You do not need to be stressed about the holidays. No, really, you don’t, but just saying that isn’t going to stop it. This blog gives five spiritual techniques to break down and transform the stress of the holidays. Last blog post, I focused on using food as talismans to bring about peace and tranquility. Hidden in that longer blog were many magical hints and practical magical lessons.
Unfortunately, most families will not just “let” you just get up and stretch to go outside (unless you are a smoker). I think many of us have the experience that family will barrage you with micro (or not so micro) aggressions if you do not comport to the implicit expectations and obligations of behaviors demanded of you. Realize two things. First, yes, some family members are trying to get under your skin. Second, you can control your reactions.
If you thought about it and have any contentious relationships in your family, interacting with family can be closer to work, especially in our post civility world. We would not work for 5 -6 hours with no breaks. Going to the bathroom is always fair game and no one will stop you. If anyone complains about the bathroom trips, you can just blame it on the booze and the coffee.
When you are in the bathroom, perform a banishing or centering. Any banishing or centering you know well can work. I will perform an astral version of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and do so in my astral temple. In Hands On Chaos Magic, I give an example of using “excretory magic” using all five of your senses to know the stress and negativity expelling from your body during the biological “bathrooming act”. Really the technique is simple, do the thing and as it’s happening just focus on the negativity draining as you do the thing. By “the thing”, I am sure you know what I mean. This technique is funny, but it is very effective.
When you are shopping or running errands, say at Target, take the time to have that mocha and build the time into your errand running for self-care. A simple method I use for errand running. Estimate the time in the holidays for running errands, double it and then use that extra time for “Me time” (either just sipping a cappuccino or sitting with a cappuccino and doing some sort of astral meditation/centering). For some of us, the crowds and their stress have a very negative effect. Remember to take care of yourself.
Reading that, I know some of you would say no no, I can’t. Repeat after me, I am worth it. Just keep repeating that for a while, then give yourself the time.
Gratitude practice is really all the rage in many new age circles. On the simplest side of things, gratitude practice could be just making sure to thank anyone and everyone that we have been directly or indirectly helped by (which is very effective). In the west, many pressures form around the holidays to spend more money (perhaps more then we have), to compare ourselves with others (and judge ourselves), and meet so many obligations.
For me, I want to give my kids what they want, but that appetite is sometimes insatiable. These obligations invite comparisons because it looks like other people are able to handle all of them easily. I can guarantee no one is meeting those obligations psychically unscathed, but the illusion is that we make everything work. Gratitude practice does bring in some Buddhist ideas into our daily practice, but allows us to instead focus on right now, and what is good right now in this moment. Here is one fast technique that can help.
Settle yourself in a relaxed posture. Take a few deep, calming breaths to relax and center. Let your awareness move to your immediate environment: all the things you can smell, taste, touch, see, hear. Say to yourself: “For this, I am grateful.”
Next, bring to mind those people in your life to whom you are close: your friends, family, partner…. Say to yourself, “For this, I am grateful.”
Next, turn your attention onto yourself: you are a unique individual, blessed with imagination, the ability to communicate, to learn from the past and plan for the future, to overcome any pain you may be experiencing. Say to yourself: “For this, I am grateful.”
Finally, rest into the realization that life is a precious gift. That you have been born into a period of immense prosperity, that you have the gift of health, culture and access to spiritual teachings. Say to yourself: “For this, I am grateful.”
Going along with the gratitude, inserting just a bit of novelty into our lives can greatly break stress and bring happiness. In my Shapeshifting Course, I talk about the need to shapeshift our routines to help cause neuro-plasticity to help break our own bad patterns. It turns out, our happiness also tends to lessen over time if we do the same actions or things that used to bring us happiness over and over. Psychology calls this hedonic adaptation. We simply have a neural mechanism to automate and stop paying attention to routine things and that means that the routine things that used to make us happy, stop doing so. In my Shapeshifting Course, I talk about how this can affect your magic as well.
Fortunately, small changes really can change this effect. Do you usually get your coffee with cream and use this as a break? Add cinnamon or another flavor you enjoy. Do you usually use a Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to banish negativity and find that it’s not really working as well anymore? Try some Chakra balancing. Work getting in the doldrums? Change the physical routine and order in which you do tasks. Holiday rituals getting super stressful? Change the normal menu or add a single thing to the menu.
Little or even one change to any routine can transform the routine allowing some of the happiness to return. As the Chinese say, “A single joy, dispels a thousand miseries.”
I carry a mala (it is like a rosary) with me all the time as well as a few talismans for the Lwa (being a Vodou priest and all). You might think I do this for protection or benefits, and that is partially true, but is much more than that. Taking these items are physical reminders that I have many friends in the spiritual sense. If you do magic and have these connections, remind yourself of them. Life (as we live it here in the US) tends to distract you until you forget.
I tend to connect to my “spiritual friends network” in my breaks, either in mantra work or mediation. Even if you cannot get to a formal alter while traveling, you can work with these spirits through things you have linked to the spirit. If it is small and was on your altar for a period of time, you can bet it has the right resonance. If you want to get into the mechanics of how to do this, Hands On Chaos Magic details this more thoroughly.
Even if you are able to do one of the 5 things, I promise you will see an improvement in your mood throughout the holidays and really let you experience the holidays in a more joyous fashion, despite any distractions which might give you a momentary stress hiccup.
Regardless of what you celebrate, Happy Holidays to you and yours!
Adding some spice to the season? Pull together some ginger, cinnamon, a little clove, some nutmeg, cardamom and allspice…sounds a bit like pumpkin pie recipe, doesn’t it? You will find some variant of this combination in many seasonal classics. In fact this one flavor probably means “Yuletide” more than any other taste of the holidays.
Various holiday teas in the author’s collection / Photograph by the author
Mulling Spices
This mixture of spice is commonly called either chai or mulling spice. Add this to soft cider, and warm the concoction in a crock-pot (set to low) for a non-alcoholic winter warming hot drink. Test the cider and add water to taste before you serve it, hot mulled cider is much sweeter than the cold variety. Float a slice or two of orange, some crab apples, and cinnamon sticks in the pot for seasonal zest.
