The studious witch

Proverbially for us the teacher comes along when we are ready. Whether this be a person, a website or a book, witches are people who drink in their learning. Hopefully thoughtfully & critically!
I had a rather odd choice of books to start with: the first was Laurie Cabot's Power of the Witch. I still can't use her 'counting down to alpha' thing, which is also taught by Christopher Penczak. I then went straight on to Marian Green, but developed most of my own witchcraft from the wonderful Phyllis Curott.
Nowadays I don't tend to read much about witchcraft. People always decry the lack of advanced books, but in a sense they are impossible things, because once you take off you water wings as a witch, you go on on your own. I'm finding I'm reading the sources of witchcraft; the magical tradition, folklore, etc. I would stress the importance of not being too snobby about certain authors: I have even heard it said that the definition of a fluffbunny is that you believe everything in a book with a crescent moon on the spine! I do quite like Silver Ravenwolf, the most fluffy-bashed author, if she'd just tone down the relentless positivity.
What should be avoided is historical claims with no evidence to support them. It should be perfectly respectable in the magical community to say, 'I made this up & look what happened...', but we are not quick enough to question people who unthinkingly or mendaciously repeat rubbish.
The pictures are of Birmingham's previous and present Central Libraries. The next one is being built as we speak. The present one is 1970s ziggurat architecture, still with orange carpets & little natural light. Hopefully the colour pictures show how it swears at every other building surrounding it. There was a campaign to list it, which fortunately failed. The new one is...odd. What's the betting there'll be another new one in 30 years?
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Conservative Party conference

The Conservative party are holding their conference in Birmingham at the International Convention Centre this week. Broad Street is crawling with coppers & the security is quite something: high fences, turnstiles... More than the last time. Could it be they're expecting trouble this time?
Everyone else has to get out of the way of an event like this. Broad Street is already single lane & it hasn't started yet. For those who work in the city travel will be a nightmare this week. This really pisses me off that these high-risk idiots are allowed to displace everyone else, just to have another bun fight at which they'll take something else away from the unsuspecting population.
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Spirit of place: Rugby, & Rupert Brooke

To Rugby today. It is best known for the posh school where a boy first was sensible enough to think 'f*ck it', pick up the football in his hands, & lucky enough to get away with it. I never did, but had an unexpected aptitude for rugby over football at school.
The town itself is hardly worth writing about, but it's also known for an early crush of mine. When I was a very young queen Rupert Brooke was a bit of a gay icon: this seems to be built around the fact that he was devastatingly good-looking, & the evidence in one of his letters for one same-sex fling with a former school friend.
Far from seeing him as the golden youth now, I feel he comes across as a nasty piece of work in his letters to James Strachey, who had a raging pash for him, but Brooke just kept writing to him about women, except for that one letter. We all know basically straight men who might givr it a go once with a man (making them a one on the Kinsey scale), or who like the homosocial side of things & don't mind being with gay men. They may even have what are now known as bromances. But mark my words, they'll always go running to a woman. I see Brooke as torn between the conformist expectations of his family & the bohemian arty set he mixed with. He was temporarily a schoolmaster at Rugby school, yet could also show Virginia Woolf an instant erection, and wasn't above telling jokes about a sexually abused choir boy. He wasn't brilliant academically, he never really saw active service, & ultimately died of an infected thumb. It was after this that he was 'canonised'. Now you may be asking what he's doing here despite this, and your sneaking suspicion is correct: I would not have been able to say 'no' to him under any circumstances, & nurture a raging crush for this dead man still.
The Great Lover

I HAVE been so great a lover: filled my days
So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise,
The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,
Desire illimitable, and still content,
And all dear names men use, to cheat despair,         5
For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear
Our hearts at random down the dark of life.
Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife
Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far,
My night shall be remembered for a star  10
That outshone all the suns of all men's days.
Shall I not crown them with immortal praise
Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me
High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see
The inenarrable godhead of delight?  15
Love is a flame;—we have beaconed the world's night.
A city:—and we have built it, these and I.
An emperor:—we have taught the world to die.
So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence,
And the high cause of Love's magnificence,  20
And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names
Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames,
And set them as a banner, that men may know,
To dare the generations, burn, and blow
Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming....  25
These I have loved:
      White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food;  30
Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood;
And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers;
And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours,
Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon;
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon  35
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;  40
The good smell of old clothes; and other such—
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns....
                                    Dear names,
And thousand others throng to me! Royal flames;  45
Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring;
Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing:
Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain,
Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train;
Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam  50
That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home;
And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold
Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould;
Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew;
And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new;  55
And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;—
All these have been my loves. And these shall pass.
Whatever passes not, in the great hour,
Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power
To hold them with me through the gate of Death.  60
They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath,
Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust
And sacramented covenant to the dust.
—Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake,
And give what's left of love again, and make  65
New friends, now strangers....
                  But the best I've known,
Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown
About the winds of the world, and fades from brains
Of living men, and dies.
                  Nothing remains.
 
