Jack Grayle. The Hekataeon: The Cassidy Edition. Jack Grayle Enterprises, 2021. Hardcover edition with expanded material. 462 pages. Illustrated by Rowan E. Cassidy.
Arthur Moros. The Cult of the Black Cube: A Saturnian Grimoire. Second edition. Theion Publishing, 2021. 191 pages. Cloth hardcover edition. Limited to 903 copies.
Steve Patterson. Cecil Williamson’s Book of Witchcraft: A Grimoire of the Museum of Witchcraft. Troy Books, 2014. Special edition in burgundy cloth with cream dust jacket. Limited to 300 copies. 304 pages.
Michael Staley, editor. Starfire: A Journal of the New Aeon Volume II, Number 3. London: Starfire Publishing, 2008. Standard softbound edition. 189 pages.
Johannes Nefastos. Fosforos: Study on the Being & Essence of Satan and on the Occult Philosophy in Six Parts. Ixaxaar Occult Literature, 2013. Silk bound limited edition in custom slipcase. 225 pages. Limited to 145 copies (#17/145).
Aleister Crowley. Gems from the Equinox: Instructions by Aleister Crowley for His Own Magical Order. Selected by Israel Regardie. Weiser Books, 2007. Hardcover edition. 1134 pages.
basically, i’ve found pdfs to nearly every esoteric book i’ve ever heard of, as well as many i haven’t, and it’s semi-organized now, or at least my folder of must-reads is (i don’t have the time to organize hundreds of pdfs into folders, i’m sorry).
here are some books that are definitely well known in modern witchcraft, that i’ve been able to find and acquire!
☽ The Green Witch - Arin Hiscock-Murphy ☽ Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways - Gemma Gary ☽ The Ancient Greek Magical Papyri ☽ Blackthorn’s Botanical Brews - Amy Blackthorn ☽ Psychic Witch - Mat Auryn ☽ Witchery - Julia Diaz ☽ Spell Crafts - Scott Cunningham ☽ Cunningham’s Book of Shadows - Scott Cunningham ☽ The Teen Spellbook - Jamie Wood ☽ Wiccapedia - Shawn Robbins and Leanna Greenway ☽ The Practical Witch’s Spellbook - Cerridwen Greenleaf ☽ How to Meet and Work With Spirit Guides - Ted Andrews
there are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more (hundreds, and counting) but these are some that you’ve probably heard of. plus, if you find that there isn’t a book in the library that you want, just fill out a request form and i’ll get it to you asap :)
It is with great difficulty that I make this post. I had intended to take a year’s sabbatical from posting here on Skeptical Occultist as the past year has been rather an imposing figure on my health and life. But the situation is such that I must clarify what has been happening in my absence.
In late 2020, having anticipated the events of Brexit making things complicated with my then recent retirement from London to a small village in Portugal, I placed a flurry of printing orders with my longstanding UK printer. The printer was unfortunately beset with staff issues related to the ongoing Covid plague but promised to get things printed and off before the end of the year.
The printings did get done, but the timing wasn’t good enough. Having departed the UK they got stuck in a purgatory of shipping created by the closing of borders to all ground shipments and thus were held too long to make it to Portugal before the deadline of Brexit.
At that point, sometime in early 2021, the shipments went missing. According to our shipper they were all in the hands of Portuguese customs, although for many months customs claimed they did not have them. After a Kafkaesque mountain of paperwork, confusing phone calls and emails, we were informed that customs did in fact have the boxes of books and were “processing” them. We were told we would receive letters stating the import taxes due and that with those letters we could claim our shipments.
Those letters never arrived. Months of arguing with customs officials began to affect my health, and while I won’t go into the details I have been considerably overwhelmed with the situation as it has unfolded this past year.
Finally I hired a Portuguese lawyer who, after making some inquires herself, declared that a lengthy legal battle would cost much more than the cost of reprinting the volumes. It seems that courts in Portugal take many years to deal with even simple legal matters.
I retired to Portugal out of a love for the landscape that had developed over my years of field research here. Knowing that my pension would not sustain me in London, my partner and I decided that a small Portuguese village we now call home would suit us well in our age. We do love it here, but the postal and customs systems of this country are a crime racket on par with the mob.
I am not in a place where I have the financial means to cover these losses and have been in a mental funk for months trying to find a way to sort out things as the letters from our readers continue to politely inquire what has happened. We owe a huge thanks and appreciation for the patience of our readers over this past year.
A friend who helps us in design and publishing has suggested that we try to crowd source the funding to get Alkahest Press back on track. They have set up a Go Fund Me page where those who have the means and wish to help us get through this difficult impasse can donate. We are extremely sorry for the delays and want nothing more than to know our volumes are in the hands of the readers who have ordered them.
If you are inclined to help please visit the fundraising page. Any amount of help is much appreciated by this grumpy old wizard.
Is the shape of a nature spirit given form over time by a culture and its linguistic perception of that spirit or is it formed in a more immediate way through the prism of cultural perception in the individual having the experience, defined by that culture’s language?
When we look at the cultures of the world, both classic and contemporary, we see a spectrum of belief in “spirits” that is prevalent in all cultures continuously throughout history. In some form or another the concept of spirits is as wide ranging as language itself. An instrumental part of the development of all socities, the nature of these spirits takes on a wide variety of roles depending on the culture in which they have blossomed.
From the ancient jinn of the east, to the nagas of Asia, the fae and sidhe of the Celts, the ancestor spirits of Africa and her diaspora in the new world, the German goblins, Norse trolls, the Vodoun lwa, the saints and demons of Judeo-Christian pantheons, the world over is full of the belief in beings whose form is transitory yet whose power is recorded as often enormous in scale. Who exist at the edge of temporality and are supplicated with offerings, orisons and rituals.
Yet while the concept of spirits is one that is universal, little contemporary thought has been given to the nature of these beings and their origins on a practical level. Relying heavily on pre enlightenment ideas of corporeality the contemporary magician is often working under conditions that have proven to be obscure at best, fraudulent at worst.
What then is the nature of these beings with whom all magicians the world over interact? How are we to express in terms scientific and yet openminded, those entities with whom our craft is indebted? Where are we to find the headwaters of these beliefs and their origins in human culture?
To say that nature is the source of all life is axiomatic, for nature is itself all life, the very mathematic formula that drives evolution on all its scales. While the boundaries of what makes up life may be little understood its form, as we perceive it, tends toward that which is measurably obvious to the viewer. As mankind has developed intellectually over the past few centuries our understanding of the complexities and subtleties of living beings has grown immeasurably. From the first understanding of the nature of germs to CRISPR gene editing in under two centuries mankind is just now beginning to scientifically understand the fields of energy that surround us that have long been overlooked.
