V.V.F.

To The Conscientious Witch.

2011-12-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

The Ship of Fools

When you started out in your new religion, you were an idiot.

I know. We all were.

You might still be an idiot. Or maybe you just feel like one sometimes. You sure feel embarrassed about some of the stuff you used to think, anyways. You don't want to go back to that; you got carried away and made a fool of yourself in front of the people around you, and didn't know how ignorant you were. You breathe a sigh a relief now, because you have all the resources and tools you need to do it right. And you've developed a capacity for critical thinking, thank goodness.

Maybe you had a helping hand from a more experienced person. Goddess knows what you would have done without her. Just think of all the beginners out there who never had that - they're blundering around without a clue! You sure are lucky. You're privy to things you might never have learned otherwise. It's a special privilege.

You might not be a Grand High Whileawayan Priestess, but hey, you have experience. You're there when someone has a question. Somebody has to stand watch at the newbie entrance, right? Somebody has to make sure they get pointed in the right direction. Somebody has to make sure they don't embarrass us all! (You know. Like you used to.) That's why you take on a teaching role for people in your path. It's an important job, and you're happy and proud to do it. Out of the goodness of your heart.

Or maybe you're older now. Maybe you had to struggle on your own to get where you are. Maybe you have a fat butt. You have a lot of responsibilities in life outside of your religion, and you don't have time to be mentoring all the empty-headed fools who crowd your inbox. You are not anybody's teacher. Of course, you're perfectly content to grumble in confidence to your peers about those empty-headed fools. All the same, you snap to attention when someone pipes up with a foolish question. You crack your walking stick against the ground, not afraid to tell someone when they haven't got a clue. And when a sad fool tremulously asks what he should do, you say, "Begone, fool! I am not anyone's teacher!" You are really very insistent about that.

Either way, you spend a lot of time conversing with other pagans, online and off. Whether you're the fuzzy type or the prickly type, you know that another batch of idiots is coming in on the next tide. Some will learn. Some will not.

You'll make sure of that.

They don't know what they're doing, after all. It's up to you to show them how things are done. Not that there's an established way of doing things really, but...there's definitely a wrong way to do things! And you can't let them do that. You have to warn them. You have to tell them when they're doing something you feel is wrong. Before somebody else gets to them first. It can be so hard for people to unlearn bad information. That's why you surround yourself with friends, to help. You certainly can't get to them all by yourself!

You don't want to be mean about it, though. Sometimes you offer criticism. Sometimes you offer an alternative. Sometimes you just laugh in their face. Anything to keep from answering the question that was asked. That's never wise.

But sometimes, you really aren't sure of what to say to someone. Maybe he's asked about something you haven't studied personally. Maybe he's asked about something you really don't like. Maybe he's asked about something dangerous that you've never tried. But deep down, you think you have a pretty good idea of what to say to a newbie. You simply know better. They have no idea of what can happen. You've heard the stories. Thankfully, you've managed to successfully avoid all those pitfalls. You've avoided all the risks.

And if there's one thing a newbie should avoid at all costs, it's risk. Since you're an expert in that arena, you're the perfect person to teach him how. "You clearly aren't ready for this," you tell him, time and again. And if you're lucky, he never will be.

Honestly, it doesn't matter to you what he does after he's taken the time to educate himself. But he won't feel the need to do those foolish things by then. He'll have seen the light.

It's your moral responsibility to make sure nobody hurts themselves, or other people. That's what anyone in your position would do. It can be a Herculean task; this place is like a bloody madhouse sometimes. You fear the day when the lunatics take over the asylum. Some days, it seems like you can hardly tell the idiots from the sages anymore. People surprise you all the time. That's why you should always act on the assumption that you're talking to an idiot. Because if you treat everyone around you that way, no one can ever accuse you of being one. Never again, that is.

You can't stress it enough: people have no idea what they're getting into with this life. Who in their right mind would choose it? Who would ask for all this darkness and grief? Who would let their soul be burdened like this? They can't imagine the weight. Anyone who asks for this in earnest deserves what they get. All the loneliness, all the helplessness, all the despair. All this questioning and dust. You certainly didn't ask for it. You didn't ask anyone to make you this way. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

That's right. You didn't choose this. Maybe...maybe you should just get out. You're in your right mind, after all.

...Aren't you?

Good night, and Merry Misrule.

Notes On Past Posts [Huldufolk Redux]

2011-12-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

Y'know, I think I'll take back what I said about the guy from the last illustration featured in my "Horned God Nudism" post. Despite looking like a Hell's Angel, he's probably not such a bad guy. I'd share a horn of mead with 'im. I mean why not?

Similarly, I may have been a bit harsh in my analysis of Hallgerdur, the elf sex lady. (If you find parts of this post indecipherable, don't worry. So do I.) Here, once again, is the interview she did a few years ago for Vice, regarding her metaphysical trysts in the Icelandic countryside:

I was well aware of the fact that sincere and literal belief in elves (or huldufólk) is entirely commonplace in modern Iceland. Even so, in my first post about her, I couldn't quite decide how to react to the idea of someone publishing a handbook about out-of-this-world (har har) sexual liasons. Subsequent perusals of her now-inactive blog on the subject did not necessarily instill confidence in her testimonies or in her various informants. Everything about it made me uncomfortable - and, admittedly, hit close to home - and I wanted to judge her terribly for it.

Then I saw her art.

I decided on a whim to search the Net for any new word on Hallgerdur's exploits. Unexpectedly, I stumbled onto her portfolio and related blog. It turns out that she's a photographer. And like any good Icelander, her country's geography is a major subject in her work. While I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, I can easily see, through her eyes, the kind of fascination with one's surroundings that might lead to all kinds of unexpected encounters. Any artist can tell you that when one builds a picture frame, or looks through a lens, things become manifest that were not apparent before. (I suspect that this is what actually lies behind the hagstone's magic.) But this woman may not have needed such tools to see the hidden inhabitants of her settings. Many of her landscapes are more like portraits - she is not interested so much in composing images as she is in documenting her chance meetings with forms. Hello, steamy yawning crevass. Hello, hill of ice. Hello, blazing safety flare mysteriously appearing in the middle of an empty parking garage. I recognize it because it's a problem that I used to have: treating places and objects like people. My professors tended to scold me for it, because it often leads to bad composition. But I think that's the place where every good landscape artist starts. Even in photos of her travels to foreign cities, she's clearly in love with environments. It produces an emotion that is very familiar to me, but impossible to name. And I know what it leads to.

It leads to elf sex.

She loves the land, and the land loves her back. I simply refused to recognize that before...because of cultural divides and modern editing technology, and because I'm an insecure asshole. Official report. So Hallgerdur, if you're reading this - where can I buy your book?

I'm still brushing up on my numerous learnings for future Lore posts, so in the meantime, please enjoy this breathtaking trailer for Huldufólk 102, a 2006 documentary on the (ancient and modern) beliefs surrounding the "hidden people" of Iceland. Seems like the perfect winter viewing to me.

Remedial Lore: Phantom Frenzy.

2011-11-29T02:52:00.000-08:00

I meant to write this at the start of November. Really I did. But the subject still makes a nice segue, so I might as well go ahead with my itinerary.

The Mound of the Hostages

In September, I started to see this article from 2002 making the rounds on the blogs, entitled "Halloween History." Among the author's main points are that many of our modern Halloween customs only go back so far, that "Samhain" is a specifically Irish word for a specifically Irish festival from pre-Christian times[1], and that we don't really know how the holiday was celebrated back then. I might be more or less in agreement with all this if not for the implication that this means we have no evidence that Samhain had anything to do with spirits. The author cites a couple of paragraphs describing a Samhain gathering that takes place in "The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn," and makes this conclusion based on it: "... for those who see the modern holiday as a time when the veil between the living and the dead grows thin and ghosts wander the earth, there is nothing in accounts of Samhain feasts to indicate a link with ceremonies for the dead."

Obviously this person did not read the rest of the story. Or ANY of the stories. Granted, when it comes to rites and customs, yes, we don't really know what may have been practiced. But anyone who begins to study the Irish sagas will find, almost immediately, that something supernatural and fucked up is always happening on Samhain. It would be an understatement to say that this festival proves prominent in Irish lore, and it's consistently shown to be a period fraught with danger, strange apparitions, and otherworldly threats.[2]

For instance, in the tale above, the hero Cú Chulainn (think of him as a young Hercules, or some kind of Teen Hulk) leaves the royal feast to go and hunt some birds for his wife (the only woman he doesn't despise on principle.) He wanders out into a watery place and spies a pair of birds flying together, bound by a chain of red gold. Thinking that he's found the perfect gift, he makes a cast at them with his sling. Cú Chulainn is the perfect warrior, even better than perfect; ever since he first took up arms, he has never missed his mark. But he can't hit these birds, and it sends a chill through him. But Cú Chulainn is not a coward, and he makes another attempt, hitting one of their wings with his javelin. They don't go down, however, and continue to fly. He chases after them until he can't chase after them any more, and falls asleep against a tree.

He is awakened by the approach of two women, in green and crimson cloaks, carrying horsewhips in their hands. They smile warmly, and proceed to beat him - a hero with the strength of Superman - within an inch of his life. He spends the following year in a state of bewitchment, his strength and will all but drained. The rest of the tale centers around the struggle to restore him, and to overcome his obsession with the otherworldly sorceress who so violently fascinated him.

Another terrifying spiritual encounter is found in the tale of the burning of Tara hill by the Red Whistler, in which the hero Fionn MacCumhail (think of him as an Irish King Arthur, if King Arthur was some kind of bloodthirsty Oliver Twist) sets his strength against the annual terror that came from a certain burial mound near the palace of the High Kings. Every year, for 23 years, on Samhain night, a sídhe bard would emerge from the mound to sing all of the mortal inhabitants of Tara to sleep. Then, when his song was finished, an inferno would burst forth from his jaws to cover the fortress in flames. It's only with the help of a poison spearhead pressed against his brow that Fionn is able to withstand the fairy's music and slay him.

If these don't sound enough like ghost stories to you, then hear the tale of Nera, whose adventure begins with nothing less than a Halloween dare from his king. The monarch announces that he will give a prize to anyone who is brave enough to go out that night and tie a wicker band around the ankle of one of the criminals hanging on the gallows out back. The sense of peril is not at all unspoken in this story. "Great was the darkness of that night and its horror, and demons would appear on that night always," the text says. And when Nera goes out to tie the withe, the corpse is reanimated and begins to speak, complaining of thirst.

Gallant that he is, Nera obliges to take the corpse over his shoulder and go in search of water. Here, we really start to break with reality; they pass a house surrounded by a ring of fire, and a house surrounded by a lake, and at last they come to a presumably normal-looking home. They enter and ask for water, and once the corpse has had his drink, he spits the last of it at their hosts, burning their faces off and killing them instantly. When Nera returns to the royal palace, he finds that everything has been razed to the ground, the headless bodies of warriors strewn everywhere. He has no choice but to follow after their murderers - the sídhe hosts that dwell in the cave of Cruachan, the entrance to Hell.

That's a real place, by the way.

The most fundamental observation one can make about Celtic - or at least, Irish - mythology is the lack of clear division between ghosts [scál], gods [dé] and fairies [sí]. Any of these beings might be found beneath the hills, alone or together - or you might find a fairy who was once a mortal, or a god who is a living ghost. Many people like to categorize the People of the Mounds ("fairies") and the People of the Goddess ("deities") distinctly. But when the gods are dwelling in the same tombs and acting by the same laws, how does one distinguish them except by their might?

* * *
Backstory

Modern readers sometimes find themselves puzzled by the malevolence displayed by our "Good Neighbors" in these stories. Why does the fairy musician set fire to Tara? In the Colloquy of the Ancients, the bard is named as Aillen Mac Midhna, "of the Tuatha Dé Danann." So he isn't simply a sprite, but one of the Gods. The 1904 retelling of the tale linked earlier provides some important background information on the Tuatha Dé when it states, "...the Tuatha De Danaan[sic], who had been vanquished and driven from the land over which they once ruled into rath and hollow hillside, where they had become expert in enchantment and subtle magic arts, came forth into the world again with power over their conquerors."

Those "conquerors" would be the human race, essentially. A unique feature of the cosmology in Irish legend is the explicit notion that the country has been inhabited by subsequent waves of settlers. The stories of these various tribes is covered in the Book of Invasions. Before "the seed of Adam" settled in Ireland for good, the Tuatha Dé Danann came to Ireland from four mythical cities, where they learned their "druidism and deviltry." Cessair and Partholon (refugees from the Flood) and Nemed (a Scythian warrior) each attempted to settle the land before them, but their expeditions did not end well. All of these groups would experience conflict with the area's native inhabitants, the Fomorians.

The Fomors, or the Powers of Evil Abroad in the World.

The Fomorians were not generally very nice to outsiders. They were basically a tribe of pirate monsters who raided the settlers by sea, demanding tribute and killing the shit out of everyone. Only the strength and wizardry of the Tuatha Dé Danann was enough to beat them back into the ocean. The Tuatha De enjoyed 150 years of rule, until mortal men arrived from Spain to stake their own claim on the land. (Yes, Spain.)

A warrior named Ith was hanging out on the Iberian Peninsula one day and saw Ireland being all verdant and numinous across the sea. He turned to his nephew, Míl, and told him that he was going to check the place out, because it looked so awesome.

When Ith arrived there, he was welcomed by the Tuatha Dé Danann. But after a time, they began to grow suspicious of his intentions - especially when he tried to advise them in their political affairs. So they straight up killed Ith in front of his friends and told them to GTFO, and Ith's party carried his body back to Spain.

When Míl saw that his uncle was slain, he worked up a powerful anger and rounded up all his sons, ordering them to go and avenge Ith's murder. So they got in their boats and set sail. The Tuatha Dé Danann responded by making enchantments on the winds and on the ports to fend off their ships. But one of Míl's sons was a pretty good wizard himself, and he sang a magical song that allowed them to overcome these defensive spells. You may have seen these verses copy-and-pasted in some of the Wiccan rituals you've been forced to endure: it's called the Song of Amergin. The main section is popular for its mysterious pronouncements about animals and the "ages of the moon," but there is also a lesser-known addendum praising the natural bounty of Ireland:

A fishful sea! / A fruitful land! / An outburst of fish / Fish under wave, / In streams (as) of / A rough sea! / birds, / A white hail / With hundreds of salmon, / Of broad whales! / A harbour-song— / An outburst of fish, /
A fishful sea!

Meanwhile, one of Amergin's brothers, Eber Donn, started shouting about how much he wanted to fuck up Ireland and everyone in it. His boat immediately sank.

To conclude this extremely simplified retelling, Amergin and two of his brothers - Eremon and Eber Finn - defeated each of the three kings of the Tuatha Dé Danann in single combat. They accomplished this by receiving the blessing of the kings' wives, Ériu, Banba, and Fódla. Amergin earned their blessings by promising to grant them each their wish; each goddess asked that he call the country by her name. (Ireland is still called Éire today, while Banba and Fódla are poetic names for the land.) Of course, these beautiful queens initially spent their time pronouncing curses against their invaders first. But it was in the spirit of truce that Eriu appeared to them in her most disturbing aspect:

Now the warriors were not long on the march when they saw a solitary ruddy tall black-browed crafty-eyed miserable lawless woman approaching them. The hosts marvelled at seeing her bearing and manner. One time she was a broad—faced beautiful queen and another time a horrible fierce-faced sorceress, a sharp—nosed whitey-grey bloated thicklipped pale-eyed battle—fiend.

Amergin asks her what she desires, and grants it. Later in the day, his brother Eremon insults her and her land, and in response, the queen pronounces that every lord who survives the coming battle will commit "treachery and fratricide" in his lifetime. Amergin attempts to ward off this curse, but in vain. After the victory of the Sons of Míl, Eremon murdered Eber Finn for his half of the kingdom, and then slew Amergin just to be on the safe side.

After their defeat, the Tuatha Dé retreated into the underworld, casting a spell of invisibility over themselves to hide from mankind.

* * *
Fast Forward

So here we have an unusual mythology in which a tribe of powerful wizard beings have been overthrown by mere mortals. Despite the fact that the divinities peacefully conceded defeat, the potential for lingering animosity is never forgotten. King Conn of the Hundred Battles, reigning in the time of Finn, certainly seems to have had a wary attitude towards the denizens of the Otherworld. There is a story of a supernatural encounter of his - called The Phantom Trance, or The Phantom Frenzy - which starts like this:

One day Conn was in Tara, after overthrowing the kings. Early in the morning he went up onto the royal rampart of Tara, before sunrise, together with his three druids, Mael and Bloc and Bluicne, and his three filid [poets], Ethain and Corb and Cesarn. For that company used to arise every day to keep watch, lest the men of the sídhe capture Ireland without his noticing.

Here we have a fairly explicit expression of the fear of insurrection by the subterranean races. And the guy is a pagan, too. Maybe those Victorians weren't being so paranoid after all?

The story continues as Conn walks along and happens to tread on a stone. To his surprise, the stone cries out, and the sound echoes around him for miles. He turns to ask one of his druids what the hell that was all about, and the druid enigmatically responds that he cannot explain until 53 days have passed.

Once that period was over, the druid explained to the king that he had stepped onto the Stone of Destiny (also a real thing), which cries out at the touch of the true king, and that the number of cries heard were the number of his descendants who would reign after him. "It is not I who will name them to you," the druid says, and an impenetrable mist suddenly descends around the king and his men. They hear a horseman coming towards them. "Woe is us, if he brings us into an unknown land!" the king says - Conn of the Hundred Battles is suddenly afraid. The horseman hurls three spears at them, each coming on faster than the last. "He is setting out to wound a king," cries the druid, "whoever makes a cast at Conn in Tara!" At which point the horseman peaceably rides up to welcome them, and offers to lead the party to his dwelling.

They arrive at a plain with a golden tree, and a house with a central pillar of white gold, extending thirty feet in the air. Inside they are greeted by a young woman wearing a golden crown, presiding over a silver vat full of red ale. Sitting on the throne, they see the great god Lugh.

They saw the scál [phantom] himself in the house, before them on his throne. There was never in Tara a man of his size or his beauty, on account of the fairness of his form and the wondrousness of his appearance.

He answered them and said, "I am not a phantom nor a specter. I have come on account of my fame among you, since my death. And I am of the race of Adam: my name is Lugh son of Eithliu son of Tigernmas. This is why I have come: to relate to you the length of your reign, and of every reign which there will be in Tara."

That last paragraph makes for a very mysterious passage. Despite claiming that he is not a specter, he openly acknowledges that he is dead. (Remember those three kings that Amergin defeated? They were the ones who killed Lugh in an act of vengeance.) Furthermore, he claims to be "of the race of Adam." Elsewhere in medieval Irish literature, the point is often made that the Tuatha Dé Danann are not descendants of the Biblical Adam, either categorizing them as fallen angels, or simply leaving their origins to the mist. But here, Lugh says differently. And upon closer inspection, his claim is easily corroborated in the Book of Invasions: his people are descendants of Nemed. Or, to quote:

Thereafter, the progeny of Bethach, [son of] Iarbonel the Soothsayer, [son of] Nemed were in the Northern islands of the world, learning druidry and knowledge and prophecy and magic, til they were expert in the arts of pagan cunning. [...] So that they were the Tuatha De Danann who came to Ireland.

Nemed was a descendant of Magog, who was the son of Japheth, son of Noah. And of course, even a casual student of the Bible should be able to tell you that Noah is a descendant of the first man. So, does this mean that the Tuatha Dé Danann might have been - at least initially - human? The more one investigates these genealogies, the clearer it becomes that most of these successive waves of invaders are members of the same family line. Even Míl's predecessors numbered among the Partholonians, who also descended from Magog. Cessair was the daughter of Noah himself. The fact that some of these factions end up fighting their cousins is a bit mysterious, unless one imagines that the actions and outcomes of Amergin and his brothers serve an allegory for how to treat the spirits of the land - and who are those spirits, except the souls of those who went before? I think it's more than possible that this Christian genealogy may be a memory of a type of ancestor worship or hero cultus. Any native Irish citizen may be counted as a descendant of Míl. Thus, all of these gods and heroes may be counted among his ancestors. And when he dies, his soul will be welcomed in the House of Donn - the first of Mil's progeny to be buried in Ireland.[3]

Returning to the story of Conn, Lugh appears to play the role of an Initiator for the king. In fact, the whole episode is reminiscent of the form and structure of an initiation, in addition to a ghostly encounter:

And the girl who sat before them in the house was the Sovereignty of Ireland, and it was she who gave Conn his meal: the rib of an ox and the rib of a boar. The ox rib was twenty-four feet long and eight feet between its arch and the ground. When the girl began to distribute drinks she said, "To whom shall this cup be given?"; and the phantom answered her.

When she had named every ruler until the Day of Judgment, they went into the phantom's shadow, so that they saw neither the enclosure nor the house. The vat and the golden dipper and the cup were left with Conn. And hence are the stories "The Phantom's Dream" and "The Adventure and Journey of Conn".

The god symbolically imparts Conn with the rights of kingship, tells him how awesome his line is going to be, and goes on his merry way. Despite the initial antagonism displayed by his envoy, neither he nor Lugh wishes to do any harm to the rightful king of the land. And what special authority might Lugh have over this kind of function? If I'm not mistaken, in some sources, Ériu, Banba, and Fódla are named as his wives or lovers - those goddesses who seem to have the power to bestow license on whom they see fit - and if I'm not mistaken, he has even been called the lover of Tara itself. This was the site from which the kings of the Tuatha Dé ruled, and the site from which the mortal kings ruled after them. Thus, Lugh appears to be as appropriate a facilitator as any.

Under the right circumstances, our Good Neighbors can be perfectly beneficent. It often seems as if we are helpless to control those circumstances, and so many people prefer to avoid encounters with them altogether. But we - are we not magicians? Are we not wizards?
If power and wisdom comes at the price of being marginally polite to an eldritch horrorterror for the space of an evening, isn't that worth the trouble?

More on that in future installments.

* * *

Footnotes:
[1] The word "samhain" also occurs in Scottish and Manx. (Samhuinn; Sauin.)
[2] In Scotland, all the quarter days of the year are similarly dangerous, as fairies (síth) were said to travel openly and en masse at these times.
[2b] In Wales, May Day (Calan Mai) is the date when Otherworldly encounters are most likely to occur.
[3] The Metrical Dindshenchas state: "So hence it is called Tech Duinn [House of Donn]: and for this cause, according to the heathen, the souls of sinners visit Tech Duinn before they go to hell, and give their blessing, ere they go, to the soul of Donn. But as for the righteous soul of a penitent, it beholds the place from afar, and is not borne astray. Such, at least, is the belief of the heathen."
[3b] It should be remembered that this is all a matter of mythos. Considering that these tales take place long before the time of Charlemagne, I don't think genealogy should be an issue for the modern polytheist.
[4] I completely skipped over the Fir Bolg, because they used to confuse me as a noob. Descendants of Nemed who fled Ireland and came back later. The TDD arrived, fought them, and pushed them into Connacht. "Fairies" in that area might be categorized as Fir Bolg.

Further Reading:
Space and Time in Irish Folk Rituals and Traditions.
Monotheistic To A Certain Extent: The 'Good Neighbours' of God in Ireland.
Thanks to Seren at Tairis for making these articles so easily accessible.

How To Go Visiting A God.

2011-11-16T00:53:00.001-08:00

"Where are you going to, stranger," said the first man.

"I am going to visit Angus Og," replied the Philosopher.

The man gave him a quick look.

"Well," said he, "that's the queerest story I ever heard. Listen here," he called to the others, "this man is looking for Angus Og."

The other man and woman came closer.

"What would you be wanting with Angus Og, Mister Honey?" said the woman.

"Oh," replied the Philosopher, "it's a particular thing, a family matter."

