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COTTAGE WITCHERY
by Ellen Dugan
Published by Llewellyn Press second edition 2005
I love this book. Does that make me a fluffy bunny? Well, then so be it. I wanted to do a book review and recommendation on a light, fun book that was worth reading and here it is.
I am a middle age professional woman. I have been walking the path of the Goddess for years, but I don't live in a fantasy world, I don't live in robes surrounded by incense and candles (I might if I could!). My normal days are not about Drawing Down the Moon, mine are about rush hour traffic and doing a good job for my clients and taking care of myself and the dogs, getting the car in for an oil change.... In other words I am just an ordinary American with a busy life.
I don't want to relegate my connection to the Goddess and God and the Elements to the special times when I have time and energy to create sacred space and center myself and commune with them. I would like to do more of that than I actually do, but a close second is making sure than my environment and my day includes constant reminders of the Deities and little moments to say 'thank you' or 'help me.'
That's what I like about this book. Suggestions for tiny altars in honor of the Goddess or one of the Elements tucked into bookshelves, kitchen shelves, living room decorations. Tiny reminders, tea light to burn and say a quick thank you, instead of big in-your-face altars that are really better suited to a more private place in your home.....unless all of your friends are Pagan or you just like justifying yourself to everyone who walks in the door.
Lots of little protection charms, lots of suggestions for cleansing a new home, new (used) furniture or other household goods. Garage sales are fun and you can find some treasures, but what do you do when you get your latest find home and start wondering what kind of energy you are dragging into your home? How about this charm?
Take a moment to picture the Elements present around you. Hold the item in your hands..."Forgotten and dusty/rusty, I now make you brand new. Transform from mundane to magick my need is true. By the powers of earth, air, fire and water, I will conjure up love, good luck health and laughter. By the powers of earth and sea, as I will it, so must it be."
And enjoy your new found treasure in peace.
There is a delightful chapter on getting along with any fairies that are inhabiting your garden, hearth or house This one can save you a lot of aggravation.
There is advice on bringing the natural world indoors with seasonal plants and decorations. A permanent natural presence is beautiful if you can master the art of having happy houseplants, here are some hints and help.
And for those of us who work at home...
"Elements four, gather 'round this work space of mine, Inspiration and comfort you bring at all times. Bring passion and commitment to the work that I do, Circle about me now with magick so strong and true. By the strength of hearth and home, the spell is spun, As I will, so mote it be and let it harm none"
I swear my desk sighed.
Is this book Paganism 101? no
Is it graduate studies in theology for Pagans? no
Is it a delightful reminder that our Paganism does not start and stop with the Circle or the Coven and we should strive to bring the Goddess into our life everyday? A resounding yes, and fun read.
Next time...Does this make me a fluffy bunny?
Suggested ebooks:
Margaret Alice Murray - The God Of The Witches
Michael Ford - The Book Of The Witch Moon
Michal Jerabek - The Book Of Enoch Vol I The Watchers
Yesterday, Haiti was severely devastated by a 7.0 earthquake. Rescue workers desperately search for survivors beneath the rubble. Hospitals have been destroyed and people are being treated for their injuries in the street while dead bodies are scattered throughout the streets of Port-au-Prince covered in shrouds. A third of all Haitians - 3 million people - need emergency aid.
In response to this terrible earthquake in Haiti, Robert Zink (GH Frater PDR (Robert Zink) today issued a call to the entire Golden Dawn community to:"invoke the Magic of Light to bring comfort, stability to the earth so as not to have more after shocks and quakes, stability to the government so as to not have up risings. We can invoke forces of Light to bring about action faster from world governments and all those willing to give aid"
We echo Robert Zink's sentiment that we need to do everything we can spiritually and physically to help with this crisis.
Then it appears Robert Zink may have had an epiphany when he said:"Then there is the Dali Lama who while exiled from his own land, and having seen persecution and murder against his people continues to spread peace and light throughout the world. He has never uttered a negative statement against anyone."In a bizarre other development, following nine months respite from the Golden Dawn internet Feud, Robert Zink paradoxically today resumed publishing ad hominem attacks on the HOGD/AO and its leaders with the following post from EOGD member, Frater QALL, Ashlee Beebe (dastree07770@...) who wrote:"I can say from personal experience that (Griffin) is a nut job!"Sadly, there remain nearly 2,000 such ad hominem attacks on our order and its leaders archived on the EOGD Yahoo! forum as part and parcel of the Golden Dawn Internet feud. Clearly, these have nothing to do with fraternal debate or rational discussion. These posts serve no purpose except to stir strife between our orders.
