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Breath of Spring - Beltaine

4/19/2022

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.Breath of Spring … Beltaine
 
From time immemorial the seasonal sequence has arrested the attention of mankind and aroused an intense emotional reaction in all states and stages of culture and types of society extending from the Upper Palaeolithic in prehistoric times to the highest civilizations of the ancient Near East and the Graeco-Roman world, with repercussions on the subsequent development of custom. Belief and behavior in the intervening ages, not least in the folk-cultures in Europe.
     The reason is not far to seek.  Everywhere and at all times the means of subsistence have been the primary concern and from this fundamental requirement recurrent seasonal periodic festivals have sprung, and by constant repetition they have assumed a variety of forms and acquired divers meanings and interpretations.  But since food has always been an essential need it is in this context that the observances have exercised their primary functions. [Seasonal Feasts & Festivals]
 
In Scotland and Ireland, the ancient Celtic practice of lighting bonfires at the beginning of May as part of a sacrificial rite lingered on until the 18th-century in the observance known as Beltaine.  The name derived from the Gaelic tein-eigin – ‘need-fire’ and the practice of lighting sacred fires, often on hill-tops, at the beginning of the second division of the Celtic year was for the purpose of stimulating the sun as the life-giving agent at the commencement of summer.  Thus on the Eve of May Day, branches of rowan of buckthorn were fastened to the houses and cattle-stalls to keep away malevolent spirits, and the gorse was set on fire at the break of day to burn them out.  ‘Home fires were extinguished and rekindled with appropriate ceremonies – the antiquity of which custom is indicated by the use of earlier methods of fire-making by friction, tinder and flint and steel being employed for the purpose, according to Professor E O James.
 
When the Beltaine bonfires had been lighted from the need-fire, branches were lit and carried into the houses to ignite the new fires in the grates.  In the Highlands of Scotland this was the only occasion when the peat-fires were put out and relighted (by the friction method) like the annual renewal of the sacred fire in the temple of Vesta on 1st March by the Vestal Virgins.  That the Beltaine fires were regarded as cathartic and regenerative is suggested by the custom of driving cattle through them to protect them from disease.
 
April’s showers will hopefully have given way to rich and fertile earth, and as the land becomes greener, there are few celebrations as representative of fertility and/or regeneration as Beltaine.  Festivities typically begin the evening before, on the last night of April. It’s a time to welcome the abundance of the fertile earth, and a day that has a long (and sometimes colourful) history.  This spring celebration is all about new life, fire, passion and rebirth, so there are all kinds of creative ways we can set up for welcoming the season.
There are many different ways we can celebrate Beltaine, but the focus is nearly always on the fact that it is a major Fire Festival and we need to find ways of incorporating this into our celebrations. A fire pit is primarily ambient/atmospheric, although it can have some warming properties, depending on how powerful it is and how large. It’s one of those lovely features for people to gather around in the evening, since it’s pleasant in cool, balmy, or even slightly warm weather. Only in downright hot temperatures does the mere look of fire cause discomfort. However, since fire pits are mainly ornamental, if weather is truly frigid or there’s a lot of precipitation, a fire pit doesn’t really do much to combat the weather and may actually get damaged.
Having a fire pit in our garden will ensure we can enjoy the outdoors for longer when the sun goes in and, really, who doesn’t enjoy sitting and looking at an open fire? Covid restrictions have hopefully been amended, so now we can begin to think of having the family over for a big celebratory ‘Beltaine Bash’. If we haven’t already invested, a fire pit is a great item to have in our garden for those Fire Festivals, so we can continue with a much-needed me-time behind the garden-gate once the sun’s gone in. But what to choose? There are lots of designs but before using your garden fire pit, ensure it’s in a safe location and away from any combustible surfaces.
  • Make sure that the location is safe and there’s nothing hanging nearby that could catch fire.
  • Position your outdoor fire pit in the middle of your patio, so you have plenty of room to move around it safely and it’s not too close to combustible surfaces, grass, trees, plants or shrubs.
  • Make sure that it isn’t too close to your property or sheds/summer houses.
  • Don’t light the fire pit under a gazebo or other covered area.
  • Check the wind direction before lighting.
  • Take fire safety precautions. For example, have a fire extinguisher, fire blanket or at least a bucket of water/sand nearby.
  • Keep children and animals away if they are unsupervised.
  • When you have finished with the fire pit, ensure that the fire is completely extinguished. Cover the fire pit with a suitable lid to contain any hot embers and prevent ash from blowing around.
  • If you have chosen a fire pit that doesn’t have legs or which gets very hot, you may need to protect the surface underneath.
On the evening of 13th May, those of traditional British Old Craft observe the Beltaine ritual in compliance with the old Julian calendar, or we may choose a weekend nearest to the 31st April in harmony with the general pagan community.  The rite can be as simple or complicated as we like to make it but the basic component is fire, which can be a roaring summer bonfire, a smouldering fire-pit or an open patio fire-basket.  We’ve even taken part in a rite where the fire was contained within a metal bucket with holes knocked in it! 
 
Whether as part of a group, or a solitary working, fire should be an integral part of any Beltaine ceremony.  Again, the purists would say that the fire should be lit as part of the ritual but there’s nothing more embarrassing that being stared at by a group of people eagerly awaiting a cheery blaze while the fire-maker fumbles about with damp matches and even damper kindling that refuses to ignite.  Beltaine should be a joyous occasion but this kind of enforced gaiety is on a par with those who insist on still holding a family barbeque in the garden when it’s pouring with rain because it’s been planned for that day!
 
In modern parlance, in our rites we are basically asking for health, wealth and happiness in the coming days of plenty, i.e. a summer - with plenty of food = health and wealth plus ‘mirth and song’. The holiday celebrates spring at its peak, and the coming of summer. This holiday is associated very strongly with fertility/regeneration, but for pagans how does this translate into a generic meaning that all our guests can relate to?
 
To put the matter in a nut-shell - regeneration is an ambiguous term with diverse meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to be regenerated is to be ‘re-born; brought again into existence; formed anew’, no doubt an accurate usage but one that is arguably too narrow. More appropriate is another meaning the OED suggests: ‘restored to a better state’ - spiritual renewal or revival.  Most definitions of regeneration, however, have been driven, over many times and places, by concern about ageing and the desire, at best, to reverse or, at least, to modify its perceived ill-effects.  And as  Robert Cochrane once observed, there had been no cause for a fertility religion in Europe since the advent of the coultershare plough in the 13th
 century!
 
 
The May Pole dances are survivals of ancient rituals around a living tree as part of the spring rites to ensure fertility. Over time it usually became a tree trunk of the correct height, age, and type (usually pine or birch). Some writers claim that the tree represented masculine energy, and the ribbons and floral garlands that adorned it represented feminine energy.  While those ribbon-weaving dancers are either pairs of boys and girls (with girls taking one colour of ribbons and boys the other), or a group of multiple ages where younger dancers take the inside of the circle and older dancers the outside; either way, the maypole itself is a splendid reminder that spring has sprung and regeneration has begun.
Given that May Day celebrations are all about expressive dancing and celebrating, the Puritans in 16th and 17th century New England labeled the rituals ‘bacchanalian’, which naturally led to the banning of the celebrations during that time.  Luckily May Day festivities made their way back into the modern era and remain a symbol of the wondrous shift from the dreary cold season to the lively warmer one. We can find today’s most dedicated revelers in Scotland and Ireland, where they recognize Beltaine or Gaelic May Day, or in the United Kingdom and Bavaria - where the maypole is painted in their region’s white and blue and adorned with representations of the local craftspeople and trades.
The tradition of the Maypole Dance has been around for a long time – it’s a celebration of the fertility of the season. Because Beltaine festivities usually kicked off the night before with a big bonfire, the Maypole celebration usually took place shortly after sunrise the next morning.   Young people came and danced around the pole, each holding the end of a ribbon. As they wove in and out, men going one way and women the other, it created a sleeve of sorts - the enveloping womb of the earth - around the pole. By the time they were done, the Maypole was nearly invisible beneath a sheath of ribbons. If you have a large group of friends and lots of ribbon, you can easily hold your own Maypole Dance as part of your Beltaine festivities. 
 
In some regions, however, a different maypole tradition existed: the carrying of highly decorated sticks with hoops or cross-sticks, or swags attached, covered with flowers, greenery or artificial materials such as crêpe paper.  This tradition is known as garlanding, and was a central feature of May Day celebrations in central and southern England until the mid-19th century and is a more practical adaptation that we can use within our Craft celebrations as a lead-up to Old Beltaine.  It can even be hung on the front door where the Yule wreath will later mark the Mid-Winter Festival.
 
 
The Beltaine/Oestra Bash
The Beltaine bonfire festival is really incomplete without a meal to go with it.  For this occasion celebrate with foods that honour the earth but probably the most wide-spread tradition is that of ‘Scottish Bannocks’.  It is a form of flat bread, the same thickness as a scone cooked on a griddle or fried in a pan.  Today it may also be baked in the oven for about twenty minutes.  In parts of Scotland, the Beltaine bannock is a popular custom. It’s said that if you eat one on Beltaine morning, you’ll be guaranteed abundance for your crops and livestock.
 
BANNOCKS OR OATCAKES (TRADITIONAL)
 
4 oz (⅔ cup) medium oatmeal
2 teaspoons melted fat (bacon dripping is good)
Pinch of bicarbonate of soda
Additional oatmeal for the kneading
Pinch of salt
¼ cup hot water
 
Mix the oatmeal with the salt and bicarbonate of soda in a basin, then
make a well in the middle and pour in the melted fat. Stir around, then
add enough water to make a stiff paste.  Scatter a board or table thickly
with oatmeal, turn out the mixture and roll into a ball.  Knead well with
the hands covered in oatmeal to prevent sticking.  Press down a little
and keep the edges as regular as possible.  Then roll out to a ¼ inch
thickness, and shape by putting a dinner plate on top and cutting round
the edges.  Sprinkle finally with a little meal, then cut into quarters or
less.  Place on the warmed girdle, or pan, and cook until the edges curl
slightly.  In Scotland they were finished on a toasting stone, but a
medium hot grill to crisp the other side is adequate. [A Taste of Scotland]
 
Oatcakes are very good with fish, especially herrings, either smoked or fresh, with raw onions; also served with soups, butter-milk, or with jam, honey or marmalade for breakfast. Bannock is also a main staple of many indigenous communities in Canada because it’s a simple bread that can be cooked in a pan, in the oven or over a fire. Top with butter, nut butter, jam or even melt a cube of cheese inside the dough.  During Beltaine a bonfire is kept going all night long. Pieces of bannock are thrown into the fire as an offering.
 
Froissart, the 14th-century chronicler, writes that the Scottish soldier always carried a flat plate of metal and a wallet of oatmeal, as part of his equipment.  With a little water he could always make himself an oatcake over a wood fire, which contributed to his remarkable stamina.
 
Loaded with beef, potatoes, and lots of vegetables, this dish celebrates winter and welcomes spring. It’s warm and hearty, yet fresh and bright.  And, at this time of year, when the days can fluctuate between spring-like with clear skies and warm air to cold and chilly rainy days that feel more like February, there’s still justification to slow cook something cozy and savory for Beltaine. With the shifting weather, we never know if there’s a last chilly day around the corner and this slow cooker beef stew has the best of both seasons. With tender beef cooked low and slow in a rich gravy along with spring veggies and plenty of fresh herbs, it’s a set-it-and-forget-it recipe that simmers all day in your slow cooker.
 