O dear my loves, O faithless, once again  70
This one last gift I give: that after men
Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed
Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved."
 
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Bottle Spells

Today some thoughts while I wait for a train on this, one of my favourite magical acts. Bottle spells have a venerable history, are easy, and endlessly adaptable to your circumstances.
First it is necessary to feed my pretensions to this being an intelligent witchcraft blog, so here is the theory (why) underpinning the practice. These spells reference three in particular of the laws of magic (I reference Bonewits's version of these laws, although they have also been framed by other people, since he is one of the few Neopagan authors I would recommend unreservedly):

The Law of Association
Essence: if any two or more patterns have elements in common, the patterns interact "through" those common elements, and control of one pattern facilitates control over the other(s), depending (among other factors) upon the number, type and duration of common elements involved.
Remarks: This is probably one of the most important of the magical Laws and is directly connected to most of the others.
Keywords: "Commonality controls."
The Law of Similarity
Essence: Effects are liable to have an outward physical or mental "appearance" similar to their causes.
Remarks: Having an accurate image/sound/smell of an object or being facilitates control over it or them.
Keywords: "Look-alikes are alike."
The Law of Contagion
Essence: Objects or beings in physical or psychic contact with each other continue to interact after separation.
Remarks: Everyone your character has ever touched has a psychic link with him, though it is (probably) pretty weak unless the contact was intense and/or repeated frequently. Naturally having a part of someone's body (nails, hair, spit, blood, etc.) gives the best contagion link. Almost as good are objects of clothing, handkerchiefs, bedsheets, etc., that have absorbed sweat or other bodily fluids from the being your character wishes to magically influence.
Keywords: "Magic is contagious."
Source