There was silence for a few minutes, and they all stepped onwards behind the ass and cart.

"How do you know where to look for himself?" said the first man again: "maybe you got the place where he lives written down in an old book or on a carved stone?"

"Or did you find the staff of Amergin or of Ossian in a bog and it written from the top to the bottom with signs?" said the second man.

"No," said the Philosopher, "it isn't that way you'd go visiting a god. What you do is, you go out from your house and walk straight away in any direction with your shadow behind you so long as it is towards a mountain, for the gods will not stay in a valley or a level plain, but only in high places; and then, if the god wants you to see him, you will go to his rath as direct as if you knew where it was, for he will be leading you with an airy thread reaching from his own place to wherever you are, and if he doesn't want to see you, you will never find out where he is, not if you were to walk for a year or twenty years."

"How do you know he wants to see you?" said the second man.

"Why wouldn't he want?" said the Philosopher.

"Maybe, Mister Honey," said the woman, "you are a holy sort of a man that a god would like well."

"Why would I be that?" said the Philosopher. "The gods like a man whether he's holy or not if he's only decent."

"Ah, well, there's plenty of that sort," said the first man.

-James Stephens, The Crock of Gold.

Remedial Lore: (The Other)world.

2011-11-09T22:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it took forever and a half, but I think I've finally hit upon the most compelling access point for this series. So let's start.

Did you know the Oompa Loompas were originally black?

Oompa Loompas [Before]
Yes; in the first edition of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, readers were given to understand that the fantastic workforce of little men in Willy Wonka's factory were, quite simply, African slaves. One biographer explains that, "In the version first published, [the Oompa–Loompas were] a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from 'the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.' Mr. Wonka keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. Wonka's little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, 'and the bark of the bong–bong tree.'"

Written in 1964, it wasn't until 1972 (after some important cultural shifts) that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory began to receive criticism for the colonialist aspect of its narrative. After much correspondence between the author and his critics on the issue, Dahl and his publisher decided to print a new edition of the novel, in which the Oompa Loompas were described as dwarfish beings with "golden-brown hair" and "rosy-white" skin.

Oompa Loompas [After]

In their characterization of the novel, Dahl's editors 'saw the story as essentially Victorian in character –– a 'very English fantasy'." Our question for today is, What exactly did they mean by that? What do African pygmies have to do with "English Fantasy?"

* * *

Many of the more passionate dabblers in folklore on the Web, when attempting to present British fairy tales in a serious way, will tend to start by asking the reader to completely disregard Victorian age, Peter and Wendy notions of Elfland. (Some intimidating phrases in ancient Irish usually follow soon after.) These same individuals will sometimes point us to the more tragic or frightening Victorian fantasy literature as examples of the "real deal," seemingly unaware that these stories are often themselves altered from the original material. The collectors (and redactors) of fairy tales in this era did not consider themselves the "folk" of folklore, and they were not normally interested in accepting folk legend as it was. British academics and aristocrats saw fairy belief as a primitive cipher that held the secrets to the (surely debauched!) origins of civilization and the human species - a mystery that the Victorians were particularly obsessed with. And they were obsessed, for reasons that are quite relevant to what I feel is the key to understanding "Faerie," and why it matters to people like you and me.

The evolution of this memeplex is easily illustrated in the career of one man: French-American explorer, Paul du Chaillu. Modern pagans might know him best for The Viking Age, an early study on the pre-history of Northern Europe. He also happened to be a member of J.M. Barrie's amateur cricket team. But two decades earlier, he had been traversing lands virtually unknown. In 1865, on an excursion through Central Africa, he was informed by his Ashango hosts of a tribe of little men living in the forests. Earlier in his career, du Chaillu was the first European to confirm the existence of the gorilla, presumed to have been entirely mythical by previous explorers. Well-informed by this experience, he decided to investigate the claims of his guides. He published a chronicle of this journey in 1872, called The Country of Dwarfs, in which he recounts his first sighting of a deserted pygmy encampment:

EARLY the next morning we started again on our journey through the great forest, passing many hills and several rivulets with queer names. Suddenly we came upon twelve strange little houses scattered at random, and I stopped and asked Kombila for what use those shelters were built. He answered, "Spirit, those, are the house of a small people called Obongos."
"What!" said I, thinking that I had not understood him.
"Yes," repeated Kombila, "the people who live in such a shelter can talk, and they build fires."
"Kombila," I replied, "why do you tell me a story? How can people live in such little places? These little houses have been built for idols. Look," said I, "at those little doors. Even a child must crawl on the ground to get into them."
"No," said Kombila, "the Dwarfs have built them."
"How can that be?" I asked; "for where are the Dwarfs now? There are no plantain-trees around; there are no fires, no cooking-pots, no water jugs."
"Oh," said Kombila, "those Obongos are strange people. They never stay long in the same place. They cook on charcoal. They drink with their hands, or with large leaves."
"Then," I answered, "do you mean to say that we are in the country of the Dwarfs?"
"Yes," said Kombila, "we are in the country of the Dwarfs. They are scattered in the forest. Their little villages, like the one you see before you, are far apart. They are as wild as the antelope, and roam in the forest from place to place. They are like the beasts of the fields. They feed on the serpents, rats and mice, and on the berries and nuts of the forest."
"That can not be," I said.
"Yes, Oguizi, this is so," replied the porters. "Look for yourself;" and they pointed to the huts.
"Is it possible," I asked myself, "that there are people so small that they can live in such small buildings as those before me?"

There are some noticeable parallels here between this description of the Obongos and that of Dahl's Oompa Loompas; of a people who dine on the small, crawling things of the forest and the fruits of the trees. One can imagine how du Chaillu's curiosity would have been piqued. When he asks if he is in "the country of the Dwarfs," I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that he was wondering if he'd fallen right down the rabbit hole:

These huts did really look like the habitations of men—the homes of a race of Dwarfs. But had Kombila told me a falsehood? Were not these huts built for the fetiches and idols? It was true the great historian Herodotus had described a nation of Dwarfs as living on the head waters of the Nile; Homer had spoken of the cranes and of the land of the Pigmies; and Strabo thought that certain little men of Ethiopia were the original Dwarfs, while Pomponius Mela placed them far south, and, like Homer, spoke of their fighting with cranes; but then nobody had believed these stories. Could it be possible that I had discovered these people, spoken of thousands of years before, just as I had come face to face with the gorilla, which Hanno had described many centuries before?

With the help of his guides, and a bit of rudeness (yanking old women out of their homes by the ankle is less than diplomatic), du Chaillu was rewarded with the discovery of a settlement of an Obongo tribe deep in the woods. He marveled at their size, comparing the children to dogs and cats. "What a sight! I had never seen the like. 'What!' said I, 'now I do see the Dwarfs of Equatorial Africa—the Dwarfs of Homer, Herodotus—the Dwarfs of the ancients.'" Clearly, du Chaillu felt that myth had become reality.

However, rather than demystifying these newly (re)discovered humans, as one might expect, the intellectual elite in Europe responded to this revelation by reinvesting little people, foreigners, the disabled, the lower class, the deformed, the nomadic, and others in their vicinity and beyond with an alien quality. To them, this was not evidence that the elfin races of legend were merely humans; this was proof of the existence of individuals who were other than human.

At a time when the fields such as archaeology, ethnology, and genetics were only just coming into being, the theory of polygenesis provided a ready outlet for numberless treaties by euhemerists on the history of humanity as told - supposedly - through the cultural fables passed down from working-class governess to highborn child. Many historians began to posit that "black, red and yellow" pygmies had once inhabited the British Isles and Germanic countries, fueling stories about "little men" and explaining what they saw as the genetic inferiority of other, non-Anglo ethnic groups. Tales of fairy abduction and marriages to mortals were thought to be cultural memories of interracial (read: interspecies) breeding, giving rise to the mentally disabled "Mongoloid" or the "Negroid" Irishman. (Remember that the English considered themselves purely Anglo-Saxon, ethnically distinct from the other nations of Great Britain. Except when they were talking about King Arthur. Then they were Britons again.) Why expend so much energy on denying a common evolutionary ancestor between the noble Englishman and the barbarians he was subduing in the name of the Empire? I'm sure the answer is self-evident. Yet, beyond the motivation of politics, there lay a pervasive fear of evolutionary regression and subsequent social collapse. Barbarians at the gate, degenerates in the street - threats loomed from within and without. This was reflected in the fantasy fiction of the time.

Previously in literature and fairy tales, elves and dwarves were often skilled tradesmen, sometimes wise, sometimes foolish and vulnerable (or both.) Not a far cry from their ancient Norse antecedents, who, while not always beneficent, were hardly bestial. In the Victorian age, even supposedly sympathetic stories of actual "dwarves" (that is, individuals with dwarfism) began to paint them as primitive, pitiable, sub-human creatures. Elsewhere, they became absolutely monstrous. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the popular novels of Golden Dawn magician, Arthur Machen. A major influence on H.P. Lovecraft's signature style of horror, Machen drew on these themes to chilling effect in his supernatural fantasies. Carol G. Silver summarizes a memorable example:

At the center and of an interpolated novella called "The Novel of the Black Seal," is Professor Gregg, an ethnologist of the euhemerist school, who believes the "stories of mothers who have left a child quietly sleeping . . . and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon, but a thin and wizened creature with sallow skin and black piercing eyes, the child of another race." The professor is in search of the originals of the Welsh fairies, a mysterious and evil "race which had fallen out of the grand march of evolution." Thus, hearing that strange-looking, dark-haired, olive-skinned Jervase is thought to be a changeling, he hires him as a servant. Although the adolescent Jervase is actually a hybrid (his mother is a local working-class woman), he exhibits all the attributes folklorists ascribed to fairy changelings. He is "mentally weak," "a natural. . . who, has fits at times." When he has a seizure, his face swells and blackens, he froths at the lips, and he squeals in a queer, hissing "half-sibilant, half-gutteral" voice," mouthing a jargon a local expert associates with the Welsh fairies.
When the professor, who is convinced that supernatural and magical powers are really "survivals from the depths of being"—that is, reversions to lower evolutionary forms of life — subjects Jervase to "scientific" tests, he discovers a horrible secret. He watches the boy, possessed by his brute nature, literally slither down the ladder of evolution to reveal a hideous reptile within. While the professor goes off to find the "Little People" and does not return, Jervase, feeble-minded and diseased, remains in the mortal world as a changeling proof of evolutionary regression, an example of "Protoplasmic Reversion."

Lest one should protest that he was simply using a popular theory for a plot device, Machen reveals quite clearly in Dreads and Drolls his faith in the notion that "a short, non-Aryan race" once haunted the hills and forests of England. This motif is repeated in his novellas "The Red Hand" and "The Shining Pyramid," in which misshapen creatures, "things made in the form of men but stunted like children and hideously deformed," scurry about the dark places of the earth, hunting the innocent and preying on their flesh, offering them up to their infernal gods. The fear of ancient horrors wakening unto life and feeding on the blood and souls of white protagonists - that occult terror that we now call "Lovecraftian" - has a direct line of descent to the Victorian fear of Faerie's uncivilized denizens. And yet, a well-to-do Londoner didn't even have to leave the city limits to have an encounter with the Other World; all she had to do was find herself accosted by a street merchant with dark, cunning eyes.

* * *
All this is not to suggest that a fear of the Other was absent in traditional fairy belief. I think it would be disingenuous to overlook the fact that it was used as a tool of social control in Celtic communities as well; a way to keep the young people in at night, a way to quietly dispose of unfit children and uppity women. Disobedience or sudden changes in behavior were often explained by fairy abduction, the disruptive individual being treated as an Otherworldly imposter to be exorcised, abandoned, or slain. A notorious example is the case of Bridget Cleary, a stylish young seamstress who, in 1895, was accused by her husband of being a changeling. A childless woman, she was known to go out riding alone (against her husband's wishes) in areas believed to be fairy haunts, and was considered "a bit queer" by others in her community. (A side note: 1895 was the year of the first known usage of the word "fairy" to mean homosexual.) Considering the triple threat of her infertility, her financial independence, and her suspicious behavior, Bridget's persecution as a changeling might be seen as a mere eventuality.

Michael Cleary believed (or wanted to believe) that his "real" wife would reappear once he had disposed of the changeling. This, he hoped to accomplish by burning her alive, ignoring the desperate pleas of his neighbors. Yet, reflected in the haunting words he spoke moments before the flames engulfed her - "I believe that she is dead" - there is a distinct possibility that Michael feared that Bridget had chosen to abandon him. Michael was nine years older than Bridget, and they hadn't dwelt together in the same house for the first few years of their marriage. And again, they had no children. He may have suspected that Bridget had a paramour, whether mortal or fairy, waiting for her at the rath. Lisa Spangenberg puts it more succintly than I can: "Just as with other Others, say Gypsies, or whatever a given community's racial/ethnic minority is, or queers, in stories about fairies and otherworld intruders it's a case of 'They want our women, and our children, and our women want sex/more sex/better sex, and so they voluntarily go with these Others, and leave us, and sometimes, they refuse to come back." This is as evident in medieval material as it is anywhere else.

One interesting perspective on this anxiety can be found in the medieval Scottish ballad, "Tam Lin." The story begins with a warning to young women about the woods of Carterhaugh, where Tam Lin dwells. He is a fairy, who they say will rob or ravish any maiden who steps foot in his forest. "There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh/But they leave him a wad/Either their rings, or green mantles/Or else their maidenhead."

Then, we are introduced to young Janet, who thinks that sounds like her idea of a party. She throws on a green frock, marches right into those woods, and picks a rose growing near the well where he has hitched his horse. Tam Lin appears, and he demands to know why she is there without his permission, and why she has stolen from him. She replies that she owns Carterhaugh by way of her father, and will go where she pleases. Then we find her back home, pregnant. A patronizing old knight confronts her, saying that he will marry her and "take the blame," that is, for her state. She refuses, indignant. Her father gently chides her, but she is adamant. She proclaims that her true love, the father of her child, is "an elfin grey," and that she won't accept any other man as her husband.

She makes her way back to Carterhaugh, and asks Tam Lin if he was ever a mortal man. And indeed he was; he tells her of how he was abducted by the Fairy Queen while out on the hunt. "Pleasant is the fairy land," he says, but every seven years a tithe is paid to Hell. Tam Lin confesses his fear that he, being "so fair and full of flesh," will be the next sacrifice. The rest of the story deals with Janet's daring rescue of Tam Lin on Hallowe'en night, pulling him away from the Wild Ride and clasping him tight as the fairies transform him into several monstrous shapes. She holds him fast. At last he takes the form of a great burning coal and, following his previous instructions, Janet throws him into the well. He emerges naked from the water, and she covers him in her cloak, whisking him away.

Here we have a story in which a mortal woman - presumably an "innocent" - actively seeks out what she is meant to fear. What she finds is not a marauding rapist, but a reasonable man, who, if anything, might be said to feel threatened by her presence. Asserting herself, she gets what she came for. She refuses to cry rape, and asserts her agency in having chosen a lover. And she doesn't choose to simply run away with him. She does everything in her power to legitimize her Baby Daddy and return him to society, so that he can be recognized by the community as the man she has chosen. At the risk of sounding obvious, she has integrated the Other.

Green is the color that most of us associate with elves and fairies. Allowing for some variances by culture and region, this is reasonably in line with tradition. "Janet has kilted her green kirtle" is the first line of the ballad's chorus, a "kirtle" being a kind of tunic, worn as a layer between the chemise and smock. Aside from being an invitation to him, this might be thought of as symbolic of her affinity with the eldritch knight. While grey is the color that Janet ascribes to her lover in this English-language ballad, it is to be noted that in Scottish, green and grey are denoted by the same word: glas. In Irish, the word can carry connotations of strangeness or eeriness, and can be applied to anyone who is dreamy, eccentric, or "a bit queer."

There is a powerful urge for many to emphasize nothing but the horror in fairy lore, in order to offset the frivolousness with which it is now associated in popular imagination. For those who see in Fairyland only hellish debasement and irrational nightmares...well, Tam Lin might be inclined to agree with you. But what is it that we are truly afraid of here? Lust? Alien life? Vengeance? Recognition? Are we not in the business of drawing circles to conjure up those very things?

More on that in the next installment.

Sources/Further Reading:
RoaldDahlFans.com
Strange and Secret Peoples
Medieval Fairies As Other
Earth Girls Are Easy

Remedial Lore: An Upcoming Theme

2011-10-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

There is a skilled work of fiction of which I am very fond, in which there is a character who has been bewitched by a wicked fairy. As is standard with bewitchments, she is unable to tell anyone what has happened to her. Each and every time she tries to lift her frail voice and confess her condition, the only words that spill out are absurd historical anecdotes from another world. She's desperately reaching out for help, but all that comes out is the tale of a battle fought by rabbit-mounted imps across an expensive rug. People shake their heads and walk away slowly.

I know the feeling.

I don't consider myself a particularly knowledgeable person when it comes to my areas of interest. I'm sure as hell not an expert. But it just so happens that the more common discourse regarding my particular passions tend to be fraught with popular misconceptions and misleadingly precious "literature," most of which can be easily dismantled by even the smallest amount of casual research.

The problem is that the intelligent and critical people end up completely dismissing whole areas of cultural history and magical practice, to the point where such information is regarded as "off limits," or simply irrelevant outside of a smutty novel. I could devote my efforts to debunking the mythical myths of idiots, like many other brave souls have, but I'm more interested in these "discerning" individuals, who think they're in on the joke, or that the lore is only so much inscrutable phantasmagoria for small time fantasy authors to plunge their grubby meat hooks into for material. (Ahem.)

For clarity, I am referring to these separate-but-certainly-not-unrelated subjects:

1.) Celtic Mythology.

2.) Fairy Lore.

3.) Familiar Spirits.

Due to a history of imperialism and cultural marginalization, few people in the West today are familiar with the histories and sagas of Celtic countries. In the Victorian age, the bourgeoisie of Great Britain developed an ongoing fixation with sanitizing folk and fairy legends for its own xenophobic, moralistic reasons. (This issue is really too big to cover at the moment, but I'm sure you already know that when I try to mention the F-word, it doesn't matter what information accompanies it, because all that figures in your mind are porcelain collectibles, or an amateur model smeared with glitter.) Roughly around the same time, a few prominent members of the Celtic Revival were engaging in some fanciful falsehoods, similar to those spun by the Rosicrucians, or any number of organizations said to have been founded by Tibetan Masters. While most authors, poets and patrons were engaged in a valiant effort to preserve the authentic narratives of their respective countries, one could argue that a legacy of bullshit may have inadvertently resulted in the aftermath. Not that I would ever compare a work as powerful and moving as Ossian to Celtic Feng Shui.

By my estimation, subject of the witch's familiar is something that has reemerged in the popular imagination the late 20th century - possibly, in the wake of New Age fascination with totemic entities - though it has yet to take center stage amidst the general fanfare we're currently seeing over witchcraft as a whole. Generally, most modern occult writing on the familiar spirit is simply fluff or filler, while all too many practitioners dismiss historical sources for their frequently Satanic overtones. Furthermore, most people are completely unaware of the intersections that occur between witchcraft and fairy belief. (Protip: there are intersections that occur between historical witchcraft and fairy belief.)

Most folks who engage in niche occult practices or the less popular polytheisms are content to talk one another's heads off until we lose our minds - at least that way, we don't have to explain what we're talking about all the time. We all understand each other. But I'd like to do what little I can so that the wider occult community can find a convenient point of entry for subjects like these - to encourage, at the very least, the same kind of casual familiarity one might have of Heathenry or Madam Blavatsky, regardless of one's own path. Basically, "Things You Really Should Already Know About _____." Because I'm not an expert. But I am an enthusiast. Hopefully, you might come to see why.

Midsummer Offerings

2011-08-02T01:40:00.000-07:00

As I've alluded to before on this blog, there's plenty of Lughnasadh left to go around - fifteen days before and after the 1st. Clearly this suits my temperament.

Recommendations.

2011-07-01T03:48:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that the content here hasn't exactly been living up to my blog's subtitle. This will be corrected soon.

Meanwhile, I've been having a bad case of every-idea-I've-ever-had-is-stupid-and-I-should-just-shut-up-forever, so while I get over that I thought I'd share with you some other bloggery I've been enjoying.

Swallowing the Camel is a pagan/occultist-friendly conspiracy-debunking blog. What does that mean? That means that everything you've ever wanted to see debunked about Satanic Panic, Illuminati nonsense, psychic frauds and "prodigal witches" (including Frater B's old friend, Bill Schnoeblen) is all right here. This guy really knows his stuff. Other, more WTF-type hoaxes are also covered.

Beyond the Wand is something in between the blog above and Wicca For The Rest of Us. Only more upbeat.

Ireland Pagan is the blog of a very thoughtful chap I ran across sometime ago on my favorite pagan forum. It is a sad irony that, outside of Druidry, there aren't many voices I know of in Celtic paganism who happen to be cultural insiders. (Much less anyone of a historically-minded bent.) For those looking for a basic overview of Irish polytheism and nothing but, this is a great place to start.

Root and Rock is written by a fierce and intelligent witch and artisan I know from way back. How does one describe her? She tends a forge and a veritable menagerie of wild creatures in her backyard. A well of poetry springs up from within her. A runeblade of snark cleaves her enemies in twain. Her entries on animal and familiar spirits are compelling and insightful. (None of this "woo woo fuzzy" business.)

Graveyard Dirt is described by the author as "part cookbook, part diary, part love letter and part magical memoir." Do not be fooled by this nonchalant characterization. This is the diary of a witch who scavenges dead animal parts and fucks like a wild rabbit in the hills of Scotland. (Swears like a sailor, too.) You never thought the "gatherer" half of "hunter/gatherer" could be so metal, but she'll teach you a thing or two. If you're not following her, do it now. (Especially you Valentines. You'd love her Ghede-pleasing ways.)

Dreams Of My Ancestral Future

2011-06-24T00:49:00.000-07:00

[Recorded on the 28th of May, the year 2011.]

I dreamed last night that we were all members of a jungle settlement in Latin America. Our houses had all the comforts of upscale, modern homes, but they were built high up within the thickness of the trees. The season was wet, and people dressed in big, canvas coats, with many layers. On the ground, there were squares marked out for people to wrestle and joust. People watched and ate gummy snacks in aluminum paper packaging.

My house resembled my house, as in waking life. [Jack] was performing some kind of experiment with a seed: with a drop of water, it rapidly grew into a two-headed serpent. It was extremely agitated and ready to attack anything, both of its mouths wide open. It managed to bite a visitor who happened to be standing in our room - a white settler named Benjamin. He was extremely fair, with long, white-blond hair, a burgundy scarf, and a canvas coat in army green. There were some others in the settlement with hair like his.

The snake slithered under my knees, and I was afraid it was going to bite me, but [Jack] pulled it away by its tail, grabbing hold of both heads. In its wrath, venom dripped from its fangs and managed to land on my forearm. It burned, but it did nothing more than that.

While [Jack] disposed of the snake, I took Benjamin upstairs and injected him with an antivenom from a first aid kit in a weathered metal box. I was competent with the needle. He started to get pretty loopy, though whether it was from the venom or the injection, I don't know. My mother giggled at his intoxicated speech, in her endeared, motherly way. He would be fine.

* * *

I was the member of an expedition on the coast of Puerto Rico. I say expedition, but our role was mostly to guard the oil rig workers and their families. The ocean was dotted with many industrial structures and ships. But people had not lived on this beach for very long, not even a month. It was a temporary settlement - we were set to explore the wilderness further inland for more permanent sites. The settlers moved with us.

