Whose Witchcraft?

Surely it will come as no surprise that I love the films directed by Pete Walker which star the wonderful Sheila Keith, an incredibly versatile old lady who had no qualms about playing a cannibalistic tarot reader in Frightmare. I have been watching House of Whipcord, with rather mixed effects. Speaking as a raging homosexual, a film set in a women's prison is never going to be sexy for me personally. However I suspect that House of Whipcord is intended to be sexy in the same way Hostel starts off sexy before the film deliberately makes it all wrong by having people's faces being blowtorched. This is a totally deliberate thing to make you feel all wrong, uncomfortable and slightly guilty.

But in the case of House of Whipcord, frankly seeing the girls getting whipped - I'm very aware that this is somebody else's sexual fantasy I am watching.

I am also following a man on Instagram who is hot stuff, and a witch, and definitely gay.

So why is he celebrating a very heterosexual God and Goddess, fertility, Wicca type witchcraft which is almost completely gleaned from other people, both books and I think he has had some direct teachers? It's like watching someone watching someone else's sexual fantasy which you know is not his. It's absolutely bizarre, in my eyes at least totally inauthentic and if he didn't have an intriguing patch of hair in a certain place I would be unfollowing post haste.

And yet despite this he still manages to keep an authentic sense of place. I think he is from the Black Country and I think lives in the Staffordshire country to the north of here, and local life and folklore totally gets an input into his witching.

Now you may very reasonably say, Hound, you arrogant bastard, who are you to say what is authentic to anyone else? And of course that's the point. It strikes me that he is using a different combination of the ingredients common to all modern witchcrafts from my own combination.

There are two different poles for how you get witchcraft. One is you are given it by someone else. This is obviously the initiatory traditions like Gardnerians, and their source for it is previous initiatory magical orders and Freemasonry. This tradition is also represented by the tradition Leland mentions that you have to give the magic to someone else before you can die. He tells the story of a witch who gave the power to a priest just for the craic.

The other tradition is the one where you go off into the woods (or into an underpass in my case - never underestimate the magical powers of a 1960s underpass) and teach yourself, make it up, or learn it from the entities you meet on the journey. There is much interchange between these two poles of course.

'There is no room for homosexuals in the Craft,' Gardner used to say. Of course this was because he liked nude young women and 'the great rite' and he can kiss my arse. My humble opinion is that if you ape someone else's witchcraft it will never truly be authentic. The way I keep comparing witchcraft to sex is totally deliberate - not just because it pretty much is sex - but the illustration holds perfectly. If you try to live someone else's sex life you're at best on a hiding to nothing - it must be yours and that is why Know Yourself is such a major magical thing.

Besides, the Goddess doesn't want sheep, that's a different thing completely.

I suppose the point I'm really getting at is you can't do somebody else's sexual fantasy or witchcraft and as you can see I have expressed my mystification but haven't actually gone so far as to act when someone else's witchcraft is in clear opposition to their expressed sexual interests!

Sources for Witchcraft: Dada

Lineage or tradition is very important to some witches. When speaking to these people my personal answer tends to differ based on whom I'm talking to. If they're Gardnerian, for example, I usually tell them I'm Fam Trad and then am mysteriously taken over by the spirit of Gerald Gardner who tells them he made it up.

The reality is that the majority of people who call themselves witches in the twenty first century do not claim an Initiatory history back to a notional ancient pagan religion. The other reality is that those who do claim this are gullible or lying. In reality all modern pagan traditions are composed of different measures of the ingredients which we all draw on: folklore, the grimoire tradition, Crowley, etc. These traditions are out there in the public domain and are influenced by what is going on in the rest of the world, and vice versa. It has struck me recently that an artistic movement has some definite magical overtones.

Dada is the arts movement in question, starting in the teens of the last century:

This new, irrational art movement would be named Dada. It got its name, according to Richard Huelsenbeck, a German artist living in Zurich, when he and Ball came upon the word in a French-German dictionary. To Ball, it fit. “Dada is ‘yes, yes’ in Rumanian, ‘rocking horse’ and ‘hobby horse’ in French,” he noted in his diary. “For Germans it is a sign of foolish naiveté, joy in procreation, and preoccupation with the baby carriage.” Tzara, who later claimed that he had coined the term, quickly used it on posters, put out the first Dada journal and wrote one of the first of many Dada manifestoes, few of which, appropriately enough, made much sense. 

This is almost the perfect description of the mindset magical people seek, to aid the magic. Literally the whole point is forgetting what 'can't' be done and doing stuff to make things happen.

“In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn,” he later wrote, describing the construction he called Bicycle Wheel, a precursor of both kinetic and conceptual art. In 1916, German writer Hugo Ball, who had taken refuge from the war in neutral Switzerland, reflected on the state of contemporary art: “The image of the human form is gradually disappearing from the painting of these times and all objects appear only in fragments....The next step is for poetry to decide to do away with language.”

That same year, Ball recited just such a poem on the stage of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, a nightspot (named for the 18th-century French philosopher and satirist) that he, Emmy Hennings (a singer and poet he would later marry) and a few expatriate pals had opened as a gathering place for artists and writers. The poem began: “gadji beri bimba / glandridi lauli lonni cadori....” It was utter nonsense, of course, aimed at a public that seemed all too complacent about a senseless war. Politicians of all stripes had proclaimed the war a noble cause—whether it was to defend Germany’s high culture, France’s Enlightenment or Britain’s empire. Ball wanted to shock anyone, he wrote, who regarded “all this civilized carnage as a triumph of European intelligence.” One Cabaret Voltaire performer, Romanian artist Tristan Tzara, described its nightly shows as “explosions of elective imbecility.” 

What is this but a description of barbaric words of power? This quote tiptoes towards the vibratory power of sounds.

The illustration for this post is 'Collage with squares arranged according to the laws of chance' by Hans Arp (1916). He made it by dropping pieces of paper and sticking them down where they landed. I wonder which magical art often uses pieces of card and infers from how they end up randomly positioned!

I'm not saying that Dada had a direct impact on the history of modern witchcraft, but I think it reasonable to conclude that there was something in the air in the twentieth century which brought traditional magical techniques and similar arts, to the attention of humanity. Perhaps the most obvious relative would be chaos magic, which apart from its popularity in the nineties caused by the prominent technique of wanking over a sigil, contains a deeper theory on the role of chaos.

Major preoccupations of the Dadaists were war, mechanisation and the place of humanity in this - surely more relevant now than ever! Perhaps it is time for a Dada revival.