The theory is necessary since the usual reason spells fail or have unforeseen consequences is that people don't fully think through what they are doing, and fall at the first hurdle.
There are actually two approaches to the 'bottle' (the approach applies to any spell involving a container): it will either function as an arena for what is going to happen to the target of the spell, or it will function as the actual target of the spell, in whom or which something is going to happen by the spell.
First it is necessary to make some kind of magical link with the object of the spell, often done by using some part of them (classically, hair from a comb or nail clippings, etc), something which has been in contact with them, or if push comes to shove, if you have a psychic link with the person or thing, you can create an object link.
The only essential part of this is that the object makes some deep association for you personally with the object of the spell. If making a 'voodoo' doll does it for you, so be it. The advantage of that approach is that by your handling the doll while making it the connection is increased. If you have something of the person this can be incorporated in the doll, and the doll's anatomy can be used to represent the person's, for example sewing up the mouth to stop gossip, sewing up a rapist's genitals to give him erectile dysfunction, etc.
I find that if I am ready to do a spell the materials for it will either already be to hand or will come to hand while I am thinking about it.
If you see someone wearing jeans with a red tab on the seat, you know the manufacturer of these jeans without having to look at the leather label which will certainly be also there. Similarly every time a company writes to you they give you an object link in their logo. Other possibilities are an individual's signature (we all sign things all the time without thinking where it is going; I personally have different signatures professionally & privately); the cup someone has drunk from; photos are easily obtained online nowadays; you get the idea. At the risk of being repetitive the important thing is that it makes you think of the subject of the spell.
If you don't have an object link all is far from lost. I have cast spells using china ornaments & even a pig's ear, which reminded me of the subject. Dorothy Morrison has the wonderful idea of using Barbie dolls, which can be further personalised to look like the person & also lend themselves to having things done to them.
You could even use the person's name written on paper, which you then magically charge to 'be' the subject. You do this in whatever way works for you: magic is so like sex in this respect that it is quite difficult beyond Witchcraft 101 to give firm prescriptions; it also explains why people grow out of the books & teachers from which they learned so much. Whether you're a bells & smells witch, or a pure mental magic type, again the key is to do whatever you have to do to make the total connection between the object and the target of the spell. Personally I find I'm 'doing' less as I go on, & if I badly enough want that connection I'll make it be going over that neural pathway often enough.
The same applies for consecrating the 'bottle' as the object of the spell, if your spell requires going down that route. Remember in The Witches of Eastwick (I still can't see Cher as a convincing witch but the book is much more realistic, & provides a good example of an ill-thought-out spell going wrong) when they turn a biscuit barrel into a woman & then put feathers & things in it, which the woman keeps coughing up? Just like that. They baptised it, and by all means do so if that's your bag. Starhawk's Spiral Dance gives a formula to consecrate a poppet as a person as part of the binding spell.
If all this seems terribly arduous, magic is like decorating, the key is in the preparation, and so in time terms we are more than half way there.
The next step is to do to your object link what you want to happen to the object of the spell (Laws of Association & Similarity): this is why your connection between the object link & object of the spell is so important.
Bottle spells can be used for the binding spell with a twist, to contain & isolate the person's harm. I tend to use large glass jars for bottle spells, since the links I use are often large, & will often wrap them in foil to make the person's actions impact on themselves only.
What you put in the jar depends on the spell: honey to sweeten, vinegar to sour, garlic or chilli powder to remove, nails or pins to prick, glue to stick, and so on.
I do not recommend this, but if you had a sexual goal for the object you could ejaculate into it or put in menstrual blood.
The traditional witch bottles always had pins in, and this is still a major way of catching unwanted vibes around the house, without an object link. You fill the bottle with nails, pins, broken china & glass, and then fill it up with your urine. This is traditionally buried by your door, or can be kept in a dark corner.
If you have consecrated the bottle itself, obviously what you put in it is aimed at the object, for example honey to seeten a person.
One this is done what you do with the bottle depends on the spell. Traditionally they were put in a river if you wanted to wash something away. As I've said before I have difficulty forgetting completely about the spell, and these spells are ideal because you can either repeatedly put things in the bottle, give it a shake, etc, with the disadvantage that this tends to keep the object near you.
For total disposal I would still recommend the drain for liquids, recycling for recyclables & the bin for solids. For closure how you dispose of the things is very good, such as burying an object link. I know I'm over-egging the cake, but as the Hound of Hecate I like to put my waste in a dog mess bin!
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Spirit of place: Birmingham Peace Gardens

Today I visited a place that I've only just discovered existed, despite living near it for years and years. I found this place while reading Quaker blogs on their witness of simplicity & plainness, a subject I shall no doubt return to. You can't dress much plainer than plain black (although a witch's motivation may be slightly different from a Quaker's), and my plain speaking may be partly responsible for the rate at which I lose friends & alienate people!
This is what Wikipedia has to day about this place:

On the night of 11 December 1940, all but the fine tower of St Thomas' and classical west portico was destroyed by German bombs. The church was never rebuilt. The grounds were laid out for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 when the gravestones were removed and the dead reinterred at Warstone Lane Cemetery. The gardens were re-designed as the Peace Garden in 1995 in commermoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. The First World War Memorial colonnade, which had been built as part of the Hall of Memory in 1925, was relocated here when Centenary Square was laid out 1989. Railings with doves of peace were erected, sculpted by Anuradha Patel.
Within the Peace Garden is a memorial to British service personnel who were killed or injured as a result of nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean.
When the world leaders came to Birmingham for the G8 summit in 1998, each planted a tree here. Each premier choose a tree that most represented their respective countries and they are now a living symbol of peace.

Source
The gardens feel nice. It is pleasing to see that despite the memorials from the great & good, when I went the main users were a homeless man asleep on a wall, & a group of men who may or may not have been homeless sitting chatting on a bench. I know they live near the (h)edge, because they nodded to acknowledge me, & it's difficult to see a witch coming unless you (have) live(d) on the edge.
There are peace messages from different nations & religious groups. Unfortunately the actual remains of the church have deteriorated recently & have been fenced off to prevent access. If it hadn't been broad daylight in a populous area, I'd've nipped over the fence & had a look inside!
Finally, I include a picture of the British Nuclear Test Veterans' memorial, despite both me managing to cut off the top of the memorial, and the memorial having a misplaced apostrophe, since 'all we want is justice' is probably closest to the witch's view of peace. Unless we collectively deal with what prevents peace there will always be a lack of peace, & what prevents peace is that people are never satisfied. This over-simplistic sentiment actually conceals the whol magical philosophy: that if I am in my 'place' it will not conflict with yours, & if I relentlessly want more, it will inevitably bring me into conflict with others. We live in a world where a ridiculously large proportion of power is held & jealously maintained by a very few people, which is the living embodiment of the opposite of the magical peace principle above. Needless to say the peace garden did not include wishes for peace from a witch, so here they are from me:
May all people do what is right,
May all people live as is right,
May all people live with others,
May living over others come to an end,
May all people actualise their inner divinity,
In all the Names of she who says,
'I am that which is attained at the end of desire.'
So mote it be.
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The right sort of person