The electromagnetic fields of all living things stretch far beyond the boundaries of their physical masses. The electromagnetic field of the earth itself functioning like an engine driving our planetary variables, steering tectonic plates, controlling weather systems. The interplay of these electromagnetic forces, coupled with energies we are barely able to understand that exist in quantum interactions and dimensional concepts too complex for a blog post, are just now being looked at, let alone fully grasped at this stage in our intellectual enlightenment.
It is in this realm, of complex energies, vibratory frequencies, and misunderstood quantum mechanics, that we find the root of those beings who can be grouped into the categories of “spirits”. From Grecian daemons to Galician mouros, lwa to kitsune, wight to ghost, the patterns of energy that make up these beings are all drawn from that stream of energies which is invisible to mankind, though slowly being revealed under the lens of contemporary technology.
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.” ― Nikola Tesla
While this river of energies may be just now coming into focus through accepted scientific practice the craft finds its very roots at the base of this tree of knowledge. The varieties of dealing with these spirits are as complex as the cultures that bore them. The negotiations of these relationships across the world playing similar tunes, yet varied in their composition to reflect the variables and practicalities at hand.
Yet we must wonder at the nature of these manifestations against the cultures in which they are perceived. What causes such a diverse narrative and a motley assortment of creatures that have long interacted with mankind? How are we to know wight from lwa? What defines the differences and commonalities of these beings? How can a river of energies so universal manifest so differently among disparate cultures, while retaining distinct core similarities in their nature?
I propose that these manifestations are given form via the specific language a practitioners understands and communicates in. That the culture whose folk narrative has given form to these spirits is manifesting the boundaries of said beings through the use of language itself.
We are linguistic beings by nature. Our entire world perception is defined through the language we speak, and not all words in all languages easily translate across linguistic boundaries. We may speak in one language of emotions and concepts that are entirely alien to the thoughts of a native speaker in another language. The sounds of one culture’s joy may be the sound of aggression in another culture and its linguistic palette.
Thus as a culture has become defined throughout time, like the polishing of the facets of a jewel, mankind’s perception of these entities that exist at the boundaries of our perception have come to reflect the inherent peculiarities of a given culture. Our fears as a people, our inhibitions and immoralities, our taboos and desires projected onto these entities we encounter in the natural world.
Thus the differences that have grown between cultures are the differences in mankind’s pantheon of spirits the world over. Some are to be feared, as that culture is one of fearfulness, others to be befriended, as that culture is one of openness and sharing.
Though as much as there are differences, more striking still are the commonalities between cultural perceptions of nature spirits. That their roles remain often identical in light of their polarized appearances, that they are more common among the untouched places of the natural world, that they can be bound, threatened, supplicated, bribed.
When in the course of the practice of the craft a magician of any ilk encounters a spirit, through accident or intention, it’s best to be aware of the shape that they manifest in relation to our perceptions and expectations. That their form is one that easily fills the container of our language and its inherent biases and preconceptions about the nature of reality. We give to these spirits as much of their form and power as they themselves, much the way we give to our rulers the power over us that we must yield in order for them to rule.
While much research in this field has yet to be done the current of this form of spirit anthropology is just now awakening. Considerable historic documentation exists to outline the ever evolving relationship between mankind and that other. Yet a fuller look at the extent of human participation in spirit interaction may be a decade or more in the making.
It would do well for the practitioner to keep in mind that the nature of the spirit catalogues of antiquity are that of slow evolution, where names shift over time via generations of misspelling and misappropriation. Recent research has been done in tracking these changes, yet the full scope of how the spirit is given specific form by the language, and thus the perception of reality that the practitioner holds, has yet to be done.
To they whom traffic in the boundaries of the landscape, know that your expectations place you in a precarious position. Those beings with whom you court and barter, supplicate and invoke, are more than your perception of them. They are merely being given form by your expectation of their presence. When the magician commands the demon to appear in a “comely form” it is to oneself the words are spoken. For the eyes only deceive us in our dealings with that world, no truth can be had in the illusion that is sight. The lies our eyes tell us have names made of the words we have been raised with, a set of linguistic boundaries on which perception is given form by that great deceiver that is culture.
A farmer’s tool taken from the shed, its stones laid some century before. “Thrice bind the windswept wheat, thrice the bitter crow’s tail, thrice bind a widow’s tears, sweet as the death rattle’s frail.”
That sprig of Lavender from the crossroads it bloomed, its delicate nature an alluring perfume. “Thrash the threshold dearly, with that single lavender sprig. Its beaten bow the better for it, as quick as a black widow’s sting.”
A pinch of moss from the Bishop’s grave, to summon his spirit to confess & betray. “Spread its smoke about the space with a burning black censor, the form it gives to spirits haste a grime and true dispenser.”
Hold the slate inscribed of graphite means, a board on which we excise that most devilish of fiends. “The sigil holds the vector true, a keyhole in its place. A way beyond the form it takes, your enemy’s disgrace.”
A boar’s bone scavenged from a well worn path, to contain the spirit fierce its laughter of woven wrath. “Thrice bind the wind’s cold tail, thrice the shadow’s keep, thrice bind the serpents whisper, as pure as silver weeps.”
The master’s key taken and forgotten long ago, stolen from his nightshirt pocket, hung beside the bedside bowl. “Pour wax through its hole on new moon nights to see the spectre that confounds you, a spirit of unearthly deed, that black dog how it hound’s you.”
This spell is one of many in my book Gramarye, available from Allahest Press. Http://alkahest.press/shop
While out for an evening walk tonight I came on to a fox, a common enough resident of the neighborhoods. Unlike the regularly jaunty foxes that one tends to see, a youthful creature full of playfulness, this one had a darker aspect. A kind of sickness that hung like a shadow over it. Not as simple as a true disease, more a hex upon its life that has become palpable.
The fox is curious thing here in England. It is resident to the streets as well as the woods, common as a rat in terms of visibility. Yet it is not a mystery to the English as it is to the Japanese and other cultures.
The Japanese “kitsune” or “fox spirit” is an ancient being that is both shape shifter and trickster. It fulfills the role of Fairy as a child stealer, doppelganger, and boggart curser. Each century it gains a new tail to show its age, with as many as nine tails being noted in the literature.
In the north the Scandinavians believed that the Aurora Borealis was the result of foxes. The Finnish word for the Aurora Borealis “revontulet” is associated with the arctic fox. According to a legend an arctic fox is running far in the north and touching the mountains with its fur, so that sparks fly off into the sky as the northern lights. In another story the fox throws the northern lights up into the sky by sweeping snow upwards with its tail.