Source of the quotes

Pillars and gods and the Fool

To my knowledge there has never been a monastic movement in ancient paganism. The closest, which has sometimes been suggested as a source for the early Christian monastics who lived on top of pillars, is the once a year occasion when men would climb up inside 'pillars' to commune with the Goddess. This is not the actual inspiration, since the actual text of Lucan's De Dea Syria makes it plain they were climbing up inside great big penises (Source chapters 27ff).

That of course is the kind of old time religion we can all be enthusiastic about. Of course they didn't inspire these pillar saints, called stylites, since they were way too fleshly. St Simeon Stylites, who illustrates this post, has always been a favourite of mine, and in true pagan style, I have always wondered how they urinated and defecated, and can't decide whether they would have done it off the edge, or used a pot which would have been collected when their food was hauled up on a pulley.

I think there are however hints of a monastic tradition in modern paganism. I read recently on another blog about a woman who aimed to practice minimalism and was expecting it to give her a great sense of freedom (I won't link this because I really am playing very fast with this source). Unfortunately when she got down to the number of possessions she was aiming for all she felt was a sense of loss and emptiness. She rather got slapped by some minimalism guru who told her she obviously wasn't ready to do it. The person whose blog I was reading criticised the guru in turn and reflected that major changes require adjustment. She felt that the freedom given by minimalism means that a person is very difficult to categorise using the standards of consumer society so would feel a freedom from pressure.

Now I don't believe in minimalism because only the incredibly rich can afford to do it. But the freedom from labels and pressures did strike a chord and I think this is the connection with modern paganism. The fool in the taroT is identified with what there is before something even manifests as intention in the magician. Of course we know the oldest neo-Pagan tradition is stealing anything which isn't nailed down and we stole this from 18th century cartomancers, who stole it from the Jewish Kabbalah. As we  know much of the point of magic is the connection between all things and this includes the no-thing before some-thing.

However there is a connection with ancient paganism and it is to the genuinely ancient belief of holey stones representing divinity. Yes there are also situations where a whole stone represents divinity but in the ditsituat where the hole is the essential thing, it is the nothing which represents the god/dess.

Even without extraordinary feats like living on a pillar I think a pursuit of the no-thing which precedes things reflects the Christian and other pursuit of aloneness but with a genuinely pagan feel.

Sources for Witchcraft: Psalm 109

Regular readers of this blog will know that, in true INFJ fashion, I both claim to be a completely untaught witch, and also to have a degree of learning about my witchcraft. I don't really see a conflict here - I'm only unlearned because nobody else has said that my studies are acceptable to them. I have never done any formal courses, and certainly never been initiated by anyone else. On the other hand, the time I have spent in academic learning has made me unafraid of book learning, happy to apply it in reality, and also given me a nose which can smell bullshit a mile off. Of course the fact that a lot of it is bullshit is what gives much of the modern witchcraft movement's literature a bad reputation - it is ahistorical, fanciful, imaginery claptrap. That said, that is the name of the game in magic, so I suppose it is to be expected, and you will certainly read a lot of my own imaginings on here (all except for the one where Andrew Lincoln knocks on my door, but I'm still working on that one).
Despite my repeated assertion that the witch's hedge ill teach her all things, I am also a firm believer that the resource the witch needs at the time will appear from whatever source, and this post is largely inspired by a visit in my hedge which then led on to a more academic study. Last weekend I went round the Birmingham Back to Backs for the first time - and in historically accurate fashion they had set up the older houses as Jewish households, since the area around Hurst Street was the Jewish quarter before anyone else got hold of it. Pondering the connection I picked up the only bible in the house, which happens to be a Jewish bible - the Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University Press, New York, 2004), and turned to a psalm very familiar to me for its use in magic - Psalm 109, one of the scarier ones. In fact it's used in several different forms of magic -

This one is powerful enough that merely chanting it while focusing on an enemy should cause him or her some distress.  However, before simply writing this particular Psalm off as evil, I should point out that it also gets interpreted in more positive ways.  Ray T. Marlbrough says it is used “To protect from an enemy, persisting in bothering you” (Magic Power of the Saints).  In this light, it is not so much of a curse as a barrier against harm.  Braucher Chris Bilardi recognizes its power to be used “against a tenacious enemy,” but also says it is useful “for acquiring friends” (The Red Church).  So even the “cursing Psalm” has its upside. Source

One of the things I like about the Jewish Study Bible is that it turns the kind of scholarship on its head that I have known from a degree in theology from a Christian perspective. In fact reading this bible for a post-Christian is about as illuminating as it can be, because it shows how the Christian reading of the Hebrew bible is far divorced from the Jewish one. As it happens, the commentary illuminated something about this psalm, which begins with an invocation of God (the translation is the Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation):
'O God of my praise,
do not keep aloof.'
I can't believe how I had never noticed the divisions within this psalm (which believe me, when you're reciting it as a monk at 5am in the morning just comes across as a protracted moan), but it then goes on to narrate what the psalmist's enemies have said against him:
'for the wicked and the deceitful
open their mouth against me;
they speak to me with lying tongue.
They encircle me with words of hate;
they attack me without cause.
They answer my love with accusation
and I must stand judgment.
They repay me with evil for good, with hatred for my love.'
Magically the most important part of this psalm is the next section - and what made me realise this is the commentary here 'The psalm, particularly this section, resembles the Mesopotamian "namburbi," lit. "untying," a type of prayer intended to undo a magic spell'. The magic spell is of course the attack outlined in the section above, and this is its untying:
'Appoint a wicked man over him;
may an accuser stand at his right side;
may he be tried and convicted;
may he be judged and found guilty.
May his days be few;
may another take over his position.
May his children be orphans,
his wife a widow.
May his children wander from their hovels,
begging in search of [bread].
May his creditor seize all his possessions;
may strangers plunder his wealth.
May no one show him mercy;
may none pity his orphans;
may his posterity be cut off;
may their names be blotted out in the next generation.
May God be ever mindful of his father's iniquity,
and may the sin of his mother not be blotted out.
May the Lord be aware of them always
and cause their names to be cut off from the earth,
because he was not minded to act kindly,
and hounded to death the poor and needy man,
one crushed in spirit.
He loved to curse - may a curse come upon him!
He would not bless - may blessing be far from him!
May he be clothed in a curse like a garment,
may it enter his body like water,
his bones like oil.
Let it be like the cloak he wraps around him,
like the belt he always wears.
May the Lord thus repay my accusers,
all those who speak evil against me.'
I was of course familiar with the magical practice of undoing as a way of averting other people's ill will. There is a spell excactly like this in my book where you begin by tying nine knots in string to represent the evil done to you, undo them one at a time and burn the string at the end. I knew that this felt old, but didn't realise that it went back to the ancient culture of Sumer (modern day Iraq), the first urban civilisation, which means that this magical method dates back to around 4000 BCE. It looks very much as if the Hebrew bible has picked up a local magical  text, because up until I read the commentary on that psalm I had no idea it followed exactly the form of these spells. They were called namburbi because that means '[ritual for] undoing it', i.e. undoing what had already been done, exactly as in the psalm. What I find particularly interesting is also that the form of the ritual has so many commonalities with pretty much every other magical reitual ever invented, but also has the exact same end of all magic - being free of something. Here is the ritual:

