THE TOAD BONE TREATISE

Or
Liber Hydrargyrum

Steps Towards an Occult Natural Science and the

Advanced Practice of Sorcery

By Robin Artisson
Copyright © 2008

The Toad's Bone moves against the stream

As surely as waking moves against the dream;
So solid and so fluid go the nights and days
And the flesh of men and women,
And the mind and heart that strays
From the path called 'straight and narrow'-
Onto the crooked road, that path's hidden marrow.
The binding Weird calls them to the game.

No teacher has been so wise, nor cunning

As the yellow moon arising and the river running;
No teacher as swift as the darting hare
Or as wise as the toad in darkness,
Or as strong as the nut-brown mare.
There is no temple as sacred as the vast dark Land;
No craft as ancient as the wordsmith's art,
Whose spells of old so few now understand.
 Introduction:
The Sorcerer of Old, The Sorcerer of Late

The Sorcerer of old came to the shores of a pond or the side of a stinking
bog; they may have cast some offering into the water, or captured some
creature for use in some spell-working. They may have been gathering some
herb or taking some water or mud for some magical use. At first, these men
and women were following along with time-honored methods of influencing
the arising of events; perhaps they were shown the way to make their
charms and potions by another.

Later, when a powerful church made it possible to be executed for attempting

to tame supernatural powers towards willed ends, they may have been
attempting charms and spells based on what some "cunning" or wise person
told them, or because "it was known" that these operations sometimes
yielded results. A very few were doing it because they were guided to do it by
mysterious benefactors- beings that appeared to them in dream or vision, but
these few were in the most danger of death for "trafficking with devils or
fairies."

The average "witching" person of medieval Christian and post-christian times

didn't think of their activities in terms of operating through a diabolical pact;
they simply held onto an alternative belief that the power or powers that
exist could be constrained or respond in certain ways, in answer to certain
actions on the parts of human beings. There was no moral dimension here;
the magic was neither good nor evil. The "evil" of it, in the later eyes of
mother church, was that it gave people an alternative source of hope or
comfort to turn to, which didn't include the walls of a church building.

It served the political authorities too well to have all eyes and hearts fixed on
a central institution of hope and comfort; it was worth the ultimate social
betrayal- that of murdering people in the society who simply held differing
views on petty matters- to hold the vast majority of people together,
cementing control in this manner.

Some say that perhaps, in those times gone by, the survival of the many
depended on everyone fixing their belief on common religious rites and
doctrines; a stable society made cooperation possible towards the ends of
feeding everyone, assuring some hint of law and order, and even moving in
national group motions, such as joining in armies that saw the boundaries of
a state kept safe. Some say that the Christian world's ability to launch
crusading armies in a more or less cohesive manner was what prevented
Europe from falling wholesale to Muslim armies- Muslims who were quite
organized and driven by a common principle of conquest and conversion.
There is some truth to all these things.

But within these threads of stability, which bound nearly all people and
shaped the destiny of many, a necessary magic dwells unseen. The wild,
 unguessable, and strange activities of occult experience- in all its many
forms- provides a hidden vitality to order. There is no possibility of order
without something fresh and unpredictable being at its heart; it is the fact
that anything can seemingly happen that makes it possible for something in
particular to happen. The strange immensities of the Unseen World provide
the needful and hidden "backdrop" for this world's houses and streets, rivers
and forests. The world of order needs its fertile field of origin-chaos.

The same is true for the order of the mental world. Those who lived in a world
of God and angels, of priests and sinners, and of saints and demons knew
that something mystical existed beyond the beliefs they were clinging to - a
strange and fearful world of mystery, of things man could not understand,
and perhaps for the better. The cracks in the perfect image created by the
church were showing- God the all-good still allowed evil to terrorize the lives
of good people; God the all-provider still let famine stalk and kill countless
people. "Faith" was enough for the first few nights of breathless fear and
restless sleep, but it became insufficient for thoughtful people. The official
explanations and apologetics for these problems- each of them a desperate
finger in the cracks of the dogma- didn't satisfy any thinking person, and they
still do not. Only those who were comfortable with the strange and the
unknown had any peace. And those people were mystics and sorcerers.

Whatever benefit the "order" of orthodoxy may have created for our
ancestors historically, it was never a benefit that included destroying or
driving away the mystical and the so-called supernatural. Such a thing is not
possible. The failure of the history of Europe was that it failed to include
within it an acceptance of the needful nature of witchcraft, sorcery,
mysticism, and the secret wildness at the heart of things. It had turned
against its own vitality by failing so.

Those of us today who are trapped by the stale and boring rules of
mathematics and materialistic sciences also feel it- there's something vital
and exciting about life; it isn't all numbers, formulae, angles, curves, and
straight lines. If we truly believed the world was so explicable and tiring, we'd
all be deep in depression; the soul in us knows greater things, even if we
can't put names to them. It knows the wild spaces, the unseen things and we
feel the internal report of these potencies though often dimly. It is enough to
attract us time and again to the mysteries of the unknown.

None of us really believe we'll only live 50 or 60 or 90 years; we all look

forward, in some way, to finding out, somehow, what mystery awaits in the
beyond- even if we lack the courage or inclination to claim some grandiose
religion or explanation for it all.

People have relied on the strange and unseen spaces of experience- and
those who open the door to them- since the dawn of time. The vocation of the
strange and the occult will never pass away, because it is a natural part of
any order. Sorcerers are not just people trained or learned in what others
have said about the occult; they are people born and bound to a special
fascination with the unknown and the mystical. They can no more change
 their nature than a raindrop could choose not to be wet.

The Weird's Ancient Magic

The great field of infinite possibilities is there; it always was and always will
be. It is the "great presence" that we feel when we are close to the wild,
natural things of the world. It is the basis for the "Unseen World"- the
dreamscape of the soul. It is the Weird, it is the natural home of many orders
of sentient being. It is our natural home, too- and these bodies of experiential
order and solid, stable flesh that we entertain with our bound awareness and
our trapped cups of memory are the side-products of the Weird's great and
universal magic.

I do not say "side product" as though the Weird merely dumped us out to the
side or made us without a serious thought; all products of the oldest magic-
Nature's magic- are fulfilling the Weird's great and secret need for
expression, its hunger for the completion of experience. Making experience
possible in new ways- in infinite ways- is necessary first; countless bodies,
countless fateful courses of power, and countless situations of all
complexities seemingly "arise" of the Weird. We can call it a "universe" if we
like, but I perceive it as a storm of magical power, a maelstrom of light and
glamour, the ultimate demonstration of sorcery.

After that, through the many perceptual cycles and eons of the long Day of
Life, sentient beings arise to (at some point) become fully aware of the great
completeness of things through their own minds and hearts. This is the final
step in the magic; then, the world is truly complete. The Weird permeates the
whole, as a whole, which of course it always was and is.

But how strange that beings should need to become aware of it! Do they
change it, somehow? No. Do they change themselves? In one way, yes, in
another, no. Is this "other" change needful to the Weird? In one way yes, in
another, no. The possibility always exists for this change and the awareness
of it on the parts of the sons and daughters of mortal men.

It is this strange possibility reserved for us that makes us "men", and not
"beasts", though the beast is never far from us because it is a natural and
eternal part of this flesh and soul. There is simply something else in us,
woven by the Weird- that "finest point of the soul"- the possibility of spirit's
undying fire bursting into its own conflagration, the outpouring of real
awareness and self-illuminating radiance that changes everything and
nothing at the same time.

It reveals the truth about things, but it does not thereby create those truths;
it shows that true "union with the divine"- or "union with all that is" is
(paradoxically) not a matter of total self-obliterating fusion, nor a matter of
total egoistic separation. It is eternal and lasting dynamic relationship and
interaction with both the ground of being- itself not to be considered some
static thing, but a perpetual unfolding and living process- and all forms that
derive their own existence from the ground of being and from countless other
co-creating and sustaining sources. It is joyful, perpetual dependency and co-
creativity with everything. A small hint of just this state is found in the
ordinary human experience of love.

The Crooked Path

The crooked road of human life- that is, the turning road, spiraling inward to
some secret place of transformation- also spirals outward at the same time.
Don't try to visualize this or wrap a logical mind around it; the act of going
"inward" is simultaneously the act of going "outward", though only the truly
wise grasp this. This is what it means to dwell in a wholeness of things, which
we certainly do. The crooked path is haunted- other beings dwell on it; some
hinder travelers, some help them. Some guard the way, others merely watch
it. Some wander about on the road, others seem to be going somewhere,
intently. Some sit as still as stones, seemingly quite asleep.

There is no place you can go where you will not be on the path, and no
person, animal, or other being you can meet that will not fulfill one of these
seven roles. You too shall occupy these roles at times, and after you have
made it to the secret place at the center, you will emerge, changed, but
continue to occupy some of those roles, though perhaps for different reasons.

It doesn't end. That road has no end, for even reaching the secret center- and
after a harrowing and a mystery- one may well discover more openness and
possibility of time, place, and being. We won't know until we arrive, though
mystically awakened beings from all times in the vast history of our world
have reported hints to us of the lay of that secret land.

What is before you is the Toad Bone Treatise- a guide down the path, a
collection of short works by yours truly that cast light on some dusty corners
and hidden clearings of the Witching art. It is a study of the the recondite
sciences and other arts now excoriated as "marginal knowledge" and
"superstition". It represents my attempt to consider the logical ramifications
of our belief in Fate and the all-pervading power of the Weird and create
steps towards an occult "natural science", but it is also a grimoire of some
power- containing many of the inner keys of the Witching way. Some of those
keys have been given before, in other places; some never before now.
Seizing this toad bone can grant many wishes- including control over the
beast that is one's unrestrained self and the strangely dazed and wandering
mind with its many dark dreams and fantasies.

Studying the world from new perspectives- hopefully more whole and truthful
ones- must make sorcery stronger, for none exist who can claim power in
sorcery without grasping something of the truth about the way things are in
this world, both the world that is known and the hidden world.

You must decide if the poetry in your soul becomes clearer when you read
and engage such things as this treatise, for if it does, then power is there and
you can use that power to affect the world and your life in the oddest and
deepest of ways. If it does not, then these words will be like dust to you. One
thing is for certain, without poetry, without secret things that fill us with the
fire of awakened imagination, we are all dust and will never be anything but.

Before the Beginning; After the End

The Oldest Things in the world are aware of you, even now. Call them Gods if
you like; call them Weirds, call them spirits; call them anything. They've
watched you come and go every day of your life- you along with everything-
and you were there with them before you were born, when nothing existed
but ghosts and strange combinations of color, when nothing was there but
vast dark spaces of timeless dwelling and strange companies of beings that
were beyond your conception. Nothing was there before you became a blood-
mote in the womb and swam into this odd yet needful world except the
strange possibilities of all things, the undying Weird-space and your fateful
perceptions of it. Nothing was there except the tug at your emotional center
to find, seek, discover, to be in a new way.

Nothing was there before your birth except the sprawling world of those who
have established themselves in the unseen through a dozen secret
entrances. Some will reign there, in courts of dazzling splendor, until the
breaking of the world. Some will fall from their castles and odd dwellings, to
be drawn into deeper shadow than any darkness you've ever known. Perhaps
you were there once. Others will wander in twilight, following unknown
courses. Others will sleep. Some will gather around the blood of the world, all
the light and passion, and seek ingress. Some will be driven to shift their
shape into all manner of creatures and nightmares; some will think of this
human world in as mythical of terms as we often think of theirs. Some will
never know a thing about our world.

The Weird has woven it all- all possibilities of time, place, and experience,
and we are wandering in a mental space with borders that cannot be found.
Powers are shrieking through here, through all things, and through us. We
have sought the quiet. We have sought the flesh and found the world of
alternating light and darkness. We have largely mercifully forgotten the
strange chaos, but we feel its extraordinary presence, creeping back up on us
at times. What happens in the depths also happens "here"- for they are not
so different places- and we cannot guess it out. Sometimes it kills. Sometimes
it brings to life. Sometimes it takes and sometimes it gives. We can be
terrified of it or try to cast ourselves into the bonds of love with it, but at the
end of this mortal road, we must face it. It is never what we imagined, as well
as all that we imagined.

We are bound, with all the things of the world, and all the things of heaven
and hell, to this life and her many experiences. Darkness and Light are not
our choices. They are powers who will take their share regardless of who we
are or what we do. Wisdom is our only choice, and the power that comes with
it- which we should seek for the use of life.

***
 The Sorcerous Pharmacopeia:
Curiosities and Short Essays Regarding The Hidden
Ways

I. Light of Day, Light of Night

The sun is the light of day; the moon is the light of night. When one
examines the bodies of the sun and moon, it is simple to see that one has a
body of fire, and the other a body of earth. Fire radiates light naturally; earth
is still and dark. The naturally luminous body of the sun spreads golden light
on the earth in each day, and after night, its light reaches the earth-body of
the moon and illuminates it.

Thus, by reflection, the undying light of the world-fire (the sun) is always with
us. In the darkness of night, it is the earth-body of the moon that receives the
light and mediates it to us. The moon is a mediator of a greater, more
constant light. There is a mystery here, in the concept of reflection. The sun's
direct, immediate light gives rise to life and abundance: plants need it to
thrive as much as humans or beasts; the cold powers are driven away under
the glaring eye of the day-star; life is made safer. Things become more
apparent, as darkness is absent in the light. Seeing with clarity and seeing
outwardly are the domains of the sun and its light.

But the character of that very same light is changed when it must be
reflected first- what the moon gives to us is the same light, but fully changed
by the moon's participation. The light of the moon is cooler and not as bright;
it is no longer golden, but pale white- it is no longer a light of gold but a light
of bone-white and silver. When the moon is rising, the light is building in it,
and it is only yellow or orange. When the moon has risen, it is brilliant white.
The sun's light in day builds power in the eye and body; it urges one to
activity. The moon's reflected light, however, calms and cools.

And the same light that once called people to outward-seeing clarity in the
day now calls people to inward seeing, under the spell of the moon-mediator.

It is curious indeed why this should be, but many lessons can be learned from
it. In the dance of the light of day and the light of night, the Weird shows that
anything received indirectly is seemingly changed quite radically. When
another being must mediate something to us- knowledge, for instance- we
must trust that what we receive is only a dim, pale reflection of what that
person received. I may go further to say that what we receive is reversed, in
a true sense- just as the moon reverses the sun's call to activity and outward
seeing into a seductive call to calmness and inward seeing. The sun's light is
for the eyes of the head, but the moon's light is for the eyes of the soul.

What does this tell us about the mystery of reflection? That reflecting things
reverses their powers and virtues. It is not merely a matter of "things"
becoming more tainted and diffuse the further they get from their source.
They also change in character, mysteriously. You have looked at yourself in a
mirror many times- but what are you seeing there? You as you appear, or "as
you are"? Or perhaps, in the mirror, what you are seeing is a reversal of what
you are, but after years of assuming that what appears is a perfect report of
what is, you can no longer consider the deceptive nature of mediation. The
mirror's spell can reveal the true face of essence to those who are no longer
fooled by the glamour.

The Weird- the boundless deep of eternal power- is like a perpetual fire body,
but its light is reflected in matter and arisen things, so what we think we
know of the power of the Weird is not only impure, but even reversed. We
conceptualize the strange space of the world-womb as the dark void that
gives rise to all- but what if it is a constant light, which never gives rise to
things- for indeed, how could perpetual things "arise"?- but perhaps it
receives all perpetual things into itself, as a constant sustaining presence.

Thus I say that the crooked path, from one perspective, turns around and
inward, but outward at the same time. It is a matter of the fact that our
perceptions are themselves already reflections, one time removed and
mediated to our minds in the form of impressions and ideas. There is reality
and the reflection of reality, which is the appearance of reality to us.
Everything and its opposite come together, one power with perception as
their ephemeral divider- fair is foul and foul is fair, without fail or end.

***

II. Mortal, Mirror, And Faery

There was a faery kingdom under that hill
Some say it is gone; I say it remains still.

A well and its water cannot be separated ultimately; the source and its
"products" are one. If we are (as is believed) possessed of two natures- one
mortal and aligned to the natural environment of this world, and the other
"fetch" or faery-immortal, aligned to the inner world of the Faery-Weird, and
further, if it is as some say, that the mortal half of our experience is sprung
from the inner world, emerged through the magic of birth into the light of day
and the dark of night (that is to say, a world of apparent cycles and duration)
from an original a world of perpetuity and wholeness, then we must consider
that the mortal and the faery, or the ferth and the fetch, are not ultimately
separate things.

We must retool our understandings to accept that the mortal is the all-around
uprising of the faery, an unbroken stream of the perpetual, a continuity of the
immortal; that the phenomenal experience of mortality is the water drawn
from the well of the numinal experience of faery, thus rendering them the
same, despite our relentless categorizations to the contrary.