The sky was overcast, and the breeze behind me was persistent. I wore a thick vinyl coat, a knit hat, and many layers. I walked across the white sand with a slender rifle in my hands. I was quickly approaching a body of water that was the same lovely turquoise as the sea. I was filled with anticipation; I had heard rumors of a bay in this area, but part of me hoped it was freshwater. I wasn't more than fifty yards away when I noticed a strange wave in the air, a glimmer that you only see when the sun's heat is bouncing off the rocks. I turned to face the wind and caught the sickly sweet odor of petroleum. Fearing what this meant, I immediately headed back to the encampment. The fumes became stronger, choking me, the closer I got. I covered my mouth with my scarf, and my eyes with my arm.

It was late afternoon when I returned. One of the colossal tankers, suspended by a crane for maintenance, had caught fire. The whole ship was burning. As day turned to night, the leaders of the expedition gathered round the families to begin our migration upwind. Our greatest concern was for the small children. One man stood on a crate to make these announcements. Behind him we could plainly see the ship, glowing orange against the blue of the evening.

* * *

I am the Queen of Spain. I have granted audience to a few dozen nobles. For some reason - probably some whim of mine - I am standing, casually, in the center of my court. The sun illuminates everything at an angle from a sparkling, glass-paneled ceiling. The air is humid.

One man is expressing outrage at the fact that I am allowing pirate trade on my coasts. I imperiously dismiss his concerns and turn away from him, swaying the bustle of my burgundy gown as I ascend the steps of my throne. I sit, and in one graceful movement of my left hand, I calmly retrieve and open a bejeweled, oriental fan. The rubies glitter as I fan myself, smiling at my challenger. He is speechless.

All The Most Prurient Punks Have Tumblrs

2011-06-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

I've embedded my tumblr way down at the bottom of my blog here - not sure if it's annoying or not. (Feel free to let me know.) I sure do like being reminded of Kunihiko Ikuhara's leather catsuit, though.

By the way, if you're reading this, P. Sufenas - it appears that Tumblr hosts the "youth crossover audience" we've been looking for. Tumblr loves Antinous!

"The Young Witches of Salem"

2011-06-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

From Boston.com: Web-based reality series about Salem witches set to begin filming in August.

From the article alone, I might not think anything of it. The producer sounds like a reasonable enough man who wants to dispel some negative stereotypes about (eclectic) Wiccans.

But I saw the commercial for this months ago. I thought it was for a store.

I can never not laugh when it gets to the third woman. (To her credit, I think she's being funny on purpose.)

Honestly, they all seem like pretty nice gals. And they're certainly better dressed than Fiona Horne. I'm just not expecting anything other than the standard fare.

Wizard Battle

2011-05-23T05:17:00.000-07:00

Loads more thrilling than the non-conflict between Christian Day and Charlie Sheen (which is technically a Warlock Battle, if you want to be specific), a war of ideas rages on between sages.

Author Caroline Tully recently had an interview with Professor Ronald Hutton. (Thanks for the heads up, Doc.) In it, he clarifies a number of his views on the subject of pagan survivals, among other things. It's a long discussion, but very interesting.

Golden Dawn Imperator, David Griffin - you may remember him - made a bold retort to several of Hutton's claims, citing contemporary Italian scholarship and making Star Trek references. Whatever your own opinion is on these subjects, you have to admit that Hutton misidentifying Griffin as a Wiccan is pretty funny.

Twiddling.

2011-05-23T04:39:00.000-07:00

As you were.

If By "Fake," You Mean Awesome

2011-05-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

From Comics Alliance, Neopagans Object to Depiction of Fake Norse Gods in 'Thor.'

Thankfully, none of the offended Heathens involved have taken on the tone of self-importance that we all know and love when it comes to dissent like this. But I will say that all the Heathens (and friends of Heathens) I know love the Thor comics. The only complaints I've been hearing are from people who appear to have never read them.

If I may be so bold, I would venture to say that while Marvel's Thor is not an entirely accurate retelling of the Norse myths, it is in no way a disrespectful one. Modern Heathens don't generally appear to be insulted by (re-)interpretations of their myths in other media - American Gods never got any guff, despite the fact that it had almost nothing to do with the traditional stories (and even mocked neopagans in its pages) - so I suspect that there are some unfortunate preconceptions about comic books at play here. Marvel's Thor balances the light-hearted with the deadly serious, just as the myths do, and there is more than enough for a modern pagan to chew on in terms of heroism, Wyrd, and the relationship between the mortal and divine. And really - is a body of legend that involves cross-dressing, giant-slaying, and explosive diarrhea really so poorly suited to the realm of comic books? I mean, come on.

Read the comics. See the movie. I think you'll enjoy it.

Beltane: You've Been Saying It Wrong.

2011-05-01T21:12:00.000-07:00

You learn something new every day: apparently we've all been pronouncing "Beltane" incorrectly. Also, another generation of pagans continues to interpret peasant celebrations from a relentlessly Freudian standpoint, but that's old news.

Don't listen to the hippie nonsense. Stay punk. Think of Johnny Thunders. Mick and Keith. Block it out!

May Day and Black Cats: Hidden History

2011-04-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Our brothers and sisters in Wisconsin are calling for a statewide general strike on May 1st, 2011. Why on May Day? Most Americans don't know this, but May 1st is celebrated internationally as an important date in the history of labor rights - most notably in regard to the fight for the eight hour day, and, most searingly, in memory of the Haymarket martyrs. Although our own Labor Day was originally observed in remembrance of those whose lives were taken from them in the Pullman Strike, the holiday as it's observed today is very depoliticized. Attempts to move Labor Day to May 1st have been met with opposition; due to anti-communist sentiment, the US government dubbed May 1st as "Americanization Day" in 1921, "Loyalty Day" in 1949, and "Law Day" in 1958. (It's like you can see the conformity pressing in on itself before the country finally explodes with beats and hippies.)

The black cat on the posters above is, of course, the symbol of a wildcat strike. You may have noticed black cat iconography - particularly the image of a cat hissing, hair standing on end - in a lot of the pamphlets and literature that has been circulating on the subject of Wisconsin. Widely understood as an emblem of the labor struggle and of anarcho-syndicalism, it's been most prominently used by the Industrial Workers of the World. (The cat represents sabotage, a tactic of particular use to industrial workers.) According to oral tradition, the black cat was adopted as a mascot after a loggers' strike that was going badly - strikebreakers had been doing their worst and several workers had been hospitalized. When a skinny black cat happened to wander into the their camp, the workers fed and sheltered it. As the cat's health returned, the strike took a turn for the better, and the workers got some of their demands met. The black cat turned out to be good luck for them, they decided.

"You know if you saw a black cat go across your path you would think, if you were superstitious, you are going to have a little bad luck. The idea of sabotage is to use a little black cat on the boss."
-Ralph Chaplin, artist and Wobblie.

Good Friday, Good Witches

2011-04-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was going to post about the tradition of Scandinavian Easter witches, but then I realized that Red Witch over at the Sexy Witch blog (NSFW) has pretty much written most of what there is to write on the subject. Although she is a bit over eager to find sexy depictions of what is today a pastime for children, she has some interesting notes on the history of the tradition:

[...] since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century Swedish youths have dressed themselves as ‘påskkäringar’ (Easter witches) or ‘påsktroll’ (Easter trolls). Some ‘mummers’ would visit neighbours, leaving a small decorated card, with a verse inviting the recipient to participate in the witches’ Sabbath. (By the 1890s these Easter cards could be bought from stationer’s shops).

Yeah, I vote to adopt this practice. It might sound scandalous to you folks, but I'm all in favor of a family-friendly, Christo-Pagan public celebration. Could you imagine inviting your neighbors to Sabbat, on Easter? Dressing up and shouting "boo!" at people in the spirit of wholesome fun? Sounds a lot more fun than isolating ourselves out by the local VFW Hall to hawk our crystal wares and listen to some small-time fantasy authors read from their latest work. I thought Americans knew how to party?

At any rate, according to the legends that inspired these festivities, during Holy Week, witches are said to fly to the mythical mountain meadow of Blockula, the "blue hill" where they would have congress with the Devil. If that sounds more like your idea of a good time, then more power to you. The Devil's accommodations sound pretty comfortable, to tell you the truth.

Not Ever Safe For Work

2011-04-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

So imagine my surprise when I woke up on the morning of April 1st after having dreamt of a man whose entire body was black as a beetle's wing, penetrating me and bringing me to the heights of ecstasy.

I spent a long time trying to figure out how to work that into a blog entry, but I never got around to it. Nor did I find anything appropriate to illustrate it with, so count your blessings.

Some of you may have noticed that I haven't written much of anything all winter.

I was hiding.

From...monsters. And the Internet. From failure, and the spectre of death.

I knew winter would last a little longer around these parts when it was sunny on the day of Imbolc. (Also, the candlestick holding the candle I lit for Brigid that evening shattered. She...she might not like me very much.) I'll hold off on making any psychological allegories about the forces of darkness, because those can be so tiresome. But I've discovered that April - especially April Fools - is a much better time for making new year's resolutions. (I've already forgotten the resolutions I decided on, but I'm much happier about it than usual.) Days are looking brighter. So look forward to seeing a bit more of me this week.

April Fools

2011-04-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

"The wise man who is not heeded is counted a fool, and the fool who proclaims the general folly first and loudest passes for a prophet and Führer, and sometimes it is luckily the other way round as well, or else mankind would long since have perished of stupidity."
-Carl Jung

"All the names of good and evil are parables: they do not declare, but only hint. Whoever among you seeks knowledge of them is a fool!"
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Ooh, A Pamphlet!

2011-02-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

So it's almost old news, but just to get back into the swing of things, I thought that the Christian community might like to know that there wasn't any Harry Potter when I was a kid. In fact, it was none other than C.S. Lewis who first stoked my brain with its first visions of witchcraft and wizardry. It was because of a simple yet mysterious remedy for warts in his Book of Incantations that I began to collect spells wherever I could find them. My goddess drives a chariot and is cold as ice. Sound familiar?

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
-The Magician's Nephew, Ch. 4, The Bell and the Hammer.

Happy Hunting

2010-12-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

Trial of the Moon

2010-11-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

I'd like to draw your attention to the scholarship of one Ben Whitmore, who has provided a generous excerpt of his book, Trial of The Moon: Reopening The Case For Historical Witchcraft:

Ronald Hutton is the first academic historian to have attempted a full-scale history of modern Pagan witchcraft (particularly Wicca), and his scholarly yet entertaining tone in The Triumph of the Moon has star-struck a generation of Pagans and substantially changed the way we see ourselves. For some, Triumph has become a cornerstone of faith, perhaps read alongside Hutton’s other books on paganism. It has greatly encouraged intellectual forms of Paganism and witchcraft in which the Gods are regarded as ‘thoughtforms’ created by people, rather than the other way around. And if Hutton is correct that our Gods and our mode of worship have no precedent in any prior religion, there hardly seems to be any other conclusion. His thesis is that modern Pagan witchcraft is entirely a new invention, cobbled together by a few eccentrics of the early twentieth century out of themes from Romanticism and the recent European occult revival, all supplemented with plenty of imagination, and with no link or even resemblance to any prior form of witchcraft or pagan spirituality. He also contends that since paganism was rapidly eradicated in the Middle Ages, Early Modern witchcraft could not have been a form of paganism — in fact, he claims, witchcraft never existed at all, outside of fantasy, until Gerald Gardner established the religion of Wicca in the early 1950s.

While I agree that today’s witchcraft is largely a reinvention, I disagree with several of Hutton’s supporting claims, and believe his case is overstated and deeply misleading. I had little inkling of this when I first read Triumph in 2001; indeed I very much enjoyed the book, though I was uneasy about a few of the conclusions, and noticed a number of errors and oversights. I might have largely accepted his findings, had I not just read another scholarly work on the history of the European witchtrials: Carlo Ginzburg’s Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, which arrives at radically different conclusions regarding the nature of historical witchcraft and its relation to older pagan spirituality. Whom should I believe? At the time I could find no literature critiquing Triumph — indeed, it seemed no-one had anything but praise for it — so I resolved to do a little research and write a brief review myself. Nine years later that brief review has grown into this book.

You can buy a copy of the book here. I know I will!

I'd like to thank David Griffin at the offical Golden Dawn blog for bringing my attention to this. His recent posts on the subject of Pagan survivals (here and here) are...most stimulating! (To say the least.)

And much thanks to Frater B as well, for his recent post on the same subject, which brought my attention to the initial debate. Great discussion all around! I heartily recommend perusing the comments section in whatever link you might visit. Worth your while.

Lastly, I'll mention an article included in the anthology Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green. In an essay called "Pagan Celtic Studies (Or, Throwing the Druidic Baby Out from the Still-Drinkable Sacred Spring Water...?!)" one Philip A. Bernhardt-House (Ph.D) challenges the idea that the dearth of information about historical druidic practice means that there is nothing we can know about pre-Christian religion in the British Isles, as well as Hutton's contention that there are no Pagan survivals. Very informative read.

For the men of Ireland have again followed heathenism (génntlidecht) as it was at first before belief, before Patrick's advent, save only that they have not worshipped idols. For the heathen had a lie and a good word, and this existeth not today. And every evil which the heathen used to do is done at this time in the land of Erin, save only that the Irish do not worship idols. Howbeit they perpetrate wounding and theft and adultery and patricides and manslaughter, and the wrecking of churches and clerics, covetousness and perjury and lies and false judgement, and destruction of God's church, wizardry (draidecht), and heathenism (génntlidecht), and dealing in charms, philtres and enchantments and fidlanna.

-Adomnán of Iona, 11th century.

Dream Satire.

2010-11-12T03:30:00.000-08:00

V.V.F's Otherwordly Sorcery - a blog you can always count on to be Jesus-free.

Nah, I'm not trying to harsh anybody's vibe. I understand how the candles and the flowers and the beads and the Virgin can be seductive. It's just that, sometimes, I tend to react to people's interest in Catholicism the same way Jack - a descendant of Irish immigrants - reacts to my interest in the sídhe. "This is the stuff my family used as nightmare-fodder to terrorize me into good behavior! What's wrong with you?"

Of course, my work with the Good Neighbours is a big part of why I make a point not to get too Jesus-y around the house, all personal feelings aside. Even some members of the Tuatha Dé Danann can be ambivalent about it - I have to be diplomatic if I'm going to be saying any Christian holy names near their shrine. Angus won't tolerate it one bit. He lost a foster-daughter to Christianity, and since he's my "gateway-god" (for lack of a better phrase), I take special care to be sensitive. Lúgh is the only other Irish god I have a personal rapport with, but I've been unclear on his feelings until now. It turns out he's really not offended or scared off by it, but - as I found out last night in a dream - he does find Christianity to be hilarious.

I was visiting a large and inexplicably tasteless cathedral in a city by the sea. Given this criteria, it may have been the Grace Cathedral, but the truth is that I'm not entirely sure it was an American city at all. It may have been some Anglican church in the UK. The people milling about inside, organizing community events and passing out flyers, certainly had a Church of England feel to them. As I entered, I found that I was not alone - the great god Lúgh trailed in after me, numinous and invisible, just behind my right shoulder. It became clear that he intended to escort me through the church, taking the opportunity to mock everything he laid eyes on. Look at that. Why are the biscuits there. So many cardigans. That banner's going to fall on nan's head. I tried my best to ignore his remarks, or at the very least, keep from bursting into laughter.

For some reason, a small group of the churchgoers were in the possession of an EMF detector. The god took it upon himself to sit down on a scale that was hooked up to it, causing it to react strongly and suddenly, which caused the people gathered around it to make a terrible fuss. He laughed.

He then herded me towards a side exit, where he drew my attention to a bulletin board. Beyond all expectation, there were two or three green flyers promoting local druid groves. I looked at one them. It claimed that the grove was situated above some kind of psychic fault line in the earth.

"What, like in Torchwood?" I said.

The god looked at me. "Why not?"

Then I woke up.

I'm trying not to read too much into it. He's such a cheek.

The Third Road.

2010-11-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think about changing my blog's title to "The Elfin Occultnik." Whaddya think, too fanciful? I just want people to know what they're getting right from the name. "V.V.F.," while short and sweet, is evocative of nothing. At any rate, I'm open to suggestions.

I've been lax about content lately, haven't I? I've been chaining myself to my tablet in an effort to get something - anything - composed into what might be commonly referred to as a "picture." (See above.) Partly because my long-suffering friends are usually owed one piece or another, but also because of Alan Moore.

Yes, I mean his previously unpublished article, Fossil Angels. I'm a little surprised that hardly anyone I know has said anything to expand on it. Granted, it's a kind of a big thing to respond to - I think I went mute for two weeks after reading it. Since then, however, two things have occurred to me.

The first thing is that I was talking to Our Local Adept about the very same topic, months before I laid eyes on "Fossil Angels." It was a very simple, very throwaway line in my mind, and I don't even remember what I was saying this in response to. But I had remarked, "People think of magic as being 'the Craft,' when it's really more of an Art." To which he replied that many of the most prominent and active members of the Golden Dawn had been artists or creative people of some sort; writers, actresses, poets. It seemed so obvious at the time. Of course, of course magic is an art.

So where did my brain break? Moore doesn't just stop at saying that sorcery is like an art, or that it's just one type of art - sorcery IS art. Art is the field of human endeavor under which magic may be placed, as opposed to science or religion. (The third road leads to fair Elfland.) That's a very different thing from simply saying that magic can be "artful" or pretty, which is kind of like being art. There's no metaphor here. Magic is art.

And what a relief it was for me to hear it, believe you me. Not only have I gone through the requisite period of having to say "No, I'm not a Satanist" to all the normal people, I've experienced the "joy" of trying to justify myself to a militant atheist as well. That was four years of "why aren't there any Wiccan millionaires" and "how can you be a feminist in a hierarchical system?" I'm lucky I still have all my hair. Trust me, neither of these camps are going to let us into the country club. They don't want our kind here. But we don't need them. Soon they'll be clamoring to be let into our loft parties where they can watch us smear tomatoes all over each other in the name of Pazuzu.

The second thing that occurred to me is that the most prominent occultists today - and by "prominent," I mean that they are in the public eye, and publicly identify as magicians - happen to be in the comic book industry, which is the field I myself aspire to. Just think about that. What an unexpected turn of events. That most denigrated and suspect of mediums, elevated to high art by a couple of wizards. Of course there are many non-wizards who have contributed to this Comic Book Renaissance, but who's on the tip of your tongue when someone asks if comics are any good? Alan Moore. Grant Morrison. Neil Gaiman is not a wizard, but he probably should be. (He's already a dog named Cabal. How is he not a wizard yet?) Tarot cards, Ouija boards, and now - comic books. Trashy, mass produced, hidden under teenagers' beds. There are no court magicians anymore, nor any wise old hags in caves - but there are always cunning folks who sell goods and services of dubious quality.

I'd say that it warms the cockles of my heart, but I think you have to be over 50 or immortal to legally be able to say that. So instead I'll just say that it fills me with bright enthusiasm. I am literally perched in my chair in the manner of Nightcrawler or Magik. That is how excited I am for this moment in time. Other occultists might have squirmed with discomfort as they braved Alan's thesis, but all I could think was that he was giving me a set of instructions for the tools I already have. It is, once again, an immense relief. I know now what I must do. Thank you, Uncle Warlock-Beard. I've got my stylus in hand. I won't let you down.

Cut Up: Gone to Croatoan

2010-11-08T16:33:00.000-08:00

For this otherworld species or "third sex," les enfants sauvages, fancy & Imagination are still undifferentiated. Unbridled PLAY: at one & the same time the source of our Art; of all the race's rarest eros. [] a dying breed of incestuous modern witch boys forced to practice their rituals in an over populated decaying city, devoid of nature and solitude.

I think that we came from another world and have been stranded here like mariners on some barren and hostile shore. I never felt that what we did together was wrong, but I fully understood the necessity and wisdom of concealing it from the villagers. Now that there is no need for concealment, I feel as if this ship is the home I had left and thought never to find again. But the voyage will end of course, and what then?

Too young for Harley choppers--flunk-outs, break-dancers, scarcely pubescent poets of flat lost railroad towns--a million sparks falling from the skyrockets of Rimbaud & Mowgli--slender terrorists whose gaudy bombs are compacted of polymorphous love & the precious shards of popular culture--punk gunslingers dreaming of piercing their ears, animist bicyclists gliding in the pewter dusk through Welfare streets of accidental flowers--out-of-season gypsy skinny-dippers, smiling sideways-glancing thieves of power- totems, small change & panther-bladed knives--we sense them everywhere--we publish this offer to trade the corruption of our own lux et gaudium for their perfect gentle filth.

A productive union, a synthesis of art and magic propagated in a culture, an environment, a magic landscape lacking temple walls and heirloom furnishings that everyone tripped over anyway. Staged amidst the gemming ferns and purpled steam-heat of a re-established occult biosphere, this passionate conjunction of two human faculties would surely constitute a Chemic Wedding which, if we were lucky and things got completely out of hand at the Chemic Reception, might precipitate a Chemic Orgy, an indecent, riotous explosion of suppressed creative urges, astral couplings of ideas resulting in multiple births of chimerae and radiant monsters.

I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice: If this is what Witch-Women know, I'll stay a girl forever! Hahahahahaha!

Turn The Dial.

2010-11-01T02:53:00.000-07:00

I had a mythologically appropriate post all set up for me to hit "publish" on when I got back from my weekend trip, but you know how tricky concluding statements can be. I just spent the past two nights freezing my ass off in the wilds, so I'm cutting myself a tiny bit of slack. Plus, the widget I've found below is probably much scarier than anything I had planned to write about Samhain. Play with it. Turn the dial. (Just don't click around too much, or you'll all discover just how uncool I am. In which case I'll probably just shout "GRANT MORRISON" at you and run away.)

Make sure your sound is on.

In addition to that, please enjoy the sounds of William S. Burroughs narrating
HÄXAN/Witchcraft Through The Ages. It's the sort of thing you like to hear on a pirated radio station late at night, keeping you riveted to the dashboard. Yes.

Things may get a bit more colorful here soon. I'm still figuring out what that means, but when I do, you'll be the first to know.

Spirit Day Sorcery

2010-10-20T03:48:00.000-07:00

Today is Spirit Day, if you didn't know - a day of remembrance in honor of the recent teen suicides caused by anti-gay bullying. I'll be wearing a purple T-shirt, but I rarely have any reason to venture outside, so I doubt anyone will witness my gesture of solidarity. If you're a basement-dwelling halfling shapeshifter like myself, perhaps you'd like to try something a little more sorcerous to show your support.

Here we have the Spell Against Homophobia, a PGM style working authored by the coolest wizard-priest I know: Professor P. Sufenas Virius Lupus!

That lion-serpent creature is Chnoubis. Think of him as Glykon's rainbow cousin. He and Antinous of Bithynia are gonna bash back. Instructions on how to unleash their 'phobe crushing powers are provided.

Also available is the Prayer Against Persecution, if you prefer to go on the defensive. It's a beautiful address to Antinous, the lover of Hadrian, to shield you from your oppressors. Bless your souls, and stay fabulous.

All Hallow's Challenge

2010-10-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

As the ritual year draws to a close and we begin to prepare for the next, I'd like to make a suggestion or two.

I make no secret of the fact that I reject the popular "Wheel of the Year" narrative where "the Goddess" gives birth to her own husband. Not that there's anything wrong with that. (Nuit and Hadit, I'm looking at you.) It just doesn't have anything to do with bobbing for apples, y'know? Aside from being ahistorical, I just don't see the need to graft on this extraneous mythos when we've already inherited such rich and enjoyable traditions through which to understand the Pagan festivals. I mean, a Dying God is dramatic and all, but I simply prefer the idea I grew up with, about how all the ghosts and demons and fair, white beings are going to come up out of the ground and trick or possibly try to kill us if we don't share our goodies with them. How exciting is that? We may not have Morris dancers here in America, but ritual guising is a living tradition in this country, and we should be grateful for that. If you're a witch or Pagan of the British persuasion, I consider it no less than your religious duty to pass out candy to children in masks.