Colophons of namburbi tablets and letters from writers and astrologers of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal show that it was the role of the ašipu, “exorcist,” to plan and implement the apotropaic rituals. If a sign had been recognized as foreboding, the gods Ea and his son Asalluḫi, Šamaš, the sun god and god of justice (mīšaru), and often the deity, in whose sphere of influence the prognostication had occurred, were invoked, and offered a meal of bread, meat, dates, incense, water and beer to appease the source of the portent and effect a change in outcome. Clay figurines were fashioned and a Šuilla, or “show of hands prayer,” was delivered to implore divine mercy.^[4]

During the preliminary purification stage, the subject and conjuror conducting the ritual abstained from eating watercress, onions, leeks or fish. Water was consecrated under the stars and with all manner of cleansing substances. Small altars were erected by the riverside in a “place difficult of access.” The person infected with the evil (lumnu) was led to a spot strewn with garden herbs (šammū kirî) behind one of the altars and a clay figurine representing the harbinger of the omen was laid before them. The conjuror then performed the incantation, often climaxing by shattering a clay pot, and the subject was washed with the consecrated water, which was afterward poured over the figurine, to return the impurity to its source. A variety of symbolic actions could follow, including cutting the subjects hair, fingernails, stripping off his coat, peeling an onion or unwinding a thread to represent the dissolution of the fate. The figurine was then cast into the river, "down to the apsû." Measures were taken to avoid reinfection, with the subject perhaps wearing an amulet and returning home via a different route from that taken prior to the ritual.

The profound psychological effect of the release ritual cannot be underestimated. For the private individual it would have had a deep impression, akin to absolution, but to a monarch it may have altered his behavior. By ridding the impending evil inherent in a bad omen, a namburbi “bolstered the king’s self-confidence, strengthened his resolution, and steeled his will to fight.” An entire staff of conjurors organized like a ministry poured over omen collections and prepared rituals to counter any portent that was diagnosed.^[7] A namburbi was a central part of the substitute king ritual. Source

That said, I'm not necessarily going to go to so much trouble myself. I was inspired by a cow's tongue on the Bull Ring this afternoon. When the witch is ready the resources *always* appear.
Oh buggrit - better put in some music to entertain hoi polloi.

Sources for Witchcraft: Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses

I have posted here before about unexpected sources from which to construct a witchcraft, including such luminaries as Miss Marple, and the fictitious witches of the Discworld. Today I come to a book I grew up with, and one which only reveals its full witchiness to adult eyes: it is A Child's Garden of Verses. In fact I think I was far too young to appreciate this book as a child, since it is only now that I have grown up into the sort of child who can appreciate the sort of world Stevenson describes. His child's garden is intensely witchy, since a pervading theme is one of the child alone, imaginary friends, and creating worlds of fantasy and fairy, to which grown ups (for which read non-witches) are not invited. Despite some of the book's attitudes being ones which are unpopular among liberals today (including racial attitudes and the easy acceptance that ones own prosperity is the result of being Good) Stevenson fleshes out a magical world of simple childhood which we could all aspire to rather than making it complicated.
This world is exactly the kind of world we witches create by image/ination and the elements of magic we find around us. In this poem it is called the Land of Counterpane:

When I was sick and lay a-bed,I had two pillows at my head,And all my toys beside me layTo keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or soI watched my leaden soldiers go,With different uniforms and drills,Among the bed-clothes, through the hills.

And sometimes sent my ships in fleetsAll up and down among the sheets;Or brought my trees and houses out,And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and stillThat sits upon the pillow-hill,And sees before him, dale and plain,The pleasant Land of Counterpane.

Like all witchcraft, this one begins with a journey into another world or between worlds, where changes can be made in all worlds. I find it interesting that Stevenson is almost exactly describing the essence of hedge witchcraft:

The lights from the parlor and kitchen shone outThrough the blinds and the windows and bars;And high overhead and all moving about,There were thousands of millions of stars.There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,Nor of people in church or the Park,As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon me,And that glistened and winked in the dark.

The Dog, and the Plough, and the Hunter, and all,And the star of the sailor, and Mars,These shown in the sky, and the pail by the wallWould be half full of water and stars.They saw me at last, and they chased me with cries,And they soon had me packed into bed;But the glory kept shining and bright in my eyes,And the stars going round in my head.

If only all witches could regain the child's sense of wonder and easy interaction with the worlds around us, in this case the wind:

I saw you toss the kites on highAnd blow the birds about the sky;And all around I heard you pass,Like ladies' skirts across the grass—O wind, a-blowing all day long!O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,But always you yourself you hid.I felt you push, I heard you call,I could not see yourself at all—O wind, a-blowing all day long,O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,O blower, are you young or old?Are you a beast of field and tree,Or just a stronger child than me?O wind, a-blowing all day long,O wind, that sings so loud a song!

Stevenson successfully conjures the nocturnal magical world created by the moon, with its sense of danger and strangeness:

The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;She shines on thieves on the garden wall,On streets and fields and harbor quays,And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.

The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,The howling dog by the door of the house,The bat that lies in bed at noon,All love to be out by the light of the moon.

But all of the things that belong to the dayCuddle to sleep to be out of her way;And flowers and children close their eyesTill up in the morning the sun shall arise.

Nor is the real world of adult conflict ignored, In this poem, it is actually placed into a surprisingly sophisticated frame:

When I am grown to man's estateI shall be very proud and great,And tell the other girls and boysNot to meddle with my toys.