No longer does a far away or divided-away mortal man seek for his Faery-
love or fetch-twin, but he must consider himself as the union, already
complete, of what is seen and what is unseen. Without this stance of mind,
the search may be long and in vain. The immortal nature has not vanished
off, leaving a mortal nature to wander about in fruitless searches; the
immortal nature has not vanished- it is the world of our senses that has
appeared and enchanted one's mind. This very nature must be that faery-
nature; something that was immortal has become enchanted and learned to
consider itself as mortal.

This fractured state of being can lead to strange madness- one may see
many things, in this world and in what would seem to be the "otherworld",
and one may wonder if one among these things is the "immortal twin" or
faery otherself; it may be that the magical force of the Weird of each of us
can, through reflection or projection, show itself as another. But the search
does not end until one realizes that the well and the water are not able to be
separated, that sources and products are one power experienced as two.

The wholeness of the Weird-world or the perpetual paradise of Faery has not
vanished. Wholeness cannot be so divided, ultimately, and so it still
maintains its wholeness. Something that is whole has become enchanted and
learned to consider itself as less than whole- it has been bewitched (after a
manner of speaking) and now interprets its own perceptions in a manner that
convinces it that it is less than whole, and, along with itself, that the “world
around it” is fatally flawed.

The perpetual power seemingly arises in many ways, and those “arisen
parts” can sometimes learn to distinguish themselves as "man" and "woman"
or as "searching" and "wandering"- but all is still one unbroken and mystical
force, as much faery in "this world" as it ever was in "the other". Something
that was immortal learned to be mortal, and has forgotten the vastness of
itself. It cannot imagine a time when it was not a limited being.

We have never "left" the faery world; if one wishes to engage the old term
"faery nature" as a name for our undying nature, then we are faery-natured
beings that still dwell in their natural world, but who have come under the
influence of bewitching confusion that has led to the creation of complex
fictions regarding who and what we are, where we "came from" and where
we are going. Our faery-natured companions who are not so deluded as we
are still "here", though we have learned not to see them, and instead accord
them existence in an unseen world.

When we perceive death to the bodies of men and women, we are

experiencing shape-shifting through Fateful consequence, nothing more- and
this process is carried out within the faery-world as well- for if it is a fact of
"this" reality, it is a fact of "that one"- for they are one reality.

Our faery stories present the faeries as tricksters of men and women- they
are presented as the masters of glamour, and their world as one full of
illusions, but now you must understand that these stories are trying to tell us
something about the nature of all worlds, including ours. They are one world.
Faery trickery and glamour is not only a danger in the faery world, but in this
one, for they are one world. It is better to say that "existing as we do, we
must accept the glamour that shapes us all and tricks us- and that glamour is
a world-creating power." This is the beginning of wisdom, and the key to its
"end".

Those beings who have undergone the metamorphosis of mind and

perception that free them from this present mortal darkness do not vanish
away from this reality, nor do they cease undergoing the shifting of shape
ordained by mighty Fate and Weird; they merely incorporate those things
into the vaster essence, that vastness of truth for themselves that they have
access to- an awareness of reality which marks them as different from we
"mortals".

Thus, the Gods of Pagans and the God of churches, the Gods of the Hindu
people and the Buddhas of the Orient are truly as all-knowing and perceiving
as their followers believe; the Oldest Beings of our own lands, now fallen into
the silence of their people's ignorance, are purveyors of wisdom and true
sight, just as the old churchmen feared. And we may become like the Oldest
Things, the Ancients, if we are cunning.

If there is a metaphysical path to understanding this grand experience that

we call our world, we must begin at the end- we must go forward to the
destruction of duality and thus, by natural paradox, find ourselves back at the
"beginning"- as the faery-natured beings that we are, free of limitation, with
those substances we call "numinal" and phenomenal" collapsed into the one
wholeness that they are. Then, from that perspective, use language to point
out merely how things appear- never must we deal with "the way things are"-
only how they appear to be, so long as we consider ourselves as mortals and
draw breath here.

***

III. A Sorcerous Conception of the Divine:

The Weird in Bog, Heath, and Moon

Wholeness in mind and flesh

Is a river in the body
A forest in the head
The sky in the fingers
A green dark land in the eye.
The Weird is the life spirit
The force of men and women
The lair of beasts
The flare of the day-star
 The glare of the wheat moon.
A hidden company tracks us;
Majesty rises unseen;
Many earths on earth there be,
Many skies in the sky above thee.

Many impassioned people tell how all others need to become resolved to
their "God"- but the Weird, the primal origin-force, everywhere apparent,
everywhere necessary, dawning everywhere without obstruction, is the true
"God" of the wise- the only "God" they need to establish themselves in
wisdom and lasting peace. It is this same force that the ancient spirits
worshipped of old as "Gods" draw their divinity from. It is the reason for all
things coming to pass, and the completion of all things.

I make no attempt to describe it in material terms; I prefer only to speak of

its processes- those things it appears to do. I experience it in terms of cycles
and processes, not in matter and material. No matter is inert; to see a willow
tree feasting on the riverside, with small fish darting to and fro in the
shallows and toads splashing into the water is to see a massive tapestry of
processes, of powers in motion.

Our own lives and all lives are this way- we are verbs, not nouns. The world is
a verb, a doing thing, because that power upon which our minds and our
experience of the world relies is a verb, a great doing, a great vibrancy that
appears quite dark at times. For all the "doingness" of the world, it also never
seems to change, in essence- all appearance of motion is the experience of
something that is perpetually still.

Like with so many things, what appears in reflection is the opposite of what is
there- and thus, the two halves come together- one does not destroy the
other; seeming motion is still seeming motion, and stillness remains stillness.
But the wise understand. They no longer accept “outward things” and
apparent motions as simply that, full stop; they know the deeper truth of
them, but they also do not deny outward things and motions in favor of some
“stillness that is apart from all things.”

The Weird, the primal power that is source and sustainer of all (peering as it
does from the timeless eyes of the great serpent in the land) lays down no
scriptures save the necessity that rules all lives. It does not sit as a white-
bearded man in judicial proceedings against souls; the ancestral powers of
families and the spirits of the world who guard the natural places and lives of
beings are the judges of human beings for their virtues and misdeeds, though
even they lack the power to sanction for eternity. They merely respond to the
needs of the integrity of the moment.

One cannot tear the branches from a grove's sacred tree without summoning
the spiritual guardians of that place, as Janet learned through Tam Lin's
appearance. At that moment of her violation, necessity urged that guardian
to maintain the integrity of the place to which he was bound, so he went to
meet the violator with a countering force. It is the Weird that compels us
forward on fateful paths, in what we experience as “this life” and during what
we experience as the state “after death.”

***

When our deaths are upon us, a crucial moment has arrived- the cost for how
we have lived, the swirling impact of our lives must be paid, though the
payment is not a great singular "coin" dropped into the hands of a waiting
judge, but a process, a new path that must be followed in execution of the
debt. It is a path determined by the forces one has gathered to oneself in life,
and those forces one has helped and healed, as well as those one has
spurned and injured; it is a path determined by emotion and passion and the
fund of personal peace and virtue as well as those guilty memories and
anxieties that are carried along in each mind.

This simple perspective yields the only basis for true moral action: our paths
through our everlasting existence are made easier and oriented to the
highest truth through words and deeds that minimize harm and maximize the
possibility and occasions of wise, harmonious interactions for ourselves and
for others. Because all powers are intertwined, and no person ever walks
alone through the forest of many living powers that exist, our deeds affect
others just as theirs affect us.

Our benevolent regard for others- and our benevolent acts- are (unavoidably)
both aids to them and to ourselves, and further to all things. It is never a
personal good that is the ultimate basis or primary motivation for the real
“morality of the wise”, but the good of all life. Fortunately for us, “we” are
included in “all life”, and thus it is that “the land and I are one”- as my people
and I are one, so speaks the sacred grail king.

All of the Weird’s great appearances are parts of us, even those fateful
visions and powers that seem to be far from our control and which seemingly
victimize us- thus, the wise bear suffering caused by these seeming “lashes
of fate” without losing their equanimity or benevolent regard for all things.

Part of the greatest spiritual and moral maturity relies on accepting the
“tears of the world” as one’s own- and something mysterious and ineffable is
revealed about the Weird in this very way: the greatest capacity for joy and
peace is reserved for those who demonstrate the greatest capacity for
enduring suffering wisely. The wisest may suffer the most, but knowing their
own perpetual nature, they have no fear and they have free access to
boundless depths of joy and wholeness of vision. They alone can feel true
love or benevolent regard for all beings as though those beings were their
own beloved children.

***
We may think of “death” in these terms: as a time of truth and knowledge- a
mental re-living of all that has gone before, and a revelation of what the path
ahead may be- but in reality, every moment of transition (and each moment
can be understood as a transition) is every bit as crucial as the death
moment. For you live in this moment now, and you will die in no other place
than the moment that you will then be experiencing as “now”.

When one realizes the perpetual nature of the self and the unbroken fullness
of that concept called “the moment”- there is only one true “moment”- one
realizes that life and death are only ideas, only limited perspectives. After
this point, we can remain free of life and death, consigning them to where
they truly belong- as further tricks of perception- or we can re-enter the
stream of limited perspectives (or be driven back to that position by long-
established force of habit) and at least strive to see causality in a wiser, more
“inter-locked” way: we can perceive that every “present moment” is an
awareness-point wherein many forces seemingly negotiate for the shape of
future moments; that every moment is a moment in which the fateful
resonance of "the past" collides with the realities of the present- a bubbling
cauldron of heat and fluid whose steam will form into the solid shapes of the
future.

A wiser belief in causality- such as the one presented in the bubbling

cauldron example- is still a good perceptual distance from the ultimate truth
of perpetuity. Perpetual being, is, in my way of knowledge, the only reality;
thus, when our wisdom or bravery become strong enough, we can (with a
good measure of fateful luck) shatter our ordinary conceptions- breaking the
cauldron, as it were- to see what promise truly lies on the other side of
"perpetuity". There was no distant "creation" for all things; the true
substance of everything has always existed in some fashion, for if "nothing"
was all that existed once, how could "something" have suddenly occurred?

Nothing comes from nothing. Things are perpetual. We- the minds that could
not have arisen out of non-minds- are perpetual. Moments didn’t arise as
some strange “units” of mysterious “time-material” out of “non-moments”;
what we are crudely calling “time” (and envisioning as a march of many
discrete moments) is a perpetual “space” wherein experience is possible, a
“great openness” without beginning or ending.

We- these relentlessly searching minds, constantly redefined in relationship

to bodies and situations- are perpetual. The wholeness of things was and is
always here; only definitions and conceptions have been changing. Within our
current outlay of perceptions, it is unavoidable that we consider our
"beginning" in concrete enough terms to develop mythologies of origins.
Within our current outlay of perceptions, it is easy to see how even myths of
“time” can arise, and with them, myths of life and death.

The truth is more powerful- the Perpetually Weaving Weird is Mother and
Foreparent to us all, Her many twisting and interacting powers responsible for
who and what we feel and think that we are, but there was no "first arising"
of our minds out of a nothingness. The Weird powers are eternal mothers,
and we eternal offspring. The constant rain and flood of experiences is
eternal.

Lacking a true "past", "present" or "future"- for they are labels of limitation-
our experience of "judgment after death" and "negotiation of forces" and of
what appear to be "fateful forces" influencing us in one manner or another is
really a matter of what level of awareness we have achieved. It is our
constant and ongoing study of ourselves and our experiences that is truly
happening, not a courthouse drama. We express what we experience in
conceptual terms, draping everything in words and splintered perceptions.

***

Why is the mind, bereft of broad and true awareness, constantly being
shoved here and there by these forces and concepts? Without true
awareness, the mind surrenders to what it believes real. Are there "real"
things? Naturally there are. But the mystery of the mind and these "things" is
such that they are entwined without possibility of division or separation,
except in perception. Thus, how the mind conceives and believes has
everything to do with the appearance of paths through “life” and “afterlife”,
and the laws that seem to rule them. Albert Einstein once remarked "It is
quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes
alone. In reality, the very opposite happens: it is the theory which
decides what we can observe."

Sir James Frazier eloquently described the sheer power of belief when he said
"The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary;
imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and may
kill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid." Naturally, he was
correct- imagination and “imaginal” things are not any “less real” than
anything else. In the wholeness of things, imagination is a sacred power and
indeed, it is the shaper of the human world- not a forlorn waste of day-
dreaming time.

Men and women are all fatefully similar in many ways, and thus, there arises
a natural consensus on many features of our common experience that we
may collectively elevate to the level of a "universal law" or a truth. We are
also fatefully similar in that we are all subject to the deceits and delusions of
many forces that prevent us from being free in perception of the truth, and it
takes an extraordinary person to shake free.

If metaphysical “laws” are relative- though no less concrete in our limited

experience of them- then it is important to state that only one Law truly
exists: that law that states all things are perpetual and belonging to the
wholeness, and thus sacred and eternal. The nightmares and fantasies that
we create, in our spells of illusion and delusion, are outcomes that are
ephemeral at best, but necessary in another way, for the Weird is always
seemingly hungry for what appears to be expression and experience. We
must not imagine that our dreams and ideas are separate from the
wholeness; they too, are part of it.

Thus, every frog in every bog, every deer lifting its head under every tree,
and every man or woman sealed in love's embrace is something powerful, a
magic from the oldest of things. They are all expressions of Weird, all of them
following a path of hidden laws and all of them products of a sorcery that
even the most cunning witch could not match. This is why love is powerful
enough to repel the spells of witches and devils, and the glamour of faeries-
this is why knowledge and love cannot be simply created as playthings or by
cheap tricks. They are parts of a greater power and a greater unfolding.

Can sorcery itself be a conception of the divine? Sorcery is a process, an

unfolding of power, a verb. The Weird's magic is what we see, not the Weird,
though paradoxically we also "see" it without fail. Stillness and
motion/process cannot be separated; the primordial sorcery never
"happened" and yet it is there, happening. We can perform sorcery, and by
so doing, engage the primal Weird. On the other hand, we are always
engaged by it. Becoming conscious of this participatory fact is what makes
"sorcery" in the human sense really possible. And “sorcery” in this way- as a
vision of our inter-relatedness within a web of power-processes- can certainly
be a route to a conscious experience of a divine reality.

***

Now we walk on the Land, by the waterside, under the glaring sun or the
changeful moon, and we walk in experience of the Weird, the sacred
vastness, the boundless deep. There are spirits among us, with us, and an
experience of "seen" and "unseen". We are also spirits, though spirits who
have learned to be mortal through the combinations of many fateful powers.
And this brings us to the concept of Fate. Long has the world's days and
nights been troubled by arguments between the "free will" believers and the
fatalists; long have people misunderstood what the entwining of powers
really means.

An ancient wise man was asked to explain Fate, once. He said that Fate was
an endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the others. The
man that had asked him said that he didn't believe this; he said he believed
in "cause and effect". The wise man pointed out that nearby, a man was
being led away to be hanged for murder- and what, he asked, was the cause?
Was it the silver coin that was given to the man, with which he bought the
dagger he stabbed his victim with? Was it the fact that he was seen
committing the crime? Or was it that no one stopped him?

This single conversation fully reveals and sums up what "Fate" is. And
endless apparent succession of intertwined events, each influencing the
others. This is what life is, a great tapestry of countless endless powers and
events, each influencing all the others. No single force- including "free will" or
a "choice" can be given the final and total responsibility or credit for "why"
certain things happen, or why people end up where they end up. Even
"choices" are themselves influenced by countless forces.

The Weird must be thought of as a binding power- the Binding Weird. We are
all bound by many strands of power, many events, many processes. This is
the truth of providence, the multifaceted origin of all things that we
experience. The lay of the land, the color of the grasses, the slope of hills, the
courses of rivers, the destines of nations, the personalities of people, the
paths birds take through the air- all of them show the influence of countless
forces. This is the same situation of life that humans and all other beings find
themselves in, even the Oldest of spiritual powers, those free of the
limitations of mortality. Being free of mortal illusions does not free one from
the Binding Weird's power; it merely means that one no longer suffers the
dark fate- what mortals call the suffering of ignorance and death.

Some people search for a "God" in the Weird, but this is forlorn. It is no God.
It is far more sublime than that. A “God” is an actor within a system which is
the Weird, not unlike a person or a beast. But the ultimate perceptual origin
of all life is, indeed, in the intertwined forces that the Weird's magical power
weaves; thus the Weird fulfills, for those who believe in it, a similar role that
“God” in mainstream religions fills.

***

This brings us to the threshold of an interesting exploration. The “God” of the

mainstream is a very conscious being, with infinite memory, will, and volition.
Is the Weird “self-aware”? Is it conscious like we are, or on some “higher”
level? Is it possessed of some great awareness, always aware of all other
things within it? To answer these questions, it is best for us to look within our
own natures, though by so doing, one looks within the world and the Weird,
also.

We are conscious and aware- and, as the wise say, "nothing comes from
nothing". If the powers of life were unconscious, unaware powers, how did
their combinations become aware and conscious? If "nothing" really existed,
no "thing" could have arisen from it- nothing comes from nothing; if non-
consciousness was all that existed, consciousness could not have arisen.