But even if you're into engaging with an overtly Thelemic (or Frazer-based) interpretation of the seasons, there's no reason to be lazy with our words when writing on the subject. I've read essays from otherwise brilliant Pagans that read like a third-grader's report on how "Thanksgiving is a time for giving thanks." Redundant, unreflective, self-referential. Most discussions of the Sabbats, both online and off, are simply copypasta as far as I'm concerned. Everyone says the same things about "new life" and "returning to the earth." It's like trying to research a subject without enough resources, and all you end up finding is the same statistics on teen pregnancy in 1995, over and over again. When everyone is drawing from a single source of information, it begs some criticism. And it's a simple fact that when you repeat a word or phrase often enough, it begins to lose its meaning. I don't doubt that you yourself, Dear Reader, may have said something about the "veil" going "thin" sometime this month. This terminology is parroted by everyone, and what's more, we usually stop there in our discourse, seemingly oblivious to the stupendous remark we've just made. We've taken a staggering cosmological statement - that there is a world of spirits that can make contact with mortal beings at special moments in time - and reduced it to jargon. Why does this happen?

More often than not, I think the significance of a ritual - by which I mean shared practices that are preserved in tradition - is discovered by engaging in it. Whatever inspired it - a numinous moment, a meaningful gesture - is usually lost to time, and only by re-enacting that experience can we understand its value and purpose. Which is not to say that it's impossible to analyze. Far from it. But I think it's impossible to say anything of substance if we're restricting ourselves to the same eight or nine buzzwords that we associate with the holidays.

So my challenge to you is this. For the next year - staring with this Samhain, of course - whether you are thinking, speaking, writing, musing, rambling, orating or prophesizing about any of the 8 Sabbats, do so without the aid of these words and phrases:

Death
Dark(ness)
Light
Life
Veil between the worlds
Renewal
New
(Re)Birth
Quickening
Seed
Challenges
Taking stock
Union
Phallic
Wax/Wane
Equilibrium
Strength
Mourn
Cycle
Womb

There. You've still got "fertility" if you want. I think that's fair.

Extra credit: No mention of "harvest" or "sacrifice" without some attempt to explain its relevance. Say what you want. Just find a new way to say it, if you can't think of anything new to say.

If all else fails, I suggest having a Dumb Supper. It's a little like a séance, but with food. Yet another American Halloween tradition brought to us by Scots-Irish immigrants, which deserves some tender loving care at this point in history. Invite your family and friends. Turn out the lights. Do everything backwards and fall on your ass. Everyone will have a great time.

Magic for Teens and Trollops

2010-10-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

I was looking over at some of Jack's old books today, and I noticed his copy of The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft, by Katheryn Paulsen. It's a cheap little book, composed of sections from the various grimoires, organized for the diabolical witch - a cunning man's penny dreadful. I thought to myself, as I did the first time I laid eyes on it, that I would have fallen in love with this book as a teenager. (Jack bought it when he was a teenager himself.) It also would have cut my fluffy years in half - something that Crowley's 777 could not do by itself. If I had been able to learn all this stuff in one book scarcely larger than my hand, I would have been way ahead of the pack.

I thought about recommending it to anyone with a persistent niece or nephew with an interest in magic. It's no more dangerous than a Black Sabbath record, and far more educational. There's always some hard ass out there who will make some kind of overture about irresponsible teens, however. To those folks, let me say this: worrying about teens practicing magic is like worrying about teens having sex. They're already doing it. So you may as well give them the knowledge and the tools necessary to do it safely. You don't want them catching anything from those incubi.

(As an aside, it's come to my attention that a number of fundamentalist Christians may have stumbled across this blog while searching for information on "Wiccan nudism." If you are one of those fundamentalists, I realize you may already be clutching your heart in terror from this post. So, uh...sorry. I don't like nudists either.)

Anyhow - if you're a teen who can't make it to your nearest Barns&Noble, here's a fun and simple magical exercise for you.

How to Get Something You Want

Step 1: Emulate your hero.

Step 2: ????

Step 3: PROFIT!

In her book, Practical Solitary Magic, Nancy B. Watson relates the story of how she became enchanted with the character of an Egyptian queen from an old movie. She started swanning around her apartment, pretending to be her, and the people around her began lavishing her with gifts and attention, just like the character in the film.

I don't want to explain the theory behind it too much - it can kill the magic sometimes, and your teenage brain is ripe for fantasy-powered juju. Watson recommends against emulating real people, but I think this can be done safely if you just pick one or two things about this person to imitate. For instance, if your hero is someone like Marilyn Manson, just make some paintings or write a song, instead of taking Ketamine and drinking the blood of women.

(Apologies again, fundamentalists.)

When you are emulating someone that you have lionized in your imagination, they begin to represent all the things you love and aspire to. They become more than just a human being or a history, but a dream, an ideal. Focusing on these emotions will succeed in bringing about those things you wish for. All your beautiful teenage dreams can come true, pure-heart-punk-kid. Try it. The aftermath is secondary.

St. Michael: In Your Personal Space

2010-09-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

The other night I had a dream that I was preparing myself to perform the LBRP in our bedroom, and I turned to my right, where - inches away from my shoulder - there was a tall, glorious angel in white, carrying a lance, and looking down at me with much gravitas, luminescent and severe.

It was kind of intense.

Since he was on my right, I can only assume it was the Archangel Michael. Tonight happens to be Michaelmas Eve, so why don't you go ahead and read this highly informative post on St. Michael from Queen of Pentacles Conjure. There's some useful stuff there for anyone who works with the Saints (or angels), such as his ability to facilitate communication with other spirits, and to aid in healing.

Rather Mercurial traits, wouldn't you say? You know, before the coming of Christianity, many of the hills known as "St. Michael's Mounts" in Britain and Europe were originally sacred to Lugus-Mercury. Curious.

(Sorry, St. Michael...I told myself I was going to get through this without mentioning any of your Pagan syncretisms, but I just couldn't help myself. Luckily, Devi says you're nice to us godless heathens, so I hope you won't be too mad. I still think you're cool.)

Oh, and don't worry, Ceremonial Magicians - I won't be making any Pagan LBRPs to foist upon you, just so you know. It can be a fun intellectual exercise, but some things in these rites just can't be substituted. Plus, I think if anyone tried to metaphysically surround themselves with the Four Cities in a ritual situation, you'd find yourself losing your mind in the middle of a Michael Moorecock novel real fast.

Although, that might be fun...

Hertha I Am Not.

2010-09-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Hahaha, oh! I just ran across one of Gordon's older posts about the horrendous quality of "Pagan Food." It is both hilarious and painfully true. I know it's supposed to be a harvest Sabbat, but I have the domestic sensibilities of an alley cat, so I offer that in lieu of any impressive recipes. (I will say this, though: I don't think the quality of milk has made any improvements since the Middle Ages. I mean, you might have gotten some bacteria from raw milk back then. But today, the blood and puss comes guaranteed!)

In any case, I grow fonder all the time of an idea that he's put forward a few times now: that modern Pagans would do well to "secularize" our holidays a bit to include our non-Pagan friends and family. I don't know if it would work in a Wiccan context, as it's a mystery religion, which, by definition, can't include everyone. But in general, I think we could experiment with moving away from big, heavy-handed rituals and trying things that are more casual and inclusive. When you invite people over on Christmas Eve, you're inviting them to dinner - not to midnight Mass.

Although that might mean someone will ask me to cook something. And no one wants that. Trust me.

Oh, and since I'm a Capricorn who's very concerned about history: we all know that "Mabon" wasn't a holiday before Gerald Gardner decided it was, right? And we all know it wasn't even called "Mabon" until Aidan Kelley flipped open a copy of the Mabinogion and pointed to a word at random, right? And we all know that Aidan Kelley is an oath-breaker who outed his fellow initiates to their employers and lives in hiding from those he betrayed, right?

Right? Okay. Good.

Signs point to yes.

2010-09-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Well...that's the most positive reading I've ever had on any subject ever. I guess when an ancient god appears to you in a dream and tells you to do something, he really isn't kidding around.

(For a suitably Teutonic ambiance, here's a piece from Der Freischutz, "Viktoria, Viktoria, Viktoria!")

Saint Columba: The First Book Pirate

2010-09-19T15:53:00.000-07:00

I've been hesitant to add to the blogosphere bother surrounding Scarlet Imprint's declaration of annoyance with the people who have scanned and digitally distributed their books. But since today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day - and since dear Jack is raising the Jolly Roger over on Plutonica.net - I thought now would be as good a time as any for Catholic Story Time!

In the sixth century, Saint Columcille (Columba, the "dove of the church") was studying under Saint Finian at Clonard Abbey, by the bank of the river Boyne. There, Finian was in the possession of a beautifully illuminated psalter, which Columcille greatly admired, and which Finian guarded jealously under glass. When Columcille asked the abbot for permission to copy it, he was soundly denied.

Like many other men of the cloth in his time, Columcille was a great lover of books. They say he penned over 300 of them by the end of his life. It was the duty of monks to preserve literature, philosophy and history, as well as the Word - if not for the enthusiastic efforts of holy men in these Dark Ages, much of Classical history would have been lost to us forever. (Roman Empire? What Roman Empire!) The copying of scrolls and manuscripts into books was the main preoccupation in a monastery. (The paged codex was still a relatively new technology at the time). It was simply what monks did. And so, not to be deterred from his calling, Columcille resorted to stealing away each night into the room in which the psalter was kept, to copy the tome in secret. Legend says that he wrote by the light of his own glowing hand, enraptured in his task. I don't know about you, but when God himself gives you a magical glow, I think you must be doing something right.

Eventually, Finian discovered what Columcille had done and went to the High King, disputing Columcille's right to keep the copy he had made. It was one of the very first copyright cases in history.

"To every cow her calf, to every book its son-book. Therefore, the copy you made,
O Colum Cille, belongs to Finian," ruled the king. Now, a man of God would probably let this sort of thing go. But then, the king decided to murder one of Columcille's kinsman, Prince Curnan, in violation of the rights of sanctuary. The prince had been gravely injured in a hurling match and had gone to stay with Columcille at the abbey, where he was dragged out and slain by the king's men, for no discernable reason other than "the lulz."

So Saint Columcille pitched the Battle of Cuil Dremne. He gathered his clans against the king, and 3,000 of his enemies fell. While he was at it, Columcille triumphantly reclaimed his copy of the psalter.

If that doesn't strike you as particularly saintly, well, his contemporaries had the same reaction - he was nearly excommunicated. Remorseful for the loss of life that occurred, Columcille made a holy vow, that he would leave Ireland and go forth to bring the Word of God to as many souls as had been taken in the battle that day.

He was determined to give the Good Book a good review.

Horned God Nudism: An Analysis. (NSFW)

2010-09-12T01:16:00.000-07:00

I admit that my PSA from the other day was driven by no small amount of anguish and tears. I'm fairly open about my past as a Wiccan. (Some people pre-judge me for it. Just 'cause I haven't got a sweet mustache like Frater B...) But what I am not always open about is the fact that I came away from the experience with this realization:

Some people enjoy nudity for the wrong reasons. Mental-hospital reasons.

Not so much honey and spice. More like ointment and hair.

I'm not an expert in art psychology, but just take a look at the imagery we're confronted with when we search Google for "Cernunnos." It isn't my intention to denigrate the skill of these artists. They are talented, and clearly capable of intriguing and imaginative work. But for whatever reason, once this ghoul-fleshed puck, the Horned God is involved, the inevitable descent into madness begins. Just see for yourself.

Sasquatch turns his gaze upon the sleeping lovers. Notice the shaft of light gently caressing his dong.

I used to think that the Horned God - by which I mean this hoary amalgamation of mythological figures like Cernunnos, Pan, Lailoken, and Sasquatch - was reaffirming of human sexuality. When I was twelve. Now I listen to community "elders" giggle about anything vaguely penis-shaped and I think I must be in church again. Because as much as these people love The Wicker Man, absolutely all of them would sooner die than let the town floozy deflower their teenage sons. (Disclaimer: I am not the town floozy.) And as much as they might like to imagine their god looking upon their post-coital bliss with murder in his eyes, in real life they would run screaming from this wonky-armed psychopath of the forest. They would scream, and run in circles like plucked chickens.

But this is probably the least disturbing example of Horned God art I've come across. I mean, those humans in the grass look restful and contented. They're probably unaware of the Sasquatch looming behind them, drawn to the scene by the pheromones currently wafting on the air. The next one, however...

Here is an example of an artist who seemed to lose all higher consciousness and reason once he turned his brush to this subject. It seems to occur particularly in the case of exposed flesh. Here we have recognizable trees and horizon, pleasing use of color and space, light and dark contrast, good perspective, solemn atmosphere...and then Princess Battle Slut is squatting in the bushes, either hiding in fear or waiting to strike. Neither option seems good. Maybe she was just interrupted during her lady business. But I honestly don't know if it's her crotch or her butt that we're looking at here. Maybe we're not supposed to know. I just...I don't know. I don't. Know.

Typical fare. Though, somehow the total absence of hip bones and the deathly pallor of his legs speaks to a deeper problem in this artist's soul. "Pallid-flesh + dark body hair" seems to be a popular combination. Actually, he looks a bit like Russell Brand, doesn't he? Teased hair and everything. But you're not going to find any dandy Russell Brandies in your local circle, I can tell you that much. No, even the sexual escapades of that debauched Englishman would never bring him to such a place. To Summerisle, perhaps, but not to this Freudian landscape where people's legs and loins petrify in bogs. Death is everywhere here. Why is this "Lord of Life" sitting in grey silt? What is this conspicuous dead branch in the foreground? Why are there little red bows in his hair? The artist says she painted this near her home, but I'm frankly surprised that it wasn't painted in prison.

Here, the true face of the problem begins to reveal itself. This is no champion of sensuality, bucking off the chains of civilized society and getting in touch with his natural self. That right there is a Mountain Rapist, and don't you try to tell me any different. Hair stringy and unwashed, eyes rolling into the back of his head, mouth hanging open as he fantasizes about carrying off your uncle or your grandmother back to his meth cottage. This is that guy you remember from when you were eight, silently staring at you from the trees and stroking himself, loping away like a starving wolf once somebody's father came to yell at him. Suddenly the Sasquatch from the beginning doesn't look so innocent now, does it?

I hope that by now you've begun to see my point. I don't know about you, but you couldn't pay me enough money to dance in a circle around this guy.

I could go on, but you may well be huddled in a fetal position by now. I don't know if this was in any way informative or helpful, but hopefully, you have a better understanding now of why I feel the way I do. I'm not a prude, honest. I'd just like to get through five minutes of a magical operation without someone drawing attention to their own genitals.

Thank you.

Cernunnos Isn't Naked.

2010-09-09T01:14:00.000-07:00

I really wish this didn't need explaining.

You see that little guy up there on the Gundestrup Cauldron? He's got clothes on, y'know. Striped V-neck shirt, striped britches to match. Studded belt, nice little shoes. And the bling! Not only is he wearing bling - he is holding up more bling for you to marvel at. Gangsta. Clearly this is a man who has taken some time to put himself together.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of Pagans must feel intimidated by his fashion sense. Why else would they deny him his wardrobe?

Maybe they're confusing him with Pan. That would certainly explain why modern artists are always slapping a boner on him, despite the fact that there are absolutely no artifacts in which Cernunnos is even nude to begin with, let alone aroused. (Don't even get me started on the goat legs.)

Or maybe they've bought into the story that he's a god of virility who has something or other to do with the Dagda. That kind of contradicts his equally popular image as a death-dealing hunter who has something or other to do with Herne. But that's okay because the Horned God has a light side and a dark side and some other completely unfounded made-up bullshit that no one cares about!

Maybe "the Horned God" was invented to act as some kind of fetish fuel. Maybe there are just a lot of overgrown children out there who believe that there is no work of art, secular or devotional, that could not be improved by the addition of some conspicuous male genitals. Maybe they're out to mentally and emotionally scar me forever. Maybe "Cernunnos/RamHornedSnake" is their OTP. Maybe they should all just go worship Freyr's proud erection and leave me the hell alone.

Hera, give me strength.

Wizard Books, Dear Readers.

2010-09-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

So lately I've been thinking that we should be expanding our horizons when it comes to grimoires. There's more out there than just the greats. Not to say that angel magic and demon taming aren't serious business - anything that potentially involves the donning of a lion-skin belt must be serious business - but I think too many occultists are missing out on stuff like, I dunno...the Galdrabók. Are you prepared to mix magical ink that requires blood from the heart of a living raven and both your nipples? Are you prepared to invoke the names of Thor and Satan at the same time? This stuff is pure wizard.

Or stuff like the enigmatic diagrams of Byrhtferth, a 10th century Anglo-Saxon monk. (Detail above.) Not that we necessarily know what the hell any of it means, but anything that involves futhark, ogham, Latin ciphers and sigils apparently of the author's own making should be instantly fascinating to any magician. At least, it's instantly fascinating to me. A Hermetic/numerological tome that weaves together at least three different linguistic systems? Pure wizard. I know we like to segregate ourselves according to our distinct "traditions," but why I've never heard anything of this material from the "occult community" before is beyond me. (For the record, it was my pal Erynn Rowan Laurie who exposed me to this. Leave it to a poet.)

Hell, I'd be happy if Anna Riva's cheap handbooks on hoodoo and witchcraft got some more love. (You know those Anna Riva oils you see in shops? Same woman.) They're certainly much more straightforward and informative than Bristle-Moon Seaspray's latest book on lubing up your candles with the oils you bought from Anna Riva. What, no whimsical nonsense or embarrassing moral proclamations? Brilliant!

I'm just beginning to see that the history of occult literature is more variant and surprising than many of us tend to assume, and that's something I'm very keen to explore.

Extra Credit: Wizard People, Dear Readers.

Memeplex: Incubus

2010-08-23T03:23:00.000-07:00

"One of the most notorious historical instances of a woman tutored by her incubus was that of Magdalena de la Cruz, of the convent of Santa Isabel de los Angeles, of Cordova, which she entered when seventeen years old, in 1504. For thirty-nine years she successfully exhibited a series of phenomena, trances, visions, prophecies, which deluded well-nigh all of Spain, and caused her to be regarded with the utmost veneration by the highest and the lowest in the land. Some, however, were not deceived. St. Ignatius Loyola entirely distrusted these exterior marvels, and rebuked one of her followers with great severity. Blessed Juan de Avila, one of the directors of St. Teresa, and a profound master of the mystical life, refused to believe in the heavenly origin of these ecstasies and soothsayings. In 1543 Magdalena fell dangerously ill, and was given over by the physicians. Believing that she lay on her death-bed, the sick woman, with floods of tears, made a full and ample confession of her imposture, and acknowledged that almost from the first she had acted under the influence and by the help of two evil spirits, Balban and Patorrio. These incubi were not only her paramours, but had taught her all kinds of juggling sleights and instructed her in seeming prophecies and visions of future events. The tale was a long and terrible one. Magdalena recovered, and the ecclesiastical authorities began an examination into these extraordinary happenings. A vast number of witnesses were heard, so that the process did not conclude until 2 May, 1546, when judgement was pronounced. [...] Thus Baxter, in his Historical Discourse of Apparitions and Witches, 1691, p 224, speaks of 'the Witch Magdalen Crucia, who got the Reputation of a Saint...and confessed how from twelve years old the Devil had lain with her thirty years.'"
-Montague Summers, Witchcraft and Black Magic






So, filled with longing and unease,
Tamara would sit long and gaze
Engrossed in lonely meditation
All day, and sigh with expectation
Beside her window, staring out....
That he would come she had no doubt,
Why else then were her dreams so clear?
Why else then used he to appear
With eyes so infinitely sad
And speech so marvellously tender?
For many days on end she had
Been strangely moved - she knew not why....
She called the good saints to defend her
But in her heart she called on him;
And always, when the day grew dim,
Weary with staring she would lie
Down on her bed and try to sleep:
The pillow burnt her flaming cheek
Fear stifled her, she gasped for breath,
Then, from her pallet she would leap
With heaving shoulders, fevered breast
Trembling, a mist before her sight,
Her arms outstretched to clasp the night,
The kisses melting on her lips...

[...]










 I am he to whom you barkened
In the stillness of the night,
He whose thought your mind has darkened,
He whose sadness you have felt,
Whose image haunts your waking sight,
Whose name the end of hope has spelt
To every soul with whom I treat.
I am he no man may love,
A scourge to all my mortal slaves,
The ill in nature. Enemy
To Heaven and all the powers above.
Lord of knowledge, liberty.
And, as you see, I'm at your feet.

-Mikhail Lermontov, "The Demon."


["Night Visit," by Mark Ryden; "Dreamtime for Toby," by Gary Baseman; "Demon and Tamara," by Mikhail Vrubel]

Spare at the Cuming Museum

2010-08-21T21:11:00.000-07:00

For you folks across the pond, London's Cuming Museum will be having an exhibition of Austin Spare's work this September. For those of you with disposable income, this illustrated monograph is being released to accompany the event.

(All right, I've gotta say it: "Cockney Visionary?" Really? Isn't that kind of like saying "Southie Guru?")

Moonlight Densetsu

2010-08-19T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm sure some of you are sick of this particular obsession of mine - the Sailor Moon obsession, that is - but until Faust figures out Wordpress some more, I'm stuck here twiddling my thumbs and listening to Japanese pop music from 1992. I have serious topics up my sleeve, I promise!

Some of you may remember my first post on "magical girls." Having had Sailor Moon on the mind recently, I realized that the most basic premise of the show is this: a girl is visited by black cat, who speaks to her, and grants her powers and magical objects. Gee, that sounds awfully...familiar. (See what I did there?)

Then I happened to come across some of the original openings for the show, which I had never seen in the English adaptations. The first thing I was struck by was that every opening began with a night sky, and the sound of a clock tower. It strikes three.

I don't think most of this stuff is intentional. But judging by these sequences, it shouldn't be surprising that witchcraft motifs should show up in a series that is basically about teenage battle-mages. And look: her boyfriend - who begins as a mysterious "man in black" at the beginning of the series - rides across the night sky on a flying horse.

Bit of a stretch? Maybe. But you can take it further. Notice how Sailor Moon raises her wand to the sky, draws power into it, and takes on the aspect of the Moon Princess. (That is a plot point, not my own interpretation.) Conscious references to Greek mythology (especially the zodiac) are present in the show - such as the magical cats being named Luna, Artemis and Diana, and Sailor Moon's love interest being Endymion himself, essentially.

I kept trying to talk myself out of this, but the more I watched, the more intrigued I became. Like with this next opening: watch Sailor Moon descend into darkness, surrounded by clocks. Very "Alice," right? Then the central emblem from the Wheel of Fortune card keeps appearing. I don't believe there's any context for that in the show.

Usagi flies naked through the air around the symbol, and is shown once again as the Moon Princess. Notice how the bow of her dress is clearly reminiscent of fairy wings. The Wheel of Fortune appears a second time at the end after her consort approaches her.

And here's the one where they ascend from some Classical ruin and fly into the air towards the moon. Sailor Moon rises naked from a magical golden cup. (Yes, it's supposed to be the Holy Grail.) Then a procession of sparkling butterflies (Sailor Moon among them, as a fairy) arcs across the sky. By now, with all wand waving, the flying, the Wheel of Fortun(a), the fairy wings and the Grail, she's starting to look more and more like Diana of the Witches. (If that doesn't make sense, well...I'll have to write another entry about that, then.)

Not enough for you? Then how about this one, where, as we peer through bracken and thorns, the clock chimes and the girls all follow after a magic horse into the air - all of them naked. Oh, and then we see Sailor Moon's boyfriend flying across the moon in his tux like he's motherfucking Dracula.