Text and image credit for the book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25617/25617-h/25617-h.htm

Tactical Witchcraft

The look, the glamour, not the ideology

My humble opinion is that the modern witchcraft movement, like all magical systems, balks at the idea of being slotted into any of society's convenient categories. Convenience & safety may dictate that it is best to take advantage of societal protection given to religion in many parts of the world. I have posted before on my discomfort at describing what we do as a spirituality, & describing ourselves as a secret society is to invite both ridicule & suspicion. Our deepest secrets are anyway open to everyone & unstateable in human language, & to assign our way to spirit alone is disingenuous.

I think our witchcraft may actually best be compared to a martial art. What I mean by this is that I feel the kind of equilibrium & mental state sought by the martial artist is almost the same as that sought by the sorcerer. The ultimate target of every magical act is almost always the magician himself: oh there I go, letting another 'secret' out of the bag. I could just tear out my own tongue.

With this confusion of identity & aim comes a confusion of principles. Naturally those who say witchcraft is a religion seek a public system of ethics, which frequently is the inadequate & tedious 'law of three,' & it's variants & amendments. The Wiccan Rede is another ethical principle guaranteed to fail as a public relations exercise while ensuring crippling fear of action in the practitioner. Witches are further hampered by an internalised inferiority towards the scriptural traditions prevalent in our society & a fear of failing to integrate all things, another major magical goal. Oh dear, I really am letting lots of cats out of bags today. If I could pronounce any of the words & didn't fancy them all, I would probably be a Heathen, since they're not shy of pronouncing someone their enemy, an action which my life experience has taught me to be sympathetic towards. To put it in a more witchly way, to integrate all things in a living system, some must die. This is inescapable & natural.

To find a system of principles to underpin this system of conscious homeostasis it is unfortunately necessary to look to the East. The writings of many martial artists can be nourishing to the witch. Such works as the Book of Five Rings & the writings of Morihei Ueshiba deal with such things as correspondence, integration & timing, which subjects fill many an appendix of a paperback with a crescent moon on the spine.

A system also from the East & one which I personally find useful for it's apparent simplicity, is Mao Tdw Tung's principles of guerilla warfare, which I find I am using extensively in my current run-in with my 'manager':

During the War of Resistance Against Japan, on the basis of his comprehensive analysis of the enemy and ourselves, Comrade Mao Tse-tung laid down the following strategic principle for the Communist-led Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies: "Guerrilla warfare is basic, but lose no chance for mobile warfare under favourable conditions. " (2) He raised guerrilla warfare to the level of strategy, because, if they are to defeat a formidable enemy, revolutionary armed forces should not fight with a reckless disregard for the consequences when there is a great disparity between their own strength and their enemy's. If they do, they will suffer serious losses and bring heavy setbacks to the revolution. Guerrilla warfare is the only way to mobilize and apply the whole strength of the people against the enemy, the only way to expand our forces in the course of the war, deplete and weaken the enemy, gradually change the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves, switch from guerrilla to mobile warfare, and finally defeat the enemy.

In the initial period of the Second Revolutionary Civil War, Comrade Mao Tse-tung enumerated the basic tactics of guerrilla warfare as follows:

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue. (3)

Guerrilla war tactics were further developed during the War of Resistance Against Japan. In the base areas behind the enemy lines, everybody joined the fighting — the troops and the civilian population, men and women, old and young; every single village fought. Various ingenious methods of fighting were devised, including "sparrow warfare", (4) land-mine warfare, tunnel warfare, sabotage warfare, and guerrilla warfare on lakes and rivers.

In the later period of the War of Resistance Against Japan and during the Third Revolutionary Civil War, we switched our strategy from that of guerrilla warfare was the primary form of fighting to that of mobile warfare in the light of the changes in the balance of forces between the enemy and ourselves. By the middle, and especially the later, period of the Third Revolutionary Civil War, our operations had developed into large-scale mobile warfare, including the storming of big cities.

War of annihilation is the fundamental guiding principle of our military operations. This guiding principle should be put into effect regardless of whether mobile or guerrilla warfare is the primary form of fighting. It is true that in guerrilla warfare much should be done to disrupt and harass the enemy, but it is still necessary actively to advocate and fight battles of annihilation whenever conditions are favourable. In mobile warfare superior forces must be concentrated in every battle so that the enemy forces can be wiped out one by one. Comrade Mao Tse-tung has pointed out:

A battle in which the enemy is routed is not basically decisive in a contest with a foe of great strength. A battle of annihilation, on the other hand, produces a great and immediate impact on any enemy. Injuring all of a man's ten fingers is not as effective as chopping off one, and routing ten enemy divisions is not as effective as annihilating one of them. (5)

Battles of annihilation are the most effective way of hitting the enemy; each time one of his brigades or regiments is wiped out, he will have one brigade or regiment less, and the enemy forces will be demoralized and will disintegrate. By fighting battles of annihilation, our army is able to take prisoners of war or capture weapons from the enemy in every battle, and the morale of our army rises, our army units get bigger, our weapons become better, and our combat effectiveness continually increases.

(https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lin-biao/1965/09/peoples_war/ch05.htm)

Since appearing at the disciplinary hearing I have also brought a grievance, since my 'manager's' sidekick decided to have a go at me for no reason. I have now gone strangely quiet. They're plainly wondering what I'm going to do next. This is exactly the kind of strategy advocated by Comrade Mao Tse Tung!

Picture credit: http://tacticalshit.com/video-islamberg-new-york-muslim-town-jihadis-learn-guerrilla-warfare-tactics/

'Twelve Step' Witchcraft

Since I posted recently about sobriety, incorporating the most witchy value of seeing things without the influence of a substance, as they are, I have found myself reflecting on the famous twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (the originals are here). I have been thinking about how they would interpret into witchcraft terms. What I think is possibly most magical about them is the way they are cast in the past tense – these things have already happened, reflecting a most important frame of mind in magical thinking, living, and working (I like to say that wishes never buried managers, and she was actually supposed to be working with me yesterday and rang in sick. Result!). They are also about doing things, and one of the problems we have in the modern witchcraft movement is that many of its adherents look for some kind of statement of belief of creed such as the Christians have, and since our Craft is based more on doing than believing, that is almost impossible to create. Conversely my witch mind feels most uncomfortable with the idea in the steps of relying on a power outside oneself. While this is not really to criticise the twelve steps, and this is certainly not intended to be a witchy replacement for them for an alcoholic, these steps are just calling out to be turned into a witchcraft statement of action. This is my poor attempt at one; there are actually only nine and as usual I make no claim to its perfection or infallibility. Probably in true witch style the steps would be better seen as spokes of a wheel to indicate return and repeat, or even choice.

