteers in accordance with our mission statement and this manifesto.

21) Honoring the solar wheel

As a temple, we celebrate the eight cross-quarterly days of the solar calendar year as a celebration of Mother Earth and her seasons of change. We celebrate the Great Mother at Yule / Winter Solstice, Sister of Compassion at Imbolc, Magdalene Rose at Ostara /Spring Equinox, Lady Sovereignty at Beltane, Solar Queen at Lithe / Summer Solstice, the Gatekeeper at Lughnasadh, Dragon Womxn on Mabon / Autumn Equinox, and the Dark Goddess on Samhain.

22) Honoring the moon cycles

As a temple, we honor the waxing and waning of the moon cycle every 28-29 days and we consider a cisgender woman’s menstruation cycle as holy, just like the moon. We celebrate new moons as portals to rest, go within and set prayers and intentions for the cycle that is initiating. We celebrate full moons as portals of abundance, to make offerings to our community and to release what doesn’t serve us. We honor eclipse portals, beginning with a lunar eclipse and ending with a solar eclipse, as potent times of shadow work and transformation.

23) A pathway of spiritual initiation

Goddess Temple Central Coast offers opportunities for spiritual initiation, healing  and transformation for anyone who is ready and willing to deepen their spiritual path and connection to the Goddess. We craft our ceremonial events, circles and gatherings to be anchored and encircled by powerful high vibrational allies that assist us with this process. All rituals are crafted to bring about genuine human experiences that activate the presence of divine love, remembrance and truth within the individual, as well as trust, connection and shared reverie amongst the group. We trust in this presence of divine love to be the initiating and transformational force within us all.

24) A pathway of spiritual mentorship

Goddess Temple Central Coast offers opportunities to journey deeper into the mysteries and teachings that form the spiritual foundation of the temple. By enrolling in temple mentorship, participants have an opportunity to become a Priest or Priestess of the Goddess Temple. This is a rigorous, devotional, transformational and life-changing path. It is one most often chosen by the soul, not the human, and ample preparation and participation in the temple is recommended before commencement of this spiritual training.

25) Spiritual enlightenment is available to all

Goddess Temple Central Coast defines enlightenment as the complete merging of spirit and body as one. We believe that this experience is not a static one, nor a status symbol. It is not one available to a chosen few with specific genetics, spiritual ability, social access or financial resources. 

Enlightenment is a spontaneous arousal co-created with earth, ancestors and spirit, yet it is also a temporary experience. Experiencing enlightenment means in no way that our spiritual journey is complete or that we have reached a higher spiritual octave, but rather it is a moment to pause in gratitude to celebrate all the ways that we have been transformed through love. Spiritual enlightenment marks the completion of a cycle.

It is an experience that is available to all who are devoted to their spiritual path. It is a state of being that occurs when we harmonize the earth’s cycles as our own cycles—of waxing and waning, of creation and destruction, balancing feminine and masculine, and light and dark within our bodies and consciousness.