This article is scheduled for publication just before my birthday of November 7th. I’ve always been fond of saying that I was born 7 days after Halloween, but I have only recently become aware that my birthday may be the actual date celebrated by the ancients as Samhain.
The ancient calendar (or so I was told) was based on the Equinoxes and Solstices that divide the year into quarters. The Cross-Quarter Days, were the midpoint between those, which, being a middle space, heralded the Opening of the Ways.
Apparently our modern November 7th is the Cross-Quarter Day midpoint between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. It’s 15 degrees through the sign of Scorpio which sits between the Libra of the Equinox and the Sagittarius of the Solstice. The equinoxes and solstices are 90 degrees apart on the zodiac, and 15 degrees of Scorpio is 45 degrees from either side.
So, like I told the clerk at the store the other day, I am Halloween.
That certainly would explain a lot.
Since last week’s article fell before the Samhain/Halloween holiday, I thought I would adorn this week’s posting with pictures from my Haunted Firehouse setup. The props are things I have collected or made over the years, employing lighting and basic stage trickery to delight and frighten the visitors. It seems to have been effective. The lab experiment is a hairdresser’s mannequin I acquired in one of my other lifetimes when I worked as a professional stylist. That was between being the cemetery caretaker and international man of mystery.
The good news is, we all get Halloween for another week, and that can’t be a bad thing. I no longer have to call it second Halloween. It’s Halloween. Which I guess makes the other Pre-Halloween, but let’s not spoil it with technicalities. Tis time, Tis Time!
My birthday this year commemorates 57 trips around the Sun. I still have a little time ahead before my second Saturn return, but when you get close, you start feeling it. The first one in our late-twenties/early-thirties usually knocks us on our ass, dropping a load of adultness on us in one fell swoop. I am hoping that this second round is a tad more refined, mature, and circumspect, owing to those changes in myself. I think, perhaps, I needn’t be conked on the head quite so forcefully this time to get the message.
Though if this year is any indication. the conking has begun. My family has been visited by death three times closely, and three more times nearby, and the year still has a few more weeks to work. Despite the months that have passed, I still find myself working through things related to the realization of the permanence of these losses. Regardless of all other things that may come to be, these things will never be altered. They are now a permanent part of the web of memory and thought and emotion that constitute who I am in the universe.
So pardon me, Saturn, if I say I’m ready to get through this return thing sooner rather than later.
This blog is partially due to hearing that ticking of the clock a bit louder every day. Now, I am in relatively good health, I am taking steps to improve my health and hope to see Saturn return at least once more, if not twice (it’s possible). But as you reach certain points in life, you start thinking about things that you’ve put off, or allocated to someday.
My life has been full. It has moved in unexpected ways, and I consider every twist and turn to be one step closer to where I stand now. Some of the things that have happened I planned. Some of them I dreamed. Most were thrown at me by the universe in a mad game of existential catch. I’ve done my best not to drop the ball, though I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t a few times.
In walking down that road, some things that were the dreams and ambitions of my youth were cast aside, to be filled with more useful, enjoyable, and worthy pursuits. But there are those that linger, that I still find joy in, and thanks to the advent of the Internet and the broad community connected to one another by it, I have opportunities to explore those things.
The fire department has excellent fog machines. They are used to simulate the conditions inside a burning building and boy howdy do they work. It was difficult to get pics of the various stations of the spooky tour, and this clip from the video is about the best shot I got of my coffin. Yes I have a coffin. Oddly enough I got it at work. Not the job at the cemetery.
The series of articles I have been posting here since around April are part of that. Originally I intended this to be something of an aside to the webstore, which I still hope will appear on this domain. But life, the universe and everything frequently interferes with my plans, and this has become a larger, and hopefully more enjoyable, offering.
I get that even today a written blog is fast becoming an anachronism. In an environment dominated by “influencers” and social media, anyone wanting to be seen and heard has moved on to the podcast circuit, and my friends know I considered that at the beginning. It’s not been completely ruled out, as I have the equipment from my filmmaking work. But the time required to produce, record, edit, and publish a regular podcast is just not something I have right now. Maybe in 2023. Or 2024. Still lots on my plate.
The weekly dribbling from my mind’s eye that you will find here was initially motivated in a previous incarnation by my feelings that many in the modern occult community were getting a lot of surface but little depth. I think that may still be true for a lot of people, but either the tide is turning, or I am just becoming more aware of the deeper voices.
This clip is Charlie who you might just make out on top of the coffin in the previous image. Charlie was made for a sculpture class I took in the mid-90s. Over the years, the latex and foam rubber have naturally degraded to give him a wonderfully creepy countenance. He comes out now and again. He was seen briefly in my short film Silent for the 48 Hour Film Festival, but usually he stays in his cage. It’s better for everyone that way.
I have been working with the unseen since I was about 7 years old and got my first Tarot deck. Along with a book on a broad range of esoteric disciplines, and a later book on witchcraft directly, this journey was undertaken in comparative secrecy and on a solitary path. After decades, it is likely that I will always be more or less solitary, but in later years the secret part has slipped away. This is the result of moving from a very restricted rural community in the hills of Eastern Kentucky to the suburbs of the largest city in Texas. There are more weirdos here than me, and I have been lucky enough to meet up with a few.
I am that guy on the Hermit card. While it is relatively easy for me to be loquacious on the most bizarre of subjects here on the internet, in person I am less so. This is a holdover from those years when talk of such odd things was considered evil sacrilege or worse by the local populace. But I still am not entirely trusting of people I meet who present a strange and unusual vibe.
Let’s be honest. Some of them are crazy. For that matter, I might be crazy, too. But there’s a good crazy and a bad crazy, and I have had that experience of sharing perhaps too freely with someone who needs professional help.
There are doubtless some who might say I would probably benefit from professional help, myself. But it’s hard to find a reliable alchemist these days.
See, that flippancy is what the therapists call a deflection. Avoiding the deep complicated stuff by making a joke. There’s the meme that goes around about “sarchotic” being the state where people don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or if you’re psychotic.
I never know either. But it’s usually fun, and it can be entertaining for those paying close attention. For the rest, well, I’m not really all that interested in keeping their company. There’s that Hermit thing again.
The world has over 7 billion people on it, and a lot more in it. You can’t possibly be friends with all of them, and you’ll go mad trying. In my youth, I lived in a community where conformity was the standard. Think about that. Being like everyone else meant you had to be like everybody else. That’s soul-crushing and sadly not isolated to small towns in remote regions.
I chose not to conform, and that rebellion ultimately got me cast out. Figuratively at first – being ostracized from the social groups, both in school and afterward. I was considered as weird by “adults who should know better” as my so-called peers. The kids had to learn it from somewhere. Eventually I just up and left, because there was a wider world beckoning.
And in that wider world, I ran across, from time to time, others who had a similar outlook, and formed connections both short and long. I also ran across people who were utterly despicable, wasters of my time, lost souls, mad, bad, and dangerous to know. I was lucky enough to recognize those encounters and move away from them as fast as was practical and possible. You can’t always tell the boss to shove it.
Esmerelda here was probably my favorite setup. The Temple of the Golden Idol had to be drastically scaled back to comply with new fire codes, so the Fortune Teller ended up being a big hit. Of course when you have Tarot Cards and crystal balls around the house, it’s a fairly easy scene to put together. Esmerelda has been seen on my instagram multiple times as Erasmus. It’s handy to have gender fluid props when trying to set up something like this.
I find as the years pass that some of that latter group might simply have appeared to be that way because of who I was at the time. And to be honest, some of the “friends” I made along the way turned out to be that only because of who I was at the time. We change, we transition. we hope that we grow. Or at least learn not to mistake simple change for actual growth. I am as guilty of seeking greener grass as the next person.
The Hermit is not at the end of his path. He is just at a stopping point for this moment.
“The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.”
I use my birthday as a kind of regeneration. I attempt to assess, improve, reject, and jettison any unneeded parts of myself that have ceased to serve. In a way, it’s a personal Samhain. It signals a new beginning for the next year.
I hope that you will continue to join me for it. Back next week with hopefully less introspective content.
Round about the caldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw.– Toad, that under cold stone, Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot!
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and caldron, bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,– For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and caldron, bubble.
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangl’d babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,– Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our caldron.
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire, burn; and caldron, bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood, Then the charm is firm and good.
Macbeth – William Shakespeare
You just can’t go wrong with the classics, eh, folks?
This post immediately precedes the Grand High Sabbat of Samhain (Northern Hemisphere) when the doors of the worlds lay open, the dead rise, and witches fly.
Samhain is of a Welsh/Gaelic/Celtic origin and thus is pronounced something like Sow – Ween, I’m told.
As my ancestors were Welsh, but I am not, and the Gaelic languages are something I am still working to learn, my English language educated brain tends to see that word as Sam Hain.
I am confident that I am not alone in this, and have jokingly pointed out that this is the full name of one of the Winchester brothers – Sam Hain Winchester. And if it isn’t, the writers of the Supernatural series surely missed a golden opportunity.
In any case, because I was born and raised in the late 20th century in America, I refer to this holiday by it’s crass commercial epithet Halloween. Which saves me considerable embarrassment around those who know how to correctly pronounce Samhain.
In most cases we celebrate this event on October 31st, whilst many of us, and probably a good number of my readers, start actively decorating around mid-August, and truthfully keep a “creepy vibe” going year round.
This delightful meme has served as a seasonal love letter between me and my wife as we will invariably post it on each other’s social media. This Halloween is the 33rd anniversary of our first date. As she puts it “Find the Gomez to your Morticia, I did. “
There is Halloween, and there is waiting for Halloween. That is all.
It’s passing strange that as witchcraft has emerged from the shadows into a full blown cultural phenomenon, the Halloween holiday diminishes more and more in the public consciousness. Outside of the dedicated souls such as myself, the witches, and other weirdos, this event has been weakened to an overly restricted children’s party that parents dread and neighbors frequently ignore. Overshadowed by the burgeoning Fat Man and his capitalist orgy of Black Friday Weekend, one has to begin early, search wide, and work hard to get their full Halloween fix.
I am not talking about the various ritual observances. Everyone does that a little differently anyway. The ancients (who may have celebrated on a different day) called it a Cross-Quarter Day. That is, it was roughly halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. So it was an excuse to have a party. In ancient days, life was miserable, brutish, and short. Having something to look forward to, particularly in cold wet dark northern Europe, made things a little less miserable. In a world without weekends, a festival day was definitely important.
The meaning of, and doings of, these ancient feast and fire parties is really lost to history. Maybe there are bits here and there, but if you are looking for the true and authentic Gaelic experience you may be out of luck. Your tradition may be made up of what the Romans said the Gaelic peoples did, and what the Romans did that got confused and adopted by the members of that culture that survived the Roman conquest. Assimilation goes both ways, of course, so some of those authentic Celto/Gallo/Nordic traditions may have just become Roman traditions that we don’t remember were Celto/Gallo/Nordic.
My Halloween traditions probably do not resemble a Grand High Sabbat. Nor are they typically Celto/Gallo/Nordic or Roman. I carry along a lot of that crass commercial thing.
When I was a kid I loved putting on the costume and going door to door. I loved watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” while I ate too much sugar and bounced around way past my already insomniac bedtime.
When I got older, I loved making really cool costumes and going to Halloween parties with the other teens during that one time of the year I could actually go to parties with the other teens. And I loved watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.
As a young adult out on my own, my wife and I threw outrageous Halloween costume parties that spilled out of our tiny starter home into the street and down the block. I think we had over 300 people at one. Fortunately I had won the local rock radio station’s contest for coolest Halloween party invitation, so they showed up with the a hearse and a coffin full of beer and the cops to provide crowd control and insure a good safe time was had by all. Somewhere in that background, I am sure there was a VCR playing a treasured personal copy of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown“.
For many of us, Linus Van Pelt was our introduction to alternative views of the universe. This 4 to 5 year old had somehow worked out that Halloween was the really cool holiday we all should be celebrating, and remained faithful to his personal gnosis despite year after year of disappointment, ridicule, and growing evidence to the contrary. Peanuts, often seen as a harmless little kids comic strip, taught lessons on a par with Aesop, and introduced us to personality types in the world that we’d only fully realize as adults. Plus the dog owned a Van Gogh. How cool is that?
Peanuts is a registered trademark of United Features Syndicate.
Then the kids came along and I loved getting them dressed up, getting myself dressed up, and going door to door for candy and treats. As they got a little older, we resumed a more subdued holiday party scene, with giant home-made props in the yard (like an Alien hive and a 40′ dragon with Nazguls). This lasted through my youngest’s undergrad years in college. I’m not quite sure what the neighbors made of a 6′ 3″ Abby Schuto accompanied by a 6′ 9″ Professor Dumbledore, but they gave us candy.
Which brought us roughly to COVID and the closing of the world. No more parties. No more trick or treating. Just grim, dark, and deadly.
My youngest was in grad school at NYU when the plague hit. She had the good luck to have experienced one Halloween in Greenwich Village before everything changed. I’d been there myself a quarter century before; a quirk of timing with my then employer. It truly is a one-of-a-kind thing. I hope the scene recovers now that the pandemic seems to be dissipating.
This last year I have more personally felt the touch of death than at any other time in my life. Coming thus to a Sabbat with so many associations with death might seem overwhelming. Yet I am deeply associated with death already. I have symbols of death all over my personal spaces. The skeletons and skulls adorn my rooms to the extent that I use glass ones to store coffee and nuts in my kitchen. I am at home with the rustle of the Reaper’s wings.
And Halloween is my holiday. Excepting my birthday next week, which is a second Halloween.
And I aim to have it back.
So in my workshop right now, are the bones of a Great Pumpkin. I’m not exactly sure where he’s going but I’d truly like to have him somewhat airborne. Linus deserves that. He’s been waiting for almost 60 years now.
You’ve heard of people with skeletons in their closets? Well, I actually have them. And skulls, and swords, and other unusual things. Halloween is the time of year when I can bring out all the odd and wonderful things that I surround myself with and it will be considered ordinary by the neighbors and other banal folks.
As you can see, our cat Amelia has spotted the problem here. This is not a Halloween decoration. Since this one is wearing an elf’s hat, it’s clearly trying to horn in from that other holiday that keeps showing up in the stores earlier and earlier each year. She’s determined he’s going back until at least after the Macy’s Black Friday Eve Parade is over.
