Reconstruction and Gnosis: The First Experiment

So there I was, standing on a little finger of land between two streams with my jacked-up Götavi grid drop-cloth. I was on my magical experiment bullshit again up a mountain in WV, perfumed with eau de DEET and wishing it wasn’t so fucking humid.

Crunch time had come; it was time to test my working theory. And come Hel or high water, I was going to test it—sweat patches and all!

(Oh the glamour!)

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. Allow me, dear reader, to wind things back a little.

The Story So Far

This series began as a single post that was supposed to stand alone. But the more I wrote, the clearer it became that I had too much to say on this topic to fit in a single post. Eventually (and much like my antiperspirant in WV), I had to concede to a greater force, and thus this series was born.

If this post is the first you’ve seen of this series, I encourage you to go back and read the rest in order. There have been five posts so far. Five posts filled with research, musings, and discussion that you won’t want to miss out on going forward. It’s all necessary context for what comes next. I’ve even linked them below to save you the trouble of hunting them down.

One
Two
Three
Four
Five

Why Is Life So Busy?

It’s been a while since the last installment and you may have been wondering where I was. Well, life got kind of exciting! I got jumped by a bunch of deadlines and facilitated a week-long devotional magical practice for the Cult of the Spinning Goddess group. I also held some community-building events called Spin ‘n’ Witches, gave a class, and kicked off a podcast with Morgan Daimler. In the middle of all of that, I’ve also been working on several books, learning Japanese with my kid, and studying Welsh (as well as doing all the usual life-y stuff).

And that’s even without mentioning my personal magical practices (both the daily and experimental). For me, there are no words on the screen without the dirty boots, sweat patches, and magical adventures. As weird as it may sound, this kind of work is also really whole-making for me, a key part of my wellness. It’s a good portion of the roots that help the tree that is me to grow.

In one way or another, practice forms a large part of the foundation for pretty much everything I produce. And I will absolutely move some projects to the back burner if it means reclaiming some time for the work that makes my souls sing. Which is what happened to these blog posts for a while, and I’m never going to apologize for that.

But anyway, as Machine Gun Kelly and/or Corpse Husband say/s in their joint masterpiece, Daywalker: “I came back.”

From Books To Boondocks

When I last left you, I’d just finished talking about the research and planning phases of magical experimentation. In this post, I’m going to talk about that first experiment and how it all shook out. This is where the gnosis is really going to start to come in. If that isn’t your thing or reading other people’s gnosis makes you rage, then I advise you to hit the back-button.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

For those of you who stick around, I hope these posts serve to illustrate how wonderful it can be when research and gnosis meet. Because frankly, it’s amazing and I hope some of you feel inspired to go make your own magical adventures.

Before we go any further though, did you know that the word “boondock” comes from the Tagalog word bundók, meaning “mountain”? If I ever get to name a mountain, I’m calling it “Bundók-Pendle Mountain” so it means “Mountain, Hill, Hill, Mountain.” You know, as you do.

Prologue To An Experiment

So anyway, I initially began researching the grid in 2019. However as it turns out, nothing wrecks plans for magical mischief and mayhem like a global pandemic. But by the time May 2021 rolled around, things seemed to be getting back on track thanks to the advent of the first COVID vaccine. So I booked a cabin up a mountain in West Virginia with a couple of friends. We were going to hang out, do the experiment, then hang out some more.

When it came to the experiment though, my friends realized they weren’t actually all that comfortable with active participation. One was concerned about the possibility of adverse effects on their health issues, and the other just didn’t want to do something with such a high degree of uncertainty attached.

These were both sensible concerns. Some forms of magic really aren’t good to participate in if you’re already sick. And some people have vulnerable folks in their care to think of too. So while I would have loved for them to have also taken part, I’m also really glad they didn’t. When you’re attempting to work with historical magic in this way, you need to know and be honest about your limits. And I’d much rather my friends tell me “Hey, this isn’t for me,” than participate and have something potentially bad happen to them.

Instead, my friends acted as observers, which meant my experiment also had the benefit of an outside perspective as well.

And that was one hell of a silver lining.

Back To The Experiment

Anyway, back to that little finger of land between two streams (and those sweat patches).

Before setting up, I made offerings to the local spirits and explained what I was going to do. The mountain was active; I’d been catching glimpses of the local beings since I’d arrived. It would have been rude to not ask.

There was a sense of acceptance toward my request, but also the feeling that it was only good until nightfall, and so I proceeded. Despite my earlier plans to set up the grid after circumambulating, I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to see where I’d walked without first setting up the grid. The ground was too uniform to discern marker points. So I opened the grid and set up posts at the north-northeast edge.

From that point on, the set-up went pretty much as planned. I circumambulated the space counterclockwise and made an offering of wine to Hel, asking her to allow temporary passage for some from her realm. Then I settled at the southwest edge of the grid.

According to my notes, I heard a male voice while circumambulating but couldn’t make out what he was saying so began to sing the dirge. Whenever I sing this dirge in ritual, I do so in a light trance in order to visualize/see the journey between the realms. This time when I peered at the road, I saw a blonde-haired man dressed in a white tunic.

A suspiciously shining man, as it happened.

As I finished the song, I heard what sounded like geese. And when I checked doorposts to the north of the grid, to my satisfaction, the space between the posts appeared “pixelated.”

There was a cool breeze like wove its way like a ribbon through the trees and the skies above grumbled, three thunderous complaints.

“Yes!” I remember thinking to myself. “This is working just like I thought it would!”

The Curveball (Because What’s An Experiment Without One?)

But that’s when the shift happened and my working theory went down like Das Boot. I’d originally theorized that the grid worked like other intermediary spaces I’d worked with like as crossroads effigies and doorposts. However, the shift that had taken place was more like what I’d experienced in my mound sitting experiments instead. When I’d sang the dead through doorposts or crossroads effigies in the past, I’d felt them enter into the space. Usually, their entrance came with a cool breeze that flowed from whichever medium they’d passed through. But most importantly, all of this would take place within an intermediary space rooted in this Middle Earth.

My experience with mounds though, is that the space shifts so that it’s no longer rooted in Middle Earth. It reminds me of the difference between being inside a different nation’s embassy while still within your own country and in your nation’s embassy while within another country.

Recognizing that feeling from those experiments with mound sitting, I moved onto the cloth, my ears filled with a buzzing that sounded like white noise. The cloth felt cool to the touch, and I had the feeling that someone was on their way.

I was both shocked and delighted by the discovery.

Unfortunately though, that thunder had only heralded a coming storm. I wasn’t able to spend as much time feeling out my discovery as I would have liked. So I began the process of wrapping things up. I sang the dead back and made offerings of gratitude to Hel. Then I closed down the doorposts and grid, before circumambulating clockwise to return the space back to how it was before.

(Or so I thought.)

The Experiment: Observer Perspective

From talking to my two wonderful observers, I learned that during the circumambulation they’d seen the leaves to the north of me appear to “twitch.” From their perspective, it appeared as though whoever was making the leaves twitch was moving toward me.

One observer seems to have seen the same ribbon of wind I’d seen, and described it as coming from the east, before veering to the north, west, and south to wrap around the space. What’s especially interesting to me is that this ribbon of wind seems to have moved counterclockwise as I had during the circumambulation.

“Greetings! Have you heard the word of Beyla?”

The next main observation was that as I was getting into the rite, a big bee appeared in front of the door to the covered porch they were observing from. Apparently, this bee seemed to be trying to get in and was loud enough to drown out my voice. They (as in the bee) went on their merry way again once the rite had ended.

The Aftermath I

As I mentioned before, I only had the benefit of observers because my friends hadn’t felt comfortable with active participation. Again, I’m going to reiterate the fact that you really don’t know what’s going to happen when creating magical experiments based on historical sources, places, or objects. And this is also true for the aftermath.

The first thing I noticed in the aftermath was that I kept seeing the blonde man in the white tunic in the land outside. There was something very elven about him, but his presence confused me at that time given my location. (Now I’m a few more experiments in with the grid,  his presence makes total sense.)

The next thing I noticed was that the cloth itself had a certain energy to it, and was still chill to the touch. The lights in the cabin dimmed as I brought it in, and one of my friends expressed the concern that it might not be safe to drive with in the car. Agreeing with her, I worked up a quick and dirty chaos magic sigil for containment on a plastic bag big enough to hold the cloth and stuffed it in.

The room visibly brightened.

Once that was taken care of, I made sure to purify myself as I always do after clarting around/potentially clarting around with the dead and settled in for the night.

The Aftermath II

The afternoon gave way to the evening and eventually night. We ate dinner together and got comfy in the lounge to hang out and shoot the shit. After a while though, we began to notice that there were creaking noises coming from an empty wooden chair in the lounge area. It sounded exactly like the kind of creaking older chairs make when someone moves, shifting their weight. Curious, I put my hand out to feel the space and felt a cool presence there.

We had an unseen guest.

He (because he felt like a “he”) would remain with us for the rest of the evening and into the next morning.