Following the excellent example of the Dalai Lama, no matter how many new ad hominem attacks Robert Zink publishes on his website and fora - he merely strengthens me in my resolve that the HOGD/AO will not strike back at him.
In the spirit of the Dalai Lama, I choose to ignore the negative remarks about me that Robert Zink published today. Robert Zink will simply have to find someone else to demonize other than our order as his Golden Dawn "boogey man."
Instead - despite the very real differences between our two orders - the HOGD/AO is answering the EOGD's call to magical solidarity in the Golden Dawn community.
I have therefore, As International HOGD/AO Imperator, today issued an appeal to all of the brothers and sisters of the HOGD/AO around the entire world, to stand in magical solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the Esoteric Order of the Golden Dawn in invoking the magic of light to bring comfort and stability as called for by EOGD leader, Robert Zink.
To ensure the success of this united magical initiative of the Golden Dawn community, I am requesting that all of the Initiates of our outer order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as all of the Adepts and Magisters of the Alpha Omega perform a Supreme Invoking Ritual of the Pentagram with this specific intention.
It is my sincere aspiration that this act of magical solidarity shall bring not only quick relief and comfort to the people of Haiti, but herald the beginning of an era of unprecedented peace, harmony, and solidarity between the EOGD and the HOGD/AO as well.
Greatly Honored Frater PDR:My wand - and the wands of all of the Brothers and Sisters of the HOGD/AO around the world, are raised in solidarity with your magical initiative on behalf of the people of Haiti!I concur with Robert Zink. Let us come together in this difficult time. But let us also walk our talk. Let us finally mutually begin to remove all of the remnants of the Golden Dawn Internet Feud from our orders respective fora, websites and blogs on a reciprocal basis, like the thousands of personal attacks remaining on the EOGD Yahoo! forum. To do otherwise would support Robert Zink's skeptics suspicion that his initiative really amounts to nothing more than taking advantage of disasters and loss of life to score public relations points.
Finally, I urge all of the brothers and sisters of the Golden Dawn not to merely let our assistance to Haiti end with this magical initiative. Let us also open up our wallets to speed the recovery along.
On a personal note, GH Frater PDR, I challenge you to join me in putting our money where our mouths are. I pledge to make personal donations from my private bank account matching personal donations that you make as well.
Send me the receipts for your donations and I will do likewise. Let us set an example for our order members with our generous donations, and prove to your skeptics that you are not merely trying to exploit a disaster to score political brownie points.
Sub Umbra Alarum Tuarum, Yeheshua
David Griffin
G.H. Frater Lux Ex Septentrionis
Imperator Ordinis,
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
outer order of the Rosicrucian
Order of Alpha et Omega
"Ex Deo Nascimur.
In Yeheshua Morimur.
Per Sanctum Spiritum Reviviscimus"
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"
I was in Dublin on Monday for business, but also found some time for book shopping. I found a most interesting book in Yellow Brick Road entitled '"Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune: The Logos of the Aeon and the Shankti of the Age"' by Alan Richardson.
"Despite being published by Llewellyn (who are more miss than hit) I have found this to be a most wonderful book that begins at their deaths and works backwards through their parallel biographies. He frames this in the light of a text written by Crowley in 1911 called Liber Thisarb "on the backwards review. In this backwards review Richardson explores the relationship between Crowley and Fortune, their exchanged letters, and their mutual ideas throughout their careers. It shows that Crowley and Fortune weren't so different after all, both working towards liberation (in their own ways), both deeply involved with the question of sex magick, both involved in the war effort, and both adepts of the Western tradition. He even presents correspondence between Fortune and Crowley that implied that both she, and other members of her Fraternity of Inner Light were quite accepting of the law of Thelema, and may even have been initiates of the A.'.A.'.This is a very different image of Fortune than one might glean from some of the more puritanical literature surrounding her, as well as the attitudes of some of her followers, but in essence it does not change who Dion Fortune was. This book was written by someone who is certainly more Fortune than Crowley, but in an open willingness to explore these two individuals and their interactions and individual missions brings a deeper appreciation of both. I highly recommend this work, especially to those with an interest in Dion Fortune in the Thelemic community. The pure image of Fortune as a master of light, and the image of Crowley as the wickedest man in the world gives way to a synthesis and complementary symbiosis in the work of these two great initiates, bringing new vistas of exploration in the Western tradition...