He’ll be part of a generally safe but still fun spooky display, maybe more than the adults who shepherd them into my yard. Over in the corner you will find the legs of a giant spider, and the bits and pieces of a few hapless victims.
Kids, even the little kids, seem to love this stuff. They’re into things that are a little creepy and a little kitsch. It’s cool to be a bit spooky, because at second glance, you can see the string holding that thing up.
There’s a part of Halloween that is about that “man behind the curtain” thing. Even for us big kids who are doing our thing with real cauldrons, real spiders, and sometimes real bones. Piercing the veil is about more than just calling the ancestors or drawing down the dark forces for malefic intent. It’s our time to peer beyond the surface of things, and see what strings are holding it up. This gives us perspective on our own roles, and power beyond those who don’t know how it all spins round.
For witches this is not an unusual thing, really. One practiced and adept can cross the hedge at will. Some days it’s hard not to. That’s why some of us talk about it being Halloween all year round in our homes. It certainly is in parts of mine. I keep the doorways of the year open should I need to access them.
This brings about something that I am hearing about more often, and that is that the old European Wheel of The Year with it’s Sabbats and High Sabbats and Grand High Sabbats doesn’t fit a modern industrial global society. That’s true enough. In fairness it may not have actually fit the postwar midcentury society it was introduced into. Arguably, much of the adaptation of these traditions was about “returning to the old ways”.
Well, the old ways had no internet. Nor antibiotics, air travel, electric light, public health, and reliable agricultural production. Regardless of how romantic it may seem at times, that miserable, brutish, and short thing was very real. You would not be reading this on your iPhone if we lived by the old ways. You’d maybe have learned a few things from your mom or an old aunt or the village wise woman, but the access you have to the great breadth of human learning, history, and awareness is unparalleled in our history. This is a transformative time, and because we have nigh-instant, nigh-global communication it is possible for everyone to take part in the transformation. We can all of us cross the hedge.
What we carry with us into that wonderful new world, full of terror and possibility, is what we choose to bring along. Just like when we pierce the veil on Halloween night. Do we honor our ancestors by doing only what they were able to do, or do we honor them by standing on their shoulders, the shoulders of giants, and making a new and bright thing that has never before been dreamt of in earth or in the heavens.
It’s a little something to think about at this time of year when we purge away all the spiritual junk we’ve accumulated since the last Halloween.
I’ll be over here in the workshop with my Peanuts DVD. Enjoy the party. See you next week.
So we are in the Halloween Season, and since I have been dropping a lot of somber, contemplative, and downright depressing stuff in recent articles, I thought I’d just jump in here with some good ol’ fashioned spookiness.
Besides, it’s the one time of year when most of us can talk about our weird and witchy sides without getting the side-eye from the normal people. Simply put, I dig the dead. After all, there are a lot more of them than there are of us.
And yes, before you ask, I have dug graves. They were not occupied. I’ve never run across poor Yoric or any of his kinfolk. The cemetery is pretty good about keeping track of who is planted where. I have also dug the graves of many of my beloved cats, And I have built tombs for bees and praying mantises, when I was a child. Death and I go way back.
I mentioned that death was never far away in my Appalachian birthplace. This is somewhat a result of a harder life that even today is not mitigated entirely by the conveniences of the modern technological world. But it also is the consequence of having large extended families in close proximity to one another. Because your great aunt Fannie just lived over the ridge, her passing was known and felt by you, and it rippled through the community.
There is a sort of fatalist bent to the people in that part of the world because of that, and certainly it mirrors generations of their forebears living in tiny villages back in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. We are all of us descended from coal miners, dirt farmers, and the wretched refuse of Europe’s teeming shores, quite accustomed to sudden reversals of fortune, loss and sorrow. I am sure this had some effect on my own interest in the macabre and morbid.
Ghosts and ghostly visitations were considered by most a fact of life in my childhood. In a culture that was an amalgam of various Protestant faiths, the survival of the individual soul after death was considered an absolute truth, so these spirits remaining, or returning, to the earth to interact with the living was not in any way out of the ordinary. Traditions such as covering the mirrors (or photos of the dead) in the house were aimed at encouraging the departed spirit to go on about it’s business and ascend (hopefully) to its eternal rest. People often took an indirect route leaving the funeral or the church, in order that the dead might not follow them home.
And yet almost everyone had some personal ghost story to tell, usually about being visited by the loved one shortly after their passing, but in some cases seeing them in later years. My grandmother told me that the night her mother was buried, she had a dream that her mother had come to the backdoor of the house, and was trying to get back in. In this instance, she did not take it as a good sign, but instead assumed it was an evil spirit trying to trick her into letting it loose in the house. Such doppelgangers are not unique to mountain lore.
I personally have been visited in dreams by the dead, often that same grandmother. Modern clinical thought would suggest that this is simply my mind replaying memories. That’s a possible explanation. Yet the nature of human consciousness is not even barely understood by science. As there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in that philosophy, I do not know what a dream really is, or what my mind really is. I can’t say that it is not a communication with a mind that is no longer in corporeal form.
Our modern sensibilities regarding luminous see-through spirits may be informed by this optical trick from the late 19th century. Dubbed “Pepper’s Ghost” for the English scientist who popularized the technique, it consisted of a “ghost” performer offstage, brightly lit, reflected into a pane of glass between the actors onstage and the audience. This method causes the reflected figure to appear as a phantasm interacting somewhat with the live persons on stage. If you’ve ridden the Haunted Mansion ride at one of the Disney parks, you’ve seen it in action.
A variation on Pepper’s Ghost was invented by cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan for the film Metropolis. In the process, a mirror is used in place of the glass plate. The mirror is set up at a proper angle to the camera. Behind it is a miniature model. Opposite, so that it will reflect into the mirror, is a set that matches part of the model, with actors. This set is positioned far enough from the mirror so that the set and actors “fit” into the space of the model. The reflective substance around the area of the set’s reflection is removed, so that the camera sees the background model, with apparently tiny actors inside it. This was used to create the Molloch sequence shown in my article on masks, as well as many others. Like Pepper’s Ghost, the technique has been disused with the advent of digital compositing and sophisticated projection systems, but it’s a great way to spook up the house for Halloween.
The typical ghost of folklore and legend, however, I have encountered more than a few times, and it’s never been that glowing see-through shade that we all saw in the moving pictures. When I have seen ghosts, they look like regular people who just happen to be there. Sometimes it is just out of the corner of the eye, but other times they walk right past.
I had such an experience earlier this year when I was visiting Salem, Massachusetts. The encounter was hardly dramatic, nor was it witchy (as one might expect). A youngish man passed me on the sidewalk. He was wearing a suit and hat from around the late 1940s. It was near the end of the day, and I was tired, and drained from the sensory overload, and it took me a minute to notice that he was out of place for the crowd, the location, the weather, and the century. When I turned to look after him, he was gone.
Now certainly, in a town like Salem where there are a number of eccentric personalities, this may simply have been a local whose particular affectation was period costume. It might have been an actor on the way to a performance. And they may simply have ducked into a storefront in that moment it took my hazy brain to realize something was odd about them.
But it didn’t feel that way. I was sure I’d seen a ghost.
In reflection I had noticed him coming down the street, in that way that you see something and the rest of the picture seems to be less important, like something you are looking at is yelling out “look at me” – “pay attention to this”.
I don’t doubt the person who passed me was not of that time and place, though what he actually was I cannot with any certainty tell you. It was a great ending to a very powerful day.
Most of my ghost encounters have been of this character. I don’t feel that I have ever run into a malevolent ghost – that is, as the spirit of a dead person appearing to me on the material plane.
But there are mischievous and malevolent spirits out there that “haunt” the usual places, old houses, castles, cemeteries, and the gallows hill. These are the goblins our ancestors believed waited behind bush and tree, waiting to carry off the unwary, to a gruesome fate that might involve a large bubbling pot.
There’s a fair argument that such hauntings are more akin to the popular idea of the tulpa. Much of modern magical thought employs this word, derived from, inaccurately, a Tibetan concept, interchangeably with words like servitor or egregore.
These Chaos magic ideas essentially assert that it is possible to create a more or less autonomous force using focused thought. These forces are believed to be capable of carrying out the magician’s will without a direct or constant intention. This might be similar to some elder concepts of the familiar spirit, but in the case of a haunting, it is the raw psychic force generated by a location, event, or person(s) that remain as a roving presence.
The angry ghost is now a trope of paranormal shows, occupying abandoned prisons and mental hospitals where the trauma and abuse of malevolent treatment is common. The pain, suffering, and madness of the inmates has taken on a life of its own. That such things continue to exist in the abandoned places is perhaps because in our own experience of the “ghosts” we feed more psychic energy into it, keeping it alive for generations.
I had the experience the first time that I visited His Majesty’s Tower of London of encountering a malevolence that occupied a part of the stairwell in the Bloody Tower. As I ascended I was almost overcome by a powerful dread. My heart raced. My hair stood on end. The entire time I was in the room at the top, I felt like there was something stalking around in the corners. This was broad daylight, with a number of other visitors. The only other person who noted the presence was my wife, who, while not as odd as myself, does admit experiencing these things from time to time.1 Though she plays it down now, she admitted to having played with two young boys at the Tower when she was a child. Like the man from Salem, they were gone inexplicably. Our family believes that these were the two princes Edward V and Richard Duke of York, who had supposedly been murdered by the usurper Richard III.
Curiously, when we returned a few years later to take our daughters, the presence was not there. I can only assume it was wandering some part of the vast ancient castle. That there should be unhappy dead in such a place is not surprising. The Norman White Tower was erected by William the Conqueror in 1066 on the remains of a Roman fortress. It has been a prison, torture chamber, and place of execution, often with the heads of the dead displayed on pikes on her outer walls. Indeed, the celebrated ravens of the Tower are descended from those corvids who came for the sweet morsels of beheaded criminals. The Tower Guard tell many tales of spirits and spooks that inhabit the place. Whether these are actual personal experiences or retold folklore depends on the person.
The executioner’s tools from the Tower of London are grim testimony to the political realities of pre-democratic times. The axe here may have ended the lives of millions whose crimes were simply displeasing the monarch or their policies of the day. Henry VIII was notorious for sending both wives and advisors to the block, though the royal and upper class offenders were probably done with the sword. In the ensuing chaos of his first daughter’s reign, Mary established an autodafe in England that was an extension of her husband’s Spanish Inquisition. Hundreds and maybe thousands were imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for heresy and witchcraft. When Elizabeth took the throne, despite initial overtures at reconciliation, attempts on her life by Catholic Spain in conspiracies with France and Scotland caused her to institute her own purges.
One would think if horrible death were a prelude to haunting that this old block of good English Oak would be swarming with the vengeful spirits of it’s victims. In an age when strangling, burning, and drawing and quartering were considered acceptable means of capital punishment, and the prelude to execution was often weeks or months of torture and imprisonment, the swift moment at the block may actually have been a merciful end to torment.
The Tower, of course, is much associated with Henry VIII and the subsequent, often tragic, Tudor dynasty. In the break between Henry and the Church of Rome, there followed many years of attendant bloodshed. Henry’s second wife and mother of Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn was beheaded at the Tower, and is said to roam the grounds. But she was not the only victim of the English Reformation. The persecutions and executions marked the reign of each succeeding monarch, and eventually contributed to the Witch Persecution in Salem in a later century.
When we visited England with our children in the mid-2000s we also went to Henry’s other palace, Hampton Court. This sprawling Tudor marvel is associated with ghosts. One is supposed to be Jane Seymour, who succeeded the beheaded Anne and gave birth to Edward, the son Henry had shed his previous two wives to get. Tragically she died from complications a few days later, and is said to haunt the stairway up to her chambers.
A second ghost is that of fifth wife Catherine Howard. Howard was much younger than the aging king, and is supposed to have openly flaunted extramarital relations. She was also beheaded at the Tower, but according to the story, her spirit replays the desperate attempt to get Henry’s mercy by running screaming down one of the hallways. Henry was engaged in prayer in the chapel on the floor below, and she never reached him.
I have seen neither of these ghosts, but on approaching the doors of that chapel at a later point in the tour, our family all experienced that same feeling of fear and dread that I had felt on the previous visit to the Bloody Tower. There is what is termed as a “cold spot” in that hallway near the chapel. It could, of course, be just a factor of the antique structures air currents. But none of us wanted to go into the chapel at the point. We satisfied ourselves with a swift look in the door, and then went on out to the warmer and merrier kitchens.
I don’t as a general rule frequent abandoned prisons and mental asylums, so I can’t relate any of the stories of those places that are so popular in the public imagination. I think there is a certain carnival sideshow fascination with places like this, and I am not certain to what extent this mystique is not creating the psychic phenomena, or at least perpetuating it. The link in the earlier paragraph on the tulpa leads to a long anthropological article on the subject of popular fascination and the possible creation of thought-form beings. It’s verbally more dense and clinical than even the kind of stuff I write, but if you are up for a challenge, I think you’ll find it interesting. As a bonus it invokes both Mulder and Scully, and the Winchester brothers. How often are you going to find a legitimate scientific article like that? Look for the connection with contemporary occult author and practicing sorceror Jason Miller near the end.
Again this time of year is a busy one for me. It’s my favorite holiday almost immediately followed by my favorite birthday, and also is that time of year when all the obligations and goals of the previous several months either come to fruition or need a final push. I hope you continue to find these articles of some interest. I will be back next week for another one before the doors to the other world swing fully wide.
My paternal grandfather passed away when I was 18. I don’t remember going to the funeral, although I must have. I know that I didn’t attend the graveside service. The cemetery was within sight of my house, and I sat on the back deck and watched from there. It was a nice sunny spring day, not a cloud in the sky.
As the coffin was lowered into the ground, there was a clap of thunder.
I know it was thunder. I eliminated the possibility that it had been blasting at one of the nearby strip mines. These shook the ground, and sometimes threw up a cloud of debris. It wasn’t that. Nor was it any other phenomena that was easily explained.
It was one loud clap of thunder, and then silence.
When the burial party returned home, my mother asked, “Did you hear that thunder?” It was a rhetorical question. We all heard it. There wasn’t any speculation or spiritual debate. It was a sign. My grandfather had been accepted into the next world.
Some years later, my cousin’s father (who was technically also a cousin, but due to age was regarded like an uncle) also passed. We had the same experience at his grave. Warm clear day. No sign of rain. A single thunderclap as the coffin was lowered.