I love this stuff, the flavor and the season both. I’m one of those folks who never really quit believing in Santa Claus, even as I wrap the kids’ gifts, signing off as the big guy himself and perpetuating the myth. It doesn’t matter, this time of year it’s gingerbread and tinsel, laughing all the way. You will find the mulling flavors in this children’s favorite. It is the spice that makes this digestive biscuit a viable building material for tabletop houses, replete with sugar icing for glue, Necco roof tiles and candy cane fencing. Everything else in that list relies upon copious amounts of sugar to keep the cottage safe from all but mice and tiny hands throughout the season. With gingerbread, it’s all about the spice.
Mulled wine uses this same base of spices to create a hot beverage that will have your guests coming back to refill time and again. The alcohol evaporates out of the heated wine rather quickly, but people think the kick is still in the Yule punch, so the effect of breaking social ice at a gathering is well served with such a beverage.
Spices
In the off season, I find myself thrown back into the holidays with a cup of chai tea. Although the blend of spices will vary in each kitchen producing the chai, there seems to be a list of favorites with a few slight variations. Checking the ingredients listed on the boxes in my tea cabinet, I found the following:
Holiday Chai
Rooibos
Cassia
Ginger
Cardamom
Black pepper
Chaucer’s Mulling Spices
Cinnamon
Orange Peel
Clove
Stash Chai Spice
Black tea
Cinnamon
Ginger root
Allspice
Clove
Cardamom
Okay, so that was an embarrassing variety, mostly because I should be using them up faster! These spices will lose pungency and potency over time. I know that many of these flavors came to Northern Europe via the trade routes followed by Marco Polo in the 13th Century and subsequently many, many others.
So many others in fact, they got sick of making the over-land journey, got in a boat and started looking all over the globe for another route. They found the Americas instead. Oh well, you win a few, you lose a few…
Chai
Chai just means tea in China. In the United States, the drink we commonly call Chai, is an import from East India officially known as Masala Chai. It has no fixed recipe but varies by region and household. Masala Chai is made with mulling spices, and can include also Almond, Rose, Fennel, Star Anise and Licorice root in the mix and is usually made with a base of black or green tea.
Let’s look at the magickal properties of chai and mulling spices, according to Cunningham, in alphabetical order:
Allspice: used to promote healing, attracts money and luck.
Almond: for money, prosperity, and wisdom.
Cardamom: is used in potions for love and lust.
Cinnamon: used for spirituality, success, healing, power, psychic powers, lust, protection, and love.
Clove: for spells of protection, exorcism, love, and money
Fennel: for protection, healing and purification.
Ginger: used to bring Love, Money, Success, and Power.
Licorice Root: for Lust, Love and Fidelity.
Nutmeg: for Luck, Money, Health, and fidelity.
Orange (peel): used for divination, and to attract Love, Luck, and money.
Rose: for Love, psychic powers, healing, Love divination, Luck, and protection.
Star Anise: Psychic powers, and Luck.
This list, after reading so many complimentary properties, must be a conjure that is many centuries old, for a very potent magickal holiday potion. Mix it up until you find the right proportions to make your own holiday magick. You will find the spices are flavorful enough to be used sparingly in foods like mincemeat and pumpkin pies. Go easy with clove and cinnamon especially as they can be quite powerful and sometimes overwhelm other flavors. Orange peel, ginger, nutmeg, are powerful allies we call to aid us in this spell-work for the New Year.
Marseille Tarot by Jean Noblet, 1650, reconstructed by Jean-Claude Flornoy (Photo: Camelia Elias)
You probably heard it before: you create true wealth when you enter all partnerships (business or family) on a premise that says you must pay it forward (with your trust and openness).
Now, while many know this, few practice it. The lack of practicing openness and easy going about it often has to do with making assumptions. Making assumptions rests on a premise of adopting a position of knowing, even all-knowing. Bad idea.
As experience shows, in order for partnerships to work, all knowing must be dropped. There is nothing we can ever know. All we can do is live and learn, and play close attention to acts and language.
As much of the fortunetelling business is precisely all about narratives of relationships, even if a relationship is with your own good self, we get to hear a lot about people’s anguish when they decide to do something together with others (make money or make children).
Here is a useful layout that I have designed in order to bring out what is unspoken in a contract.
The Pretended and the Hidden
Lay down three cards that tell you something about the situation at hand.
Place a card on top of that will tell you something about what the other pretends.
Place a card at bottom that will tell you something about what the other hides.
Just a note, before I proceed to give an example:
Why must we assume that the other pretends, or hides anything? Because, as I said, most partnerships lack the premise of paying it forward. Lust can be mistaken for love, the preservation of status-quo can be mistaken for family values, contributing to society can be mistaken for keeping up with the Joneses. Misunderstandings are more common than uncommon.
So people come to fortunetellers to get a sense of what is at stake in entering a partnership, and whether the condition for creating real wealth is honored and present.
Now, let’s look at an example that illustrates why consulting the cards can be a very good idea:
Someone wants to know about her partner’s motivations to start a business. The cards here are all read for this other person.
Marseille Tarot by Jean Noblet, 1650, reconstructed by Jean-Claude Flornoy (Photo: Camelia Elias)
Here’s what we get on the horizontal axis:
The Fool, The Emperor, The Devil
Straightforwardly we read this string like this:
The fool empowers himself and commands in hell.
This is not a good picture. The fact that the Emperor gets to cut deals under the table – the domain of the Devil’s underground – tells us something about his nature: Once a fool, always a fool.
The Fool may don an imperial costume, and he may even accomplish great things, but if the domain ruled over is hell, then we understand that this is not the fool we want in our family.
Let’s look at the cards on top (what is pretended? Temperance) and bottom (what is hidden? The World):
The partner here pretends to be a diplomat smoothing out all relations, and keeping things in balance. In reality, he hides a whole world.