So the aware nature of our minds and beings is itself caused by other
awareness. We can take this as far "back" as the Weird, if we like. My only
concern is that people who do this exercise do not fool themselves into
imagining that the Weird has some “mind” that we can easily grasp or
understand- if it does, indeed, have some “intelligence” that can be
described as a singular “mind”, it would be beyond us to grasp fully, if at all,
due to the sheer magnitude of Weird’s power. We must instead focus on our
own minds and natures, and on the realities of interaction- and through those
things find peace- instead of living in fruitless speculation about some “over-
mind” that may or may not have motivations like unto our own, but which
can never be known fully.

As a combination of countless forces coalesced to give rise to mankind and

all things, we can consider the Weird the mother (or father) of all things-
though the iconography of the Old Path- born in the most ancient of
mythologies- looks to the wholeness as mother, not father. The word
"mother" is used owing to the apparent generative power of the potencies of
nature, their ability to create from within themselves and of themselves, and
to sustain. Wholeness- the wholeness of powers, all in the present moment, is
the mother of everything.

The sorcerous conception of the divine is hereby complete: nothing needs to

be done to reach the "divine power" nor the divine powers, in the shape of
spirits or other powers. All are here; all is complete. No special path leads to
the true source of powers; all paths are within it, though not all paths lead to
bright ends for human beings. Discrimination and wisdom are not equally
shared on all paths, even though the Weird is forever present.

It is enough to live a simple life on the land, on the heath, by the waters,
under the light of day and the light of night. Those who tamper with the
minds of others to taint them with guilt and fear are not speaking for
anything except their own foolishness- the true primal originating force is not
some strange angry being, waiting to punish or forgive. A calmness and
rightness permeates nature and also fills human nature- a basic sanity that
we can reach and reclaim for it was ours from our birth, and it was ours
before our birth.

We are beings of the Weird- we are humans, we are perpetual of the faery-
world; we are cutters of grain, husbandmen and women of beasts, shapers of
metal, parents and lovers, fools and sages, all belonging to the Land, the
golden sun and the bone-white moon. We know that the sorcerous nature of
reality is full of a natural and primordial trickery, tied to our perceptions; For
everything that is seen, nine things are unseen. Nothing is as it appears, and
yet- nothing is really fully otherwise.

I have walked under the darkest shade of trees on moonless nights, and
heard countless night-birds making their own choir, and every time I have
walked through that dark magic, I have known the Weird. For some, there are
just trees and birds, and the dangers of the night. For me, there is great
power, there is witchery there. For me, there is heaven and hell, together- a
world of wonder and a world of deep, inward-turning mystery, full of power
and fear.

For me, wherever I go, I know my natural and eternal environment, and I
know it as part of me and me of it. Beyond whatever we think, there is a
darkly glimmering mystery far beyond reason and sanity, but full of the
wholeness of beauty. It perpetually sustains and bestows all things with their
own nature and being- perfectly, fully and without need for further
elaboration or rectification. This is the sorcerous conception of deity.
 ***

IV. The Old Ones, Familiars, and the

Summoning Art

Throughout the ages human beings have interacted with powers they
have called Gods or spirits; they have rendered worship and obedience to the
Old Ones; they have learned from them, and even struggled with them. There
is much wisdom in the past and in records of humanity's experience of other
beings and powers in this weirded wholeness, and much power is needed to
trace those old roads, though the only real necessity is that we understand
our true relationship with the powers that dwell among us and all over amid
the dark and bright spaces of reality. Understanding the truth of our
relationship with everything- how things really exist, and thus how we really
exist, and how we rely on all other things and they on us- is tantamount to
the highest attainment.

So much of Witchcraft and sorcery leans on the human sorcerer's ability to

interact with familiar spirits and other great powers that lend their aid to
working. We must investigate the nature of these relationships, how they are
summoned and why.

The Old Ones don't have to "come" or "go"- as is the nature of spiritual
beings, they are always "here"- wherever this "here-ness" of the world may
be. It is we who do not see them, and wander far from them in our thinking
and perceiving. From our side of the mirror, it seems as though they are the
ones who have wandered away from us or have been driven away by one
thing or another.

In these wasted times, bereft of much ancient wisdom, where farmers no

longer sate the spirits of fields with glad offerings or sweeten their fresh-
plowed soil with milk, blood, and honey, and where the spirits of houses are
ignored by the lady of the house and hearths sit empty of bowls of offering, it
is easy to imagine that the Old Powers and spirits have wandered far from us
perceptually, dejected. The forests around us- what few remain- gradually
collect rubbish and litter dropped by thoughtless hikers. People place the
bodies of their dead in the ground and seldom render them the ongoing
offerings, attention, and prayers that the wise of the past did- Christianity,
with its focus on the supreme "god", frowns on too much attention being
given to other powers. The dead are left in their graves until judgment day, to
sleep in un-knowing.

What Gods of old would remain to bless us? We have become numb and
blind, and we have treated the world like it was a heap of materials to be
manipulated for our benefit, but in so doing we have mistreated the sacred,
and abused our own minds and characters, for the world and the mind are
entwined. Did the Heathen Gods flee from Christian crosses in disgust, or
leave finally after their sacrifices ceased, or did we simply smear the mud of
vice and ignorance into our own spiritual eyes? I must go with the latter
explanation.

***

Many kinds of spirit exist, and while some Old Powers may be the true lordly
type whose ancient presences still permeate the Land and the skies, and the
forests and fields, others were more akin to mankind, maintaining different
models of relationship and different styles of interaction- and folklore reveals
that how humans responded to them and acted had everything to do with
how they responded and interacted. Folklore reveals their propensity for
harm and for help, and the need to treat them with respect. The very
existence of these powers- these People of the Hills- and others of the hosts
unseen- was and is a gateway to the deepest animistic awareness native to
the children of Europe. That awareness can still be awakened, though it is
questionable what extraordinary wisdom or memory would be required to
find the old paths to the Unseen People's hidden halls and dwellings.

No one knows if they've gone for good, or just fled the land under the mind-
numbing and soul-shattering power of the sinister church bells that shattered
the peace of the air and frightened the spirits of the ground. Maybe they
changed their residence, or withdrew deeper into the earth. Maybe their
Fateful time ended, or maybe it still persists. Folklore would reveal that some
of these ancients did maintain their twilight existence alongside the mortal
world, such as the Faery-clan discovered upon Selena Moor.

Approaching the Unseen World has many practical motivations: if that world
exists (which of course it does) and if it is peopled by the hosts of the dead
now transformed into countless new orders of existence, and with shape-
shifters, ancient spirits once called "Gods", and by the non-ordinary bodies of
those things we experience normally as trees, plants, stones, and winds (just
to name a few), then our walk to knowledge and wholeness requires that we
understand this world and how to successfully interact with it.

But our quest for personal sorcerous transformation and deeper wisdom
takes us to the unseen hosts for their aid in attaining the highest seals of
ascension. Some among the people of the world are prepared for the full
blossoming of life's potential, which is conscious wholeness. On that path,
sorcery arises as the unfolding of certain potentials- from the outside
perspective, it seems as though one may have become a miracle worker; one
seems blessed with extraordinary gifts. This has led to the perception on the
parts of many that sorcery is about these powers and experiences, when they
are merely side effects of a greater exploration.

When we attain conscious contact with non-human powers and beings, we

are again experiencing something of the Weird- not that it "appears" as these
beings, for they are as fully individual powers as we are- but moving closer to
the non-human sentient world brings us closer to the strange wholeness of
things, and to consciousness of its eldritch presence. It is easy to mistake
some of the luminous powers of the Unseen as messengers of the Weird, as
ministers somehow of the highest reality, but this is only a perception on our
part, informed as it is by Christian models of otherworldly experience.

The deep and refreshing (yet odd) joy sometimes felt by those who move into
the "otherness" is not a sign of Godly grace, but of the natural joy inherent to
consciously existing in our sorcerous and perpetual reality. Joy may exist for
natural, simple reasons; how strange to think that we have all become so
jaded that our most in-depth and defining "joys" can only come from fulfilling
mythical imperatives that we believe will give us perpetual joy in some
afterlife or some redemption, or from the most unbalanced depths of physical
gratification or augmentation through body-deteriorating substances. When
did living quietly on the land, or watching the moon fly her course in the
starry sky become insufficient to fill us with rapture? The moment it becomes
enough for a man or a woman is the moment the Old Powers return for them.

***

People wonder a good deal at the prospect of summoning the Old Ones. It is
not so hard as is imagined, though not as easy as many books today make
out. On must alter one's perceiving in such a manner that one enters the
"spiritual climate" of the power. One may do this with the power of the mind
and the natural poetry of the soul, but more direct means are so much the
better- the Secret Spirit-King and Protector of wild places and wild creatures
is not a caricature to be imagined in a "visualization" of a forest; it is to an
actual wild and wooded place one should go, moving on whatever fateful
course through the trees and brambles one is sent, to alter the character of
the mind and soul’s experience.

The forest is not just a place, but an environment of the mind. It does not
merely contain trees and animals; it changes the feeling, shape, and
orientation of the soul. Poetry- good, strong poetry- is the only thing that
suffices to replace the bodies of trees and plants, and the holy force of the
forest-Weird. But few today can speak the forest with poetic sorcery; most of
us must enter into its precincts.

Poetry is a wonder that can transport us anywhere- the power of words is the
oldest and greatest sorcery taught to man by ancient powers. But an even
more organic sorcery is simply the act of going to the waters, walking the
paths through the forests, going to the graves and mounds, walking to the
crossed roads or the forked road, entering the plowed lands or the heath,
going to the standing stones, the fields or the mountains, or going to the sea-
shore. There, in those places, the mind changes, the mind and spirit reach
out- and within- differently. The positions of stars, the moon and the sun, and
the corresponding rising and falling of light and heat and cold also change a
person, alter perception and transform soul and spirit. Being immersed in
water, in the heat of a fire, being amid strong wind- these things alter a
person, as well. Seeing the sun rise or set, seeing the moon in its many
phases- they alter, they make things possible.

Not just where we are, and when we are, but what we do is the third stake
that makes the tripod. All is process. There are activities that summon
powers- the lord of sorcery, the ancient spirit of the Sagely Firebringer, the
Witch-Father and Master, is called by the mere act of sorcerous operations,
though one must be prepared to receive him by knowing this fact. The
plowing spirits of field and farm are called precisely through the act of
making furrows, however small; the powers of fertility and fruitfulness are
called by the acts of love.

The spirit of fire is in the kindling of fire and in seething liquids and cooking
on it, or fixing one's gaze into it, feeling its heat suffuse the flesh; the hearth-
spirits are there, in the cleaning of the hearth and the lighting of its fires, and
in the domestic activities done before it. Poetry and the magic of words also
calls to any of them- and both doing and speaking is finally the strongest
combination of power. No one knows the spirit of the hunt like a hunter; no
one knows the grain-spirits and the plow-spirit like a farmer. No one knows
the secret fire like a poet, and no one knows the great power of the word
more than a sorcerer.

The symbols of the spirit-powers sought as familiars and as teachers and

supporters by sorcerers and witches are another aspect of summoning; to
gaze upon their symbols is to change the mind into a new condition. All
symbols were born in the appearances of animals and natural phenomenon
believed to be connected to these ancient powers- and what was true then is
true now. Merely seeing an animal which is mythically or folklorically
connected to a spiritual power makes one more capable of summoning it, as
well as seeing a representation of the animal, the marks the animal may
leave on nature (hoof, talon, or paw-prints, for example) or its bodily remains-
and the same is true for natural phenomenon like lightning, thunder, waves,
fires, stars, or any others.

This is why entering the forest- going away from civilization and into the wild
and untamed wood- and setting up a pole bearing an antlered skull, gazing at
it through firelight under the cover of night, will practically summon the
power of the Lord of Beasts, the mighty and savage protector of natural
places and power, all by itself. The act of traveling into the forest, bearing the
skull, making the fire with intention, of being in the darkness- all of these acts
are sorcerous acts if one turns their attention to them in such a manner. They
are the strongest of summoning magics. Desire, too, is the strongest of
summoning magic, for it is a dark or bright desire that begins the call to other
powers- and can finish that call, as well.

***

I have seen the dull yellow haze of the moon arising behind the dark forms of
winter-stripped trees on cold nights, and felt the Weird with such great power
that I knew with certainty the ease I would have contacting the unseen world,
and manipulating the sorcerous powers that pulse through myself and the
world alike. I knew that I would have this ease because I was already in
contact- to live in this way makes the sorcerer what he or she is. One need
not summon familiars or spirits to aid in sorcery, though doing precisely this
is what makes a witch a witch or a sorcerer a sorcerer- but any sufficiently
aware person may contact the Weird and conjure directly within the web of
powers. Most people will discover what the witch or sorcerer already knows:
familiar powers provide strength to working, and provide it with a speed and
ease that is nearly impossible to match. A relationship with familiars is worth
a high cost.

Nothing special needs to be done; yet, a tapestry of many things creates a

spell of summoning. The presence of times, places, things, beasts, symbols,
and evocative poetry- it all transforms the mind, makes the mind more
receptive to the presence of these living powers. One will know these forces
when they enter into the sphere of one's presence and awareness, on many
levels. What is more important is the knowledge that they will know you, as
well.

When you have summoned, if it was your goal to affect changes through the
summoning, or to increase one's own power or insight, it is intention and will
that you must join to the summoning, making the spell complete. You
combine these substances into the wholeness that they already naturally are,
open yourself up to that wholeness: there is the summoner, the summoned
power, and the will/intent. The three must become one; the three are one,
and with your new awareness of the fact, the spell is perfect and done.
Perceptual transformations begin apace.

Understand that every spell is a contract. It is a two way flow of power, and
more than that, a multi-directional arising and falling, a great multi-layered
breathing of Weird. It affects you and the world in many ways. Sentient
spiritual powers of high wisdom and power normally expect recompense-
they do not give without expecting the courtesy of repayment- but this is not
materialistic hunger on their parts. It is their knowledge that human beings
must practice reciprocity if they are to be wise.

Francis Bacon said it best and wisest when he said

“Consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and they seek it not
either for pleasure or mind, or for contention, or for superiority to
others, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferior
things; but for the benefits and use of life.”

Some "minor" powers are very wild or even destructive and wicked to human
perceptions, so their motivations for reciprocation- should they consent to
serve you or aid you- may be dark. It is not advised that one conjure the
dangerous stories and choppy, chaotic poetry that calls these things into
conscious contact and relationship, though many do and have done such
things throughout the ages. If you are wise, you will never do such things
near one's home or loved ones.

***

V. The Devil's Pitchfork: The Three Pronged

Fork of Sorcery

Occult rites have their power from the eternal uprising and persisting of
the power of wholeness experienced as countless inter-related strands of
power, which is the Weird. To truly access the power to perform sorcery, one
must, for a moment, consider the wholeness as a singular power, an all-
around manifesting power with a seeming of many parts. Every intention, act,
phenomenon, or experience is the arising of the Weird as a totality.
Everything is, in a manner of speaking, present here and now, present within
every other thing, tied to every other thing. Whatever you desire, whomever
you desire to affect, they are present now, in the wholeness.

The "terrible oneness" or the wholeness/totality is the underlying origin-

power of all things including sorcerous arts. Without the totality of power, the
wholeness of things that excludes nothing and binds all things, sorcery would
not work. Without this Weird-connection, the poppet designed in the shape of
a recipient of a sorcerous work would be so much clay or fabric, with no
connection through which the power could affect anything. Without this
connection, knowledge and communication could not pass between two
beings; fire would not burn wood, light would not suffuse the eye and mind,
and there would be no birth. There would be no reality, and no experience
possible.

The sorcerous Master's pitchfork has three prongs; every spell, conjury,
charm, or working of Art has three aspects that together make a powerful
wholeness, a complete and effective working. The first prong or aspect is the
world itself- containing as it does the relative objects that you may desire, the
persons you may wish to affect, or the place or thing you are working towards
or with somehow. The second prong or aspect is the working; the words and
actions spoken and done by you to make the working. So, in the first two
prongs, we have the object of the working and the method- and the method
may be a grand creation of sorcerous areas or circles, combined with the
burning of incenses and resins and the boiling of philters and various worts,
combined with sacrifices and chants and dancing- or it may simply be a poem
which states- with the darkling force of creativity that all real sorcerous
poetry must have- what you wish to see occur.

The third prong or aspect is the missing prong that the vast majority of occult
specialists these days lack: and this prong is simply the knowledge, the
certainty on your part- that the world and the working, the first two prongs,
are not ultimately separate. Without this awareness, the inner triangle of
manifestation which IS your spell cannot be complete and the spell will not
work. The mind is the third leg of the sorcerous tripod, the bridge that brings
together the world and your working's intentions and specific activities. It
makes a totality, completes the loop, as it were. The mind brings it together,
perceives the wholeness, and the power of transformation can flow in the
womb of that triple-yet-one force, and manifest in the “outward-appearing”
world. Metaphysically speaking, three-ness is one-ness, oneness with the
possibility of fertile, arising newness of situations and forms. The fire of
creativity is what drives that one-ness, that wholeness, to make new forms,
new situations, and new creations seemingly emerge.

