• Uncategorized

    Elements of a Personal Cult

    There is a sense in which the favorite deity has already chosen the devotee, and an early step in establishing a devotional relationship is to examine any unusual dreams or waking experiences that seem to be messages from someone. Think back through your past, looking for experiences that preceded important turning points in your attitude and approach to life. The experiences themselves need not have been unusual in any obvious sense, making their influence on us all the more mysterious. I can remember one morning long ago when I was up at dawn walking to breakfast. I had had a personal disappointment the night before, when suddenly a bright-eyed old…

  • Uncategorized

    Friendship with the Gods

    I have called this ‘friendship’ with the gods rather than ‘devotion,’ because pagan religion does not require us to fake emotions the way the biblical religions do. As many of us know, Jews and Christians are commanded “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy mind, and all thy strength.” Was a more impossible commandment ever given? The pagan gods of nature, unlike Yahweh, “in whom we live, move and have our being,” do not compass us round about. They arise from chaos at the beginning of a world cycle and build a new world out of matter in the chaotic…

  • Uncategorized

    Intimations of the Dream Soul

    The Pagan doctrine of multiple souls is a stumbling block for many Neopagans who are used to associating their soul with their identity. The ancients tended to associate the idea of soul with mental phenomena that are more or less under the subject’s control. This leaves room for psychic entities that serve the identity as instruments, and through long association we can come to identify with these instruments and consider them to be all or part of ourselves. Thus, the word personality derives from the Latin word for the mask worn by actors in Greek dramas, which was so shaped as to act like a megaphone, amplifying the actor’s voice…

  • Uncategorized

    Learning on the Sun-Wheel

    To follow the hidden path of witchcraft is to commit ourselves to a life of learning, and the Craft makes no distinction between learning from books and learning from experience. The same rules apply to both. The stages in learning can be charted around the Sun-wheel, also called ‘the wheel of the year,’ since it is commonly used to map the eight Sabbats or ‘restful recreations’ of the witches throughout the year. 1 It is also a guide to the elemental directions 2 of the ritual Circle, and to the four powers of the witch. 3 The directions, Sabbats, elements and powers are mapped on the Sun-wheel thus: Direction  …

  • Uncategorized

    Land Spirits in the Works of H.R.E. Davidson

    The republication of Hilda Roderick Ellis’ (later Davidson) The Road to Hel, published initially in 1943, was an exciting event. It was one of the first attempts to correlate archaeological evidence with the data from surviving literature on the Norse views of the afterlife, the soul, the cult of the dead, and the journey to the land of the dead. I read it through with avidity, and only afterwards noticed that I already possess three other books by her on similar subjects, spanning her career from 1943 to 1993. I decided to take one topic, the land spirits. Over the course of fifty years, the author’s familiarity with archæological data…

  • Uncategorized

    Short Story: A Gathering of Sorcerers

    The tale-finder had traced the story as far as a small tavern in a remote village. Quaffing his ale, he greeted the other guests and, after a customary exchange of pleasantries, asked if anyone present had heard the story Hob told of a midnight gathering of sorcerers. There was some chuckling, and then a giant of a man sitting in the corner replied that he knew the tale, or knew of it. “It isn’t much of a story,” he began. “This farmhand Hob, in some stead over the river, was about to head home for the evening when the Mistress of the farm stopped by and asked him if he…

  • Uncategorized

    My Daily Practice of Witchcraft

    Preface The practice described below is personal; for just as anyone fluent in a language will speak it somewhat differently from everyone else, so anyone who has passed the initiation of the second degree does so by the emergence of a knack, or personal style in witchcraft. So what is described below is intended as a model only. This is how I practice the Craft on a daily basis; what is your way? The second point here is that this is daily practice only. Esbat rituals, sabbats, following the Anglo-Saxon or Ogham calendars, and such, concern what one does at longer intervals. Finally, as the author is a solitary (though…

  • Uncategorized

    The Mood of a Cat

    Cats generally are content to do whatever they are doing at the time, whether that is stalking, eating, or simply sitting and going to sleep. They do not feel guilty that they are not doing something else instead. This is the frame of mind in which the witch should enter the circle; for if he or she feels the sort of conflict that cats do not feel, part of the witch’s spirit will be continually moving across the circle to someplace else, and this will disrupt and weaken it. It is because cats feel content to be where they are and to do what they are doing in the moment…

  • Uncategorized

    When the Moon is Full

    When the Moon is full, go outside and kiss your power hand (right hand if you are right-handed, etc.) to Her three times, then view Her through the mano en cornuta, which is made by pressing the tips of the middle and ring fingers with the tip of the thumb, while extending the index and little fingers upward toward the Moon like antennae. Gaze at Her between the erect fingers. You should have a sense of looking at Her as at a human face, which of course looks back at you. Then you can say the Greek poetess Sappho’s Paean (hymn) to the Full Moon in either English or Aeolic…

  • Uncategorized

    The Sun-Wheel and the Pentacle

    The two most prominent symbols in modern Witchcraft are the Sun-Wheel and the Pentacle. The Sun-Wheel is the quartered circle, while the Pentacle is the circled pentagram or five-pointed star. I want to consider the relationship between them. The Sun-Wheel stands for many things. As the Wheel of the Year, it maps out the Sabbats. The four quarter-points of East, South, West and North stand for the minor Sabbats of Ostara, Litha, Mabon and Yule, respectively. These are the names used most widely in the Craft for the spring equinox, the summer solstice, the autumn equinox, and the winter solstice. The major Sabbats fall on the cross-quarter points: Imbolc on…