To have the World card in this position is actually very bad news, as it means that no matter what assumptions you make about this person, none of them will turn out to be correct. When a world is hidden, it simply means that everything else above the horizon, in the realm of public manifestation, is an act, a pretense from A to Z that has no real value beyond pretense.
As with all things hidden, having a secret can be interesting. It makes things more romantic, if you’re the kind of person who favors narratives of emotions, but when everything is hidden, then you can be sure that there’s nothing you will be able to do in this partnership that will be the result of paying it forward in a mutual way.
Then, of course, as some secrets can be nasty, you can also expect to engage in making decisions that will affect what you have put yourself put into it that’s aligned with your desire for symmetrical relations, now dishonored.
So, a simple layout describing the situation, what is pretended and what is hidden, can disclose to what extent what you hope for in your partnership can be delivered and thus considered a thing of true value, creating value.
Good luck with your detective work. Digging into motives, yours and others, is always a revealing act. It makes you ask the ultimate question:
What is the real pay off, when misunderstanding is eliminated from the equation, when there’s room for something other than pretense, when not everything is hidden, when the domain ruled over is not one of darkness, but rather, one of clarity and openness?
In 1947, Protestant theologian Karl Barth introduced the phrase Ecclesia semper reformanda est — “the church is always to be reformed.” Barth used the phrase to express the Reformed conviction that the Christian Church must constantly examine itself and continue to evolve and reform; a teaching that thinks of the Reformation as a permanent state rather than an historic event. Since the Second Vatican Council, certain radical Catholic theologians like Hans Küng have also used the saying to express their desire for a Church that remains open to the world and to the spirit of the times. Pope Francis has in many ways resumed this spirit of dialogue and openness within the Church, especially when it comes to issues like poverty and climate change.
2.
Yet before the Second Vatican Council, before Karl Barth, and even before the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, there was a major philosophical, theological, and spiritual drive to reform the Church. This has been called, by some, the Hermetic Reformation. Its proponents saw it as a Universal Reformation — one that would transform all aspects of the Church and European society. Rather than a return to the Bible or to traditional Christian dogmas, this Reformation would be rooted in Hermetic philosophy, Renaissance Neoplatonism, and Christian Cabala — the primary sources of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
3.
Corpus Hermeticum: first edition, by Marsilio Ficino, 1471 CE, at the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam.
Marsilio Ficino, through his translations of the Hermetica, Plato, and Plotinus, provided a corpus of ancient wisdom that he and the other Renaissance philosophers believed to represent a prisca theologia, a perennial philosophy that stretched from Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus through Plato and Moses, all the way to Jesus Christ and the apostles. Ficino and his brilliant student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, thought that a return to this pristine theology would reform the Catholic Church and usher in a new golden age of utopian society, united under a philosopher-priest that some saw as an enlightened role for the Pope. Pico’s “manifesto of the Renaissance,” the Oration on the Dignity of Man, suggested that the human vocation, expressed through the universal tradition of the perennial philosophy, is a mystical vocation that joins together “moral transformation, intellectual research and final perfection in the identity with the absolute reality.”
4.
Ficino and Pico drew on Platonism, Neoplatonism, Hermetism, and Cabala to make their arguments for the prisca theologia andthe Universal Reformation of the Church and society. They also practiced a form of Christian natural magic, or astral magic — the drawing down of the powers of the stars and the astrological planets into talismans and other images. Ficino even suggested that it might be possible to create “a universal image, an image of the very universe itself,” in order to draw down the power of the whole macrocosm (Three Books on Life, 3.XIX). Inspired by the teachings of the Hermetic text the Asclepius, Ficino argued that such magic was acceptable for Christians because it worked with natural, created forces rather than through the use of demonic pacts or other supernatural feats. The more conservative elements of the Roman Catholic Church were not so sure — both Ficino and Pico suffered from periods of ecclesiastical censure, as well as patronage and support. It would be the more radical doctrines of Giordano Bruno, the later Hermetist and Neoplatonist who argued for a full return to the ancient Egyptian magical religion, which would be roundly condemned by the militant Counter-Reformation Church, leading to Bruno’s execution by burning at the stake in February 1600.
5.
Tommaso Campanella’s utopian “City of the Sun.”
As readers of Dame Frances Yates and other scholars of Hermetic philosophy know, however, the story didn’t end there. The Rosicrucian Manifestos, in their own unique post-Reformation context, provided a new esoteric key for the aspiration to Universal Reformation, and the traditions of utopian texts like Bacon’s The New Atlantis and Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun kept alive the dream of a new universal civilization ruled by an enlightened class of philosopher-priests.
6.
In this same seventeenth century milieu, John Amos Comenius, the Czech philosopher, pedagogue and Moravian theologian, a correspondent of Johann Valentin Andreae (author of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz), promoted the notion of Pansophy or Pansophism, a program of universal education and an attempt to organize all human knowledge. Comenius’ pansophic ideas prefigured the later encyclopedic movement of the eighteenth century, but were tinged with Hermetic and Rosicrucian concepts. As Manly P. Hall explains, Comenius’ concept of a Pansophic University “combines the function of a college and a temple … The plan is Utopian in the education field. … Through Pansophy the human being was to be led gently and wisely through the knowledge of things to the love and service of God, the source of all things.”
7.
“The Temple of the Rosy Cross is depicted on wheels, suspended from heaven by a cord, and surrounded with emblems relating to the foundation of the Society.”
The concept of Christian Pansophy was linked to the Utopian schemas of Bacon and Campanella, as well as to the Rosicrucianism of Andreae. One of the only previous uses of the term Pansophia, according to Hall, was in Frater Theophilus’ Rosicrucian tract Speculum Sophicum Rhodo-Stauroticum, which purported to give an “extensive explanation of the Collegium and of the rules of the specially enlightened Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians.” The Speculum is unique in that it contains a description of the Collegium Fraternitatus: “It is a building, a great building, without doors or windows; a princely, yes, imperial palace, to be seen from everywhere and still hidden from the eyes of men. … It is … so rich, so artistically and marvelously constructed that there is no art, science, riches, gold, precious stones, money, possessions, honor, authority and knowledge in the whole world which cannot be found in this most blessed palace in the highest degree.” As Hall concludes, in Theophilus’ description of the Collegium we have “a direct reference to a Pansophic College published nineteen years prior to the outline for such an institution with the same name prepared by Comenius.”
