Liber ab Nomen (Book of Name)^25
can be down right painful if you happen to be the one who has to sit with your back to
the faucet. So in addressing the lustral bath prior to public ritual, the best method I
have found is to make a gift of bath salts to the guests you know will be attending.
Should a person arrive at the monthly meeting of a public organization and ask for
the Rite of Wiccaning, by all means welcome the person, but ask them to return to the
following month’s meeting after having first followed certain instructions. Give to them
those instructions along with the bath salts of Initiation, instruction as to their use, and
a parental consent form should the person be under legal age. Those instructions should
be clear in why the lustral bath is important so the seeker does not think he or she
smells bad (even if he or she does indeed smell bad).
So why is the lustral bath so important? Because Wicca is a religion that embraces
both creation and evolution. Although one might think the two are mutually exclusive,
Wicca is a fertility religion, so it sees the creation of humanity as similar to the creation
of a child. A child is not conceived in finished human form. Instead, a child begins his or
her life as a cell, then two cells, then four, then eight, then 16...All of which took place
in the womb of that child’s mother.
Wiccans view the ocean as the womb of our Mother Earth, not just because it is
nicely poetic, but because science tells us that the ocean is the womb in which all life on
this planet started. Per common scientific convention, the primordial oceans of the
Earth were once filled with the building blocks of life (the ovum) but it remained with-
out life until gradually the conditions became such that the relationship between the
Earth and the sky built potential between the two. With the Earth’s rotation and the
churning of the sky, that potential became greater and greater, the way rubbing a cat
produces static electricity. When the potential became too great for the separate poles
to contain, that electricity (sperm) was released. Like human conception, the first or-
gasms probably did not result in life, but as the ocean was joined with lightning over and
over again, the chances increased until those building blocks of life (simple proteins/
ovum) were eventually moved in such a way that they became amino acids. Eventually
those amino acids joined in such a way to form the very first string of viable DNA for
the first life. Those simple strings of DNA became the first single celled life—fertilized
ovum—which in turn grew into the plethora that we now see, the beauty of all life.
Thus, the lustral bath reminds us that plants, animals, and humans may have distinct
differences, but they are all in the same order of Life itself. Thus, they are all sacred in
a religion that praises Life.
Wicca is first and foremost a cult of science. Right about now you are probably
flinching because I used the word cult. You shouldn’t because of the word I used after
that spooky term, science. The word cult means nothing more than ‘a following,’ and
science is a way of explaining the truths of the world which can at this time be ex-
plained. So when I say Wicca is first and foremost a cult of science, all I am saying is that
Wicca is first and foremost a following of the truth.
Now, I know other religions have used the word science in their titles. But I am not
talking about other religions. No one has a trademark or copyright on the word. Think
back on what you know about the Church State of Medieval England. Who did it per-
secute? Midwives and healers perhaps? Is not medicine a form of science? Maybe peopleg WB Chap 0.p65 25 7/11/2003, 5:47 PM