I'm writing this on the bus going home from the moot. The traffic doesn't usually look like that at this time of night! We're passing groups of students settling down for a good night of partying & there are some going home as well.
Some people from another moot came to our moot last time & it struck me how different the 'culture' of their moot is. They hold public rituals, have formal talks about things, and are generally so much more organised than us. The culture of our moot suits me much better. People either come to ours (or avoid it) because we are not on our best behaviour & will often not say the 'right' thing. While there may not be so much formal teaching it still serves the function of a gathering of magical people: to give each other support, draw on the resources of the group & generally stop oneself going off ones head.
I would venture to say that I also like the 'party line' at our moot. Perhaps it's a sign I'm getting old that I can see that it's a party line: there would have been a time when I would have seen our orthodoxy as the only way a sensible person could possibly see things (of course deep down I still know it to be so really). Our orthodoxy is a Hutton-influenced one of history, & of diversity in practice. If we think someone's talking rubbish, we'll tend to tell you so. This is a function of a magical gathering that I didn't mention above: to have ones views challenged, particularly as a solitary. One of the people from the other moot asserted as a fact something which was just plain wrong & I'm afraid didn't like it when I told him so.
I am smugly satisfied to have found a community where not only I can find sense being talked, but they'll also tell me to shut up when I become too much!
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Therapeutic fantasy: the romance of the railways

Peter Murray-Hill (centre), The Ghost Train

Will Hay  & uncredited friend, Oh Mr Porter

Mrs Peel and Steed, The Avengers

It was only as I was going through the files on my mp3 player ready to divert myself this week that I noticed how many of the films that live on there more or less permanently are set in and around railways. The Lady Vanishes is of course one of those espionage classics: like all of the films here it now creaks like an old gate. The others are Terror by Night (a Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes), The Ghost Train (the film version of the rollicking story almost designed for amateur theatrics, which stars Arthur Askey. I now find him an irritating little man, but can ignore him & tune in to the story), Oh Mr Porter (I think as a child it was highly formative to my interest in folklore & the paranormal). Not on my mp3 player because it's still in copyright is an Avengers episode called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Station, which again centres around an espionage-based story of a plot to blow up a Very Important Person, only with the eccentric features that one would expect from a Mrs Peel avengers episode.
I'm not sure where I get this railway thing from, except that I've never had to commute by train so associate them with holidays and days out rather than the grindstone. Certainly it's not a blokey railway fascination, which bores me to death. I'm more interested in old railway posters than rolling stock, which I think indicates that it's an escapism thing.
What trains objectively represent in our society is a major thread of the history of the Industrial Revolution: freight trains still run, and of course for many in history trains would have been associated with the unrelenting labour of laying tracks, digging tunnels, and the making of the actual stock. I am aware that I have been in some way 'taken in' by the advertising lure of the romance of the railways, since I've only ever been on the customer side of the counter.
I am actually writing this blog post on a train going to Kidderminster for the day: the trains for me are escapism, this is therapeutic for *me*. It is therapy and escape from getting out of bed to be at work at 7am yesterday morning, and this escapism into what is a world of fantasy for me is an essential part of rest and recuperation.
The essential thing to remember is precisely that this is fantasy. I must keep a handle on that fact, since where it would become dangerous would be if I build a fantasy that sees the dream as reality. The guard on this train is working just as I was yesterday. He is not leading soke fantasy paradisiacal life, but looks just as, or more, harried as me yesterday. Rather my escape is about moving from one aspect of my life to another for a time of rest, while still keeping hold of an awareness of exactly what this is. There's no harm in being able to keep several different worlds on the go at once (as long as you let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, don't lie to yourself or anyone else, and don't end up only in one world which is not based on your reality). In fact this ability is not only therapeutic and healthful, but it is an essential skill for the witch, something practised in so many of our meditations and pathworkings. This is precisely what riding the hedge means, both journeying between different worlds, and the ability to keep an eye on several worlds at once.
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