8.
Since the Renaissance era of Ficino, Pico, and Bruno, and the Rosicrucian era of Comenius, Andreae, Campanella, and the Manifestos, the prisca theologia has survived through the work of the esoteric orders, fraternal societies, and occult teachers of the Western Esoteric Tradition. Yet while mentions of Universal Reformation are still made in various currents of Western esotericism, these are usually vague overtures toward a coming New Age — the Era of the Holy Spirit during the French occult revival, the Age of Aquarius in the American 1960s, or the (unfulfilled) cosmic transformation of 2012. Some orders do suggest a program of reform or revolution — the Illuminati supported the Enlightenment ideals of the eighteenth century, while the moral philosophy and symbolism of Freemasonry may have indirectly influenced the French and American Revolutions. In the nineteenth century, groups like the Knights of Labor combined fraternal organization and ritual — influenced by Freemasonry — with the burgeoning national labor movement. And Ordo Templi Orientis, reorganized around the Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley, does hold some utopian notions of a future Thelemic society blossoming in the later years of the Aeon of Horus.
But few esoteric orders do much concrete work toward organizing such a massive reformation of human religious and civic institutions as that envisioned by Pico, Bruno, or the early Rosicrucians. The accumulation of the political and social power necessary for movement building is not a strong suit of occultists in general. Instead, a post-Jungian psychologizing and internalizing of esoteric doctrines has made Hermetic magic more of a Gnostic pursuit of inner knowledge, rather than a cosmogonic enterprise that would radically transform the entire macrocosm through the mediation of the microcosmic human being.
9.
Frater Achad’s Diamond of Manifestation, a symbol related both to his proclamation of the Aeon of Maat and to the doctrines of the Universal Brotherhood.
Yet one esoteric organization, founded in the early twentieth century and led for a time by Crowley’s “magical son,” Frater Achad, does propose to radically overhaul human society and aspires to transform the macrocosm into a perfect image of the One Ideal held in the mind of God for God’s creation: the Universal Brotherhood, also known as the Integral Fellowship or the Mahacakra (M.). As Achad explained in a 1925 letter to his student W.T. Smith, “The declared object of the M. is not alone to bring about a knowledge of God. The ‘objects’ of the Integral Fellowship are all the objects of all human beings in all their relationships … the most perfect possible collaboration with the Celestial Powers and with the Creative Intent … the Universal Terrestrial Realization of the Ideal, the deliberate carrying into effect and bringing to full fruition of the Divine and Macrocosmic Purposes” (Achad to W.T. Smith, March 12, 1925, WTS Papers).
To that end, the Universal Brotherhood carries out a program of “the study and diffusion of the Integral Truth and the methods of attaining and verifying it,” a process which includes “the building up of the Integral Fellowship which is Humanity itself so far as it has become normally & organically united” (ibid.). This aggregation and propagation of the Integral Truth and method of organizing humanity in a universal organization is highly reminiscent of past Hermetic schemes to create a Pansophic College, a universal city of philosophy, or a Church and society that has been totally reformed on lines laid out by the Renaissance philosophers. The concept of Integral Truth is also reminiscent of the prisca theologia — but it goes beyond that idea, as rather than advocating a return to a past golden age through embracing one form of perennial philosophy, to be truly “Integral” the Integral Truth must include all the truths contained within all systems of human knowledge and religion, organized and unorganized, as well as within every human being as such — a notion resembling Pico della Mirandola’s insistence that all human beings possess inherent dignity and the potential vocation of being philosopher-magi.
This is truly a system of macrocosmic transformation, a Universal Reformation working through the Providential embrace of all human knowledge, experiences, and expressions. As Frater Achad claimed, the U.B. is “macrocosmic in nature” — while other esoteric orders such as Crowley’s A∴A∴ are “microcosmic,” emphasizing as they do inner knowledge and the spiritual transformation of individual persons (Martin P. Starr, The Unknown God: W.T. Smith and the Thelemites, 142).
For those who are interested in this current of pansophic thought, in working to construct “a great building without doors or windows” which contains the spiritual knowledge of all of humanity, and who see the need for a Universal Reformation in human society — a need that is as great or greater today than it was in the era of Ficino and Pico, Andreae and Comenius — the work of the Universal Brotherhood continues in the twenty-first century.
As Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
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If you enjoyed this article, check out my new personal blog, The Light Invisible, for more pieces on Christian esotericism.
[Author’s Note: I usually write a witchy essay or pagan book review for this column, but I have been writing exposition constantly, so today I thought a magical diary entry might be more fun. We could get to know each other better if you also tell me about your day in the comments.]
Dear Agora,
Last night I declared my intentions for the next day and fell asleep after doing a relaxation meditation with my cat curled up on my lap. I woke up before my alarm and dozed a little between visualizing which potion supplies I needed to pack for a visit to a student apprentice’s house and where the supplies were put away. Once I had it all mapped out, I’d bought myself half an hour more sleep because I wouldn’t have to search.
I got up, dressed, put away laundry, and made a short devotion at my spirit altar. I made breakfast and packed lunch. Then I gathered all the herbs, spices, my fairy wooden spoon, wine, a glass jug and an airlock for setting my student’s new kitchen potions lab in the afternoon. Next I was off to my morning coven meeting.
Driving North the sky was too cloudy to see my beloved fire keeper, Mt. St. Helens. I’ve been thinking a lot about the landscape because of how important this place I’ve lived my whole life is to my animism and witchcraft.
An altar to Brighid / Photo by the Author
At coven, Amy, Erin and I caught up on all our personal news. Then we planned the Yule ritual celebration and talked about the sacred painting of Brighid we would create for our flame tending order Nigheanan Brìghde.