The pitchfork is one tool, but with three prongs. Three and one meld into one
another, back and forth- just as the stang has two "horns", two prongs, but it
is one stang- Wholeness and multiplicity working alongside one another. Our
minds are great Weird-powers themselves, with the capacity to join all things
that seem separate into oneness. When your will and intention flows into that
oneness, things begin to happen. But there can be no mental reservation or
hesitation on your part- you must believe in the connectedness of things, in
the wholeness of things, so much so that there is no room for doubt. Such a
mind will feel the truth of this ancient belief. Such a mind can perceptually
"bring any forces together", directed by will. The secret is deeper- the forces
can be "brought together" because they are already together.

Even though master sorcerers know the very best and most effective types of
power manipulation through word and deed, it really doesn't fully matter
what your "working conjury" is, nor what the details of your working are. If
you have an intention, if there is a person (for instance) that needs relief from
an illness, and you know this person, have seen them or their image, and if
you have a simple poem created which calls for a healing for them, then all of
the powers are in play.

From that point, the work means entering into the "space" of mind in which
you understand and fully accept how the world and that person, and you and
your working are all tied together in one great wholeness, and that the
speaking of your poem (though the recipient is a hundred miles away) is still
"occurring" in the precise same unitary metaphysical field as that target-
person, and furthermore that your will and memory and familiarity with this
person further tightens your bond with them, cementing that bond in your
mind, then you cannot fail to affect them. If you did not believe in this
connection, nor have a conscious awareness of it, your mind cannot become
the bridge nor manifest the "three pronged" power, the whole power of the
spell. There is no possibility of magic, then.

You cannot fail to affect them, however, if you know what you must know and
do what you must do, as they and your conjury are one. Words- and
sympathetic magical gestures- are simply that powerful, when used under
will and with mystical conceptions of wholeness and connection- words were,
as they say, originally magic and even today maintain much of their ancient
magical force.

The world and its parts and peoples, the acts of spell-work and especially the
spoken word, and your awareness of the oneness of all these things: that is
the pitchfork wielded by the sorcerous spirit.

***

VI. The Elemental Conjury

It is by earth and living water,
The world's own breath and golden fire,
The power that alone masters all
That I conjure you back to the ground
Do not rise from your grave again
Instead sink, further to the world below
To the reward that awaits and rest.
We will be with you when it is time.

Elemental conjurations have to do with the concept of authority. When

we look at the tapestry of forces that appear to our senses, when we examine
the composition of the entire world, we can use ancient notions of the "four
elements" to categorize our experience- it certainly seems that some things
are of the nature of solidity, others of fluidity, others of a gaseous, diffuse
nature, and then there is the pure energetic and rapidly moving nature of
fire. To have an "earth, water, air, fire" perspective is a simple matter of
accepting the four "states" that all things we see and experience seem to be
moving through.

But it is more- the Weird would appear to manifest many of its powers
through these basic states or through combinations of them. Thus, the
"elemental signatures" of things can be considered almost like four "chief
avatars" of hidden power, not unlike the western cabbalistic notion of each
element corresponding to one of the four letters in the "name of God". To
conjure "in the name of the elements" is to conjure through constraining
other powers to obedience in the "name" of every way that spirits or powers
appear to exist in the world.

There was an account of an historical elemental conjuration used during a

necromantic working, a séance, by the witch Tamsin Blight who lived from
1798-1856 (she was also known as Tammy Blee i.e. Tammy the Wolf- Blee
being Cornish word for wolf). She was hired to conjure the spirit of Jane
Hendy for a male relative who wished to know were she had hidden the
money she was supposed to leave him:
"Spirit of Jane Hendy, in the name of all the powers above and
below, I summon thee to rise from the grave and appear before me
and this man! By the spirits of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, I summon
thee to arise! Come hither, appear, and speak to this man! Come!"

What is salient to notice here is that Tamsin Blight summons the dead by the
authority of the spiritual powers that dwell within those elements.

Thus it is, in my own practice- I look to the elements not as "four major
substances" but as four processes or conditions of power as it moves, and I
note that other sentient powers seem to dwell alongside or within the
elements- the many sentient spirits and powers of the land within earth, the
water weirds or powers of rivers and lakes and other fluid bodies within
water, the spirits of winds and other aerial powers in air, and of course the
always mysterious and crucial powers of fire. To conjure through the
elements is to call upon wholeness in a new way- to call for "all powers" that
apparently exist to notice or give force to your conjury.

"By those powers that dwell in the wide earth, those that dwell in
the waters, those who take flight in the airs, and the ephemeral
force of the fire of the world, and by that power that masters them
all, I conjure X. thusly... I constrain you by all powers that you fulfill
X."

Naturally, "that power that masters them all" refers to two things- both the
Binding Weird, the Weird itself that is origin and final truth of the elements,
but also the mind of the sorcerer.

***

VII. The Arcane Inscriptions in the Land

"See you the dimpled track that runs,
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet!

See you our little mill that clacks,

So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,

And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke,
On the day that Harold died!
 See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by!

See you our pastures wide and lone,

Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house!

And see you, after rain, the trace

Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul!

And see you marks that show and fade,

Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns!

Trackway and Camp and City lost,

Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,

Water or Wood or Air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare."

-Rudyard Kipling, from Puck of Pook's Hill

The Land itself is a grimoire, a book of secrets. "She is not any common
Earth, Water, or Wood or Air..." but a living repository of all the powers that
have gone before. In the Land is inscribed a hidden history and many of the
paths to power that any wise sorcerer or witch will work to understand.

It does not do to walk across your land- wherever it may be- as though it
were a "common earth"- it is not "common" except to the dull senses of
people who look upon it only as a mass of dead dirt. It is the holy and
powerful canvas that the tools of Fate are always etching and painting upon,
not unlike the body and mind of each man and woman, as they grow, become
marked, scarred, and filled with memory. We are living repositories of
experience, just as the Land is.

Rudyard Kipling's amazing poetic talent was as powerful a sorcery as any in

his day might have seen. He was able to use the sorcery of words to peel
back layers in the Land itself, and so we must- words are the first and
foremost powers that can open up the Land's secrets, but there are other
paths, as well. Attention is the first and greatest tool you will need- paying
attention to the history of your Land and to how the Land itself appears at
present.

Take notice, wherever you may live, of the expressions of the Land near you
and around you. Examine how mountains and hills surround you, or where
they rise, and what sorts of collections of trees grow, and where. Look at how
bodies of water are placed around you, and how rivers or streams flow. It
may help to hand-draw your own map, concentrating on the features of the
Land. If you live in the center of a swarming city- a sad arrangement, but not
lacking in all power- look to the natural forces that surround your city beyond
its boundaries, and even to the land as it struggles to manifest within the
well-ordered blocks of the city.

You will begin to make a catalogue, in this way, of the pools of power and the
channels of power that are nearest you, and which can be experienced in
terms of sorcerous reality. Look to the history of your place- discover where
great events once took place and tragic events- do not be fooled into
imagining that they do not still influence the inner reality of those places in
which they played out, and sometimes the outer reality.

Every place has its own mythology, born in the events that took place there.
There is a mythology, an inner story, which is born from the collection of
forces that may have attracted human beings to the place originally- was it
the river that the first settlers desired to make their home on? Was it
highlands that kept them safe from the other people they felt threatened by?
Why did they come here? What did the land offer them?

Who was here before you and your people? And before them? The ancient
histories tell their own stories. We are all part of a greater story, our lives just
recent chapters in an endless march of events. And there is no "common
earth"- there is only an extraordinary earth of power, full of powers who
remember many things. Without them, your sorcery will be cut-off and weak.
If you entertain the attitude that the earth is “common”, and let entire days
slip by without taking time to appreciate the land around you with the proper
awe and respect, your sorcery will not be strong.

***

VIII. Powers That Come and Take

There are powers and combinations of powers that come and take
people away from themselves. By saying this, I mean that there are powers
and combinations of power that steal a person away from those perception-
states that they consider as "normal". The experience can be of three
characters: it can be traumatic or exhilarating, full of emotion and
excitement; it can be overpowering and steal a person into basic
unconsciousness; or it can be so subtle as to be ignored or not noticed. It is
the first of these three characters that the sorcerer hopes to cultivate, and of
the last two, he or she hopes to defeat. It does not do to be dragged away
into unconsciousness or to be so numb to the mystical changing of mind-
states that we accept them as "common" or "normal" and disregard them.

Of the first character, while we do not wish to be assaulted by fear or terror,

it does happen, to everyone. Some power, some Weird is like that- it shows
its power through its ability to disturb.

There are many powers and combinations of power that come and take
people into new conditions of mind. The cunning witch or sorcerer will know
them and utilize them to the best of their ability.

1. The Moon: the moon, throughout its phases, sheds the mediated light of
the sun into a trance-inducing light, and it calls those who see it with eyes of
wisdom into deeper states of mystical introspection.

2. Gravesites: these places have been seen as powerful since time

immemorial, though today they normally only get a passing "fearful"
reputation as possible sites of hauntings, and then only on the part of the
uninformed and superstitious. Every grave is a passageway-point into the
unseen world, and the shade-like power of the dead hover about and near
their graves for some time- often a very long time. Graves are doorways, and
being near them, especially in the night, causes an alteration of the mind for
those who are sensitive to such things.

3. Seasons and Sacred Times: the outward seasons of winter with its cold
and snows, of summer with its heat and greenery, autumn with its riot of
colors, and spring with its watery and cool boundless energy- they cause
changes in people, even if people have learned to ignore them. The cold calls
us to introspection; the heat calls us to activity; the relaxing autumn calls us
to secret places, and the spring fills us with hope for renewal. You can feel
these powers best after sleeping, and then walking outside as soon as you
awake and communing with the force of the day and of the season.

Early in a season, I find that I "feel" the new power of it best, only becoming
used to it a few weeks in. It is good to try and never become "used" to a day
or a season's power, and to let it be new to you every morning and evening.
The hidden seasons are likewise powerful- bright Beltaine, dark Samhain, the
old days of Harvest and merry-making, the twelve Wolf-nights and Mother-
nights of Yule- all of the old calendars captured days and weeks of strange
occurrences that coincided often with the changing of seasons. These days
are best for sorcerous workings by virtue of the Weird forces that collect
around them. And they change people, if those people can feel.

4. Liminal Areas: like graves, certain places wield a natural power to exert
change and transformation on the mind: the banks of rivers, the tops of hills,
the borderlines of properties, forest deeps, ocean-shores, hedges, crossed
roads in the lonely country or forked roads, and this list continues on. We do
not walk on a "common earth"- it is a very powerful collection of Weird,
showing itself as many powerful locations.

5. Lack of Sleep: going without sleep is a stress on the body and a

transformative power on the mind. Going without too much is a gateway to
madness, but forcing the mind and body to find new sources of energy by
denying them sleep places a person in a more hyper-aware spiritual state
than many believe.

6. The Wild: being far from human beings and their cities, normally in a
forest or anywhere on the untamed land makes your mind and soul change
over into a new shape. All who love spending their time in such places
already know this, though they may not realize that their love for the
wilderness comes from the fact that it changes them and orients them to feel
the natural bliss and boundless infinity of the Weird.

7. Cold: cold winds and temperatures force us naturally to turn within. The
cold is to the moon as the heat is to the sun- the sun turns us outward; the
moon inward, and thus it is with temperatures.

8. Fog: mists and fogs exert an uncanny presence on the world and
therefore on the mind- they remind us of what is hidden and they make it
possible for anything to be "near us" though unseen. They swirl and move
like ghosts.

9. Religious and Spiritual Rites: whether it be sorcerous operations or

workings and devotions of "religious" power, doing things that you consider
powerful- chants, the blessing and eating of sacrifices or offerings, dances, or
whatever- these things do change the way you perceive, while you are
engaged in them, though (sadly) many don't feel this strongly enough. It
becomes routine for people, but this is death to the cause.

10. Intoxicants: it goes without saying that intoxicating substances can

change a person's perceptions of things, but too much and too often, and the
mind becomes heedless.

11. Spiritual influences: in every place, there are powers and Weird and
they can alter and change perceptions when people come too near to them.
The wise seek out places that seem to have these powers hovering about
them.

12. Occult training and pacts: deals with familiar spirits and allegiances to
other powers cause a life-long change in perception, or at least a change so
long as the deal holds good.

13. Strong emotions and pain: the most common powers that alter
perception are also the ones most people never stop to notice or utilize: great
joy and elation or sorrow, or rage- and even physical pain. They do change
us, cause the extraordinary perceptions to come near to the surface of
awareness.

14. Hunger: not eating for a while- anywhere from one day to three days-
has an enormous power to make one more receptive to extraordinary
realities. These sorts of practices have been done since time immemorial by
ancient peoples from all over the world.

15. Fever: when the life-fire of the body runs high and hot, one may feel
wasted and tired, unwilling to engage in works of Art or sorcery, and perhaps
there is some wisdom to this, for most. But fevers also give access to subtle
reaches of perception that can have sorcerous use.

Together, these 15 powers and combinations of power can be further

combined- and many are they who have already seen the great potential of
these things. What greatness and depth of perception can be found for a
person who goes out, on Lammas eve, deep into a forest to the bank of a
river, with a mist pouring off it, the cold settling in, and the moon bright and
large in the night above? What if that person has prepared himself or herself
by fast and by ingestion of a stout brew, enough to raise the spirit of the
flesh, but not enough to confuse them? From that combination of powers,
consciously pursued, many forces can be entwined in him or her for contact
with the extra-sensory reality, and much can be gained. A great poetry can
appear in them.

***

IX. Tree-Coil and Tree-Weird: The Growing

Powers

If the Land is already the greatest book of secrets one may ever have
the privilege to read, the growing things that spring from the land are the
words that comprise the oldest spells and speak of the deepest mysteries.
There is an entire Witchcraft available to those who are wood-cunning and
wort-cunning, those who can view the growing things of the world as the
sorcerous powers that they are, but also as the expressions of the presence
of sentient forces that they are. The forest is as much our natural home as
anything that dwells there- though the “civilized man” in us thinks of
buildings and streets first in terms of "home". The wild places in us are forest-
dwelling things, things that yearn for hills and heaths and woods and waters.

Here is the lore of the woods that I have collected over much time and on
many journeys.
Alder, the Fire-Tree: full of the nature of fire, the Alder-weird resists water.
It was used for all supports to buildings or structures that had to be exposed
to moisture, like the foundations of bridges. No fire burns hotter than an
alder-fire, for the essence within is released to full expression. Water
symbolizes that force that gradually washes things away, the persistent
change of time and cycles- and the Alder can resist it longer than any other
power. Carving symbols that represent your relationship and happiness with
loved ones onto Alder bark and keeping these safe is a means to preserving
your happiness as long as it can be from the Weird powers that dissolve and
wash away life-situations.

Apple, the Life-Giving Tree: Apples are expressions of the Weird power
that gives eternal life- or should I say, which opens the awareness to the
already-existing reality of eternal, perpetual existence. This is why the Gods
of the Heathen world derived their "youth" from magical apples- their
perpetual existences come from their awareness of the truth of themselves
and this world. It is said that the dead eat apples for their sustenance; the
power of the apple in this world can sustain our lives, and in the inner world,
it continues to sustain, though in another manner- the dead need the
realization of their true natures, and the living leave out apples hoping that
the dead will receive it.

The apple is the Aphrodite-fruit, the beguiling fruit of love and death
simultaneously- and here we see the ancient connection between love and
eternity, but also sex and death. Those who are sweetened by the apple
charm may find love, and those who eat the flesh can fill their bellies and live
on, but one day must die. Those who consume the true essence of the apple
will live forever, and understand that love is a name given to our experience
of our true connectedness with all things.

Few trees are as sacred as the apple- where they grow, the ground is even
more sacred than it normally is; the pitch of sacred awareness is raised to a
shriek. The dead buried beneath the roots of apple trees will come to great
awareness, and through that place, commune with this world. Life and death
collapse into the wholeness that they are in the apple's mystery, and love
appears. Slice the apple in two, place the names of the lovers inside, and
restore the apple to wholeness with thin slivers or wood or pins, and they will
be joined, if one can create the charm needed with proper sorcerous insight.
Real knowledge is insight into wholeness- not for no reason was the apple the
tree of knowledge and death, for the experience of wholeness kills the mortal
that once was. The last apple on a tree or in an orchard must never be taken;
it is left for the Apple-weird, the “Apple-man”, as his due.

