There are no shortage of articles on the internet pointing out how emphasizing the gender binary in public ritual and practice can be problematic or downright exclusionary. What’s harder to find are articles about reframing gender divinity into a more inclusive model. It only does so much good to point out the flaws in a system without offering an alternative. So, here is my attempt at a gender divinity model that places non-binary genders in equal status to male and female genders. It is my hope that it might resonate with you, or give you ideas for how to create your own nonbinary gender divinity model.

In order to create a new model, it helps to have a conscious understanding of the terms involved, and how the current model works.

“Binary Gender” refers to classifying gender only in terms of a male/female dichotomy, in which the two are usually considered to be opposite, distinct, and independent of each other. Any additional genders are either described in terms of their maleness and femaleness, or are omitted altogether.

“Nonbinary Gender” refers to all genders and gender identities that are neither male nor female. This includes, but is nowhere near limited to, androgyne, intergender, agender, genderfluid, genderqueer, demi-gendered, and multi-gendered.

I define “Gender Binary Model” in a metaphysical context as the practice of parceling out reality into only male or female boxes, including objects, plants, animals, spirits, and deities that have no inherent gender, or are inherently other gendered. Common examples of this are gender attributions for heavenly bodies, ritual tools, vehicles, and weather patterns. Ritual and symbology is usually steeped in a male/female dichotomy, and most work in the area of divinity is polarized between constructs of the only two genders explicitly represented or acknowledged, male and female. If the user of this model believes in gender spectrum, work outside of “female” or “male” tends to be framed as some % female and some % male, meaning that it is still being interpreted solely through the framework of male/female gender identity.

A “Nonbinary Model” is one that seeks to include nonbinary genders as equal in import to male and female, and as existing independently of male or female.

When creating a new model, it also helps to examine your personal baggage with the current system, in what ways specifically it does and does not work for you, and what parts of it you want to change. If you don’t do that kind of examination, it’s difficult to know if you can make a small change to the current system, make massive changes, or need to throw it all out and start from scratch.

Why do I care?

As an asexual nonbinary person, I have never felt any real draw to include gender in my personal practice. When I was young I thought that maybe I should include gender, because everyone else was, but it didn’t ever happen. Gender exists, but most of the time I see it as something that is not central to any work I might want to do. It’s more like a footnote, a fact about a person, entity, or thing, like the color of a person’s hair or skin. The fact that someone is blond doesn’t matter to a working unless it has to do with their hair. The fact that someone is female doesn’t matter to a working unless the work is directly related to some part of her femaleness. The fact that a deity is male or female is insignificant compared to my actual reason for working with them, same as working with another witch. I am completely disinclined to play the “you are male/female, and therefor are best suited to X role” game. As a result, it is extremely easy for me to avoid the gender binary by simply not including gender as a central element of my personal practice.

Most ways of casting a circle that I have encountered are steeped in gender binary symbology, but I also never cast circles in my personal practice. I live my life metaphysically protected and connected at all times, so most of the time casting a circle amounts to a lot of pomp and circumstance that doesn’t actually add anything to my work. Circles are something I have only ever done in group settings, whether with a coven or other private group, or at public ritual. In those settings it makes a great deal of sense to me to cast a circle, because that extra ceremony helps the group connect and be protected, no matter the skills or focus of the particular individuals attending. Plus, the extra ritual is good for the human psyche and can help build community.

That means I have participated in a good number of rituals over the year that were based on a gender binary model, especially the Wiccan model of circle where you call quarters and specifically invoke the Goddess and God. Whether or not the rest of the ritual turns out to be amazing, during the creation and banishing of such circles I always feel like a participant observer, politely standing there to witness something that has meaning for other people present, but not me.

In fact, gender binary circles are so prevalent in public ritual that many people are conditioned to expect gender-based divinity in such settings. Tacitly omitting gender altogether can easily leave people feeling like the ritual was somehow incomplete (as I have discovered). However, I don’t see gender as a binary, or even a spectrum, so I cannot in good faith officiate such a ritual, even if that ritual is for public consumption. That means in order to better meet the needs of the community when officiating ritual, I need to be able to provide a system where all genders are equally represented.