When something like that happens, I generally find that you have a few options. You can ignore them and hope they don’t cause trouble. Another option is to kick them out. But my preferred option (at least in this case) was to offer him hospitality in the form of a cup of mead in exchange for him being a good guest. There can be a level of protection in the host-guest relationship, and when it goes right, everyone leaves happy.

And he was a good guest, though he would show his displeasure by creaking his chair and flickering the lights whenever we talked about other ghosts who were assholes while trading stories. Whenever this happened, we’d reassure him we didn’t mean him and he’d calm down again.

It was a real “not all ghosts” moment.

After the After-Aftermath

So that was the first experiment with the grid. Looking back, there were a lot of mistakes and my working theory was just plain wrong. However, this is all par for the course with this kind of magical experimentation. If that’s not something you can handle—that uncertainty—then I recommend you steer clear of this work. You need to be able to think on your feet and McGyver solutions relatively quickly. And I’m not saying that to be an elitist. It’s just that there’s so much you can’t know or plan for as the first human (often) to work with a space/object/kind of magic in a thousand-or-so years.

But that uncertainty and those first experiment fuck-ups is where the next step comes in: evaluation and optimization. And that is what I’m going to talk about in the next post in this series.

Be well.

Smoke Cleansing: From Leechbook to Modern Heathen Practice

Smoke Cleansing: The Proceduring

In the last post, I talked about some of the helpful herbs you can use for smoke cleansing. This is the third and final part of a series that began in 2014. Or rather, I wrote the first post in 2014, then was inspired to return to it, revise it, and add to it.

In this post, we’re going to take a look at an Old English procedure for preparing herbs for smoke cleansing.

Smoke Cleansing in Bald’s Leechbook III

The Charm

Dating back to the mid-tenth century, Bald’s Leechbook is a collection of remedies for everything from headaches to “elf-diseases.” There are two different procedures for preparing herbs for smoke fumigation that I’ve found, but I’m going to stick to the simplest. If you are curious about the second procedure, you can read it here.

In the charm we’re going to focus on, charm Lxii, we are given the following instructions:

“Against elf-disease: take marsh mallow, fennel, lupin, the lower part of bittersweet nightshade and the lichen from a holy crucifix and frankincense. Take a handful [of all of the plants]. Bind all the plants in a cloth. Dip [them] into a fountain with holy water three times. Let three masses be sung over them: one Omnibus Sanctis, another Contra Tribulationem, a third Pro Infirmis. Then put hot coals in a chafing dish and lay those plants in [it]. Smoke that person with the plants before 9 a.m. and at night, and sing litanies and credos and Pater Noster, and write the sign of the cross on each of his limbs, and take a little handful of the same plants of that kind, likewise consecrated, and boil in milk. Drip three [drops] of the holy water into [it] and sup [it] before his food. Soon he will be well.”

Source

Looks pretty Christian, right?

Well, not necessarily.

Healing, Smoke Cleansing, and “Middle Practices”

This was actually very close to the kind of healing the church fathers spoke out against. Contemporary writings show us that there was a clear preference for healing through prayer, or miracles. But herbal healing wasn’t viewed as necessarily being bad in and of itself for the most part. Simply making yourself some chamomile tea to settle a stomach and maybe speaking a blessing over it was fine. And really, that’s not all that different from what millions of Christians do today when they pray before eating. But when you’re using prayers and Christian liturgy as spells and throwing in a few ritual acts, that cure then transitions into the gray space between “magic” and “miracle” referred to by Karen Jolly as “middle practices” (Jolly 89).

So what do we have in our Leechbook charm?

We have the healer collecting the herbs and dipping them into holy water three times. In the Lacnunga, we see the number three usually associated with holiness. Alternatively, singing a prayer three times could also be a way of timing whatever the healer was doing.

Then, the herbs are hid under the altar while three masses are sung over them. Is this blessing or Christian prayers as galdor? See what I mean about that gray area?

Finally, the person is fumigated with the herbs – both in the morning and at night – while the healer sings further prayer/spells. (Plus draws crosses on the patient and feeds them some of the consecrated herb mixture boiled in milk with holy water.)

Adaptation

So, how do we take that procedure and Heathenize it for our own purposes? If Aelfric can replace spoken charms (galdre) with blessings, we can replace prayers and blessings with galdre.

(Fair’s fair, my dude!)

1. Collecting the Herbs

The first step comes in collecting the herbs. Here is where I look to a combination of the Nine Herbs Charm and the vervain charm from Harland. In both charms, the herbs are addressed as sentient beings in and of themselves. This is despite the 700-800 year gap between the Lacnunga and the charm recorded by Harland mentioned above.

All-hele, thou holy herb, Vervin, Growing on the ground…”

So, you may want to say a few words of your own when approaching and pulling the herbs. Pray to them as the spirits they are and take respectfully.

And just a note on the herbs mentioned in the Leechbook. I don’t use that particular mix of herbs because I prefer to work with plants I know and can easily forage/grow. In my experience, this procedure is good for preparing a wide range of herbs for smoke fumigation.

2. Washing the Herbs

In the original charm, the herbs are bound in cloth and dipped in holy water three times. Now, I suspect the cloth was largely to prevent bits of leaves breaking off into the font, so I don’t bother with that part. I’m also a Heathen, and where they say “holy water,” I say “Lemme go hallow this water with some galdor.”

Water from a local spring you consider sacred also works.

Empowering, right?

Now, give your plant friends a little bath.

3. Three Masses?

Here we come to the final step for prepping the herbs for later use. (As opposed to prepping the herbs in order to go treat a patient as soon as possible.) And the way I do this is I lay out the herbs (nicely spread out on a cloth so they dry out) on my shrine and then I hold three rituals to my gods and plant spirits on three consecutive days. I make offerings, I ask the gods and spirits to make the herbs so holy that ill-wights flee from their smoke. I also address the spirits of the plants themselves again. If I’m working with mugwort, I speak the verse from the Nine Herbs Charm that reminds her of what she can do while asking her to bring her powers to bear. With other plants, I fall back on relating any stories I know about them, reminding them of what they can do and asking them to help.

Then, after the three days of rituals are complete (and the herbs are dry), I put them away for later use.

Final Word

Hopefully, this series of posts has been both informative and helpful.  What began as a revision of an old blog post that still does the rounds, grew into an examination of helpful herbs. We end here with a framework for preparing those helpful herbs for smoke cleansing.

So, until next time. Be well.

Sources
Lancashire Folk-Lore – John Harland
Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context – Karen Louse Jolly
Leechbook – Stephen Pollington
Leechbook III 

The Places We Go In Dream

It’s been a while since I last posted about dreams in a general way. But after the dream I had on Sunday night, I find myself inspired to revisit the topic.

If you’re a long time reader of this blog then you probably already know that dreams are important to me, that they’re something I work with. I keep a dream journal that lives in an app on my phone with a secondary residence in the cloud. Other people have dedicated paper and pen journals that they keep in a handy-to-reach place for when they wake up.

It doesn’t really matter what you use to record your dreams though. It just has to work for you, and more importantly you have to actually use it. Which means developing the discipline to write down everything you remember as soon as you wake up. (As opposed to clicking on social media and letting it all get washed away.)

What’s in a Dream?

Dreams aren’t just random brain junk for me. Many of them contain lessons and interactions. Sometimes I find myself in what might be called the Otherworld, and occasionally there’s a good bit of prophecy in there too. But all of this only really becomes clear when you start recording your dreams. A clear record can make the various patterns and themes in your dreams clear, which can in turn, help you understand what those dreams could mean for your waking life.

Moreover, if you also are the kind of person who encounters otherworldly beings in dreams, then it’s just smart to keep a record of those interactions full stop. As humans we’re largely at a disadvantage in dream, and lucidity can be hit or miss (depending on how practiced you are). You may receive requests, be given tasks to do, or even pressured into making oaths with some of these beings. At the very least you need to create a record. An agreement made in dream is still an agreement to the Othercrowd (and as with all agreements they expect you to keep it).

Oh the Places You’ll Go (in Dream)!

Before waking up on Monday morning, I’d been at a bus interchange. I knew the place – had been there six months earlier. (Thank you for the reminder, dream journal!) And I also knew what had happened in my life after having that dream. (Hello, pattern!)

In short, it got me thinking about the places we find ourselves over and over again in dream, what they mean, and the role/s they can play in waking life (if you let them).

For the sake of simplicity I’ve divided these different types of spaces into two categories: the ‘Regular Spaces’ (ie spaces you visit on a reasonably regular basis that seem ‘fixed’), and ‘Intermediary Spaces’ (or spaces which either indicate transition or may be transited through to the Otherworld).

These are some of the spaces I encounter. (I’d love to hear about yours!)

Regular Spaces

The Otherworldly School

This is a space I find myself in quite often. I’m never alone there but in classes full of what I suspect may be other sleeping witches. The environment is extremely strict – it would make a Victorian school room look lax. And there’s an underlying sense of danger should you mess up. But as with all schools, there are lessons here too (and not only in etiquette). I’ve received some of my most interesting magical lessons from this school, and yes, they often assign homework too.