And have you been noticing the little girl with the pink hair in these openings? That's Sailor Moon's daughter, Sailor Chibi Moon. (She's from the future. It's complicated.) I could probably devote a whole page just to her and her magical tools. Like the Key of Space and Time, or the floating cat-head-ball that can change into any shape at her command, and the bell she uses to call upon her helpful spirit - the aforementioned magic horse. In this season, Chibi Moon is visited by this spirit, who helps her become more powerful and gives her tools (such as the bell) and even aids in her magical battles. Not only that, but he's a sort of "celestial husband" to her as well; he appears later as a handsome young prince named Helios, and he even kisses her twice by the end of the season. (I know what you're thinking. But the first one was a magic kiss, and for the second one, he was a horse. So...it's okay.)

So, there we are. The Sailor Senshi: A coven of witches in futuristic school uniforms.

Fighting evil by moonlight.

2010-08-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

So I doodled this in inauguration of my brand new digital tablet last night...

...and then my buddy P. Sufenas informed me that today is Natalis Dianae, the feast day of Diana. On top of it being Friday the 13th. Damn, I'd better do something witchy tonight. Can't let opportunities like this go to waste.

I'm too lazy to do accent marks today.

2010-08-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

Just today I discovered a fantastic and well-informed article on Lugh and Lughnasadh that goes over the relevant myths much more comprehensively than I did in my last post.

I will point out that while they mention that Fomorian monsters were occasionally possessed of only one eye, one arm and one leg, the author fails to mention that this is a motif that occurs repeatedly in Irish myth. Lugh himself strikes a posture in which he stands on one leg, with one arm behind his back, and covering one eye with the other hand, as he speaks his curse against the Fomorians:

Havoc its strain of battles shared death there. In this a battle after foreigners broke (our) shared settlement by destruction of it. They will be defeated by hosts. O Fairy-hosts, land of men on guard, birds of prey rain down (on them), men without choice. Be hindered (the) foreigners. Another (the other) company fears, another company listens, they are very terribly in torment, dark (sad) men (are they). Roaring brightly ninefold are we! Hurrah and Woe! Leftward! O you my beautiful ones! Sacred will be the sustenance after cloud and flowers through its powerful skills of wizards. My battle will not dwindle until (its) end. Not cowardly my request with (their) encountering me with a land of rushes laid waste by fire death's form established, death on us given birth. Before (the presence of) the Sídhe with each of them, before Ogma I satisfy, before the sky and the earth and the sea, before the sun and the moon and the stars. O Band of warriors my band here to you. My hosts here of great hosts sea-full (of) mighty sea-spray (boiling) smelted golden powerful, conceived, may it be sought upon the field of battle. Joint death its strain. Havoc its strain.

-a translation by Seán Ó Tuathail in The Excellence of Ancient Word.. Badass, right? Or as Donna would say, "Real wizard."

I was also intrigued by this remark from the author: "In modern times, he has been known to take an interest in computing and the internet." This is the only bit of "Unverified Personal Gnosis" mentioned in the piece, but it's something I happen to have observed myself. It's nice to be reassured of one's sanity.

Remember, technically there's four more days of Lughnasadh left. Play some sports. Or, if you're a nerd, play some online chess. Lugh will be pleased either way!

So I fibbed.

2010-08-08T20:03:00.000-07:00

A couple of entries ago I promised artwork within 48 hours. We know how that turned out!

But I have this one thing I've been working on.

Am I just like Aubrey Beardsley yet? (The answer is no, because I fucked up on the leftside cheekbone.)

That's Antinous of Bythnia, the lover of Emporer Hadrian. Apotheosized. Red lotuses were his flower. Your typical puer aeternus, but gay-friendly. Drawn for my friend, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus.

I try not to be one of those artists who never has anything to show for their supposed talent. Yes, I have obstacles like neurosis and empty pockets to deal with, but these really aren't excuses. I should be doing a lot more with what I have.

In that spirit, you can find the poet Julia Balbilla after the jump.

More mistakes in this one. I was plagued by an unsteady hand. But I feel better when I pretend that it's the 1970s, so I'm allowed to draw wonky.

Lúgh: Why Not?

2010-08-02T02:24:00.000-07:00

Since today was the height of Lúghnasadh - historically it was celebrated for fifteen days before and after August 1st, so there's no reason not to prolong your merrymaking - I thought I'd take a moment to share a few thoughts concerning the man of the day.

And just as a note: Searching Google for images of Lugh results in hilarity. Not as much as when you search for Cernunnos. But still.

Both among Reconstructionists and the more casual Celtic Pagan types, Brigid/Bride is probably the most popular deity when it comes to Irish and Scottish business. Which makes sense; aside from the fact that she's a very approachable lady, historically, her cult has been more than enduring. After that, the Morrigan probably comes in at a close second. Another strong woman for the goddess-oriented ladies to look up to, as well as the folks in the armed forces. (Though I hope any civilian who worships the Morrigan is trained in some kind of martial skill, or I can't imagine the relationship would be very reciprocal.)

Then you get a couple of the fellas - Manannan, and sometimes the Dagda. Though it seems that the latter only gets the occasional name drop in your average eclectic ritual, and in all likelihood, that's solely due to his giant club. (Har har twinkle har.) Among those who actually take the time to learn anything about Celtic legend, Manannan is a surprisingly popular individual. I guess "Magical Sea King" is a type of character that sticks in one's mind, especially when you're interested in an island culture. And many Celtic Recons today happen to live in coastal areas, so again, it makes some sense.

But you know who's name I rarely see come up outside of a community ritual in June? Lúgh. And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Lúghnasadh is said to be a festival the god himself founded to honor of the memory of his foster mother, Tailtiu, at the hill where she was buried. She died after having single-handedly cleared the plains of Ireland for farming. He instituted similar festivals in other areas in memory of women with similarly agrarian powers, such as the witch Carman, who threatened to destroy all the fruit in the countryside. Her grave was dug by Bres the Beautiful, the Fomorian tyrant from whom Lugh had gained the secrets of agriculture. All in all, it makes for a convenient picture of a Summer King who rules over the crops. But to stop there in his characterization would be ill-considered and ill-informed.

As Alexei Kondratiev tells us in The Many-Gifted Lord, "Of all the divinities known to have been worshipped in the Celtic world, the god whom the Continental Celts called Lugus and the Irish called Lúgh is one of the best documented and best understood. The sheer volume and widespread range of evidence related to him testifies to the importance of this god in Celtic tradition." Caesar himself commented on the eminence of this deity among the Celtic nations, though "Mercury" was the only name he and his countrymen could give to him. "Well over 400 dedications to 'Mercury' or one of his common native titles have been found: his importance in Gaul and Britain far exceeded anything that the role of Mercury in Roman religion could have warranted. Clearly 'Mercury' was the new, 'modern' disguise of Lugus, and because the two names were seen to be precisely equivalent the native one was virtually never used in the Latin of official inscriptions."

Looking at Lúgh's central myths, an identification with Mercury seems natural. He is, after all, Samildánach, master of every skill and trade. Building, medicine, sorcery, music - he did it all. (He could even cast Sleep and Remove Fear.) And, when one reads between the lines and pays attention to the oral folk traditions surrounding him, a certain cheeky, tricksy personality emerges that isn't immediately apparent in the medieval texts. He is not a Herculean divinity. He is a figure who, though he possesses great strength, wins the day through cunning, swiftness and magic, rather than brute force. His major act of heroism was defeating a terrible giant with only a sling. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? (...Did I mention that the giant had a lazer?)

All this, I would think, makes him far more relevant to your average city Pagan, whether you're the type who crafts his own armor on the weekend or not. Rather than being some ambiguous sun god who's only concerned with "quickening the fields" (his supposed solar attributes have long been debunked, and in the Irish tradition it seems that strategic shagging was more about winning wars than making the flowers grow anyway), he served as the patron of just about every function one could have in society, and his festival reflected that. "In modern times

this agricultural core of the festival is all that has survived, but formerly, when Celtic lands were under native rulers, Lúghnasadh was the occasion of major assemblies where legal matters were settled, political problems were discussed, craftsmen, artists and entertainers got a chance to show off their talents, and sporting events brought scattered communities together." I put that in bold for a reason. Modern Pagans sometimes suffer from this notion that people in Olden Times (whether they mean the Bronze, Iron, Dark or Middle ages is unclear) were devoid of any culture or sophistication and just spent all their time fucking in the hay. No. They had parties and concerts and ball games and important meetings and court settlements just like we do. They had historians, artists and poets, lawyers and judges. It was more than just pig farmers. (Though even the pig farmers were capable of wizardry in Irish legend. I theorize that the pigs were the source of their power.)

But I digress. The point I would like to make is that His Majesty is a swashbuckling jack-of-all-trades, and I'm baffled as to why he isn't more popular. For a subculture that's so crazy about ravens, you'd think folks to gravitate to him right away. I invite you to take a look at Kondratiev's essay, hit Ctrl+F and search for "raven." The results are intriguing. This, along with his likely function as a god of oaths, has invited more than one comparison with Odin. Though...did I mention that Lugus was represented by the mistletoe?

Hell, he's even got a little bit of Thor thrown in. In oral traditions, L

úgh defeats Balor by casting his emblematic spear into the giant's eye, rather than a slingstone. Kondratiev contends that this paints him as a god of thunder. "Lúghnasadh is a day on which thunderstorms with plentiful rain are expected and welcomed. They provide a respite from the fierce summer heat that endangers the crops and encourages insect pests. The pitiless sun is Balor's scorching eye, and the spear of Lúgh is needed to tame its power. Lúgh is called Lonnbeimnech ('fierce striker') as well as Lámhfhada. Celtic 'Mercury' is sometimes shown not only with his spear but with the easily recognizable Indo-European thunder-hammer. In Mayo the Lúghnasadh thunderstorms where seen as the battle between Lúgh and Balor: 'Tá gaoth Logha Lámhfhada ag eiteall anocht san aer. 'Seadh, agus drithleogaí a athar. Balor Béimeann an t-athair' ('The wind of Lúgh Long-arm is flying in the air tonight. Yes, and the sparks of his father [sic]. Balor Béimeann is the father'). From these and other examples it is abundantly clear that Lugus has his domain in storm rather than in sunlight, and that if his name has any relation to 'light' it more properly means 'lightning-flash' (as in Breton luc'h and Cornish lughes). This is the principal function of his invincible spear."

As in the Welsh myth of Pwyll and his battle against Hafgan, "Summer White," it seems that solar figures, on the rare occasion they do turn up, are not often the "good guys" in Celtic folklore. So if you've spent your life imagining L

úgh as some kind of sunny Jesus figure, rest assured that this isn't necessary. If you've spent your life assuming that there's nothing more to him than corn, rest assured that this isn't true.

He's a young sorcerer with a magic bag, standing on one foot at the crossroads. He could tear the roof off your house, but he'll sweet talk his way in. He can make anything, and sell it too. He gives power and he takes it away. Victory is his bride. The spear he wields thirsts for blood, and his harp sings a stately song. He'll make you a promise. A phantom frenzy.

Why I loved Anne Rice.

2010-07-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

It was during the regular hours when all the good Irish and German Catholics could be counted upon to clear their consciences before Mass and Communion on Sunday.

And so he was seated in the ornate wooden house of the confessional in his narrow chair behind a green serge curtain, listening in alternation to the penitents who came to kneel in the small cells to the left and the right of him. These voices and sins he could have heard in Boston or New York City, so similar the accents, the worries, the ideas.

"Three Hail Marys," he would prescribe, or "Three Our Fathers" but seldom more than that to these laboring men and good housewives who came to confess routine peccadillos.

Then a child's voice had caught him off guard, coming rapid and crisp through the dark dusty grille – eloquent of intelligence and precocity. He had not recognized it. After all, Deirdre Mayfair had not spoken one word before in his presence.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was weeks and weeks ago. Father, help me please. I cannot fight the devil. I try and I always fail. And I'm going to go to hell for it."

What was this, more of Sister Bridget Marie's influence? But before he could speak, the child went on and he knew that it was Deirdre.

"I didn't tell the devil to go away when he brought the flowers. I wanted to and I know that I should have done it, and Aunt Carl is really, really angry with me. But Father, he only wanted to make us happy. I swear to you, Father, he's never mean to me. And he cries if I don't look at him or listen to him. I didn't know he'd bring the flowers from the altar! Sometimes he does very foolish things like that, Father, things like a little child would do, with even less sense than that. But he doesn't mean to hurt anyone."

"Now, wait a minute, darling, what makes you think the devil himself would trouble a little girl? Don't you want to tell me what really happened?"

"Father, he's not like the Bible says. I swear it. He's not ugly. He's tall and beautiful. Just like a real man. And he doesn't tell lies. He does nice things, always. When I'm afraid he comes and sits by me on the bed and kisses me. He really does. And he frightens away people who try to hurt me!"

"Then why do you say he's the devil, child? Wouldn't it be better to say he's a made-up friend, someone to be with so you'll never be lonely?"

"No, Father, he's the devil." So definite she sounded. "He's not real, and he's not made up either." The little voice had become sad, tired. A little woman in a child's guise struggling with an immense burden, almost in despair. "I know he's there when no one else does, and then I look and look and then everyone can see him!" The voice broke. "Father, I try not to look. I say Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and I try not to look. I know it's a mortal sin. But he's so sad and he cries without making a sound and I can hear him."

"Now, child, have you talked to your Aunt Carl about this?" His voice was calm, but in fact the child's detailed account had begun to alarm him. This was beyond "excess of imagination" or any such excess he'd ever known.

"Father, she knows all about him. All my aunts do. They call him the man, but Aunt Carl says he's really the devil. She's the one who says it's a sin, like touching yourself between the legs, like having dirty thoughts. Like when he kisses me and makes me feel chills and things. She says it's filth to look at the man and let him come under the covers. She says he can kill me. My mother saw him too all her life and that's why she died and went to heaven to get away from him."

Father Mattingly was aghast. So you can never shock a priest in the confessional, was that the old saying?

"And my mother's mother saw him too," the child went on, the voice rushing, straining. "And she was really, really bad, he made her bad, and she died on account of him. But she went to hell probably, instead of heaven, and I might too."

"Now, wait a minute, child. Who told you this!"

"My Aunt Carl, Father," the child insisted. "She doesn't want me to go to hell like Stella. She told me to pray and drive him away, that I could do it if I only tried, if I said the rosary and didn't look at him. But Father, she gets so angry with me for letting him come –" The child stopped. She was crying, though obviously trying to muffle her cries. "And Aunt Millie is so afraid. And Aunt Nancy won't look at me. Aunt Nancy says that in our family, once you've seen the man, you're as good as done for."

Father Mattingly was too shocked to speak. Quickly he cleared his throat. "You mean your aunts say this thing is real-"

"They've always known about him, Father. And anyone can see him when I let him get strong enough. It's true, Father. Anyone. But you see, I have to make him come. It's not a mortal sin for other people to see him because it's my fault. My fault. He couldn't be seen if I didn't let it happen. And Father, I just, I just don't understand how the devil could be so kind to me, and could cry so hard when he's sad and wants so badly just to be near me –" The voice broke off into low sobs.

"Don't cry, Deirdre!" he'd said, firmly. But this was in-conceivable! That sensible, "modern" woman in her tailored suit telling a child this superstition? And what about the others, for the love of God? Why, they made the likes of Sister Bridget Marie look like Sigmund Freud himself. He tried to see Deirdre through the dim grille. Was she wiping her eyes with her hands?

The crisp little voice went on suddenly in an anguished rush.

"Aunt Carl says it's a mortal sin even to think of him or think of his name. It makes him come immediately, if you say his name! But Father, he stands right beside me when she's talking and he says she's lying, and Father, I know it's terrible to say it, but she is lying sometimes. I know it, even when he's being quiet. But the worst part is when he comes through and scares her. And she threatens him! She says if he doesn't leave me alone she'll hurt me!" Her voice broke again, the cries barely audible. So small she seemed, so helpless! "But all the time, Father, even when I'm all alone, or even at Mass with everybody there, I know he's right beside me. I can feel him. I can hear him crying and it makes me cry, too."

"Child, now think carefully before you answer. Did your Aunt Carl actually say she saw this thing?"

"Oh, yes, Father." So weary! Didn't he believe her? That's what she was begging him to do.

"I'm trying to understand, darling. I want so to understand, but you must help me. Are you certain that your Aunt Carl said she saw him with her own eyes?"

"Father, she saw him when I was a baby and didn't even know I could make him come. She saw him the day my mother died. He was rocking my cradle. And when my grand-mother Stella was a little girl, he'd come behind her to the supper table. Father, I'll tell you a terrible secret thing. There's a picture in our house of my mother, and he's in the picture, standing beside her. I know about the picture because he got it and gave it to me, though they had it hidden away. He opened the dresser drawer without even touching it, and then he put the picture in my hand. He does things like that when he's really strong, when I've been with him a long time and been thinking about him all day. That's when everybody knows he's in the house, and Aunt Nancy meets Aunt Carl at the door and whispers, "The man is here. I just saw him." And then Aunt Carl gets so mad. It's all my fault, Father! And I'm scared I can't stop him. And they're all so upset!"

Her sobs had gotten louder, echoing against the wooden walls of the little cell. Surely they could hear her outside in the church itself.

And what was he to say to her? His temper was boiling. What craziness went on with these women? Was there no one with a particle of sense in the whole family who could get a psychiatrist to help this girl?

"Darling, listen to me. I want your permission to speak of these things outside the confessional to your Aunt Carl. Will you give me that permission?"

"Oh, no Father, please, you mustn't!"

"Child, I won't, not without your permission. But I tell you, I need to speak to your Aunt Carl about these things. Deirdre, she and I can drive away this thing together."

"Father, she'll never forgive me for telling. Never. It's a mortal sin to ever tell. Aunt Nancy would never forgive me. Even Aunt Millie would be angry. Father, you can't tell her I told you about him!" She was becoming hysterical.

"I can wipe that mortal sin away, child," he'd explained, "I can give you absolution. From that moment on, your soul is as white as snow, Deirdre. Trust in me, Deirdre. Give me permission to talk to her."

For a tense moment the crying was his only answer. Then, even before he heard her turn the knob of the little wooden door, he knew he'd lost her. Within seconds, he heard her steps running fast down the aisle away from him.

He had said the wrong thing, made the wrong judgment! And now there was nothing he could do, bound as he was by the seal of the confessional. And this secret had come to him from a troubled child who was not even old enough to commit a mortal sin, or benefit from the sacrament she'd been seeking.

He never forgot that moment, sitting helpless, hearing those steps echoing in the vestibule of the church, the closeness and the heat of the confessional suffocating him. Dear God, what was he going to do?

But the torture had only begun for Father Mattingly.

-an excerpt from The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice.

I always knew she'd come back. At least, I always hoped. Her writing meant so much to me when I was a girl - sometimes I felt as if there was no one else on this earth who understood. In accordance with a fan/creator relationship of such fervor, it actually hurt me when she went back to Catholicism. I felt like she'd left me behind.

But her Catholicism was something she had wrestled with all her life, whereas I extricated myself from it by the time I was eleven...not even old enough to commit a mortal sin, or benefit from the sacrament I had sought. I sometimes make a bit much of my Catholic upbringing, to tell the truth. For all its lasting psychological consequences, I know less about the religion now than your average 14 year old off to Confirmation.

In any case, I'm grateful, on a personal level, that she never abandoned what I had perceived to be her ideals. And I'm glad for her, if she can have a relationship with Christ without abandoning those ideals. As for me, well...it's like what they say in The Witching Hour:

"Once you've seen the man, you're done for."

Fine.

2010-07-12T17:35:00.000-07:00

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Fine. I'll read some H.P. Lovecraft already! Are you happy?

Keltoi

2010-07-12T03:09:00.000-07:00

I don't imagine anyone's noticed, but I've re-worked a couple of my tags; posts that were once marked as "Irish Myth" are now marked as "Goidelic," and posts that were once marked as "Welsh Myth" are now labeled as "Bythonic." I may switch them back at some point - in fact, I probably will - but I've been agonizing lately over finding labels that were slightly more broad than "Irish" and "Welsh," but still more specific than our old friend, "Celtic." Or, as some might like to call it, "the other C-word." (You're welcome.)

Not everyone realizes this, but "Celtic" is a word that gets abused about as often as "shamanic" does. (Sometimes, they are even abused in tandem.) Aside from the fact that many people use it to describe things that are hardly Celtic at all (Wicca, for example), there are people who contend that the very label is offensively generalizing.

As a "Latino" person, I feel I can understand this issue on a certain level.

YOU TELL 'EM.

While I wouldn't say that it's exactly incorrect to refer to a "Latino Race," it is imprecise, and for the most part, unhelpful. While the nations of Latin America are all united by related (but not always identical) languages, customs and values, to refer to us all by a single name glosses over the multitude of cultures and histories that make up each nation. However, while I'm as adamant as any other Latino person is about the fact that my culture is distinct from all the other Spanish-speaking countries, it's still easy for me to see the cultural legacies that have contributed to all of them. So I've never strongly objected to "Latino" as a general descriptor, when a general descriptor is needed.

I imagine there are people in Britain and Ireland who feel similarly about the C-word. (No, the other C-word!) But at the same time, the problem remains of having uninformed outsiders assume that you're "all the same." A problem I am all too familiar with. And for a grouping of islands that has had the kind of conflicted, bloody history that the British Isles have had, that's especially inappropriate. Too many American Pagans remain uninformed about the countries they claim a spiritual legacy from, to say nothing of pre-Christian Celtic traditions.

I'm going to make a confession: the first book on the occult I ever bought was D.J. Conway's Celtic Magick. I was 11, okay? It's not the most horrible source on the Insular Celts in the world. (That source is probably a purple website somewhere.) But it's just one of the many unfortunate texts out there that perpetuates the idea that Wiccan tradition has anything to do with the ancient Celts. I am far from an expert, but through expending only a small amount of effort and critical thinking, I can confidently tell you this.

I'm going to tell you everything that's Celtic about Wicca. Are you ready?

1.) Cernunnos.
2.) The Greater Sabbats.

That's it. Not the maypole (Germanic), not the Four Quarters (Hermetic), not the Wheel of the Year narrative (Thelemic!) and not the Goddess (I couldn't even begin to tell you.) Not anything else. Even though many Wiccans maintain a basic understanding of how the four "fire festivals" were historically celebrated, this is not what happens in circle. Beyond the concept of Samhain as a liminal period, and a general fixation on the number three, Wiccan practice, as it's been handed down, has virtually nothing to do with the ancient Celts. I hate to seem combative about this, but I've met intelligent people who refuse to accept this. There's nothing wrong with being Wiccan and having an interest in Celtic Paganism - that's me, for starters - but if your interest is genuine, then the least you can do is pick up a book or spend an hour on Google. There are courageous nerds who will show you the way.

I don't imagine many of the people who are reading actually needed that speech, but there you are. Now...the fairy lore that went on to wed itself to the narratives of historical witchcraft may be another story entirely. But that's a post for another day.

As an aside: In my effort to gain a basic grasp of the Irish language, I came upon a couple of very helpful videos by a young girl who's in love with Gerard Butler. I'd hoped for more - I liked the idea of learning a language from a petulant native youth - but unfortunately, she ended up receiving a steady stream of hatemail quite soon after her first lesson. Why? Because she had the nerve to mock Americans and other foreigners who attempt to (mis)appropriate her national identity. I guess they missed the part where she generously offers to teach these outsiders Irish in the same breath. Poor dear.

Memeplex: Jupiter

2010-07-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

[Shown: Taranis; Sucellus; modern sculpture of the Cauldron of Dagda in Tralee Town Park by Paula O'Sullivan.]

So quotable.

