The Charge of the Goddess - Doreen & Gerald
“let thine inmost divine self shall be enfolded in the raptures of the infinite.”
Again this seems to be derived from two more quotes merged from the Law of Liberty: “He is then your inmost divine self” and “in the constant rapture of the embraces of Infinite Beauty”. These quotes are words attributed to Hadit, the masculine divine (i.e. the God) in the cosmology of Aleister Crowley’s Thelema. Being used in a Charge for the Goddess is inappropriate, and may indicate that the person compiling this version of the Charge was not familiar with Crowley’s work or philosophy. Rather they thought of the words as mere poetry to be used, as it would seem from this that the material used to compile the Charge was used regardless of its original context and symbolism.
Valiente’s remark in An ABC of Witchcraft that Gardner told her he “had supplied words which seemed to him to convey the right atmosphere, to strike the right chords in one’s mind” might explain a few things here. If Gardner gave Valiente a few quotes to work with, then she may simply not have been aware of the authorship of the material she was weaving together to create her adaptation of the Charge; and so she would not have known that she was replacing Crowley with more Crowley quite so often!