The Old House with a Hearth

Another interesting space I often find myself in is an old house somewhere in Germany. Well I say “somewhere”, but that’s not quite right either. It’s like an amalgamation of the town where I used to live in Germany and several others. The house is situated along a winding street of old houses that date back to the 16th century and has a flagstone floor and huge hearth upon which various symbols are carved. The back of the house is somewhat lighter thanks to the great windows that open out into the hof. It’s a familiar place to me despite never having lived there. And every time I am there I am working magic in what appears to be an earlier period of history.

The Creepy Ruined Church

Until last year, the Creepy Ruined Church was my least favorite place to find

See this ruin? Yeah, it’s way nicer than where I go.

myself in dream. There has always been something malevolent about the place. It feels twisted. Unhæl. And I’ve always wanted to leave. But last year I realized that the Creepy Ruined Church was a training ground of sorts – a kind of magical troubleshooting simulator, if you will. And the more I’ve worked with it in this way, the more it’s become somewhere I don’t really mind anymore. It even looks better now.

Out with the possessed pigs and in with the chill dead people, I guess.

The Kindergarten

You know, it’s kind of “funny” really that an ex-Kindergarten teacher winds up in a dream kindergarten helping to teach non-human children. But it is what it is.

The Facsimile of Iceland

Ever since I went to Iceland in 2018, I feel like a part of myself sort of dug in there like some kind of anchor for when I die. There was a sense of home to Iceland, and so it’s probably not surprising that I end up there quite often in my dreams. Out of all the recurring places, Iceland, and especially northern Iceland, probably features the most. And these dreams almost always come with a message or involve elves in some way.

Intermediary Spaces

The Train Station

When I encounter the train station, it’s usually as a transitory space in and of itself that symbolizes an upcoming period of transition in life (surprise!). But it can also be something that I call to me in dream or trance to escape a space that’s either uncomfortable or just plain dangerous.

(There’s a whole backstory there about lessons from dead relatives who reside in Fairy but I’ll have to save that for a different post).

The Bus Interchange

The bus interchange is not so different from the first function of the train station. The only major difference that I’ve found is that the clothes I wear while at the bus interchange seem to be indicative of the type of change that I’ll be facing in waking life.

So for example, wearing armor at the bus interchange would be a bad sign (it was).

The Unrealistic Supermarket

What if I were to tell you that one of my most common entrances into the Otherworld (and lucidity) in dream, was through a massive supermarket?

When we think about the Otherworld, I think there’s a tendency to imagine it as some old-fashioned, almost Renn-Faire-looking kind of deal. And don’t get me wrong – in my experience, those places do exist. But I’ve also found that there are a lot of modern-looking places associated with the Otherworld as well.

The Unrealistic Supermarket is one such place for me.

Imagine a supermarket, but even more random than your local Walmart Supercenter. Maybe there is an entire row of functioning shower cubicles along one row with people using them? Or maybe there’s an aisle full of preserved, ornate human hands? Perhaps next to those there are hammers and Oreos?

See what I mean? Random and unrealistic.

When I find myself in the Unrealistic Supermarket, I usually start at the front of the store and move toward the back. And as I’m walking to the back of the store, I encounter a series of bearded men who stare at me as I pass.

It’s pretty weird and uncomfortable. But it also snaps me into lucidity right before I enter whatever section of the Otherworld proper I wind up in that time. (And for that I’m grateful.)

Housekeeping

So did you all know I have a book coming out next month? I do! It’s called Elves, Witches and Gods: Spinning Old Heathen Magic in Modern Day. If a somewhat atypical look at Heathen worldview and magic with an emphasis on experimentation and practice interests you, then it may be right up your alley. Available for preorder here.

I’m also running my class ‘Against the Evil that Roams the Land: Practices of Protection and Purification from the OE and ON/Icelandic Sources’ again on 2/27/21. This is for those of you who missed it last year, but also contains new material that I’ve been working with since the last time I ran this class. Interested? Sign up here.

Story, Satanic Witches, and Hell(ier)

My blog post today is about story. And I’m going to begin it by telling you a story (about story).

I like to write fiction, and I’ve been creating and writing stories for as long as I can remember. There’s something magical about the process of creating characters and allowing them to reveal the next stages in what inevitably becomes their story. For the most part, these characters are my creations, beginning as hastily plotted-out spider diagrams on whatever scrap of paper I can find and growing into themselves as I write.

By Human or Non-Human Hands?

But around this time last year, two characters began to take shape in my mind without conscious plotting on my part. I still made hastily-scribbled diagrams, but instead of being spiderlike sigils of creation, they were more like a record of beings that were already there..

I wrote them almost obsessively, unable to think about anything else. And this entire world began to take shape as I worked, growing up around the characters in a suspiciously organic fashion.

But one day around Beltane, they were suddenly gone. The world and its inhabitants no longer spoke to me. I could no longer see where I next needed to go, and so I let the project fall. Because while I could have simply invented the details and carried on writing, it felt wrong to do so.

For months I missed them like distant friends. I wanted to continue their story and spend more time in their world, and in September I got my wish.

They had returned. I could see their world once more, and their stories began to speak to me again.

But instead of jumping back into their world, I held back. Why?

Because I realized that they had returned at the same time as the acronychal Story - pleiadesrising of the Pleiades. Moreover, their Beltane disappearance coincided with the yearly disappearance of the Pleiades from the night sky. It seemed a little too coincidental, especially when the characters you’re writing are Gentry who worship the ‘Seven Queens’.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all of this instead of simply getting into the CAOS.

I’m telling you this because I wanted to illustrate the point that story doesn’t always come from humans, and that sometimes there are non-human hands in the mix as well.

Otherworldly Media and Narrative

What do a bunch of ‘cave goblins’, Irish fairies, and a long-dead Icelandic völva spirit have in common?

If my sources are correct on this: they have all either historically been interested in modern communications technology and/or media, have already arguably exerted their influence, or have reportedly expressed an interest in doing so.

As outlandish as all of this may seem, this is not so different from the kind of otherworldly interest in creative types recorded in older sources. The storytelling bard has become the TV show writer, artists who may have painted scenes from Fairy while locked up in Bedlam, now create digitally, and famous Fairy-Firkler Morgan Daimler has been pointing out the weird waves of disinformation about Themselves online for a while.

(I mean, come on…plastic is the ‘new iron’?)

Why would humans be the only beings to adapt to an ever-changing world? Why would the otherworldly not continue to interact with and influence creative types as they have done for generations?

Sabrina Goes to Hell(ier)

Which brings me to the point of this post. Yet again, the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has angered modern Pagans and Witches. This time though, it’s the depiction of the ‘Pagans’ that seems to be the source of the greatest ire.

I have a lot of say about that ire in general. But I’m going to limit myself to making the following two points:

  • That the ‘Pagans’ are not so much human worshippers of Pagan gods, but beings that were seen as being potentially monstrous (if not outright so) by their own Pagan period peers. Yes, as unjust as a monstrous read is when it comes to figures like Medusa and Circe, that’s probably how many people at the time probably saw them.
  • That the Greendale coven now worship Hecate. Which means that they’re now technically Pagans too. (Congratulations! You no longer have to get mad that they’re Satanic witches.)

Oh and about that whole thing with Pan and the Green Man: didn’t it feel a little familiar? Kind of like we’ve seen that alliance somewhere before?

Ah right, yes. Hellier season two. Again.

And I’m not the only person to have noticed the similarities either. According to the Twitterverse there was even a tin can moment in CAOS pt 3 (that I missed, probably because I tend to watch things like sewing/knitting/spinning).

A Topsy-Turvy Story

CAOS pt 3 was a story of different factions and battlelines. The Satanic was revealed to be codependent on the Christian for not only its ascent and power, but also help in the form of Mambo Marie (who is at one point described as being Catholic as well as a vodouisante). The ‘Pagans’ were largely actually monstrous beings, ‘Robin Goodfellow’ allies himself with the humans, and the Greendale coven end up (a different kind of) Pagan anyway.

If there’s one thing about the underlying ‘string-pullers’ of Hellier, it’s that the history doesn’t quite add up – at least not in the usual way. Greg is sent a pdf of The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, a book by a man called Jim Brandon (pseudonym). It’s a wild ride through archaeology, conspiracy theory, cryptozoology, paranormal phenomena, and Crowley. Rather than the Ancient Greek figure, the ‘Pan’ spoke of in this book (a being which the author argues is actually the conscious, collective identity of the earth/contained within the earth) is an aggregate term, a way of naming what the author believes to be manifestations of this consciousness of/within the earth.

The Green Man (a being associated with this ‘Pan’ by Brandon) of CAOS is also aggregate. The ‘Pagans’ of CAOS are trying to resurrect a supposedly ancient god (that’s apparently actually a bunch of other beings masquerading in a trench coat as ‘our lost connection to nature’). In a sense, he is a manifestation of Brandon’s ‘Pan’ (with a representation of Pan serving as his high priest), set within this uniquely American story that began with colonial era diabolist witches.

And then there’s Hecate – a deity that seems to be becoming more prominent among modern Pagans at the moment, often in a protective/tutelary capacity.  Funny how she’s associated with dogs, isn’t it?

The Stories We Tell and the Fucking Zeitgeist

When people on Twitter first began to notice the similarities between Hellier2 and CAOS pt 3, one person remarked that the CAOS producers should have given credit to Greg and Dana Neukirk.