In England the fox was seen in the Middle Ages as a messenger of the Devil. Often decried as a Witch’s Familiar there were occasional scourges of foxes as a result. Today it is at most quaint and the worst a pest.
But the fox is a spirit that inhabits this place whether the people pay attention to it or not. It runs through the shadows of the night, sleeping throughout the day like some Robin Goodfellow. Over hedgerow and down alleyway, gnawing the remains of a chicken and chips or chasing a rabbit through a roadside leeway.
It is at once invisible and constantly among us. It dwells in the spaces between, in the discarded remains of our lives, unseen but for the hapless night wanderer or the morning milkman.
Whatever ghosts haunted my dark fox are the reflections of his urban lifestyle. Too easy a life of scrounging and little hunting. Not enough open fields and moonlit chases.
Their silent footsteps cross the morning darkness unnoticed. A familiar to those of us who keep the owl’s hours.
What has come to my mind recently is the nature of our historic understanding of witchcraft/cunning craft/etc as practiced in Europe over the course of the past 200 or so years. We base much of our knowledge, and further more most of the pages of the known literature, on the testimonies of parish priests, inquisitors and confessions often made under duress and torture. This body of knowledge has become, for the worse of history, the basis in which contemporary craft practice has been rooted. It is a framework of Christianity, a universe predicated on a savior, and a god who forbids such acts in law. An Abrahamic cult brought to the British Isles by the Roman in the 6th century. A patriarchy of knowledge control and subjugation.
Yet there exists, starting in the early 17th century, a profound body of knowledge that is not derived from tortures or confessions but on stories and knowledge freely given amongst locals in villages and towns. It is the body of what we now call ethnographic study, but is most commonly known as folklore. Starting in 1878 The Folk Lore Society in London began publishing a series of ethnographic studies, both in magazine and book format. But such folkloric study goes back several centuries before to men from the Brothers Grimm, Thomas Crofton Croker, Dalyell, Henderson, Kirk, Lady Wilde, and many others over a span of 300+ years. People who went into the pubs and gardens and talked to the real people of these places. Who listened and wrote down the stories of warding off beings and banishing dead souls. The instructions for curing illness and the nature of laying on hands and second sight.
This body of knowledge is a directly transmitted oral testimony, storytelling and folk beliefs handed down within families and gathered together by the folklorists and antiquarians from across regions of the British Isles and Europe. There are hundreds of books of these beliefs, many with detailed descriptions of spells to attack, to ward off spirits, to bind and banish and drive forth. Often listing exact components of charms and dances. Studies on the nature of folk magic in Scottish highlands, on horse magic in East Anglia, of the witch bottles and warding wands of Wales, and endless stream of valid information on the flowing tradition of folk magic as a living practice in the UK over the past half of a millennia. As well as documenting the exact pronunciation of regional words, curses, and spirits terminology, often with a glossary!
And yet this body of knowledge is almost completely overlooked in the contemporary literature on witchcraft practice. Which instead relies on the testament of Church torturers as to what was said, on the scant testimonies of victims of a system of abjuration pointed against herbal healers and common folk practitioners, more often than not elderly widows whose properties could be confiscated by the Church warden.
Its time for a rethink of our understanding of the nature of folk magic. How it is the very essence of true witch practice and is at its heart older and truer a practice that those tainted by the narrative of the Church over the past thousand years of attempted suppression. We must dig into this lost literature, much of which is available online for free as pdfs hidden on archive.org and in google books.
[I intend to post a list in the near future compiling links to some of the better documents of contemporary folk practice, particularly that from the UK.]
I have been increasingly considering the nature of pacts, that is, those agreements we make with the spirits with whom we traffic. Pacts are, on the face of it, a natural arrangement of dealing with any sort of being (material or immaterial) with whom no preexisting trust has developed. A contract that stipulates the services required and those that will in turn be rendered as payment.
Recently I have done a bit of work in the striking of a bargain and have found myself in a precarious position, one in which my dealings with regular humanity have chaffed against the more important, and considerably private, parts of my life. The terms of the pact having been well laid out there is little recourse I have been afforded by my own undertaking. The path ahead, though uncertain, is still well laid out before me.
Given the nature of our dealings with spirits, we must consider the way in which a pact is to be reinforced. The power of the spirit as a threat is ultimately the damocles sword that drives the need to fulfill our end of the bargain. Yet what recourse does the magician have in dealings with wayward spirits to whom no appeal or previous threat have been successful?
This depends in the main on the nature of the spirit itself. If it is of a goetic character, finding itself listed among the tables of the grimoires, it will likely have rulers to whom it answers, or kings to which you can apply to straighten out the wayward demon. An hierarchy is good to have, one to which you can appeal in particular.
If, on the other hand, the spirit is of the land, called sidhe or fae, mouros and many other names, the path of control is likely outlined in the historic character of the being. Folklore leads a path toward the dealings of each landscape spirit, the necessary tools and offerings that can implore a spirit to stick to its end of the deal found in the likely sources (such as Dalyell,Crofton Croker,Briggs, et al).
When the spirit is that of the ancestors, a horse rider, lwa, spectre, barrow wight or other deceased persons to whom the magician calls on for aide, the ability to have them keep their word is in the main the domain of one’s own trustworthiness. If the magician is honest, and sticks to their end of the deal, there is little chance of an ancestor spirit not doing as agreed. Failure of the spirt is invariably a failure of the conjuror in heart or intent.
The agreement itself, the pact, is more often than not actually written down on a virgin piece of paper. Though it can be simply an oral agreement I find those are about as solid in the spirit world as they are in the judiciary of mankind, i.e. not at all. In my opinion the best pact is one written and signed by all concerned parties, bound in sigil and seal and hermetically sealed into some container. Jars, boxes, bells, skulls, bones, gourds, all have been brought to this purpose the world over.
In the written pact one should be sure to include all of the demands of both sides, much in the way one would write a mundane contract. But like a music contract beware that the terms themselves limit the range or scope of the true intention of the magician. The pact should be simple and concise, the more words it contains the more likelihood of mistaken intention.
As in the regular world you would not sign a contract with a person you had just met. Take your time in developing a relationship with those spirits with whom a pact may eventually lead. Get to know them, their desires and whims, their moods and powers, before you come to any arrangement with them. A spirit is of a necessarily transient and shifting nature. What you bind is often not exactly what you wished to conjure.
There are those beings who linger on the edge of the Veil, waiting for you to poke a hole in its gossamer membrane, that they may slip into materialization on the back of your work. They will claim an identity, conforming to your desires in appearance and character. Seeming to perform the tasks you wish all while undermining your goals. Learn to know with whom you traffic, to recognize their true voice as you would an old friend. Be sure to cleanse one’s space of undesirable elements before and after any work is done. Always assign a license to depart.