We realised our duty to take ownership of our lives and responsibility to implement change to prevent the same things recurring until we could face them. We admitted to ourselves where we had given this sovereignty to others.

By a searching and fearless moral inventory we sought to identify the reality of our lives and situations, accepting our power to name needs, actions and situations to identify them, so that we could no longer delude ourselves with untruth.

We acknowledged the existence of many realities beyond our own, including divinities. We see them as actively present to us, in us, and ourselves as able to co-create with our divinities while being their agents in the world.

We came to see the universe as a place where all things interact. As part of this, we understood that the resources we need will always be available when we need them, if we are capable of seeing them .

We saw our need to understand our world by means beyond the visible. By divination and recognition of signs, we came to know that we could see past, present, and future. In so doing, we recognised the ebb and flow of life, and so became ever more part of them, and able to influence them.

We accepted that often we would not be able to see the consequences of our actions due to the nature of the situations we were acting in; we returned to a moral inventory to make judgements as to what to do. In denying the concept of sin, we aimed to make our vision of right and wrong clearer and more flexible.

We accepted that in taking the mantle of witch upon ourselves, we became a source of misunderstanding, yet also a source of change, liberation, and magic, to other people.

We did not claim to have the final answers to the meaning of life; instead we acknowledge that our knowledge is usually at best partial and we cannot claim knowledge beyond our small sphere.

We admitted that there were times when we had lived in fear. While confessing that our way will never be for all, we proclaimed this as our message of hope, that people can live with joy, not in fear of judgement or other people. We call this joy the ecstasy of the Goddess.

(Image credit: here)

Sources for Witchcraft: Miss Marple as an Unexpected Source

I am re-reading Agatha Christie's The Thirteen Problems. I last read this book in 1995. I am not in the habit of keeping records of what I read – although I do note passages or quotes I want to be able to come back to – and the reason I remember this twentieth anniversary so precisely is of course that I was in a rather difficult time of my life. 

The precise circumstances were that I was a Benedictine novice. I was the last remaining of three novices in my noviciate – it was very apparent to me that not only was the community incredibly dysfunctional, despite there being some men there, now dead, who were the closest I have ever come to meeting real Christian saints, but it was also dominated by someone who in retrospect I can see as being very personality disordered. If at this point you have had a strong emotional reaction to those rather emotive words, I would just say to you that personality disorders are actually very common. Many executives of big corporations have symptoms of personality disorder, and in fact it is their disordered personalities which make them able to get to the top of organisations, which subsequently was exactly the case with the person I am talking about. The problem with these people, of course, is that because they identify the issue with their own safety, and also do not believe that other people's emotions are real, because they don't have any themselves, they can do a great deal of damage. I am not going to go into details – that is not the purpose of the post – but suffice to say that I have experienced the psychological abuse of which Catholic clergy are capable, at first hand. When this man's dramatic downfall comes, I will happily post here about how the authorities of his order know full well what he's about. My only sorrow is that that there is no point going to the police about him – the things I know for a fact about him can all be demolished by his facile tongue as my imagination or by means of attributing his own 'interests' to me. Needless to say I have not failed to resort to magical means to mimimise his damage to others and isolate him into his own little world: since he is personality disordered he will ultimately always self-sabotage until he accepts he is his problem, and so magically it is easiest to let him screw himself up.

In tandem with experiencing this abuse I have experienced how ones loved ones do not believe the fact that one is being abused. Over and again in the literature on child abuse (obviously I was an adult at the time), the tale is told of the target of abuse trying to tell someone and not being believed. Certainly in my situation, where I was capable of resisting the psychological intimidation and abuse to which I was suspect, and he would dearly have loved to have sex with me but could see that trying it on would give me the material to finish him, the most useful thing that I could have had would have simply to be believed by my mother. She did not. The only effect of this is to add to the abuse the person is suffering.

Into this situation came Miss Marple. I read this book in the evenings in bed. I found a woman of completely independent thought, who had the clarity of vision to stick by her own guns and this saw to the heart of the problem, and thirteen times, had the correct idea of what was happening. This is surely close to the heart of the witch figure, as somebody who stands apart, gets information in all sorts of ways, mostly unrecognised by everyone else, and is prepared to stick to their conclusion until it is proved right, which it will be.

One of my companions in the novitiate commented to me one day that he couldn't understand why I had seen through this person before he had. I told him at the time that I felt the monk of whom I speak had carefully put a front on what he was about, which my fellow-novice would see as being legitimate. For example, he decided he would try to give me a hard time, but told my fellow novice that the motivation for this was to test my vocation. He believed this at the time, although I told him it was a complete lie – it is not for nothing that nowadays I can recognise a good old-fashioned bully from a mile off – and it was not until the monk in question managed to get my fellow-novice alone in a car, put his hand on his genitals and said, 'What about it?', that he began to suspect he wasn't that interested in living his monastic commitment.

I think the reason I found Miss Marple's clarity of vision and refusal to be taken in by the way other people thought about things, was that, even though my Myers-Briggs personality test came out INFP at the time, I was actually already feeling my way towards the fact of being an INFJ. In fact the sentence I write above about Miss Marple's character being close to the archetypal witch figure, could also go for the INFJ personality. I had to mature into it, clearly, but definitely had the many traits already. This fact also indicates the basic cracks in my relationship with my mother, which inevitably led to it blowing apart when it was stressed by both of us getting older, with all the health problems that that involved. There are some of those lists on the internet along the lines of 'things never to say to an INFJ'. In fact, reading those lists, all of them are things that my mother routinely said to me over and over again: a friend asked me whether she winds me up on purpose. I can only answer that she does a fair imitation of it, not least because if you keep on saying things to someone that you know drives them up the wall, well, what can I say. The key one here, of course, is not being believed. This was often dressed up as 'you do exaggerate,' 'you make it up as you go along,' and so on, but the key thought being expressed here was always that the younger Hound was a liar. Touchy, and over-serious, as well. All of them guaranteed to have an INFJ foaming at the mouth; in fact I'm surprised it took me as long as 38 years to do an INFJ door slam on her.

I can see in the incidents of which I write here, and the inspiration I took from Miss Marple, the younger me feeling my way towards being the mature me. Miss Marple's example actually helped me, not only in a traumatic time of life when disbelieved and thus isolated by my own mother, but also towards becoming truly me, and arriving as a witch.