Aspen, the Shivertree: people tremble at the thought of death, and the
Aspen-weird seems to be sympathetic to that plight, as it is called the
"shivertree" itself, and its wood was used to make the mete-stick that were
used as the measure of a corpse when coffins were made. The Aspen is a
healer and a protector- thought to heal fevers and ague. Taking a lock of
one's hair and pinning it to the trunk of an aspen tree and saying the charm:

"Aspen wight, honored tree,

I pray you shake and shiver instead of me".

And thus the Aspen will take away the fever- assuming, of course, that one
realizes the three-pronged secret of sorcerous invocation, and if one is polite
enough and respectful enough to create a true heart-level relationship of
reciprocal grace with all living things, including the power of the Aspen, who
can be considered a godly spirit for the purposes of this work. The Aspen's
wood- bark-plates or sticks- can be bound up with red threads to make
protective charms, shields against wicked sorcery.

Ash, the Tree that Courts the Flash: Old Man the Ash-weird has a broad
history among our ancestors for his many powers and the many things he has
come to mean throughout the ages. His power is vast and mighty. His
mysteries speak of human origins- the origins of these bodies of matter- for
many ancients believed that mankind descended from the ash, or had their
fleshy homes shaped from the trunk of an ash. The Ash-weirds or wights
speak of our origins in sorcery, however- for the powers of life are sorcerous
powers. The ash is the presence of the cold, blasting windy spirit of sorcery,
the liberated spirit of humans that move like the wind, and the other powers
that exist beyond our state, who are also in a condition of perpetual
“mobility”, symbolized by wind and flight.

It is the wood of the handle of the broom of the witch, for obvious reasons,
but it is also a symbol of the ancient tree that was believed to connect all
things. It is not that a tree actually connects all things; the metaphor refers to
the airy nature of the liberated mind and spirit that, by virtue of wholeness,
can access all things. The ash-power is therefore the power of lightning-fast
transition between states of mind, and of liberation of the spirit. It is the
power of trance. It is believed to “draw lightning” or “court lightning”- a fine
enough belief, considering that the power of lightning is the very natural
sympathetic manifestation of the instantaneous speed of spirit and mind to
course through the airs and sky and into the earth.

The ash tree’s powers and mysteries are reserved for humans and other
powers like us; what are we if not beings capable of leaping from one state of
consciousness to another? The ash is the tree of man. And it is a healer in its
own way- it heals children- and presumably adults- of hernias through being
cleft and then becoming whole again. Ash-trees were cleft, and a child
passed through them, before the tree was bound up tightly, and as it healed,
the child would heal.

It has a power against ill-wishers, specifically female ill-wishers, and it is a

wood of divination. It also protects from serpents and snakes- they are said
not to molest one carrying the parts of the plant. The wood of the ash-tree,
curious to say, will not complain or sputter if burned green, and the smoke is
a powerful incense for protection and insight. A newborn child passed
through the smoke is given its “ash fire bath” before the first bath of water,
for protection. The “even ash” leaf- a leaf that has equal divisions on both
sides- is a rare find, but should be plucked if found, with a charm for good
luck:

Ash-weird, your even leaf I pluck

That every day and night to come I have good luck
Give that luck to me, of if not,
I’ll give it away to reek and rot.
Foreparent tree, good luck to me
And ever grateful I will be.

Bay, the Fragrant Tree: The Bay tree is reputed to never be struck by
lightning, and thus was planted in front of houses and in gardens for its
protection. If one looks deeper, one sees that more esoterically, the Weird of
this tree wards off unexpected strokes of bad fortune- though I must admit to
never having seen one struck by the actual physical lightning of the sky,
myself. The leaves are fragrant for bowls and cooking- and there are some
who call this tree a physician among trees, its leaves and wooden body
keeping pestilence away. A suffusion of its leaves poured into bath water is
healing and soothing. A leaf placed under the head at night when sleeping
summons pleasant and perhaps informative dreams- if one conjures the
power of the tree to ask questions, that is. It will expect ribbons to be tied on
its branches as return offerings, and other offerings left before it.

Beech, Queen of the Woods: The Beech is the Oak’s queen. It is said that
the first books were thin slices of beechwood, bound together- and the Anglo-
Saxons called this tree “bok”, from whence we derive “book”. They say that
the beech-weird is tied to the transmission of knowledge, and indeed, the
“speaking mattresses” were stuffed with beech leaves, making their hissing
and whispering when they were lain upon. Questions may be asked of the
beech weird when sleeping upon its leaves, and answers come in dreams.
The root-systems of beech trees grow quite serpentine- and the serpent is
tied to the power of this tree. It was the wise serpent, after all, who was the
first teacher of mankind in esoteric and exoteric knowledge, was it not?

Any prayer- any use of words- under the shade of the beech tree is more
powerful; any wish made there is more likely to come true, as are any curses.
Carving the letters of your desires onto beech wands and branches and twigs,
and then burying them causes them to “appear” in the outer world as the
talisman rots under the ground. If you would have your luck-power increase,
give offerings of strong drinks or delicious ones to the roots of a beech, and
shelter in its shade, pressing your face against its bark as though it were a
beautiful woman; let your heart truly accept the beech as the body of the
earth-mother, and you will be many times blessed.

Birch, the Renewal Tree: when the forests were new, after the cold-weirds
and ice-weirds returned to their homes in the north and deep under the seas,
it was the Birch-weird that sprung up first from the pregnant ground. In her
glorious soft whiteness, she is the tree-weird of renewal and purification. She
“makes new” all places that are blessed with her power- her shaved bark and
leaves mixed with cold, clean water is the lustral water of cleansing,
purification, and renewal- though your hands must be well washed before you
dare touch her. To bring her leaves and branches into your home averts
malevolent influences and gives good fortune. She is the “beginning tree”,
starting all things off in the numinosity of freshness. Striking the ground,
cursed places, or even people and animals with the twigs of the birch drives
wickedness out of them. It is the best and only wood you should want cradles
for children built out of- it nurtures small children like the mother-weird it is.

Blackthorn, the Blasting Tree: the hardy blackthorn is a most powerful

weird- it is a thorny tree, and like all thorny plants, it is naturally and
powerfully protective. It grows into thick hedges that cannot be crossed- and
this power of impenetrability in this world is true in the inner world, as well:
its weird can be used to create impenetrable barriers. It is a native plum tree
to Britain; it produces sloe fruits, from which the strong alcoholic beverage
sloe gin is made- and this form of gin has many powers of its own; it is an
excellent offering to spirits of all kinds, and an excellent intoxicant for use
when dealing with spiritual contact, most especially with the blackthorn-
weird, but with any weird besides. It, along with elderberry wine, are two very
potent and sacred substances derived from the green world of Weird. The
blackthorn’s sticks and staves are the favored stick for “Blasting” sorcery- for
driving away wicked powers and protecting an area. Blackthorn is a sister to
the Hawthorn, and where they grow together is a very powerful place. The
blackthorn can help “blast” enemies with curses- and the devil was said to
prick his initiates’ fingers with a blackthorn-needle.

Bramble, the Flayer of Evil: the bramble- the blackberry- is a thorny vine,
and thorns are the averters and flayers of wicked powers, very protective.
The leaves are used, when mixed with water (hopefully from a sacred spring
or well) to heal burns and scalds and inflammations of the skin- the wet
leaves and the infused water are laid on the injured skin and poured onto it,
with the chant:

Three luminous spirits came from the east

Two bearing frost and one searing fire:
Out, searing fire, into me, frost;
Out, searing fire, into me, frost.

The protective qualities of the thorny bramble vines are this plant-weird’s
greatest gift- they can be wrapped around wreathes for front doors and
windows, or used in other protective rites- and they alone can make the
“spirit flail” or the “sprite flail”, a whip used to scatter harmful weird-power
and drive away wicked powers. Nine well-thorned lengths of bramble are tied
at one end with willow bark, though red thread or yarn or any string can be
used, and held in the left hand while being used to make sweeping motions.
Someone once told me that paths through forests that had been unused for
some time could collect dangerous powers- and this sprite-flail can be used to
“clear” those. Any place that seems to have been cursed can be “cleared” by
lashing the sprite-whip about in it; the sweeping motion needs to be nine
swipes.

Elder, The Old Lady: the Elder-weird, called Hylde-moer, or Hyldor, and
called the Bourtree or the Eldurntree, is powerful to the old craft. Frau Elle or
Frau Ellhorn is another name for the powerful female Weird-presence of the
tree; it was at her hands that I had my first initiatory experience, one that still
chills my spine to this day. She has a mysterious relationship to the powers of
death and can make you confront death, and “take you apart” and “put you
together again” in a powerful, transformative way. The Elder tree is the tree
of the faerie people or the hill-folk, more powerful than any other for
contacting their world. It is a funerary power, Saturnian in the extreme, but
strongly connected to the solid ground.

On Beltaine, Elder twigs and strips can be woven into garlands that give the
wearer the power to see the unseen world’s motions. Standing under the tree
on Midsummer is said to show faery-people; sleeping under it- though
dangerous, in a way- can make one “awake in the otherworld”- have visions
or out of body experiences. Warding is needed lest otherworldly powers
attempt to steal you away fully. It is deadly to burn the “quick” Elder wood-
living elder wood, green and fresh, but not so dangerous if it is dead wood. It
must never be brought indoors, either, on the pain of the darkest of fortune
and death. Gathering the elder’s wood is somewhat tricky- the Weird of the
elder must be propitiated using a certain charm. When you take any part of
the living elder, you must first lower your head- uncovering your head if
wearing a hat- and say

“Old Lady, give me of thy wood, and I will give you some of mine, when I
grow into a tree.”

Of course, this “virid pact”- by which one binds oneself to a reciprocal

contract of giving with the Old Lady, can (and probably should) be satisfied
by taking the seed of some tree or plant, and dipping it in your blood, and
naming the infused seed with your own name, then planting it somewhere
safe, and allowing it to grow. Thus, “you” have grown into a tree or a plant,
and the Elder-mother can take of that, if she needs. You will not need to
actually be constrained to take up residence in a tree or plant form after
death to make good on your pact.

Elder wood should never be brought near babies or their cradles. It has
hollow branches and twigs, perfect for making flutes and whistles that can
easily summon spirits. It’s berries have dozens of medicinal and culinary
uses, including the creation of a strong dark red and black organic dye that
can even dye hair darkly. Elderberry wine is an ancient sacramental drink.
The Elder-weird has much to teach witches, and her sacred grove in the
underworld is a place of terrors and wonders. Elder wood can be used to
make warding crosses and wreathes to be hung outside of a house, only, but
are very protective. In earlier days, the Elder Tree was supposed to ward off
evil influence and give protection from witches, a popular belief held in
widely-distant countries.

Lady Northcote says:

'The Russians believe that Elder-trees drive away evil spirits, and the
Bohemians go to it with a spell to take away fever. The Sicilians think that
sticks of its wood will kill serpents and drive away robbers, and the Serbs
introduce a stick of Elder into their wedding ceremonies to bring good luck. In
England it was thought that the Elder was never struck by lightning, and a
twig of it tied into three or four knots and carried in the pocket was a charm
against rheumatism. A cross made of Elder and fastened to cowhouses and
stables was supposed to keep all evil from the animals.'

In Cole's Art of Simpling it says that

“In order to prevent witches from entering their houses, the common people
used to gather Elder leaves on the last day of April and affix them to their
doors and windows, and the tree was formerly much cultivated near English
cottages for protection against witches.”

Canon Ellacombe says that in the Tyrol:

“An Elder bush, trimmed into the form of a cross, is planted on a new-made
grave, and if it blossoms, the soul of the person Iying beneath it is happy.”

For the Elder-Mother is there, with the dead. She’d know.

Elm, the Coffin Tree: the Elm, the tree that some legends say the first
woman was made from, was the wood favored to make coffins, perhaps
because of how well it fares underground. This usage shows the other side of
women’s wondrous ability to give life: the necessity to die. Elms are very
stately and picturesque; and they are the guards of the dead, and the
passage the dead must take to the underworld. It is thus the Weird of
transition into the afterlife- and a “hater of men”, as it is called sometimes in
folklore, famous for dropping heavy branches onto people. The elm is the
boundary-tree, a common marker of boundaries, and another connection to
its role as guard of the transition across the boundary of life and death.

Hawthorn, the Hedge Tree: any tree or plant with thorns is naturally
protective. The Hawthorn, or the whitethorn, or just the “thorn” is not only
protective, but one of the great “faery trees” of the old tradition. It is the
“hedge tree” that symbolizes the hedge or protective boundary-divider that
keeps the village (or home) safe from the weird and chaotic powers that exist
in the wilds around it. But the faery-thorn, like the hedge, is also the place
where the unseen and weird-world beyond can be accessed, and the roots of
the thorn are one of the most powerful traditional passageways “down
below” to the depths and the underworld, or to the faery-world. Sitting below
the thorn tree on certain powerful days and hidden seasons is to run the risk
of being “taken” by the weird-powers.

You must never harm any tree or plant if you can avoid it; taking prudently
and respectfully of a tree or plant is never “harm” in this sense; but the
thorn, more than most trees, is dangerous to destroy, for weird forces protect
it strongly.

The bright white and light-colored blossoms that the thorn produces are the
true signs of summer’s arrival, of the coming of the bright time of the light
half of the year. It is called the “may tree” for this reason. Hawthorn twigs
can and should be gathered- respectfully- to be used in “thorning the
ground”- creating a circle of protection (a miniature hedge, actually) which is
useful for many reasons of protection and sorcery. But they must be gathered
by another person for their potency to be good.

Thorn trees by crossroads or in other powerful places- or at powerful times-

are gateways to the world below the graves. William Bottrell, sometime
before 1870, collected the report of a traditional sorcerer who used the thorn
to access the “powers below”- the powers of the dead merged with the
underworld- to gain magical assistance. He recounted the sorcerer saying:

"I went on my knees under a White-thorn tree by the crossroads, and

there, for best part of that night, I called on the powers till they
helped me cast the spells that gave old Jemmy and his family plenty
of junket and sour milk for a time."

Do not bring the blossoms of the hawthorn indoors, but the branches and
leaves can be brought. It’s better to keep them outside, at any rate; thorning
the ground, or growing thorns near the house or around it, is a powerful
protection charm. You may make a “may bush” or a “hawthorn bush” by
respectfully taking a branch with many lesser branches and bending it into a
globe, and hanging it in your kitchen or hearth all year for luck- but on new
year’s day, you must burn it in a field, in a straw fire, and make a new one.
Singe that new one in the coals of the old one, and it is good for one more
year of protection and luck. That field will be blessed, by the destruction of
the old hawthorn charm, protected from every manner of wickedness and
misfortune.

Hazel, the Wise Tree: Hazel is thought to be the wisest of trees, and its
nuts are both a good food- from the perspective of the everyday world- and
the full presence of omniscient wisdom from the perspective of wholeness.
No charm for the development of wisdom or sight should go without the nuts
of the hazel. “Enhazeled earth”- an area of ground marked out by a boundary
of hazel stakes, is a protected and powerful area, though perhaps protected
in a different manner than the “thorned earth”- wisdom protects in a different
way; it protects from illusions and mistakes in perception and judgment. It
protects from glamours. The “green hazel branch” is also a powerful charm
against serpents- and by extension- harmful powers in the land itself that
may mean you ill-will. The hazel-weird is a weird of divination; divining rods
are best made from this wood, and hazel nuts cast into water, one for each
partner in a relationship, can determine if they will stay together or come
apart- by how the nuts float. A rod of hazel wood is the wise-staff of the
weird-worker, a symbol of authority that goes far beyond temporal matters.

Holly, Who Bears The Crown: holly’s many sharp, angled leaves prick the
very eyes of evil- the evil eye, and malevolent beings, forces, and people are
turned away from places where the boughs are hung. It is also one of the
other great “lightning protectors” of green-world lore. An old carol says that
“of holly and ivy, when both are full grown in the wood, it is holly that bears
the crown…” the crown, of course, being the crown of life and summer, for at
midwinter, the evergreen holly carries the power that has temporarily fled
the oak and the other trees. Thus, it is the crown and clothing of the “holly
king”- the name given to the power of the kingly spirit of life itself, as it must
transform itself in winter.

Juniper, the Warding Weird: Juniper branches and twigs make a most
efficacious charm for warding away evil, and its smoke, when burnt, is
intolerable to malevolent forces.

Maple, the Long-Life Weird: Wassailing bowls- bowls that are used in the
yearly ritual (performed around the yule-tide) to propitiate the spirits of fruit-
bearing trees and drive away wickedness from them, are made of maple. To
wassail- to be whole- is a process and a blessing that has many levels, and
the maple is mysterious connected to it. Even though the maple does not
appear to be very long-lived (for a tree), it is connected to an ancient rite for
long life: a young child is passed through its branches to confer on them
longevity.