Remember that a pact is binding in two directions. The spirit is bound to you, as you are to it. It helps if your goals and theirs are aligned, though it isn’t always necessary. Working with a spirit to ends other than its desires is a dangerous practice that can lead to madness and death. Remember to look both ways before you cross the threshold of the crossroads.
We tend to think of water spirits as existing in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Yet water itself exists within the earth throughout the globe. The “water table” under the land may be very deep, but it is there from tundra to rainforest under every bit of walkable landscape
As I sit on the mountain side listening to the crickets of the night air I think about the deep wells that surround this isolated cabin. The various springs and water mines that dot the mountainside portals to that underworld of the land’s water. Pockets of aqua that bring life to the land and its inhabitants and often represent gateways into the otherworld of folk belief.
Each of these water spaces traditionally contains a spirit, often one with a history of local social interaction. The spirits of the wells of England are long thought to possess healing powers that were often later appropriated by the Christian church. Pagan sites converted to shrines of the Virgin Mary and her various saintly retinue.
This phenomena of folk belief in a water spirit that exists within the boundaries of a source of water is a practically global concept, common throughout world cultures. Yet in Portugal, like in Britain, they have come to have a long evolved set of ideas associated with them.
The moura of Portugal are often thought of as the Portuguese equivalent of fairies of the British Isles, yet they have come through a historic past that has shaped them in ways unimaginable to the average celt. Legends of Moorish magic from the time of the Iberian Caliphates ingrained in centuries long folk magic practice, romantic notions of hidden treasures tracing their roots to that people driven so long ago from these lands by Christian Crusaders. Distilled into a corpus of Cyprian related magics seeking to reveal that which is said to have been hidden by Arabic magic.
Bubbling under the surface of this landscape is an ocean, even here in the high mountains of the Açor, where the namesake açor goshawk cries above me as I write. It flows from springs to form streams and creeks that merge downland into rivers, ultimately flowing toward the Atlantic.
While these aquatic protrusions into the land, river and well alike, are often believed to be the home of some spirit or another, the water inside the land stretches in all directions unseen and underfoot. THe well and the river are merely the gateways to that realm of water hidden by the landscape itself.
My investigations into the apotropaic markings on agricultural buildings has led to a number of interesting documents of markings on or near springs and water mines. These marks, scratched into the soft schist stones, resemble in some forms those markings found near agricultural buildings that housed goats and other livestock. Yet more prominent near water sources are circular patterns, not always closed or complete, that repeat.
Found deep inside the watermines these markings have led me to more exploration of their cause, though local inquiry turns up a blank among the people of these hills. None of my mostly reliable sources have been able to find even a whisper of a memory of what or why these markings came to be in the watermines. Contrary to those on buildings, who seem to have as many opinions about there purpose as there are locals to ask about them.
Yet as an occultist it is well apparent that these markings are set out in accordance with some spirit related activity, their occurrence being parallel to a field of sensitivity around certain locales. So far none of the markings I have found have had words or recognizable letters, mostly patterns. Though further investigations are afoot and I hope will yield higher resolution data.
The concept of giving something to invisible powers in order to curry favour, or placate them, is as old as mankind. When we look at the archeological evidence this practice is found in the earliest record of man’s beliefs. In temple and cave we find burnt and charred remains, idols and other objects and substances meant to be given as currency to those beings with which shaman, priest, and witch all traffic.
Sacrifice, that is, the taking of a life, has long been considered the pinnacle of spirit offerings. Blood spilt and breath taken, the life of a being is the most precious gift one could give from time immemorial.
More commonly it was not a sacrifice but a simple offering that was the bargain between people and spirits. Those bits that were deemed sufficient to please, to coax and to favour the beings whose aide and instruction one desired. The items were often personal, something that had acquired significant sentimental value or that was inherently rare for the time and place it was being given.
When we look at the folk practices of northern Europe, particularly in Scotland and Ireland, we see that common people regularly made offerings to appease the localized version of earth spirits (fae, fairies, sidhe, hillfolk, goblins, gnomes, etc). A saucer of milk, a plate of cakes, a bowl of cream could all curry favour with one’s local sprite. Even wine and mead were given on specific occasions. These offerings may seem trivial in an age of supermarkets and global produce but in an era of self sustenance farming even a saucer of milk was a considerable offering.
The witch, being that pinnacle of human superstitious practice, trafficked with such entities more so than the common person. Thus these exchanges developed and refined the practice of making offerings into an art. While the practitioner may have left regular offerings of milk and cream, much as their neighbor did, they would more intimately have dealt directly with these beings. Having given other more elaborate offerings in exchange for particular deeds and information.
Such passive offerings, preemptively enticing the spirit to favour, give way to active considerations and even requests from the spirit. A lock of one’s hair, the bones of some animal, the burning of particular herbs. At the edge of work in the shadows one may encounter beings who request even blood sacrifice for their services. Such work is not undertaken without due consideration even for the most experienced of practitioners. In general those spirits whom require the taking of life are not to be trafficked with lightly.
Yet it is much more common that one would make a binding agreement with a spirit through the giving of a gift. A simple and practical exchange that results in the barter for services. In Caribbean conjure work cigars and exceptional liquors are the preferred currency, in the Highlands of Scotland a brass button, lock of hair, or coloured thread is more likely to achieve practical results.
In the modern world we tend to forget that the spirits with whom we traffic are as old as the hills and forest in which they manifest. They have seen countless men and women come and go like fireflies on a summer night. Our lives are but a brief burning of a candle to them, our decades and centuries like hours and days, much in the way trees experience time, or mountains.
While approaching the building of a relationship with a spirit one should be sure to make offerings of those things thought precious in an earlier age. A saucer of milk, a silver spoon, an old brass button. These things were once the most precious gifts a spirit could be offered, and the old ones remember them well. A spirit who has seen men come and go for millennia remembers the taste of fresh milk and churned butter, may delight in the shimmer of a brass button or a particular stone, find comfort in coloured cloth, silk ribbons or hand spun thread.
We must learn in our dealings with earth spirits of all kinds that barter is a principal that is beyond human culture. The giving of gifts is an inherent part of living, practiced in one form or another by birds, reptiles, mammals, and fish alike. From mating rituals to the cessation of a conflict, countless forms of life barter. No less these entities whose world rubs against our own, whose manifestation lingers at the boundaries of what we call real.