Cultural appropriation & the magical world

The picture illustrates what you find if you take apart one of the packets of joss paper. There is a great tradition of Chinese magic, often in a form of sigilisation, & many things that are recognisably sigils are visible in the picture.
I have commented before on this blog about the presence of African traditional magic - or rather in that case, charlatans taking money off people & pretending to be magical practitioners - in our European cities. In fact it is difficult to live in one of our modern diverse cities & be unaware, if you have an eye for magic, of the different kinds of magic going on. There is some recognisable Afro-Caribbean magic in Brum, for example. Of course to the magical person there is always an ambivalent dividing line between magic & religion, & one also sees Islamic magic, Chinese magic, Catholic magic, & what have you. For the purposes of completeness, my point here is that you will find quasi-magical, quasi-religious, & quasi-cultural practices originating in all the originating worlds of a population. Church of England magic? Ooooh, yes.
However in our white Anglo-Saxon culture there is a specific tradition of locating magic in what were traditionally considered 'exotic' cultures. I suspect this is an element of the tendency in European culture to make magic OK as long as someone else does it - you have to employ someone else to do the dirty work for you.
Alongside this our approach to other cultures - whether imbued with ideas of mystery, of 'darkness', or concpets of the 'noble savage' - has traditionally seen them as the source of magical knowledge. And of course this has come in fashions - there was a time when anything magic was almost always dressed up in Egyptian clothing. Another example would be the qabilistic undergirding of so much modern magic. Yet another would be the influence of the 'hippie' understanding of eastern mysticism since the 1960s.
In more recent times an awareness of 'cultural appropriation' - which means a more powerful culture taking aspects of a less powerful culture - has led to a discomfort with where we posit the sources of our magic. Perhaps the best example of this would be the Native American wannabees in the States.
Both of these positions make me intensely uncomfortable. The reality is that all cultures & religions at all times have had a culture-specific form of magic. Prophets & priests have also always gone off the rails into the domain of magic. And the simple fact it that the majority of these systems bear more than a passing resemblance to each other.
A further reason why either stealing from another culture because it's seen as magical or studiously avoiding cultural appropriation are both approaches that lead to a magical dead end is found in the nature of magic. In a magical world view, everything in the world is connected to everything else in some way. What usually differentiates the magical world view from most religious world views is that the magical practitioner is seen as part of this interconnected world, & indeed has some level of control over it. I therefore have both the liberty & duty of care which comes with this interconnectedness. It behoves me to be a good guest in a world I'm not native to, but there is no guarantee where the next magical inspiration will come from.
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Winged penises, bereavement & moving house

It's a bit fraught in my house still. I'm in the middle of selling & moving, & in true witch style I've almost worked my way through one estate agent in a fortnight. Without naming names, they made a monumental cock up & I was forced to remonstrate with them. I wish people would stop crying when I'm trying to talk to them, it's most distracting. Anyway, also in true witch style, I have a little plan to turn this situation around to my advantage.
I'm not so distracted that I didn't notice the graffiti which form the first picture here. I looooove the halos, & apart from anything else, those are actually a genuinely ancient religious symbol. Forget your made-up Neo-Pagan traditions, kids, flying penises are that real ol' time religion! The second picture is of an ancient Roman amulet to prove that it's the real thing (sorry, I've lost the source):
'In ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinus or fascinum was the embodiment of the divine phallus. The word can refer to the deity himself (Fascinus), to phallus effigies and amulets, and to the spells used to invoke his divine protection. Pliny calls it a medicus invidiae, a "doctor" or remedy for envy (invidia, a "looking upon") or the evil eye.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus)
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Reblog: Royal Life Lessons From A Drag Queen’s Dressing Room by Nicole Denise

Source: http://www.nicoledenise.org/royal-life-lessons-from-a-drag-queens-dressing-room/
I wonder if she realises there's a great magical catchphrase in the middle of this?
Momentarily halt the controversial debates surrounding marriage equality, religious dogma and socially acceptable lifestyles and enter into the drag queen's quarters. Her (makeup) vanity is far deeper than one would think. Among the glitz and glamour, one could glean fundamental proverbs that lead to fulfilling and unapologetic living.
Live Big or Stay Home
The stage presence of a drag queen is intoxicating. She beckons undivided attention. Even the most prude are captivated—watching through parted fingers—when in the presence of royalty. What is that? Why is watching a queen werk so amazing? It's simple. The philosophy of every queen is live big or stay home. There is no other option.
Queens don't cower under spotlight, and they surely don't resist the fanfare of their own presence. Take note, and live as big, loud and spirited as you choose to. Who's gonna stop you? In reality, no one has the power to rain on your life's parade except the self-sabotaging voice that drowns out your passions and true life calling. Ignore that lying twit and locate the most colorful and beautiful expression of yourself and share it with the world. You deserve it and humanity requires your light to rid it of darkness.
Acceptance Is Necessary But Not Required
The life of a drag queen is glamorous and yet shrouded by the darkness of controversy. Why is an existence so stunningly bold, shunned, ridiculed and even hated? It's the sad reality of living in an unconscious society. When one is insecure or uncertain of the treasure encapsulated within, it becomes easier to project negativity onto an individual who has located the gold of his soul. But even in gloomy ugliness, the show must go on!
Remember that acceptance is necessary but not required. This almost oxymoronic phrase is a nugget of wisdom. In order to live a life of liberty, you must live from a place of truth. Fully accept your whole self—flaws and all—and promise that even with all your sh*t, you will show up only as you. No masking or pretense allowed. Once you accept yourself, outsider permission or tolerance is unnecessary. The beautiful thing about showing up fully is that it eventually sets the truth in others free. Proceed in full, yet unrequired acceptance.
Fake It 'Til You Make It
The art of presenting a queen to the world from the perspective (and physicality) of masculinity is quite a feat. It requires the rehearsing, tucking, enhancing and exaggeration of features that are, sometimes, non-existent. But what emerges from this calculated metamorphosis is the real deal.
It's sometimes necessary to enhance and exaggerate areas of life that are certain. It's also okay to tuck those areas from view that require discovery, healing and/or further incubation. This, unlike denial and deception, creates healthy life boundaries. Identify those blemishes and tender spots of your identity and beautify them with truth.
The human is a work in progress being transformed into perfection by the Creator.  As the internal work is completed, live big, accept truth, fake it 'til you make it and WERK!
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Sources for Witchcraft: Wordsworth on Plain Living and High Thinking

Plain-dressing Quakers

A surprising source this, but I have always loved this poem. Perhaps it's because I'm plain living, thinking, and speaking, to the point of rudeness.