My cousin who had been in attendance at my grandfather’s grave found this gratifying. Its fair to say that our relationships with these men, and the paths they had walked in the world, were complicated. And yet all of us took these signs as a favorable portent. The individual had received life everlasting.
I should clarify that I was not deeply religious and certainly not Christian at this time in my life, nor do I think I really ever have been. But in rural Eastern Kentucky, the biblical is interwoven into the culture. Like the ever-present tobacco and coal smoke, you can’t help but take some of it in.
I have seen this same grandfather go cut a fork from a sapling tree, hold it out before him, and where the tip would dip, water would be found. He did his dowsing for the construction company that employed him as a carpenter and woodworker. He pointed. They drilled. That was how they situated wells on new homesites.
The ancients had many means of divining the future. Elaborate rituals often involving animal sacrifice were carried out by a priestly caste, to determine the most propitious time for state events like the crowning of kings and waging of wars. Dream interpretation was practiced by the ancients as well. Usually this would be the dream of a chief or king, since those persons personified the state or tribe. But there were clearly priests and cunning folk who provided such services for the common people, for a fee, of course.
Modern superstitions such as a black cat crossing your path are possibly Medieval in origin. Cats in general were considered ill portents in early Islam. The witch’s cat was frequently cast as the devil in disguise in witch hunter manuals like the Maleus Malificarum.
Poor Bast earned such a bad reputation that feral cat populations were eradicated in many places, leading to a growth spurt in the rodent population of Europe’s cities. The fleas on the rodents carried the germ Yersinia pestis, which spread rapidly through the population. In the end one-quarter to one-third of the people died, leaving whole villages empty of life. We call it the Black Death. Better they should have kept the cats.
No one considered this the least out of the ordinary. Nor was the thunder roll that sent him off unexpected. He had some power about him, though he was a lay preacher in the Hardshell Baptist church. He had the intimate knowledge of nature that comes from relying on it for your food, medicine, and shelter. He knew what every kind of tree was, from bark, leaf, nut, and sap. He knew the wild herbs, and we routinely collected them. American ginseng was part of our autumn harvest, and would go to buy Christmas presents for the grandkids.
He was, generally speaking a good man, but he was also a hard one, and that comes from a hard life in a hard place. I learned things from him, but I can’t say that I ever really knew him. I experienced him when we went hunting or foraging or fishing. I didn’t care for many of those activities so perhaps the distance was as much my fault. In any case, there’s things the older me would have liked to have asked him. I know I have spent much time looking for things in books that I could have listened to when he was around.
Every generation we get away from the dead we lose some of who they were. My children never knew him. He is a complete abstraction. He’s a name for a man in a picture. I had the same experience of my great-grandfather, who was, apparently, the only other left-handed person in memory of our family.
Left-handedness is one of those “signs” in many cultures. Often viewed as evil, or unnatural, it’s a minor genetic variation that is frequently suppressed in early childhood. The term “Left-hand path” is almost synonymous with malefic magic and those who practice it. In Latin, the right hand is “dexter” whence emerges our word dexterity. The left hand is sinister. Well, guilty as charged.
Signs and portents are not necessarily magical. Some of them are quite natural, but people either don’t know about them, or they don’t pay attention to them. Those who do then acquire the prestige of a prophet, simply because they looked around. For instance, I can usually tell you when it’s going to rain. There’s an ache in my left ankle that seems to increase a day or so before a front comes through. I am fairly certain that this is the result of a change in barometric pressure, that my arthritic joint picks up as well as a column of mercury. If I also happen to notice the ants are building their hills up higher, and the leaves on the trees seem to be floppy and turned over, I am sure it’s going to come a gulley-washer.
The ants, of course, are responding to some indicator that they sense in the air or the magnetic field of the earth and preparing for the inevitable flooding of their tunnels by dredging. The trees are pulling the fluid out of the leaf that makes them rigid, in order to be less likely to be torn or pulled off by wind. This is probably, again, some response to changes in air pressure that are sensed in the very cells of the plant.
Okay, so it isn’t Doppler radar. But in context, and in the absence of Doppler radar and other prognosticating tools, it was how the wise knew it was time to put up the chickens and get in the house.
There’s a storehouse of lore about many important survival skills that predate modern industrialization and factory-farming. “Planting by the signs” is as old as the hills, as they say, but likely is a mixture of immigrant traditions and indigenous knowledge that survives in a few places still. The “signs” most typically is the phase of the moon, and then the moon at certain times of the year. This was determined to be most propitious so that the chance of a late frost wouldn’t blight the seedlings that just emerged. If you have heard the term “harvest moon” then you know of what I speak. There are interpretations that it meant a moon so bright you could bring in the crops by it, but that is not right. It was the right moon, at the right phase, in the right month. Any later and there’d be frost on the pumpkins, and you would have lost valuable and vital food. You might find this information in a modern Farmers’ Almanac, which was first compiled for this purpose. You’ll find a lot of other omens and signs there as well.
Birds are considered omens of good and ill in many cultures. In the Rime of the Ancient Mariner the man who killed the albatross is considered to have slain a good sign. But when the winds pick up and the ship sails northward from the polar seas, they hail him heroic for killing the bird that “brought the fog and mist”. Of course, the Mariner’s hellish voyage was just beginning, and none that condemned or hailed him would survive the trip.
These two birds visited me this year. The white ibis, bird of Thoth, the Mercury of the Egyptians, arrived on a February morning. That night my wife’s mother passed away. The black crow that came and sat on my balcony arrived a day after my father had died. These can, of course, be seen as coincidence. But I watch the birds more closely now.
As death was always near in mountain life, there were signs to look for. Remember that these people were descended from those who knew the cry of the Banshee or the Wailing Woman. The caterwaul was a creature, like Texas’s jackalope, that has evolved into a tall tale. Originally as a kind of Banshee spirit, its mournful cry presaged a death in the community. I have heard a wildcat screech at times that sounds like the keening of a woman in pain or fear. This is the beast they speak of. Sometimes, of course, it’s the call of a screech owl, echoing over “holler and hill” that mutates into the warning of impending loss. So too, was the call of the whippoorwill. Owls, of course, are birds of ill omen anyway, companion of witches and creatures of the night. But any bird that flew into the house meant that someone under that roof would die soon.
Shooting stars are another sign of bad things to come, at least in the area where I grew up. A meteor was reason to believe death or hard times were on the way. Closer to earth ghost lights and “fireballs” were often seen in the deep woods at night. While many of these may have been optical illusions, caused by atmospheric conditions and the moon or even terrestrial campfires, some of the older generation swore they’d been chased by them. They were often seen near so called “Indian mounds” like the barrow wights of English lore. These earthworks, if indeed they were not naturally formed, carried their own mystique, so the association of protective and malevolent spirits with them is not unusual. There are prehistoric mounds to the western part of the state, and northward in Ohio, so the presence of smaller ones in Eastern Kentucky is not impossible. Unlike their European counterparts, most are believed to have been ceremonial rather than funerary. Yet the spirits linger.
As we moved into cities and towns, and got electric light to drive off the night and weather forecasts on the color TV and geological surveys to drill our wells, much of the mystery and wonder of the old ways quietly slipped into the nothing. I am probably the last generation to have some direct connection with the tales and experiences that give meaning to “superstitions” that may go back to Medieval times or earlier. My children and their peers, and the generation that is coming up, can only respond to it as a recorded abstraction to be read about on the Internet.
The mantic arts are so popularly believed now that Halloween decorations tout the Tarot and “Fortune Telling”. Tarot like many systems, is based on random patterns being interpreted as portents of things to come. Random information could come from cracks on heated bones, the shapes of clouds, or the spots on a goat’s liver.
Other oracles were based on random outcomes of coin tosses or dice rolls. In the case of the former, a set number of tosses were combined and read as a pattern or value. This value was then looked up in a list. Later, yarrow sticks were then shaken in a bundle. The sticks that fell out gave the meaning. This is known as the I Ching, and is one of the most popular Chinese methods of predicting the future.
While there are certainly still wise folk in the hills, like Byron Ballard, who are recording and bringing forward these practices, there is a difference between living it and reading about it. Like the coal smoke on a brisk fall evening, you breath it in, and it becomes part of you. Otherwise, it’s not the same.
I hope you have found today’s tales worth the telling. I will return next week with more autumn thoughts.
Let the bells ring out, it’s Halloween month again!
I am fairly sure my readers feel the same jubilation when October rolls around (unless I have an audience south of the Equator, in which case, insert “Beltane month”). Some of us sniff that scent in the air as August draws to a close, even though here in coastal Texas “fall” is relegated to a state of mind for the most part.
It seems an apropos time to discuss the concept of the mask. I am a collector of masks (I’m a collector of a lot of things, books, guitars, swords, cats, skulls…). I have been fascinated by them since I was a child, through my years working in theatre and film, and as an intriguing part of popular culture. And of course, the ritual and magical use of the mask easily commands my attention.
Que tous les masques que vous portez soient les vôtres
I know I promised at the end of last week’s article to stop referring to the root words of things. Technically this is a direct translation, but our word mask is “larva” in Latin. I find this extraordinary. We can see of course why this term is used to apply to the untransformed infant stage of insects. The larva “masks” the true creature it becomes. But so too, can donning a mask be a transformative experience. When we mask ourselves, we are becoming something else.
This goes way way back to pre-history. We find evidence in the Sorceror of Tres Freres. Underneath his deerskin and horns he is becoming the Spirit of the animal. Whether he is personifying the deity locally for his tribe, or using this to hide himself as he travels the unseen world, we may never know.
The masks here are from various Pacific Island cultures. They are probably ceremonial, though they might have been used in battle to terrify the enemy. My personal favorite is Batman, there in the middle. His resemblance to the comic book Caped Crusader is telling. In earlier cultures the mythic beings represented by ritual masks are equivalent in a way to our modern superhero. The being portrayed is powerful, inscrutable, and quasi-divine. Underneath, the secret identity of the wearer is protected, both from the audience, and from any other quasi-divines that might mistake the mask for the legendary hero and come after them. This layer of protection is an important spiritual function of the mask. A mixed selection of African masks and idols from New York’s Museum of Natural History. I took these photos in 2021 as we toured the extensive permanent collection. It underlines how universal the idea of the mask is in human society, probably because we are hardwired to recognize faces. Another image from the museum trip. As you may infer from the style of the bronze work in this case, the example here is from central Asia. Although the tag did not mention it, I couldn’t help wondering if it was meant to represent a yeti, the fabled giant man-ape of the Himalayas. I think this was a shaman mask, so it fulfills the same role as the deer skin on the Paleolithic sorceror in that cave in France. It allows the shaman to transform into a being capable of entering the other worlds safely, and conversing with the beings that live there. it might also serve to scare off any potential evil or troublesome spirits that are attracted to the bright light of the shaman as he walks the paths between the worlds.
Yet there are tribal communities extant who use masked rituals for similar purposes, as well as to illustrate tribal history and legend. In many cases ritually re-enacting a story from myth is a kind of spellwork. In performing the ritual, the acts that brought about the desired ends are reintroduced into the universe, hopefully to remind the forgetful skies to bring rain, or the bored earth to make the fields green.
The ritual use of masks are not relegated to tribal cultures alone, though. Masks, and by extension costume, are integral to much ceremonial magic. And even when we are not garbed in robes the color of darkest midnight, we frequently use metaphorical masks in our work. We take on the role of a particular spirit, deity, or even abstract concept, when performing ritual and spellwork, as surely as that ancient sorcerer donned his deer skin.
Masks and mask-adjacent exhibits in the armory wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. These artful bronze helmets were typically Italian, and date from the time of the Renaissance. It is at the end of the jousting tradition, though some probably were used on the field of honor. In the age of the cannon, protecting the face and skull from shrapnel was vitally important. The cast helms would most likely have had visors that covered at least the lower half of the face. The designs served a double duty, in that the wearer might be easily identified on the field of battle. This would have a drawback when cannon gave way to musket, and more practical, and anonymous, headgear evolved.
In many witchcraft practices these roles are binary and gender-specific, deriving in some cases from more ancient fertility rites. This inbuilt duality is becoming problematic as we welcome into the larger occult community persons who do not fit easily within this paradigm. It’s time to understand that these restrictions are, in fact, just masks to express concepts that are not absolutes, but aspects of the Divine.
It is ridiculous to believe that LGBTQ+ persons did not practice witchcraft in elder times, or that their involvement in the craft did not form a vital part of their personal identity as much as it does for heterosexuals and cisgender individuals. Human sexuality has always been complex, variable, and fluid, depending on culture, time, and belief. It is only one component of that enigma we call human identity, which is still barely understood by modern psychological disciplines, and a total mystery to empirical science.
I’m talking here about the thing that drives around our meat suits, which are as much of a mask as anything you’ll find down at Party City this time of year. The physical body, though we may enjoy it while we occupy it, is not really what we are. We are made of rarer stuff. Stuff that is capable of assuming a number of different forms, playing a lot of different parts, and experiencing the greater Divine nature in a myriad of ways.
We are spirits in a material world.
Egyptian art has many examples of the last mask anyone would ever wear. These mummy masks were placed over the head and shoulders of the embalmed corpse, and used as stand-ins during the all-important “opening of the mouth” ceremony. This was performed at graveside by a priest wearing a mask of Anubis, the guardian and guide of the dead. Using a set of special tools, touched to the lips of the mask (or sometimes the coffin) the deceased was given both the power of speech needed for the sacred spells, and the ability to eat and drink in the afterlife.
Even in death, the ritual mask still has a purpose. In this case, it identifies what our meat suit looked like before time, desiccation, and decay took it away.
Certain Buddhist and Hindu teachings put forth that even that material world is an illusion. Our experience is happening in our minds, and our minds are ineffable, infinite, and eternal.
But as spirits we do enjoy wearing masks from time to time. They make it easier to go shopping for decorations down at the Spirit Halloween store. And to have conversations with other mask-wearing spirits about the nature of human identity, the cosmos, and our role in it.
It’s easy for us to confuse the mask for the wearer. Our minds are fertile places that concoct all manner of fantasies to keep us entertained when we should be paying attention in math class. We see the mask and infer, and elaborate, and imagine, and by the time we actually encounter the other person we probably have them dead wrong. When get to meet the wearer, if we are ever that lucky, it can be a shattering experience.
We must cultivate the practice of seeing through the mask, to those little bits of the wearer that come through the eyeholes and around the edges. While we may still be wrong when the masks come off at midnight, maybe we won’t be tragically so.