My coven sisters are part of my spiritual family and it revives my spirits through hard times to connect with them and they inspire me to work on important projects. Speaking of which, I had to return Amy’s basket she’d lent me so I could take ten pounds of persimmons last week. I really must get a batch of wine started with those!
We talked a lot about the spirits of local landscape that we work with: the mountains, rivers and sea and how fairy faith people worked with the landscape in Ireland. My favorite local mountain Mt. St. Helens is known by the regional Native American peoples to be the spirit of a beautiful woman who is an ancient firekeeper Loowit.
Cailleach at Carrowmore / Photograph by the Author
We told stories about the old hag Cailleach who spilled boulders from her apron as she flew across Ireland and Scotland carrying them. There was a drawing comical of her at An Cheathrú Mhór when I visited Ireland. The old lady winter shaped the land with her movements.
Queen Maeve is buried in a mountain standing up at Cnoc na Riabh. I think that story might mean that the mountain used to be a goddess version of Maeve and the story evolved into a war drama. I’d visited these places last year, but Erin has a better memory for Gaeilge names and places. Her reminders were very helpful for linking together loose ideas.
Onto my student’s house, I cuddled her cat until she got back from church. She is one of my patrons on Patreon, so I came by to teach her in person. I used up the last sprigs of my wormwood so we could make a bitter and visionary mulled wine.
Wormwood / Photo by the author
Luckily, as I was leaving, I noticed a big wormwood bush growing by her front door–a sure sign of a witch! She hadn’t known it was wormwood, so I showed her how bitter it was by tasting the leaves. We offered some of the mulled wine to Artemis of the Artemisia and the Green Fairy of the absinthium and I took one bunch of sprigs so I can make more wines until my plant gets new leaves in the spring.
Back home my neighbors were having a holiday party. I stopped in for free food and homebrewed wine. I browsed their books on local Native American legends for tales about nearby landscape features. After talking to the hosts for a little and eating dessert, I escaped back home to write you this tale.
So I guess now you know I’m an opportunist and how my days have magical themes. Today it was: local landscape, wormwood and wine.
P.S.
Did your day have any magic themes? What is most special to you about your landscape?
Winter can be an edgy time. Nature strips itself bare in the face of harsh conditions of darkness, cold, death and scarcity. The Winter Solstice is the darkest night of the year. These natural occurrences can trigger our primal fears of darkness, death, and the loss and suffering that come with our mortality.
Our winter-season spiritual work can also be edgy as we turn inward to the dark, hidden places in our inner landscape, and come up against the painful, vulnerable parts of our life story.
It’s this very edginess that makes Winter one of the most powerful times of the year for transformational pathwork. Winter is the season of the Dark Goddess and Her rebirth magic. From darkness and death, new light and life are reborn. From the dark night of our personal wounding, we reclaim and rebirth our true, beautiful Self.
Here are four transformational lessons for your personal rebirth magic in the winter season.
1. Your personal rebirth magic arises from the depths of your inner darkness.
Rebirth is a potent magic. It offers profound transformational change that can make your life anew. This magic doesn’t come from an outside source, nor from the things you already know and understand about yourself and your life. Rebirth is a special kind of transformative magic that emerges from the lost, forgotten and denied parts of your life story, secreted away in the dark folds of your inner landscape.
In Winter, Nature reveals the powerful workings of the Dark Goddess’s rebirth magic. Beneath the outer dormancy and death of the natural realm, the seeds of Spring’s new growth gestate in the dark belly of the Earth. On the Winter Solstice, the darkest night births forth the light of the new solar year. Life and light are reborn from death and darkness.
So too the seeds of your personal rebirth magic gestate in the depths of your inner darkness. Here you can discover the lost parts of your life story that hold the seeds of your beauty and wounding that are stirring at this time, waiting for the awakening touch of your conscious awareness and love.
Together these seeds can illuminate and guide your healing and personal growth in the months to come. When you find and reclaim your wounding, you awaken and reclaim your beauty. Just as life and light are reborn from death and darkness, so too your true beauty is reborn from your deep wounding — this is the personal rebirth magic that can make your life anew.
2. Your wounded self is your ally, not your enemy, on your journey of soul.
When you turn to your inner darkness in search of the deep roots of your healing and personal growth, you’re going to encounter your wounded self. This is the part of you that carries your experiences and stories of loss, pain and sorrow, as well as your personal dysfunctions and tangled emotions related to your wounding experiences.
Our culture teaches us to fear and repress our wounding, and to run as fast as we can in the other direction. Yet none of this works, and will only block and delay your healing and personal growth.
Your wounded self isn’t your enemy. It’s the part of you that is the guardian and protector of your beauty, and the tender, vulnerable places inside of you. It learned how to cope, and sometimes even thrive, in the face of adversity. It remembers the truth of what happened to you, and the lost stories that can heal and set you free.
To embrace your rebirth magic is to make an ally of your wounded self. This part of you has suffered on your behalf, and deserves your love and tender attention. As your cherished partner on your journey of soul, your wounded self can guide your way through a painful, limiting past and into a new, more positive and empowering future.
3. To transform your life, you need to cultivate inner emptiness: a silent, fertile space of what else is true and possible.
If you truly want to transform your life, you need to learn to cultivate inner silence and emptiness. Profound change, the kind the can make your life anew, happens when you step past the stuff-filled space of what you know, and your busy, noisy mind, into the open, empty space of greater truth and possibilities.
The rebirth magic of the Dark Goddess requires you to show up to the raw, naked truth of your life story, beyond illusion, mind, ego and judgments. Nature in Winter is a living example of this inward-focused state of deep silence and stillness, with its outer manifestations stripped bare and dormant.
When you achieve this inner emptiness, you also become your own sacred witness — a silent, loving presence that watches whatever shows up in your inner emptiness, with curiosity, compassion, respect and gratitude. The silent witness doesn’t judge, take action or seek resolution.