"Love is the law, love under will"
Letters recently leaked from the Vatican suggest that a power struggle may be going among the various members of the College of Cardinals. The Roman Catholic Church has not disputed the contents of the letters, but claims that the media has vastly overstated their importance. The College of Cardinals is a secretive organization, and it may very well be that this sort of thing goes on all the time but is not usually reported to the public. Nonetheless, the documents contain some allegations that sound more serious than general, day-to-day operations.
The first missives to be published date from last spring. In them, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan`o, at the time the deputy governor of Vatican City, fretted that he would be ousted after making enemies in his effort to combat overspending and cronyism in the awarding of contracts. He pleaded with his boss, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and the pope to let him stay on. Instead, Archbishop Vigan`o was named the papal nuncio, or ambassador, to the United States.
Letters and documents by other Vatican officials followed, including some that suggested that the Vatican was not adequately complying with international legislation to prevent money laundering.
One anonymous document published in a national newspaper last week cited reports that a Sicilian cardinal had spoken vaguely about a plot to kill Pope Benedict XVI before the end of 2012.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, called the reports "delirious and incomprehensible."
One of the biggest problems with religious and spiritual groups, especially large ones, is that whenever a group of people get together you get politics. And politics are bad for spiritual realization. They detract from the group's true purpose and cultivate animosities that can lead to infighting. Aleister Crowley may gone a little too far in putting together his guidelines for A.'.A.'. when he stipulated that each initiate could only know one other person in the order, but there's certainly some merit to the general idea. As Crowley commented in "Magick Without Tears", "I am afraid you have still got the idea that the Great Work is a tea-party. Contact with other students only means that you criticize their hats, and then their morals; and I am not going to encourage this. Your work is not anybody else's; and undirected chatter is the worst poisonous element in human society."
Wise words, those.
Suggested ebooks:
Kenneth Grant - Aleister Crowley And The Hidden God
John Moore - Aleister Crowley A Modern Master Extract
I got my first copy of the Golden Dawn book edited by Israel Regardie when it became a single volume. I can remember for a few years prior coveting the two volume version with its own slip case, but it was beyond my ability to afford. It was the great prize for anyone who sought to learn ritual or ceremonial magick, and was carefully displayed behind glass so it wouldn't get stolen. The new Llewellyn edition was a single hardcover volume with a splashy colorful cover, but the price was right, and the old two volume edition was no longer in print. I bought the new version, back in the early autumn of 1975, and eagerly took it home to extract all of its secrets. I found that task to be nearly impossible, since my nascent intellectual skills weren't really up to the task. I might have been a twenty year old adult, but my ability to read through hundreds of pages of arcane lore was a bit too much for my reading skills at the time. It would seem that I needed some background in order to fully master this lore.
After I joined the Coven from Hell, I was taught most of the material from the Golden Dawn book, except perhaps the initiation rituals, and that included the Qabbalah, the Enochian material and the basic rituals. Once shown how these rituals worked, I immediately began to incorporate them into my own ritual work. In less than a year, I had my own versions of these rituals, but of them, only the Superior Pentagram, Superior Hexagram, the Middle Pillar, Qabalistic Cross and the Rose Cross rituals were used. The hexagram was soon replaced by the septagram, which I had always preferred, but those other four rituals were seamlessly incorporated into my magickal repertoire. I did fail to figure out how to use the lesser pentagram and hexagram rituals in conjunction with the superior rites, so I never mastered the Golden Dawn methodology for performing elemental, planetary and zodiacal magick. Instead, over time, I invented my own independent system of magick, but the rituals, structures and devices were expropriated from the Golden Dawn. This is because there wasn't any Golden Dawn organization for me to join, and to this day I remained an outsider to that tradition.