But here is the thing: both series were produced more or less concurrently. Season 2 of Hellier dropped on 11/29/19, and CAOS on 1/24/20. While there are a couple of months between both shows, there wasn’t enough time for anyone to copy anyone else. Moreover, per CAOS showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, they were filming episode six in August – roughly around the same time as Greg and Dana et al. were still filming Hellier season two.

Good humans, I give you the zeitgeist…maybe.

Or maybe instead we see non-human hands in human stories and hints of narratives yet to be shaped?

Lessons from the Story of the Time

In my little corner of the world, I’ve noticed a lot of strange things post-Hellier 2. Moreover, more than a few people have hit me up out of the blue with stories that are spookily similar.

I believe the unseen world gained a new faction, and it’s something of a ‘new kid’ on the block. Based on what I’ve seen so far of this new kid, I’m pretty sure the ‘old kids’ aren’t too happy with it. Something – a collection of beings in a trench coat masquerading as something else is trying to come onto their turf. And as humans, the creators and consumers of stories that shape the dominant consensus, we’re faced with a choice (another one).

In CAOS, the Greendale coven is given the (false) choice of joining the ‘Pagans’. But instead they choose Hecate, their ancestors (of blood and of practice), and ultimately each other.

Despite the fact that it’s a TV show, I think there’s a valuable lesson in that for witches. Because regardless of tradition, most of us already have relationships with have gods, ancestors, and other beings. Some of us also have magical siblings of sorts too. These are the relationships that have long sustained us. And even when we don’t have those things, the older beings tend to have track records that we can refer to when making our choices. Cleaving to those that are proven hael (by experience or reputation) is probably the best choice.

“What’s Your Lineage?”

Before I crack on, did you know that I’m holding an online class about magic circles? It’s kind of like this blog post but with a whole lot more information and discussion. So if you’ve got an hour or so (it’s probably going to be between 1-2 hours) on 9/15 at around 3pm, join me for a crazed exploration of the history, purpose, and ways in which magic circles can be tweaked. Can’t make it? The class will be recorded so participants can listen later!

I’m also producing a bunch of content on Anglo-Saxon magico-medical charms and how the magical tech can be deconstructed and re-purposed over here too!

Now, on with the show!

Do You Have a Flag/Lineage?

It began like so many conversations on magical Facebook groups – admin posts link, person replies, and another person decides that it’s a great time to start something.

The “Jolene Rogers”. Im told this is the pirate flag of middle-aged white ladies everywhere!

“Oldest” story on the ‘Book, amirite?

But it was the input of a third person that I’m going to focus on here. Because it’s something that I’ve seen again and again in Pagan and magical spaces since moving to the US.

“What is your lineage?”

Whenever most people ask this question I see that Eddie Izzard sketch in my head – “Do you have a flag?”

But Eddie Izzard sketches aside, the matter of lineage is a complex one in modern Pagan and magical traditions. For many, the idea of belonging to a lineage conveys a certain legitimacy (regardless of the actual abilities of the practitioner). However, depending on which tradition you practice, the existence of lineage in the sense that it is typically understood today may be completely unnecessary.

Lineaged and Unlineaged Traditions

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that all lineages are bullshit. But lineages are far from universal to every tradition.

Take early modern English witchcraft, for example. Most of the witches in the accounts became witches because they had an encounter with an otherworldly spirit (either a fairy or elf). This encounter was usually by chance,

“Oh Pyewhacket, be a love and steal some butter and shit on old Mabel’s bed, will you?”
“No”

and could either be with the familiar spirit itself, or with fairy royalty, who then gift the witch a fairy familiar if shown proper respect. In this worldview, it was not lineage, but the familiar (which could also be a member of the dead), that made the witch.

Having said that though, there are accounts of these otherworldly familiars being passed on from witch to witch (usually family members), and that could be considered to be a lineage of sorts. However, the otherworldly figure was still probably the king (or witch!) maker in this equation as they (presumably) had to agree to this transfer. Despite many modern ideas about the Othercrowd, they have never been at our beck and call. It simply does not follow that a being who is the source of knowledge and power for a witch would not be in charge. (Wilby 60)

And sure, we could argue that these ideas were the fevered product of tortured imaginations. But as I’ve previously discussed there is a continuity to this particular shape. Alaric Hall, for example, traces the pattern of witches working with elves back to Old English sources. I would even argue that given that one of the Old English cognates of Seiðr was ‘ælfsīden’ (as well as for a bunch of other reasons), elves were an integral part of Seiðr, and that that shape continued into the early modern period.

Kinda makes you look at that story of Freyja as the priestess of dead-Freyr’s mound cult in the Ynglinga saga a little differently, right? If ever there was an Eliade-esque “paradigmatic fix point” for this particular paradigm, that would likely be it.

But none of that takes from the fact that there are lineaged traditions in the world. Moreover, there are a lot of benefits (not to mention safety nets) from being a part of a lineaged tradition that has its shit together.
Notice that caveat there?

Because let’s not try to pretend here – some lineaged traditions are clusterfucks that just happened to have been started because (often) one person didn’t like something long-established about an actual lineage and decided to set up their own tree house. That’s not to say that all breakaway lineaged traditions are shit though. Plenty of breakaway lineages turn into actual lineages, but some…yeah.

Legitimate lineages (however they’re judged) can be excellent for a number of reasons though. Because not only do you have access to a far more systematic way of learning, but you also have the safety nets of more experienced elders as well as the lineage itself. If you are interested in a tradition that has lineages then you should absolutely do the work and enter in the correct way. In some cases, it can actually be dangerous to you if you don’t.
For those of you who are trying to live that early modern life though, keep flashing your sweet fairy/elf bait asses (and good luck)!

Okay, I was joking about the ‘fairy bait’ bit.

(Maybe. Just try to be the right kind of bait, okay?)

Lineage and College Degrees

In some ways, the question “What is your lineage?” (especially in groups of mixed practitioners who come from both lineaged and non-lineaged traditions) feels symptomatic of a far greater social issue in the US. Now I’m not going to get all Mike Rowe on you all here, but I feel like the obsession over college degrees for any old crap has kind of carried over into how we perceive magical capacity in others too.

It was one of the thing that first struck me when I moved to my current area. Where I’d lived before didn’t really have much of a magical community. But where I am now is like a fucking soap opera (possibly addictive horror series) with that shit.

When I first moved here, I was excited to come across so many other

“I got my completely unaccredited qualification! YAY!”

practitioners. But soon, I was relegated to some kind of ‘discard pile’ when it became clear that I didn’t have any lineage they cared about. Nor was I interested in learning from the main teachers in the area (a seemingly necessary ‘qualification’ if one is to be taken seriously regardless of actual ability). They just weren’t selling what I wanted, and frankly some of it felt ‘icky’ and even corrupted to me.

There’s a whole lot more I could say here, but I’m not going to. I think that was enough to illustrate my point. Despite my lack of lineage or connection to local big names though, I’ve somehow become the person people come to when things aren’t just getting bad, but really bad.

I’ve found myself thinking about this curious situation quite a lot over the years too. I’ve found so many talented people in my area who don’t have the qualifications people are looking for, and who get completely overlooked if they try to sell their services despite their talent. For example, I have a friend who is ridiculously talented – especially with the dead – and she has been “negged” by people who just happen to be better known or “qualified”. And part of it reminds me of how some jobs now require a bachelor’s degree despite never needing them before.

But part of it is also undoubtedly down to competition and the psychology of buying services. Services are always a greater risk to a customer than products. It’s far easier to see the quality of a product than a service before purchase. So we’ve evolved ways of making the customer feel better – more certain – when buying a service. (Incidentally, this is where “the customer is always right” comes from.) This is especially necessary for those who sell “less tangible” services, and especially those that go against the consensus (such as spell work, healing work, or exorcisms).

See what I’m saying?

In these cases, belonging to a lineage or having qualifications from the “right” teacher can give a customer reassurance (I say “right” here because I think the very concept of “right teacher”, especially in the context of a whole geographical area, is always debatable).

A Big Dog Party

Now I’m not saying that lineage is bad here, because it can be an overwhelmingly positive thing in a practitioner’s life. And before anyone says “oh she’s just bitter because she doesn’t have a lineage”, I do. (No I’m not telling any of you what it is because frankly it’s no one’s business but my own and that of those in my lineage).

What I’m saying here is that I can see both sides of the coin.

I’ve been that non-lineaged witch who gained a familiar through a chance encounter, and I’m now in a lineage and kicking names and taking ass there too (hopefully – I just wanted a chance to use that quote).

All I’m saying is that there should be space for both.

We’re a modern movement, but we’re massively diverse. Some of our traditions are lineaged and some not, and we need to respect those differences. Because at the end of the day, it’s far more important that we get off the fucking sofa and actually do.

(Just don’t do lineaged stuff if you’re not in the lineage).

And yes, that final subheading was from Dr Seuss ‘Go, Dog. Go!’