The practitioner should remember that much like how your grandmother still likes “old fashioned” things, that may be long out of date, the spirits, be they sidhe, fae, wight, lwa, or boggart, often long for offerings we no longer consider rare, for gifts we overlook in our fast paced world of amazon deliveries. Make an offering with consideration, in keeping with the stature and age of the being with whom you are dealing. Learn to give them those things which they desire, those objects that fulfill the promise of the ancient pact. If not you may wake to find your milk spoiled and your windows cracked!
We are too sheltered from death, too pampered in our absolute obliviousness to the reality of death. To the putrid smell of vacant flesh, the buzzing of flies around the orifices of empty bodies, the sweet hot smell of a rotting eye on a summer day.
In our modern world we have cloistered death away. The service industries have bloomed in sweeping all remnants of our death from view. Clean white suits and black boxes all wrapped up nicely. Just as we have with our meat.
The way in which the modern person sees meat is as a pink slab under a shrink-wrap plastic. A smooth morsel of flesh with a total negation of its origin. Much like the industry of mortality that blooms in the wake of man’s denial of the reality of death, the agriculture industry has removed all trace of the horrible deed that once was done at the hand of our mothers and fathers.
We need to return to this pallor of death on our door. We need to know that death is there, invisible, behind every moment of our lives. We need to have the bodies of our families in our homes when they die, so that children may see them. We need to slaughter our own meat, to understand the pain and sacrifice that eating meat entails. Most of all we need to smell death, to know it in our nostrils so that when it comes we have forewarning. Then we will know death by the stench that precedes it.
We tend to think of water spirits as existing in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Yet water itself exists within the earth throughout the globe. The “water table” under the land may be very deep, but it is there from tundra to rainforest under every bit of walkable landscape
As I sit on the mountain side listening to the crickets of the night air I think about the deep wells that surround this isolated cabin. The various springs and water mines that dot the mountainside portals to that underworld of the land’s water. Pockets of aqua that bring life to the land and its inhabitants and often represent gateways into the otherworld of folk belief.
Each of these water spaces traditionally contains a spirit, often one with a history of local social interaction. The spirits of the wells of England are long thought to possess healing powers that were often later appropriated by the Christian church. Pagan sites converted to shrines of the Virgin Mary and her various saintly retinue.
This phenomena of folk belief in a water spirit that exists within the boundaries of a source of water is a practically global concept, common throughout world cultures. Yet in Portugal, like in Britain, they have come to have a long evolved set of ideas associated with them.
The moura of Portugal are often thought of as the Portuguese equivalent of fairies of the British Isles, yet they have come through a historic past that has shaped them in ways unimaginable to the average celt. Legends of Moorish magic from the time of the Iberian Caliphates ingrained in centuries long folk magic practice, romantic notions of hidden treasures tracing their roots to that people driven so long ago from these lands by Christian Crusaders. Distilled into a corpus of Cyprian related magics seeking to reveal that which is said to have been hidden by Arabic magic.
Bubbling under the surface of this landscape is an ocean, even here in the high mountains of the Açor, where the namesake açor goshawk cries above me as I write. It flows from springs to form streams and creeks that merge downland into rivers, ultimately flowing toward the Atlantic.
While these aquatic protrusions into the land, river and well alike, are often believed to be the home of some spirit or another, the water inside the land stretches in all directions unseen and underfoot. THe well and the river are merely the gateways to that realm of water hidden by the landscape itself.
My investigations into the apotropaic markings on agricultural buildings has led to a number of interesting documents of markings on or near springs and water mines. These marks, scratched into the soft schist stones, resemble in some forms those markings found near agricultural buildings that housed goats and other livestock. Yet more prominent near water sources are circular patterns, not always closed or complete, that repeat.
Found deep inside the watermines these markings have led me to more exploration of their cause, though local inquiry turns up a blank among the people of these hills. None of my mostly reliable sources have been able to find even a whisper of a memory of what or why these markings came to be in the watermines. Contrary to those on buildings, who seem to have as many opinions about there purpose as there are locals to ask about them.
Yet as an occultist it is well apparent that these markings are set out in accordance with some spirit related activity, their occurrence being parallel to a field of sensitivity around certain locales. So far none of the markings I have found have had words or recognizable letters, mostly patterns. Though further investigations are afoot and I hope will yield higher resolution data.
The modern world of craft practice is inundated with symbols. From the myriad of cultural religious and sacred imagery that has been appropriated by various magical practices over the centuries to the ever evolving stable of geometric drawings that have long been held to hold some innate metaphysical knowledge, the world of magic is full of symbols.
Thesigil, originally a term meaning the signature of a spirit entity, has evolved since the 19th century, through the work of Austin Osman Spare,Kenneth Grant and later UK based chaos magicians, to be a symbolic representation of a spell or goal oriented magic working.
Thus modern magical practice often incorporates the creation of ever further symbols to represent our magical desires, formulations, and contemplations. These sigils have become central to magic in a world of screens, where every grimoire is able to be accessed instantly and the commodity of the symbol, a rarification of knowledge, is lost in the ubiquitousness of the internet age. No symbol is rare, no sigil unique.
Yet as we move through this era of data overstimulation and increasingly thinner language barriers we as magic practitioners have long understood that the true and underlying power of the symbol is in the thing it represents, not the ink on the parchment. The map is not the territory on this side of the mirror of the landscape, nor the other.
When we look for the foundation of symbols like the pentacle and hexagram, geometric forms that outline mathematical truths, we find them everywhere in nature. Their power is in the root of life itself, expressions in plants and animal matter that count themselves innumerably. From the pattern of flower petals to the digits of a human hand, from the forking twists of tree branches to the roots of sacred herbs the mathematical expression that is symbolized in a pentagram, hexagram, squiggly line, pointed arrow, all are found in the natural world. Our sigils are merely representations of things, much as is our language. A pale and dim reflection of a radiant thing of complex arrangement.
As magicians we must return to the land and give less credence to the map. We must let our sigils be the shapes we find in nature, the forking of a leaf, the vein of a stone, a spiral of a shell, the fracture of a bone. The trace of an ancient river our spirit symbol for its essence, the pentate of flower petals the warning of its hidden power.
Language is at best discarded when we enter upon the threshold of that realm beyond. By bringing language into the space of the other we dilute our ability to grasp its architecture. Carrying language with us is baggage best left behind, for as we attempt to categorize and compartmentalize the experiences of the other those experiences move away from us, like a willow the wisp fading in the forest ahead.
When we mistake the map for the territory we lose sight of our path, looking to be guided by the map we are no longer explorers of our own lives but merely commuters on the way to some self perceived goal. The practice of magic and the role it has in our perception of “reality” is one that affords us subtle understandings of the architecture of reality. The reduction of these things to mere symbols and sigils robs them of their agency, reduces and diminishes their power and awe.