It’s also very important to remember that our own masks are on, and that impacts our own perception. I think we’ve all had the experience of wearing that mask where the eyes aren’t quite in the right place, or the mouth doesn’t match up. The bodies we wear and the baggage that we carry in the form of cultural roles and other outward expressions of identity can restrict and color our view of the world we are in. It’s vitally important that our masks fit us properly. Otherwise, we are stifled and miserable and angry all the time.
Remember that the spirits and deities and such that some of us work with are also wearing masks. They may need to go shopping down at the Spirit Halloween store, too. Very often they wear a mask so we can understand and interact with them.
Consider it a kind of metaphysical social media. We interact with the equivalent of a text message with a profile pic, and see the occasional meme post. The actual being we are communicating with may bear little resemblance to what we think they are. Meeting them “irl” could be devastating, disappointing, or ecstatic. But like social media, they may live far away and the chances of that happening are slim to none.
Our meat suits are not up to the challenge of such an encounter anyway. The grimoires are replete with entreaties to “appear in a form pleasant to the eye”. Otherworldly beings exist in forms and fashions that are not that same as the world we inhabit. To come into our space-time, necessitates a “container” that responds to our laws of physics. But that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable or pleasing to experience.
Mohammed was required to look only upon the angel Gabriel after he had passed by, because to see the full countenance would cause him to drop down dead. It’s safe to assume that we are only in the presence of a small portion or aspect of beings of this nature.
On the other hand, mythology and lore has many examples of spirits that live in a single tree, or protect a stream or river. These genius loci are more on our human scale, at least when that scale is limited by the meat suit.
Of course, these creatures could be as the mycelium of the mushroom. They are a greater whole, of which only a part is visible (and even they may not be fully aware of it).
This is not an uncommon concept. There are many versions of the cosmic Divine that suggest all our personal identities are merely a piece of this greater continuum, and that our moments incarnate in the meat suit provide a convenient situation for the self knowledge of that Divine. In which case, all the variations and viewpoints of everyone and everything are just masks that the Divine wears to know about itself. It is an exploration of wonder on an unimaginable scale, and so encounters with any and all should be welcomed, and cherished for what they are.
We are more than just the masks we wear. We wear a lot of masks. Don’t confuse the mask for the wearer. Especially when the wearer is you.
May all the masks you wear be your own.
Thank you for the taking the time to read this. It’s my busy season, so some of these may be shorter than the usual. I’m sure the tl;dr folks among you will appreciate that. I’ll be back next week.
Featured image and Instagram/Facebook/Twitter attachments are cropped from Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. In the frame the Great Machine that powers the city and exhausts the workers is transformed into the demon Molloch, who consumes them into his fiery insides. Another lovely occult reference in this film, and evidence that even a machine can wear a mask on occasion.
‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogroves and the mome raths outgrebe.
—Jabberwocky – Lewis Carroll
Language is a defining mark of humanity. Chimpanzees and bonobos use tools. Ants and bees build communities. But speaking is the one trait that separates us from the rest of the terrestrial animals on the planet.1 The ability of cetacen species like dolphins and whales to communicate linguistically is still a much debated topic. Whether their keening songs represent a language or are simply instinctive vocalizations remains unknown. For perspective, I recommend you read Roger Zelazny’s My Name is Legion. While the work is science fiction, one of the stories in the anthology poses an interesting idea about species communication.
Language has allowed us to rise to the point where we can manipulate the planet in ways unimaginable. We transmit our memory and our understanding from generation to generation through the spoken and written word. This innovation enables us to reach back thousands of years into the collective human experience. Without language, these memories would disappear, as Bladerunner’s Roy Batty puts it, like tears in rain.
Yet we waste this vital resource constantly, talking about the weather, nattering about the latest celebrity scandal, or arguing over politics on social media. We spend it away without thought or appreciation, without any idea of how important it is.
If you’ve been following this site for a while, you already know that I refuse to write to a fifth grade reading level. I think the vast majority of people who are interested in the kinds of strange things I write about are generally more intelligent than that. So give yourself a pat on the back if you don’t care for the fine art of small talk.
The place where I come from is a small town They think so small; They use small words.
—Big Time – Peter Gabriel
It’s a sad fact that sometimes just the possession of a large vocabulary has marked some for derision, isolation, and harassment by the general population. “Nerd”, “brainiac”, and even “professor” were meant as hurtful and derogatory in my youth and I am sure my experience is not singular. The root of this, of course, is that if one does not understand the words I am using, it tends to make them feel like they might not be so bright. No one likes to feel dumb, so why not respond with hurtful bullying. Brute force, verbally or otherwise, is far easier than looking things up in the dictionary.
I did, and still do, follow that latter route. Words are a fascination to me, and if I discover a new word I will delve deep until I ascertain it’s meaning. When I was in elementary school a millennia ago, we were taught how words were formed. We explored the entire dictionary entry of a word, including it’s origins in Aulde Anglish Old French, Latin, Greek, and a few that were more exotic. From this practice I could begin to construct words, and to greet new words with familiar endings and openings ( called suffixes and prefixes officially) with some knowledge of what they were about. This is vastly helpful in learning new and complex things.
“In the beginning was the Word” is a phrase out ye aulde King James Bible. That book, and hundreds of others, have been used as source material when constructing magical spells and incantations. The Psalms feature prominently in some of the folk magic of my native Appalachians and practices from the American South. These probably migrated from Protestant England.
The Hebrew Torah and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are believed by Kabbalists to hold the secrets of the Cosmos. Indeed, the letters are believed to be capable of making reality all by themselves. One can find this in the cautionary tale of the Golem, a man of clay who was inscribed with the word “Truth”. When the creature began doing damage, the letter Aleph was rubbed out, changing the word to “Dead”. While this may not strictly be Kabbalistic magic, the folklore partakes of the idea of the power of the letters as archetypes of the energies of creation. Many ancient cultures had similar beliefs. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that showed snakes, scorpions, or other baneful creatures were often “killed” by being incomplete or broken, so as to prevent the creature “coming to life” and doing magical harm.
For instance. logos, from the Greek, is the basis of the suffix -ology. The -ology suffix generally is taken to mean “the scientific study of”. So you could take a word, and add -ology to the end, and you made a new word that was the scientific study of whatever that root word was.
My youngest collects a series of books that begin publishing in their childhood using this principle. The first, I believe, was printed in England, and called Dragonology. It was followed shortly by Egyptology (ironically, actually the scientific study of Ancient Egypt), and the race was on.
Now, those of us who spent far too many hours of our youth perusing the entries in the great big Webster’s dictionary at the library (I now own four) are quick to point out that the scientific study of dragons is more properly Draconology, or possibly Dracology, because the word dragon comes from Old French, that borrowed if from the Latin Draconem (or draco) who stole it from the Greek drakon, which was a sea serpent, and not a dragon at all.
However, these beasts were also known by the term Vermis, from which comes our modern English Worm (after taking a trip through Germany and France, of course). Vermis was applicable to snakes which the ancients did not separate from worms of the more earthly sort. This is why cadaver art and dans macabre images frequently show serpents entwined and emerging from corpses. So when you find translation of Aulde Anglish sagas about slaying dragons where they call it “an old worm” you now know how that happens.
We also get our modern word vermin from the root vermis, and this has broadened to a generic class of undesired pests and parasites. In the dialect of my Appalachian homeland and the various child dialects of the American West, the word has become “varmint”. If you are unfamiliar with the term, I recommend reviewing the Bugs Bunny/Yosemite Sam Warner cartoons, where Sam drops it about every three seconds.
In my herbals, I find the word frequently attached to the suffix -fuge. This ending derives from the Latin fugus – to fly, or put to flight. Thus a vermifuge, is an herb or compound that drives worms from the digestive tract. I’m not sure it would deter a dragon, though, unless you planted an awful lot of it.
The vermifuge always gets me thinking of febrifuge, which is an herb or compound that gets rid of fevers (febris – Latin: fever). And so on and so forth. In this way I learned herbology. Herbology is the scientific study of herbal medicine, as opposed to botany, which is a generic subset of biology that focuses on the scientific study of plants.
Botany is one of those words that defy the structure we rely on. It comes from the ancient Greek botane, which is basically “plant”. Now why should the study of plants not be called botanology? I have no answer for you. Perhaps the Greeks used that word, but the French didn’t, and we English speakers stole the French word.
One of the other words that “break” our neat system is astronomy. Astronomy is the scientific study of stars (from the Greek astronimos – literally “star-arranging”). Astronomy and astrology were once the same thing. It was the same thing when the Greeks used astronomy, and when the Romans borrowed both words. It was only in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance that the two started to divide. Astrology went forward as a means of viewing the star arrangements as indicative of events in the world, and astronomy evolved to mean studying the mechanisms where these star arrangements came to be.
It’s interesting that the seminal texts of both sciences were written by the same person, Claudius Ptolemy of Alexandria. I’ve mentioned him before and with reason.
Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos (tetra – Greek: four / biblos – Greek: book) is the basis of Western astrology as we know it today. He was consolidating and editing the various texts from the Library of Alexandria, some of which went back to original sources in ancient Babylon, Chaldea, and Akkad. And those were probably based on Sumerian and older traditions, possibly, going back to the earliest human impressions of the night sky. This is just one example of how language can transcend our long long tenure on the planet.
On the other hand, Ptolemy’s book on astronomy, called now the Almagest (an Arabic corruption of the Greek megiste: greatest) was instrumental in suppressing things like the idea of a spherical earth that orbited with other planets around the sun.
The original name in Greek was Mathematike Syntaxis is a bit more accurate, and terribly similar to the Principia Mathematica of Sir Isaac Newton which ultimately replaced it as the “correct” explanation of planetary motion.
The Almagest asserted that the earth was a more or less flat and finite object in the middle of the universe, the Center of All Creation, with the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, the Stars, the Orders of the Angels, and God Almighty in His Heaven circling above (in roughly that order).
As this model was amenable to both Medieval Christianity and Islam, it was given support over other radical ideas like that of Aristarchus who had proven the earth was round, and calculated it’s size very accurately around the same time as Ptolemy was editing these works.
With the Renaissance and discovery of sea routes to Asia and then the Americas, the Almagest became a volume of quaint and curious lore to be found in the libraries of esotericists, collectors, and cranks (I have a pdf copy from here.) The Americas, were named by the Italian cartographer who drew up the first charts for Christopher Columbus. He was called Amerigo Vespucci and was happy to name an entire hemisphere after himself. That may not have been his actual intention, but other swathes of Terra Incognita ( Latin: Land Unknown) kept the names as the maps expanded and they became Terra Cognita. Personally I prefer those spaces on the edge, past Terra Incognita, with the admonishment: Hic sunt dracones!
“Here there be dragons!”
And just like that, I’ve circled back around. And this is theme of this week’s article. Our mastery of words, and the capacity we have to manipulate them gives up power in the universe. The words we use mark us out among others. The way we use words gives us the power over others. We can lead. We can wound. We can poison. We can heal. We can inspire.
The importance of the word and language is buried deep in our human history. It is that oldest form of sympathetic magic. The name of a thing is the thing. That is the same as the image of the thing. If you know the name, you can affect the thing.
And by this you can name things for which there isn’t an image, like the wind, or a spirit. You can call upon the slyphs of the breeze, and the angry heart of the hurakan (native Taino name for “evil wind spirit” from whence comes “hurricane”). You can anthropomorphize the seasons and the days and such things to make it easier to communicate with them. We can speak to the genius loci (genius – Latin: attendant or guardian spirit / loci – Latin: place) and ask permission or at least detente (French from Latin: to relax or loosen) when we perform our rituals. In doing so, we may teach them the words to lend their voices to the process, and we may learn some words from them.
Jabberwocky is called by many a “nonsense poem” , meaning that it’s simply a collection of words that rhyme without any real meaning. According to the Wikipedia article however: “Linguist Peter Lucas believes the “nonsense” term is inaccurate. The poem relies on a distortion of sense rather than “non-sense”, allowing the reader to infer meaning and therefore engage with narrative while lexical allusions swim under the surface of the poem.” In other words, because Carroll uses the framework of English grammar, we can read the poem and “see” the creatures in it. While I typically prefer other sources to Wikipedia, the section of the article on the “definition” of some of the words is quite entertaining.
I started out with Lewis Carroll because I have always loved the linguistic twisting of that poem. There’s a lot of magic hidden in Lewis Carroll, though I am not sure if he even knew it. A little girl follows a person sized, waistcoat-wearing rabbit down a hole in a hedge. Such a creature is called a Púca in Welsh tradition. It is a mischievous spirit related to the Fae. Certainly Alice’s trip into the earth is not so different than many other Celtic tales of visiting the world of the Tuatha De Danann. Alice returns to the Wonderland by passing through to the other side of the mirror. These are all found in folklore tales about witchcraft and faeries. It is perhaps why his works are so frequently classed with the tales of the Brothers Grimm.
But what he does with Jabberwocky is simply marvelous. He takes an algebraic approach to words. That is, if one follows the proper order of operations – in this case, English grammar, any n can be inserted into the formula and the equation still solved.
“‘Twas brilliant and the slimy toads did gyre and gambol in the wave.”
This “translation” as it were is something I discovered in a literature treatise some years ago, but the lesson is profound. Words can be changed at will and if you still follow the rules of grammar the statement is readable. Here, in a poem it also needs to rhyme, which is easier if you can make up the word, especially if oranges are involved.
But the fact that it is a poem gives us a clue that “outgrebe” is pronounced with the last syllable as “A” rather than “E” in order to rhyme with “wabe”.
Unless of course, those words have an additional syllable and are pronounced out – gre – bE and wa – bE, which is perfectly possible. In this case the final -bE rhymes. 2 Any good poet will tell you, having the same sound rhyme is lazy writing, so I’m going with wAbe and outgrAbe. The ghost of Lewis Carroll can sue me if I’m wrong.
Does all this linguistic and grammatic gymnastic make your head hurt? Try reading a Medieval grimoire sometime. The tenets of Qabbalah have evolved from the practice of rearranging Hebrew letters to make new words, and then contemplating those words to discover hidden truths. Angelic magic is full of words and symbols that twist and turn. The famous Sator magic square reads the same up and down and left to right; and right to left bottom to top.