SPRING BEEF AND VEGETABLE STEW
 
1 tbsp vegetable oil
500g beef diced stewing steak
1 tbsp flour
700ml beef stock
1 carrot, thickly sliced
400g Jersey Royal potatoes, cut into wedges
1 leek, thickly sliced
100g Spring Greens (or Baby Leaf Greens), shredded
25g pack fresh parsley, chopped
Pepper and salt


Preheat the oven to 180ºC, gas mark 4. Heat the oil in a large frying pan
and fry the beef until browned. Stir in the flour and seasoning and cook
for 1 minute, add the stock and bring to the boil. Stir in the carrot and
potatoes. Transfer to an ovenproof casserole dish (or slow cooker), cover
and bake for 1 hour. Add the leek and bake for a further 1 hour until the
beef is tender Add the greens and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the parsley
and serve with plenty of crusty bread [Waitrose]
 
Beltaine festivals, both in ancient times and today, are commonly accompanied by a large feast. Traditional Beltaine celebrations would set aside some food and drink for the aos sí as a nod of respect.   Since Beltaine used to focus on livestock, perhaps it’s not a bad alternative in providing an enormous ‘cheese/ charcuterie board’ with a wide variety of cheeses and cured meats for the occasion, together with a large wicker basket full of fresh bread and crackers. And best of all, this has something for everyone! From different types of cheese to sweet and savory snacks to crackers and cured meats, the best cheese boards leave no one behind.
 
Select the cheeses. Try to include a variety of flavors and textures by selecting cheeses from different families (for example):
  • Aged: Aged Cheddar, Gruyere, Gouda.
  • Soft: Brie, Camembert, Goat.
  • Firm: Manchego, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Edam.
  • Blue: Gorgonzola, Roquefort, Stilton.
 
Use cheese markers to label cheese so everyone knows what they're getting and bring cheeses to room temperature before serving in order to bring out their true flavor.
 
Add some charcuterie...aka cured meats. Prosciutto, salami, sopressata, chorizo, mortadella or paté are all good options.
Add some savory. Think olives, pickles, roasted peppers, artichokes or spicy mustards.
Add some sweet. Think seasonal and dried fruits, candied nuts, preserves, honey or chutney.
Offer a variety of breads. Sliced baguette, bread sticks, and a variety of crackers in different shapes, sizes, and flavors.
Finish it off with some garnishes. This is a great way to give your cheese board a seasonal touch. Use edible flowers, cherry tomatoes, fresh herbs, celery or grapes to give your board the look and feel you want.  [Lemon Tree Dwelling]
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NEW RELEASE

3/28/2022

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The Witch’s Book of Simples
The simple arte of domestic folk medicine
 
A Simple is a philtre derived from a single herb and was an important element among the natural resources of the parish-pump witch, wise-women and cunning-folk.  Simples are common kitchen ‘stuff’ that has been handed down through generations of country people in the form of family cures for everyday ailments.  Or as William Fernie wrote in his Herbal Simples (1897) “The art of Simpling is as old with us as our British hills.  It aims at curing common ailments with simple remedies culled from the soil, or got from home resources near at hand.”
 
These were no fancy recipes with magical formulae, and, often given as a tisane, the women of the household were able to use the remedies to treat common ailments suffered by her family. And, this elementary form of domestic plant medicine can be as simple as a cup of chamomile tea made from flowers picked fresh from our own garden to aid sleep.  This was the most elementary way to use medicinal plants since no fancy recipes or scientific acumen was needed as Simples were often given as an infusion or used as a poultice or compress.  But this element of traditional witchcraft has long been in the shadows …
 
As most of my readers will know, I have a fascination for odd and obscure historical facts that are hidden away in the millions of sources that outstrip and confound the confines of the Internet – it’s finding them that presents the stimulation and the challenge. Because if we merely rely on the regurgitated information of contemporary paganism not only does our mind become stagnant, but for those who follow the Craft of the witch, so do our magical abilities.
 
Over the years I have also incorporated a great deal of folk- cunning- and country-lore into my books on witchcraft with a view to preserving that knowledge for future generations. Much of what even those of my grandparents’ generation once knew is now lost because it was never recorded for posterity. True there are numerous pagan books written about similar subjects but it is obvious that a large number of writers don’t have the countryside in their blood and fail to reflect the magic and mystery of growing up in an uncomplicated rural environment. Strangely enough, these sentiments are often now viewed as some form of elitism but I prefer to go back to the roots of learning rather than consult something that has been cobbled together from different popular titles without any true grounding in Nature.
 
Finally, special thanks must go to medical herbalist Tish Romanov of The Old Apothecary for giving The Witch’s Book of Simples the once over to make sure I wasn’t about to kill anyone, or that my brain hadn’t failed during the long years since I was first introduced to (and used) these simple domestic plant remedies … and for adding the warnings, cautions and dangers where applicable.
 
The Witch’s Book of Simples by Melusine Draco is published by Moon Books (www.moon-books.net) ISBN 978 1 78904 789 9 : 188 pp : UK£11.99/US$18.95
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VERNAL EQUINOX

3/19/2022

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​The Elders of the Coven of the Scales and myself always view the Spring Equinox with a degree of trepidation since it usually brings with it the onset of personal turmoil and upheaval.  As the year begins to change we prepare to batten down the hatches until the storm of uncertainty has passed.  And, as we all appreciate, uncertainty is often centered on worries about the future and all the bad things we can anticipate happening. It can leave us feeling hopeless and depressed about the days ahead, exaggerate the scope of the problems we face, and even prevent us from taking action to overcome any problems until the Vernal Equinox has gone.

Canadian wellness coach, Kelly Spencer, observes that the Vernal Equinox is a time of rebirth for all life. “As winter places us in a life of more darkness, we rejoice more sunlight. With all of life dependent upon the sun, you can imagine the energy of celebration this time of year for all living species. Birds sing, flowers bloom, bees dance, and babies of all species are born. In ancient times, rituals were performed at the Spring Equinox and people would cleanse old energy. This is where our tradition of ‘spring cleaning’ came from! We feel more energized and want to plant seeds of vision in our lives or for our gardens. We may feel the urge to open the windows, clean and prepare for a new, warmer and brighter season. We might make plans to get outside more, develop a health plan for ourselves, or set some new goals to achieve, both personally and professionally.”

We also understand that there is a real ‘seasonal science’ concerning the varied affects on our body and mind so that we can all be more mindful of when transition from season to season wreaks its affects on us. In fact, it can affect all living creatures. Seasonal changes, including the increase in the amount of light is a signal to animals, plants and people, of the changing seasons. For some, changes of season can trigger a change in mood. During the winter many develop seasonal affective disorder (SAD), with some experts believing the shorter days, with less sunlight, upset the body’s internal clock causing loss of energy and lack of luster for life.

With the increase in light, as it hits the retina and enters the pineal gland and slows the production of melatonin, we may notice a change in the way we feel and the energy we have. As the melatonin recedes and the light begins to affect the brain, we can get a lighter ‘spring’ in our step, we become more alert and experience increase feelings of happiness. The fresh air, scents and visual displays of bloom and birth, feel good as we consume them with our senses.

But what can account for those feelings of apprehension that some monumental upheaval is about to occur – and it will invariably happen around the Equinox!?  There’s never been a satisfactory answer to this situation but a gentle read through Professor E O James’s Seasonal Feasts & Festivals (1961) provided another train of thought …

This related to the tradition custom of seasonal contests that had been an integral element for promoting fertility and conquering the malign forces of evil, especially at the approach of spring.  According to Professor James, this is apparent in the many ball games that had survived throughout the ages which originally had a ritual significance – not to mention local hostility.  Not infrequently these have occurred in the opening of the year, and have persisted in association with the carnival, revelries and merry-making.  The rites, however, belong to the Spring Festival rather than that of the Winter Solstice – Shrovetide customs looking forward to Easter, not backwards towards Yule.

In England it became the custom for parishes to divide themselves into two opposing groups at this season of the year, which usually coincided with Shove Tuesday, to engage in ‘rough and rumbles’ such as those recorded in forty-two towns or districts,  and in which they have survived to within recent memory.  ‘Broken shins, broken heads, torn coats and lost hats’, we are told were ‘among the minor accidents of this fearful contest’.  A Frenchman who witnessed the scene remarked that ‘if Englishmen called this playing, it would be impossible to say what they would call fighting’.

According to one local tradition this violent event celebrated the driving out and slaying of a cohort of Roman soldiers marching through the town by unarmed Britons.  And to suppress the observance in 1846 ‘it required two troops of Dragoons, a large levy of special constables and the reading of the Riot Act to secure the desired result’. These regional ‘needle-matches’ or bitterly fought contests between two teams who bear each other a grudge,  aroused exceptional personal antagonism between the contestants.

Seasonal games and contests of this nature were almost universal in England and elsewhere in Europe at the approach or beginning of spring, until they were prohibited on the ground that they were dangerous to life and limb, and property, as indeed they were.  Is the astral turbulence surrounding the Spring Equinox a throw-back to the ‘good old days’ enshrined in our racial memory?  Because the mere presence of such violence in the astral realm is already acutely burdensome, and to be physically exposed to it is exhausting and debilitating

Uncertain times create waves in the astral realm:When the human mind doesn’t know what the future will hold, its natural tendency is to seek out some narrative to grasp on to, to make sense of, and identify with that narrative. Without meditative training, simply remaining in a blank, unknowable present is not how most of us cope with uncertainty. When understood in the context of a society (and, in general, all rules that apply to individuals apply to groups; as above, so below), this means that an uncertain material world (like say, the Corvid pandemic) creates even more uncertainty in our collective heads, and all members of society feel a sense of change, and often of unease, like we know something is coming but aren’t sure what. This is what is meant by ‘something in the air;’ a collective consciousness comes to reflect this uncertainty, this sense of foreboding. It is like the calm before a storm. [Astral Harmony]

Both Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes universally represent a time when earth energies as well as our own bio-energetic systems are dramatically shifting gears, so our emotional and physical health can be quite sensitive, and we need extra rest and care to protect our life force and to help us stay steady.

During equinoxes, the Sun also exerts a stronger pull on the Earth than at the rest of the year, because of the alignment between the sun and the equator. Consequently, the water surface is strongly attracted by the Sun, which accentuates what we call ‘great tides’. To the meteorologists, spring is from March to May, and it is seen as a period of instability.  This is because the ground is warming up but the air is still quite cold, producing a bitter-sweet mixture of squally showers, fine spells and cold, frosty nights.  Just when the days appear to be improving, a deep depression can whip moisture-laden air down from the polar seas, hurling it across the countryside as sleet and snow.  After warm March days, when the blackthorn comes into bloom, there is often a sting in the tail of the month – the blackthorn winter!
​
In fact, the countryman’s observation for this time of year is ‘Beware the Blackthorn Winter’ – because although the blackthorn is in full bloom by now, its pale, softly fragrant blossoms are often matched by frost-whitened grass or snow-covered hills. The blackthorn flowers before its leaves grow, so we get a real contrast of white flower against black bark; blackthorn has a reputation as being one of the ‘witch-trees’ of the countryside, not least because we have to be very careful of its long (and very sharp!) spikes which can puncture skin very easily and the wounds have a tendency to turn septic. The blackthorn is depicted in many fairytales throughout Europe as a tree of ill omen but it along with the alder it is the totem tree of traditional British Old Craft.
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WRITER@WORK - spring

3/15/2022

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WRITER@WORK – Spring
The next book in the How to Survive (and Enjoy) titles is about due for publication in Sumer Is Icumen In – scheduled for 29th April which looks at reclaiming our Summer Festivals for our personal/family calendar.   Harvest Home – In Gathering and Breath of Spring have also been added to the Moon Books publishing schedule and so we now have a complete year of reclaimed fire-festivals.  I’ve also completed the final draft of the ignotus version of Hallowe’en & All That – which is a bit more graphic than its Moon Books companions.