It is through a meditative understanding of the expression of these symbols in nature that we as witches will come to grasp the invisible realm of otherness. That beyond, that is part and parcel of the mundane world and yet so often ignored by the masses in their search for comfort and stability. We see the true landscape through the veil, and the symbols that point the way are merely signposts on our path.
Let the sigils of nature manifest in our craft, as stewards of the landscape in which we work, as journeyers along a path through the beyond. Let the flower represent itself without the pentagram, the crossroads reveal itself without the hexengram. The unfolding magnificence of the natural world is the territory we seek to ensnare in our symbols, let them stand for themselves on our altar and in our path. The landscape will reveal those sigils for which all things may be bound, all spirits may be called. We must merely learn to see them in our midst.
These days of modern plague grow weary on the soul. I often feel like I am moving through molasses in my attempts to get things done, receive shipped goods, clear customs and the like. The practicalities of publishing become increasingly difficult when international borders and pandemics come into play.
The publication of “Wormwood’s Gramarye”and“Skeptical Occultist Journal”volume Five are both delayed, but only for a few weeks longer. Between sorting out my personal unpacking and getting things in order we have been distracted endlessly. Hoping to have Gramarye back from the printers in the next week or so then on to SOJ5.
In the meantime I am happy to announce a partial lineup for the next issue of Folkwitch, issue four. The pieces for this next issue are incredible and make me proud to be publishing this journal. The material coming our way is just so brilliant and relevant to what is happening in folk witchcraft and landscape magic today.
Issue four will include a piece by Clive Harper on hagstones and root binding, an incredible look at the magical uses of Nettle as it exists in the “Nine Herb Charm” by scholar Robert Wallis, a look over the edges of Elphame by Daniel Yates, a bit of landscape revery by Jaga Moura, and some phenomenal pieces by guest artist Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos, along with some rant or another by yours truly. We may even slip in another author or two before we go to print.
We are nearly sold out in preorders as the run is a very limited quantity for a select readership - get your copy while you still can over at Alkahest Press’ shop.
Just a handful of copies left of the fourth issue of FOLKWITCH. With some astounding contributors it is the best issue yet. Get your copy from Alkahest Press. Http://alkahest.press/shop
“A pentagram of nightshade berries, deadly as the vipers sting. ~The Visions they will conjure bring the spirits from the dark,
A saucer full of milk as pure as the moon, an unseelie offering. ~That tempts the greed of kindly ones so that they soon embark.
A dish of black ink, the abyss in night’s mournful eye, ~That seers call to wonder in the depths of wight’s fateful cry,
A length of twine to describe a circle for spirits to reside. ~That sigil traced to seal the pact of malefic alibi.
Six corvus bones set like a compass, to the four quarters called . ~The victim named, the spirit bound, the offering received at large,
Three black steel pins to bind it, ‘do your bidding after all. ~The spirit departs to deliver it’s venēficia to the stated charge.”
A raven’s feather to sign it, a pact of harm as sure as night. The witches blood to seal the deed that burns as pure as light.
This is one of the many spells, charms, and hexes that can be found in my new book Gramarye, available in preorder (due any day from the printer!) from Alkahest Press. Http://alkahest.press/shop
The nature of folklore is that it creates a dynamic for evolutionary influences, filtering out weak ideas and impractical solutions to actual problems. An herb that has a pronounced chemical effect will be found in oral tradition much more often than a placebo. A method of purification, an element whose properties are ideal for certain functions, a word that spoken gives true power. These things tend to stay while the superfluous falls away over time.
From handwritten manuscripts handed down from collector and scholar unto the introduction of print many such ideas, both valuable and inconsequential, have been put to ink. From centuries of antiquarian and ethnographic study in hundreds of authoritative volumes over the past three centuries there has grown a substantial body of dross, useless material with no practical knowledge or understanding of the craft. The 20th century’s ease of printing cumulated in decades of uninformed and badly researched material becoming common in the archival record. Ill thought dissertations and sensationalist propaganda that moves now yellow paged pulp paperbacks off of shelves into the hands of naive inquiring seekers.
Practical occultism in the past two centuries has been dictated by the occultists who happen to also be writers. The majority of practitioners (be they witch, wizard, shaman, sorcerer, or priestess), whose practice is as idiosyncratic as the next, have little or no input in the historic record in a post ethnologic environment.
Historically, those who publish books get the say, those who are interested in being public individuals with books (and blogs) and a public persona are the ones that have decided what is and is not occult practice. Across the board witches who are engineers, labourers, musicians, painters, but not writers have had little or no input in the dialog of occultism over the past two centuries outside of secondhand ethnographic reporting.
The ethnographic folklore record is at best 300 years old. It was only in the 18th century that scholars began to gather the stories of common people and publish them. Crofton Croker, the Brothers Grimm, Lady Wilde, those names we associate with fairy tales were actually scholars researching the history of the magic of common people. They travelled the towns and villages, lending an ear to anyone who had a tale to tell. Collating the data and constructing theories about the archetypes of storytelling, about the ritual practices of pre Christian central Europe and the British Isles, about which creatures you should fear most in the night. These words are a solid foundation of knowledge, and the most direct from living sources in the wild. Yet they are still viewed through the mind of the writer who is the folklorist.
Thus the practice of all forms of occultism have been viewed almost solely through the lens of the written record given to us by exclusively history’s writers. Not the painters, not the farm labourers, rarely the words of women, the insights of possibly powerful yet totally illiterate, or antisocial, practitioners of the world having no historic recourse. The thoughts, rituals, and practices of those isolated magicians mostly erased from history. For centuries the narrative of accepted magic has been the domain of those who work in written words, not the smith who works in iron, nor the midwife or the ploughman.
In the age of the internet something new is being born, a kind of veil made of information through which it is seemingly impossible to see. The catalyst for dross that was initiated by the continually less expensive printing process in the past century has finally broken open with online social media. Anyone can write anything and claim it as authoritative, dismissing naysayers as uninitiated or lacking insight. The adage coined by Theodore Sturgeon that “90% of everything is crap” needs to be updated in this age of too much information and not enough knowledge to “99% of everything is crap.”
The internet provides a seemingly endless supply of information on the practice of magic. Cliques of authors and bloggers siding with various historic and ahistoric documents and their infamous authors of the past. The entirety of the grimoire tradition is available online in highres scans, not to mention bootleg pdfs of contemporary analysis and comparison of these historic documents.