Written in London. September, 1802
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

O Friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom! — We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:
The wealthiest man among us is the best:
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174834

Sources for Witchcraft: Walking & Kierkegaard

Needless Alley, Birmingham, 1953

I think I prefer sources 'for' to sources 'of', as better representing the act of using sources to create a witchcraft; 'of' seems to hijack those sources & apply a usually unsuitable witchcraft title to them. At some point I shall go through the blog applying this tag where I think it fits. It's been ages since I've debunked anything, so let's debunk the idea of the Peripatetic School of Greek philosophy first. Needless to say, this entry from Wikipedia is unreferenced, but all the sources I've been able to see clearly describe Aristotle teaching in the Lyceum, not walking about:

'The Peripatetic school was a school of philosophy in Ancient Greece. Its teachings derived from its founder, the Greek philosopher, Aristotle, and Peripatetic is a name given to his followers. The school originally derived its name Peripatos from the peripatoi (περίπατοι "colonnades") of the Lyceum in Athens where the members met. A similar Greek word peripatetikos (Greek: περιπατητικός) refers to the act of walking, and as an adjective, "peripatetic" is often used to mean itinerant, wandering, meandering, or walking about. After Aristotle's death, a legend arose that he was a "peripatetic" lecturer – that he walked about as he taught – and the designation Peripatetikos came to replace the original Peripatos.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school).

I begin with this because I want to draw parallels between the walking praxis of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, who was deeply schooled in the ancient Greek philosphers, & is sometimes referred to as a peripatetic philosopher, & the philosophy of the hedge among modern witches. For us the hedge is a location of learning, encounter, magic, & transformation, & it appears our approach is not that different from that of Kierkegaard to Copenhagen in the nineteenth century:

'Kierkegaard's walking was a many-sided affair and had from the very first a communicational intention. The walks were both Socratic and Romantic-Ironic. They were the walks both of a philosopher prepared to engage any passer-by on some topic of mutual interest and of the free-floating, unengaged spirit as described by Friedrich Schlegel, unattached, passionless, committed to no cause, achieving no aim, and serenely indifferent to whatever might befall.' (Roger Poole: Kierkegaard - The Indirect Communication. University of Virginia Press, 1993, p.15)

I remember Kirkegaard from my theology student days as a rather dour, pietistic Christian philosopher, & so I am delighted to find much that is witch-like in him. I am of course aware that I am essentially hijacking someone who is absolutely not a witch for my purposes. Hey, that's what finding yourself in the hedge is all about: the inspiration can come from the most unlikely places. Perhaps the most witch-like thing about him is his desire not to set himself up as the great philosopher. He needed the daily contact with many different people that he got in what he called his 'people bath', that he got while walking the streets of Copenhagen, the streets that formed his 'hedge' in which he did his thinking before going home to write it all down. For one of his biographers the image of the streets become an (extremely witchy) metaphor for the thinking he did in them:

'The city is a metaphor for Kierkegaard's work as an author - changeable & disquieting - & it could take almost no time to move from the light-filled, elegantly neo-classical plazas to the cacophony of the dark alleys. So when Kierkegaard moved about the streets of Copenhagen, his strutting was connected with his writing, he was everywhere & nowhere, walking this way & that, conversing intimately with everyone, but at the same time distant & alien.' (Joakim Garff (translated by Bruce H Kirmmse): Soren Kierkegaard: A Biography. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005, pp. 316-7)

So for Kierkegaard his daily walk was both the source of & forum for his philosophy, exactly the role the hedge plays for hedge witchcraft. A further reason he walked was not to set himself up as a 'celebrity' - ironically his concept of aristocracy in this next quote is also incredibly witchy:

'Yes, of course I am an aristocrat (& so is everyone who is truly conscious of willing the Good, because they are always few in number), but I want to stand right on the street, in the midst of the people, where there is danger & opposition. I do not want [...] to live in cowardly & prissy fashion at an aristocratic remove, in select circles protected by an illusion (that the masses seldom see them [other philosophers he has named] & therefore imagine them to be Somebody).' (Cited in Garff, op cit, pp. 317-8)

Kierkegaard comes incredibly close to a magical notion of movement in the famous letter written to his niece in 1847:

'Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Even if one were to walk for ones health & it were always one station ahead - I would still say: Walk! Besides, it is also apparent that in walking one constantly gets as close to well-being as possible, even if one does not quite reach it - but by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Health & salvation can be found only in motion. If anyone denies that motion exists, I do as Diogenes did, I walk. If anyone denies that health resides in motion, then I walk away from all morbid objections. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right. And out in the country you have all the advantages; you do not risk being stopped before you are safe & happy outside your gate, nor do you run the risk of being intercepted on your way home. I remember exactly what happened to me a while ago & what has happened frequently since then. I had been walking for an hour & a half & had done a great deal of thinking,& with the help of motion I had really become a very agreeable person to myself. What bliss, &, as you may imagine, what care did I not take to bring my bliss home as safely as possible. Thus I hurry along, with downcast eyes I steal through the streets, so to speak; confident that I am entitled to the sidewalk, I do not consider it necessary to look about at all (for thereby one is so easily intercepted, just as one is looking about - in order to avoid) & thus hasten along the sidewalk with my bliss (for the ordinance forbidding one to carry anything on the sidewalk does not extend to bliss, which makes a person lighter)  - directly into a man who is always suffering from illness & who therefore with downcast eyes, defiant because of his illness, does not even think that he must look about when he is not entitled to the sidewalk. I was stopped. It was a quite exalted gentleman who now honoured me with conversation. Thus all was lost. After the conversation ended, there was only one thing left for me to do: instead of going home, to go walking again.' (Cited in Poole, op cit, pp 172-3)

In this letter Kierkegaard manages to cover so many matters of concern to witches: the place, high & low, single-mindedness. In fact Kierkegaard's notion of the nature of walking is not that far separated from the French idea of the flaneur, more recently also utilised in psychogeography:

'While Baudelaire characterized the flâneur as a "gentleman stroller of city streets",[8] he saw the flâneur as having a key role in understanding, participating in and portraying the city. A flâneur thus played a double role in city life and in theory, that is, while remaining a detached observer. This stance, simultaneously part of and apart from, combines sociological, anthropological, literary and historical notions of the relationship between the individual and the greater populace.[9]

'In the period after the 1848 Revolution in France, during which the Empire was reestablished with clearly bourgeois pretensions of "order" and "morals", Baudelaire began asserting that traditional art was inadequate for the new dynamic complications of modern life. Social and economic changes brought by industrialization demanded that the artist immerse himself in the metropolis and become, in Baudelaire's phrase, "a botanist of the sidewalk".[8] David Harvey asserts that "Baudelaire would be torn the rest of his life between the stances of flâneur and dandy, a disengaged and cynical voyeur on the one hand, and man of the people who enters into the life of his subjects with passion on the other" (Paris: Capital of Modernity 14).