References

Hall, Alaric – Elves in Anglo-Saxon England
Wilby, Emma – Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits

Ancestor Cult is Not Saint Cult (And Other Stories)

ancestors - gallery

I talk about the dead a lot. Not because I’m a morbid fucker, but because death, dying, and what happens next are important topics to grapple with. After all, we’re all going to die someday, it’s one thing (along with shitting) that all humans have in common. So we may as well get to grips with it all now.

ancestors - bird
“Tweet tweet, motherfucker! I’m a new series of posts!”

(This is the sound of a new series of posts being born.)

But we’re not all that great with this stuff. Talking about death is still somewhat taboo, and ancestor veneration among European-descended Pagans and Heathens suffers from poor modeling. There are also a lot of misconceptions that don’t seem to exist among people who follow traditions that still include ancestor veneration.

So what’s going on? Why do we mostly suck when it comes to ancestors?

And that kids, is going to be the topic of this post. So grab yourselves a snack and buckle in, because I’m going to learn you some shit.

European-Descended Pagans and Ancestors

But let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Why do we get it so wrong?

Well once upon a time (or more accurately the 6th century), Pope Gregory I wrote a letter to the Abbot Mellitus about his mission to spread Jesus like Herpes among the Heathen Anglo-Saxons. Instead of the usual message of “burn it down like a latrine full of spiders” though, pope Greg advocated repurposing holy sites and co-opting rituals for Christian worship. I mean, they were even

Ancestors -letter
“I really liked those English lads, so don’t go burning their shit down. I really want them to be on ‘Team Jesus’.”

cool with cow sacrifices at first, as long as they were cow sacrifices for Jesus (bet you never learned that at school, right?). This and similar policy is probably why you see so many Christian sites on former Pagan sites all over Europe.

(Fun fact, but there’s an anecdote that pope Greg’s eye was quite taken by a couple of fair-haired English boys at a slave market in Rome…and if that’s not the most Catholic story ever…wow.)

Unfortunately, this also meant that the church took control of any and all rituals pertaining to the dead (something the Vatican is still flexing its muscles on in modern times), making themselves the (weirdly conical) intercessors between the living and our dead kin (Lee 105-106).

Is it any wonder we don’t really understand the ancestors or what to do anymore? We let a middle man take over and change our ancestor traditions, then got rid of the middle man!

When it comes to ancestor veneration, we lack the basics, and it shows in how we think of and interact with the dead. If anything, what we have is like a strange mishmash of Hero Cult, Cult of Saints, and what scholars refer to as “memoria”.

So what are the top three basics of ancestor veneration that we’re probably missing?

1. Individualism vs. Collective

The most important concept we need to get to grips with is this idea that the ancestors are probably best thought of as a collective (with individuals that pop out from time to time to give messages and such). This is pretty much how it is in the vast majority of cultures that still have living ancestor veneration traditions.

It’s also the most practical view of ancestor veneration. Because when ancestors are a collective, a big, burgeoning mass of power, then a few shitty dead are no longer a barrier to practice. Moreover, it also allows for a belief in rebirth (ask Olaf Geirstad-Alf about that). Because when your ancestors are a collective, then what matter if some in the line are being reborn and others are staying dead?

However when you think about it, it also makes sense within a European historical context. (Well okay, I’m going to be focusing on Northwestern Europe here because that’s my jam, you Classical kids can sort yourselves out).

I mean, could you ever imagine worshipping only one of the Matronae? Or thinking of the Wild Hunt as a bunch of individuals? It sounds strange, doesn’t it? And yet these are ostensibly ancestral or at least associated with the world of the dead. The same goes for elves too, albeit within certain contexts.

So where did the idea of focusing on individual dead come from?

Truth be told, we’ve always worshipped some individual members of the dead. But these aren’t ordinary dead people. These are big or greater in some way. These are the dead who were possessed of some intangible quality that made them an ælf/álf. These were the dead who were worshipped in the mound and thought to be able to bless the people and land around them.

Guess what people were probably reminded of when the cult of the Saints came around?

Like elves in their mounds, martyrs/saints (because what even was the difference back then?) inhabited their tombs and were considered able to essentially bless the land and people. And as with elves, people would feast

their tombs in the Pagan fashion – except more Roman-like. Because they were actually in Rome, and it was the 4th century, and it was all cool until Augustine of fucking Hippo went all ‘ixnay on the sacrificial mortuorum’ (Lee

ancestors - elves
E L V E S

116).

And yes, I realize that I just conflated saints with elves, deal with it.

Elves.

Fucking Augustine.

When the church began to take over burial rites and rites for the dead in Northwestern Europe though, something that scholars refer to as memoria came into being as an alternative to feasting the dead at the grave. This term referred to every kind of rite in honor of/for the care of the dead created by the church. There are no parallels in Jewish ritual, and so the likelihood is that the concept was in some way descended from or inspired by Pagan rites – only with the Paganisms removed as much as possible.

ancestors - relic
“Coming soon to a church near you – our new and improved, porta-Elf! (Now with added Jesus)”

For a long period of time, these memoria – or rather individual memoria – and the Cult of the saints were closely associated (Lee 116). It’s not hard to see how we came to view ancestors as individuals from whom we expect the highest ideals. It was after all, a very slow separation between the individual memoria and the Cult of the Saints.

But for all of the individual memoria, a prayer referred to as Pro Anima Kari in the 8th century Bobbio Missal suggests that the ‘dead-as-collective’ thing wasn’t entirely…dead. Designed as a prayer to aid the dying, the Pro Anima Kari called upon all of the descendants of Adam who were deceased – basically all human ancestors – and if that isn’t a collectivist view of the dead, then I’ve got some hang glider engines I’d be happy to sell you ( Lee 109-110).

2. The Cult of the Dead vs The Cult of the Ancestors

The next thing to be aware of is that the Cult of the Dead and the Cult of the Ancestors are not the same thing. Okay, so they both pertain to the dead. But when you look at ancestor veneration around the world, it’s like you have different grades of “dead” (that go beyond “fresh” and “not fresh”). In some cultures, the dead are guided through ritual processes that formally install them or acknowledge them as part of the collective ancestors of the group. In other cultures (such as Japanese Shinto), the dead are thought to gradually merge with the generalized group of family dead. The newly dead (shirei), take on characteristics of new buddhas, then buddhas, then ancestors (senszo), then kami (gods) over the course of 35 to 50 years (Klass 63-64). Regardless of how it takes place though, there is the sentiment that the recent dead are not the same as ancestors, and that some form of elevation takes place.

However, what would that process look like in a Northwestern European context?

Well, as far as I know, we don’t know. However, older traditions such as feasting the dead at the gravesite (a practice known as Dadsisas) are suggestive of a Cult of the Dead that took place at the graves of the more recently deceased (Lee 113-114). We may perhaps also infer from the collective terms mentioned above (such as the “Wild Hunt”, “Matronae” etc.) that some form of elevation also took place for at least some of the dead (although the picture provided to us by source materials is far from clear).

Regardless of how much we don’t know though, the concept of elevation provides us with a useful model for beginning to understand the different kinds of dead we may find ourselves dealing with, and the ritual remedies required as part of our cultic revivals.

The Unwell or Angry Dead Can Fuck With The Living

There are reasons why the dead are generally feared, but mostly it’s because

Ancestors - outhouse
Haunted outhouse, the worst. Will literally scare the crap out of you.

when the dead are unwell or angry, then that’s generally bad news for the living too (Oesterdieckhoff 585) . Because I mean, if the big dead are able to influence the land and people for good, then why wouldn’t the angry or unwell dead also have this capability – especially en masse? So for many humans around the world, it’s considered to be kind of in our interest to care for and remedy the matter of bad dead via ritual. (And no, I’m not talking about magical murderhobo-dom here.)

Final Words

Ancestor veneration is something that many of us of European ancestry find difficult to get our heads around, or find our rooting in. However, as we have seen above, there are some excellent reasons for that disconnect, and a general lack of understanding. This is a real shame, because research has shown that even just thinking about our ancestors can have positive effects. I truly believe that healthy ancestor veneration can be one of the keys to happier, more rooted, more connected, and more compassionate lives.

In the next blog, I’m going to ramble some more about the dead – possibly about some of our issues with ancestor veneration.

But just for today, pick a dead family member or older ancestor who you know went through some shit, and take a few moments to think about them. Think about what they endured or overcame, and reflect on that badassery. You’re here because of that badassery, and shades of that badassery are in you. How does that make you feel? Now try to imagine how much badassery your ancestors collectively have.

That’s one hell of a deep well, isn’t it?

Sources

Christina Lee – Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals
Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, Steven Nickman – Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief
Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff – Why Premodern Humans Believed in the Divine Status of their Parents and Ancestors

Sex and the Dead: A Right Load of Fuckery

ancestor - skull

The Paradox of Sex and the Dead

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, the onion was considered a vegetable of the dead. Perhaps it’s because it grew in the ground as the deceased are planted? Or perhaps the reasoning was something else. Either way, along with parsley and celery, the onion commonly graced the tables of funeral feasts

sex and the dead - onions
Viagra, a long time ago.

(“Eating with the Dead”).

But here is where we come to a paradox, because the onion was also well known as an aphrodisiac. And what of grim and unyielding Hades himself? Not only was he connected with the cycle of the year, but was also arguably connected to fertility too.