The Gender Spectrum Model

It is very common to use a binary gender spectrum in an attempt to include those who are neither male nor female. However, there is far too much variation in gender for it to be cleanly defined along a spectrum line. If I really had to, I could put myself approximately in the middle of a male/female spectrum, but that’s not actually accurate. Regardless of the fact that I look extremely female, I’m neither male nor female, and yet include aspects of both. I’m not genderfluid either, so it would be ridiculous to move me up and down the gender binary spectrum depending upon whether society perceived me as more “femme” or “butch” on any particular day. I don’t wake up in the morning and think to myself, “I feel like being 60% female today.” (Although if you do, more power to you.)

If you are using the spectrum model, how do you determine the extremes? Is a masculine male one end, and a feminine female the other end? If so, where do you put a tom boy who completely identifies as female? Or a fabulous man who completely identifies as male? How do you define what qualifies as “masculine male” or “feminine female”? (hint: cultural bias and stereotypes) Where do you put agender people? Where do you put demigender people? Where do you put people who feel equally both, not half and half, but fully both? Where do you put intersex people? Do you try to define them by how much of which sex traits they posses? (The respectful answer is No, you do not.)

The gender binary spectrum model completely breaks down when you look critically at the genders that exist beyond the gender binary. This is especially true when you realize that those other genders are their own thing, and not some mishmash soup of masculine and feminine. It gets even more complicated when you realize that no two people are exactly the same gender. For example, you can ask two very female identifying people what “female” means, and you will get two different answers. What female or male means is not universal (on a physical or divine level), and our genders are as unique as we are. However helpful that is on a philosophical and spiritual level, it’s not at all helpful for communication and the very human desire to find others like ourselves. So, we create labels and archetypes and struggle to achieve a consensus for what those mean.

Gender Archetypes

The binary gender divine archetypes found in modern paganism grew out of a very Christian Western binary gendered cultural view of the world. There have always been people and deities who exist outside the gender binary, but awareness, knowledge, and (ideally) acceptance of that fact has only recently come into common public discourse in the Western world. As a result you have no shortage of material written about the divine feminine and divine masculine, but very little written about connecting to other gender divinities.

Archetypes are handy in the same way labels are, because they allow us to lump related traits together into more explainable and understandable chunks. Declaring that “every person’s gender is unique” is great, but when you want to be able to focus your energy, it’s not very helpful. Archetypes provide structure that can be focused upon for doing work and better grasping the nature of the world around us. They fail us when they are not adequate to explain or represent something. When that happens, archetypes change, fall out of use, or new ones are created, and often a mix of all three. These archetypal changes are nothing new, and are part of the human experience.

I am of the belief that even if the gender binary works for you, there is only benefit to be gained by practicing a nonbinary gender model. Male and female still exist within such models, so nothing is lost, but you stand to gain wider perspective and a deeper understanding of the nuances of existence. By helping to dissolve culturally dictated gender biases, and reframing male and female so they are not in opposition, nonbinary models can also be a helpful tool for shedding the baggage of the patriarchy.

If your reaction is to reject a nonbinary model because it’s not relevant to you as a strongly male or female practitioner, I posit that you are already including a gender other than your own in your practice. Even in goddess worship where masculine divinity is omitted, there is still an implicit acknowledgement that masculine divinity exists. Even in god worship where feminine divinity is omitted, there is still an implicit acknowledgement that feminine divinity exists. Just because you acknowledge something exists doesn’t mean you must make it a central focus of your personal practice. I certainly am going to continue mostly ignoring gender altogether in my personal practice, and explore diverse gender divinity in public practice.

Gender Circle Model

At this time I am mostly breaking down gender archetypes into a circle, with spokes for masculine, feminine, intergender, genderfluid, and agender. Feel free to add or change gender archetypes on your circle to best suit your understanding of divine gender. Those five don’t cover all nuanced possibilities by any stretch of the imagination, but seems pretty good for covering all major bases for the purposes of gender divinity archetypes. I’m still working on it, and my model will continue to change as I work with it. By all means, add or remove spokes as best suits your understanding of gender.

Masculine divine includes maleness, cis and trans men, and everything else you might associate with masculine. Pretty standard stuff here.

Feminine includes femaleness, cis and trans women, and everything else you might associate with femininity. Also pretty standard.

Agender includes all that which has no gender. It is as important to acknowledge the absence of gender as the presence of gender, or the tendency is to try and define all things in terms of gender even if there is none.