2010-06-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

"I am dominated by one thing: an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art." -Gustave Moreau.

*"Jason," 1865

The Book Game

2010-06-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

So, Gordon over at Runesoup has proposed a little exercise. How would you introduce someone to magic using only books?

The Rules:

Fiction is allowed. [Good!]
You have to specify what brand of magician you want to build beforehand. [A witch! A witch!]
You can’t tell the subject this. [All right, my imaginary victim will know nothing.]
You must include books from at least three disciplines. [I've got psychology and paranormal studies in there, so I think I'm good.]
It’s only books. No guru teaching, no magical training. Just books. (It’s a book game.) Presume they will do the exact same amount of exercises out of the books that you did.
The subject goes into the house without any belief in magic. They are a smug, modern agnostic.
A maximum of ten titles. Trilogies count as three books.

It's meant to give one some thought as to one's major influences and values as a sorcerer or magician. Me, I started my education in magic when I was 11. And I read a lot of drivel, I really did. Those books formed me as much as the good ones I read later on, but I'd never recommend them unless somebody wanted to follow in my footsteps exactly - something else I don't recommend - or if somebody wanted to know why I'm so obsessed with elf sex. (The answer is Edain McCoy.)

But if I really did have someone all to myself in a lake house for a month, who had to read anything I told them to...I think my list would look something like this.

1. Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell by Susanna Clarke. (fiction)

As Clarke's protagonists might be inclined to say, this is a book about magic, not a book of magic. But, in lieu of handing someone enough books on British folklore and legend to fill an entire room, I would simply "shew" them this brick of narrative brilliance. They'll come away with a nearly perfect understanding of the spirit of such tales, and the problems they may encounter with medieval grimoires.

2. The Interpretation of Fairy Tales by Marie Louis-Von Franz. (psychology/non-fiction)

This book opens with an intriguing exploration of how fairy tales are sometimes born: through singular, extraordinary occurrences - encounters with magic. It then proceeds to be awesome all the way to the end. Fairy tales are a language every witch should learn to speak.

3. Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld by Patrick Harpur. (non-fiction)

Along the same lines as works such as Vallee's Passport to Magonia or Keel's Mothman Prophecies, this book had a huge impact on me in my teens. Witchcraft is an act of congress with eidolons, and that's what this text is about.

4. The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis. (fiction)

This book taught me how to astral project as a kid. No lie. It also taught me that a witch doesn't wear any sleeves, and I still hold to that policy today. I'm no hippie crusader for ritual nudity, but I think you should go bare armed if possible.

5. Postmodern Magic by Patrick Dunn. (non-fiction)
It was really a toss-up between this and Frater U.D.'s High Magick, which, despite the title, is actually very postmodern. Witchcraft and cunning craft have always borrowed from the grimoires, and no witch should be without those tools in her arsenal. But what sets witchcraft apart from high magick is its ability to improvise, and to fascinate. Dunn's book focuses on these skills very nicely, and many of the practices he illustrates are very useful to the witch. In addition to that, I've always found the magical theories of the "postmodern" magicians extremely accessible, even to people who are not metaphysically inclined, and texts in this sort of tradition are always the ones I'll suggest to total beginners. (Plus, the exercises are fun!)

6. Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by Charles Godfrey Leland. ("folklore"/non-/fiction?!)

Yes, it's pretty standard. Can't get away from it. But most of the Wiccish crowd doesn't seem to actually understand what's in this book, and if they do, they nervously ignore it. It is the work of a Luciferian anarchist, and it forms the mythological complex most modern witchcraft traditions have been founded on. Anybody I indoctrinate needs to be comfortable with that.

7. Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson. (non-fiction)

Paul Huson is a man who understands what's in Aradia. He understands a lot of things - things that most Wiccans, even the traditional ones, unfortunately don't. You won't find anything in here about the Rede or the Sabbats, or see mention of the "Lord and Lady" in this book. (And that's because he actually knows their names.) When it comes to witchcraft, this is the practical guide I would recommend before any other. You really wanna learn about Wicca? Don't read the Farrars. Read Huson.

8, 9, 10. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman. (fiction)

To my knowledge, nothing in the realm of non-fiction can really "teach you" about cultivating a relationship with a familiar or daemon without unfairly cribbing notes from Native American traditions. If witchcraft has anything to do with shamanism, then it has far more to do with the Lapplanders than with the Hopi. Philip Pullman gets that. (He also gets that witches don't wear sleeves. So I give him a gold star for that.) This is the one aspect of my personal practice that is completely self-taught, and these are the only texts I've encountered - beyond the confessions of the accused - that reflect at all my experience.

The heroes of this series are a liar (a girl named Lyra) and a murderer (a boy named Will). I don't know if there's anything I can say beyond that which could convey how truly deviant - socially and spiritually deviant! - this story is. Harry Potter won't teach you how to become a witch, but these books will. Many people - including, and especially, women - come to witchcraft because they chose to reject Christianity. They are not always articulate about their reasons. Pullman, however, gives an excellent one: Eve was a witch, and she heeded the counsel of her familiar.

Also? It's pretty steampunk. So there's that.

...And that's ten. Any ongoing curriculum would surely include works by Ronald Hutton. Being a Capricorn, history is very important to me. Carlo Ginzburg as well.

Why no Neil Gaiman? Was I not, once, a rabid Neil Gaiman fan? Have I not, like so many other pagan revivalists today, gotten some very profound and meaningful messages from his fiction?

Yes, and yes. Double yes. But Gaiman has a tendency to make jabs at modern pagans, which I can't quite forgive him for. (I think he's jealous of us.) Also, he appears to be more than slightly afraid of vaginas, if the first chapter of American Gods is any indication. (And I think it is.) Out his novels, I think Anansi Boys is the only one I'd suggest for something beyond entertainment value. Or, perhaps, A Game of You.

More on Magical Witch Girls

2010-06-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the maho shoujo, or "magical girl" character found throughout Japanese television, began as the majokko - the "witch girl?"

Mahotsukai Sally was the first, in 1966, inspired by American television's Bewitched. Sally is the princess of Astoria, a realm of witches, but she has come to the world of mortals out of curiosity, and a desire to play with other children.

Majokko Megu-chan, made in 1974, is responsible for many of the anime tropes we see today. Enjoy the spy music, the perverted wizard, and the otherworldly Emma Peel-type character who serves as Megu's rival for the throne of Witch-World. Tarot cards figure as a motif throughout the series.

And just because, I can't help but include the rare case of a witch boy - 1973's Dororon Enma-kun! Enma is the nephew of the mythical king of the underworld (with whom he shares his name), and it's his job to make sure the demons of hell don't escape and overrun the earth.

I'd list Majokko Tickle as well, but Tickle is really more of a fairy. (...Or maybe just a magical bitch.)

Sally and Megu were produced by Toei Animation, the same company that would go on to release Sailor Moon, which would come to typify the genre. Though these early "magical girls" were drawing from specifically Western imagery of the witch, this type of protagonist has occurred with far less frequency in Western children's television. Some notable examples did emerge in the late 80s and early 90s, with series like Rainbow Brite, She-Ra: Princess of Power, and Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld. (Note, however, the dominance of the "princess" image over that of a sorceress or fighter.) The popularity of the witch as a positive protagonist for young girls likely exploded in Japan due to their own analogous cultural image of the miko, or virgin priestess. One of the Sailor Scouts, Rei, happens to be a shrine maiden in her mundane life. Check out her Shinto-esque magical attacks, including her bow - the standard (and appropriately Dianic) weapon of fictional miko.

It seems to me that the closest we usually get in the West to a vaguely magical young heroine is in fairytales - not so much in modern popular culture, Alice being the primary exception. But even Alice doesn't have powers of her own; are her journeys through different states of consciousness enough to make her a witch? Maybe so. Rest assured that it is a subject I am thoroughly engaged with.

I Am A Magical Girl: A Testimony

2010-06-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

Some nights ago I was troubled by dark dreams. I saw lines of black hares rushing across the forest floor. Swarms of witches, like bats, descended upon young maidens to feast on their blood. They called up a flood, and an Irish farmboy used his herculean strength to save his father's cows from drowning. Faust and I entered a subterranean labyrinth only to discover that some druid was already using it.

Two women attended him, and one of them gave me a sistrum to play. Except that it was less like a sistrum, and more like the wand that Sailor Moon uses to transform.

I am dangerously close to making a ritual tool in homage to this. Dangerously close.

Now, to change topics almost completely - in light of Alan Moore's immanent chicanery, I find myself reminiscing about my failed relationship with empiricism.

Empiricism's name was Mark.

See, there was this phase in my life where I strictly adhered to the psychological interpretation of magic. "Magic can only affect yourself," I would say, when experience had shown me that wasn't true. Why?

Because I had no self-esteem. Surely, I thought, no one but this Enlightenment Era vivisectionist could ever love me. I'd better make him think I've renounced my Indian ways. Better dead than red.

See, the irony was that, while psychology was the only lens through which I could "scientifically" justify my magical practice, what I really believed was just the opposite. Despite the changes I knew I was capable of making to my environment through magical means, somehow it wasn't enough to convince me that I myself could ever be transformed or improved upon. Chronic social anxiety ruled my life. I was not a very good student. I didn't have friends, nor much in the way of initiative. I was possessed of the notion that I was irredeemably worthless. So it was hard to stand up to the criticisms of Empiricsm. I was so lowly (and womanish), and he was so Authoritative (and male), that it was difficult to find value even in my own testimony. If he thought it sounded absurd, then surely it had to be, no matter what my experience may have been.

Hurts just to type that. It was a bad time. And yet, somewhere inside, there remained a spark - a little burning ember of magic, like the howling of all my ancestors - that told me to persevere, to remain true to my convictions.

So, as had been my goal throughout my adolescence, I got myself initiated into a coven...and consequently got dumped. Undeterred, I joined an online occult community of chaos magicians, and I made a witch bottle.

Not a traditional witch bottle, either - not one of the ones full of piss and rue and broken glass. (Although I do have a couple of those.) I made a happy witch bottle. A cute witch bottle. A bottle with my name on it, and a little tiny cork, that I filled with garnets and sparkly sand, and fresh oak twigs, and goose feathers, and my nail clippings, and several planetary oils - excluding Saturn. I filled it with all the things I wanted to nurture within myself. "No more restriction," I said to myself, "and no more fear. I won't resign myself to suffering. I'm not bad and I'm not stupid. I deserve life. I deserve love."

And you know what? It came.

All of it came. Things I had not thought possible began happening everywhere in my life. Things I had not thought myself capable of, I achieved. I traveled. I made friends. Someone fell in love with me! I had vindicated myself. I persisted in the juvenile, primitive belief that putting all the right sparkly things in a little clay jar with flowers painted on it could change anything. It could. It did. The proof is sitting before you, writing these words.

So remember:

"Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure."

-Alan Moore.

*Alan Moore as a teenage girl, by Ryusuke Hamamoto.

I'm having so much fun with words.

2010-05-29T01:53:00.000-07:00

I just added the elf sex tag to my last post since it quite clearly mentions the subject, if only in passing. You know that shit piques your interest.

I will be posting here with more frequency in the coming weeks. To make my Mytho-Poetic Statement of the Day, I have drunk deep of that honeyed cordial which shapes fire for the head. Heck, I'd be shaping formless fire all over the place right now, but I'll be traveling this weekend, so it will have to wait a couple of days.

In the meantime, enjoy these phantasmagorical Mardi Gras designs at BibliOdyssey, and this post from my second-favorite chaos magician on guerilla magickal tactics and bees. Both are ingenius. (But who is my number one favorite chaote? I'd tell you, but the answer is pretty sappy.)

Orbis Alia

2010-05-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

"The sky spoke to him again. This time he thought it was a question. Great consequences hung upon his answer. If he could just understand what was being asked and find the correct words in which to frame his reply, then something would be revealed - something that would change English magic forever, something that Strange and Norrell had not even guessed at yet.
"For a long moment he struggled to understand. The language or spell seemed tantalizingly familiar now. In a moment, he thought, he would grasp it. After all, the world had been speaking these words to him every day of his life - it was just that he had not noticed it before..."

- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

"The peasant was wandering in his mind with prolonged sorrow. Once he burst out with, 'God possesses the heavens - God possesses the heavens - but He covets the world'; and once he lamented that his old neighbours were gone, and that all had forgotten him: they used to draw a chair to the fire for him in every cabin, and now they said, 'Who is that old fellow there?' 'The fret [Irish for doom] is over me,' he repeated, and then went on to talk once more of God and heaven. More than once also he said, waving his arm towards the mountain, 'Only myself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago'; and as he said it the tears upon his face glistened in the moonlight."
- The Celtic Twilight, W.B. Yeats

I have a habit lately of commenting upon things months and months after they have passed. But I won't let this go without comment; last February I was more than surprised to discover the most intelligent discussion on the Fair Folk I've ever witnessed on the Internet. The OP had asked the community what their main conception of "fairies" consists of. My favorite answer is the first.

If the average American pagan has any wisdom concerning the Fair Folk it usually manifests as a policy of avoiding them as much as possible. A good number of magicians will assert that the summoning of demons is by far a more safe and sane practice than trafficking with the "Good Folk." (Y'know how the biggest guy in Robin Hood's band of merry men is called "Little John?" Names can, from time to time, be misleading.) "You can at least rely on a demon," they will say. "At least demons have principles."

What they really mean is that demons may be compelled serve us by tried and true methods. In the commonly accepted occult cosmology, demons are our spiritual inferiors and, through the authority of our Higher Selves, we can command them. The same cannot be said of our Good Neighbors. "We are not of that origin," the king Manannan said to Aengus Og, after telling him of the battle in heaven. If we are to be broad in our survey of otherwordly races, the Hidden People of Nordic and Scandinavian lore are, essentially, our brothers and sisters. Normally - or "at best," if that's your attitude - we are on more or less equal footing. We have no more authority over them than we do over a roommate or the person living in the apartment below. (I'm not even gonna get into the "landlord" part of this metaphor.) They have wills of their own and don't exactly exist to serve our needs. You may as well try telling Dionysus what to do, and he's a very troublesome fellow.

Which brings me to a common contention about the Fair Folk that I often see repeated, even and especially in the discussion previously mentioned. A widespread opinion exists that they are "alien," "foreign," "not like us," or even "devoid of empathy" and "completely irrational." This very much informs their portrayal in Susanna Clarke's popular novel, quoted above. The otherwordly gentleman of the story torments the mortals that have captured his attention by whisking them away each night to monotonous dances and horrific diversions. He casts a shadow over their waking lives, robbing them of all clarity and happiness. He is entertained by death and kills those who oppose or offend him as if he were swatting flies. He is so narcissistic that he cannot even perceive that his mortal "companions" are in despair.

This is not altogether an inaccurate depiction. But I think it would be wrong to accept this characterization at face value.

Of course it would be stupid to deny that one may encounter beings like this. Sadistic, murderous wights like this can be found throughout the ancient stories and medieval ballads if one actually takes the time to look them over. In the zeal of educated people to tear down the popular image of the tiny, winged pixie who helps your garden grow, they often take great pains to remind the community of this, occasionally with the disclaimer that the Fair Folk simply have motivations that are so different from ours as to be unfathomable. (No value judgments here!) Note, once more, that these are the same people who typically refuse to associate with them in any way.

Certain experiences have naturally eluded them.

Where in the past, mistrust of the Fair Folk was instilled through Christian piety as much as encounters with villains, today it is largely inspired by the works of Neil Gaiman, whose "Faery" royals are so self-centered as to be sociopathic. As influential as his stories have been on modern fantasy fiction, this does not make him an authority on the matter. (His friendship with the likes of Alan Moore notwithstanding, I have yet to see any evidence that Gaiman even holds any sincere belief in the spiritual or supernatural.) I might continue by saying that one simply cannot make generalizations about the nature and disposition of the Fair Folk. But there exists a specific truth about their people, and their world, that is far more mysterious and lonesome than any such platitude can suggest.

In one of the legends concerning the origins of the Hidden People, it is explained that when God created the first woman for Adam, she proved to be "exceedingly difficult to manage." I think we all have a pretty good idea of what is meant by this - the idea that women are irrational and overemotional goes back, apparently, to the dawn of history. What's interesting is that God chose to resolve this by creating another man to match her temperament...a man "e qual to her untameable nature." His name was Alfur, "elf." Adam and the woman - here called Alvör - begat humanity, while she and Alfur begat all of the elves, trolls and huldufólk. This tale is very similar to how Lilith begat the world's demons, but with one difference: Lilith was unsuitable for Adam because she was too sexually aggressive, and thus she gave birth to devils. Alvör was unsuitable for Adam because she was too emotional - and thus she gave birth to the Hidden People.

Just as the man of Antiquity was sometimes fearful of the power of sexuality, so too was he fearful of the power of his own feelings. Introspection is not a common feature of Classical literature; the scholar Thomas Cahill contends that Augustine of Hippo was the first man in Western history to write "I" and mean it in the same sense we do today. The closest we get to "psychological content" before him is Ovid's Metamorphosis. Irrationality - which is the name a man of reason gives to the emotional sphere - was relegated, like so many other things men found inconvenient, to women, and to the darkness of the teeming woods, to cavort with the beasts and succubi. We are fond of repeating that madness is one possible consequence of a sojourn in Elphame - we forget that depression is another. Longing is yet one more. When you are a peasant who has done nothing but toil his whole life, and you are touched, for one moment, by the numinous...how can you going on living as you did before? Only myself knows what happened under the thorn-tree forty years ago. The tears on your face glisten in the moonlight.

When I was a girl, I was very fond of those websites created by those fanciful and naive people who believe in "flower fairies." You know the ones. Those pink, purple, sparkley pages festooned with animated fantasy art of precious creatures - gnomes and unicorns and helpful djinn. I had a whole collection of images that are probably gathering dust in an Angelfire directory somewhere. For those people, the Otherworld was another kind of heaven, an Edenic paradise where the lion shall lie down with the lamb, and the dragon with the dairy cow. Since then, I have of course educated myself properly on the actual lore and the celebrated scholarship of Briggs and Evans-Wentz. I have been exposed to - and have pretended to wear - the cynical attitude of well-read pagan Terry Pratchett fans, which calls the Good Folk mad and casts doubt over the value of fairy gold. "Oh, that way lies madness...and embarrassing outbursts," they say, nevermind that the same is true of being initiated into a coven. But over time I have come to observe that, amid all their citations and cautionary tales, the singlemost likely result of contact with the Land of Promise is inexplicably absent: the longing to return. A yearning to hear the stones speak once again. The hope to find a doorway in the hedge wall once more. (Only at special hours may they be seen with certainty. Only witches can go back and forth when they please - a sure sign of their "deviance.") The ignorant housewives with the free webhosting are the only ones who seem to know anything about it! They may be utter fools, but fairies love fools most of all. Only a fool would trust a fairy, and only a fool steps over the threshold to find her apron full of jewels.

To attribute the "fairy touch" to mere delusions of grandeur would be to miss the point of such bewitchment. I will not question how great a danger there is of losing touch with "reality," but the danger of missed opportunity is far greater. The sight of their wild cavalcade seizes us with fright because it is composed of the terrifying contents of our own hearts, and the memory of our dead. It stops us from our work and haunts our days. It fills us with dreaming and despair. It confronts us with our own unanswerable hopes, our wish for impossible things. Something long forgotten is remembered again. The lone witness to a miracle. Waking from a dream you can't hold onto. Don't go.

It is not a challenge for the faint of heart. But you have a sense of adventure, don't you? Why are you even reading fantasy novels anyway?

...

The host is riding from Knocknarea,
And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, "Away, come away;
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart,
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart."
The host is rushing 'twixt night and day;
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, "Away, come away."

-"The Hosting of the Sidhe," W.B. Yeats

*Dedicated to the Fetch-Magistellus Catus, and to His Majesty Lugh Mac Ethlenn.

Beltane Announcements: Please Read

2010-05-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

Since the Sabbat most widely associated with penises and vaginas is nigh upon us, I thought I'd make a short PSA about a few of our favorite Pagan and occult-related gender narratives!

FACT: The Hermetic tradition never assigned gender concepts to the elements beyond the specific deities associated with them; Hera, Zeus, Hades and Nestis/Persephone. They associated the elements with the mysteries ruled by the divinities themselves, rather than on gender based relationships.

FACT: The Cauldron of Cerridwen has nothing to do with vaginas. She was brewing a formula for wisdom and inspiration - it is not a symbol of fertility, nor a cauldron of plenty. If the myth as a whole has anything to do with vaginas, then it has to do with the concept of an initiatory rebirth, rather than the mundane procreative act.

FACT: You know who does have a cauldron of plenty? The Dagda. Y'know, that guy with the giant club which everyone agrees is a hysterical metaphor for his penis? Yeah. That guy. (Consider also his parallel in the Continental god, Sucellus, who was depicted with a hammer and a cup, another object we are taught to associate with the female organs.)

FACT: Despite what anyone may tell you, the maypole is not an invention from the Celtic countries. It is Germanic in origin. (Just like the Krampus!)

FACT: Speaking of Mayday traditions, some of you may be familiar with the "Beltane Chase Song," a call-and-answer song that can be heard at Neo-Pagan gatherings today, whose message is a thinly veiled metaphor for sexual aggression. (Probably why the lyrics ended up on an anti-religious website. Fun for the whole family!) Often you will find this song credited as being "traditional," implying that is has been sung for untold generations throughout the English countryside. But ever since I first laid eyes on these verses, I couldn't help but think to myself, "Hmm. These lines are just like the rhyme Isobel Gowdie used to turn herself into a hare. And, y'know, all these other transformations in the song remind me of another story - y'know, the one I mentioned a few paragraphs ago? - only in this song, the man is chasing the woman, instead of the other way around. Gee, I wonder why?" (Warning: my innocence is completely feigned.)

As it turns out, the verses are quite clearly lifted from Robert Graves' The Allansford Pursuit - which can be found in a footnote on page 402 of The White Goddess - and was, in fact, inspired by Isobel Gowdie's incantations. A more paganized version of the poem can be found in Ed Fitch's Grimoire of Shadows, first published in the 70s, which retains the female-pursuer-and-male-pursued narrative that can be found in the initiatory drama of the Welsh myth.

As often happens, various Neo-Pagan groups have adapted it to their own tastes across the years. Why were the gender roles suddenly swapped? The fellow witch who helped me unravel this mystery speculates: "...it reads to me as written by a (probably male) neoPagan who missed the deeper Wiccish-pagan themes of Graves (or of Fitch's or whatever derivative work he was familiar with), and reframed it in context of the dominant paradigm to which he was accustomed, in which men feel desire and have agency to act on it, while women are objects of desire and can only react." And ain't that the American way?

I hope you all have a rollicking good time this Beltane, and remember - never, ever sleep with the wife of a Fairy King. Why? I've got two words for you: Incest and almost-incest.

Nomenclature

2010-03-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

I am arbitrarily going by V.V.F. once again on Blogspot, for a while, at least. Because - while I'm quite accustomed to beloved family members calling me Zoe - I've noticed that I react with a sense of alarm when grown men on the Internet refer to me by that name. I think, somewhere deep in my subconscious mind, I imagine it must be my father speaking, and that I'm in a world of trouble, a sort of nameless dread forming in the sky above me.

Anyhow! I've been painting up my Antinous pieces that I drew up plans for some weeks ago, as you all saw. Hopefully I should have something to show for it by Monday. Ta!

ETA: I've just drawn a new header image for young Faust. He is pleased. Sometimes I get a little insecure about my hand-drawn work in comparison to all of the clean, digital imagery that people tend to prefer. But at the same time I like being able to see the texture of the ink on paper.

It's nice to know us witches are appreciated somewhere.

2010-03-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

Oh, Japan! I love you too!

Seriously, though. You're not supposed to know about the first one. Have you been going through my laundry?