Beyond the hallowed halls of accepted occultism lies and vast ocean of cliques and niches, filled with people of every demographic and a few you didn’t know about. Oft naive of any age they are all seeking something, all wanting, praying, believing in magic and witchcraft. These people come to the craft looking for something, often not sure what that thing is. “Power” is a word commonly used, and traditionally magic has been the tool of the powerless. Yet in the 21st century the idea of what power is has become warped. Where centuries ago magic was used to distort and disrupt the common way of things, bending reality to its will, today it is often seen as a path of achievement, as a tool for expanding one’s material gains, increasing one’s positive emotional state, and increasing one’s luck - all buying into the structures of a contemporary society it once sought to destroy.
The illusion of knowledge created by the excess of information in the internet age has birthed an endless stream of fantastical (and that is truly what they are, fantasy) fictions of an imagined practical magic. Adjectives strung together to form infinite new subgenera of occultism without so much as a wink in the direction of its own absurdity. Chain letter blackmail with a whiff of cosplay kneeling before an Esty bought altar of other people’s killings and chinese made shiny things. A Borgesian labyrinth of nonsense parading as a magic it does not understand, as a craft it can only write fanfic about.
You will not find it in books, nor the internet. You may look, and often incredibly good advise on what to do once you’ve found it can be found in that rare book or two, but it is not there in the written word. It is in the world. In the soil and the sea, in the air and the trees. It is that humming vibrant energy that imbues all things. You have to go out and hold it in your hands, breathe of its scents, know its horrors and its delights. Lie in its tapestries of meadow and field, of forest and shore. Listen long and there you will find it. Not even in the dusty pages of the oldest book is it found. It is a secret whispered by the world, you only have to learn to listen.
As the rain pounds the clay tiles of my roof I sit and ponder the incredibly confusing year that has been. While in the middle of a plague the long planned moved from London to a quiet village in Portugal was successfully orchestrated, though not without its troubles.
The primary frustration in our adopted home seems to lie in the incredible affect the plague has had on international shipping and customs. While much of the problem can be said to be directly related to the plague, a certain amount of guilt must be levied at the Portuguese postal and customs system CTT.
The CTT appear to be a form of mob racket, holding property hostage without a note, waiting until you dig through a graveyard of paperwork, forms you need to fill out that they never mention, and phone calls that tell you the opposite from emails you received just a day before.
It has made publishing a nightmare, with an Iberian take on the Kafkaesque driven by the fact that I have had little luck locating a printer within Portugal that is both of the quality our readers have come to expect and of a price even close to those we have become accustom to.
Beyond that any personal purchases from the US or Canada that are insured are immediately stopped by customs, taking as much time if not more than our publishing printed matter does to locate in the Byzantine system, and paying as much as an 80% import tax on the stated value of a book. It has become so drastic I have started having all North American mail sent to London and shipped from there to here. But come the end of the year the UK will be out of the EU and I will require another path of entry into the EU for my books.
Besides these annoyances I have been incredibly grateful to now live in such an idyllic place. The people here are astoundingly friendly and open, inviting us to events and constantly offering us food from their gardens and pantries. I must have eaten a liter of my neighbor’s pumpkin jam in the past month alone.
Yet between unpacking and settling into our new home, and the constant issues with shipping and publishing I have had little time for Skeptical Occultist posts, folklore research, field work or anything else really.
I have however adopted a local cat who lingers at the edge of my garden. He comes much closer now than he did when I first met him in the summer night, but while we feed him he has still not come close enough to touch.
I hope to find more time before the end of the year to write on a variety of topics I have jotted notes for, review a couple of incredible books of occult scholarship that have come across my desk, and get the rest of these books printed and out in the post before the end of the year.
In the meantime my book of spells Gramarye is closing in on selling out in preorders, and we have only a handful of copies of FOLKWITCH 4 left in preorders as well. I guess I should get back to work, but the cat needs to be fed under the awning where he prefers his grub on a rainy day and I need to refill my coffee first.
Be safe in these times of plague my friends, stock yourself with rare books and strong coffees as the winter ahead looks to be dire.
These days of modern plague grow weary on the soul. I often feel like I am moving through molasses in my attempts to get things done, receive shipped goods, clear customs and the like. The practicalities of publishing become increasingly difficult when international borders and pandemics come into play.
The publication of “Wormwood’s Gramarye”and“Skeptical Occultist Journal”volume Five are both delayed, but only for a few weeks longer. Between sorting out my personal unpacking and getting things in order we have been distracted endlessly. Hoping to have Gramarye back from the printers in the next week or so then on to SOJ5.
In the meantime I am happy to announce a partial lineup for the next issue of Folkwitch, issue four. The pieces for this next issue are incredible and make me proud to be publishing this journal. The material coming our way is just so brilliant and relevant to what is happening in folk witchcraft and landscape magic today.
Issue four will include a piece by Clive Harper on hagstones and root binding, an incredible look at the magical uses of Nettle as it exists in the “Nine Herb Charm” by scholar Robert Wallis, a look over the edges of Elphame by Daniel Yates, a bit of landscape revery by Jaga Moura, and some phenomenal pieces by guest artist Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos, along with some rant or another by yours truly. We may even slip in another author or two before we go to print.
We are nearly sold out in preorders as the run is a very limited quantity for a select readership - get your copy while you still can over at Alkahest Press’ shop.
“The Book of St Cyprian” “Jonas Sufurino”, attribution.
The history of fictional magicians is long and tawdry, often evolving out of folktales related to actual historic figures there are those who were created whole cloth for the purpose of selling books.
While we may have record of those occultists like Michael Scot,Johann Faust, and others who were in fact real people, there are some figures who defy historic documentation. St Cyprian himself is supposed to have existed in the 3rd century of the common era, but even the Catholic Church has been hard pressed to provide any hard evidence for a Cyprian of Antioch.
Jonas Sufurino seems to be a character who was created as part of the evolving Cyprian mythologies, possibly by a Spanish publisher, to give a more modern context to a supposedly ancient text.
As the story goes, Sufurino was a German monk at the Abbey of WalkenriednearMount Brocken, a location famous for its legends of witches and devils meeting there each year on Walpurgisnacht. He claims to have gotten Cyprian’s book from the Devil himself after conjuring him forth.
The book we have at hand goes even deeper into the abyss of speculative authorship as we are presented with a version of the book that is said to be translated from the German of Sufurino’s hand, apparently a copy/translation Sufurino made of the Hebrew original written by St Cyprian, to the Spanish that has been translated by Humberto Maggi.
That no German version of the work ever existed is more than likely, but the path of authorship is convoluted to say the least, although no credit is given for the translator who was supposed to have brought the work from German to Spanish.