Mistletoe, the Druid-Wood: at the time of the winter solstice, the

mistletoe, a strange green parasite that grows in the boughs of trees, bears
its powerful fruit. Its dark green color- the color of life triumphant- is matched
by its white berries, both revealing the mystery of eternal life. In this world,
you will find that the druid-wood is poisonous; but in the wholeness, in the
unseen, it is perpetual life-giving. The mysteries of life and death being two
sides of one wholeness are captured in the mistletoe-weird; now, as in ages
long past, it is the key to the entrance to the Underworld. Bearing a bough of
mistletoe with you down below will give you admittance past the guardian-
weirds who try and block the way to the spiritual deeps. The vision of eternity
and life everlasting is the supreme gift of the old ways- and the presence of
the mistletoe is one of greatest fortune, but it must never be allowed to touch
the ground. When taken from a tree- preferably an oak- it must not touch the
ground between the nights of Yule and the following Candlemas- though after
that, it can hang throughout the year in the house, protecting from ill-luck,
lightning and fires, to be replaced next Yule.

You will notice that the mistletoe and the holly have similar features- and this
is a secret hidden in plain sight. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is
more sacred than most people realize; eternity is only experienced in the
presence of others and the community of all creatures, so bonds of affection-
demonstrated under the mistletoe- are offerings to the greatest of weird-
blessings. It would be bad luck not to kiss or hug beneath the sacred bough
during the winter season. The druid-wood is a healer of great power, though
the berries are poisonous in certain amounts. Herbalists today rightly use its
leaves and twigs for treating many illnesses.

Oak, the King of the Wood: the Oak is the sacred and favored tree of the
kingly spirit of lightning, thunder, and the sky. The oak-weird has an ongoing
relationship with this ancient power, attracting his lightning and being struck
often- though greatly increasing in its power when this happens, assuming
the weird is not “taken up” to the sky (if it dies from the lightning stroke).
Ironically, oak is seen as protection from lightning, again, taking the lightning
stroke to itself. Any part of a lightning-struck oak is simply the most powerful
protection charm from evil and from further lightning strikes. The acorns are
powerfully protective for any reason or cause. The oak-weird is the kingly
weird of the wood, the image in the green world of the mighty lord of natural
places and living creatures himself. His acorns are his sperm- full of the
potentials of all things, for great forests grow from small acorns. There is a
secret to manifesting magic, here, for the wise. It is blasphemy against the
weird and life itself to destroy an oak without the best of reasons.

Pine, the Illuminator: the resins of the pine tree are the best for kindling
fires, and this weird is the illuminator and the torch-bearing power. The cones
of pine represent warm, generative force, and they chase away cold-weirds
and other harmful powers of the winter and those powers that thwart fertility.

Poplar, the Resurrection Tree: the poplar weird “speaks” when the wind
rustles its leaves; arrows and wands made from its wood have been used for
divination in the past. But the real power of this growing weird is the story it
tells of resurrection- of the passage into the inner world and the conscious
return from it. A crown of poplar leaves was worn by the ancient Greek hero
Heracles as he made his descent into the underworld, and next to the “well of
forgetfulness” in the underworld, legends say a white poplar grew. Taking the
poplar-weird’s blessing onto yourself is a sure way to gain an ally that will not
let you fall to the oblivion of forgetfulness- though if you do not, it will see
that you forget.
Rowan, the Protector: planted near the door or garden-gate, the rowan-
weird keeps the house safe from unwanted powers. But it protects in other
ways- a charm carved onto the wood of rowan spares people from drowning.
Rowan twig-crosses tied with red yarn or thread (and sometimes mixed with
birch) are some of the strongest protection charms for houses and barns and
sheds- especially against foul witchcraft- but the rowan twigs or boughs must
be removed without a cutting instrument. Those same crosses can and
should protect freshly planted seeds. A necklace of rowan berries protects
the wearer from medical problems.

Willow, the Water Tree: loving the water and often being found next to it,
the willow-weird has abundant life- cut away any branch of it and stick it in
the ground, and it will sprout into a new willow- this weird is the weird of
resilience, but also the weird of passage across water (some species of the
willow have boat-shaped leaves) and across spiritual boundaries. It can also
create boundaries- the “beating of the bounds”- the ceremonial creation of
boundaries within which a family may live, or a village may be built, or a
ceremony of sorcery may be done, is performed by walking the boundaries,
beating the ground with willow switches. The moon-weird and the willow-
weird have a powerful relationship; and one must be cautious- old man or
lady willow can open up the door to conscious access to the deep places of
the mind, but the willow can never be used to strike other people or animals,
because it is cursed- it will retard their growth, if not on the outer level
(though it may) then on the inner level. Of course, if you intend to curse
another, that is a separate matter. The willow-weird communes with any
water that it grows near, and a rod of willow from a tree near water contains
not only the power of the willow, but of that body of water. It is said that the
willow-weird can uproot itself and walk, late at night, and they can be very
protective of their natural homes.

Yew, the Eternity Tree: No tree lives longer than the yew, and it, more
than any other tree-weird, mediates the essence of eternity and eternal life
into our world, in a form that we can tangibly recognize it. The bones and/or
ashes of the dead should be buried under yews or near them so that they can
be “drawn up” into the eternity more surely. Like most of the weirds of
eternal life, the yew is very poisonous, and on very hot days, it gives off a
resinous vapour that can cause visions.

The yew’s power is inwardly connected to all times and places, a perfect
image of the Weird-power as a whole. The yew-weird can help lovers stay
together through adversity, and even see that they are reunited after death,
weirded together to be reborn together in many conditions. Sprigs of yew
should be sewn into the clothes or shrouds of the dead to speed their
passage into wholeness. No tree is more connected to the dark goddess of
Fate, the Weird-Mother herself, and her power to overcome all, whose powers
have ensorcelled all, and who gives access to the deepest truths.

***
This short walk through a catalogue of tree-weirds should help you greatly in
your own sorceries. Trees and plants, more than any other powers, draw us
to the ground- to the places where we work and live, and perform rites. You
have seen what woods are good for sanctifying and protecting a ground- any
tree strongly associated with protection is the power you should interact with
for such causes. A sprinkling of flour around an area, making a white
boundary, and mingled with finely reduced barks or pieces of oak is a forceful
“encircler”; mingle it with graveyard-dust, and you will have even more
protection from malevolent things.

A conjured fire in the center of such a circle fulfills it; “roads” of water cast in
straight lines to the four directions, leading out from the cardinal “corners” of
the circle provide spiritual powers with a path to reaching you, seeing as they
can the light of your fire. One must not be remiss in the use of fire and water
in any sorcerous act- both fire and water can purify; both can be used to
make boundaries; but their supreme use is as I just described.

***

X. An Uncommon Bestiary: The Occult Natural

Catalogue

The Weird has spun out and weaved the shapes of many powers, all
encountered in many different ways- as many different powers as there are
places or even men and women. Weird is such that, in our perception of it, it
never spins the same way perfectly twice. Every combination of forces that
we can identify with our minds shows great uniqueness, or even a hidden
uniqueness that we cannot easily see with our given limitations.

One will encounter spiritual powers and other living powers every day of life,
and all day- and all night, even while one sleeps. Most will not be aware that
they have entered into the presence of certain powers; such that we are, we
are dullards to the subtle reaches of reality. But the wise can sharpen the
mind, and see their “true companions” in the great Weird.

What follows are simple notes about some of the shapes and names given by
the ancients, and by folklore, to how many of the weird-powers can be
experienced. This is a catalogue of the past and the present; but it is not full
and complete- you may experience things that do not fall into any neat list.
But it is good to know some of the “marks” of the wisdom-tradition, so that
you can (perhaps) feel the comfort of knowing where you have been, in
whose presence you may have stood, and find some meaning that way.

Truly, the greatest “meaning” will only be written down by you, based on
your own experience. But the catalogue is a starting point, and more than
that, an orientation to how the sorcerer should “see” the world of Weird. It is
a community of living beings, some seen, many unseen, every bit as rich and
powerful as any fantastic mythology or tale. Our world is not empty; it is
sorcerous and potent beyond description.

I have often stated that, contrary to what most think, the call to witchcraft
and sorcery is not automatically a call back to pantheonic Paganism. Of
course, nothing stops a person whose heart is motivated to worship Pagan
Gods and Goddesses from doing so; but today, our relationships have
changed in many ways with those Weird-powers that were once accorded
universal respect as deities, and one must not feel pressured into any sort of
model of relationship with them. Only one rule is ever required for relating to
any power, from the perceptually greatest to the least- and that is the rule of
respect. One must have the right amount of awe, acceptance, and caution
for most of the weird-powers, and only the deepest respect for the greatest.

These powers are as real as you or I, or as real as the tree outside your door.
They are vast, pervasive, mysterious, and still capable of acting within your
life on a very deep level. It would appear that you decide the level of your
involvement- though you will no doubt discover as I have that Fate has other
plans for our lives, and what we are driven to respect and to love and to
pursue are often not our conscious choices. No sorcerer, whatever their
tastes in religion, can afford to be anything other than respectful to other
sentient powers- especially those great powers that still hover darkly within
our world, shaping so many of our ends- nor anything other than honest to
what the Weird manifests in them.

For me, the life of knowing Weird and living on the Land aside its many
powers is religion enough- and at any rate, religion cannot live our lives for
us; whoever we are and whatever we believe, we have to work at relating
well and being wise.

Spirits and Powers Given the Honor of Gods by the Ancients

The Binding Weird and the Weird-Sisters

Captured in the lore and myths of the most ancient lands and peoples, the
Weird itself cannot fail to appear to the soul-eyes of human beings. When she
appears- the veritable manifestation of the totality itself, she is mysterious
and beyond even the ken of other spirits that were called Gods- they being
subject to her inexorable will. She appears in older lore in a triple form, as
sisters weaving fate, or as a singular “fate” herself- Old Fate, in fact.

The appearances of the “Fates” or “Norns” in folklore and even in the

personal dreams or visions of people alive today have a special character-
they are not so much “actors” that stop by for chats or tea- they are icons of
abstract and awe-full concepts, normally only appearing to signify that some
deeper motion or power has been set thereupon by the great Law itself. An
entire class of lesser “norns” or weirds- perhaps folk-memories of witch-
women in the past that acted as human mediators of the inexorable power,
as well as their continuing living presence in this very moment- have
appeared in folklore, and these have been somewhat more conversational, if
no less deadly or powerful.

The Pale Faced Woman

The mystery of this spiritual power is truly beyond us; but she is found at all
levels of mythology and folklore from the past, and she is an ongoing
presence this very day, for those who are fortunate- or unfortunate- enough
to meet her, or know the way to her dwelling. Whether one is fortunate or
unfortunate really rather depends on their own character- for lazy, malicious,
selfish, or spoiled rotten people never seem to come away well from her.

She is the “hidden” spirit, the “hulda” being of goddess-like power that
maintains great authority in the Underworld, over the dead, deep below the
hills and ground, and within the unseen generally. She appears to be the
ultimate source of storms and snow and other weather- and the decider of
the destinies of unborn children, drawn from a pond of souls that she
maintains- the very pool of living essences that are “asleep” or wandering
about in the underworld, destined for further wanderings. Owls seem to be
the birds that are her “animal badge”- a living symbol of her presence,
though geese fulfill this role, too.

The deeper questions of this being are many- what is her relationship,
precisely, to the figure of “Old Fate” or the Weird, broadly? Is she an
embodiment of the Weird, like the iconographic figures of the Fate-sisters? It
seems that she wields great power as a weird-weaver, and yet, she appears
very personal and communicative in tales told about her. These questions
cannot really be answered, as everyone will have a different experience of
her, if they experience her in this life. There are some- this author included-
who believe her to be the “inner earth goddess” or spirit who is also the
“earth mother”, one and the same being (perhaps an “inner” and an “outer”
face for the same power), though this being can take on many masks or
guises if she likes.

The “Green Gown”- or the “Old Lady”- to be detailed soon- is believed by me

to be this same power. Others disagree for various reasons. As to the subject
of whether or not she is identical to the Weird, or the “Weird embodied”, one
must recall that every thing that exists- from leaves to human beings to rocks
or shrews- anything- is an “embodiment” of Weird, of the totality, in a way.
The rest is mysterious.

This “pale faced woman”, the “hell-queen”, the great Dame, was (and is) a
chief tutelary power of witch-cults, as well as many other cults in antiquity,
and has done her part as more than one saint in Roman Catholicism, along
with her other guises. She is perhaps best well known to children the world
over as “Mother Goose”. Hints to her nature and powers can be found in
Grimm’s folktale “Mother Hulda”. The Pale-Faced Woman and the Green
Gown/Earth Mother seem to be positioned to be “elder” to nearly all of the
other spiritual beings recorded in lore- even their mother. She is certainly a
fore-mother to mankind, whose bodies and blood are drawn from the earth
and water, and whose souls- being rivers of natural power- are also drawn
from nature.

The Elfin Queen or Princess of Glamours

Where hares run and roam, you will know the presence of this spirit, well-
attested to as a lady among the Elfin people (the Hill-people or Faeries, the
inhabitants of the inner world). She is the enchantress par excellence,
Venusian and running untamed, like the hares whose forms she apparently
takes when she desires it. Cats- also malkins- are the other “animal badge”
that she wears, and at times, rides along with her six sisters. She is the
Godda of legend, thought by some to be another hypostasis of the earth
mother, but again, these things are hard to compare or know for certain.
Roses are her sacred flowers, and she is about in spring and summer, like her
boxing hares and fertile malkins. This would mark her as part of the “seelie”
court, the bright-crown company, though one must not get too attached to
such easy designations- her dark side runs deeper than the ocean. Anyone
who has felt the infatuation of love and the dark depths of desire already
knows something of it.

The Quicksilver Prince of Elves, Master of Sorcery

The unseen world has produced a prince among princes- and his presence
has been known throughout all times by all peoples. The original teacher and
awakener of man to his potentials, the quicksilver-spirit of this Master being
has appeared in the deeps of forests in the north, down to the streets of
glittering cities in the south of the ancient world. It is his rural appearance
among the peoples of Britain and the north that I specialize in researching,
though entire books could be written about his omnipresent and ongoing
activities.

He, more than any other being, was assaulted and vilified by Christian powers
all over Europe and the Near East, called “The devil”- likely due to his
association with serpents and the awakening of mankind- an awakening that
ancient Judaism and Christianity associated with the first sin. “Devil” may be
seen, in retrospect, as yet another title for this master shape-shifter, whose
great wisdom is mixed freely with his great and mysterious nature, his
penchant for trickery and trouble, and his inscrutable methods and
motivations.

There is no way to know the truth about this power’s true and ultimate origin,
anymore than we can know it for anything- but he has been called “artificer”,
the teacher of metalworking to human beings (and other civilizing
technologies) and is worshipped as “Tubal Cain” by one famous group of
witches to this day. He is the ploughman- the teacher of agriculture, the
“Tas” or “Tascio”, the “Daxa” of the rural countries, guardian of fields and
farms. He is the “Bucca”, the goatish spirit that takes us into a series of
folkloric characters, such as local land-powers called “pucks”, to the great
kingly-spirit of the land and sky who was also (as we shall see) associated
with goats at times. This spirit is not those spirits, however much they seem
to overlap in a surface-level reading.

As a master shape-shifter, and a supremely wise spirit, this Master could

appear as anything- the turnskin lord- appearing as human or beast, male or
female, muscular and sooty, or young and beautiful, or just androgynous. He
is Firebringer and Witchfather, in days long past and today. The enlightener
of mankind and guide of souls of the dead, he was the Apollonian and
Mercurial power enshrined by the Greeks and Romans. Wolves and ravens,
alongside goats and serpents, were his animal badges. The winds were
especially potent signs of his presence and power, a power of aerial spiritual
liberation or spirit-flight.

The Lordly Thunder Spirit

Captured in every European mythology as the Drighten, the High Thunderer-

the God of sky and thunder, of rain and oak trees, and sometimes of the
solar-disk cross, representing the magnificence of the power of order over
wicked powers and chaotic weird, this spirit- remote though he is- is still out
and about. One of his most ancient names is Induru. He is killer of wicked
powers, one before whom they all tremble. Today, he is largely prayed to by
Christians who call him “Lord”, though the character of their God is based on
primitive Semitic myths and not representative of the whole character of this
powerful being. He is far too remote to be the personal God of church-going
folk, but he is active in the skies of this world- and also in the forest and wild
places, for this masculine force is not limited to just the sky.

An older guise of the same power was known from the far Harrapa and Indus
valleys, all the way to Britain- the earth-bound and savage power of this
fatherly and lordly spirit, given to wildness and chaos as much as to the
protection of natural places and the sanctification of the earth- known in very
old times as Rudara, and in later folklore perhaps as Edric. This power is not a
simple one- it is the closest thing most people today imagine when they
imagine “God”, the masculine power that over-arches the formed natural
world, and indwells it- and he wears antlers and horns in his many ancient
and modern depictions (at least in his earth-concerned guises) and is the God
of many a modern neo-pagan today. They seldom realize how vast and
dangerous his power really is, being as ancient and wild as it is, and thus,
seldom really tap into it.