[From the series Black Butler and Hellsing, respectively. Translation/chart done by KuroFushicho on deviantart.]

Onward and Upward. Down and Around.

2010-03-07T03:49:00.000-08:00

I've considered making the comments herein for a few days now, unsure of how to begin. But there's no way to learn without trying, I suppose.

It should be accepted as a given that different schools of occultism are simply going to have different attitudes and ways of dealing with things. A Luciferian sorcerer is going to feel rather differently about certain things when compared to a Rosicrucian; a Vodou practitioner is operating in a completely different headspace than that of a member of the Golden Dawn. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, and it only makes sense. Different traditions with different origins and contributers will each have their own techniques, their own flavor of thinking.

More than a few times now, I've seen that the more accomplished witches in my area have well-acquainted themselves with the techniques of high magick. Being traditional Wiccans, of course they've gone through the traditional channels in order to do so - through initiation and earnest study. They've gone through all of the lessons in Qabalah and Psuedo-Judeo-Christian cosmology that any other initiate would have. They may or may not feel any strong allegiance to those ideas or see them as anything more than useful tools, but I believe that most of them have made, or are making, an honest effort to understand them.

By contrast, I would be very surprised to find a high magician getting down and dirty with witchery of any kind.

I mean, witchcraft techni ques in and of themselves? Sure. I could see a magician getting out his needle and thread. In fact, I think I have. But witchery itself? The base, vulcan wickedness of it all? I don't think I've seen it happen yet.

Of course, I don't want to sound like that kid in high school who asks - thinking he's clever - why there isn't a "White People Day" during Multi-Cultural Week. I understand that for many people who enter the world of occultism from a certain angle, Wicca and witchcraft seem ubiquitous and inescapable - a wasteland of red tents and drum circles with no end in sight. For someone who's after something that can only be provided by the Orders and sorcerers' cabals, I imagine that the word "witch" conjures, for many of them, only the image of an aromatherapist holding a crystal wand.

Sometimes, the true voice of the witch comes through, even if it wins no converts. Consider a somewhat recent review from Plutonica.net of Fulgur's first issue of Abraxas, focusing on witchcraft. It contains an excerpt:

"Witchcraft is an old animism felt in the heart. It is non-verbal and cannot be described in language without its substance getting lost in translation. It can only be alluded to and suggested. The lens of science will never observe an undine or dryad, but these terms are a convenient and poetic way of describing a very real congress that takes place between human consciousness and the manifest mysteries of nature, when you approach the latter in the mode of a witch."
"It almost makes me wish I were a witch," our reviewer writes.
"(Almost.)"

Again, it's not as if I'm going to fault her for not wanting to be a witch. That would be silly. But comments such as these, innocuous as they are, move me to conclude that mine is a realm that the vast majority of magicians simply aren't interested in for any reason. "And why should they be?" is one response. My question is more, "Why aren't they?"

And there are some obvious answers to that. Our gods hold little fascination for them. There is nothing under the hills that they want. For them, the moon does not touch the earth. They love the succubus and never the night-hag.

And, once again, there's nothing wrong with that. But still, I wonder why I don't see these extra-curricular studies happening on both sides. Granted, I would say that our craft is a hard one to learn. While a mish-mash of rules can be found in a single text, most of it gathered from easily recognizable grimoires, Murrayite theses, and snippets of Crowley...you simply can't learn it solely from a book, even the Black Book just mentioned. So even a sincere pupil from a sorcerers' cabal might have some trouble. The heart of the witch is not found in any doctrine or heretical manifesto one can refer to, nor is it simply a matter of affecting a rustic flair to your work. The heart of the witch is what flies over the rooftops of the slumbering town. It is in the apparition of a beast. It is on the face of the mountain, with Diana and her darling crew.

[formspring.me] The gayest painting?

2010-02-26T23:28:00.001-08:00

What is the gayest painting in history?

I have spoken.

("The Swing," by Fragonard.)

Ask me anything

[formspring.me] Inspirations

2010-02-26T22:35:00.001-08:00

What artists inspire you the most?

I imagine Leonardo and Michelangelo would go without saying on any artist's list of inspirations. Did you know they got into an argument on the street once while Michelangelo was working? Leonardo burst out,

"WHAT AM I EVEN TALKING TO YOU FOR. YOU CAN'T EVEN FINISH A HORSE."

I love that story.

Aside from those two titans, at the top of my list would have to be Aubrey Beardsley.

It's hard to know where to begin with him; his decadence? the grace of his lines? his deep affection for the grotesque? His work speaks for itself more eloquently than I ever could. Everything of his is like an erotic dream, with varying depths of wickedness. Every composition faultlessly executed. You don't ever forget a Beardsley drawing once you've seen one. Apart from his close companion, Oscar Wilde, Beardsley is my favorite Aesthete. I consider his artistic choices in almost everything that I do. Which isn't to say it's my intention to imitate him, but it is without question my wish to reach the same heights of eeriness.

Secondly, John Bauer's work is larger than life to me. Anyone who's seen his illustrations of trolls and giants might find them familiar - they were a huge influence on Jim Henson and Brian Froud (who of course worked together on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. His work really exemplifies, for me, the emotional quality of fairy tales: the world is full of titanic forces and primeval sources of strength, and even the smallest, most helpless of creatures can find its way through it, through virtue or providence. His style is whimsical, yet there is a weight and depth to it, an earthiness I don't often see in this kind of subject matter. And his color palette! Oh god his color palette...

Then there's the artist who's often been compared to Beardsley, despite the fact that he probably would have sent the pallid dandy screaming into the night: Austin Osman Spare. His bacchanalian nightmares may have been too much even for the Yellow Book; Spare lacked the delicate sensibilities shared by the upper-crust painters of the time, being, as he was, a lower-class boy with a simply infernal imagination. By 16 he had already had his unnerving work exhibited at the Royal Academy, being quoted by journalists about how he had rejected the Church - anyone with sense could see that the child was a witch. And so he went on to claim, frightening the bejesus out of everyone for years to come. It's impossible for me to reflect on the man without feeling affection, impossible for me to behold his visions of nymphs, vultures and satyrs without thinking, "He must have bargained his soul for the mastery of line!"

Lastly, I discovered an artist only last year whose work gave me a new standard to set myself to: Jan Henryk de Rosen, the man who painted the frescoes in the Grace Cathedral.

Now, for the most part, the Grace Cathedral is a disgraceful travesty of a building - a faceless pastiche of other, more famous churches, making up for in size what it lacks in dignity and self-respect. (Overpriced water at the cafeteria in the basement? Tacky and heretical.) Disregarding whatever history it may possess, it is less a house of worship and more of a tourist attraction. But if there is any reason to visit that monstrosity, it's to see de Rosen's paintings. Never let it be said that I can only admire the work of godless heathens - de Rosen was a Christian mystic.The pitiful photograph of St. Augustine Greeting King Ethelbert at the church website doesn't do it any justice. The pagans in his murals are portrayed with the same dignity and majesty as the coming Christians. A pair of soldiers in one panel turn to regard the viewer, producing a vivid sense of having stepped into scene. A pale woman in a purple hood wanders outside, mesmerized by an angelic vision. When I saw these paintings, I knew that this was what I wanted to be capable of someday. One day, I'll go back with a real camera and take real pictures. [Meanwhile, if there's a historical religious structure you'd like to support, I would suggest St. Brigid's Church, which is genuinely beautiful, and in need of the help.]

Honorable Mentions:
Artemisia Gentileschi - She had every disadvantage going against her as a woman, but she succeeded by surpassing her peers in genius.
Hieronymus Bosch - Man what is this I don't even...
Albrecht Durer - Clearly a prodigy. And kinda cute.
Donatello - Simply for making the bronze David. Okay, and for Judith and Holofernes.
Bernini - Simply for the way he carved Apollo's nipples. I am not even kidding.
Catherine de Monchaux - Man what is this I don't even...

Ask me anything

formspring.me

2010-02-26T02:44:00.001-08:00

Ask me anything! All the cool kids are doing it. http://formspring.me/nzoe

Wee hours nonsense.

2010-02-24T05:07:00.001-08:00

Wooooooooo up at all hours of the night!

What I mean to say is:

I like to think that if C.S. Lewis were alive today, we would have been bestest friends. I have been getting into him again lately. Not long ago I discovered this very precious Victorian poem (and by "precious" and "Victorian," I mean "suspiciously gay") that he wrote about Angus the God. ("Swift, naked, eager, pitilessly fair"? That's right, Lewis. Every night in our dreams.) He also mentions the Dagda in Ballade Mystique. It's odd - it seems like Lewis is always presented to us as an Englishman, when he was born in Ireland and was even invested in the Celtic Revival for a time, in addition to his Norse and Classical interests.

But seriously, look at that collection of poems. They're all to do with pagan heroes and defying God and sorcerers and witches and Satan. I learned recently that he stated openly in his letters that if there had been a Satanic cabal in his neighborhood, he would have joined it in a heartbeat. But he could never find one, so he stayed a Christian. He was on our side. I know it.

(Extra credit: They're wizards. I know it.)

Psychic Noise

2010-01-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

So, while on checking out links on Plutonica.net last night, I came across a little post at Magic of the Ordinary that's pretty much convinced me that, yes, I do have some things to learn from my local Golden Dawn unit.

The first section of the post seemed like a lot of old-person-grumbling, but then I got to something I found personally relevant:

Many GD and magical bloggers post how they have ‘talked’ to their Holy Guardian Angels. They often describe the HGA and the interaction they have with him, almost like talking to another human being. They repeat the words said, how they felt about the words, how the HGA may be holding something back etc. Often they report extended astral visions and journeys as part of their conversations. In addition some bloggers will report chats with other ‘beings’, daimons , guides and wot all. They will ponder if they are aspects of the HGA, which are useful and which may be part of themselves etc. To be blunt, all of these experiences are taking place in the astral sphere, a sphere ‘below’ that of the Holy Guardian Angel. This is not to say no contact has been made with the HGA, only that the communication has been corrupted. Tradition is clear on this: the Knowledge and Conversation of the HGA refers to an ongoing state of meta-consciouness. There are no visions and chats in meta-consciousness, just pure pristine Knowledge. A Rosicrucian magician knows her connection with the HGA, there is no doubt, no questioning, no possibility of the HGA tricking or holding things back.

I used to scoff at the notion of there being a "Lower Astral," inferior to some higher, more transcendent level of awareness. "You can't demarcate the spirit world!" I thought. "That doesn't make sense." Even as my local adept affirmed it, even as my highly knowledgeable partner explained to me that the Lower Astral was the place filled with minor imps and voidwalkers and reflections of your own neuroses, I just didn't get it.

But when I read this passage, it finally clicked. I think it was all in how the author compared that type of convoluted experience to the true awareness of the Holy Guardian Angel, or of God. "Oh shit," I thought. "This is why, so often, when I try to get some meaningful interface with divinity, there's all this ANNOYING PSYCHIC BULLSHIT IN MY WAY." Sometimes it's nearly impossible to get through.

It would also explain why I've found it so easy to contact a wight or familiar through spirit flight, and yet so difficult to contact certain gods. Perhaps they're hard to reach because I'm using the wrong avenues.

Not that I'm suddenly convinced that "extended astral visions and journeys" have no value or usefulness. Witches are supposed to fly, after all. But to have the source of my difficulties suddenly pointed out to me is something of a relief.

The post goes on to discuss several highly interesting things: The way many students judge the value of a ritual to how much "power" it generates, how personal growth does not equal spiritual growth, a peculiar species of "lust of result," how psychic powers do not equal spiritual wisdom, and a couple of other things.

I will say I was wary of his admonitions about "low magic." The argument he seemed to be making was, "Hey, we're all well-to-do Westerners here - we don't need to use magic for selfish reasons if we're all surfing the Internet."

I don't even know where to start with that one.

Maybe I don't know much about high magick, but I'm beginning to think there are some guys with sticks up their butts out there who really don't know much about low magick, and think that they do.

Then there are the people who don't know anything about anything, and they ruin it for all of us.

I need caffeine.

WAT

2010-01-08T17:49:00.000-08:00

OMFG YOU GUYS THE WOMAN FROM THE ELF SEX VIDEO SHOWED UP ON FASHIONIST.
Now that an occult acquaintance and Hallgerdur have popped up on my favorite fashion blog, I am now forced to suspect at least 30% of well-dressed people of being occult mystics.

[For clarity, please refer to my tl;dr post on Hallgerdur's eldritch escapades.]

The Witch

2009-12-29T20:06:00.000-08:00

The Witch, by C.S. Lewis

Trapped amid the woods with guile
They’ve led her bound in fetters vile
To death, a deadlier sorceress
Than any born for earth’s distress
Since first the winner of the fleece
Bore home the Colchian witch to Greece—
Seven months with snare and gin
They’ve sought the maid o’erwise within
The forest’s labyrinthine shade.
The lonely woodman half afraid
Far off her ragged form has seen
Sauntering down the alleys green,
Or crouched in godless prayer alone
At eve before a Druid stone.
But now the bitter chase is won,
The quarry’s caught, her magic’s done,
The bishop’s brought her strongest spell
To naught with candle, book, and bell;
With holy water splashed upon her,
She goes to burning and dishonour
Too deeply damned to feel her shame,
For, though beneath her hair of flame
Her thoughtful head be lowly bowed
It droops for meditation proud
Impenitent, and pondering yet
Things no memory can forget,
Starry wonders she has seen
Brooding in the wildwood green
With holiness. For who can say
In what strange crew she loved to play,
What demons or what gods of old
Deep mysteries unto her have told
At dead of night in worship bent
At ruined shrines magnificent,
Or how the quivering will she sent
Alone into the great alone
Where all is loved and all is known,
Who now lifts up her maiden eyes
And looks around with soft surprise
Upon the noisy, crowded square,
The city oafs that nod and stare,
The bishop’s court that gathers there,
The faggots and the blackened stake
Where sinners die for justice’ sake?
Now she is set upon the pile,
The mob grows still a little while,
Till lo! before the eager folk
Up curls a thin, blue line of smoke.
“Alas!” the full-fed burghers cry,
“That evil loveliness must die!”

Why...it's as if it was made just for me!

2009-12-28T22:15:00.000-08:00

Mmmm...for once it's a cute boy being sacrificed in the middle of a ritual circle!

Granted, a boy shouldn't be quite so curvy (it's an unfortunate fact that many pervy girl artists can't get the male waist right), but damn, the drapery is superior. And all the little details on the ritual tools? Hot.

This is original art by a presumably young, presumably Japanese woman who loves all the same things I do: Gustave Moreau, manga pin-up boys, Austin Osman Spare, and incredibly suggestive paintings of Saint Sebastian. Interspersed between Renaissance paintings and male models are magickal seals and photos of Crowley, Spare, and Severus Snape. And Billy Corgan.

Just keep going back to the older entries. You'll see what I mean.

It's like I have a long-lost twin in another country. God I've gotta learn Japanese just so I can talk to this person!

Elf Sex (You Know You Want To Read This)

2009-12-28T21:12:00.000-08:00

[Last week I had an interesting discussion on my livejournal about an unusual news item Faust pointed me to on Disinfo.com. The entry is friends locked, so I'll reproduce the original post here since my 12-year-old sister, hopefully, knows nothing of this blog.]:

I...I don't even know what to make of this.

Three words: Icelandic Elf Sex.

Before I make any kind of attempt to psychoanalyze this woman, I was kind of struck by one of the comments about how people in Middle Eastern countries claim to have encounters with djinn all the time and we dismiss them as being superstitious; but the commenter was baffled at the notion that these highly educated white people would have such a strong belief in the literal existence of huldufolk.

I received my copy of a recent pagan anthology, entitled Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, which had a pretty interesting article by one Amy Hale, entilted, "White Men Can't Dance: Evaluating Race, Class and Rationality in Ethnographies of the Esoteric." She begins by telling us a tale from her time as a student of anthropology, when she was given an assignment to do a presentation on a modern religious ritual. Other students in her class did presentations on Voudoun and Santeria, things like that. She did her presentation on an O.T.O. style wedding performed by friends of hers - and the entire classroom laughed throughout it. And she received a poor grade. When she asked her professor why, he said,

"Maybe this is just a personal bias of mine, but I just can't see it as culturally significant when white people do this sort of thing."

Hale then points out how Western esoteric and religious practices are belittled and marginalized by Western anthropologists, precisely because of the notion that white people should be above such irrational behavior. She then puts forth the notion that "Western rationalism is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves," even making the contention that, even in the white West, a strictly empirical worldview is the deviation and not the norm. Which is a theory I would love-love-love to see expanded upon by her or anyone else in the future.

Now. That said. This woman in the video.

I don't know whether to believe she's had physical encounters with huldr in the wilderness. A more typical anecdote about an encounter with a huldra goes something like this:

A sheperdess was falling asleep on a hill one sunny afternoon. As she dozed, her sheep began to stray. Suddenly, she awoke with a start, having been struck on the ear. She looked up, and saw a young man in a blue coat, covered in silver buttons. She turned to see that her sheep were going astray, and when she looked back, the young man was gone. He was one of the Hidden People.

Sounds like any of the stories my relatives might tell about a ghost or an angel.

In Scandinavia, fairy stories about female huldr seducing men and even marrying them are very common. Stories about seductive men? Not so much. (For that, you have to go look at the Nokken. (Awwww yeah.)) But the title of her book, Please YoursELF, which sounds rather psychological if you think about it, leads me to suppose that she might be having a legitimate fetch-wyfe type of experience, and is simply too stupid to know what to do with it, completely wasting it on apparently fantastic orgasms. (Well, I guess that's not a total waste.) In 14th century England, this woman would have been accused of witchcraft - for certainly, any otherworldly being she's having sexual congress with in the fields must be teaching her sorcery.

But I guess that's what happens sometimes. You start having sex with someone and you stop seeing them for who they truly are - in this case, an imponderable eidolon of fantastic power.

And with that - Merry Misrule!

[I had some pretty thought-provoking responses. For instance, I learned from one friends of mine that in Icelandic belief, elves do not, in fact, like poop. He also said, "Sex with non-corporeals is a strange experience, and I don't doubt that it could have happened to this woman; I think it could be talked about in a much more interesting and useful fashion, though...at least without the cheezy saxaphone music...!?!" To which I replied]:

"Yes, I agree about the saxophone music. Also, I think conversations with this kind of tone about topics like this have the potential to really creep people out, myself included. And not without reason; I mean, I've had experiences of that nature, but I'd never discuss it so openly or flippantly, and in such a forum, because I have at least half a brain.

"I admit I could be speaking from a place of shame, though. When I was a young teen, my devout Catholic father was flipping through one of my Llewellyn catalogs, discovered Donald Tyson's Sexual Alchemy: Magical Intercourse with Spirits, and promptly went on a tirade about how any spirit that tempted you with carnality was clearly demonic, and that the occult was surely filled with such temptations and thus unimaginably dangerous. And I couldn't say, 'That isn't true!' Because then he would have had to ask, 'And how do you know?!' Which I certainly couldn't answer without getting slapped. Oh, the perils of being a witch maiden..."

[Another person said that he found the video charming, and that he knew other people who have had similar experiences who agreed that it was "better than with humans," as the woman says. I felt moved to explain my discomfort]:

"I don't think it's too uncommon at all, personally. However, while I don't doubt that some people probably find it more satisfying than corporeal sex, there's definitely something off about people who prefer to spend their time 'over there' than 'over here.' The whole point of having the power to go 'over there' is to come back 'here' with something meaningful. I don't know if an orgasm is all that meaningful in most cases. I see people like this woman talk about what they do, and I'm like, 'That's cool and all, but...is that all you're doing with this otherworldly revelation? Getting off?'

"I'll admit that there was a time when I wasn't so different. I would venture to say that it kind of comes with the territory when you're a young witch who doesn't know what she's doing. (I also blame Edain McCoy.) But, as I said in my entry, it seems like she (and others) are wasting a golden opportunity if they're simply treating the otherworld like a bordello. There are certainly instances where a sexual experience in that place can be extremely powerful and significant, but...I dunno. People who make a hobby of it (nevermind a spectacle of it) just give me this bad feeling."

[To which the first gentleman, a Celtic Studies professor, replied]:

"Plus, it's easy to end up like Cú Chulainn, who in the course of one story was: A) paralyzed in a catatonic state for over a year because of a vision of otherworld women; B) completely wracked with indecision and turmoil because the otherworld and his mortal wife were jealous of one another; and finally C) he went mad due to sadness and upset over his separation, and was only lured back to society through druidic potions and divine intervention. If all that can happen with over-interest in the otherworld for sex, it's a can of worms most people probably can't hack..."

[Bingo. The story my friend here is referring to, "The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn," or "The Sickbed of Cú Chulainn," is a tale I think should be required reading for anyone who has recently had or is considering having any kind of liaison with an eldritch being, so they can learn how horribly wrong this kind of thing can go. Then they should read "The Ballad of Tam Lin," so they can learn how to successfully manage a dangerous but potentially beneficial situation. Then, last of all, they should read "The Dream of Oenghus," which is the only swan-maiden tale I know of that ends happily. If only more of these Otherworldly maidens were as clever as Caer Ibormeith, playing hard to get until she knows her mortal love will marry her. A fetch-wyfe isn't just a personal concubine, people. It takes a true sorcerer to realize the full potential of such a relationship.]

It was revealed to Lugh, Temuir's lover.

2009-12-17T01:01:00.000-08:00

"A man's in the doorway," said the doorguard, "who has no match.

All of the arts are in his power,
the red one, brown and comely."

"If it were Lugh, lover of Fódla,
of the slow streams' song,
that was there," said the Tuatha Dé Danann,
"it's time for him."

"To take the prize away from the man in the doorway is not easy --
a cause for reluctance --
nothing made of earth or of water
dares to try it.

"His side, his face, his hair --
the key of choosing --
a trinity in color -- of white lime and bronze
and blood.

"A sweetness of tongue
like smooth-shaping on lute strings
for comfortable sleep
in an artist's hands for a time ever-playing."

Eros, Peace and Pleasure

2009-10-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

Not knowing where else to put forth some of the thoughts in my head at the moment, I thought I'd put them down here, in the special place I've set aside for sounding knowledgeable.

My divine fixation for the last year or more has been on a somewhat unpopular love god of the Hibernian persuasion. Sometimes when I share this with folks, I get a bit of a blank look. A lot of pagans (or more specifically, a lot of Wiccans), familiar with the clear, "single function" divisions of labor among Greek and Roman gods, don't understand why I'd spend time with a love deity if I wasn't specifically looking for love. There are two misunderstandings occurring here; the first being that the Celtic deities are necessarily restricted to a single function, and the second being that love deities are necessarily restricted to the realms of physical or romantic love.

Óengus Mac Óg is a more multifaceted character, in contrast to, say, the Greek or Roman male embodiments of love and desire. He's really more of an Apollo than a Cupid - the image of goodly male youth, a magician and a warrior - though he retains the tricksiness of Eros/eros all the same. True, he spends much of his time in the stories helping couples survive against the obstacles that face them. And while that illustrates his nature quite excellently, that's not all there is to him. Eros, in the psychological, philosophical sense as I see it, isn't a matter solely related to dating or sex. Eros is agape, descended into the realm of the flesh. Eros is relation and delight. A hedonism stopping just short of bakkheia, a bright flame tempered by the tranquility of water.