So it would seem that I used, in a rather cavalier manner, some of the magickal rituals of the Golden Dawn, some of the Enochian materials and pretty much ignored the rest. Since I had books from Aleister Crowley, I found that a combination of Crowley and the Golden Dawn seemed to help me fill in the void. Between these two authors, I was able to expand my knowledge and capability to craft and build my own personal system of magick. I was, in a word, an occult lore pirate, and both Israel Regardie and Aleister Crowley facilitated that plundering. I am sure that many others have found this published material both useful and practical, however, others within the Golden Dawn tradition have called both of them oath breakers. Had they not published the material from the Golden Dawn, I probably wouldn't have been able to craft the magickal system that I did eventually derive. So I owe a debt of gratitude to these two individuals who are not honored in some of the more traditional Golden Dawn circles.
Since that time, I have moved on and now use my own tried and true ritual structures, devices and components, all of which are now far removed from the Golden Dawn tradition. I have also refrained from purchasing any materials that are supposedly culled from secret documents that are still in use by that order. I have done this out of respect for the active tradition of the Golden Dawn, and because this lore would obviously not be particularly relevant to me or my organization. Thus, I wouldn't bother seeking to purchase any of the revelatory books published by either Farrell or Zelewski, since I feel that such published works are quite disrespectful to those who are working within a living tradition of the Golden Dawn.
I am also quite cold to anyone writing a history of the Golden Dawn where the founders, such as Westcott and Mathers, and others, are reviled as frauds or shown to be incompetent. Years ago I read Ellic Howe's book "Magicians of the Golden Dawn" and considered it a harsh and even scurrilous biography of that organization. I have no illusions as to the follies, flaws and failings of individuals and humanity in general, but I think that I would rather focus on the accomplished work of such individuals instead of attempting to judge them many decades after their death. This is why I consider Aleister Crowley to be an important writer and contributor to western occultism regardless of how he behaved or what kind of man he was while alive. So, for me, these individuals are judged by their work and their legacy. If they left behind writings that I find important to my own occult work, then I will judge them as a valuable resource, and nothing more. I think that its pretty tough to judge someone without personally knowing them, and even harder to judge someone who has been dead for a long time.
Whatever I think of the original founders of the Golden Dawn must therefore be based entirely on their work. There is so little historical information about Mathers that his life story has become something of a cipher that holds nearly any opinion, from the gloriously good to the vilifyingly evil. Aleister Crowley painted a picture of Mathers that was very dark and disturbing in the so called fictional work "Moon Child," and Dion Fortune supposedly accused Mina Mathers of having cursed her. I think that both of these opinions are likely fictional creations that do a great injustice to both of these individuals. If I were to judge the founders of the Golden Dawn, it would be to venerate them, since the Golden Dawn lore was so ahead of its time and such a radical departure from anything that had been practiced in the 19th century up to that time. I would have to consider Mathers, Westcott and others to be creative geniuses, since the Golden Dawn lore was so advanced. The fact that the rituals and documents of the Golden Dawn are still relevant today, in the early 21st century, should demonstrate just how advanced the lore was back when it was first presented to members of that order. To members of the order back in the early 1890's, the lore must seemed like something totally radical!
Some have said that the founders of the Golden Dawn were frauds or incompetent, and that their vision of the world, populated with rare encounters with flesh and blood advanced high adepts is a myth or a delusion. I think that the Golden Dawn lore speaks for itself, since either the founders were incredible geniuses, or that they had help from other unnamed individuals. These mysterious personages would have been quite enlightened and likely members of an elite organization, which was called the Third Order. Either perspective shows that Mathers, for all his supposed flaws and social issues, was a true adept and facilitator for even higher adepts (visible or invisible), since he was, after all, a man, and the lore that he presented to his order was beyond anything previously seen in the western world. For this reason alone, I venerate Mather's unwitting contribution to the occult world, which is his legacy, and I also venerate the Golden Dawn. I may not be a member, but as an outsider, I can easily see its long term value.
Frater Barrabbas
Suggested ebooks:
Michael Osiris Snuffin - Aleister Crowley And The Legend Of Pasiphae
Kenneth Grant - Aleister Crowley And The Hidden God