For all his primal and forceful nature, he is a trustworthy protector of mankind
and the world as a whole and all its creatures, and responds well to respectful
offerings, and expects right, respectful behavior from humans, both to the
land, the unseen world, and between one another.

That the High Thunderer should have a “chthonic” or earth-bound aspect is

not new; the Greeks likewise prayed to a “Chthonic Zeus”, associated with a
great serpent in the land, and the Roman Jupiter was originally an oak-spirit.
Mate to the Earth-mother, he is father to many if not all. He has influence
over weather and hunts wicked powers, and even the souls of the wicked who
become earth-bound at death and are foolish enough to cross paths with his
hunt. He has his own sorcery, which strips us bare of civilization and takes us
back to the deepest places in ourselves.

He is master of beasts, and grants familiar spirits to sorcerers who dare

approach him. He, like the goatish puck, was associated with “the devil”,
though the mistake in that logic is far too clear to dignify much response. He
is the spirit of the arousal of life-force and fertility/sexuality. Bulls, goats,
serpents, and stags all passed as his animal badges in the past. He is mighty
in the land, and even the People of the Hill still fear and respect him- though
he is seldom seen directly, dwelling as he does in deeper- and higher- places
than most can venture. Such as these “high level” beings are, to “see” them
in their entirety- which would include the heights and depths of Weird- would
likely overpower or destroy a mortal being, or any being bound to confusion
and limitation.

The Shriekers

Normally appearing as women, these weeping, wailing, or shrieking beings

are very frightening, and only appeared in ancient lores as choosers of
people who had to die in battles or natural disasters. They are tied to the fate
of each person and family, and follow each person and family throughout
time. They are tied completely to the inner-world dwelling folk, the People of
the Hill, and to the strange out-workings of Weird, which they seem to have
some insight into.

The Old Wise Woman, Grandmother Green-Gown

The “green gown” worn by this ancient being is, of course, the verdure of the
earth, the green of fields and forests and plowed land. She is the “earth-
mother”, so well known from many mythologies, and (apparently) very active
once in giving the gifts of law and culture to human beings, as well as oracles
and mysteries. Her giving nature is fully and perfectly balanced by an
ambivalent “taking” nature, though she is still motherly. Those who
experience her or encounter her (like all these powerful beings, usually in a
vision or dream) need to consider the reasons for her emergence. She
demands that we remember our source and live well and wisely in our
interactions with the vast pool and web of living forces that make up her
body, and ourselves. Whatever elements or material we human beings are
made of, they are from her, the common mother.

We owe much to her, all of the food we eat and the water we drink, and she
responds well to our gifts given to her, buried in her body or cast into her
waters. Any large bonfire made and charmed properly can receive offerings
and send them to any power- fire becomes a burning doorway into the
unseen, and anything cast on a funeral pyre enters the world of the dead
alongside the dead person or beast.

Sun-weird and Moon-weird

It is no secret that the sun and moon have been worshipped by all humans in
some form or fashion, and given many different roles and powers in the play
of mythology. When one looks deeper, one sees that the sun and moon, far
from being simple deities in mythologies, are often symbols of other powers-
the sun, for instance, is often the spiritual icon of the bright, life-giving order
of the sky and the triumph of human cunning and wisdom over dark powers.
In the distant past, the solar-force, in its representation as the "equal armed
cross" was given wholly over to the sky-god as a sign of his power. The moon
was a symbol of the dark feminine powers that hearkened back to older
times, when perhaps feminine divinities may have been supreme in the eyes
of early humans. The moon is associated chiefly with sorcery and access into
the underworld; the sun with the source of life and victory.

They have been called divinities- though different people have seen them
alternately as Gods or Goddesses. They certainly have a weird-force of great
might, though it is their impact on human minds and imaginations that is
their true power. They are doors to deeper understandings. They are also the
weirds of “time keeping” and the ordering of seasons, showing one of Weird’s
most pervasive faces: that of a cycling power. Both the light of day (the sun)
and the light of night (the moon) are badges of Weird’s activity at a very high
level, both keys to deeper doors, whether "godly" or otherwise. Like all Weird-
forces, they can appear in many ways, showing many different levels of
interaction.

The Serpent in the Land

The great dragon or wyrm, the Land-serpent, is a latent and active stream of
power that flows through the entire land, and through human bodies as life-
force. In some way, it is another image of the great Weird, though an image
that is tied to the earth-mother and the kingly spirit of the land and sky, for
they apparently “wield” this power to their own ends. Human sorcerers can
wield it as well, as it is as natural to our bodies as it is to the hills or winds.
Any being in myth or lore who is associated with serpents is associated with
sorcery, and thus, this natural and omnipresent power. It “sleeps” in certain
seasons of the year- the cold seasons, and its awakening is the herald of
summer.
 Other Beings and Powers, More Commonly Met or Found Through
Occult Exploration

The confused minds of any and all beings can wander through many “ways of
being”, many limited forms of life, throughout “time”, for time has no
beginning or ending. It is true that perhaps we have all been many “things” in
our time, many expressions of life in both the seen and the unseen world- the
shape-shifting “cycle of the soul” or, more properly, “cycle of the spirit” is a
natural conclusion and article of belief in the deepest strands of the old way.
Any of the following powers are more related to humanity than we realize- for
many-though not all- may have been humans before. Naturally, even without
“cyclic existence binding”, weird-powers arise themselves naturally and
spontaneously from the power of Weird, and are uniquely, perfectly what
they happen to be. The real mystery of any being- what supports it and what
originated it- is often (if not always) too complex to really be known by
mortals.

Wort Weirds

Word weirds are the genii of plants, the non-ordinary aspect (revealing the
possible sentient inner-worldly power) of all green growing things, as well as
mosses, fungi, and the like, which are not trees. A plant-weird or a wort-
weird- like any weird- is not an easy thing to categorize; they seem, at times,
and to various perceptions, like strange cycles or processes of power;
sometimes living, at other times seemingly unaware; at other times they can
appear as beings, even humanoid beings or theriomorphs (animal shaped
beings). The key rule that should govern your interaction with plant-weirds is
respect; whatever they are, whoever they are, they are essential parts of the
entire web of Weird, the totality.

Collecting parts of simples and worts or herbs has to be done with a mind to
both respect the weird of the plant, and to preserve its power- without that
subtle power, which can flee or drain out of a part of a plant, or the plant as a
whole (if its roots are removed from the ground) the plant’s part or body is
useless to sorcery.

Making a furrow around the plant, setting apart from others, and making
offerings of dried oats, milk, bread, small coins, or part of your own body- hair
and/or blood- is the first step, as the weird will be increased by this
treatment. A conjury to the weird- using the understanding of the three-
pronged fork of sorcery is next, communicating precisely what it is you intend
to do with the part, and showing respect to the weird and promising it
rewards. Taking the part with a quick slice or pluck- always careful to use
clean blades, as not to infect the plant- is third. Always doing this under a full
moon, or on a day or night of a sacred day or season is better. If you know
the planetary stream that the plant belongs to- Venusian, Saturnian, etc. you
should only do this on the corresponding day. Storing the plant-part has to be
done carefully- do not let it touch the ground, and keep it in a clean cloth or
bottle or box. Use it within a few days, that same night or the next day being
better- and if you must dry the parts to keep them, know that the power may
remain, but it gets weaker over time.

Tree Coils or Wood Guardians

The spirits or weirds of the mighty trees are a “step up” from their smaller
growing counterparts, and they evidence more power and seeming
intelligence. Some of the most developed weirds of trees are as concerned
with their own well-being as humans are, and have access to great powers.
Many are resentful to human beings, after many ages of abuse and misuse,
so proceed with caution in dealings with them, making certain that you
demonstrate your benevolence and wisdom to them, that they recognize you
as not just another human who litters their roots or snaps their branches for
frivolous reasons.

Tree-coils, or Tree-Weirds often join consciously into a form of solidarity with

other powers around them- nowhere is this more apparent than with the case
of the Willow-weird and nearby weirds of waters or streams, and with the
Oak-weirds and the mistletoe-weirds that sometimes take purchase in their
branches. Forests as a whole become like a community of powers, and they
actively guard and resist intrusions from powers and people that they
consider dangerous, or sense danger in.

They have a strong power in the wholeness of things, though humans

normally only see or sense these things as “Innerworldly” potencies- and if
you believe that trees cannot be dangerous if aroused or threatened, you are
fatally mistaken. While they are not likely- often- to reach down and choke
you with their branches, they can do terrible “weird damage” to a person-
approximating what some may call a “curse”, and they can affect the world
in other ways, besides. Together or singularly, they can change the
atmosphere of a place into one that is very welcoming and fortunate or very
dark, disturbing, or repellent. If befriended, they can offer and teach limitless
wisdom to human beings.

Like other weirds, they can appear to the inner senses of humans in many
ways- they can appear as animals or as other humans, or just as trees, or
other more bizarre things, like lights or odd creatures. It is truly not possible
to perform sorcery or have any depth experience of the inner-world in a
forest of tree-weirds that are actively resistant to one’s activities.

Wards

Any power- including living humans (or the spiritual presence of a dead
human) can become a “ward”, a guardian of a natural location. Some wards
choose to merge with an area’s inner region to protect it; others are bound or
forced to do so through misdeeds or harm to a place, or through other
circumstances or powers. Wards, like sufficiently powerful tree-coils, are
“doorkeepers” between a natural place and the unseen reaches of Weird
beyond. No one spiritually transitions through that place from one state of
awareness to another without the ward’s permission and blessing. Damaging
or disrespecting a natural area that happens to be warded is the fastest and
most disastrous way of bringing down their attentions. Wards may persist for
very long perceptual amounts of time, and others, after a time, mysteriously
fade or leave. Their usual method of defending a place- any place- is to cause
nightmares for people they don’t desire there, or cause accidents, some of
which can be lethal. They can also cause an area to be permeated with a
sense of dread.

Water Weirds

The spirits of streams, pools, springs, rivers, lakes, and even the vast oceans-
these weirds are sometimes (though not often) encountered alone, and other
times in communal groupings, just like Land-weirds or land-spirits. Water
weirds of great age often take on a feminine appearance, and can be very
alluring. They despise people polluting their homes, and are more often than
not dangerous- they will drown unsuspecting people of any age, and I suspect
this is more of a function of their frustration with mankind than anything else-
though they are also pictured as “vampiric”- they can feast on the released
life-force of a drowned victim.

Water weirds were often given regular sacrifices and gifts- cast directlty into
their homes- by ancient people, and some, especially the weirds of wells and
thermal springs, were elevated to the status of Goddesses, due to their great
involvement with giving human beings life-preserving water and healing
therapy. They deserved to be thanked, then and now. These ancients may be
dangerous, too- especially the spirits of old rivers and springs that were the
centers of cults in Pagan times; they are starved for attention and offerings.

The fastest way to become protected by their benevolence is to make large

offerings to them, but don’t ever become fooled into thinking that they will
never be harmful to you- always keep a measure of respect and wariness. All
natural bodies of water can be used as gateways into the Underworld by the
dead, or by sorcerers who wish to lower their consciousness into that deep
place- but guardian water weirds can block this passage, if not appeased. All
water weirds have a beguiling power.

Land-Weirds or Land Wights

Chiefly responsible for the fertility of the land, or should I say, able to
withhold the fertility of the land if offended, these powers overlap completely
with the “green people” and “white people” that I will discuss shortly. Like
water weirds, they can and often do appear as groups of powers, as opposed
to an individual power. Pagan people spent a good deal of time propitiating
these powers, for good harvests and yields. They hate church bells and
drawing the power of the underworld up through a hazel staff, mounted with
a horse-skull- a “blasting pole” or “scorn pole”- will scatter them and cause
them to change locations, leaving a wasteland- either physically or spiritually-
behind. The fleeing land-weirds may vent their wrath on any who live nearby,
or towards whose home the horses’ eye sockets gaze.

This sort of curse is very dark, and likely disastrous to the long-term destiny
of the person who does it, unless they had a very justifiable reason. Land
wights desire blood, honey, and milk, and would prefer to have it poured on
natural stones that may jut out of their land. If not, directly onto the ground
will suffice. Some extremely powerful land-weirds almost seem to rule over
areas like a local god. Very malicious land-weirds- called Yarthkins in some
areas- can cause great harm if they desire, or if they are disturbed.

Ice and Stone Giants

These are the non-ordinary aspects or weird-force of glaciers and mountains.

They seldom, if ever, speak or communicate, for they are of a “giant”
character that overwhelms mortal senses- inner or outer, though their
presence can surely be felt- and it can be majestic or terrifying.

Spuks or Spooks- Haunts and Hungry Ghosts

All manner of fates may await a deceased person or animal, or even another
power that “lives” and “dies” in its own way- but the notion of a ghost or a
haunt is well-captured in human history, and refers specifically to those
spirits of the dead who refuse- or resist somehow, through powerful will or
sorcery- to follow the natural cycle of the spirit and wander about, often
causing fear and trouble where they go.

Some may say that the “wandering spirit” is another part of the cycle, and
just as necessary as any other being, but folklore unanimously accords these
powers dread and pity- and always is the notion that they are stepping
wrong, somehow, or violating some natural imperative. I’ll leave that
discussion to better philosophers than myself; all I need say is that greed,
anger, rage, hate, sorrow, and fear can create these beings, and they are
often bound to a person or a place, and sometimes bound to cyclically repeat
certain actions, deeds, or activities. The “repeating cycle” of some is a
manifestation of their own fixation on certain thoughts or feelings- they
seldom have the memory to realize that they have been in the same place for
sometimes centuries (from the perspective of us mortals) doing the same
thing over and over again.

Often, they will be bound by a deed they left undone, or an object they stole
or somehow hid- and the way to dispel them is to find their hidden things and
show them to the light of the sun. Excessive weeping for a lost loved one can
“wet their shroud” or “wet their winding sheet” and cause them to remain
behind- a sad state of affairs if there ever was one. Helping grieving people to
overcome their grief, in this case, is the way to allow those poor souls peace.

Other haunts must be frightened away by the power of greater spirits- chiefly
the Lordly Spirit described in the first part of this essay- or by showing them
evidence of their deaths, as many refuse to believe that they have died. Any
smell that re-creates the smell of rot or burning flesh or decay can also drive
them away, as it (somehow) forces them to face their own deaths. Haunts
often cause disturbances in sleep, fires, house-accidents (if they are bound to
a house) feelings of dread, and (sometimes, rarely) the theft of items.

The Green People

Showing the overlap between the human dead and the “land weirds”, the
term “green people” refers to those who have died, and been buried- and
have merged with the land, becoming some sort of presence in that place.
They can be thought of as land-weirds, but they maintain a sleep-like, dream-
like state of merging, and can sometimes be sources of information about
their own lives, and sources of impressions that they receive from deeper
powers.

The White People, the People of the Hill

Again, showing a well-attested to overlap between the human dead and the
Faery-world, the “White people” are the faery-dead, or just the people of the
Innerworld of Faery or Elfhame- the “elf-home”, for the dead were believed to
become “elven”. Thus, “faery” and “elf” are two cultural terms for the same
type of being. Whether or not all of the white people in the unseen world
were once “living” humans is not known, but many from folklore clearly were.
Unlike the “green people” who die and merge with the perceptual “surface
level” of the ground, the white people are turned towards the inner, deeper
world and wide awake- in their own strange sense of wakefulness, and can
appear as humanoids that are sometimes perceived as much smaller than
human beings, and sometimes just as people, dressed oddly.

They can be deadly to living mortals- they can “elf strike” them and cause
strokes, heart attacks, and diseases, and they can cause a state of death that
allows them to leave a person’s body behind, but takes the person’s soul or
spirit into their own world, trapping it there. For all their dangers, they are not
all malicious, though some can be. They tend to be captured in folklore as
somewhere between indifferent or ambivalent, and mischievous, at least
from the human perspective. They are clearly bound to new and secret
“rules” of behavior or social and mental norms that belong to the unseen
world, and therefore are hard to judge from human perspectives.

The “elfin dead” or the faeries are all a supremely magical category of
sentient life- they specialize in illusions or glamours, and seem to have a
strange dependency on human beings, at least in certain situations. They
hate being spied on, and they always tend to reward human kindness or
hospitality. While they spend most of their time in their own native world,
they do emerge into the human world, perceptually, at sacred times of the
year, to do their “rides” or “rades”, moving across the countryside at
intervals and between certain faery-haunted places, a procession that can be
dangerous to encounter for the ordinary person.

The Faery people can clearly sometimes remember their former lives,
sometimes from ages before on earth, and often live in states of longing or
fading passion for those old times and their old lives. They also clearly have
ways of maintaining their existence in the faery-state, sometimes through
very dark sacrifices. They represent a community of beings that share the
wholeness of things and our world with us, so understanding them- and the
study of the faery faith and faery folklore could take up a lifetime- is very
important for sorcerers of the old traditions.