Lots of interest on TVWriters’ Vault for Temple House Archive and the Hugo Braithwaite Mysteries from television production companies looking for new series.  This is a long, drawn out process but these two fiction series have both attracted some interest … so fingers crossed.  Have also started on volume four of the Vampyre’s Tale and hopefully this can be added to the list.

​Scaling down on all sorts of projects leading up to the planned move back to the UK in the autumn and, who knows, may be making room for some new ones.  I shall miss the Glen since it has been a wondrous source of inspiration over the years but being close to the sea may provide stimulus of a different kind.  Talking of which, Incubation and Temple Sleep is next in the Arcanum series and should be ready for release in April/May.
All these things are linked in with each other and who knows what writing changes there are in store for me in the coming months …
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Traditional Witchcraft for the Seashore - Tides

2/3/2022

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Natural tides are an integral part of tradition British witchcraft because these are what empower our magical workings and personal spell casting.  Imagine drawing in the energies we’ve given out today. Pull back the energy that has gone into chatting, encounters at work, the distractions of shop windows, or the emotional pull of others. Ethereal meditation focuses on spiritual transformation. It is a form of conscious meditation that combines powerful visualizations and affirmations to help harness the flow of personal and environmental energy in our lives.  Here we use the natural tides of the Earth to help restore our body when we’re feeling exhausted, weary, and tired. We will feel more alive and filled with energy ...
 
Natural tides are caused by the effect of gravity in the Earth-Moon-Sun system, and the movement of those three bodies.  Let’s consider just the Moon for a minute, and imagine the Earth completely covered in water. There would be two bulges of water - one towards the Moon and another on the opposite side. The rise and fall in sea-level is caused by the Earth rotating on its axis underneath these bulges of water. There are two tides a day because it passes under two bulges for each 24 hour rotation.  This is called the lunar tide.
 
The Sun also creates two bulges of water called the solar tide - this is about a third the size of the lunar tide. Two Bulges? What causes the one on the side away from the Moon? Most people think the Moon rotates round the Earth. In reality, the Earth and the Moon rotate about a common centre just inside the Earth’s surface. At this common centre, the two forces acting: gravity towards the Moon and a rotational force away from the Moon are perfectly in balance. They have to be otherwise the Earth and Moon would not stay in this orbit. The ‘tide-generating’ force is the difference between these two forces. On the surface of the Earth nearest the Moon, gravity is greater than the rotational force, and so there is a net force towards the Moon causing a bulge towards the Moon. On the opposite side of the Earth, gravity is less as it is further from the Moon, so the rotational force is dominant. Hence there is a net force away from the Moon. It is this that creates the second bulge away from the Moon.
 
The solar-tidal bulges are about half the size of those caused by the Moon. Like the Moon, gravitational attraction to the Sun creates one bulge towards the Sun and one away from it ... These occur during full and new Moons when the gravitational influence of the Sun and the Moon line up with each other. Tides cause daily changes in water levels in many coastal areas. Factors such as local topography and weather contribute to the timing and height of tides, but the primary reason for tides is the gravitational attraction between liquid water on the Earth and the Moon. All objects on Earth experience tidal forces. However, the effect is most pronounced with water because, as a liquid, it is more easily deformed by gravity when compared to solid objects.
 
Basically, oceanic tides are very long-period waves that move through the oceans in response to the forces exerted by the moon and sun. Tides originate in the oceans and progress toward the coastlines where they appear as the regular rise and fall of the sea surface. When the highest part, or crest of the wave reaches a particular location, high tide occurs; low tide corresponds to the lowest part of the wave, or its trough. The difference in height between the high tide and the low tide is called the tidal range.
A horizontal movement of water often accompanies the rising and falling of the tide. This is called the tidal current. The incoming tide along the coast and into the bays and estuaries is called a flood current; the outgoing tide is called an ebb current. The strongest flood and ebb currents usually occur before or near the time of the high and low tides. The weakest currents occur between the flood and ebb currents and are called ‘slack water’ or ‘slack current’. In the open ocean tidal currents are relatively weak. Near estuary entrances, narrow straits and inlets, the speed of tidal currents can reach up to several kilometers per hour.
 
The solar cycle is the cycle that the Sun’s magnetic field goes through approximately every eleven years. Our Sun is a huge ball of electrically-charged hot gas. This charged gas moves, generating a powerful magnetic field.  Every 11 years or so, the Sun’s magnetic field completely flips. This means that the Sun’s north and south poles switch places. Then it takes about another 11 years for the Sun’s north and south poles to flip back again. The solar cycle affects activity on the surface of the Sun, such as sunspots which are caused by the Sun’s magnetic fields, and as the magnetic fields change, so does the amount of activity on the Suns surface.
 
Atmospheric tides are ubiquitous features of the Earth’s atmosphere. They are the persistent global oscillations that are observed in all types of atmospheric fields, including wind, temperature, pressure, density, and land height.   Tidal oscillations have periods that are some factor of a solar or lunar day. Atmospheric tides have been studied for many years, since they are evident in both surface pressure and magnetic observations that date back to the early part of the twentieth century.  Atmospheric tides are further characterized by their sources.
 
The Moon’s gravity forces the lunar atmospheric tide, while solar atmospheric tides can be excited in several ways, including the absorption of solar radiation, large-scale latent heat release associated with deep convective clouds in the troposphere, the gravitational pull of the Sun, and as secondary waves due to nonlinear wave–wave interactions. The restoring force that acts on atmospheric tides is gravity, so tides are a special class of buoyancy or gravity waves. Solar atmospheric tides are generally larger than lunar tides and dominate the tidal motions in the middle and upper atmosphere, that is, the stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. [NASA]
 
Earth tide is the displacement of the solid earth’s surface caused by the gravity of the Moon and Sun. At ground level, atmospheric tides can be detected as regular but small oscillations in surface pressure with periods of 24 and 12 hours. The largest body tide constituents are semi-diurnal, but there are also significant diurnal, semi-annual, and fortnightly contributions. Though the gravitational force causing earth tides and ocean tides is the same, the responses are quite different.  In coastal areas, because the ocean tide is quite out of step with the Earth tide, at high ocean tide there is an excess of water about what would be the gravitational equilibrium level, and therefore the adjacent ground falls in response to the resulting differences in weight. At low tide there is a deficit of water and the ground rises. Displacements caused by ocean tidal loading can exceed the displacements due to the Earth body tide. Sensitive instruments far inland often have to make similar corrections. Atmospheric loading and storm events may also be measurable, though the masses in movement are less weighty. Volcanologists use the regular, predictable Earth tide movements to calibrate and test sensitive volcano deformation monitoring instruments. The tides may also trigger volcanic events. [Wikipedia]
The pole tide is the response of the ocean to incremental centrifugal forces associated with the Chandler wobble - a small deviation in the Earth’s axis of rotation relative to the solid earth.  It amounts to change of about 30 ft in the point at which the axis intersects the Earth’s surface and has a period of 433 days. This wobble, combines with another wobble with a period of one year, so that the total polar motion varies with a period of about seven years. The tide has a potentially important effect on the period and damping of the wobble, but it is at present not well constrained by observations.  In regard to ocean tides in particular: the South Pole is on land so there are no ocean tides; and the North Pole is frozen so it is hard to see the Ocean tides! It is true that tides tend to reduce with increasing latitude, but there are many other factors including the shape of the coastline. [Navipedia]
 
Tides have an effect on the atmosphere surrounding the Earth and can be used magically to our advantage to enhance our rituals when each individual tides is at its highest/strongest. Here’s an energizing yogic meditation we can do for just thirty seconds that will fill our body and mind with a smooth, natural energy. This is also great for increasing our immunity and clearing our mind. Try doing this in the morning or mid-afternoon to fill ourselves with an intoxicating natural buzz as we plug into the natural tide.
 
While this is a simple meditation is also a mental practice that allows us to connect back to our physical bodies, slow down, and calm our thoughts when they are racing or frantic. Like all forms of meditation, doing even a quick exercise can train us to press pause on our swirling thoughts and focus, even for a few seconds, on the moment.  The internet can help us to pinpoint the apogee of the tide on which we wish to focus, so that we can concentrate on that precise moment in time prior to engaging in any magical working.
 
Once we have discovered how to syncronize our routine with the various natural tides by consulting any one of a number of apps or local tide charts available we can literally drop into the exercise anytime, anywhere. If we’re stressed at our desk, or even slipping into negative thoughts while at the gym, we can sink into this mini-yoga exercise any time we feel the need.


  • First things first, get comfortable – whether we choose to cozy up on a couch or step outside into the sunlight. Keeping our feet firmly planted on the ground can be helpful for greater connection and grounding.  On the go or not at home? No problem.
  • Take a few deep breaths . . . like, all the way down to your belly (four seconds in, four-second hold, and four seconds out is a good place to start).
     
    Without trying to change what we observe, let’s simply notice the sensations in our body. Do we have clenched shoulders? A tightened jaw? Tightness in our neck?
  • Simply observing what we feel may be shocking once we stop and notice just how tense we’ve been without even realizing it
  • Once you’ve become aware of sensations, take notice of a few other things like:
 
The temperature of our hands
The feeling of clothing against our body
The ground under our feet
The smells and feeling of the air around us
 
  • All of these objective observations can help increase mindfulness – like when it feels like as though our anxiety is taking control.
  • Gently allow our body to relax, from head to toe.
  • Start by relaxing the facial muscles and jaw, neck, and shoulders. Even our tongue and throat might be holding anxiety, so let them go limp. Continue to breathe deeply as we relax all the way down to your toes.  Think of nothing.
  • New to meditation or finding this all a little abstract? As with all types of meditation, there’s no right or wrong way. So if sitting in silence with yourself feels good, you’re doing it right!
  • We can always take it up to the next level and go for five to 10 minutes, or longer! This is a good way to begin our day, self-sooth over your lunch break, or wind down before going to sleep.  Or even focus our thoughts prior to beginning a magical working.
Let this pure thought, the recognition of our pure existence, center you and draw you deeper inside. To find our place of peace in our mind. To be at our most calm mindset and think clearly. Think of this practice as an exercise in meeting our invulnerable core. It can give us the strength we need to open up to our own vulnerability without being overwhelmed by it and connect with the Universe as it manifests in natural tides and rhythms.

Traditional Witchcraft for the Seashore by Melusine Draco is published by Moon Books ISBN 978 184694 426 0 : 150 pages : Price UK£9.99/US$16.95 www.mon-books.net
 
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CANDLEMAS

1/31/2022

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Although Candlemas is a Christian holiday celebrated on 2nd February that has aspects in common with Imbolc – although it is referred to as Candlemas in accordance with the  tradition British Old Craft tradition. Its celebration can be traced to 4th century Greece as a purification holiday and a celebration of the return of light. The modern celebration of Imbolc is considered a low-key and sometimes private affair concerned with reconnecting with nature. Since it’s a climate-specific holiday, some followers of the Wiccan religion adjust their celebration of it to correspond with a date more appropriate to the coming of spring where they live. Others embrace the symbolism of the holiday and keep to the 1st February celebration.
 
