skip to main |
skip to sidebar
I've often joked about the old folklore belief that a magician could put a "bad word" on their neighbor's cow, presumably using some sort of spell rather than spray paint and a thesaurus. Later this month a lecture by Dr. Karen Cullen at UHI, an educational institution located in Inverness, Scotland, will explore these beliefs and discuss their historical significance.
The lecture is amusingly entitled "Charmed Cows and Contentious Neighbors" and it is part of a continuing positive trend in academia involving the scholarly study of esoteric beliefs, from mysticism to folk magick. For practicing magicians these studies can be a wellspring of new (or more properly old) practical ideas, and from the standpoint of history folk beliefs have not been taken very seriously by historians until relatively recently despite their influence within societies and cultures.
I don't really need a collection of cattle-related spells, but if I lived in Scotland I would still be interested in attending. You never know, someday I might find myself in a bizarre situation that would require me to hex a heifer.
Suggested ebooks:
Aleister Crowley - Basic Techniques Of Sex Magick
Eliphas Levi - The Doctrine Of Transcendental Magic
Ophiel - The Art Practice Of Caballa Magic
ENTRY INTO FAERIE, THE DEVA REALM
Hail Psilos, Guide and Guardian along the path between Binah and Kether.
Hail Tehuti, Master of the stylus, the knowledge of mathematics and the arts.
Hail Thoth, Teacher of Wisdom, magick, and the symbols of Tarot.
Hail Hermes-Trismegistus, 'Thrice-great' messenger of the gods
Son of Maya and Zeus Master Thief Trainer of the Way of the Thief
Father of Pan, the Wild Goat God Wielder of the Caduceus
Patron to the Magi, the line of ancient adepts Inscriber of the Emerald Tablets Mercurial escort, bearing Psyche to the palace of the gods, where she partakes of the ambrosia of immortality
Master Servant, Hanuman, bringing the Key of Solomon, the Egyptian Ankh of Life.
Hail Merlin, Otherworld Guide,
Arch-Seer and Prophet of the Druids
Wizard and Founder of the Order of Istari,
Dweller of the Island of the Blessed, Aman
Mithrandir of the People of the Stars, and friend to all free ones
We welcome an initiation into your Mysteries,
a glimpse of your wonderful magick
that is the essence of consciousness.
Let the Dolmen-shape of the umbrella fungi
soften the rain of your teachings
as it gathers these waters of life
in its sponginess.
Allow our safe passage through your netherworld.
Show us the fruit of our labors and ready us for
the lessons we may approach.
We would take your hand as you lead us
down the spiral path into Faerie.
We look to you for advice and encouragement
as we will this transition.
Let your spore-seeds inflame
our awareness and self-understanding
just as this return-offering
burns to the ash of shed skin.
May our journey through and out of the Underworld be pleasant yet fruitful.
May we remember to trust our inner being as the source of manifestation and the center of existence.
Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your compassion.
Thank you for your humor.
Thank you for your awareness.
The flesh of the gods
The blood of the gods
Absorbed and encompassed,
we enter the womb only to exit
from the cave of our abandoned shell-self.
In love, peace, and trust in all things
we begin this adventure in a spirit of bright joy
and tender blessings.
Suggested ebooks:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Beast In The Cave
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - The Child That Went With The Fairies
Since last November my friend Frater Barrabbas has been following an ongoing debate in the Pagan community over how closely modern Paganism resembles its historical ancestors. In a more recent article he discusses his interpretation of the three philosophical perspectives that seem to be fueling the debate.
These three different philosophical perspectives are based on three different approaches to engaging with a tradition. I call these three perspectives "traditional lore, reconstructionist" and the middle ground of "objectified traditional lore," or "revisionism." If you ever wanted to be entertained, just get together three individuals who are die-hard adherents of these three different perspectives, introduce them to a strategic point of disagreement, and then let the fur fly.