Though these skills aren’t easy to master, they’re invaluable to your spiritual pathwork, and the ongoing challenges of your everyday life. What happens in this convergence of inner emptiness and sacred witness is transformational magic: whatever you need to focus on in your life, right now, shows up to guide your healing and personal evolution.
4. Whatever shows up is your work of soul at this time.
You are master of your own journey of soul, working at the level of depth and pace that are right for you. Self-care and self-responsibility are essential to your spiritual pathwork. And you always have a choice whether or not to do the soul work that shows up in your inner emptiness and explorations of your inner darkness. But you don’t control what shows up.
Spiritual pathwork isn’t always pretty or easy. Death, endings, loss, wounding, shadow — these are part of our human experiences, and the reality that governs all things of the living Earth. Try as we might, we can’t escape them. Instead, we need to embrace these aspects of our soul work as our teachers and guides in the hard, wondrous pathwork of healing and transformation.
Life is meant to be a tricky, bumpy business. Great beauty, wisdom, complexity and resilience can emerge from the depths of our struggles. And sometimes things have to end, to die, for something new to be born. This is just how things are, inevitable, inescapable and essential for our healing and personal growth.
In your rebirth pathwork, honor that whatever shows up is your soul work at this time. Let your wounding and your beauty inform and guide your spiritual journey in the months to come. Expect things to be messy, challenging and confusing, as well as inspiring, breathtaking and life changing. Your life story, everything you’ve experienced, the beautiful and the wounding, matter; it’s the very stuff of your rebirth magic that can mend your soul and make your life anew.
If you’d like to further explore your personal rebirth magic with the Dark Goddess, check out the latest offering in the Path of She Guided Journey Series – A Winter Journey: Your Rebirth Magic.
The Winter Journey includes seven lessons with integrated teachings, exercises, and journaling tasks in two pdf ebooks: the Winter Journey Guidebook and Winter Journey Journal, and the Winter Journey Guided Meditation (mp3 audio).
The Path of She is published on alternate Saturdays; follow it via RSS or e-mail! If you like Karen’s work, like her page on Facebook or maybe buy her book, Tale of the Lost Daughter, a fictional spiritual adventure into the life-changing world of magic and the sacred feminine.
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As a polytheist, I’ve found that they are many challenges involved with being a woman dedicated to Freyr. One of my biggest issues with Him, and one of the reasons it took me so long to come back to Him, was the myth of how He won his jotun wife, Gerda. It’s a fascinating story told in the form of an old-fashioned narrative ballad (unlike most of the surviving tales), and at first glance it doesn’t really portray Him in a very positive light.
The story, the Skirnismal (from the Poetic Edda), goes like this:
The Introduction
One day, Freyr decides to sit on Hlidskjalf from where he could see all of the things that were happening in all of the Nine Worlds. He sees a beautiful jotun maiden with flashing white arms (“her arms shine, and from them all air and see take light”—Larrington trans.) walking from her father’s home to her garden. He falls violently in love with her, and starts moping.
Njord and Skadi notice that he appears angry, and ask his friend/servant Skirnir to go find out why. He explains that he sat on Odin’s chair and saw Gerd, the female that he loves, but he is upset because he knows that “of all of the gods and all the elves, no one wishes that we should be together”. Skirnir offers to go woo Gerd for him, but only if he gives Skirnir the horse that leaps through fire and the sword that fights by itself. Freyr agrees, and gives Skirnir his horse and sword. Skirnir leaves as soon as it is dark.
Skirnir arrives at Gerd’s home but is met with three barking dogs and a shepherd standing on a mound nearby. He asks the shepherd how he should get in to talk with Gerd. The shepherd says that he’ll never be able to, so why bother trying? Skirnir says that he can’t just sit there sobbing about it—he has to try.
Gerd, for her part, hears the commotion outside and asks her handmaiden to see what’s going on. She describes Skirnir, and Gerd tells her to let Skirnir in so she can offer her visitor some mead. She is worried, however, than he is her brother’s killer (no context is given for this comment, unfortunately).
The Meeting
Skirnir woos Gerd / Charles E. Brock
Skirnir comes in. Gerd asks him what race he is (elf, or Aesir, or Vanir) and why he has come to see her. He doesn’t explain who he is, but he says that he is neither elf nor a member of the Aesir or Vanir, and he starts off attempting to woo forthwith. First he offers her eleven golden apples (or some of Idunn’s apples, depending on the translation) if she will say that Freyr “is not the most loathsome man alive”. She says that her desires will not be bought and that she will never settle down with Freyr.
Skirnir then offers what must ostensibly be Draupnir, Odin’s golden arm-ring that drops eight identical rings every nine nights. She replies that she will not accept it; she has all of the gold she needs here in her father’s hall.
Skirnir then shows her Freyr’s sword, and threatens to cut off her head. Again, she is unswayed, saying “coercion I shall never endure at any man’s desire”, and that her father would kill him if he tried.
Gerðr refuses Skírnir’s offer of eleven golden apples and the ring gift as illustrated (1895) / Lorenz Frølich – Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
The Threats
Finally, Skirnir threatens to use his “taming wand” on her, and lists a long, creative, and detailed set of curses that he will give her. This last part threatens her with everything a woman DOESN’T want: to become a spectacle (or completely ignored); to have her money, independence, and social status taken away; to be so filled with unbearable lust that she will debase her self in front of an ugly giant; and to made to be a beggar at the gate of Hel with only goat’s piss to drink. (I know it’s my heart’s desire to avoid having all of this happen to me, anyway.) He ends his tirade with this curse:
“I write thee a charm and three runes therewith,
Longing and madness and lust;
But what I have writ I may yet unwrite
If I find a need therefor.”
At this, Gerd changes her mind and offers him a glass of the ancient mead, saying that she never thought she would love a Vanir. Before he leaves, Gerd agrees to meet Freyr in nine nights at sheltered a grove of trees that they both know, called Barri.