Since the Victorian era, it is customary to remove Yuletide decorations on Twelfth Night ... but up until the 19th century people would keep their decorations up until Candlemas Eve.  If this custom wasn’t followed, it was believed that greenery would not return and vegetation would not grow, leading to agricultural shortages and subsequently food problems. Even though Christmas decorations are now less about foliage and more about baubles, glitter and tinsel, many people still adhere to the superstition which they ascribe to the modern Twelfth Night on the 5th January. This 17th century poem by Robert Herrick gives us a better idea of what sort of greenery was used prior to the introduction of the Victorian Christmas tree … In his ‘Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve’ he wrote …
 
DOWN with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe ;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall :
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind :
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)
So many goblins you shall see.
In his longer ‘Ceremonies for Candlemas Eve’, he added:

       DOWN with the rosemary and bays,
           Down with the misletoe;
       Instead of holly, now up-raise
           The greener box (for show).

       The holly hitherto did sway ;
           Let box now domineer
       Until the dancing Easter day,
           Or Easter's eve appear.

       Then youthful box which now hath grace
           Your houses to renew ;
       Grown old, surrender must his place
           Unto the crisped yew.

       When yew is out, then birch comes in,
           And many flowers beside ;
       Both of a fresh and fragrant kind
           To honour Whitsuntide.

       Green rushes, then, and sweetest bents (grasses),
           With cooler oaken boughs,
       Come in for comely ornaments
           To re-adorn the house.
Thus times do shift; Each thing his turn does hold ;
New things succeed, As former things grow old.
In fact, Herrick (1591-1674) wrote at least four poems concerning Candlemas.  Likewise, ‘Upon Candlemas Day’ shows the day itself had its own entrenched traditions:
END now the white loaf and the pie,
And let all sports with Christmas die.
Finally, in ‘The Ceremonies for Candlemas Day’, he wrote:
KINDLE the Christmas brand, and then
Till sunset let it burn ;
Which quench’d, then lay it up again
Till Christmas next return.
Part must be kept wherewith to tend
The Christmas log next year,
And where ‘tis safely kept, the fiend
Can do no mischief there.
This latter poem recalls the tradition that Christmas greenery would be burned and the Yule log allowed to burn down completely, but that a portion should be held back to start next year’s Yule log fire (and as a good luck charm against ‘mischief’). The ashes were to be spread over the land/garden to ensure a good harvest and the Yule log for the next year would be chosen at that time.  Candlemas was also believed to be a good day for weather forecasting (it falls halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox): If it was a sunny day, there would be forty more days of cold and snow. This belief has carried into folklore tradition around the world, and one olde English rhyme says:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will have another flight;
But if it be dark with clouds and rain,
Winter is gone, and will not come again.
 
All this Christian overlay merely confirms what an important festival this was for our pagan forebears and, as such, it became the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary in the church calendar. The Christian feast-day commemorates the ceremony performed by the mother of Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem forty days after the birth of Christ in fulfillment of the Mosaic Law requiring the cleansing of a woman from the ritual impurity incurred at childbirth.  The convenience of having yet another important pagan festival falling within the ‘nativity cycle’ meant that Brigid easily became a Catholic saint! In the early calendar, on that morning, many candles were lit in the church, symbolically driving out the darkness. In the afternoon, there was feasting all round, with much music as Candlemas Day marked the formal end of winter. 
 
In the pagan Celtic world it was Imbolc, the festival marking the beginning of spring that has been celebrated since ancient times. It is also a cross quarter day, that midpoint between the Mid-Winter Festival and the Spring Equinox; the name deriving from the OldIrish imbolg meaning ‘in the belly’, a time when sheep began to lactate, their udders filled and the grass began to grow. Imbolc was a time to celebrate Brigid, as the goddess of inspiration, healing, and smith-craft, with associations to fire, the hearth and poetry.  Also called Là Fhèill Brìghde, it corresponds to the Welsh Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau as a traditional festival marking the beginning of spring; it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man.  Local festivals marking the arrival of the first signs of spring may be named after either the Cailleach or Brìghde, while some interpretations have them as the dual face of the same goddess.
 
Là Fhèill Brìghde, is also the day the Cailleach gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter. Legend has it that, if she intends to make the winter last a good while longer, she will make sure the weather on 1st February is bright and sunny, so she can gather plenty of firewood to keep herself warm in the coming months. As a result, people are generally relieved if Là Fhèill Brìghde is a day of foul weather, as it means the Cailleach is still asleep, will soon run out of firewood, and therefore winter is almost over.
 
The Cailleach is a divine hag, a creatorix, weather and ancestor deity while Brigid is a sort of Celtic Athena, with very similar functions. Although most often presented as a mysteriously veiled, ancient woman, the Cailleach is also said to take on the guise of many different beasts and birds as she travels around the rugged landscapes of her homeland.  The Cailleach Béara is said to be one of the most ancient of mythological beings, appearing as an old crone who brings winter with her blackthorn staff when she appears and who wields incredible power over life and death.  Her ability to control the weather and the seasons meant many communities looked upon her with a mixture of reverence and fear.
 
Candlemas, then, is the re-awakening of the Old Lass within Old Craft belief and also coincides with the Roman Festa Candelarum, which commemorated the search for Persephone by her mother Demeter, Persephone having been kidnapped by the King of the Otherworld, Hades. As Persephone was no longer in our world, darkness was everywhere, so her mother used a torch in her search, and in the end obtained a decree that her daughter would be on Earth and Olympus for two thirds of the year (the light period), and in the Other World (Hades) for the other third of the time (winter season). The festival of candles symbolizes the return of the Light. 
 
During medieval times, peasants still carried torches and crossed the fields in procession, praying for purification of the ground before planting. In the early churches, the torches were replaced by blessed candles whose glow was supposed to take away evil; villagers and townsfolk would later take the candles to their houses to bring protection to their homes and family.  During the evening, an especially large candle would have been lit while the family gathered around waiting for a celebratory feast, during which plans and promises to be kept through the new season would be discussed and debated until it burned out. It was also customary at sunset to ritually light a candle in each room of the home in honour of the Sun’s return. Not surprisingly, in 1543, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, banned candles on Candlemas Day because the rites were seen as superstitious, i.e. pagan!
 
In traditional British Old Craft, however, Old Candlemas/Old Imbolc now falls on the 15th February due to the changes in the calendar. Imbolc is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and there is evidence it has been an important date since pre-Christian times: at the Mound of the Hostages on the Hill of Tara the rising sun at Imbolc illuminates the inner chamber; the sun also illuminates the chamber at Samhain.  Our Neolithic ancestors were obviously acutely aware of this time of the year, as were the Celts and the later settlers in the Ireland, each seeming to adopt some of the traditions and beliefs of the previous/existing culture. 
 
In county Meath there are two important Neolithic solar alignments to Imbolc.  Firstly, on the Hill of Tara, at the Mound of the Hostages a Neolithic passage grave has an entrance directed towards the sunrise on the 8th November and the 4th February, the start and end of winter respectively. As the sun rises it squarely illuminates the back-stone of the chamber for about a week. The stone engravings are illuminated, not by the sun beam directly, but its diffuse reflection from the back stone.  Simultaneously in Cairn L on Cairnbane West, Loughcrew, the sun is shining into the monument to perform what can only be described as a carefully choreographed ballet. At the instant of sunrise the first rays of light are focused on a free standing white pillar stone and nothing else. The light is seen to visibly move from top to bottom in a matter of seconds and then swing from left to right where it is then focused onto a ‘mirror’ stone which throws the diffuse sunlight into a dark recess illuminating one of the most accomplished pieces of Neolithic art in the world.
 
This is the only time when the carvings can be seen without the aid of a torch. All the fine detail being revealed in a very dramatic and stunning way. The sunlight then falls on an angled stone and again within a matter of seconds is seen to shrink and disappear as the sun moves higher in the sky outside the chamber. Curiously the central motif on the Mound of the Hostages stone and the Cairn L stone are remarkably similar, sharing images of nested concentric circles.  From these ancient rites we can see how they identify with the Old Lass and her awakening, not to mention their association with the Mysteries of the Elder Faith.
 
In Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed, Evan John Jones acknowledges that Candlemas is the first of the great Sabbats and the start of the ritual year, when it is time to let go of the past and to look to the future, clearing out the old, making both outer and inner space for new beginnings.  In ancient Rome, on the eve of Candlemas all the home fires would have been put out, cleaned out, and re-lit being symbolic of the returning light of the Sun. In Old Craft, and in keeping with this symbolism, a broom made from the three sacred woods symbolic of the three-fold aspects of the goddess (the handle from ash, the brush from birch twigs and the binding cord from willow) would be placed by the front door to symbolize sweeping out the old and welcoming in the new.
 
We are now preparing to move into the bright half of the year and those four great fire festivals that are marked by the Equinoxes and Solstices of the solar year, together with the four traditional celebrations of Old Beltaine, Old Lammas, Old Hallowe’en and Old Candlemas making up the eight Sabbats of the witch’s year that will be coming round again. The fire festivals occur at the beginning of each quarter of the solar-tide cycle, with Candlemas marking the end of the reign of the Holly King and heralding the first stirrings of the bright tide of summer of the Primal Goddess.  
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Traditional Witchcraft for Urban Living

1/15/2022

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By Melusine Draco
An extract from the book and a bit more …
In the roaring traffic’s boom / In the silence of my lonely room from the Cole Porter’s song, Night and Day, probably sums up the lot of many urban witches who find the inner city streets incompatible with what they see as a pagan life-style. And yet for hundreds of years, witches and cunning folk have plied their trade for the benefit of their town-dwelling neighbours.

​Only recently, a rather mature witch of my acquaintance reminded me of the time when I’d advised her on how to cope with a recent move from rural Berkshire to a large sprawling city;  of how she needed to get out and find the old heart of her new community and reconnect with the heart-beat of her kind.  It was amazing, she said, just how many old life-lines were still evident in the abandoned water-courses, derelict churchyards and ancient architecture. 
 
Late 18th-century antiquarians portrayed the urbanizing towns of the period as ‘centres of a new-style civilization, confident, reformed, free of the old superstitions of the past.  The urban laboring-classes were still views as ignorant and vice-ridden, but they were not thought to be as ignorant, and consequently not as superstitious as their country bumpkin cousins.  By the mid-19th century, confidence in the civilizing effects of urbanization had worn off somewhat … but many intellectuals of the period believed that urbanization rescued people ‘from the idiocy of rural life’.   Thus an editorial in the periodical All The Year Round (November 1869), remarked that although the belief in witchcraft still existed ‘to a very considerable extent in England’ it was not heard of in the busy towns
 
Washington Irving, writing in 1820, described how the inhabitants of Little Britain (near Smithfield Market) still believed in dreams and fortune-telling but failed to mention witchcraft among the beliefs still held in the area.  It is evident from the scant folkloric source material, and from the newspaper archives, that accusations of witchcraft were far less common in London than in rural areas during the modern period.  In early modern England the flow of rural migrants to an expanding London, for example, did not necessarily lead to irrevocable breaks in social relations between village and city.  Rural teenagers were apprenticed to urban relations or friends, and many townspeople returned to their village homes to help at harvest time, this reinforcing those kinship links which geographical distance might have otherwise broken.
 
Owen Davies, who is well-known to most pagan readers for his classic Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History charted the transition of cunning folk from village to city in his The Decline in the Popular Belief in Witchcraft and Magic; his unpublished PhD thesis for the University of Lancaster, 1995 – which was later published in the Journal of Social History (1997).   By the time of WWI there were far fewer cunning folk operating in England than there had been fifty years before, and by the 1940s they seen to have disappeared altogether.
 