In this flexibility and agility with language and writing we can find a metaphor for the fluidity of reality itself. Even in modern quantum science, the observation of a phenomena is considered the cause of it’s existence. In quantum terms, every particle is moving at an unknown speed through an unknown point in space. It is only when we seek to measure it’s location or speed that it really is there. Add to that, the uncertainty principle, – a concept that says we can either know where it is at any point, or how fast it is moving at any point, but never both, and you start dancing through the hedge after that rabbit.
In this flaky quantum multiverse (yes, since the particle can be anywhere at any time until someone somewhere sees it, the “other” places and times can be seen by other someones in other somewheres and make other universes) tiny tiny little particles act freaky all the time. But as they lump together and get bigger and bigger and turn into protons and neutrons and electrons and atoms and molecules and cruise ships and nebulae and galaxies they start to behave more in line with Mr. Newton’s rules in the Principia. There are some important modifications from Mr. Einstein’s Relativity (General and Special) and much more work done since then, but essentially the bigger it gets, the harder it becomes to influence it. At least when you are bound by those pesky laws of physics in normal space-time.
But the mind is not bound by that. Science really can’t determine if the mind is even part of that. The mind can travel back into our past, replay events, re-see and re-hear experiences that were a long time ago. We can hear music. We can remember speech. Though these events once had a physicality they are now stored in a form that is not physical, in a much more confined space (if we accept that the mind and brain are co-resident), and capable of immediate recollection.
But the mind can also experience things that were never real. We call it imagination, but our brains can present us with pasts we did not ever live through, futures which are yet to be, and worlds we can only dream of far across the great expanse of night. And these are equally accessible as the memories of our “real world”, perhaps even moreso.
Well, of course, but that’s “all in your head”. To make things happen in the real world you get bound by physics. I’m not sure about that.
Mozart was really good at making the music he heard in his head come out into the world. Shakespeare did the same for words, as did Carroll. Many words we use today were just invented by them (and other’s of course) to fill a need, or make a cunning rhyme.
For instance, if you’ve ever found something so funny it made you chortle, you owe it to Lewis Carroll. He made up the word “chortled” in Jabberwocky, though others deconstructed it to be a contraction of “chuckled” and “snorted”. As Jabberwocky employs a number of onomatopoeia – words that are made up to represent a sound – like galumphing, burbling, and whiffling, chortling is likely meant to represent a deep rumbling laugh, rather than the laugh-snort that sends your coffee across your phone screen. 3Again, the ghost of Lewis Carroll can haunt me if I err.
There’s a frequent meme that translates the word “abracadabra” as “What I say I make.” While my research indicates that “abracadabra” is probably a corruption, mispronunciation, or pun relating to the Gnostic deity named Abraxas (the X is pronounced as K) , the idea comes from a long belief in the power of the spoken word to make things happen. J.K. Rowling takes the sounds and gives them a Latinesque twist to create the Avada Kedavra death curse, working in a pun on cadaver in the process.
That “wascawy wabbit” has a bit of fun with magic words in the Warner cartoon “Hocus-Pocus Hare” using abracadabra, hocus pocus, hocus-cadabra, abracapocus, walla walla, and ultimately newport news. He starts by finding the book of Magic Words and Phrases on the shelf in the guest room of the nefarious Count, who suffers mightily at the utterance of the mashed up incantations. While hilarious, the principle of turning and twisting words and phrases, particularly rhyming and alliterative ones, is common to the craft of spellwork. There’s a reason they call it a spell.
Abracadabra can almost always be found in close proximity to hocus-pocus (believed to be a derivation of the blessing Hoc est corpus meum). That these rhyming words make no real sense is not relevant. We like the way they sound. They are music to the ear and quicksilver on the tongue. They’re also mnemonic (Greek mnemon – mindful). A lot of spells use rhyming and poesy to make them easier to remember. Most of us, even if pressed to do so, might not be able to remember a famous speech or quotation, but we routinely sing along to hundreds, if not thousands, of performances by our favorite bands. Small wonder that our words enchantment and incantation share the Latin root “cantare” for “sing”. This is inherent in the Welsh Bard, and the Greek Chorus. They had the power to charm the spirit, even if the spirit were just sitting there in the audience in their meat suits.
Language and it’s use to charm and enspell is a fascinating and potentially endless subject of examination. I have gone on much longer here than many of my other articles. If you have had the stamina and resolve to reach here to the end, I greatly appreciate it. For the TL;DR version, words are cool, and you can make things happen with them. Especially when you make them from scratch.
Please join me again next week, where I cannot promise to be less loquacious (loqui Latin talk), but will at least remove the parentheticals.
SirJohn Tenniel’s woodcut of the Jabberwock from Alice Through the Looking Glass is public domain. The still from Hocus-Pocus Hare is copyrighted by Time-Warner, and is employed under the Fair Use doctrine. The header image was provided by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash. The thumbnail image for social media was provided by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash. Unsplash is a free resource for bloggers and artists when photographers offer royalty free content for use.
Twice in a solar year, due to a quirk of astral mechanics, the rotational axis of the Earth aligns straight up and down with regard to our path around the sun. These days are called by the old Latin term equinox, because the hours of the night and the day are roughly equal. From thence the spinning top we live on continues to wobble over until one of the solstices, at which point it reverses.
This is handy, as if our poles keeled over further it would result in one half of the planet being constantly exposed to the sun and the other half enduring a perpetual frozen night. If such a cataclysm was gradual enough, species might evolve that could live in the “twilight zone” around the equator, where the oblique rays of sunlight could be similar to northern Alaska in summertime.
Our ancestors seemed keenly aware of this horrible potential. As the days shortened in the northern hemisphere (as they soon will be doing), they conceived great fire festivals, to push back the cold and the dark, and remind the sun through their earthly bonfires, that we were still down here, and still interested.
When enough generations had passed, it became fairly well accepted that the sun was going to come back in the springtime. By modern reckoning, Spring starts on the date of the Vernal Equinox, when the sun transits from Pisces into Aries. This perhaps is an accurate date if you live at the latitude of central Europe, as much human population did in the Neolithic. This was important for settled agrarian societies, that had become dependent on domesticated crops. “Spring” was when it was safe to plant, because the likelihood of damaging winter frosts was over.
But further south in Egypt, the beginning of the agricultural year was the annual flooding of the Nile, which happens about mid-August. The Nile flood is the result of torrential rains down in Africa. The rainy season was presaged to the Egyptian by the rising of the star Sirius in the southeastern sky. This visibility of the Canopus constellation is also occasioned by our wobbly world and it’s eccentricity.
During the period the Nile was in flood, the general populace that were usually engaged in farming were put to work as unskilled labor in various public building projects such as the erection of pyramids, obelisks, and temples, the majority of which were focused on keeping the sun spinning round the Earth in it’s usual happy way. This was an expression of “Ma’at” or “Truth” which has a very different meaning in ancient Egypt than in our present day.
Truth to the Egyptian was cosmic Law. It was the nature of things the way they were ordained, written down in the secret language of hieroglyphs by ibis-headed Tehuti for all eternity. Ma’at is symbolized by a single feather, both in texts and iconography, unless She appears as human goddess with the feather on her head. 1Frequently deities in Egyptian art are often depicted as nearly identical persons with the glyph of there name as a headdress. Thus the four goddesses guarding the shrine of Tutankhamen’s canopic jars can be identified as Isis, Nephthys, Serqet, and Neith. Ma’at is perhaps most famously known to Western eyes as the feather on the balance in the Weighing of the Heart ritual from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. This image is the source of our “scales of justice” and related imagery.
To the Egyptian way of thinking, the “Truth” that rested in the heart of the deceased was more about these cosmic rules than whether or not they had prevaricated. There was a long list called “The Negative Confessions” that the dead person was supposed to recite prior to, or during, the weighing of the heart. These were a recitation of wrong things that the deceased hadn’t done.
Again, for the purposes of the ritual, it didn’t matter whether or not the mummy had actually done them, it was important to say that it hadn’t. There’s also a handy little rubric, usually inscribed on a basalt scarab placed over the heart during the wrapping process, that admonishes the heart not to betray them, to keep silent if they had broken the rules. Obviously our modern ideas of Justice and Law differ.
The building called El Castillo at Chichen Itza is an example of astronomically tuned architecture. A temple to the Mayan god Kukulkan, the predecessor of the Aztec Quetzelcoatl or Plumed Serpent, this structure does a magic trick on the Equinox. The corners of the building cast the shadow of an undulating snake along the side of the steps, which moves slowly as the sun travels across the sky. To the ancient people this kind of display was proof of the presence of their deity, and affirmation that he had ordained another year for the world.
For the ancients, though, the doctrine of sympathy meant that the image of a thing was connected to the thing itself. So if you said you weren’t guilty, then you magically became not guilty (I’m certain there are number of persons incarcerated who wish that had worked). It was important to keep the universe in balance. Otherwise the world might flop over and the sandstorms of Set/Sutekh would overwhelm all civilization. Better to build another pyramid or temple to make sure the sun god stays happy.
Or maybe there’s more to it. We first have records of the famed obelisks being used for astronomical purpose by Aristarchus of Samos at the library of Alexandria. It’s entirely possible, given phenomena we can still observe, that the Egyptian temple and funerary architecture were astronomically aligned. This should not surprise us. In the late Stone Age and early Bronze age architecture was one of the few methods of accurately telling time.
Solar, lunar, and astronomical alignments are not a feature of Egyptian culture alone. Stonehenge and similar megalithic sites are fairly well understood as calendars. Mesoamerican pyramids and structures throughout Asia and Africa have solstice “clocks” built into them. Often these take the form of a slot or window, that shines light into a particular niche or area on the day of the winter solstice.
The equinoxes are a consequence of the solstices. If the planet didn’t reach over to the extremes at the beginning of Cancer and Capricorn, it wouldn’t have these crossing points. The equinoxes form a 90 degree angle to the solstices, so the year gets divided into four quarters, which are subdivided into three astrological signs.
As noted, the Vernal Equinox is the beginning of Aries. The Autumnal one, the beginning of Libra. As our trip around the sun is a tad over the 360 days that the Chaldees worked out (and applied to the Zodiac as degrees), these celestial events wander between the 21st to 23rd of March, June, September, and December. If you have an ephemeris handy (you don’t?) you can extrapolate the transit of the Sun into the relevant sign and plot it on your own calendar. There are at least a couple of occult almanacs that will give you the information, and the mundane Farmers’ Almanac will reference them as the beginnings of the seasons.
I’ve always been fascinated with astronomical, mathematical, and navigational instruments. A working armillary sphere is rather expensive (don’t even get me started on the cost of the astrolabes). You’ve probably seen “prop” versions at a number of department stores and garden centers, but these are usually fixed pieces of metal that at best might be spun around to point north. These screen shots from the virtual one on my phone show the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. The slanted band on these showing the month and sign is the apparent path of the sun from the earth. It’s really the earth and us that are slanted, but in the geocentric cosmology of the armillary, we are the fixed point. If you’ve dabbled at all with astrology you know that the Equinox is at the beginning of Libra and that the Solstice signals the start of Capricorn. Alas the more scientifically inclined authors of this app are using a sidereal zodiac, which is based on the positions of the constellations as the actually are, whereas Western Astrology uses a tropical zodiac that places a perfect 90 degree division between the Equinoxes and Solstices. Projected onto the earth the highest and lowest points of the suns travel give us the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, Depending on time of year, the sun is more or less directly overhead at midday between these points. Further north or south, and the sun never which actually comes directly overhead.
The quarter points also define the Cardinal signs, one for each element. Aries is fire, of course, and Cancer is water. Libra is the cardinal air sign, and Capricorn, represents earth. The next sign around in each quarter is a Fixed sign, Taurus/Earth; Leo/Fire; Scorpio/Water; and Aquarius/Air. The last sign in each quarter is the Mutable sign, signifying the nature of that sign’s character transitioning back toward the Cardinal. These are Gemini/Air; Virgo/Earth; Sagittarius/Fire; and finally Pisces/Water.
The Cardinal is an emergent energy. It has great force, and may be viewed as archtypical of the elemental nature of the sign. Planets on cardinal points influence powerfully, but sometimes in a raw or brutal way. Subtlety and sophistication may be lacking. This is good to keep in mind when picking times for planetary workings, or elemental based magic.
Magical timing and the use of astrology in ritual, derives from centuries of tradition. Much of it may have passed into Medieval texts with no real understanding of the ancient rationale. There are a number of examples where these correspondences were copied unquestioned into modern ritual manuals, and passed into present day with even less connection to the rudimentary ideas of relating magic to the greater state of the universe.
The approach of “scribe an amulet of bronze with this sigil in the hour of Venus” is, to my mind, far less efficacious, and less personal, than working out how the skies will aid your goal. There are apps aplenty to cast horoscopes and tally the planetary hours (I have several ). If you’re old school, or just want to understand the bones of the thing, you can use a paper ephmeris2 There are pdf versions available for free, here . to work out when the planets, signs and elements bode well for your venture. If I’m planning something especially complex, I will spot check the software results with paper calculus, and possibly even personal observation (saving pennies for that working astrolabe).
Even if you don’t want to go that extreme, understanding the why of the ritual holidays, whether we call them sabbats, or equinoxes, or the first day of fall, is, to my way of thinking, integral to the idea of a nature-adjacent lifestyle. Nature, after all, includes the sun, moon, stars, galaxies, and all the great big unknowns out there in the sky. 3If you’re really dedicated, or compulsive, or maybe a little wacky, you can even calculate things like seasonal shifts on the planets as part of your zodiac. The information is available out there. But maybe that is a little wacky.
A sun dial seems to be a fairly straightforward gadget. In fact, you can make one by poking a stick in the ground and seeing where the shadow falls. But there’s more to it that that. This little brass number – which I keep in a room with drawn curtains – has a means to tilt the surface based on latitude. I have mine set to around 30 degrees north, roughly the same as the Great Pyramid of Giza. There’s also a compass in the base to determine which way is north (since you are trying to maximize East-West exposure). There are also leveling feet if one is on uneven ground, though there’s not a level bubble, so I’m not sure what use they are. The sun dial has evolved significantly from the stick in the ground. There are some that have a figure-eight still grid laid out, to account for the variances in solar position due to the wobble of the earth’s axis.
I hope this has given you some things to think about when you see these days cycling around on that Witches’ Calendar plaque above the altar. I find the movements of the heavens fascinating, as they do affect how we live down here on earth. These wiggles of the planet give us the seasons, spawn hurricanes, monsoons, and typhoons, and control the hibernation of animals and plants. We are here because of it.