The most important understanding of the faery world is, of course, the
understanding that unifies it with the mortal world- for in a real and
immediate way, the white people are the “other half” of the life we all lead;
they are doing what we once did before we wandered into the human world,
and what they are doing is what most of us will do after we die- at least
according to the old thinking. Before it sounds too exciting, recall that some
regions of the unseen world were not very happy places at all; faery and the
heathen notion of “Hell” or Hades are the same place, and contained their
own regions of suffering- though it would appear that one’s destiny with
respect to one’s new condition of existence was determined very much by
how they lived and how wise they became now.

Red Men and Cold Weirds

Unconscious or semi-conscious powers that are malicious, or at least

passively harmful to human life, are called “the Red men”, and of course, the
weird-power that spins into freezes, frost, snow, and cold are the cold-weirds.
The red men can be weird powers of disease and plague, or of mental dis-
eases, or just presences that inspire anger and destructive feelings among
human beings. They don’t tend to be very responsive to communication in
the inner world, and instead show themselves in some threatening manner,
some threatening monstrous form, or some threatening animal form. Cold-
weirds are likewise very non-responsive, though like with any weird, nearly
anything is possible. These powers are really mostly known through their
presence- as the naturally chaotic forces in nature, natural diseases, and the
natural colds that come and choke the life out of lands in winter, and help
cause the deaths of elderly or sick people. Aside from the predations of
malicious faeries, these “red men” are the powers that protective charms are
designed for. You learned many of those charms in the essay on the powers,
potencies, and virtues of trees. The power of fire is the only power that can
ward away cold-weirds.
House-weirds

Houses are sacred places in their own right, for many power-interactions take
place in homes that are the most vital interactions within human society: the
creation of new family members, eating meals, sheltering from rain and foul
weather, and safety from the outside world. Such interactions taking place
within wooden or stone frames and piles and rooms, under beams of wood,
cause homes to become impregnated with vast amounts of concentrations of
Weird- and thus, attract sentient powers, some of whom may arise through
the interactions of humans and these places. Other house-weirds may have
been land-weirds or wights inhabiting the area that the house was built on,
who “moved in” as it were. Either way, every house also has a spirit- or at
least most do- and these powers need recognition and respect, as well, and
they will yield many blessings for the house.

When we look to folklore for guidance, we see many stories of the human
relationship with the spirits of their homes. The stories of the spirits called
"brownies" from England, Scotland, and Northwestern Europe are clear
manifestations in lore of weirds that entered into relationships with humans,
and worked for them in their homes and on their farms, in exchange for gifts
of food and recognition. As a bit of trivia, the fact that the little brown cakes
that we call "brownies" are called "brownies" in the first place is because of
these spirits- the little cakes and bowls of milk left out at night to feed the
house-spirit actually took on the name of the spirit- a brownie.

With linguistic variation, "brownie" becomes "bodach" in the Scottish

Highlands, and "fenodoree" on the Isle of Man, and all refer to house guardian
spirits. Fairy-type folklore can teach us something important about the
human relationship to these beings. If offended, these beings became
"boggarts", and became harmful to the human inhabitants of their places of
dwelling. This is likely a reflection of the idea that wights can be harmful if
offended or not appeased. Brownies specialized in doing house-work and
protecting the home, and milk was typically left out for them, as well as
bread or cakes- but there was an almost universal warning included.
Brownies could never be offered a reward for its services or its labors on
behalf of the home.

If they were offered a reward, they would usually flee or become harmful.
This taboo seems odd, but the old folklore says that these beings were too
free-spirited to be "bound" to humans through the acceptance of payment. It
seems that they would accept praise and they would take the offerings left
out, but if the humans said "Take this in exchange for what you have done for
us", the spirit balked at the bond that accepting such a gift would entail.

Heathens believed that "a gift demanded a gift"- There was and is a bond
created between two people who give gifts to each other. There is an
expectation that follows this act. The house-spirit desires communion,
recognition and participation with human beings, but it doesn't desire to be
bound as a servant. It is enough to leave gifts for the house-weird, which it
will accept, and to thank the spirit through recognizing its presence and
praising its good deeds for the home, but to offer it a reward for this is
something that the wise should not do.

As an aside, the one offered reward that drove house-spirits away more than
any other was clothing. To offer a brownie or house-spirit clothing as a
reward would drive it way, infallibly. It is also worth noting that brownies and
other types of house-guardians and spirits hate Christian religious symbols. I
don't expect most sorcerers to have such things in their houses, but those
who do can be certain that the house-weirds have long since departed.

Theriomorphs

Weirds encountered in the shape of birds and animals are more common
than one might expect- and some are legendary, such as the “black shuck”
dogs, the big bargests and black spirit-hounds that are regarded as omens of
approaching death or disaster, and the legendary huge cats that are
sometimes spotted around rural areas. Theriomorphic weirds are as varied as
the “ordinary” animal world, and related to them, somehow. They often do
appear as they do, in the shape they are in, to symbolize certain Weird-
realities that humans are best to take note of. Part of the fear, in so many
cultures, of ravens and owls is likely because it was never known if an owl
that landed on someone’s rooftop- thought in some places to be a sign of
coming death- was just an ordinary owl, or a spirit appearing that way to
show a sign. In this sense, theriomorphs seem to be like the “shriekers” or
the death and fate-omens that come through the forms of the crying or
weeping women.

Justified Men and The Hidden Company

Some human beings finally manage to achieve enough wisdom and insight
into the wholeness of things, that they are freed from the rounds of
wandering and confusion that characterize other people, and they enter into
a new order of being. These “hidden companies” of formerly humans but now
“ascended” spirits are called the companies of the “Justified Men”- and, when
they appear as females, the “Grey Women”. They are the arch-sages and
teachers of the entire fund of the ancient wisdom and all wisdom, besides- for
they have broken through to the perennial wisdom that is true in all times
and places, seeing as they have the deepest mysteries of existence, and
attaining a perpetual freedom through which they can continue to interact
with people from all eras.

Fetch Powers

Each human being is “followed” through life by unseen powers- none so

intimate or essential to them as their “fetch” powers, or the unseen “other
aspects” of their personhood. Tied to them ancestrally, the “fetch forces”
usually appear in two forms- the beast-fetch or animal fetch, (called a Puckril
by some) and as a human figure, normally contrasexual, who acts normally
only at death to guide this person “over” into new experiences. Sorcerers,
however, can awaken awareness of fetch-powers and win their company in
this life, and utilize the many things they can teach to perform great acts of
magical potency.

The “fetch bride” or “fetch husband”- the human form of the fetch-follower- is
hard even for sorcerers to see or capture, seemingly coming and going as it
will- though union with it and its teachings is the key to the “justification”
that leads to conscious perpetuity of existence and lasting peace. The “fetch
mate” may, in fact, be one of the “hidden company” themselves, though this
is speculation. One thing is for certain- the fetch-mate can change into the
fetch-beast, so one form- the beast- appears to be “closer” to the human
mind and soul, easier to contact, though the beast (the legendary familiar of
the witches) performs “lower” duties, such as protection from wicked powers,
guidance through unseen landscapes, and sometimes acts as a divination-
empowerer. The lore of the fetch is very deep and recondite, and should be
sought out in more detail.

Murk-people, Pechts, Dark Elves or Dwarfs

A final category of land-weirds, these beings seem to be encountered

“deeper” in the earth, and are associated with artifice, the riches below the
earth, and the constant, dark, unconscious milling about of deeper processes
of weird. They tend to be disrespectful or hateful to human beings. They may
be classed among the “white people” as more inhabitants of the inner world-
the deep underworld, specifically- but they represent a less conscious and
more malicious strain of beings, at least from human perspectives. They are
guardians of the treasures under the earth, and no doubt delight in cursing
humans who have been ripping those treasures out of the ground without
recognizing their hegemony over these deep realms for the last 2000 years.

***

The Forest Behind the Farm:

Spelling and Charming
I.
A Stave that has the Life of the Land
When a tree or shrub has grown from a land, it draws up into itself the very
soul of that land. To take from the tree-weird is not just to take of it; it is to
take of the land, and so even the powers below the ground should be offered
to for their good graces. The necromantic rod is taken, necessarily, from a
tree in a graveyard- or a tree that grows on the side of a burial mound- but
with the latter case, the dangers are many, for the spiritual powers of those
places are great. The tree that grows by the water has the power of the water
in its body- the staves taken from it are staves of that pool, or river too- and
the weirds of that water need their due. The necromantic yew staff that Elie
Evans took from the grave of her husband was not just a stave of great
Saturnian force, but a means of reaching his spirit, which was merged with
that place in the dark ground.

II.
The Hares in the Holes

The charm for making the fruit grow larger and in greater quantity on the
orchard trees, and for making the plants of the earth come forth in greater
quality and abundance was the same as the charm for making the woman
fertile- clay was taken from the land and the shape of hare carved out of it.
There, under the large round moon, next to a well-charmed fire, the hare
statue was bathed in moonlight and firelight, and the charm was made:

A leaping god when people were free

In the forests and fields long before me
A hare was he, a hare was she,
fire and fierce, a hare was he.
Hare-weird, life overflowing
Fire burning, freedom running,
Darting hare, life overflowing
In the forests and fields long before me.
A help for me if it may be.

The hare statue was told what was needed, the spirit of the hare-weird so
pleaded with, and it was placed on the mantle of the house- or in a tree
overlooking the fields and orchards. The next Friday, another hare was made,
the same way, with the same charm said by a fire that contained some wood
from the first fire. That hare was buried on the land somewhere, in a hole that
was dug and refilled. The powers of the land were given their milk and honey
or their wine. The next Friday, another hare was made, and charmed in the
same manner, in front of a fire at night made with some sticks from the
previous fire, and that hare was buried in the same hole- and on this went,
the hole becoming full of hares.

III.
Raising Grain

Grain is gold and fire is gold- both are sources of life and comfort. Gold is
gold, the mineral of wealth. The fire and the grain and golden wealth have a
weirded relationship, and the raising of a fire and the springing up of wheat
are sympathetically tied together. The charm to get the grain to grow more
abundantly was the same as the charm to gain more wealth- build a small
fire, and add wood to it to make it suddenly spring larger, and then more to
make it larger, and more to make it larger still- while making the proper
charm.

IV.
Old Man River's Charm

“That old river-man was always kind to my family; we fished and swam in his
water without him trying to rankle us. We’d always go down to the waterside
and toss in some of our sandwiches for Old Man River, and I think he liked our
company. If you needed anything, he might be able to help- steal away a
bottle of gin or whiskey and dump it in the water at night, and dig a hole as
close to the water as you could get- a place where the rising river water after
a rain would cover it up- and you could put in a message for Old Man River,
and he’d carry it away, and do things with it- I took a doll and dressed up like
the girl my heart was set on, and I split open the chest of the doll and took a
red stone to be her heart, and after giving Old Man River his whiskey, I told
him

“Old Man River, make this heart beat in desire for me- it is the heart of my
sweetness, whose arms I want around me- make this heart beat in desire for
me.”

And I kissed that stone and put it in the heart of the doll, and stitched it up,
and buried that doll there. The river flooded up a few days later, and the Old
Man took that spell away. I got what I wanted, and so did he- more whiskey,
and my undying friendship.”

V.
Messages to the Well-Woman

Wells are natural entryways into the underworld, down to the kingdom of the
Pale-Faced Lady. A spindle dropped in a well was discovered by the girl sent
down to find it in the cottage of Mother Hulda- that girl discovered a world far
below, and a quest for gold. All deep bodies of water have been seen as
passageways to the deep world, and the “Lady in the Well”- whether it be the
water-weird of that hole, or the manifestation of the Hidden One, or even the
ancient Earth Mother herself, they can be reached down those shafts with
messages- messages written on rocks, carved on clay or wax tablets, on lead
tablets, or what have you- messages that can be dropped down below, to her
waiting lap. Things in the deep can be spoken with, letters of desire can be
sent down to the deepest places of the world. Send offerings down with your
missives, and tie offerings to the nearby trees and shrubs, and watch this
oldest of magic come to life with the voice of the land and water.
VI.
The Grave Ditch

Some of the dead know a lot of things. Through death, they entered the
reversed world, the fullness of things in another way, and they may have met
many powers of wisdom- or terror. Some of the dead sleep lightly, others not
so. I’ve had good dreams of the dead, long after they went to rest, telling me
that they were still there, still concerned for the rest of us, but very happy
where they were, too. In the falling snowflakes, I’ve seen a bridge to the
dead, and I’ve had more dreams. When I needed advice about something of
urgent importance, I would always use the grave ditch conjuration to reach
out to the dead below the ground.

Going to the graveyard at night, on the same day of the week that my
beloved was buried (though the same day of the year would be ten times as
powerful) I’d dig a trench on top of their grave and fill it with red wine and a
drop of my blood. I’d thorn the earth in a small circle to the north of the grave
and surround myself with dust mingled with tiny bits of bread, and I’d pour a
small trickle-road of water from the grave to the southern tip of my circle. I'd
light a candle there and call my beloved’s name three times, then say it three
times backwards, blow out my candle and then lie down and go to sleep
inside my circle thus made. I’d wake up the next morning knowing just what I
needed to do.

VII.
Old Lady that Mommet

I turned a broom upside down, and made the bristles into hair- I even brought
in more twigs and straws to make more hair, and I made a face of clay up
there. It was a good likeness of the person that I intended to conjure. I tied
sticks for arms near the neck of the broom and dressed it up in clothes just
like she wears often, and I even managed to get a hair of hers, to add to the
head. I put the same sort of makeup that she wears on the clay-face, and I
sat the mommet at my table in my house, feeding it foods I knew she liked- I
prepared them just like I knew she liked them, and I left them there for the
entire time of the meal, taking her plates away when I took mine away. I
tucked old lady that mommet into bed at night, and walked it around outside
during the day. It lived with me for nine days, eating and sleeping.

On the first day of her existence, I baptized her and named her- on the ninth
day, the moon was dark, and I took Eleanor outside, wrapped her in her
winding sheet, and put her in the grave I had dug. I said the prayers for the
dead over that sad little grave, and even managed to weep a bit- but they
were tears of joy. Shovelfuls of earth later, she was in the ground, deservedly
resting.
VIII.
The Follower and the Way Down Below

I have run through the entire length of the damp woods behind Old Corbet’s
farm- many times. I go there to see the river, and feel away from it all- a
distance from the boring square blocks and grey streets of my town. There
are trails all throughout those woods, and after being away for a rainy
season, when it floods so high that you can’ get back there, there were new
trails made to explore. I managed to get lost, but I was able to find my way
back to Corbet’s farm.

There is an old gate looking into the woods in the back, and beyond that, old
barbed wire and posts that have seen better days. Into a long-unused pasture
I went, and then into a wild, overgrown orchard. The weird there was strange,
longing, exhausted. Peeking through the ruined fence on the side of that, I
gazed out into the main part of his land, the old barn staring back at me from
quite a distance. I could see the stream behind his farm from here, with all its
sleeping weirds, but I went back. I wanted to go by the stables before I
climbed back up the hill and walked home, but I had come here for a
purpose- to find a way down below.

There was a tree out here that I had used before- it had a natural cave at its
roots, and on wings of witch-sleep, I had crawled down it, and into another
world. Now, some power or another was binding me or blocking me, because
try as I might, I couldn’t find that old tree. I walked up and down the trail I did
know, but never did I see where the old tree was. So many trees had fallen
back here since the last floods, that I thought- and realized- that my old
underworld-tree had been taken. It was no longer there to give me
admittance into the world of the dead. I heard an owl calling across the river,
calling long and clear. He knew what I was doing, that Weird-bird of mine,
and he approved. He was going to make sure that I saw what I needed to see-
he was following me.

I went through the forest, off the trail a lot, until I saw my first sign: he was
looking at me, from the side of a tree. The rough wood on the side of the
tree, in a stripped bare area, was clearly formed into the face of an owl. Next
to it, a den of some animal vanished into the earth. Maybe that was a way
down below, but I felt inside that I should keep going. So I did.

The trail turned north, and I followed it, but it didn’t keep going to the back of
Corbet’s farm- it turned east, but it took me time to realize that this was a
new trail. I was about to turn back when I saw, in a small depression below
me, wide open ground and scattered cypress trees everywhere. One of them
had a large, dark, perfectly dome-shaped cave in it, and I knew I was
supposed to see it. I walked over to it, sat on the wet leaves and memorized
its every detail. This was the way down below. The invisible fetch-beast
following me had taken me straight there, after showing me his face in the
wood.

That night, I would lie down, the proper charms and protections conjured, and
on wings of conscious sleep, fly to the tree and enter it's cave. If it led all the
way down, I could find the pleasant country below, that country which is also
darker than inky shadow. And what mysteries await there? Even the wisest
cannot tell... I will go there to the source of all and converse with those whose
wisdom outstrips the sharpest of my world.

***

All Text On All Pages of this Treatise is Copyright © 2008 by Robin

Artisson.
All Rights Reserved.