Interestingly, Gabrielle Hatfield made a similar observation in Memory, Wisdom & Healing (1999) following her researches into the history of domestic plant medicine , that had been passed down orally from one generation to the next.  She acknowledges that many women described as witches were probably innocent practitioners of herbal medicine; while others undoubtedly cultivated the image of witchcraft so that they had more to offer their customers than the common knowledge of plant medicine.
 
She also found that when she was collecting data on 20th-century plant remedies, many people initially disclaimed any knowledge of the subject. “In our present century, elderly people with such knowledge usually have not passed it on to the next generation for fear of being laughed at, or simply because they felt that such information was of no interest … especially in view of the condescending attitudes shown towards the users of such remedies.”
 
As far as today’s witches are concerned, the pursuit of this hidden urban knowledge is concerned, will be long and often misleading.  After all, why should an eager young witchlet expect these elderly kinfolk to be forthcoming?   The modern witch seeks to drop into a stranger’s life and expect to share their recollections and knowledge, and very often they will not be immune to having the wool pulled over his or her eyes!
 
For the witch whose career confines them to an urbanised environment, regular Craft practice may often seem like a futile gesture, especially if home is a small, gardenless-flat. Even the suburbs can be magically incapacitating, if there is constant noise from traffic and neighbours. People work long hours; often setting off for work and getting home again in the dark during the winter months, without having the opportunity to notice the subtle changing of the seasons. Weekends are a constant battle with family commitments, domestic chores and socialising. It’s no wonder that the urban witch has little time or strength left for magical and spiritual development.
 
There are, of course, others who find themselves having to remain town and house-bound because of age or disability; because they are caring for an aged/infirm parent, or partner; or because they have small children. Urbanisation often provides on-the-spot facilities to make things easier on the domestic front but it cannot give the one thing that a witch needs most – privacy and spiritual elbow-room. So how do we manage?
 
We get up close and personal. And we reject the textbook clichés of what is, and what is not, recommended witchcraft practice. We do not follow stereotyping when it comes to when, where and how we perform our rituals simply because it may not be practically possible to always follow the instructions to the letter. For example: I am a Welsh witch and I come from a place midway between the mountains and the sea, but I have not lived in my homeland now for many years. It would be untrue to say that I never experience what the Welsh call hiraethus, that indescribable feeling of longing and home-sickness, but as we all know, in magical terms there is always a price to be paid for our Craft. During those long years, my career and domestic life has taken me to London (where I lived for 20 years), to the industrial Midlands and, more recently, to a totally urbanised area of East Anglia. Not once, before moving to rural Ireland, did I have the luxury of wild, open spaces – it was all concrete and asphalt. But not once, in all that time, did I stop being a real witch.
 
In my experience, the greatest problem a solitary urban witch faces is that an urban environment is not user-friendly when it comes to psychic activity, but then we don’t always have a choice of where we are going to live if someone else’s needs have to be catered for, too. Mostly I have been confined to renting small terraced cottages and flats, often with little or no garden to give that extra bit of space. I make this comment merely to demonstrate that my Craft activities have not been conducted in a round of luxurious city apartments and picturesque Grade II listed town houses! Under these circumstances, for me the key words have always been: acclimatise, adapt and improvise. Any animal, plant or person that is uprooted and transported to another environment quickly learns to acclimatise if it is going to survive. I have adapted to my surroundings and drawn on whatever material/energy there is to hand, even if it is not what I’ve been used to working with. I improvise by drawing on existing knowledge and experience. So …
 
Acclimatise: Accustom yourself to tuning-in to your environment, even if you’ve lived there for some time. Try to imagine visiting the place for the first time. Buy a detailed street map or guidebook, and familiarise yourself with all the hidden nooks and crannies in the immediate vicinity. Is there a park nearby? Public gardens? Churchyard? Cemetery? What trees are growing locally? Which are the most important/attractive buildings?  Where is the nearest river or canal? Where is the oldest church? Take your time … explore … rediscover … acclimatise.
 
Adapt: Modify or adjust the way you look at things. There is no point in wishing you were elsewhere when circumstances dictate that you remain where you are. But on the other hand there’s nothing quite so mind-numbing as doing the same thing, day in day out, for weeks on end. For a change, try walking to the shops, school, or travelling to work, via a different route. Examine what’s growing in all the front gardens along the way to the shop, school, station or bus stop. Make sure you take time out for lunch - and get out of the home or working environment for an hour - even if it’s a wet Wednesday afternoon: after all, a witch shouldn’t be afraid of a little drop of Elemental Water! Start seriously inter[1]acting with your environment … adapt.
 
Improvise: Be prepared to perform a magical working at any time, without preparation, and without what is considered to be the ‘proper regalia’. Be aware of the magical signs Nature has to offer and be ready to act spontaneously, even in the middle of a crowded railway station or shopping mall during rush hour! It may also come as a bit of a shock to realise that a large number of books mentioned in this text are not about witchcraft, or written by witches. This is because we are learning to improvise and look at things from a different or unexpected perspective. Before we go out and meet Nature face to face, however, there may be one or two changes needed to enable us to re-connect with the natural, elemental energies that are an essential ingre[1]dient within any magical environment. Sorry … we’re not talking about symbolic bowls of water, salt, night-lights and a joss stick to mark the quarters on the sitting room rug, we’re talking about encountering real Elemental Air, real Elemental Water, real Elemental Earth and real Elemental Fire - up close and personal!
 
 
Elemental Air: This is … wait for it … fresh air! It’s the stuff every living thing on the planet needs to breathe to stay alive but, apart from the occasional jaunt to a pagan camp, a large number of urban pagans appear to be terrified of it. I’ve been into some homes where the stuffy, cluttered atmosphere is so over-powering that you could cut the reek of stale incense with a knife. Whilst we appreciate that modern society no longer allows us to live with our doors and windows wide open, we must get used to letting cleansing air back into our lives.
 
There is a purifying element to fresh air! In both religious and magical terms, however, Elemental Air is usually represented by smoke from the incense carrying our prayers and entreaties up to the gods. As Joules Taylor observes in Perfume Power, the burning of fragrance to represent questions or appeals is an ancient and well-nigh indestructible facet of worship. In other words, from very early times fragrance has been associated with the gods, the soul and spiritual qualities. Learn to recognise natural fragrance (not always pleasant) from the world around you, and not to rely totally on the contrived atmospherics of the incense burner!
 
As Jules Taylor goes on to observe, our once highly developed sense of smell is now generally under deployed and now perhaps the least-regarded of all human senses. We can improve our ‘scent perception’ by simply concentrating on becoming more aware of the smells around us. Unfortunately, the urban witch also has to contend with exhaust fumes, fast-food outlets and all manner of other municipal pollution, but with practice it is possible to detect the faint fragrance of Nature. If we want to reconnect with Nature the first thing we must do is sharpen our senses and learn to read the signs that come to us on the breeze
 
Elemental Air brings lightness and freedom of spirit, as well as being a universal symbol of irresistible force and uncontrollable power. Exercise: In town it’s often difficult to find a moment, or even a place to relax. In the larger towns and cities the noise is a constant, 24- hour drone of traffic, where people never seem to sleep. With the use of a local map, find a ‘green spot’ … even if it’s only a small churchyard or square … where you can sit, watch and listen.
 
Okay, but what are we watching and listening for?
 
Nature … because she is there all around us, all the time. For example, I’ve encountered a green woodpecker while sitting in the small courtyard garden of a coffee shop in the middle of town. I’ve seen (and heard) hundreds of these birds over the years, but this was the closest I’d ever been … just five feet away. How many different birds (most certainly creatures of Elemental Air) can you identify? If the answer is very few, then how can you hope to begin to read those ‘signs’ that make up a large part of the witch’s world? Invest a few coppers in a book on British birds from a local charity shop, or buy off e-bay, or ABE-Books on the Internet. Start learning, even if it’s only by watching the pigeons in Trafalgar Square! You’ll be surprised how many different birds can be spotted in our towns and inner cities on a regular basis, and birds have been always been considered bearers of omens since ancient times.
 
Elemental Water: Water is the essential ingredient of life but how many of us consciously pay homage to this fact in our day-to-day existence? We use water for the daily ritual cleansing of our home and body, to water the garden or wash the car, but often neglecting its spiritual properties. From prehistoric times, our ancestors considered springs and ‘watery places’ to be sacred, and the contemporary custom of throwing coins into wells and municipal fountains goes back to the times when votive offerings were cast into the waters to propitiate the gods. We should be mindful that water, particularly spring water, is truly a ‘gift of the gods’ and not to be treated casually.
 
For magical purposes we need to re-connect with water, for even the most rubbish-clogged urban watercourse carries life[1]giving properties along its muddy artery. If we live close to a river, canal, park or golf course, then it makes it easier to observe water at close quarters during the changing seasons, and come to recognise the local wildlife that depends on it. Even the modern fountain in the city centre can be a focus for meditative moments when the sun catches the colours of the rainbow in the falling spray. Our local brook regularly acts as a depository for shopping trolleys, traffic cones and other domestic debris, as it runs right through the centre of town. Growing through the restraining brickwork, however, is a magnificent elder tree and an amazing collection of harts-tongue ferns, which I haven’t seen in such profusion since leaving Wales.
 
Most days the flow is the barest trickle but when it rains, the watercourse becomes a raging torrent. The only other ‘watery’ place is the dried bed of an old pond that only floods during the winter months, but this is the real magical place. The water has gone because the surrounding urban development has drained it, but the site is old, with a large stand of reed mace and a host of other interesting creatures living in this well-established habitat.
 
There are numerous ideas for a ‘water feature’ in the home, and much depends on personal taste rather than pagan cliché. Even the smallest courtyard can host an ornamental wall fountain, birdbath or wooden barrel containing miniature water lilies (although these do require direct sunlight for success). Inside, a large bowl with flower heads floating on the surface can be extremely attractive … but not a good idea if you have small children or a large dog. Be creative, use your imagination.  
 
Elemental Water ‘saturates our lives and language and is the most compelling of human metaphors’ wrote Rebecca Rupp in Four Elements; it is the universal symbol of primal mystery.
 
Exercise: Trace your local source of natural water and try to follow it for as far as possible. You may be lucky enough to live near a pond, stream, lake, river or canal and can watch the changing face of the seasons at the water margin. How many different species of flora and fauna dependent on an Elemental Water habitat can you identify? If the answer is very few, then how can you hope to begin to read those ‘signs’ that make up a large part of the witch’s world? Remember that pure (or purified) water is sterile and that for magical purposes we need to work with natural water. Unless you have access to a spring or holy-well, place a wide bowl or jar outside on a window-sill, to catch rain or moisture; transfer to a sealable bottle and keep for use in your rites. But don’t drink rainwater!
 
Elemental Earth: Of all the elements, Earth is the symbol of solidity and substance, and the ‘most intrusive in our daily lives’, was an observation made by Rebecca Rupp. The subject of global warming and saving the planet is at the forefront of everyone’s mind these days, but for the witch, the sanctity of the Earth and Nature has always been paramount. The witch does not ‘worship’ Nature but exists in a sort of ‘spiritual care-taking’ capacity – after all, it is from Nature direct that we divine the signs and symbols that give us the power over natural things. Communing with Nature isn’t always easy in an urban environment and it is very often necessary to ‘manufacture’ a moment of peace for ourselves amongst the busy populace.
 