Aside from playing matchmaker for mortals, deities of love - Aphrodite, Bast, Inanna, Frigg (even Freyr, who is more often thought of as a god of agriculture and fertility, was said to "bestow peace and pleasure upon mortals," which I think is a good example of what I'm talking about) - have a certain kind of wisdom to impart. Those who might find themselves shying away from the decadence and frenzy of figures like Dionysus and Pan would do well to place themselves at the feet of one of these divinities. In fact, those who are shy in general might do so. Those who suffer from a lack of self-esteem. Those who suffer from inconvenient bouts of anxiety and existential dread. (Why worry when you are pleased with yourself, with who and what you are? Self-love can be just as powerful and valuable as selfless love.) I could tout the power of charm and charisma where it pertains to personal and business relations, but I find little poetry in that. An invitation, the bestowal of favor - enjoyment, an indulgence, the giving of praise. These are the ties that bind human beings together. It's no small thing.

I personally find it significant that the first record we have of a consciously neo-pagan organization was the Church of Venus, in Russia. I compared eros to agape earlier, and self-love to selfless love...I think eros may be a decidedly non-Christian kind of love. I its literal sense, eros, "desire," is more selfish in nature. And when you're coming from a cultural or religious upbringing in which you were taught to deny yourself (your Self?), I really don't think there's anything wrong with that. Seeing to the contentment and satisfaction of others is all the more enriching, I think, when you know that you are entitled to the same. Catholic guilt doesn't really allow you to take pleasure in receiving compliments, or being a target of admiration, or anything gratifying in life, really. Who needs Satan, when Óengus the Perfect is already doing a great job of corrupting my childhood values?

Chalice Visions

2009-06-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

Over the last three years, around midsummer, I've had powerful dreams involving the chalice. I described my thoughts on these dreams this evening on livejournal:

Two years ago I bought my first chalice at the local midsummer festival. That night I dreamed that I was a silver chalice filled with water, being held up under the moonlight, by a man dressed in white. I felt joyous.

In the second dream, which also occurred around midsummer if I remember correctly, I dreamed I was a bronze or brass chalice, being lovingly washed by a teenage boy with red hair. It was late afternoon. I felt safe.

In last night's dream, there was a woman on a hill, dressed in a pink gown. The hill was surrounded by many people. Someone said, "That's the woman that invaders want to carry away." At this point I feared something violent would happen in the dream, but instead, I saw that the woman held above her head a large, golden chalice that seemed to draw down a beam of sunlight around her. She was then surrounded by a roseate aura of lightning. I felt powerful. Inviolable.

There are almost no words. You know?

These chalice dreams are remarkable to me, because it's so easy to dismiss the chalice as a symbol of female passivity or a crude metaphor for woman's reproductive properties. In these dreams, I don't feel like any kind of vessel - at least, not a vessel for anyone else's use. I was not a thing for filling - I already possessed something of great value, that welled up out of myself. What I said of the first dream was that "I felt like I was holding something really important, and that really important thing was me." What these dreams are teaching me is that the chalice doesn't simply exist to have a wand or knife or lance stuck into it - it is a powerful magical tool and spiritual symbol in its own right.

"On Looking into the Eyes of a Demon Lover," by Sylvia Plath

2009-06-11T02:51:00.000-07:00

Here are two pupils
whose moons of black
transform to cripples
all who look:

each lovely lady
who peers inside
takes on the body
of a toad.

Within these mirrors
the world inverts:
the fond admirer's
burning darts

turn back to injure
the thrusting hand
and inflame to danger
the scarlet wound.

I sought my image
in the scorching glass,
for what fire could damage
a witch's face?

So I stared in that furnace
where beauties char
but found radiant Venus
reflected there.

[This poem says so much about where I've been, and in such literal terms.]

Art giveaway

2009-05-07T21:02:00.000-07:00

Though roundabout internet communities, I have discovered a fellow blogspotter is giving away some art of Alice and the White Rabbit. Link here. I find it very cute, so I'm throwing my hat in the ring to win it!

The 1st of May.

2009-05-03T02:08:00.000-07:00

I posted this little write-up on the 1st, for my livejournal. I thought I may as well replicate it here. The prayer mentioned is a historical one, recited by Welsh soothsayers during their work.

* * *

On this May Day I waited for nightfall and made an offering to Gwyn Ap Nudd, in gratitude for a gift he'd given me in a dream I had in 2006. (Three years ago...ha.) It featured a small young blonde character - clearly one of them - who would go on to appear in my dreams several more times. In this dream, I "woke up" in a dark place. There was some sort of celebration, and a bonfire glowed near me. I saw my Good Neighbor lying beside me, back turned. He rolled over to face me, holding something in his hand. He gave me a beautiful knife, whose handle and sheath seemed to be made of bone or ivory. There were two bronze horns extending from the butt of the handle. He told me that it was a gift from Gwyn Ap Nudd, to me. And then I really woke up.

I thought for a long time about finding some way to acknowledge his generosity. I started reading what I could about what sorts of offerings were made amongst the pagan Insular Celts, and I discovered that one common offering was broken weaponry. (As to why one might offer something broken...perhaps the reasoning is the same as in some Asian cultures, that something broken in this world appears whole in the spirit world. Perhaps this is why Biddy Early once said that one should never mend a broken pot or vase, "for it vexes them.") I remembered that I had a broken folding knife in my possession. It was small and lovely, but could no longer fold and unfold. But for some reason, I never really did anything about it, until tonight.

The experience was a bit harrowing, as it was necessary for me to pass right by an earthly neighbor's door in order to get to our garden and make the offering. (He is named Kevin, and lives in a converted garage on our property.) It was also necessary (I felt) for me to speak a prayer, only steps away from his window. I wouldn't care so much about him knowing I was there, if it weren't for the fact that he's a paranoid schizophrenic. While most people might hear a young lady pass by their window at night, in the pouring rain, and wonder momentarily what she was muttering and why before forgetting about it and turning back to the TV...the insane - being hyper-vigilant - come to the only possible and correct conclusion:

A WITCH! SHE'S A WITCH!

Incidentally, I'm reminded of a funny story: One of the women in my coven happens to work in a mental facility. One day she was walking down the hall and stopped at the end, to open a locked room. As she was trying to find the right key, a male patient sidled up to her, and slowly gasped with all the awe-struck wonder of a small child.

"...You're magic, aren't you!" he said.

She knew that it was generally against policy to affirm or "feed into" a patient's delusions, but deciding it was harmless in this case, she said, "Yeah, I am!"

"Wow!" he said. "Can you make magic shoot from your fingertips?!?!"

"Sometimes."

The man grinned. "You know, you're a pretty lady. I like a woman with meat on her bones!"

At this point, she struggled the door open and swiftly sheltered herself inside.

Anyway, [our neighbor] takes medication and is pretty functional, and my mother (a psychotherapist) always tells me not to worry about him seeing me in the garden waving my ceremonial knife and chanting incantations, but I don't know. He still has delusions; for instance, he's entirely convinced that there are government agents at a local deli who want to arrest him. He once declined a gift of homemade cookies from my 12-year-old step-sister, whom he's known all her life, because he was afraid they were poison. I just wouldn't want to alarm the poor man with the sight of an actual witch attempting to traffic with actual spirits in the yard. I fear the consequences of that.

So, like so many witches before me, I dashed out the door, heart beating, struggling with my umbrella, attempting to neither be seen nor heard, for fear of discovery. I got to our garden gate, and paused. I didn't want to whisper, because that didn't seem right. I felt that I should speak clearly, so that I would be heard. I spoke, low but clear:

To the King of Spirits, and to his Queen -
Gwyn ap Nudd, you who are yonder in the forest
For love of your mate, permit us to enter your dwelling.

I went to our small tree and deposited my offering there, expressing a few words of thanks, and my hope that it would please the god. It was a good night to do so, in the dark, and the rain; I felt that I was actually being heard. I hurried back to up the steps to my house, but could not avoid being heard - just as I got through the door, Kevin decided to step out for a cigarette. (Which for him, is just a ruse to check for intruders, CIA, or aliens.) He nodded in acknowledgment to me, as he usually does, and I nodded back before disappearing inside. If he suspects anything, I don't know. >.>

New drawings.

2009-05-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

So, I more or less fulfilled my personal pledge to finish three drawings this week. That just depends on what you mean by "finished." Or, "drawing." >.>

However, I'm rather proud of this:

Óengus Mac Óg, the god of love. This is one of those drawings I didn't intend to actually take seriously. I was just doodling aimlessly in an attempt to draw something, anything - and then I decided on this, beginning in a casual sort of attitude, and then putting all my care into it. I originally meant to make him more conventionally masculine, but no matter how many times I tried, I just couldn't get it right. His face, his bodily proportions, nothing - it was like I'd forgotten how to draw a person. Every attempt was pitiful. Finally, I said "forget it!" and went as romantic as I could. I stopped trying to draw realistically and just used lines. I stopped trying to make him manly and let him be angelic. The god seemed to like that so much better.

(This image was much informed by the John Duncan painting of the same subject, seen here, at right.)

Also, I drew this, for my own amusement.*

IRISH MYTH. LEARN IT. LOVE IT.

*Yes, all these quotes (and more!) can be found in The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, The Wooing of Emer, and The Second Battle of Mag Tuiredh. (Óengus never says anything like that, though. He's a nice boy.)

"I am the lantern, I am the Light."

2009-04-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to get up off my ass this week and do some artwork. (Or, as I like to call it, "work.") I've been recruited by two friends to illustrate their respective graphic tales...I have here a preliminary sketch for the last issue of The Bus Station, a project I'll be working on with my good friend, Phillupus (author of the Phillupic Hymns and what I like to call the Steve Akins smack-down), which will be a series of icons.

After scanning this maybe six times, I finally figured out how to keep it from cutting whole inches from the bottom and sides. However, I am too lazy to scan it again. Anyway, here is my first preliminary sketch. (Or as I'm more comfortable calling it, a "doodle.")

You can thank the early Renaissance for the way he's holding that crook.

I envisioned this is as a diptych, split down the middle (this was originally meant to be two separate icons), but the final product will be rather different, as the images won't be joined in a two-page spread. The god will have to take up more of the frame, for one thing. He may not even be shown from the waist down, if we want to keep this basic idea.

Now, to stop being a lazy ass and finish up my previous assignment...if I'm lucky, I may have a finished drawing to post up by midnight tonight.

Dreaming in Public.

2009-03-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

nataliedee.com

- Artistic Appreciation -
Opera, Orchestra, Ballet, Painting, etc. Aristocrats and Lolitas must always have a deep concern in the artistic field. At ordinary times, you must train your eye to be come the 'Seeing Eye.' We recommend you train your eye to become the 'Seeing Eye.' On page 96-97 are the recommended CDs. Please use as a reference.
-"Manners for Lolitas and Aristocrats," Gothic & Lolita Bible #4

Later, having headed for Harajuku and Kiddy Land, [...] I find myself distracted outside Harajuku Station by a bevy of teenage manga nurses, rocker girls kitted out in knee-high black platform boots, black jodhpurs, black Lara Croft tops, and open, carefully starched lab coats, stethoscopes around their necks.

The look clearly isn't happening without a stethoscope.

They're doing the Harajuku hang - smoking cigarettes, talking on their little phones, and being seen. I circle them for a while, hoping one will have a colostomy bag or a Texas catheter worked into her outfit, but the look, like most looks here or anywhere, is rigidly delineated. They all have the same black lipstick, worn away to pink at the center.

I think about the nurses on my way back to the hotel. Something about dreams, about the interface between the private and the consensual. You can do that here, in Tokyo: be a teenage girl on the street in a bondage-nurse outfit. You can dream in public. And the reason you can do it is that this is one of the safest cities in the world, and a special zone, Harajuku, has already been set aside for you. That was true during the Bubble, and remains true today, in the face of drugs and slackers and a notable local increase in globalization. The Japanese, in the course of being booted down the timeline, have learned to keep it together in ways that we're only just starting to imagine. They don't really worry, not the way we do. The manga nurses don't threaten anything; there's a place for them, and for whatever replaces them.
-"My Own Private Tokyo," by William Gibson.

I've been thinking a little bit about some of the fashion-based subcultures I have interest in - namely, Lolita (often called Gothic Lolita), and Steampunk. Both styles are marked by their nostalgic glance towards the Victorian past, with splashes of goth and punk thrown into each with varying degrees. Minnesota's local public radio did a small story on the rise of these two anachronistic fashion movements.

Lolita, in spite of the epithet of "gothic" that's often applied to it, is a subculture that isn't tied to any particular genre of music, which seems rather unusual when compared to similar teenage subcultures in the US. Previously, the West's fashion statements have tended to occur in tandem with some other cultural movement - bohemian fashion and its literature/theater, punk rock and its music, hippie fashion and its politics. Lolita isn't a sartorial reflection of the latest philosophy or ideological statement - Lolita is a daydream unto itself, a reverie of girlhood equally bursting with sweetness and dripping with malice. It is a persona, lived out in a waking life narrative. Lolis may have similar interests and sensibilites, but they don't necessarily have a vision for the world - their main interest is capturing a moment in time, in reclaiming childhood and its sense of wonder and fear. Lolis are dreamers, but it seems that theirs is a way of Seeing one's surroundings, rather than shaping them. Steampunk, which is quite similar in this regard, nonetheless seems to stand alone as something that goes a bit beyond Seeing. Besides not being beholden to any one artform, it isn't even limited to fashion. Steampunk is a re-imagining of one's history and environment - a re-imagining of the world. A Dreaming.

Of course, it incorporates "punk" into its name and outlook, which gives it an air of anarchism that can justifiably be read as political. But, more than anything else, it is an aesthetic movement; I daresay, it may be one of the most innovative aesthetic movements since the dawn of Aestheticism itself. Issue 1 of Steampunk Magazine calls it an "aesthetic and technological movement," and goes on to say:

The machine must be liberated from efficiency and designed by desire and dreams. Imperfection, chaos, chance and obsolescence are not to be seen as faults, but as ways of allowing spontaneous liberation from the predictability of perfection.

Steampunk overthrows the factory of consciousness by means of beautiful entropy, creating a seamless paradox between the practical and the fanciful. This living dream of technology is neither slave nor master, but partner in the exploration of otherwise unknowable territories of both art and science. [...]

We are inflamed by the dockworkers of the Doglands as they set Prince Albert’s Hall ablaze and impassioned by the dark rituals of the Ordo Templi Orientis. We stand with the traitors of the past as we hatch impossible treasons against our present.
-"What Then, Is Steampunk?: Colonizing the Past So We Can Dream the Future," Steampunk Magazine.

Re-inventing the past and dreaming the future. Dreaming in public. I think this is something very new for the States. And the implications are baffling - I don't even know where to begin. Is Steampunk our cultural coping mechanism for being shot forward through time? Are the common cowans of the masses learning to use phantasy to shape reality? Has "the Empire never ended?" Have I simply been infected by VTI? I invite you to ponder these things with me. I rather wish I had more answers than questions to put forth. But I think there are many worthy questions to be asked about Steampunk, some of which can perhaps be answered by the dreamers of Japan.

More to come in the future, I'm quite sure.

Gush-worthy.

2009-03-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

In doing some research on 1870s fashion for WE NEVER SLEEP (sounds terribly interesting, doesn't it?), I came upon something that delighted my artistic heart: BibliOdyssey.

It's like a visual museum. I can't even explain it, you just have to see for yourself. Old charts and botanical guides and calendars; a goldmine of the obscure and ephemeral. The latest post is called Facebook in the 1750s. That should give you some idea. It is magnificent.

What I love most? The little medieval crest in the upper right corner, of a blackbird clutching a ring in its beak. That should be a symbol for artists everywhere. Nicer than the Corinthian, at least:

He bears a strange resemblance to my ex-boyfriend. But my ex-boyfriend ate souls instead of eyes.

Ni heolas go haontios.

2009-03-12T20:54:00.000-07:00

So I went ahead and finally ordered a copy of Talking About The Elephant: An Anthology of Neopagan Perspectives on Cultural Appropriation, from Immanion Press. It arrived in the mail today, the title page signed by the editor (rising pagan author Lupa, including a cute little doodle of her namesake - a wolf - peeking above her name), and another person whose signature I can't make heads or tails of, unfortunately. It looks like "FozlmEllk." (Taylor Elwood, perhaps?)

Anyhow, I'm hardly into the second essay, written by my pal Erynn Rowan Laurie, when she states a fact that comes at me like a lightning bolt:

"When it comes to language study, no one is going to accuse anyone of cultural appropriation. Learning a second or subsequent language is usually looked upon as an accomplishment and welcomed by native speakers, even if the student is a bit awkward and the grammar isn't always right. Those who can sing in a language like Irish or Scots Gaelic are welcome at cultural events ranging from local ceilidhs to the Scottish Royal National Mód. Student efforts are usually greatly appreciated by older folks who speak that language, and student participation is seen as helping to enliven and preserve both the language and the culture that goes with it."

Strangely, this has never occurred to me when contemplating this subject, despite the fact that I was raised in a house with two languages. Instantly I began to look at this through an informational lense, as per Frater U.D.'s models of magick.

Earlier in the piece, Erynn tells us of an Irish proverb: Ní tír gan teanga, "No nation without a language." Does language carry the main informational content of a culture? Why do people instinctively encourage the study of language as a way to transmit their culture? Does speaking a language propagate its ideas? I know you Ceremonial types have lots to say about language in relation to magick. What about language in relation to a national, tribal, spiritual matrix? What is its relation to the numinous body of a culture? Does learning a language give back to a cultural paradigm, rather than just taking from it? How? Are there other ways to do so, other ways to turn the application of a foreign tradition into a meaningful exchange?

Many people who calls themselves "occultists" (rather than "pagans") probably don't concern themselves too much with the issue of cultural theft. Oddly, chaos magicians seem to get away with a whole hell of a lot, despite the fact that they appear to do exactly what appropriators are accused of doing; using shiny cool bits and pieces of cultures to serve their own ends, completely without regard. But, fortunately, I think a lot of chaos magicians actually do have regard; through their understanding of traditions as paradigms, they seem to understand pretty well that you have to apply cultural content in context, or it loses its power. They may not necessarily be interested in giving back to (much less meaningfully participating in) any particular culture, but at least they take the time to understand a tradition to the best of their ability in order to apply it.

Ceremonial magicians...well, that whole history is a bit beyond my ken. You could ask questions about the usage of Egyptian and Sumerian mythos and mixing it all in with Hermeticism and what have you, but people don't tend to have the same concerns about taking from "dead" cultures - it isn't "stealing" if it no longer belongs to anyone. (I think we should still take the same steps towards understanding those cultures, however.) I will say that Crowley was apparently perfectly happy to utilize Hebrew script in his Work and hurl racial slurs in Victor Neuberg's face at the same time...so maybe language isn't quite a cure-all for the issue at hand!

Extra credit: Sarah Silverman explains Kabbalah.

Extra extra: Ni heolas go haontios is Irish for, "You can't know me without living with me." I copied and pasted it - the laziest way to learn!

Notes on art appreciation.

2009-03-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

("Trees in the Moonlight," Caspar David Friedrich, 1824.)

For reasons I don't entirely understand, I'm going to begin posting here. For reasons that seem based on pure whimsy, my first post will be about my major subject of study: art.

Above, you see what is probably my favorite work by one of my very favorite painters, Caspar David Friedrich. You may have seen his more famous pieces, such as The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog on book of philosophy, or The Sea of Ice on a paperback edition of Frankenstein. I hold his work dear, despite the fact that landscape is probably my least favorite genre. Being exposed to his oeuvre opened my eyes to the landscape's profoundly expressive capabilities. His images inspire a deep emotional response in me; when I look on them too long, my heart begins to ache. I like to use this fact to illustrate an important thing to remember about art:

There is no inherently interesting subject matter.

People unfamiliar with art tend to judge it through it's content. People usually find images of people most relatable. They might also say that they like pictures of angels or tigers or lakes, while they find pictures of fields or bowls of fruit boring. But you can't judge art (solely) by its content. You have to judge it by its execution.

For every person who only likes paintings of "bleeding hearts in the hands of robots" (as one of my old professors once put it), there's another who thinks anything other than a bowl of fruit is pretentious. I once knew someone like the latter, and I had to explain to him that regardless of the "too cool for school" content of whatever album cover he was criticizing, what you really have to ask yourself is, "What is the artist's goal, and did she achieve that goal?" Success in achieving that goal equals success as an artwork. It isn't about having a "message" or even breaking the envelope - as one of my countrymen has put it, "excellence is not a simple matter of serving noble purposes." Whether you're talking about commercial art or fine art, excellence is a matter of the artist achieving what they have set out to do, whether that's telling a story, showing us her world, or just making a rock star look impressive.

("Tree of Crows," Friedrich, 1819-1820.)

We all have our personal tastes, of course, and much of that is based on content - nothing wrong with that. I will admit that Friedrich appeals to me partly because his twisted, mysterious oaks reaching toward the moon remind me of the oaks that line the river of my own region, housing multitudes of crows and serving as the pillars of a primeval acropolis. ("Das wilden und fluren luften/Der aar und wolken liften"?)

("Abbey in the Oakwood," Friedrich, 1809-1810)

But even as I begin to describe the why of how his content enchants me, it becomes clear how he manages to make a simple subject - trees - captivate the viewer. All of Friedrich's identity and philosophy is brought to bear on his work - his Romanticism, his Christianity, his Germanic soul. People call his work singularly Teutonic, even Wagnerian. "Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing witness to the presence of God are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes," says wiki. "He sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature." As potentially operatic and impressive as his subjects are, trees and harbors and forest ruins may or may not be interesting to a particular individual in and of themselves. The key is that Friedrich was not, as said, merely painting what he saw in front of him - he was painting what he saw in himself. He was portraying the hand of God in the movement of the skies, and the disconsolate yearning of arches toward the heavens. That was his goal, and he accomplished it quite hauntingly and effectively.

I was almost tempted to cast aside any mention of the apparent emotional aspect of his work and focus on how he used technique to show it to us...because, emotional content is still content, and detracts a bit from my intended message. Fortunately, I have a better example of how artistic excellence is not dependent on subject matter: John Singer Sargent.

("Nonchalance," John Singer Sargent, 1911)

I came across this piece by Sargent in an entry at Lines and Colors. Here is a great example of an artist who has been undervalued due to his subject matter - he was a high society portrait artist - while his distinctive and accomplished work continues to captivate. The blog author says it much better than I can:

"I have to admit that his paintings on the surface are not infused with great emotion or drama, he seems as unconnected to his sitters as those he painted in groups seem to each other. By accounts Sargent apparently did not have strong ties outside his family, but it is not in the emotional character of his faces and figures that I find the passion in Sargent’s work, it is in the painting itself.

'If you approach Sargent’s portraits as 'living still lifes' or 'interior landscapes', you may begin to see what I mean. Look at the folds in a dress, the way soft interior light bounces off valleys of satin, glowing with subtle but intense colors, like a misty Impressionist garden in the rain. Look at the textures of cloth, hair and skin; the rose colors where blood vessels are close to the surface in noses and cheeks; the sweep of light through dark interiors and the interplay of varied-colored brushstrokes, swaying back and forth with the rhythm of some distant symphony…

'Here is Sargent’s passion, not found in his bored dilettante subjects, but in spite of them, in the act of painting itself. Yes, there is romance and drama in Sargent’s work, but it is less in his images than in his brushstrokes. If you go to look at Sargent’s oil paintings, get up close."

Yes, we are still using words like "passion" and "emotion," but I draw on this example because the artist is not cloying us with any particular emotion - his exuberance is unrelated to the subject. His portraits are sober and prosaic; his poetry is sung through his skill.

Sargent's most famous portraits include the "Daughters of Edward Darley Boit," the Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, and the incomparable Madame X, considered by the artist to be his best. I tell you, anyone who calls the man "not important in the grand scheme of things" is merely green with envy. Though I must say...it appears he was not above jarring us with an exotic image, once in a blue moon:

I agree with Lines and Colors. Good god that man could paint. ("Fumee d'Ambre Gris," 1880.)

(A large and varied collection of Friedrich's paintings can be found here. A painstakingly detailed collection of Sargent's work, here.)