I’ll be back next week with other reflections. Thank you for reading.
I had written a different article for this week. It was drenched in downer September thoughts and after the heavy stuff last week, I thought it might be better for all concerned to postpone it for a later publication. Ergo, I am going to do a bit of a review/recommendation article of some of the various occult -ish stores I have visited around the country.
I encourage you to visit, if not these stores, then the one’s in your neighborhood.
Between the ‘zon and B&N and the mad mutant masters of mass market merchandising, one can obtain almost all manner of book, bell, candle, card, crystal, pendulum, mirror, seal, sigil, tablecloth, wall hanging, and T-shirt related to the practice of esoteric beliefs that one wants.
Had I these resources when I was young and living in rural Appalachia with virtually zero access to any of it, I’d not be the person I am today. I think there is a danger to the ease with which we can get the trappings of the craft; a tendency to assume that all the shiny things are both necessary and capable of making the magic work. I have found that neither is true, and like my art, I have often had to make do with less.
Before there was a ‘zon, before there was a B&N, and before there was an internet, there was mail-order, and the mail order catalog from Universal Imports featured all manner of goodies that you can’t get on the ‘zon even today. I never had the money to send off for any of it, but I still have one of the catalogs in my bookshelf. It’s both nostalgic and a reminder of the kind of magic that was being done pre-twitter.
Magic finds us in mysterious ways (as it rightly should). In addition to the things I could imagine I might do with potions and talismans from Miss Anna Riva, I was also fascinated with something called the Necronomicon that was hawked monthly on the back cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland. At the “outrageous” price of fifty late 1970s dollars, it was far beyond my reach, but I was certain if I got it, then I’d be a real sorceror.
If you’re familiar with the book, you know that it might at best be considered a hoax (in the same sense that the 1938 War of The Worlds broadcast is – something of a well intentioned practical joke). It purports to be a “discovered” manuscript of the real work of Abdul Al Hazared, referred to in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.
The Necronomicon is a synthesis of many Renaissance grimoires (the Picatrix, the Grand Grimoire, etc. ), borrowing names from the lesser known Sumerian mythology, and giving the usual proscriptions for doing rituals in certain planetary hours using talismans carved under the proper stars on exotic (and impossibly expensive) metals and gems.
Of course if you’re in your teens and you’ve not yet read any Medieval grimoires, it sounds amazingly powerful, Especially when you are primed to talismans and sigils and oils from the Universal Imports catalog.
I went with the considerably less expensive paperback version of the Necronomicon that I found in a mall bookstore along with the Satanic Bible. The latter I have since passed on to someone more interested in that, but I still keep the Necronomicon on the shelf, even though much of it is clearly fictional. And that is because in reading the “history” included in the introduction it mentions the Magical Child Bookshop in New York City.
I went to New York my first year in college, and I was determined to visit this place. It’s gone now, but the fictional bookstore in The Craft and “Ray’s Occult” in the Ghostbuster movies have the bones of it. It rambled through an old house in the East Village, with a wall of herb jars, rows of ritual candles (of the adult kind “wink-wink-nudge nudge”) and all the other paraphernalia we associate with a witch shop. In those days, it was probably one of three or four in the country. I bought a few herbs and incenses that I could afford, and made my way back to the more mundane world I lived in.
There are several more occult shops in New York City today, and doubtless a few that are not easily found on Google. I went to one that was called the successor to the Magical Child, called Enchantments. It’s focused very much on the herb and incense trade, with a somewhat limited selection of other items. At least this was my experience in 2021, when the city was still recovering from the pandemic. During the lock-down, the witches at this store did the best they could to continue supplying local occultists with herbs, incenses and other requirements for their practice. For that alone, they have my respect and my recommendation. That said, it’s not the shiny crystal laden prop shop that some stores are. The atmosphere is thick with the scent of exotic concoctions (made fresh on the premises) and the quarters are close. But the experience is authentic, and the staff, even when busy, acknowledges visitors and is respectful and helpful. You can find them in the East Village:
Among the number of occult shops on Manhattan Island, not to mention the rest of the five boroughs, I am a repeat visitor to the Namaste Bookshop on 14th Street just down from 5th Avenue. It’s tucked into a small storefront, but is chock-full of crystals, cards, books, and altar items. The staff was friendly, helpful, respectful, and seemed to genuinely enjoy being there. If you are looking for Tarot or graven images, this is a good choice. Despite the name, they have a wide selection of items ranging from Egyptian to African to Nordic, Celtic, and other European Pagan. They have a broad offering of crystals and stones as well. They can be found at:
Bookstores in and of themselves can be great resources of occult information. While so many small shops, antiquarian stores and secondhand booksellers have vanished with the rise of the megamall and the broad illiteracy of a web-focused population, I would be remiss if I did not mention and highly recommend that venerable Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village. It’s been there for ages, and despite struggling during the pandemic is still holding on to some of the more expensive real estate in Manhattan. I fear it, too, will go the way of the dinosaur, but in the meantime, you can find this resource of used and antique books on Broadway at:
There are, of course, several other occult shops and book stores in the greater New York area, but these are the one’s I have recent direct experience of, so they are offered here.
A shelf in my library demonstrates the odd sources I have used over the years to collect texts on magic and the occult. A great number of these were from second-hand stores, a few came as review copies, others as book club editions, and a few from modern market purveyors. When possible I buy my witchy books from witchy stores. They carry a broader selection and are more likely to have stock of less widely published tomes.
I visited Salem, Massachusetts for the first time this year. I was in Boston on a semi-business trip and was not going to pass up the chance to see this place so tied into America’s witchcraft history. As you may imagine, there are witch shops everywhere – at least in the touristy section of town. I visited a number of them, and I leave it to the reader to explore on their own, but I will make mention of three that I feel I can recommend.
First up is Pyramid Books, though they have much more than books. The selection of books and cards was amazing, were the stones, and other items, many which were locally made. Having a large collection as I do, I didn’t find a set of Tarot that called to me, but I definitely believe a visit to Salem should include this store. There were a number of things I would like to have had if I were not limited by having to return on a commercial aircraft. Pyramid is on the main street near the wharf, at:
It’s just a short walk from Pyramid Books down to the wharf where you’ll find Enchanted of Salem. This store is affiliated with Laurie Cabot, the Official Witch of Salem. You’ll find a number of her books, magical charms, and related items here. I understand that she does make appearances from time to time, but that was not the case when I was there. It’s a small space, but a friendly one. There are books, cards, crystals, jewelry, and a genuinely interested and supportive staff. As with Pyramid, there was much more I would have purchased if I could have gotten it safely on the plane. I satisfied myself with a deck of Fabio Listrani’s Goetia Tarot, a small silver bell, some jewelry for my wife, and a charm to protect my grandcat Dean. I highly recommend this shop.
If you find yourself at the Witch Trials Memorial -and you should- you will be very near to the third shop I am sharing, Pentagram. Admittedly the “new kids” in town, Pentagram has a good vibe, well stocked shelves of books1 including an anniversary re-issue of the Necronomicon hardcover- now doubled in price , cards, and other necessaries. The staff is helpful and genuinely interested. I did not end up purchasing anything, because, again, my collection is fairly large. The owner and I discussed the difference between today’s mass market and the habit of scouring antiquarian stores where you might have to read a bit of Latin and Greek. I think they are definitely worth a look, especially for the new witch, and as they are right next door to the memorial, you’re going to be there anyway. Check them out at:
Salem is a bit of a mixed bag. I wandered into one souvenir shop that was half an occult store. These are the tip of the iceberg, and there are of course the gift shops at the various museums and experiences, as well as a number of other specifically witchy shops. These three are again, those I have personal experience of and feel good passing on.
Closer to home is another place one might rightly expect to be full of witch shops, and that is New Orleans. My time there is principally spent in the French Quarter, where my wife and I attended an annual writers’ conference until the pandemic (ever shall it be cursed) shut that down. I am hopeful that next year it will resume. Not to be deprived of the experience, I visited there in 2021 on my birthday weekend. The city was something of a ghost town due to COVID, and the shopkeepers were happy to see us. There are several magic shops in the Quarter, and I am sure there are more in the city proper, as well as a number of solo practitioners who offer products direct to clients. New Orleans is synonymous with Voodoo and Hoodoo, though the shops I have visited offer broader options. With so many to choose from, I will focus on a couple that are not perhaps as well known.
A selection of the shiny rocks I purchased for my birthday last year. The majority of these came from Earth Odyssey (below) but a few were picked up in other rock shops in the Quarter. The porphyry mortar and pestle was from a stall in the French Market, just before they closed for the day. If you have a capacity to haggle, you may find some great bargains there.
The first is primarily focused on crystals and stones, and that is Earth Odyssey. It’s a bit hard to find, as it’s nestled in the middle of Chartres Street away from the noise and bars typical of the quarter. They offer polished and raw stones, multiple shapes (spheres, pyramids, obelisks, wands, and mirrors) a selection of locally made jewelry, and a smattering of books and cards. The staff at my visit was made up of the owner and a few long time employees, with enthusiastic young people who found themselves in NOLA temporarily. They were all fabulous to work with, patient, supportive, and knowledgeable. I spent quite a lot, because I found a number of things I’d wanted for a while, and it was, after all, my birthday. They very carefully packed it all for me, as although I usually just drive over to New Orleans, this time we had flown. Everything got back in perfect condition. They are on my “must-visit” list for my next trip. You can explore them here:
If you are looking for a more witchy experience, I definitely recommend Crescent City Conjure for your needs. The store specializes in Voodoo, Hoodoo, and Witchcraft, and is practice focused more than prop focused. That is, you are going to find candles, oils, washes, spell kits, gris-gris bags, and other items from Southern American magic culture. It’s authentic, results oriented, direct magic, about hexing and protecting. While aimed at a practicioner’s market, they staff was courteous and fun with the wide-eyed tourists who wandered in there. It has the New Orleans vibe that way, everyone is welcome at the table. You can come sit at:
A word about the New Orleans experience, (and perhaps about Salem as well). New Orleans has traditionally been a very laid back environment. Despite the horrors of Katrina and the privations of the pandemic, the city’s spirit remains one of relaxed enjoyment of life. With this in mind, don’t expect that shop hours as posted are particularly rigid. Opening at noon can be noon, 12:15, 12:30 or maybe a little after 1:00. Closing may be whenever the shopkeeper gets tired for the day. This is not a disregard for the customer but a dedication to embracing the motto of the city – “laissez les bontemps rouler!” – Let the Good Times Roll.
I also make an annual trip down to Clearwater/Tampa/St. Petersburg in Florida. There are a few little shops in the retirement towns along the coast that I will mention if you ever find yourself in the area. There’s Enchanted Spirit in Dunedin, Florida (it’s pronounced Dun – eden, though my brain keeps reading it as Tolkein’s Dúnedain). It’s a very laid-back shop run by a couple I would guess are semi-retirees. They have a bookshelf with a good assortment, and some Tarot and oracle cards, but the majority of the shop is dedicated to incenses. oils, and stones. I gather reiki and crystal healing are very popular in the area. They have a number of beautiful raw crystals if you have deep enough pockets, but I’m confident you can find a few things in your price range and interests. They can be visited at
Just a few blocks away in this charmingly walkable little town, you’ll find Emelia’s Apothecary. Although the namesake owner sold it just before the pandemic, the new proprietors maintain her focus on natural herbal solutions and homeopathic treatments. You will find a good selection of high quality essential oils. Be prepared to pay a premium for the more exotic ones like neroli, but they stock it. There are also custom-blended lotions, spritzes, and other aromatics for curing what ails you, or at least making for a long relaxing bath. They are located at:
There’s a friendly old tree right outside. Be sure to say hello.
If you drive, or take the trolley a bit further up the coast you will come to Tarpon Springs. Like many towns that had an earlier industry, it has turned it’s old downtown into a walkable shopping area. Here you will find the Healing Hedge Witch, an apothecary with a small selection of stones, books, and cards. I visited them last month and found several items of interest that could easily go home in my checked luggage. The owner was very friendly, and closed the sale by giving me an “intention card”, which had a good message. I thought the practice innovative, and genuine. I will call again.
A very short walk also took me to the Bohemian Gypsea, an eclectic shop spread throughout an old Victorian style house. The exterior yard is filled with potted plants which are also for sale, and the interior is crowded with goods of all sorts. The proprietor offered me tea upon entering. That is unexpected, but set a happy tone. I spent the better part of an hour wandering through the stones and artwork in the back, before continuing upstairs to peruse their offerings of books and cards, and clothing in the Stevie Nicks style. None of it would have looked good on me, of course, but it was a varied selection. I ended up with another set of tree/forest based oracle cards, a tiny deck of RWS Tarot (for my bookshelf witch- who I’ll now have to build a table), and some Tibetan prayer cymbals. As I said, it was a very eclectic shop, and one worth a look. Their address is:
I felt like I was visiting the aunts in Practical Magic.
And finally, closest to home, are those shops that I visit two or three times a year (or more) in the greater Houston metropolitan area, for my local occult fix.
Furthest afield (for me anyway) is the Witchery in Galveston, Texas. Located a couple of blocks off the more promoted Strand district, the Witchery has been there for at least a decade that I know of. The Woods who own and operate it are very customer-oriented, The selection is wide ranging and high quality, including books, cards, stones, crystals, altar ware, and other paraphernalia. If you’re vacationing in Galveston it’s worth a stop. You’ll find them at:
Houston has a number of esoteric shops, and at least two pop-up occult markets. As a melting pot city, we have specialty shops for Eastern medicine, botanica yerberias, Voodoo and Hoodoo, as well as the more general witchy type stores. I’ve been to a lot of them over the years, and am always on the lookout for new ones.
Some that have gotten my recent attention, and money, are nearby in Old Town Spring. You may have heard of it as Hometown Horror on the Travel Channel did a piece on a supposed “cursed doll” at the Doll Hospital.
Like Dunedin and Tarpon Springs in Florida, the original downtown of this Western railstop has re-invented itself as a walkable shopping district with a mix of galleries, restaurants, bars, and boutiques. And among them are several little shops for the strange and unusual.
Let’s start with the Chakra Shop. As you might expect from the name, it’s focus is on spiritual balance and meditation. The wares features are crystals, raw stones, meditation aids, incense, a few books and cards, and jewelry. Yet it is one of those places that I will visit when I am in the area, because I am always treated well, and with respect. The prices are fair, and they offer many services. They are in Gentry Square in the heart of town at:
At the other end of the porch you’ll find Xuxa Mystical Bazaar. It’s an eclectic mix of crystals, herbs, incenses, and statuary, chimes, and singing bowls. This is a second location for Xuxa, and the hours are variable. The shop is small, and there’s a lot of stuff. The operator is helpful, but can get busy assisting people especially if they are compounding herbs.