As it turns out though, this collocation of sex and death is not unusual, and it’s not limited to the classical world either.

Among the Germanic tribes, for example, the god of the mound is also the god who fertilizes the earth. It is he who is depicted with a large phallus – a sign of his virility. Ruler of Alfheim, so too do his subjects share the same associations. Mound-dwelling and sexually deviant, elves would eventually come to be known as incubi.

Moving slightly further afield, the Canaanite Ba’al the god of life and fertility is shown to be constantly locked in battle with Mot, the god of death and sterility.

To move even further afield (at least from the perspective of my resting paradigm), we see the same dichotomy in the Haitian deity Papa Ghédé who presides over both death and eroticism.

Again and again, fertility (or even straight up eroticism) and death walk hand in hand. Life is spun and then unspun in a cycle of generation and dissolution, the fibers falling away only to be respun again. These are in truth, two sides of the same cycle, and without the one there cannot be the other.

Man Imitates Gods (or Elves)

This also seems to be the case for many humans who work with the dead too, and the grave may be just as inseparable from sex and generation within some human practitioners, as it is with the aforementioned gods.

“Thus the Gods did, thus men do”

Taittirīya Brāhmana
(Eliade 98)

sex and the dead - beso negro
Those witches will get with any old unclean spirit!

There also seems to be something in the “wiring” here too. For anyone who has studied historical witchcraft accounts, accusations of “sexual deviancy” go hand in hand with accusations of trucking (sexually or magically) with demons or elves. Again and again we see this pattern of chthonic beings with fertility aspects and their human partners engaged in both necromancy and apparent sexual deviancy. (See Lee Morgan’s ‘A Deed without a Name’ for further discussion on these relationships both among historical and modern practitioners)

It would seem that one cannot separate the sex/eroticism from the chthonic, and by extension, death itself. And this can be unsettling to our modern WEIRD minds. (I note here that apparently Papa Ghédé enjoys fucking with white people because of exactly this kind of hang up. Go Papa Ghédé!)

But patterns rarely emerge without reason, and this one is no exception.

A Matter of “Wiring”?

First though, I’d like to talk about the matter of the “wiring” of human practitioners for a moment. Because here too are patterns to be observed. Why is it that the witch was so associated with sexual deviancy in historical accounts? Why did Jordanes write of the Halirunnae (Gothic for Helrune), if you’re interested) going out and having issue with “unclean spirits”? Why was that so believable to him that people associated with Hel practices would be all about fucking the “unclean spirits”? (Getica XXIV, 121-123)

This matter of “wiring” is something that Martin Coleman (aka Draja Mickaharic) comments on in Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy. To quote him regarding women with the propensity for necromancy:

“If you are a woman you may have had occasional vivid dreams of a sexual nature which you remember upon awakening. In some cases, the dream may

sex and the dead - necromancy
According to Pixabay, this is what necromancy looks like

have been so vivid that you awakened as a result of the orgasm that the dream produced. This is not an uncommon phenomena found in those women who are able to work with the spirits of the dead. Women who are able to work well with the spirits of the dead often have very little sense of physical modesty. In a few cases they are excessively modest. Often women who can work with spirits of the dead are quite uninhibited in comparison with most of the women of their generation. Occasionally they are asexual, but these women are usually found at the extreme ranges of dress and sexual behavior.”

So what is going on here? Why can working with the dead turn into such fuckery? (Ha, see what I did there?) Why does this collocation exist?

Sex as a Safety Mechanism

One thing you quickly learn when interacting with the dead is that to interact with the dead is to interact with death, and pull away from life. But to engage in the primal act of intercourse is to pull away from death and to reassert one’s place within the living world. It is to leave the world of shadows and rejoin the world of the heart pounding, heavy breathing, and corporeality of skin and bodily fluids. To fall once more under the spell of the sensual and reconnect with one of the joys of this world. It is in this sense, a way of exorcising the touch of death from yourself in the same way that you may take salt or wash your feet, or whatever else you do to purify when leaving the places of the sex and the dead - life and deathdead.

This is not some sick and perverted thing as some might think. There is no sexual attraction to the dead present (and I actually hate that I feel like I have to say that). Instead, I find it to be more like the triggering a safety mechanism that occurs in response to a certain degree of proximity to death. It’s a form of medicine. When you think about it, this is really no different from people fucking at or after funerals. It is, I believe, the same underlying mechanism at work.

In short, this is a piece of protective wiring for those of us who experience it, and deities like Papa Ghédé rightfully mock us when repression keeps us from this act of self-healing.

(Ace folx, I’d be curious to hear what you experience post-interacting-with-the-dead!)

Bibliography

Eating With the Dead: Funeral Meal Practices, by Tylluan Perry in MEMENTO MORI A Collection of Magickal and Mythological Perspectives On Death, Dying, Mortality and Beyond

The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, by Mircea Eliade

Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy, by Martin Coleman

Whiteness is the Witchcraft-Killer

Introduction

I’ve sat on this post for a long time. It’s a post that started with a dream that became a maelstrom of thoughts. And since the morning of the 27th of October (which was when I entered the dream into my journal), I’ve been turning it over in my head. You see, I want to be clear about this, because this topic is important.

But it may also be difficult for those of you who share my melanin-deficiency.  I do however, ask you to set aside your initial feelings, read with an open heart, and then turn this topic over in your own mind some before reacting.

Because it is not white skin that is under attack here. I do not deny the realities of white privilege or the different lived experiences of oppressed peoples – those things are as plain to me as the nose on my face. But this is about whiteness, why we must not buy into it, and why we must work to free ourselves of it.

Before continuing though, I should probably define what I mean by whiteness - gated community“whiteness” in this post. When I speak of “whiteness”, I speak of a construct that sits in our society like a gated community that limits its entry to those who fit certain criteria. To reiterate, this is not a post about the the intrinsic and innate, of melanin and ancestry. It is a post about a social construct which actively excludes, harms, and which I believe to be completely incompatible with Witchcraft.

A Brief History of the Concept of Whiteness

Before the 17th century, “whiteness” as a concept or racial category didn’t whiteness - struggleexist. Laws both in the early colonies and Barbados instead focused on religion, setting aside freedoms for Christians and relegating non-Christians to servitude and slavery. However, as times changed and more people of color (both free and enslaved) became Christians, that legal language was changed. The goalposts were moved in order to retain power among the white landowning elite. 1697 saw the passage of the first law that restricted voting rights to only the white [Source].

But whiteness then was not the whiteness we know now; the membership requirements for that gated community have changed again and again, and ethnic groups that are now automatically considered white often found themselves on the outside. They were, according to the thinking of the day, varieties of “lesser” white [Source].

The construct of whiteness as it exists today is inherently a modified version of WASPishness.

Originally coined in 1962 in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, the term “WASP” stood for “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant”. (There’s also some further underlying fuckery with the “Anglo-Saxon” label that further elucidates the intentions of the creators of this term which you can read about here). But the stereotypical WASP is, in a sense, the epitome of the whiteness ideal. It is that which is to be emulated in so far as nature and circumstance will allow if one wishes to gain and retain access to that gated community. The criteria has changed somewhat since the 60s – largely to allow greater buy-in from a greater number of people, but they can be summarized thusly:

You must have the right skin.
You must have the right tongue.
You must have the right faith.
You must have the right worldview.

And should you catch a glimpse of another worldview, you must not rock the boat.

In short, it should be considered the very anathema of witchcraft. The gated community of whiteness is not a space in which Witchcraft can truly exist, and any attempt to root it within those manicured lawns is not without its betrayals.

Respectability Politics

The term, “respectability politics” was first articulated in 1992 by Professor Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920.. It is a tactic of performed compatibility that is undertaken by minority groups in the hope that they are either treated better by the dominant group, or given access to the same benefits. Here too we find our gatekeepers.

People of color are well acquainted with this tactic. It has, after all, been a matter of survival for them. The more a person of color endeavors to make themselves more “respectable” from the perspective of the whiteness construct, the more “acceptable” he or she is considered to be. POCs routinely report code-switching around white coworkers and friends, dressing more ‘white’, emulating white seeming hairstyles, and a whole host of other behaviors that are ultimately designed to coddle white feelings in the hopes of getting thrown a bone.

whiteness - harmless pagans
“See how harmless I am as I wander whimsically through this field with (probably) tick-laden flowers on my head!”

This is essentially what we Pagans and Witches also do when we reassure the Christians in our lives just how “normal” and “harmless” we are; when we hold up the threefold law as a kind of “See! We’re not really dangerous!”; and when we get into that mindset of seeing it as some kind of “win” to be deemed acceptable enough to be invited to Interfaith meetings.

But what is lost when we do this? What is traded away for the scraps we’re thrown? And what of the value of these scraps? Do we truly believe that these would protect us should the law change tomorrow and allow our active persecution? Gentle people, this is what is known as a “forlorn hope”.

Witches and the Other

It is here though that we come to the real crux of this matter: Witches belong far more to the Other than to any inner, and not only do we belong to it, but we are also driven to interact with it.

whiteness - fence
Hedge…fence…whatever.

