Phoenix MacFarland (copyright 2000)
Most people experience some name changes during their lives. We sometimes are given nicknames, for better or worse, by our schoolmates. Our lovers give us special pet names. Most women change their last names when they marry, and they still go from Miss to Mrs., despite the feminist movement and the push toward Ms-ing everyone together in one big, feminine group. As Wiccans, when we set forth upon our spiritual path, we often take a magical name to signify the internal changes that have occurred.
We take magical names for more reasons than just to bear a "cool" name. We do it because the path of Wicca is a transformational one. As we walk along it, we change, we grow. We evolve into new people many times over as we progress through the degrees. Each step requires a new name because we no longer fit the names originally given to us. After having met the challenges the Goddess gives us; after having studied and developed our power and wisdom; after learning to work the magic, the healing of the sick, the divination of the future; after having been the vessel of the very gods themselves, we just are no longer a Cathy or a Dan.
In some traditions, with each degree's elevation ritual, the Witch takes a new name, but what about all those other times in our lives? We go through so many passages in our lives that go unacknowledged. These stages of life are mileposts of our progress through life. Here are what I see as the ten most significant life passages.
1. Childhood. Childhood is the point at which one is no longer a baby. There could be a new name given upon being weaned onto solid foods or completing toilet training.
2. Teen. This is a great passage, usually indicated by the beginning of menses in girls. Since boys do not have a marker that is as apparent as menses, parents of boys can help them choose what event will mark the passage for them.
3. Post Virginity. Losing one's virginity is an unquestioned landmark event. It's about first love, youth, innocence, broken hearts quickly healed, and the passions of the young.
4. Adulthood. Adulthood is an achievement rather than an age. Not everyone who is eighteen or twenty-one should be considered adult. Some people in their forties are not yet adults. Some think one of the reasons this is so is that there are no longer rituals that outline expected adult behaviour, responsibilities, and rewards to transform the rebellious teen into an honourable adult.
5. Career. When one embarks on a career, beginning usually with a graduation ritual and ending with a retirement party, one does more than earn a paycheck and bring home the tofu. A career is one's life's work.
6. Marriage. I used to think that committed unmarried couples are as much a couple as married people. Then I got married. The wedding ritual is the most profound ritual of your lifetime. It changes you. I see marriage as an initiation into the world of real relationships.
7. Parenthood. Creating and giving birth to a child constitutes the initiation into this new realm of life's experiences. Over the long haul is where the real parenting takes place.
8. Change of Life. The children move out, the eggs stop sliding down those tubes, the baby machine shuts down, and women get power surges. For men it involves physical aging, gray hair, balding, widening around the middle, and sometimes a hysterical rebellion against those things with a comb-over, a bottle of Grecian formula, and a red Corvette.
9. The Elder Years. The elder years are marked by silver hair, the wrinkles, complaints about how small they are making the print on the aspirin bottles, not being able to get up without grunting, the post-menopausal energy, retirement, and grandchildren.
10. Death. This is the final passage. The time for reflection about all that you accomplished, all the people you were, all the love you shared, and the people you touched in this incarnation. The cycle ends and begins again.
Life is a circle, the Wiccans sing. It's a dance. Using naming rituals, we can mark the transition past each passage. When the baby achieves its first milepost and becomes, instead, a child, this is the time to retire the baby names you cooed at them when they were at the breast. Consider a tender mother-daughter ritual upon your daughter's menses. Talking about her experience, and yours, teaching her what she can expect, what she needs to know, and honoring that change in her life's path with a magical name. It need not be a public name change. It could be a pet name between mother and daughter, or simply a name change in her diary to help mark the passage and make a memory.
Adulthood and career names are usually given to us when we are first called by the title Mr., Miss or Ms. A young person will giggle when first addressed this way, thinking perhaps that you mean their father or mother. When they realize that they have grown up enough to bear that title, it is a profound moment. You can use that feeling in your coming-of-age rituals. At the end, when the supplicant has overcome challenges and achieved the honor of adulthood, call him Mr. or her Ms.
Parenting comes with automatic name change to "Mommy" and "Daddy," and even affecting other members of the family to aunts and uncles or grandparents and great-grandparents. As they grow, your child's names for you will change from ma-like syllables drooled out of a baby's mouth to the "Mama" and "Mommy" of small children, giving way to the "Mom" of older kids and the scornful "Mother" of teens. Mothers can also take the names of mothers they admire, perhaps from films or literature, and use them in hopes of being as good a mother as those characters were.
It is in the passages of change of life and the elder years that magical names can have the most profound effect upon your state of mind. We are culturally preconditioned to see life's marks upon our faces as signs of decay rather than marks of wisdom. We live in a culture that embraces only the virgin, and to a lesser extent the mother. The crone has little value except as the only alternative to death. It is unfortunate that this is so. Other cultures revere their elders, and perhaps as the Baby Boomers silver, society's priorities will shift.
One way to embrace our eldering is to name it and so claim it. Consider a woman going through her change of life time. She is leaving off the role of mother and is heading toward...? That's the problem. Those little mysterious, unknown dots traipsing off to who knows where and making a fifty-something person uneasy. Try a ritual that marks the time, or that not only marks the ending of the parent years, leaving behind the problems of birth control, the discomforts of menses, and the issues around raising children, but that celebrates the freedom of the future. Look forward to the goals we have planned for that time in our lives.
As one enters the elder years, why not take a name to celebrate? We can weave positive magic into the names by choosing names that are imbued with health, strength, wisdom, and respect--whatever is needed. In my book The Complete Book of Magical Names, I have included an "Index of Names by Characteristics" that you can use to choose the names for all your passages, according to what characteristics they will bring into your life.
I was at a Wiccan handfasting in which the couple used all the magical names they had ever had. In effect, marrying all the aspects of themselves to the other's complete self. The end of our lives could be like that. We could look back over a lifetime of names, each marking our significant passages, and reflect on all that we have been, all that we have accomplished, and all the names we bore so proudly along the long, strange trip called life.
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