Genderfluid is transformative gender. That means the gender is likely to change over time or with circumstance. In the same way a bisexual person is still bisexual even when they are in a heterosexual relationship, a genderfluid person or being is still genderfluid no matter what gender they are currently exhibiting or feeling.

Intergender in this context includes androgyne, multigender, and just about any kind of non-binary gender that is not agender or genderfluid. This archetype is representative of gender that contains elements traditionally associated with both masculine and feminine, yet is neither.

Demigender is included on whatever spoke it is demi- to, or on the line between the gender and agender. For example: demi-female would be on the feminine spoke, or on the line between female and agender.

I place the gender archetypes in a circle because they are all distinct, and yet interrelated and interdependent. Because there are an odd number of spokes, none of them are placed in direct opposition to each other. Also, instead of seeing a spectrum along a line, they each have spheres of influence and can be visualized as intersecting like a venn diagram. They also don’t have to be placed in exactly the positions illustrated in my symbol at the top of this article. They can be moved around to create different emphasis, like changing the locations of the elements when mapping them out on a pentagram.

Example: A gender pentagram to help a transgender female transition smoothly
Set the pentagram with feminine at the top, intergender and genderfluid at the bottom, and masculine and agender to the sides. Feminine is at the top because it is the goal. Genderfluid and intergender are the foundation. Intergender shows that our gender is not truly defined by our physiology, and genderfluid supports transformation of gender. Masculine is in the past, but it still exists. Agender may or may not be part of the process, but regardless, it also still exists. For female to male transition, simply swap the positions of masculine and feminine.

Example: A gender pentagram to encourage gender-neutral pronoun use
Set the pentagram with intergender or agender at the top to emphasize use of gender neutral pronouns. Use whichever of the two best applies to the person who is the target of the spell. Set feminine and masculine at the bottom because they are the most likely to misgender. Set genderfluid and intergender or agender to the sides because they support the concept of gender neutral pronouns. If it makes more sense to you to place the supporting genders at the base, and male/female to the sides, do that instead.

What Now?

Exactly how you make use of nonbinary gender divinity models will depend very much upon your personal practice, how much emphasis you place on gender in your practice, and whether you want to work equally with all genders or your practice focuses on one or two. It may be as simple as mentally swapping out a binary model for a non-binary one, or it may require a great deal of soul searching and massive changes to the symbology and ritual of your practice. What follows are a couple ideas, but by no means an exhaustive list. Follow your heart and your intuition. You are the only person who knows what is best for your personal practice.

If you are lighting candles to masculine and feminine divinity, instead light one candle for all divinity regardless of gender, or five candles to represent each of these divine gender archetype, or as many candles as you need to represent the gender archetypes you wish to specifically include.

Gender attribution to magical tools is not inherent (tools are fundamentally gender neutral objects, and can be related to different genders depending upon the associations of the user), but applying gender symbology can be very powerful in magical practice. Critically reevaluate the metaphysical meanings and symbology of your tools through the nonbinary framework, and reassign gender meanings based on those expanded archetypes. Some will stay male or female, but others will take on new dimensions of meaning by giving them other gendered attributions. For example, wands are of the earth, usually made from something that was once alive, often artistically created, used for focusing magic, and they are very rarely weapons. Having a wand symbolize intergender acknowledges the aspects of the wand that are beyond the typical masculine properties.

All paths are mutable and personal. Ritual and meaning changes as our understanding of the world around us changes. Sometimes those changes are conscious decisions, and other times they happen more organically. For some people, changing your mindset to a nonbinary metaphysical model is easy and natural. For other people it is fighting a lifetime of biases, and struggling to understand something that is outside of personal experience. For most people I expect it is somewhere between the two extremes. It may take a lot of time and effort before it feels natural. The most important part is to make the effort and continue to learn and grow, because there is so much more to life and divinity than just man and woman.

This is a sigil for gender diversity, acceptance, and inclusion in pagan and magical spaces, community, rituals, and workings.

This has been magically charged with intent for:
*learning
*welcoming
*community
*crossroads and bridges
*inclusion and full acceptance
*open to other perspectives
*wards against hate and bigotry

You can read more about the sigil, what it means, suggestions for how to use it, and details about its creation and the specific symbology used.