The image of the hedge rider is a powerful one here. We do not belong fully to any one world, instead going between and negotiating many, and we’ll always have far more in common with those without than those within. As my friend Morgan says, “the Other is the soul of witchcraft”. They are absolutely correct in this, and for more than one reason.

We’ve always seated our cults and practices in both the between places, and among those who society fails or allows to fall through the cracks. The ancient groves of Diana with their diverse adherents comprised of those who would traditionally be excluded are an old world example of this (Green 53-54), but as Peter Grey demonstrates in Apocalyptic Witchcraft, witchcraft has ever been the tool of the oppressed. To then exclude others in our modern cults because of sexuality/gender/social status/ethnicity – the values of the gated community of whiteness – rather than what they have shown through their actions, is to betray that heritage.

Moreover, when we subscribe to whiteness, we hinder our own interactions with the Other. When you exist within a paradigm within which other humans are not fully human depending on arbitrary and innate qualities, then you have little chance of forming the kind of relationships with non-human persons that are the fuel and soul of Witchcraft. I have already written a little about how our attitudes towards other humans affect how we interact with the Other, and some of the common assumptions that that has led to. You can read about that here, but hopefully my point is made.

There is no Witchcraft without the Other, because no matter how much Witchcraft is made increasingly safe and removed from its beating core of inspirited dark nights and heart-pounding experiences, that is what Witchcraft has always been and always will be. It will always be about partnerships with the Other, be that Other the elves spoken of Isobel Gowdie, and referred to as far back as the Old English magico-medical manuals, or the Ov of the Witch of Endor. You cannot replace that with whitewashed bullshit that exists to make the practitioner feel good as a form of edgy self-help.

Witchcraft is service.
It’s not safe.
It’s hard.
It takes work.
And it sure as shit isn’t compatible with whiteness.

If anything, whiteness and the respectability politics it demands for bare scraps of “acceptance” is a Witchcraft-killer, and that is by design rather than accident.

So please, dear people, think about where you stand and what you espouse. whiteness - groveThink about the voices you listen to and the voices you give space to and elevate (here’s a good video by the amazing Benebell Wen about that very thing). Rock that damn boat, use your voice to argue for destroying those gates, make an effort to learn about how things are outside those gates, and make damn sure you don’t erect the same gates in your Pagan and Witch communities. In other words, return to the groves, the Other, and your human siblings.

Bibliography

1. Green, C.M.C Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia
2. Grey, Peter Apocalyptic Witchcraft

Authority and Hierarchies IV: Or “Why Your Pet Isn’t Your Fucking Familiar”

familiar - Boye Dog

Returning to Familiar Ground

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been on an epic journey. We’ve taken a look at the evidence for hierarchies among grimoire spirits and fairies alike, and discussed agency, anthropocentrism, and to a small degree, colonialism too. We’ve also examined the different kinds of reciprocal relationships, spiritual authority, the role of piety, and finally took a brief tour through the history of magic wands.

This week, I’m coming back to a topic that should be a lot more familiar to everyone (pun intended): the witch’s familiar.

Introducing the Early Modern Witch’s Familiar

The witch’s familiar is an ancient phenomenon, though the most commonly held ideas surrounding them seem to owe more to Early Modern Britain. Simply put, a familiar was a form of spirit helper with which the witch or cunning person held a certain kind of relationship. The kinds of familiars possessed by both cunning folk and witches differed too, with the familiars associated with “Cunning Folk” being more of fairy, and those associated with witches being

Familiar - Hopkins
Prize prick Matthew Hopkins with some witches identifying their familiars.

more demonic. It is the latter form that is the most recognizable today (Wilby 2005).

For witch or cunning person, the acquisition of a familiar was for the most part by chance. Accounts of encounters recorded during the witch trials, paint these encounters as happening spontaneously, as the witch or cunning person went about their business (Wilby 2005). Often the witch or cunning person would also be impoverished, or recently subjected to some kind of further hardship or tragedy. There is an undeniably folkloric feel to these encounters, and not unlike the kind of deal made by the girl forced to spin straw in Rumpelstiltskin (for example).

Unlike period descriptions of encounters with the dead, the fairy or demon familiars are described in stunningly naturalistic terms – they’re as real-looking as you or I. They were of vivid color, and animation and sound. But that’s not to say that they were “really” just the pets of people who looked a little “witchy”; it’s one thing to assume the shape of a thing, and quite another to actually be that thing. Familiar - BoyeHaving said that though, there were cases in which the pets of people suspected of witchcraft also shared the fates of their owners. But witch crazes are nothing if not illogical, let’s not mistake misplaced bloodlust for authenticity.

However, while the majority of accounts depict a person coming across the spirit that would become their familiar in a spontaneous way, there were ways in which familiar spirits could also be acquired. For example, one might petition a condemned person to return and serve as your familiar as in the case of Mary Parish’s familiar, a one George Whitmore (Cummins 2017 “The Rain Will Make a Door III”). In other cases, one could gain a familiar by somehow encountering fairy royalty and showing them the proper respect thus acquiring a familiar as a gift. Alternatively, you might acquire a familiar as a gift from another witch – most commonly a family member (Wilby 2005). And lastly, if none of those methods were available to you, you could always try petitioning a demon such as the Verum demon Sustugriel who was reputed to ”give good familiars” (Stratton-Kent 2010).

(About that fairy and devil/demon crossover? You might want to read this piece by Fairy in a Human Suit, Morgan Daimler.)

Tracing an Older Pattern

As I said above though, the Early Modern familiar is simply just the most well-known form of spirit helper. The fact of the matter is that magical practitioners have been finding helping spirits and making pacts with them for a very, very long time. And like wands, familiars traverse a wide range of different cultures (albeit under different names – obviously).

The earliest account of what might be recognized as a familiar is the ob (pronounced “ov”) of the biblical Witch of Endor. The ob was both a spirit “of the dead or minor underworld deity that “speaks from the earth in whispering voices”, and an object of worship whose spirit can enter into a human and reside within them (Barrabbas 2017). In other words, to have a familiar is to be possessed by a familiar (something which I will speak of more towards the end of this post).

Among the Greeks, we find the parhedros who fulfills a similar function to that of the ob and the familiar. Given that the Greek Magical Papyri begins with ways in which to acquire a parhedros, we have to assume that they were considered an integral part of performing magic (Skinner 2014). Moreover, like their Hebrew counterparts, there is also the aspect of worshiping objects associated with the paredros. For those of you who are interested in the idea of performing one of these paredros rituals, it bears mentioning that those early methods of acquisition require blood sacrifice. Far less bloody to summon a demon in this case!

Moving over to Heathen period Northern Europe now, we find evidence that witches partnered with elves in order to perform their magic. Alaric Hall argues that rather than being the result of attacks by elves, the phenomenon of elfshot was more likely curses thrown by elf-empowered witches (Hall 2001). This is where we find our way back to familiar - burial moundWilby’s period of study. Hall traces a pattern of witches working with mound-connected elves from the tenth century Old English magico-medical charm Wið Færstice and term ælfs?den (literally “elf-Seiðr”, or “elf-magic”); to Martin Luther’s account of being “shot” by a neighborhood witch; and finally to Isobel Gowdie’s accounts of encountering the Queen of Elfhame in a mound and seeing elves fashioning the shot. I personally take it somewhat further and point to the portrayal of Frey and Freyja in the Ynglingasaga. Freyja as the sacrificial priestess (and as we know, goddess associated with the form of magic known as “Seiðr”) ends up overseeing the cult to her brother, Freyr (who is associated with elves), even as he lies in the burial mound. The people bring offerings to the mound for peace and good seasons, and so even in death, he possesses a power that his sister does not.

Equally, elves were also associated with possessory divinatory trances that may have resembled or been confused with epileptic fits (Hall 2001), and so here too we find the possessory aspect of the ob.

Familiars and Hierarchy

The themes of hierarchy and spiritual authority also play their respective roles here. You may have already noticed that outside of the spontaneously acquired familiars, a higher power must be approached. This is an important distinction to make: the familiar gifted by fairy royalty will obey you if their royals command it. For those who inherit their familiars from others, one has to assume that the same terms and conditions of whatever pact was agreed upon transfer to the new witch.

Mary Parish’s familiar George is the obvious exception to this. Unlike most other familiars in the accounts, he was a dead human whose service was contracted by means of an oath before dying. This allowed Mary the authority she needed in order to work with him postmortem. However, his story is not completely devoid of involvement by a higher (fairy) power.

At some point, a minor aristocrat by the name of Goodwin Wharton became covetous of George (who he had become aware of through his love affair with Mary), and endeavored to have Mary gift him her familiar. However, a fairy queen referred to as the Queen of the Lowlanders steps in. From Wharton’s journal:

familiar - fairy queen” The transfer of George was further complicated by the queen of the Lowlanders, who demanded that Goodwin stop attempting to have George as his own personal spirit. At first Goodwin was a little resistant, but the queen insisted that if he would not willingly show her this preference, he should never see any of the Lowlanders. She wanted to be his number-one contact with the spirit world. Goodwin had little choice but to agree to her terms. As a consolation, George agreed to answer any questions directed at him as long as Goodwin turned his back and did not look directly where George stood. However, Goodwin could not understand the spirit very clearly, as he spoke in a low, soft voice close to Mary’s ear. So throughout their relationship, Goodwin relied on Mary to communicate with George.”
(Cummins 2017 “The Rain Will Make a Door III”)

It would seem that even when it comes to contracting the familiar services of the dead, the fairies will still have their say.