As soon as he returns, Freyr demands to know the result of his quest. Skirnir tells him that Gerd will meet him in nine days. Freyr, appalled, says that he can barely stand waiting one night without her, much less nine nights.
You can probably see how this myth does not portray Freyr in a good light. Here he is, a virile fertility god associated with peace and kingship, who had to resort to some really nasty coercive techniques to get a jotun maiden to marry him. Carolyne Larrington, in her article about the desire and gender dynamics in the Skirnismal, called “What Does Woman Want?” gets to the heart of it: “Few critics have faced squarely the problem offered by a poem which asks its audience to accept and to identify with a hero who coerces a woman into having sex with him.” (4) Granted, it wasn’t Freyr doing the actual coercing, but that doesn’t really absolve Him. No matter how you slice it, it’s coercion.
The Archetypal Analysis
In the archetypal viewpoint, most of these specific details don’t matter. Freyr, as a fertility god and the God of the sun, summer, and “good seasons” represents the coming of Spring. Gerd, associated as she is with frost-giants, protected in her father’s house and unwilling to change her situation represents the cold, hard ground of winter. Skirnir’s “wooing” is really just an increasingly aggressive reminder that Spring will come. Freyr is the inexorable coming of Spring, in every possible way that it can come.
The Polytheist Analysis
The polytheist analysis, however, focuses very specifically on these details. These details can really help us understand more about the Gods we honor. So when I, as a feminist polytheist dedicant of Freyr read the gnarly details of this myth, I run headlong into a rather painful wall of cognitive dissonance. My choices are to either to a) find a way to make it work within my worldview, or b) start looking or a new God to honor.
Filling in the Gaps
When I come to myths like these, I often use a Myth Embodiment exercise to make sense of it all. My previous group, the Vanic Conspiracy, being filled as it was with several feminists who also had initially balked at working with Freyr, did a myth embodiment for the Skirnismal several years ago.
First, as Larrington points out, Gerd’s voice is almost non-existent in the poem. One of the great things a myth embodiment can do is to fill in for those characters who are silent. Let’s try to see this myth from her perspective, shall we?
Gerd is a jotun woman, a Lady of her Hall, who, as far as we know, is living quite contentedly in her father’s lands. She has plenty of money, handmaids to help care for her, and a father who will protect her. As far as we know, all of her wants and needs are being met. Out of the blue, some unidentifiable male comes leaping over her hall’s flaming walls wishing to speak with her (and possibly killing her brother in the process). She offers him the mead, as is customary for a guest, but instead he immediately starts negotiating for her hand in marriage to a leader of an enemy tribe. He insults her by offering her gold (as if she could be bought!) and threatening to behead her. She appears annoyed—but not truly threatened—by this. Seeing that he is losing this battle, he threatens to “tame her” using his taming wand, offending her even further.
(Who wants to be tamed by a taming wand? Seriously. I mean, with prior consent, maybe. But still.)
In the VC’s embodiment, We debated this next section for a while before coming up with one possible solution: Gerd is a jotun. Jotun culture is something like Klingon culture—strength and self-reliance are valued above all things. Jotuns are not terribly bound up by sensitive human-like morals and conscience; they want to know if you can destroy or trick your enemies and protect your land. Gerd, at her father’s house, is completely protected and taken care of (or so she thought). Therefore, anyone who sought her hand in marriage would have to prove that he was at least as much of a bad-ass as her father. She is unaffected by the gold and the sword that fights by itself, but She respects the power of the magic that Skirnir threatens to wield against her. She doesn’t have any protection against that. So, in her mind, Skirnir (and by proxy, Freyr) have proven his strength and might, and therefore his right to take her to Freyr to be his wife.
It’s a mostly convincing argument, but it still leaves me a tad uneasy. Which is where my actual experiences with Freyr come in to play.
The author’s Gerd and Freyr altar / Photo by the author
My Personal Experience Narrative
Luckily, my actual experiences with Freyr have been of a very loving and comforting deity, not a creepy and coercive one. Unlike His sister, Freya, He is a more introverted being who brings stability, fecundity, and emotional sensitivity along with the His passion. As in this myth, He mopes. He feels longing. In my experience, He is unaware of the power of His presence and is horrified that He sometimes overwhelms His followers accidentally. He is, in many ways, the softer, gentler version of Freya, a description that fits in well with his Viking Age priests, who were also said to be “unmanly” (ergi). Unlike Freya, he descends. Many of us modern worshipers see Him as going “into the Mound” (as do several prosperous kings of old named Frodi). This usually happens sometime after the Fall Equinox. He arises again in the Spring.
This all is not to say that He can’t also be extremely pushy. As in the archetypal analysis, he isthe inexorable coming of Spring, as a number of my Freyr-devoted friends have pointed out. He IS the energy that forces crocuses to sprout through the snow and bloom, that makes leeks grow strong and wide and tall in February, and reminds the animals that it’s time to start getting it on. That is his energy, and, like that energy, He can be very overwhelming. However, it is nothing like the creepy coercion that Skirnir threatens Gerd with. In my interactions with Her, few though they’ve been, my sense is that She is fine where She is and that She loves Him very much. In fact, She seems to provide a nice counterbalance for his energy and sensitivity, and She keeps the Hall running while he is away.
Long story short, myths don’t always portray the Gods accurately. However, Knowing Your Lore is a great place to start.
Works cited:
Larolyne Larrington. “What Does Woman Want?” Mær und munr in Skírnismál*. From A Handbook to Eddic Poetry: Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia, ed. Larrington, Judy Quinn, and Brittany Schorn. Cambridge University Press: 2016.
Not so long ago, Yule was as much a chilling season of Ghosts, Monsters, Imps, and Uglies as it was a festival of goodwill. Lets open that ancient door, as the moonlight glitters off the holly leaves and also welcome the darker spirits that dart among the boughs.
Krampus and Scrooge’s three Christmas ghosts aren’t the only Dark Spirits of Yule.
When you hear the rooftop, and tinkling bells with that gruff “Ho ho” you might just find the Wild Hunt instead of Santa’s sleigh.