According to Barrabbas' definitions, Traditionalists are defined as members of a particular initiatic system or lineage who adhere to to the teachings of that tradition regardless of outside evidence to the contrary. Reconstructivists seek to restore the practices of a particular group at a particular period in time according to academic writing and research about the tradition. Finally, Revisionists validate and augment their lore by researching academic and scientific information. Like this. By those definitions I'm clearly a Revisionist and proud of it. In fact, I have no idea why anyone would want to be a Traditionalist or Reconstructionist if they're at all interested in doing magick.
Purely Traditionalist systems suffer from the accumulation of dogma. Without any sort of peer review inaccurate information can wind up being disseminated. For example, the Golden Dawn origin story about Anna Sprengel and her body of European adepts made for a great plot element in my novel but most experts agree that it is probably not historically true. From the fragmentary technical documents that have been published on the Golden Dawn tradition sometime between Aleister Crowley's work with Macgregor Mathers ("Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae") and Israel Regardie's publication of the Stella Matutina documents ("The Golden Dawn") it looks like the Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram was replaced by the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram, a change which is taught by most of the modern Golden Dawn orders but which according to my own empirical research on probability shifts massively weakens the system.
Reconstructionists sometimes make important new historical discoveries about their respective traditions that prove useful, but without revision any such system is always going to contain elements that were appropriate in a particular time and place but are no longer relevant to the modern world. For example, there a million books out there that purport to teach "Celtic" Paganism. Many experts believe that the discovery of bog men clearly demonstrates that the ancient Celts practiced human sacrifice. Should we? Obviously a modern person is going to respond in the negative to that one, but as soon as you start changing even extreme elements of the system to fit the modern world you effectively are a Revisionist anyway. I also think the idea that if a magical practice is old it automatically works well needs to be discarded once and for all. My electric refrigerator works a lot better than an icebox.
When Traditionalists and Reconstructions went to war over whether or not Ronald Hutton's ideas about the history of Neo-Paganism were correct my Revisionist response was pretty much a big yawn. Who cares? Seriously. Either the techniques work or they don't. Whether or not they're ancient or modern shouldn't make any difference, especially since the debate seemed to be between two sides that couldn't agree over what percentage of modern Pagan practices have ancient roots. The more important question is what percentage of modern Pagan techniques work and what percentage don't. If all the people kicking up a huge fuss about whether the correct percentage of ancient lore is 10% or 90% instead performed a series of experiments with various Pagan magical techniques and recorded their results something useful would be generated rather than an emotional but pointless debate.
Magick is a technology. That means if something works better it is better, plain and simple. Some of its effects can be subjective, but that only makes evaluation of those aspects difficult, not impossible. Psychologists research subjective mental phenomena all the time. And as far as practical techniques go, all you need to do is set up experiments to test the probability shifts those techniques produce. Ancient methods are still worth studying because the human mind has changed little over the last several millenia, but they should be researched, tested, and integrated into modern systems only if they are found to be effective. The "sifting" method that most proto-sciences use to accumulate knowledge can occasionally produce spectacular successes that the formal scientific method will miss, but at the same time it can produce some spectacular failures, superstitions that manage to live on as the tradition evolves despite their ineffectiveness.
What amazes me from following this whole debate is how ridiculous it is. If your spiritual system works for you and produces the results you want, why should you care if it's ancient or modern? If it doesn't work for you, why should you practice it? Thelema works for me and "The Book of the Law" was written in 1904. I've certainly never lost any sleep over its relatively recent origins. As a matter of fact, from the standpoint of study, being in possession of the original manuscript is quite useful, and if the book were thousands of years old it almost certainly would have been lost. Furthermore, Thelema's modern elements such as "the method of science, the aim of religion" are a big part of its appeal to me and had it originated even hundreds of years ago those elements would probably not be present.
UPDATE: The comment thread for this article has drifted over into discussing the issue of individuals in the Pagan community who do not practice magick but still want to be treated as authority figures. That conversation is continuing over at Rob's place.
This year Mabon, the Autumnal Equinox, occurs on Friday the 23rd, but like many Pagans I celebrate Mabon on a convenient day between the 20th-23rd. I will be doing most of my celebrations this evening by meditating, and doing divination.