Dig out a copy of that famous junior school poem by William Henry Davies, ‘Leisure’ that begins: “What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare … ” and take a verse for your very own Thought for the Day. Without compromising your personal safety, try to visit the local park or old cemetery during school hours, or early on a weekend morning, when you can guarantee having a quiet corner to yourself for a while. Many years ago, long before the ‘great clean up’ got underway, we lived near Highgate Cemetery and this was a perfect place for a meditative or magical moment. The magnificent monuments were overgrown and apart from the occasional tourist visit at weekends, we pretty much had the place to ourselves via a discreet hole in the boundary fence. Not only had Nature taken over completely and the place full of wildlife, but there was also the comfortable familiarity that all witches should have with both the spirits of the dead, and the spirits of Nature.
 
But how do we bring Elemental Earth into our urban home? By growing something, of course! Not everyone has green fingers but it doesn’t take much effort to introduce a small selection of supermarket-grown potted herbs to the kitchen window-sill, does it? This small gesture gives a dual sense of purpose, in that we are caring for something that we can utilise in our day-to-day cooking and magic. Go one better and buy a small kitchen bay. As well as having culinary uses, bay is one of the oldest sacred herbs with strong protective powers when used in spell-casting. My bay started out (many years ago) some six inches high and now stands three-foot tall in a large pot that can be transported anywhere. This is your first step in learning (or re-learning) about wort-lore within the confines of urbanity.
 
Elemental Earth gives a feeling of security. Universal myths claim that first man was created out of clay, earth or sand; traditionally Earth is represented by the ‘mother’ and the harvest.
 
Exercise: It must be obvious that Elemental Earth is much more complex than we would first imagine. We live on it, our food comes from it, we bury our dead in it, Elemental Earth (North) is the direction of magical Power … and yet most of us are afraid of getting our hands dirty by interacting with it. So now is the time to rediscover the Earth energies around where you live, by going out and making time to stand and stare!
 
This also time for an exercise in personal honesty; be truthful, just how comfortable are you with quiet corners of a park or cemetery? If the answer is ‘not very’, then how can you hope to begin to read those spiritual and temporal ‘signs’ that make up a large part of the witch’s world? Again, I would repeat, never compromise your personal safely while on your quest, but try to determine whether you are nervous because you feel vulnerable (i.e. alone), or whether you are uncomfortable with the close proximity to the natural (and supernatural) worlds.
 
Elemental Fire: In its natural state, Elemental Fire is the most elusive of the four within an urban environment, unless the local vandals have ignored the ASBO and gone on a car-torching spree! Fire has always played an important part in esoteric gatherings but the historic concept of a coven gathering around the bonfire in a woodland clearing is highly suspect. A single candle flame can be seen for miles on a dark night, and in the days when witches were falling foul of the law, a blazing fire would have been an open invitation to the Witch Finders. Fire, however, is part of the Mysteries of Craft and an integral part of any magical working.
 
First man probably encountered fire as the result of a lightning strike, and so he would have been left in no doubt that the resulting blaze was indeed heaven-sent. From that time to the present, that god-gift of heat and light has provided the dual[1]purpose of hearth fire (domestic) and sacred flame (religious) … both equally as important as a spiritual focus. For our purposes the hearth-fire is, of course, the most obvious, for witches require no formal temples or sanctuaries in order to follow their Craft. Our urban problem of fire lighting was solved by purchasing a circular patio heater – this is a domed-mesh cover affair, with a tray underneath to catch hot ash so it can safely be used on decking – and also doubles as a barbeque. It can be used in confined spaces and moved to another home when necessary. We also have a collection of old-fashioned lanterns (probably nearer the true), which double up for both indoor and outdoor working … and infinitely safer than naked candles.
 
Elemental Fire is the symbol of warmth, passion … and danger. It can offer the welcome of a glowing hearth or an uncontrollable conflagration that destroys everything in its path. Those who pass through the flames and survive, emerge transformed and improved.
 
Exercise: Learn to love fire and make a point of always having a candle burning (safely) while you are at home. Treat yourself to a ‘special’ holder that will always act as the focus for your devotions – whether indoors or out – so think in terms of something generous, expensive and wind-proof, like a storm[1]lantern. If you are fortunate enough to have a patio heater or an open fire, buy some of those wonderful copper sulphate- coated pinecones that produce the most amazing coloured flames - perfect for divination - but don’t cook over them! Now … how comfortable are you with fire? If the answer is ‘not very’, then how can you hope to begin to read those divinatory ‘signs’ that make up a large part of the witch’s world?
 
Important: When out and about, never put yourself at risk by wandering in remote places. More attacks on lone people occur in urban areas rather than out in the countryside, so do not be foolhardy – the gods do not always protect.
 
We also need to accept that witchcraft (unlike Wicca) is not a religion – it never has been, simply because it’s an individual’s natural ability that distinguishes him or her as a witch. In other words, a witch is born, not made. It just isn’t possible to learn how to become a witch if we haven’t got these abilities, although it is possible to learn how to hone and develop latent, or suppressed psychic talents, under the right tuition. And there is no age limit for these discoveries – in either the young, middle-aged or old. Wicca, on the other hand, is fast becoming accepted as the ‘new pagan religion’ with its doctrines drawing heavily on an eco-feminine shadow-image of Christianity. This again is nothing new, since Christianity itself absorbed many of the existing pagan festivals and celebrations into the Church calendar (including an identification of the Virgin Mary with Isis), and contemporary paganism is merely reclaiming its own. But in reality, even in the days before the Christian invasion, not all of the pagan populace were skilled in the Craft of witches.
 
To use a natural analogy, the differences between witchcraft and paganism per se is to liken them to the relationship between the domestic and the wild cat. To the casual observer there is little difference. Just as the similarities between the modern wild cat (felis sylvestris) and the house cat (felis catus) are so great and the differences so few, that it is difficult to establish any authentic genealogy. There is evidence that wild cats have mated with domestic cats and domestic cats can survive in the wild having gone feral, but they don’t usually move far from human habitation and will quickly revert if given the opportunity. The wild cat, however, cannot be handled or tamed; even a small kitten it is extremely ferocious. In appearance it is difficult at a distance to distinguish a wild cat from a large domestic tabby that has gone feral, but (as with witchcraft and paganism), the subtle differences are there, if you know where and how to look.
 
Witchcraft is not bound by social rules and conventions, only by the personal morality of the individual, and is governed solely by the natural tides. Any form of magical working or spiritual observance tends to be of a solitary nature, or in the company of tried and trusted people. Witches believe that esoteric knowledge should be kept hidden because it is impossible to convey the meaning of the ‘true mysteries’ without the appro[1]priate teaching. Traditional witches are now rarely seen at pagan events, and hold that any ritual equipment will be acquired as and when it is necessary.
 
The witch learns his or her Craft along the way, and pays homage to Nature but in a more abstract form that the textbooks will allow, something along the lines of Blake’s ‘Auguries of Innocence’:
 
“To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour”
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sources:
Memory, Wisdom & Healing, Gabrielle Hatfield (Sutton
The Secret People, Melusine Draco (Moon Books)
Traditional Witchcraft for Urban Living, Melusine Draco (Moon Books)
Urbanization and the Decline of Witchcraft: An Examination of London,Owen Davies. Journal of Social History Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring, 1997), (OUP
 

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NEW BOOKS

10/31/2021

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Scent of a Witch
Melusine Draco
‘Magic and scent were conceptually linked in antiquity. Ancient authors sometimes treated magic as a type of smell; at other times odors were treated as a medium through which magic worked. Some authors compare the effect of smells to magic; others described scent and magic as different things but impossible to distinguish. Magicians used incenses and perfumes liberally to set the scene for their rituals and please the gods, as demonstrated by the corpus of spell books that survive from Greco-Roman Egypt; meanwhile, ancient deities signaled their presence by their divine fragrance.’ So writes Britta Ager in her academic paper for Penn State University, Magic Perfumes and Deadly Herbs: The Scent of Witches’ Magic in Classical Literature.
The Classical authors that Professor Ager cites in her paper were, of course, more contemporary with the regular users of those fragranced preparations. While most modern scents are produced from synthetic materials, the original fragrances were a combination of plant or animal products and rich oils. Today, archaeologists continue to find evidence of perfume’s use throughout the Ancient World, often in the form of contents in intricate perfume vessels. In witches’ spell books, known as grimoires, herbs, flowers, roots and resins were called upon to facilitate the workings of the magical practitioners who recorded the use of olfaction as a very powerful tool in spell-casting. Essences and aromatic smoke have also been linked with spirits and gods in ancient cultures, and the earliest of spell books …
 
Perfume-making has long been big business and from the earliest times provided a ‘cottage industry’ for those who knew and understood the properties of plants. Those early Greek witches whose magic was associated with scent were supernatural exaggerations of rhizotomoi, or ‘root-cutters’ – professional herb gatherers who supplied doctors, magicians, and others with ingredients.
 
Rhizotomoi, who could be male or female, observed ritual precautions when picking certain plants, either to protect themselves from the herbs’ dangerous powers, or to preserve the herbs’ efficacy. Such plant-cutting rituals are well-attested throughout antiquity, including precautions such as pulling up the plant with the left hand, drawing a magic circle around it with a sword, chanting, sacrificing, pouring libations, or cutting it at a particular time of day. There was a tendency worldwide to attribute medicinal and magical powers to plants with strong odours, and, conversely, scented plants are more likely to accrue folk-lore about their potency than inodorate species. Homer’s mythical plant moly, for instance, was frequently identified in antiquity with stinking rue or garlic.
 
The Greeks believed that the scent of certain herbs, magic or otherwise, was potent enough to be dangerous; thus Theophrastus, a fourth-century BC botanist, wrote that people gathering hellebore should eat garlic and drink wine as a protection; and that when harvesting other plants the root-cutter should stand upwind to avoid eye damage and swelling. One early portrait of the mythological Greek witch, Medea, shows the ease with which female root-cutters, with their strange rituals and dangerous herbs, came to be mythologized as witches. Evidence for Medea in the classic Greek Archaic period is highly fragmentary, although what survives already shows a well-developed narrative in which she is the wife of the hero Jason and a powerful witch with magical powers grounded in a knowledge of herbs and drugs
 
Further along the historical time scale, however, the ‘root-cutters’ were still going strong. In his Herbal Simples (1897), William Fernie made rare mention of the ‘green men’ [and women] who were first licensed in the Elizabethan Wild Herb Act to gather herbs and roots from wild, uncultivated land – but it was a contemporary occupation that had already been going strong since the late 14th-century. A new kind of medical herbalist had evolved – the apothecary – who purchased plants collected from the countryside by these wandering herb collectors. In Green Pharmacy, Barbara Griggs records that during the 17th-century herbs could also be bought direct from the herb women in Newgate Market or Covent Garden. According to Fernie:
 
Coming down to the first part of the present [19th] century, we find purveyors of medicinal and savory herbs then wandered over the whole of England in quest of useful Simples as were in constant demand at most houses for the medicine-chest, the store-closet, or the toilet-table. These rustic practitioners of the healing art were known as ‘green men’, who carried with them their portable apparatus for distilling essences, and for preparing their herbal extracts. In token of their giving formally officiated in this capacity, there may yet be seen in London and elsewhere about the country, taverns bearing the curious sign of The Green Man & [his] Still’
 
The Green Man & Still was a tavern originally situated at 335 Oxford Street, London and was also a coaching inn (a 1792 map shows it at the entrance to a stagecoach yard), the starting point/terminus of several stage coach routes out of London. Although the original tavern closed and re-located, it retained the Green Man & Still name as late as the early 1920s. Another Green Man & Still is recorded at 161 Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell in 1789 run by one Peter Richardson, victualler, from Sun Fire Office records held at the London Metropolitan Archives. It closed in 2006 and remained empty until it became a coffee shop in 2011. The ‘Green Man’ became a popular name for English pubs in the 17th-century (when the Distiller’s Company Green Man & Still heraldic arms were still in common use), although most inn signs tended to feature the familiar foliated face of church architecture; while the ‘green men’ or rhizotomoi, of Elizabethan times, probably merged into the cunning-folk tradition and faded into oblivion.
 