A bit further down the street you’ll find the Celtic Odyssey Emporium and Spa. The name might tend to confuse, but there’s a good selection of occult items in this old house, including cards, books, clothing, blades, and altar ware. They have a section in the back with old games and toys, as well as costume pieces from Gaelic to steampunk. I typically go for the odd stuff. They offer readings as well. It’s close and sometimes crowded, but very cool.
However, I have to say that my new favorite shop for odd things is Mallott’s Hardware and Variety. Do not let the name fool you. It’s the variety that attracts, and this can include singing bowls, Egyptian statues, incense, crystals, antiques, artwork, and oddities. I spent a significant amount there, and was very pleased to contribute to a local family business who appreciated. The only downside to Mallott’s, is that it is located in the old bank building (be sure to look at the cowboy era vault in the back) and is very small. Because they have a tremendous amount of goods, access to the store is limited to a few people at a time, so during peak hours, you may be waiting on the sidewalk. That’s okay, as they keep a generous amount of incense burning on the sill and there are some items to shop through. The compact and intimate nature of the shop is part of the charm. Just be aware of your surroundings, there’s fragile and breakable stuff everywhere you turn. Like Aladdin’s cave, there’s a tendency to be fascinated by all the treasures. I believe they do offer call – ahead access, as their hours can be flexible.
Recent additions to my strange and unusual items may include items sourced from charity thrift stores (great place to find cursed jewelry) craft and hobby shops, and museum stores. The large singing bowl , Vajra bell , and the little Tibetan prayer wheel to it’s left were found unexpectedly at Mallott’s in Old Town Spring. The thing to remember when purchasing items for your altar or magic space is that it should resonate with you personally, and mean something to your workings. It doesn’t have to be what it says in the book or on the ‘Gram. Power begins when you see the thing on a shelf that you just have to pick up.
And if you do find yourself shopping in Old Town Spring, please visit the numerous restaurants and shops that are more mainstream. The people are very friendly, some of them are friends of mine, and they are grateful for the business people bring to their town.
Well, I hope you found this listing enjoyable and useful, and a pleasant diversion from my usual stuff. Worry not, the creepy and creepier will return as Spooky Season progresses.
And wherever you are, I do encourage you to search out the local purveyors of the weird and wonderful when you do your seasonal shopping. Many of them source product from local artisans and craftspeople. Amazon and B&N don’t need another billion, but that esoteric shop down the street, with only a few unusual clientele, needs to feed their kids, or their cat, or that dark something they have in the attic, and you can make that choice.
I grew up in a temperate climate, and by this first week of September the signs of arriving autumn were well and truly underway. The family garden had largely been harvested. Dry brown cornstalks rattled in the morning breezes, waiting my scythe to fell them. The trees were already starting to color, and soon would burst forth in a final glory before dropping their leaves in advance of the coming winter.
Despite having lived longer in semi-arid and semi-tropical parts of Texas, where no such natural alchemies occur, my brain has not rewired the calendar of childhood. When August ends, my mind turns to thoughts of fall, dimming days, longer nights, and the inevitable grip of the Winter Dark.
September is also a frequent metaphor for those of us looking at our later years. Careers are winding down; children are raised and gone. A few pleasant years of retirement ahead, and then that inevitable long slumber, our own encounter with final darkness of the human experience. Hence this time of year my thoughts turn toward contemplation on endings, and the melancholia that attends such.
You’ve been warned.
When one is younger, the fact that we are all marching toward that same destiny is hardly noticed by most. As teenagers we are invincible and immortal, and even into our 40s and early 50s we may still occupy our minds with the daily grind. What is being ground away is pushed deep down from our consciousness. When we start seeing 60 on the horizon, though, the ticking of that clock becomes much louder. Despite encouragement from Blue Oyster Cult, we all still fear the Reaper.
This fear is hard wired in us. It’s deep down in our anatomy in a place fittingly at the bottom of our brain called the amygdala. These nerve clusters are considered to be essential for our experience of the emotions of fear, anxiety, and aggression. It is the center of the “fight or flight” response. Fear and hatred are interlinked at a cellular level.
The amygdala and it’s connected processes are sometimes referred to as our “reptile brain”. These are the parts of the brain that respond instinctually, to carry out the primary purpose of the organism, survival. There are few commands in this primitive part of our brain.
Eat. Mate. Repeat if necessary.
Presumably this is the wiring of all those nifty Cretaceous critters that you see when you go to Jurassic Park (because Cretaceous Park wouldn’t fit on the sign, I guess). They’re Eaters who want to make baby Eaters. They do that and keep doing it until a bigger Eater swoops in and eats them.
This is the whole reason for fight or flight. The Eater had to determine (and very quickly) whether or not the thing confronting it was predator, prey, or mate, and consequently whether to try it’s luck or run away like a bunch of English knights from a vicious rabbit.
Since there were only three options, the wiring didn’t need to be too complex. A basic pattern of friendly, not friendly, and edible was put together, probably based on the pheromones in scent, and things went merrily onward until an asteroid hit the planet.
With most of the Eaters now extinct, evolution filled the gap with mammals. Mammals are also Eaters, but they are a bit more sophisticated about it. What existed of the amygdala in the reptile brain, started wiring into other areas of the mammalian brain. It formed more complicated relationships that included support for nurturing, community, and hierarchy. These structures were necessary for insuring the safety and survival of the young, which were born largely unfinished. The weeks, months, and sometimes years needed for a mammal offspring to reach adulthood and begin it’s role eating and mating compelled this adaptation.
Fast forward a few million years and one uppity group of mammals started doing things like using tools, and maybe even fire, and we got the primate brain. I don’t make a distinction between primate brain and human brain. There’s ample evidence that while we have some significant increase in size and capacity, we aren’t always using it any better, and sometimes not nearly as well.
But primate brain seems to have one major distinction over the basic mammal brain, and that is an awareness of death. That is, when comparing something like a pride of lions, and a colony of chimpanzees, a death in the group is responded to in very different ways.
Chimps are known to mourn, or at least appear to mourn the loss of one of their members. They experience grief in a way at least similar to our own.
Lions, while the Discovery Channel might narrate otherwise, seem less attached. A couple of nose nudges, and then the pride moves on. Sorry, Disney.
Velociraptors, of course, would just eat the dead one. There’s no code for friendly but dead. The default is edible.
The cults of death are as diverse as they are common. Ritual and taboo have evolved around the basic necessity of insuring that the decomposition of our mortal remains occurs in a safe manner for our food supply and watershed. In elder days it was also handy to keep predators from sniffing around the cave or village. From this the physical and metaphysical lands of the dead were born, and remain with us tens of millennia later.
We start to see “human” behavior regarding death in the species called Neanderthals. These homonids are the first indications we have of intentional burial. The finds also often include personal artifacts.
While it is tempting to believe that early humans included these as tribute or memento, it is more likely they were simply taboo. The resources required to fashion a stone axe or arrowhead tend to preclude it being buried as an offering to the ancestor, at least at this point in our pre-history.
But if it were the possession of someone who suddenly stopped walking, talking, and breathing, that might not be something you wanted to keep around. It could potentially be the thing that stopped them walking, talking, and breathing, so best to leave it behind in the grave.
Burial originally might simply have been a means of keeping predators from being attracted to the rest of the group. Of equal value would be insuring that the process of decomposition occurred out of sight, and any possible contamination (physical or spiritual) was contained. We dispose of our dead today for similar reasons, so it’s not hard to imagine that being how it started.
The awareness of death, and the absolute inevitability of death, sends all kinds of messages down to that reptile brain. After all, it’s purpose is to survive.
Eat or be eaten.
So far, however, nobody has been able to get away from that biggest Eater of all.
Our rational primate brain would rather just avoid the subject, and engage in things like small talk, online gaming, and whatever the hell reality TV is about.
The mammal brain admits that apparently death happens, but there’s a really nice cool water hole over there.
Meanwhile the reptile brain sits down there at the bottom of our consciousness screaming day and night, “YOU FOOLS! WHY DON’T YOU DO SOMETHING? FIGHT! RUN! SOMETHING?”
It’s that downstairs neighbor tapping on the ceiling with a broom while the mammals and primates are having a loud party upstairs.
It’s the Serpent in Eden, and it’s terrifyingly real.
We have no control over the situation. We may live to well over 100 years in peaceful health, and harmony. We could step in front of a bus in the morning.
From the moment that we first experience the loss of another’s life, we are unable to ever go back. We know now.
We have left the Garden.
The terror and pain are real and immediate. Grief and mourning are the process whereby we convince ourselves that despite what just happened, the rest of the world is spinning onward with general indifference.
As cold as that may sound, it’s what we need to be able to get up and go out in the morning, without spending every moment wondering and waiting who will be next to go. And whether it might be us.
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking Racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
—Time – Roger Waters / David Gilmour / Nick Mason / Richard Wright
Some people seem more attuned to dealing with the idea of mortality than others. I place myself in that group. I surround myself with emblems of death. Skulls and skeletons decorate my home and my wardrobe. I visit cemeteries and battlefields and charnel grounds. I listen to the unquiet dead whispering on that autumn breeze. ” Come away. Come away…”
Yes, of course, I’m a fan of Poe. Even named one of my children Raven.
But there are lot of writers and artists and musicians and entertainers that seem to enjoy this spiraling dance with death and things macabre. Horror and fear are big industries in the part of the world where it can be purchased as entertainment. I think perhaps that the numbers of people who are comfortable, if not chummy, with human mortality is less in the parts of the world where sudden horrible death is a daily occurrence, I can’t believe that there are not some who still walk that path with Thanatos.
Anubis and I are old friends. In some ways meeting him, in a photo in an old library book, started me on the path I now walk. We were finally able to connect “in person” when I visited the Cairo Museum in the mid 1990s. I have seen many cult images of the deity, and have a few myself, but for some reason I feel this one from the celebrated treasury of Tutankhamen is the one he lives in.
I don’t have any idea why I am that way. We lived next to a large cemetery that started out as just family, but had expanded through marriages and kinships to a broader community. My grandmother oversaw the maintenance. In my teens and twenties, I was hired as caretaker, but I often accompanied her and my great-grandmother (when she was still able) down to the graveyard. My grandmother knew who all the dead people were. Even if she had not met them, she knew them because they had been the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of people she did know. It was a small community, and everyone knew everyone. Even the dead.
I did not get the chance to visit it when I was last there, and it would be about 20 years since, but I wager I could still tell you who was who, and how they were “kin” to one another, and maybe where they lived and what they did for a living. The oldest resident I know was corporal in George Washington’s army. My grandmother and great-grandmother have since moved in. They may be the last generation of my family to take up residence. My own parents have decided on cremation, and I doubt my brother’s line will be much different. As noted, I live in a far away world now.
I suppose they will miss me. The dead, I mean.
Cemeteries can be beautiful peaceful places for reflection and contemplation, as well as warehouse for human remains. But in a world bursting at the seams with living humans demanding resources, the real estate can be a little wasteful. And filling the ground with metal and plastic boxes holding chemically preserved bodies is not really green.
Like the jackal associated with Anubis, the vulture of Nebkhet is something we associate with death and dying in our modern world. The Ancient Egyptians saw these creatures as protective. Since they were so closely associated with death, surely evil spirits and the like would be frightened away by them. Some cultures practice “sky burial” where the vulture and other carrion birds do what they do to the remains of the deceased, thus taking their mortal coil on to the heavens. The process is both natural and sanitary, if horrifying to modern Western eyes.
The most interesting final disposition I have heard about is a company that will mix your cremated remains with potting soil, and then plant you with a seedling. You get to go back to the earth and come back as the tree of your choice.
I’m not sure what the regulatory agencies (and you would not believe the number of government agencies at multiple levels that have their fingers in the death pie) have determined regarding the potential “public health issues” of this kind of thing. To my mind if your ashes can be dumped in a field, scattered in the ocean or thrown to the wind off a tall building, you can damned well be a shade tree in suburbia.
Now, if I go that route, I know I am going to be that gnarled ancient oak way back in the forest that the animals avoid and nothing grows near. That would be so cool.
The hard thing about being comfortable with death, dying, and the post-death experience is deciding which way to go. I mean, if I’m honest, I want a pyramid. However, looking into the costs of even a small one is discouraging. Maybe I can donate myself to science and pick one of those teams that is always trying to recreate how the Egyptians did it for the History Channel.
Being intimately connected with the family plots, I had sort of just assumed that someday I would have a little piece of the field there. But time passes and things change, and you start thinking odd thoughts as you get older.
Part of the cemetery thing means having perpetual ownership. In other words, when the subdivision moves in, they best not be moving my final resting place. And woe be unto you if you do that Poltergeist thing and just move the headstones, cause I am definitely going to haunt those people. Honestly I will haunt anyone there anyway. I’m just that petty.
But, my kids have no real connection to that place. And if I were in the ground there, they’d either feel obliged to visit a place they hate, or they’d never show up at all. Just like I don’t.
I have deep love and appreciation for my grandmother, but I never visit her grave. I just don’t feel that it matters. The paths I have walked in my life cause me to wonder whether it matters where or what is done with your mortal coil once you have shuffled it off. Spoiler alert – it doesn’t.
If we believe that we are spirits or souls or energy forms that are driving around in our meat puppets for three score and ten, then what becomes of those meat puppets is entirely irrelevant.
Excluding true atheists, everyone has some belief in life after death, and if you don’t, then you aren’t really going to be upset much.
How that life after death turns out is not known. It’s fair to say that someone will have gotten it wrong. Maybe everyone.
That’s an exciting thought.
Owlsong  Dawn rises. Cool mists cling to the forest floor A lone voice proclaims It is not quite through with the night.
Death and witches seem to go hand in hand. The stories are universally grim (and Grimm). Witches were purveyors of poisons, casters of curses, and throwers of bones. The spirits that attended them could just as well be your departed Aunt Fannie as Buen or Baelzebuth. Witches routinely caused the death of livestock, villagers, and crops. They were a living harbinger of death in whatever community they inhabited.