Pets as Familiars

Now to come to something a little polemic, but that I find weirdly irritating all the same.

I’ve noticed a tendency among some in the Pagan/Witch/Heathen communities to refer to their pets as their “familiars”. At first, I thought it was just a joke being made (and for most people, it does seem to be). However, I seem to be coming across more people who actually think their pets are their familiars.

Now hopefully this blog has illustrated all the ways in which that is just fucking stupid. And I think one of the reasons why I get so angry about this is that after having worked with a familiar for a number of years, the collocation of “pet” with “familiar” is just yet more disrespect and treating the Other like some fun and twee little thing that’s just here for our edification, or worse – our entertainment. I feel like I’m quickly running out of ways to say that it’s not all about us humans.

Let’s just stop this, please. We’re better than this. And your dog/cat/bird/whatever may be cool, but he isn’t your familiar. Moreover, if you actually kept your dog as animal familiars were most commonly kept (in a wool basket, being fed milk, blood, or whatever), you’d be in trouble for animal cruelty.

So let’s just not; okay?

Sources

Barrabbas, Frater (2017) Spirit Conjuring For Witches
Cummins, Al (2017)The Rain Will Make a Door III: Faerie and the Dead
Hall, Alaric (2009) Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Health, Belief, Gender, and Identity
Skinner, Stephen (2014) Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic

Stratton-Kent, Jake (2010) The True Grimoire
Wilby, Emma (2005) Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic

Maran, Nightwalkers, and Elves, Oh My! (Part Two)

In the first part of this post, I discussed the importance of dream, the various kinds of beings that were thought to attack sleepers, and what symptoms of those attacks were thought to look like in OE sources. In this part, I’m going to discuss the charms themselves and how we can use them in modern practice to hopefully sleep undisturbed.

 

Charms and Herbs: The Magico-Medical Prescription

The Old English charms are referred to as being magico-medical for good reason. Because unlike modern medicine which only seeks to treat the physical causes of disease, the Early English also recognized non-physical or”spiritual” causes of disease/illness, and tailored their treatments accordingly. So among the charms, you will find everything from recipes to treat physiological ailments, to charms that combined magical acts, verbal formulae, or both. Here follows a short overview of the relevant charms with analysis of the commonalities between the charms and how they may be used.

Bald’s Leechbook II, section 65, ff. 107v-108r – Wið ælfe 7 wiþ unc?þum s?dsan

This is one of the more general charms against elves and ‘strange/unusual’ s?dsa, or “magic” (again, cognate with “Seiðr”). Kitson suggests that the ingredients of this charm betray a foreign origin for the charm, but one that has been adapted to native tradition (Hall 120).

Against an elf/against elves and against unknown/strange/unusual s?dsa, crumble myrrh into wine and the same amount of white frankincense and shave a piece of jet [the stone] into that wine, drink on three mornings, fasting at night, or nine, or twelve.

 

L?cnunga, section 29, ff. 137r -138r

This is the holy/blessed drink against ælfs?den and against all tribulations of the enemy (Hall 120-121)

I only include this title as a matter of interest and to add to the evidence demonstrating the collocation of ælfs?den with f?ondes costunga. I largely agree with Richard North in Heathen Gods in OE Literature that this is more of an exorcism charm that might have been employed against those considered to be ylfig or “engaged with an elf”. As such, further detail is not particularly relevant for the purposes of this post.

 

Leechbook III, section 41, ff. 120v-121r: Wyrc g?de sealfe wiþ f?ondes costunga

Make a good salve against the tribulations of the enemy: bishopwort, lupin, viper’s bugloss,

strawberry stalk, the cloved lesser celandine, eorðr?ma, blackberry, pennyroyal, wormwood, pound all those plants; boil in good butter, strain through a cloth; place under the altar; sing nine masses over them; then smear nightwalkers - betonythe person with it generously on the temples, and above the eyes and on the top of the head and the breast and under the arms. This salve is good against each tribulation of the enemy and ælfs?den and Lent-illness.

 

Leechbook I, section 64, f. 52v: Læced?mas wiþ ælcre l?odr?nan 7 ælfs?denne

Prescriptions against every l?odr?ne and ælfs?den, being a charm, powder, drinks and a salve, for fevers: and if the illness should be upon livestock; and if the illness should happen to a person or a mære should ride and happen; in all 7 remedies

If a mære should ride a person: take lupin and garlic and betony and incense; bind in fawn-skin; the person should have this on him and he should walk wearing these plants

 

Leechbook III, section 61, f. 123: Wið ælfcynne

nightwalkers - garlicMake a salve against ælfcynne and a night-walker and for/against those people whom the devil has sex with: take hops(?), wormwood, bishopwort, lupin, vervain, henbane, h?rewyrt, viper’s bugloss, stalk of whortleberry, (?)crow garlic, garlic, seed of goosegrass, cockle and fennel. Put these plants in a vessel, place under an altar, sing 9 masses over them; boil in butter and in sheep’s fat; put in plenty of holy salt; strain through a cloth. Throw the plants into running water. If any evil tribulation or an ælf or a night-walker happens to a person, smear his face with this salve and put it on his eyes and where his body is sore/in pain, and burn incense about him and sign [with the cross] often; his problem will soon be better.

As you can see from the above charms, treatment/prevention of attack by maran/night-walkers/elves generally takes the form of a salve to be applied to certain parts of the body (but especially parts of the face). There are some commonalities in both the herbs and methodology employed, and while no one of the herb charms are one hundred percent clear, I believe it is possible to pull the most common herbs from these charms when recreating our own salves.

From these charms, bishopwort (betony), lupin (suggested to be lupinus albus), viper’s bugloss, wormwood, garlic, and some kind of berry stalk seem to be the most common. Most of them are also quite accessible to modern people. These herbs are then taken and made into a salve either before or after having 9 masses sung over them while positioned under the altar.

From my own survey of the use of numbers in the L?cnunga, the number 9 tends to be associated with banishing or driving out. So in order to create a ‘Heathenized’ version of this charm, I would simply ensure that the herbs I use for my salve would be under an altar during 9 rites of similar purpose to the mass. These would potentially be rites that combine aspects of consecration, seeking divine favor, and empowerment – in whatever form you’d like that to take for your tradition.

Equally, Leechbook I, section 64 suggests that a kind of amulet can be made that is not unlike a hoodoo hand. Again, we see the use of garlic, betony, and lupin. However, there is also the addition of ‘incense’ – which sounds quite vague until you look at other Leechbook cures in which incense is also a recommended. Interestingly, these cures (found in Leechbook III, section 62) also involve elves – more specifically how to cure forms of ‘elfsickness’.

In these charms, the healer is advised to prepare incense in a rather specific way and then burn it in the environment where the patient is in order to ‘smoke out’ the elf/illness. The instructions should look at least a little familiar by now.


Take a handful of each, bind all of the herbs in cloth, dip into hallowed spring-water three times. After this, against that (illness), lay these herbs under an altar and let them be sung over.

This suggests that this process of purification and laying under and altar is important to the success of the charm, and so I recommend that should you decide to try these charms, you find a way to incorporate this stage of purification/consecration and empowerment. As for the herbs for incense, I would recommend that you again choose from herbs mentioned previously in similar charms.

 

The Münchener Nachtsegen Charm

The following charm is not OE, but I include it here for its usefulness. Alb here means ‘elf’, and in Austria it was believed that the ‘alb’ was the soul of an evil woman under a spell by which she was compelled to leave her body and go out and torment people by night (LeCouteux 100)

Alb, or also elbelin [little alb]
you shall remain no longer
alb’s sister and father,
you shall go out over the gate;
alb’s mother,
trute [female monster] and mar,

you shall go out to the roof-ridge!

Let the mare not oppress me,

let the trute not pinche me

let the mare not ride me,
let the mare not mount me!

Alb with your crooked nose,
I forbid you to blow on [people]

(Hall 125-126)

 

Final Word

Hopefully the importance of dream to the Pagan/Heathen mindset has been made clear over the course of these past two posts. As I’ve written before, dream is something that I believe we need to fight for and reclaim.

However, few things as powerful as dream, come without any accompanying hazards. When we open these doors, when we invite in what was once chased back, we are often doing so half-blind. We have a lot of sources on various Heathen and Pagan worldviews, however none of them can tell us things like what it was to actually fear things like elves or faeries. None of them can tell us what it was actually like to live in such a populated and enchanted world; that is for us to [re]discover for ourselves. And there are few things more terrifying than the thought of  being attacked by something that cannot be fought while already in a vulnerable state.

Sleep well!

Sources

Alaric Hall – Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity

Karen Jolly – Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context

Claude LeCouteux – Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages
 Stephen Pollington – Leechcraft: Early English Charms, Plant-Lore and Healing