'The observer-participant dialectic is evidenced in part by the dandy culture. Highly self-aware, and to a certain degree flamboyant and theatrical, dandies of the mid-nineteenth century created scenes through self-consciously outrageous acts like walking turtles on leashes down the streets of Paris. Such acts exemplify a flâneur's active participation in and fascination with street life while displaying a critical attitude towards the uniformity, speed, and anonymity of modern life in the city.

'The concept of the flâneur is important in academic discussions of the phenomenon of modernity. While Baudelaire's aesthetic and critical visions helped open up the modern city as a space for investigation, theorists such as Georg Simmel began to codify the urban experience in more sociological and psychological terms. In his essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life", Simmel theorized that the complexities of the modern city create new social bonds and new attitudes towards others. The modern city was transforming humans, giving them a new relationship to time and space, inculcating in them a "blasé attitude", and altering fundamental notions of freedom and being... (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur)

Once again this draws on so many of the modern witch figure's roles. Just in case there is a source I haven't plundered yet in this post, walking has a more profound meaning in the world of magic, which again can be drawn upon to nourish a philosophy of hedgewitch walking, that of circumambulation. One of the things I love about witchcraft is the way it has a habit of leading you back to where you begin, & so the themes I find myself returning to continually in this blog are found here: the hedge, the circle, going round, embodiment, and so on. The witch's wanderings through the hedge interact with the hedge so that both the witch & the hedge are altered by the act of walking. I'm going to give the last word, on circumambulation, to Uncle Al:

'In Part II of this Book 4 it was assumed that the Magician went barefoot. This would imply his intention to make intimate contact with his Circle. But he may wear sandals, for the Ankh is a sandal-strap; it is born by the Egyptian Gods to signify their power of Going, that is their eternal energy. By shape the Ankh (or Crux Ansata) suggests the formula by which this going is effected in actual practice.

'This has a very definite result, but one which is very difficult to describe. An analogy is the dynamo. 'Circumambulation properly performed in combination with the Sign of Horus (or "The Enterer") on passing the East is one of the best methods of arousing the macrocosmic force in the Circle. It should never be omitted unless there be some special reason against it.

'A particular tread seems appropriate to it. This tread should be light and stealthy, almost furtive, and yet very purposeful. It is the pace of the tiger who stalks the deer. The number of circumambulations should of course correspond to the nature of the ceremony.' (Magick in Theory & Practice, Book 4, Chapter 10. http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/chap10.html)

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Thoughts on tags & Sources of Witchcraft

I have several posts in the pipeline, including ones on Kierkegaard, a psychogeographic map, & a witchy pub crawl of Birmingham. The Kierkegaard one is because I have recently discovered him as an unlikely source of the witch thing, as practiced by me personally. I am thinking of starting a new tag called 'Sources of Witchcraft' - up until now I have used 'The Hedge' as the tag for those kind of posts. The hedge of course is both the source & arena of witchcraft, as I understand it. I think the differentiation would be that 'Sources of Witchcraft' would refer to the sources plundered by witches, such things as Freemasonry & the Golden Dawn, to create witchcraft, without the elements of initiation & praxis suggested by the hedge.

Sources of Witchcraft is an obvious twist on Sources Chretiennes, a many-hundreds-of-volumes collection of Christian patristic sources. We don't have a clear canon of fathers & mothers in witchcraft so we are compelled to draw on what we can in our witching or crafting. The publisher's website of Sources Chretiennes is http://www.editionsducerf.fr/html/index/collection.asp?n_col_cerf=209&id_theme=2&id_cat=99 from whence comes this quote - it seems boastful but it's probably true:

'Avec plus de cinq cents volumes publi�s, la collection ��Sources chr�tiennes�� est � ce jour la plus importante biblioth�que patristique au monde � donner acc�s aux �uvres int�grales des P�res de l'�glise. Le texte original, grec ou latin le plus souvent, plus rarement syriaque, arabe ou g�orgien, est toujours accompagn� d'une traduction fran�aise, de notes et d'une solide introduction qui situe l'�uvre dans son contexte historique et doctrinal.'

A library of witchcraft sources would involve every library in the world. So the inquiring are probably just as well coming to this blog! A wikipedia entry (in English) on the history of Sources Chretiennes is at http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_Chr%C3%A9tiennes

Other than that my tags may be somewhat opaque in their meaning to others - reading this blog is a virtual entering of my hedge, so some level of confusion is bound to ensue. Perhaps the tag I haven't explained enough is 'economy' - by this is mean the magical world view, the way in which things work in a magical world view. If I were to write about the threefold law (I have once, & I've got better things to do with my time), that would come under the heading of economy.

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The Invisibles/Matrix Egregore Continues

I was in Cex this morning & there was a man in there with his girlfriend, selling his stuff. I suppose they must be students, but what interested me was that they had been watching all three Matrix films.

Thoughts are things & my experiences with cartoon characters are also, with the Matrix thing, the evidence that these magical 'things', when put out there, develop an existence of their own.

I can't remember where, but I have read an interview with the lovely Grant Morrison in which he said that he incorporated a spell into his Invisibles graphic novels, a spell to turn their readers into Invisibles themselves. He said how annoyed he was when The Matrix came out, because to all intents & purposes it was the film of The Invisibles that he had in mind, & someone got there first. However on consideration, he realised that that was exactly what he should have expected when he put this egregore out there: he was actually experiencing the effects of the spell he had cast. No doubt at this moment there are fluffbunnies reading this, up in arms at the idea of performing nonconsensual magic. My personal view is the world is full of the lazy, naïve, those in denial & the just plain vicious, & it is for the magical person to do something about this.

I suppose the 'moral' of all this, if there be one, is that within modern entities of popular culture, the ancient magical question is asked. It is 'Which way will you choose?'. Even within created egregores the magical challenge to go out into the unknown is faced, & the future is changed

I wonder whether that man & his girlf knew what they may be letting loose in their lives, & also wonder which pill they took. I took both, me.

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