Gone were the days when a tavern sign pointed to the existence on the premises of a still where cordials were distilled from green herbs. In this case, the house was not kept by a tavern-keeper, but by a herbalist. The premises may, however, have belonged to an innkeeper or a ‘green man’ who lived further afield on the same estate. In Shakespeare’s time there was a London street, named Bucklersbury (near today’s Mansion House), so noted for the number of apothecaries who sold Simples and sweet-smelling herbs that in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Sir John Falstaff describes the dandified fops of his day as ‘Lisping hawthorn buds that smell like Bucklersbury in simple time.’
 
The cunning folk provided a combination of written charms, magic rituals, prayers and herbal preparations, because one of the most ancient of magical sciences is ‘magical perfumery’. It has long been recognized that certain scents produce certain responses in our physical, mental, and emotional bodies. Both men and women of old perfumed their bodies and kept unguents in alabaster flasks and caskets so that the perfume seeped through the alabaster. The bottle was called a flacon – a small, often decorative container with an opening seal or stopper, designed especially to hold valuable liquids which may deteriorate upon contact with the air.
 
A modern-day rhizotomai – or root magician, John Canard, in his Defences Against the Witches’ Craft, describes himself as fitting into the role of the cunning man – and, of course, cunning men were often employed to fight against the malefic attentions of witches. He lists a whole range of plants said to protect from negative magic that can be home-grown for protection and several of the classic anti-witch herbs are mentioned in the old rhyme – but not for their perfume:
 
Trefoil, vervain, John’s wort, dill,
That hindereth witches of their will.
 
·         Trefoil has a sweet, vanilla scent and although it is a pretty yellow flower, its old country meaning is one of revenge or a warning. It was worn as a protection against evil and witchcraft.
 
·         Vervain was one of the three most sacred herbs of the Druids (the other two are meadowsweet and watermint) and used to ward off evil. It has very little smell and a bitter taste. It has been used as a powerful protective plant from malefic magic, hence the name of Devil’s Bane.
 
·         St John’s wort oil has an herbaceous, sweet, floral aroma although the leaves give off a ‘foxy’ odour. Used as a powerful herb against malefic magic.
 
·         The distinct smell of Dill influences the conscious mind and will clear the head after smelling it for a few seconds. It was believed to be a very powerful anti-witch herb
 
This is where we have to try to define what brings back the past for us as individuals. I would have to say that for me, personally, it is the scent of hawthorn on the summer breeze and before the flowers start to fade. This also evokes the late spring-early summer weekends of childhood and camping trips to The Quarries where the landscape was a mass of white flowering trees mingling with the smell of wood-smoke from an open camp fire … Seventy-five years later and these particular scents can cause me to take a gigantic leap back in time in an act of involuntary memory.
 
For dwellers in green places, every season has its own perfume: Spring has the sappy smell of working bulbs, piercing sword leaves, and swelling buds. Smell a daffodil and you know the entire fragrance of spring. During high summer the golden liquid of a thousand scent bottles changes unnoticed into a pot-pourri of fallen petals. The smell of autumn, perhaps the most nostalgic of all scents, of rotting leaves, wood-smoke and mushrooms, hangs motionless between the trees until one day we realize that it has gone, who knows where – and the chill of splintered mirrors in frozen ditches gives out the faintest perfume of the year. [Green Magic]
 
Translate these scents of the seasons into colours, and we have for spring the pale green of new leaves. Summer’s scent is a deep rose-pink; autumn is an orange-red, fading to brown and then to grey, as the season dies. Winter’s cold faint perfume is a silvered ice-blue in the witch’s world where we often ‘see’ intangible things in terms of colour.
 
The Scent of a Witch by Melusine Draco is published by ignotus press uk : ISBN: 9781803022338 : Paperback : Pages  104 : Price £6.85 : Published  28 October 2021 : Order direct from https://www.feedaread.com/books/Scent-of-a-Witch.aspx
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NEW RELEASE

9/29/2021

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Quartz: Breath of the Dragon
There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewellery and hard-stone carvings, while in the metaphysical world quartz crystals are the supreme gift of Mother Earth. Even the smallest piece is imbued with powerful properties that enable the bearer to cross the boundaries between the worlds; while archaeologists are finding more and more evidence that quartz played an important part in the ritual and burial customs of our Megalithic and Paleolithic ancestors
 
It is the quartz element of granite that reconnects us with the spirit within the landscape. As an accomplished occultist and having a doctorate in Geology, one of the Coven’s founders, Mériém Clay-Egerton, was fascinated by the fact that for millennia, humanity and quartz had interacted with each other. She wrote that our ancestors having recognised the qualities of quartz was evident from the studies of its usage, not region by region, but over the entire area of the British Isles and other parts of the world: “Everywhere one looks there are clear distinct traces. To people who know its potential, it was clearly no accidental employment of any material to hand. It was sought out for use. Why?”
 
Quartz is the most common constituent of rock, she went on to explain, a basic silicate dioxide having three molecules arranged in either a right or left-handed spiral form, which has the power
of polarising light in more than one direction: “When light enters a crystal it splits into two beams, due to the differing speeds of the light’s velocity being refracted back from the different vibration of the crystal’s lattices, and their own individual refracting indices. In certain circumstances, the crystals can act as ‘windows’ to ultra-violet and infra-red wavelengths. In
addition to these scientific points, we may also hear quartz crystals hum or ‘sing’. We can also see quartz crystals displaying piezoelectric effects.”
 
These are scientific terms for what our ancestors knew: “Burial chambers with quartz kerb-stones were commonplace, as were the pits used for inhumations, which were sprinkled with quartz chippings, both whole and broken. There is a school of thought that these were used to either keep the individuals concerned safely at rest, or to permit the living to contact spirit
entities when they were in a correctly attuned state.”
 
On a metaphysical level, Mériém wrote: “Standing stones (some of which are made of quartz - others may contain a high percentage of it), are accepted by psychics [and magical practitioners] as being able to act as conductors of ‘earth-force’, such as that encountered at nodal points for energy lines. If they are acting like natural ‘acupuncture needles’, then it is not surprising that they should be as pure a substance as possible and with natural powers of their own. Many circles in the south-west of England appear to have been originally constructed with a central point; other phases being tacked on afterwards. A quartz stone, or stones with high quartz content, will often appear in such a prominent position, having superseded the original wooden post.”  A new study reveals how Stonehenge has stood the test of time so successfully: The quartz crystals that make up the sarsens form an interlocking structure that makes the boulders nearly indestructible.
 
And much closer to home: “Nowadays, we protect our water with chemicals to make it fit for us to drink, but in ancient times folk made offerings to the guardians of holy wells. Some were simple things, others were valuable objects that had been ceremoniously broken; it is strange how often white stones, and quartz in particular, figured highly on the list of offerings. As the wells were quite often used in fertility and healing rites, then I suppose we should naturally expect quartz to be a frequent gift. Today, crystal healing is still practised; and quartz plain or coloured, is one of the principal stones used – yet another relic of our past.”
 
In truth, as Dr Clay-Egerton asserted some forty years ago, the use of quartz in prehistoric stone-working traditions was a worldwide phenomenon.  For archaeologists, however, quartz analysis presented significant challenges with the result that it was often misidentified, or ignored, or only cursorily analysed.  Indeed, well into the 20th-century, quartz artefacts were routinely discarded during excavations.  Nevertheless, quartz was an integral part of traditional British Old Craft teaching all those years ago and, despite the contemporary pagan penchant for crystals, for us nothing was allowed to displace quartz from being the most valuable stone for witchcraft.
 
On a final note: quartz is solid silica and if it did not crystallize when it solidified it is known as flint, and everyone knows that two flints struck together will produce a spark. What is not generally known is that all quartz pebbles will do the same and often produce bigger and better sparks. Clear quartz, or rock crystal, will produce an orange spark if two pieces are
struck together in a darkened room, accompanied by the smell of burning … and this can be viewed as magical fire from the very Earth itself.  Despite all the gems of the world, for the magical practitioner, natural quartz should remain the most precious gift of all.
 
As a result of this current resurgence of academic interest, there is a certain pride and satisfaction in knowing that the ‘old-fashioned’ teachings of traditional British Old Craft are now being validated by contemporary scientists and archaeologists, who are beginning to understand that the ancients’ obsession with quartz crystals was more than just a passing fancy.  It was Aleister Crowley who maintained that magic was an amalgam of art and science and those Old Crafters of my generation were fortunate indeed, that our founder was a doctor of geology, with more than a passing interest in archaeology, anthropology and ‘earth mysteries’.  This meant that we also had a thorough grounding in these subjects and were encouraged to investigate further for information and knowledge … a practice that is maintained within the Coven to the present day.
 
‘Thanks, Mériém …’
 
Quartz: Breath of the Dragon is the sixth in the ignotus press Arcanum series. ISBN: 9781803021829 : Type Paperback : Pages: 104 : Published: 17 September 2021: Price
£6.85 : Order direct from https://www.feedaread.com/books/Quartz-Breath-of-the-Dragon-9781803021829.aspx
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Treasure House of Images

9/11/2021

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The concept of magic is communicated by a whole host of signs and imagery – where nothing is as it seems. The magical world is concealed behind a veil of analogy and allegory; similes and metaphor; sigils and symbols; praxis and motif; illusion and allusion; myth and legend – all of which is a complicated shorthand for the techniques of magic and its practices. Because no matter what rosy-tinted view we have of our Craft ancestors, they were not the composers and compilers of the infamous grimoires and magical texts that have come down to us as such.
 
They ‘knew’ things, of course, but few of them would have known how to record this knowledge for posterity and Craft remained an oral tradition for hundreds – if not thousands - of years. If we turn to Jung, however, we find that the history of symbolism shows everything can assume some symbolic significance, providing we understand the context in which it is presented.
 
‘Man, with his symbols - making for propensity, unconsciously transforms objects or forms into symbols (thereby endowing them with a great psychological importance) and expresses them in both his religion and his visual art. The intertwined history of religion and art, reaching back to prehistoric times, is the record that our ancestors have left of the symbols that were meaningful to them.’ [Symbolism in the Visual Arts]
 
There are four recurring motifs that illustrate the presence and nature of symbolism in the craft of the witch – these are the symbols of the stone, the animal, the circle/spiral and the cross. Each of these has had an enduring psychological significance from the earliest expressions of human consciousness to the most sophisticated forms of 20th-century art, wrote Swiss psychoanalyst Aniela Jaffé. And yet, if we do not hold the key to unlocking this means of communication, then the way will remain closed …
 
We know from our forays into ancient history that uneven stones – like the black meteoric stones known as baitulia – were early objects of cult worship in ancient Greece and were recorded from the earliest times. Some of those archaic Greek writers recall these stones were invested with divine and animated by it. Once anointed they even worked miracles on behalf of their supplicants and had a highly symbolic meaning for various ancient and primitive societies. In fact, their use may be regarded as a primaeval representation of sculpture – ‘a first attempt to invest the stone with more expressive power than chance and nature could give it’, according to Professor David Freedberg in his remarkably enlightening writing on the subject: The Power of Images.
 