I often wonder if Baba Yaga was just an old woman who had the same fascination with mortality that I have had all my life. The accumulation of bones and apparent indifference to death may have led to tales of cannibalism that feature in her story as well as others. I’ve never eaten anyone, but I’d be perfectly okay with the loud neighbor kids thinking I might. Keeps them off the lawn.
Other people, of course, can’t help but hear that screaming amygdala and yelling back “shutupshutupshutup!” Death is never discussed, never thought of, and avoided whenever possible. Grieving for them is harder and longer, because the event is shattering. The screaming reptile brain is shouting “I told you so!” and that is never productive.
If you are a person upset by this article, I expect that you may have already hit the back button and ducked out. I really would have liked for you to have read it. On the other hand, if you are part of that group of crazy kids who hang out with Anubis, can’t wait for Halloween, and really understand that the profound truth is that the mystery beyond death is where we’re all headed, then thank you for reading this. I know it’s not as directly witchy as the usual, but when you reach my age, you may find that it’s important to face this kind of thing, and realize that the clock will run out.
Addendum — I try to write my blog several weeks ahead. This was originally penned in late June or early July, because in truth, I think “Autumn thoughts” all year round.
A week ago, my father died.
I am fairly sure at the time that I wrote this, I was thinking about this inevitability, even though at that point he had not been diagnosed as terminal. The timing is neither ironic nor really unexpected. Part of being strange and unusual is living a bit out of sync with linear time, and accepting the insights that this brings.
I am confident that he is no longer in pain. I feel that he is both at peace, and has achieved some manner of perspective that will aid his spiritual path in the future.
My view of the cosmos assumes that future, for him and for all of us, so I don’t mourn in the fashion of my ancestors or my immediate family.
I add this epilogue as an observation and affirmation of the rest of the article. To borrow from Gandalf, Death is just another journey, one that we all must take.
Discretion is traditionally considered the better part of valor. Valor, however, is not something we use in common parlance, at least not in the New Millennium (more’s the pity).
Keeping one’s trap shut is frequently recommended, however, especially when it comes to things occult. Occult, after all, means hidden. This tradition was still largely extant in my youth. That was not so much due to oaths of silence, but to prevent the perception that one was some kind of kook. In the twenty-twenties, however, out and proud witchcraft screams across social media, into the mainstream shops, and horribly inaccurate television and film narratives.
I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing.
Let’s scrape aside for a moment the Hollywood version of things. Let’s remove the layer upon layer of mass market paperbacks, most generated to cash in on a trend, and some not even written by human beings. Let’s try for a moment to encounter witchcraft, magic, and the occult without the glare of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok (and Tumblr and Twitter and Toto too.)
What are we actually left with? What is the nature of occult practice today, without all the external public glitz and glamour?
I personally suspect that the circle is drawn considerably smaller. I am not opening the debate about what constitutes “a real witch” on ye olde Internet. I’m simply saying that a lot of what is out there is surface, and that the number who are swimming in deeper waters is more limited.
It’s fairly evident to me that occultists of my age are somewhat rare on the interwebs. I don’t think it’s because we made inadvisable pacts with infernal forces and were carried off at an untimely age to serve our nefarious masters.
Nor do I believe it likely that we are generationally impaired when it comes to technology. If you can tease out the important threads from a Medieval grimoire, I’m pretty sure you can handle tweeting from your mobile device.
It’s probably because that most of us are going on our merry way, hobnobbing with our brother wizards as per usual, without making a big thing out of it. We still ascribe to those old habits of long hours of hard studying, nigh scientific experimentation, and keeping the results of our efforts restricted to a close circle of intimates.
There are some things that I am never going to tell anyone.
I am bound by no oath. I am not a member of any secret society or tradition.
But there are still some things that I am never going to tell anyone.
I’ve been exploring a number of Tibetan traditions in the last year or so. I’ve been aware of them since I was a child, I think, but for many reasons these never seemed to “fit” my experience of the cosmos, until recently.
I’m one that generally bridles at the idea of the guru. in fairness, this is a response to the often poorly expressed and sometimes exploited image of the guru in the West. Looking up the term in Sanskrit, it translates generally to “one worthy of honor”.
Doesn’t say teacher, though that is implied. Doesn’t say holy one, mentor, buddha, etc. Just simply one worthy of honor.
I can get behind that idea.
I’ve met a number of people in life that I considered worthy of honor. Generally they had some impact on my way of thinking, or acting, or the choices I made in life as a consequence of meeting them. Very few of these encounters were with formal teachers, in a specific discipline or in an academic or meditative setting. Quite to the contrary, my experience with formal instruction was often frustrating and fruitless.
But still, in my late fifties, I was finding more and more connections with these old beliefs from the Himalayas and surrounding areas. Now, I have no intention of selling all that I own and joining a Tibetan monastery. For one thing, my wife would not be at all pleased with it, and I am rather fond of her. But the study of these ideas is accessible via the Internet, so I have the option of learning from home.
Or so I thought. Many of the texts I have read (and in fairness, they’re not a lot), make reference to an initiation ceremony of sorts, and of the need for direct instruction.
Now why would this be so? Isn’t the whole idea of Enlightenment as something that happens to one upon the spiritual path? Now there are gatekeepers to Nirvana?
Well, in a way yes. There are at least guides. There are people who have trod the path ahead of you, and know where you are liable to slip and fall. It is out of a concern for your safety that they offer the warning.
But sometimes the warning is insufficient. Sometimes, we are not able to hear the warning or understand it.
Let’s assume we are walking a terrestrial path in the woods. It twists and turns, and rambles over rough ground. Just up ahead, behind a bend in the road, there’s a hungry bear. If you have reached the bend in the road, you can see the bear, and see a path that will take you well clear of it.
But from where you are, you can’t see the bear waiting for you.
The person ahead can see it, tell you that it is there, and prepare you to react properly to it.
This is the idea of guru.
Someone doesn’t need to have made it to the end of the path. They just need to be far enough ahead of you to be helpful. The best teachers are themselves perpetual students.
But those who are further ahead on the path, realize that you not only don’t know about the bear, you don’t necessarily know what a bear is, or why it is dangerous. It is kinder for them to say, “You must wait here.” or “You must go that way”, than terrifying you with the idea that there’s a hungry bear in the woods waiting to eat you. Then you are only going to be worried about the bear. You’ll constantly be looking for the bear, and miss all the other wonderful and exciting things along the path.
Plus, you’ll probably never work up the courage to step off that path and go wandering in the woods.
The person ahead of you hopes that someday you will stand at that bend in the road, and gently beckon backward to those behind you and say “Here, come this way”. They will help you where they can, but they know that you still might be eaten by the bear. This is because no matter how much they may provide by way of instruction, there is always some things you must experience yourself in order to fully understand them.
Occult societies, cults, covens, and lodges often exact oaths of secrecy as part of the initiation into the group. Hand in hand with this are often tiers of adepts or degrees, which have boundaries of similar secret oaths. The purpose is not to limit the lower orders, but rather to manage the information that they must process. It is analogous to assembly instructions. The procedure on the fifth page makes no sense without completion of the steps on the previous four pages. You may look at the instructions, but you will probably misunderstand them.
Now since I am not going to Tibet anytime soon, I have to look at other ways to get around that bear. These may be “wrong” in the sense that they will lead me down paths that wind and twist and meet dead ends, forcing me to go back and find a better way. But I believe there is more than one way around the bear. After all, someone had to figure out how to get past it to begin with, so just because one way may be best, or easier, it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Sometimes it’s not the best or easiest for the person making the journey.
The occult nature of occult studies in the West, was largely induced by the need to avoid the ecclesiastic and civil authorities who had enacted penalties for such practices. If you poke into the dark corners of the late Middle Ages you can find that the fear of the Holy Mother Church for the other Abrahamic religions may have led to any texts written in Hebrew or Arabic being considered books of Black Magic.
While in the Moorish kingdom of Cordoba, Jews were tolerated and allowed to live more or less normal lives, the rest of Europe considered them heretics. 1One of the ingredients in the witches brew from Shakespeare is “liver of blaspheming Jew”. While modern eyes see this as a gross anti-semitism, the Christian world of the 15th and 16th century regarded the Jewish denial of the Christ as the Messiah as strongest heresy. The Inquisition’s torture chambers were filled with more Jews than apostate Catholics, witches, and other “deviants”. Driven underground during the Reconquista, the Jews, remaining Muslims, and their libraries, may have been the impetus for the rumored Black School of Toledo. This establishment, supposedly in a system of caves and caverns north of the city, was the top wizard school of the age. Like Hogwart’s though, it didn’t really exist.
There were, of course, a great number of actual magical texts that came through the Moorish kingdom into Europe. One of the most famous is the Picatrix, a 12th century Latin translation of the 10th century Islamic Ghayat al-Hakim.
The Arabic name translates roughly to “The Goal of the Sage”. It is an encyclopedic reference on various spells, potions, rituals, enchantments, talismans, and conjurations. The bones of this likely filtered down into works by Paracelsus and Agrippa, and were known to people like John Dee, Francis Bacon, Michel de Notre Dame, and later occult researchers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods through their work. it is not impossible that much of the ceremonial magic practiced today has roots in the Ghayat al-Hakim.
The Greek Magical Papyri also made their way into Europe by way of Islam, either through Spain or via the Silk Road. Practices and belief from as far away as China made that journey, and were synthesized, augmented, and mutated all along the way westward. The “Black Magic” being suppressed by the church was a complicated polyglot of folk-belief, surviving ancient practices, and the influence of esoteric concepts from Africa, Arabia, and Asia.
Growing hand in hand with the secular humanism of the Renaissance, occult ideas were mutated again into being Christian magic and Holy Alchemy. The reasoning was simple and convenient. The “spirits” which could include angels, demons, djinn, efrit, fae, nature spirits, the dead, and the old gods, had all be made by the Lord God Jehovah who had given Man dominion over all things way back in the Book of Genesis. Ergo, Man could dominate those beings, and use them as he saw fit, like some supernatural twenty-mule team. At least, that’s how it looked on paper.
In reality, if one were well-heeled and well-placed, dabbling in sorcery was an accepted hobby. Divination and necromancy were supported by an elite looking for financial or political advantage. Alchemy offered both immortality and tremendous wealth, so it is not surprising that even kings funded these obscure experiments.
The Book of Shadows or grimoire is a fixture of magic practice in fact and fiction. Authentic sorcery manuals in the West are largely from the Middle Ages and later. While there were a few real ones, others were forged by ecclesiastical authorities as “evidence” in the witch persecution. The “Devil’s Book” was manufactured to convict accused witches, along with forged pacts and other ephemera.
The Victorian lodge magicians set a great store by grimoires and their black books. Traditional witches prior to Wicca likely passed down most of what they knew by oral tradition, or at most a recipe book of herbal cures, and potions.
Much as been made of the odd symbology that surrounds alchemy. These images were a kind of secret code, to keep the unwise from finding the Philosopher’s Stone and using it for impure purpose. The adept -as the alchemists were fond of calling themselves – was able to decipher the code into a kind of manufacturing process, aimed at creating the Stone and/or the Elixir of Life. Some texts say the Stone makes the Elixir. Some say the Elixir may be boiled away to make the Stone. The Stone, of course, turned lead in to gold, which was the primary goal of the investors. Immortality would be a great bonus, but immortality without the money to enjoy it was a non-starter.
Many researchers today think that the alchemical manuscripts were obfuscating a philosophical journey, whereby the individual purified their own soul and consciousness, thereby earning eternal life (spiritually or physically is not clear, though there are legends of those who attained to great old age through the process).
This brought to my mind some of those Tibetan concepts I have been working with. The mandalas and related imagery are often confusing. In some cases they would appear terrifying and even pornographic to Western eyes. Yet I understand these to be a complex symbolic language, aimed at teaching key points that aid in spiritual growth.
Sound familiar?
I obtained a copy of the Bardo Thodol when I was in my teens. This is known by the more popular title of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It’s been a while since I read it, but I do recall it was about giving instructions so that the soul could be purified, and escape the endless cycle of physical reincarnation. If that wasn’t possible, then the goal was to find a new body which would be best suited to educate you for the next round. Because at birth, we tend to forget those things we learned in the previous life, and only by transcending the illusion of physicality can we reach those other memories.
Buddha said “We have all lived a thousand lifetimes. I remember all of them and you remember only this one. ” Consider that for a moment. Think about all the things that your current life experience has been. You hopefully have had joy and love. But we all have experienced pain and loss. Now multiply those memories by ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. Can you conceive of the joy you could feel if you accessed that? Can you imagine the pain of all those memories; the lost loved ones, the disappointments, the fear.
That’s the hungry bear waiting out there in the woods.
Realizing that this is not about balancing the good against the bad, or joy over the pain, is not something we typically do in the West. Duality is a big part of our nature, and it goes very far back. The nature of Other is built into our experience of the Universe. To be able to recognize the Universe is to acknowledge the Other. Yet all things are either Other or us, and as we are Other to the Other, it’s all the same thing. The forms and shapes are just paint and wallpaper on the real nature of the Cosmos.
Grasping that inside a human brain is nigh impossible. It’s hard to say if the Buddhas of Eastern thought actually attained it in physical form, or transcended, and having transcended, chose to return to their bodies to function as guides and teachers. 2There may be parallels in the Christian story of Jesus.
Having transcended the physical, it’s insubstantiality is understood. It is not real. Changing it is like switching channels. Not happy with your job? Click. Looking for a better apartment.? Click. Want to move that mountain range? Click.
Which is precisely why such capacities have been kept from the unwise, the untrained, and the uninitiated. That sort of thing could be very dangerous. We can’t have people going around and moving mountains. Think of the consequences.
Thing is, when you can move a mountain, you realize that you need not do it. There’s no reason. It’s just a mountain. There’s more important things you can put your power toward.
But I can’t tell you about that.
The Hermit is an archetype of the individual journey toward spiritual awareness. It’s a reference to the monastic existence, withdrawal from the world, and focus on quiet contemplation. Yet this symbol also stands on a great height, and shines his light before him.
Absent a view of the world around him, we may suppose he is holding the light to beckon others coming up the mountain. But he may also be holding a lamp unto his feet. The enigma of the Hermit reminds us that the path is potentially treacherous, even when we think we know it.
I appreciate your reading about what I could put into words, and of course, hope that it gave you some measure of perspective. The Hermit’s light shines through a crack in the lantern. The full force of it’s brightness is blinding.
And you don’t want to go wandering around blinded. There’s a hungry bear out there.