Mabon is a celebration of the harvest and marks the changing of the seasons as the official start of Autumn. Here in Seattle we're enjoying our last days of warmth and sunshine before the inevitable beginning of the rainy season. Soon having warm, dry toes will be but memory. Even though it's still warm out, the shift towards Autumn is quite obvious if you look for the signs - trees are beginning to lose their leaves, the mornings are chill, and (most tellingly) it's dark when I leave for work.
For some Autumn is a time of sadness as children trudge back to school and we say farewell to the easy summer weather - not for me. I love Autumn. When I feel that cool, crisp wind coming down from the North I feel excited and invigorated. I love watching the sun rise in a clouded sky. I love hearing leaves crunch under my feet. I love the smell of mulling apples. I even love the first Autumn rains. But the most important things about the change from summer to fall, for me at least, is that it's the time when my magick comes alive. As a shadow worker most of what I do stays pretty dormant over the summer and it's not until we shift from the light half of the year to the dark that I feel compelled to do magick. I can feel the shift in the air. I can feel dark magicks waking up and tapping on my windows. I love it!
So yes, I celebrate the harvest on Mabon, but that's not all. For me Mabon is a celebration of re-awakening and growing power. It's the time when I get to go out and dance in friendly energies at midnight - my reward for waiting patiently and being good since the Spring. I'll spend tonight meditating on my plans for the next few months and doing divination to guide me along my path. I don't do any major rituals or spells on Mabon - those wait for Samhain. Instead I like to spend this holiday quietly, just enjoying the energy and letting my hair down. The time for my major works is coming all too soon, so I like to enjoy the last of my lazy days.
On Friday I'm taking the Spirits of Seattle ghost tour, so look for a report on that next Monday.
Suggested ebooks:
Howard Phillips Lovecraft - The Book
Meshafi Resh - The Black Book
Harold Macgrath - The Pagan Madonna
A question I get asked a lot is "What are the best Tarot card decks?" Well, "best" is a relative term. I don't really think there is any such thing as "best" but I do agree that there are some decks that are more popular than others and maybe a little easier to understand. In this article, I'm going to briefly review the most popular and probably the most easy to learn Tarot card decks in the world today. Hopefully, after reading this, you'll have a pretty good idea of what Tarot card deck you will ultimately end up with.
Without a doubt, the most popular and easiest to learn Tarot card deck is the Rider Waite Tarot Deck. This deck was named after the very famous occult scholar, Dr. Arthur Edward Waite. The deck was first created in 1910. He had the designs drawn by a very talented lady by the name of Pamela Coleman Smith. Pamela was a member of the occult society group called the Order of the Golden Dawn.
The deck itself is very pleasing to look at. The symbolism is very easy to understand. But the best thing about using this deck is that there are so many books written on the use of these particular cards that learning to use the Rider Waite deck is going to be easier than just about any other deck in existence. For this reason, most occultists recommend that beginners start off with the Rider Waite Deck.
Another very popular Tarot Card deck, though nowhere near as easy to learn, is the Llewellyn Tarot. The illustrations in this deck are based off of the legends and the mythology of Wales. The artwork is created ina a very beautiful watercolor style.
The Llewellyn deck isn't as easy to read as the Rider Waite and there aren't as many books on it either. However, you can find some decent ones in your more established occult stores, whereas you can find a Rider Wait book in just about any book store.
Of course, probably one of the most popular Tarot Card decks of all time is the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot, which was created by another Order of the Golden Dawn member, Aleister Crowley. Reading this deck is extremely difficult and requires some pretty serious prior knowledge of Tarot Cards. One of the most unusual things about this deck is that it contains three versions of the Magus card. If you're going to use this deck for your divination, some serious study of the Tarot beforehand will be required.
There are of course many other Tarot Card decks, but these three should be more than enough to get you started. I suggest starting with the Rider Waite, then moving on to the Llewellyn Tarot, and then finally tackling the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot, when you begin to feel more adventurous.
To YOUR Divination Success.
by Steven Wagenheim
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven Wagenheim