Many people cannot refrain from picking up stones of a slightly unusual colour or shape and keeping them, without knowing why they do this. It is as if the stones hold a living mystery that fascinates us. Men have collected stones since the beginning of time and have apparently assumed that certain ones were the containers of the life force with all its mystery. In many prehistoric stone-sanctuaries, the ‘deity’ is represented not by a single stone but by a great many unhewn stones, arranged in distinct patterns. The geometrical stone alignments at Carnac in Brittany, the stone circles at Stonehenge and the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney are famous examples. Arrangements of rough natural stones also play a significant part in the highly sophisticated rock gardens of Zen Buddhism: although apparently haphazard, the stones in the Ryoanji temple in Japan are arranged to express a most refined spirituality. Or the stone labyrinths of Scandinavia.
 
‘Very early in history, men began trying to express what they felt to be the soul or spirit of a rock by working it into a recognisable form. In many cases, the form was a more or less approximation to the human figure – the ancient menhirs with their crude outlines of faces, or the hermae that developed out of boundary stones in ancient Greece, or the many of the stone idols with human features. The animation of the stone must be explained as the projection of a more or less distinct content of the unconscious into the stone.’ [Man and His Symbols]
 
David Freeberg reminds us that when the Greek traveller, Pausanius visited the well-known site of Pharai in Achaia, where about thirty square stones were worshipped as gods, he reflected that ‘in more ancient times, unworked stones were worshipped by all the Greeks, instead of images of the Gods’. It was Pausanius who provided us with the fullest range of references to these unworked stones (or argoi lithoi as they were called), and the baitulia, those meteoric stones, which fell from heaven – both of them classes of objects unformed by human hand and yet given divine status.
 
In Europe ‘holy’ stones wrapped in bark and hidden in caves have been found in many places; as a focus of divine power, they were probably kept there by people of the Stone Age. At the present time, some Australian aborigines believe that their dead ancestors continue to exist in stones as virtuous and divine powers, and that if they rub these stones, the power increases (like charging them with electricity) for the benefit of both the living and the dead. Even those of us in modern society still have the urge to possess certain stones. We bring them home and place them around the house or garden as symbols of people or happy times, and imbue them with a sense of person or place. Jung says that this animation of the stone can be explained as the projection of a more or less distinct content of the unconscious into the stone.
 
 
Animal images go back to the Ice Age and were discovered on the walls of caves in France and Spain at the end of the 19th-century, but it was not until early in the 20th-century that archaeologists began to realise their extreme importance and to inquire into their meaning. Even today, a strange magic seems to haunt the caves that contain these rock paintings and according to art historian Herbert Kühn, inhabitants of the areas in Africa, Spain, France and Scandinavia where such paintings are found, could not be induced to go near the caves. A kind of religious awe, or perhaps a fear of spirits hovering among the rocks, held them back. Which goes to prove that the caves with the animal paintings have always instinctively felt like what they originally were – religious places. The numen of the place have outlived the centuries and kept the profane away.
 
These pictures suggest a hunting magic like that still practiced by hunting tribes in Africa. A form of sympathetic magic, which is based on the ‘reality’ of a double represented in the picture. The underlying psychological fact is a strong identification between a living being and its image, which is considered to be the being’s soul. Some of the most interesting figures in the caves are those of semi-humans in animal disguise. In the Trois Freres caves in France, a man wrapped in an animal hide is playing a primitive flute. In the same cave is a dancing human with antlers, a horse’s head and bear’s paws and dominating a grouping of several hundred animals that Jung has described as a ‘bush soul’ (or second soul) that is incarnate in a wild animal or tree, with which an individual has some kind of psychic identity.
 
In the course of time, these disguises were superseded in many places by animal and/or demon masks and played an important part in the folk arts – such as the magnificently expressive masks of the ancient Japanese Noh drama which is still performed in modern Japan. The symbolic function of the mask is the same as that of the original animal disguise, according to Aniela Jaffé in Symbols in the Visual Arts, and that the animal motif is usually symbolic of man’s primitive and instinctual nature. A large number of myths are concerned with a primal animal, which must be sacrificed in the cause of fertility or even creation. One example of this is the sacrifice of a bull by the Persian sun-god Mithras, from which sprang the earth with all its wealth and fruitfulness.
 
‘The boundless profusion of animal symbolism in the religion and art of all times does not merely emphasise the importance of the symbol; it shows how vital it is for men to integrate into their lives the symbol’s psychic content – instinct.’ [Man and His Symbols]
 
The magical symbol of the animal is that which represents its most laudable characteristics and elevates it above all others – like the four beasts of venery: the hart, hare, boar and wolf – which distinguishes them from the ‘five beasts of the chase’ – the buck, does, fox, martin and roe. These images were allegorically used in artworks from the Middle Ages onwards in much the same way as the cave-art in prehistoric times.
 
 
Circles and spirals are some of the oldest images to be found in prehistoric rock art in the British Isles. A circle represents evolution as a process of transformation from death to birth, ending and beginning; a circle represents eternity and in many customs and spiritual beliefs represents the Divine life-force. The meaning of shapes and symbols meets us when and where we are ready to listen and learn. However, understanding the foundations of what a circle represents may invite investigation to explore the deeper meaning symbolism of the circle in our own life.
 
Circles, unlike every other shape in our reality, are not linear. There is no corner, edge, or ending to mark where one line ends and another one begins. This is important when looking at the broader symbolic meaning because this holds a lot of interpretations regarding the role that a circle plays in shaping our world. Circles hold and contain energy so that cycles of growth can exist within them. Just like a clock moving through time in a circular motion, we feel a sense that there is a beginning and end to the day; yet, time never begins or ends, it just keeps moving in a circle. Looking at the cosmos, we can see that everything moves in circles, and is shaped in spheres without beginning or end. No naturally occurring straight lines exist in space. Our entire Universe shifts and forms in the shape of a circle. 
 
Spiritually, the circle represents a supernatural motion that keeps things moving continuously. A circle represents the Divine that keeps everything moving through spiritual law and order; on a smaller scale, a circle represents our own individual spiritual force that keeps us evolving. Symbolically, a circle represents the completion of cycles, transition, potential, and a movement that never ends towards self-realization. A circle protects against chaos and unpredictability, and invites an element of ‘trusting the Universe’. It symbolizes the natural order and progression that inspires us to keep going. 
 
The spiral and triple spiral motif is a Neolithic symbol in Europe and the so-called Celtic triple spiral is in fact a pre-Celtic symbol. It is etched into the rock of a stone lozenge near the main entrance of the prehistoric Newgrange monument and carved at least 2,500 years before the Celts reached Ireland but has long since been incorporated into Celtic culture. This triskelion symbol, consisting of three interlocked spirals or three bent human legs, appears in many early cultures, including Mycenaean vessels; on coinage in Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia; as well as on the heraldic emblem on warriors’ shields depicted on Greek pottery.
 
Spirals can be found throughout pre-Columbian art in Latin and Central America. The more than 1,400 petroglyphs (rock engravings) in Las Plazuelas, Guanajuato Mexico, predominantly depict spirals, dot figures and scale models. In Colombia, monkey, frog and lizard-like figures depicted in petroglyphs or as gold offering frequently includes spirals, for example on the palms of hands. In Lower Central America spirals along with circles, wavy lines, crosses and points are universal petroglyphs characters. Spirals can also be found among the Nazca Lines in the coastal desert of Peru, dating from 200 BC to 500 AD; the geoglyphs number in the thousands and depict animals, plants and geometric motifs, including spirals.
 
We see that when one end of the spiral is reached, it is found to be the beginning of another. Try to follow the thread with the tip of a pencil and you will find that it is almost impossible to keep to an unbroken line. Within Qabalistic teaching, the spiral is the metaphor for magical knowledge because as soon as we think we’ve mastered the subject, we discovered another thread that pulls us deeper into another labyrinth – and out the other side onto another path. Each level of consciousness, each sephirah has its own spiral and the ‘wisdom’ comes when we understand that we could spend an entire lifetime investigating the different levels of Malkuth, for example, and still not come to the end of our studies.
 
The triskele gained popularity in its use within the Celtic culture from 500BC onwards. This archaic symbol is one of the most convoluted to decipher as symbolists believe it is reflective of many areas of culture from the time. Firstly, the triskele can be thought to represent motion as all three arms are positioned to make it appear as though it was moving outwards from its centre. Movement, or motion, is believed to signify energies, in particular within this symbol the motion of action, cycles, progress, revolution and competition. Secondly, and the more challenging area for symbolists, is the precise significance of the three arms of the triskele. These differences can be dependent on the era, culture, mythology and history, which is why there are so many variations of opinion as to what these three extensions in the triple spiral symbol mean.
 
Some of these connotations include the obvious: life-death-rebirth, spirit-mind-body, mother-father-child, past-present-future, power-intellect-love and creation-preservation-destruction to name but a few. It’s also been proposed that through the combination of these two areas we gain one meaning of the Celtic triskele. It is also believed to represent the idea of forward motion to reach understanding and to represent the three Celtic worlds; the spiritual, the present and the celestial. Like the ancient Trinity-knot, the number three holds a special symbolism within the triskele.
 
The ‘cross’ is possibly the most confusing of all Craft symbols, simply because it has become inextricably entwined with our persecutors! Nevertheless, the cross used within esoteric practice is much older, being the four-armed, heraldic, Greek or Minoan cross found in many ancient cultures predating Christianity. It is often interpreted as representing either the four seasons, four winds, four elements, or some other equal aspect of physical nature. Or, quaternity – an image with a four-fold structure, usually square or circular and symmetrical – psychologically it points to the idea of wholeness.
 
Archaeologist, Arthur Evans refers to the images of the Minoan cross being used in many cultures as the most simple representation of a star and concluded that the ‘geared object’ featured on excavated plaques is a combination of a morning star within the disc of the sun. He also claimed that the smaller object is a symbol for the goddess as the queen of the under-world and as the stars of the night; in combination with the crescent, the cross is then an evening star. 
 
A solar cross, consisting of an equilateral cross inside a circle is frequently found in the symbolism of many prehistoric cultures, particularly during the Neolithic to Bronze Age periods of European prehistory. The famous cross pattée is a type of equal-armed heraldic cross with arms that are narrow at the centre and often flared in a curve or straight-line shape, to be broader at the perimeter. The form appears very early in medieval art; as the red cross the Templars wore on their robes as a symbol of martyrdom, since to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven.
 
The cross-in-a-circle was interpreted as a solar symbol derived from the interpretation of the disc of the Sun as the wheel of the chariot of the Sun god. Karl Wieseler postulated a Gothic rune hvel represented the solar deity by the ‘wheel’ symbol of a cross-in-a-circle, reflected by the Gothic letter hwair. A wealth of symbolism in one, small shape …
 
 
When we begin to explore this impenetrable veil of symbolism we discover that very little in the natural, physical or metaphysical world is not matched with its own form of esoteric shorthand. Because of the complexity of magical jargon, a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship will be used instead of its ‘true’ meaning. Symbols allow witches to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences
 
It is an esoteric concept rather than an actual object and, like all esoteric symbols it represents knowledge, and the more knowledge we have the more of the symbol’s secrets we unlock. The amount of knowledge needed to understand esoteric symbolism, however, can border on staggering for the uninitiated, since the knowledge and science they represent is not taught outside of esoteric circles for a valid reason: because in almost every instance what people have been taught can be the exact opposite of the truth. And symbols and sigils, allegories and metaphors, are used as esoteric concepts because of the amount of encapsulated knowledge they represent which is not easily explainable to the layman.

Published by ignotus press uk : ISBN: 9781803021485Type: Paperback : Pages: 110 : Published: 10 September 2021 : Price £6.85 : Order direct from https://www.feedaread.com/books/Treasure-House-of-Images.aspx


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