Maggi’s earlier translation of the “Book of St Cyprian” was drawn from a Mexican edition published in 1920. That earlier volume is a tome of a work that covers the ground of hodgepodge occult sources. Each Cyprianos seems to be tailored to the local reader’s interests, culled from a list of sources nearest to hand to each publisher in question.
While Maggi’s earlier Cyprian takes most of its content from the “Le Véritable Magie Noire” the Sufurino, an edition published in Spanish in Barcelona, casts an even wider net, taking from the “Grand Grimoire” and the “Black Pullet” as well. Maggi speculates, based on scholarship by Félix Castro Vincente, that the Sufurino was copied in part from earlier Portuguese editions. It does contain a series of charms that involve the torture of animals that is found in the Portuguese Cyprians, but lacks the treasure hunting aspects.
The work is a mixed bag of ceremonial magic whose roots ultimately come to us, via the hand of many editors over many years, from the Greek Magical Papyri. It contains versions of the “Key of Solomon”, “The Red Dragon”, “The Grand Grimoire”, as well as sections on magic candles, “Chaldean and Egyptian” philters, enchantments and sorceries.
Maggi has done a splendid job bringing this work into an English translation. It is a handsome volume, beautifully bound in black (faux?) leather with metallic red stamping to the spine and a metallic red devil in the corner of the cover. The paper is a nice thicker quality of cream with a rougher tooth, giving it an old book feel. The endpapers are printed with a splendid artwork by Daniele Valeriani.
For any scholar of Cyprian literature this is a must have edition in one’s collection. Nephilim Press have provided an important part of the puzzle of St Cyprian the Magician as an Iberian folk character and focal point of an evolving magical tradition that has spanned centuries.
We are pleased to announce that preorders for Folkwitch issue 4 are now open. A fantastic lineup of authors and our usual handmade covers make this our best issue to date. Limited to just 48 copies per issue, 40ish pages, a5, B&W, with some wonderful pieces that are sure to please our readers.
I have been thinking a lot about the use of divinatory practices by aspiring magic practitioners. In particular the use of the tarot by young witches as a kind of measuring stick by which to live and love.
The history of divination as practiced by magicians goes back to the early stages of magic itself. “What does the future hold?” is a question that was asked by people as soon as those words were formed in the mouths of mankind.
Over the millennia the practice of divination has been born in the main out of various implements available to the practitioner. The casting of bones, the marks of smoke on the stones, the pattern of tea leaves in the bottom of an empty cup - these mundane elements come over time and use to have certain predisposed ideas attached to them, portents of a future to come and a past that haunts us.
With the invention of language and visual art mankind was able to create more specifically coded templates on which to predict the future. The use of magic bowls inscribed with the words of a spell was common for centuries before the common era.
Eventually by the middle ages mankind’s use of various games of chance were drawn into the practice of divination. Dice and cards being conscribed to more than lingering entertainment, they were re-envisioned with symbols more complex than their simple base 13 numbering system. Given over to a kind of complex sigilization tarot cards and their cousins were born.
Many authors have written countless words about the history of tarot, and a few have looked more deeply at its mechanistic framework. But the use of these tools holds potential dangers to the user that are seldom discussed.
I have long held the Romani belief that you can not buy your future, and so at the age of 13 I acquired my first and still primary tarot deck, a 1970s printing of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, from a shopping mall chain bookshop by means less than legal.
I still use that deck as my primary tarot deck to this day and what I have been thinking about is how the use of tarot has exploded with this current crop of occult revival.
More young witches and wizards have turned to tarot than in any previous generation, at levels reminiscent of my generation’s use of the ouija board (a form of “spirit communication” created whole-cloth by a game company designer).
Within this new crop of divinators there is a pronounced use of the tarot by means that have nothing to do with their traditional use. The practices of the majority of contemporary tarot users seem to have drifted far afield from those intended by the creators of the decks that they are using.
Having clearly decided to ignore the written manual, contemporary users seem to reply on a kind of poker-based single card draw for “yes or no” questions about mundane topics. As well there are now a generation of “tarot experts” willing to make everything they know up in order to charge you for something they can not provide.
But a sucker is born every minute and my real concern is not those who would pay a person for their future, but those real practitioners who would look continually to their future for guidance to the point of ignoring their own part in the process of that future.
What I have noticed is that young tarot users seem to ask the tarot dozens of questions a day. “Am I going to have a good day?”, “Will this carrot cake come out well?”, “Does the person I like, like me back?”, “Should I wear these shoes with that coat?” - the triviality of seeking guidance of tasks so mundane is an insult to the very nature of divination.
When we divine, acting as probes for futures that have yet to come, we reach out into the field of unknowing to act as cartographers of an undefined reality. We separate ourselves from linear time, and seek to know potentialities that are, from our own perspective of time, still merely quantum.
In many forms of divination we seek that change of perspective through a spirit intermediary, and to ask a spirit to tell us “ifs and whats” about mundane life is petty and insulting.
This 20 questions version of tarot cards makes the reasons for the shift to “single card draw” “yes or no” tarot obvious. It would take these practitioners too much time to actually do the tarot, laying out the cards in order to foresee a pattern in the future, for 20 questions a day. So the tarot becomes reduced to a magic 8 ball toy. “Does he like me? YES or NO”
The root of this need to ask the tarot for countless guidance is manifested in the uncertainty many people feel when looking at the mundane world around them. Lacking guidance on how to navigate the failing system of capitalism they turn to other means to suss out what is coming around the corner.
Lest we mistake the map for the territory it behoves would be divinators to seek not often the guidance of such council. Rarity is of utmost importance in any act of magic, no less the many forms of divination. To sully the cards with one’s mundane matters is to ask a mystic to polish one’s shoes.
More importantly we must be aware that like gambling any form of habit that pushes our emotional buttons can become addictive, no less tarot cards. For those psychologically predisposed to addiction through the shape of their personal mental landscapes tarot can become an emotional roller coaster based on the draw of the cards, even if one does them the correct way. Reliance on their promise of answers can be as addictive as gambling or drug use.
In all realms of the occult it is the rarity of the ritual practice that creates importance to us in our mind. The sacredness of it, the singularity of it, is what gives it its power and allows us to access a range of existence not mundanely available to us.
Beware the use of tarot or any form of divination for answers to questions we as magicians should otherwise be able to rationally determine. Do not ask them to make mundane decisions for you, and always keep them at enough of a distance so that they are not sullied by the world of mundane things.
Safe divinatory practices need to be discussed more among both established and fledgling practitioners of all ilks. Don’t let divination become an emotional and mental crutch on which you rely, use it sparingly to ask only the real questions about those things that matter beyond the veil.