Saturnalia
Saturnalia was an ancient Roman festival in honour of the deity Saturn, held on 17 December of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to 23 December.
It was a period of general merrymaking and was the predecessor of Christmas.
The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms. Gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves.
Role-playing was implicit in the Saturnalia’s status reversals, and there were hints of mask-wearing or “guising”. Gambling and dice-playing, normally prohibited or at least frowned upon, were permitted for all, even slaves. Rampant overeating and drunkenness became the rule, and a sober person the exception.
The Lord of Misrule
The King of the Saturnalia ruled as master of ceremonies for the proceedings. He was appointed and compared to the medieval Lord of Misrule at the Feast of Fools. His capricious commands, such as “Sing naked!” or “Throw him into cold water!”, had to be obeyed by the other guests since he creates and misrules this chaotic and absurd world.
Trolls
The Trolls and the Gnome Boy / John Bauer 1909 – Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
In Sweden, it’s believed that trolls travel freely through the countryside from dusk on Christmas Eve until dawn on Christmas morning. For this reason, it is common practice there, to stay indoors during those hours.
A tomte, is a mythological creature from Scandinavian folklore today typically associated with the winter solstice and the Christmas season. It is generally described as being no taller than three feet, having a long white beard, and wearing a conical or knit cap in red or some other bright color. They often have an appearance somewhat similar to that of a garden gnome.
Kallikantzaroi
A Goat-footed Kallikantzaros / ΟΕΔΒ 1961 – Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
The kallikantzaros or kallikantzaroi is a malevolent goblin in Southeastern European and Anatolian folklore. Stories about the kallikantzaros or its equivalents can be found in Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Turkey. Kallikantzaroi are believed to dwell underground but come to the surface during the twelve days of Christmas, from 25 December to 6 January (from the winter solstice for a fortnight during which time the sun ceases its seasonal movement).
Kallikantzaroi are believed to be creatures of the night. According to folklore, there were many ways people could protect themselves during the days when the kallikantzaroi were loose. One such method was to leave a colander on their doorstep to trick the visiting kallikantzaros. It was believed that since it could not count above two – three was believed to be a holy number, and by pronouncing it, the kallikantzaros would supposedly kill itself – the kallikantzaros would sit at the doorstep all night, counting each hole of the colander, until the sun rose and it was forced to hide.
Another supposed method of protection from kallikantzaroi was to leave the fire burning in the fireplace, all night, so that they could not enter through it. In some areas, people would burn the Yule log for the duration of the twelve days. In other areas, people would throw foul-smelling shoes into the fire, as the stench was believed to repel the kallikantzaroi and thus force them to stay away. Additional ways to keep them away included marking one’s door with a black cross on Christmas Eve and burning incense.
According to legend, any child born during the twelve days of Christmas was in danger of transforming to a kallikantzaros during each Christmas season, starting with adulthood. It was believed that the antidote to prevent this transformation was to bind the baby in tresses of garlic or straw, or to singe the child’s toenails. According to another legend, anyone born on a Saturday could see and talk with the kallikantzaroi. What set the kallikantzaroi apart from other goblins or creatures in folklore was that they were said to appear on Earth for only twelve days each year.
Christmas Werewolves
Legend has it that animals can speak on Christmas Eve. Don’t listen for them though, the same legend says it’s unlucky to hear them!
Of all the odd customs, traditions, and legends associated with Christmas around the world, none seems odder than the werewolves of Yule.
According to 15th century Swedish traveler, diplomat, writer, and cleric Olaus Magnus, in Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania werewolves had a party on Christmas night, and then issued forth to “rage with wondrous ferocity against human beings… for when a human habitation has been detected by them isolated in the woods, they besiege it with atrocity, striving to break in the doors and in the event of doing so, they devour all the human beings, and every animal which is found within.”
Another Baltic belief of the time was that “at Christmas a boy lame of leg goes round the country summoning the devil’s followers, who are countless, to a general conclave. Whoever remains behind, or goes reluctantly, is scourged by another with an iron whip… The human form vanishes and the whole multitude becomes wolves.”
In the Netherlands Sinterklaas, a Dutch Santa, like Saint Nicholas, is old and bearded but he never goes anywhere without his sidekick Black Peter whose job it is to stuff naughty children in his sack and carry them off. He’s dressed in a brightly colored cap and resembles a Moorish page boy. It’s Black Peter’s job to go up and down the sooty chimneys to fill the children’s shoes so that Saint Nicholas won’t soil his costly bishop’s robes.
In the attic of homes in Denmark are elves called Juul Nisse. Children leave out saucers of milk or rice pudding for them and are delighted to find the food gone on Christmas morning. As a kind of rent payment, I suppose, they hide presents around the home on Christmas Eve, to be discovered the next morn.
They are elder hearth spirits of elfin origin who live in dark corners, in attics or stables, or under the stairs, to emerge on Christmas Eve while the inhabitants of the house are sleeping, and later to feast on the porridge that the children have left out for them and to hide Christmas packages in unexpected places. In some areas of Sweden, Jultmoten the Gift-Bringer is a gnome whose sleigh is drawn by the Julbocker.
The Wild Rider, Wild Huntsman of Winter
Across Europe, the Wild Hunt appears at various times of the year, but most commonly over the Yule season. This is not surprising as Yule was regarded as the season in which supernatural visitations were most common. In particular, the spirits of the dead were allowed to return.
“When the winter winds blow and the Yule fires are lit, it is best to stay indoors, safely shut away from the dark paths and the wild heaths. Those who wander out by themselves during the Yule-nights may hear a sudden rustling through the tops of the trees – a rustling that might be the wind, though the rest of the wood is still.
“But then the barking of dogs fills the air, and the host of wild souls sweeps down, fire flashing from the eyes of the black hounds and the hooves of the black horses”
Kveldulf Hagen Gundarsson (Mountain Thunder)
The form of the Wild Hunt, or Raging Host, varied across each of the geographical locations/ in which the tradition was found. But the basic idea was generally the same – a phantasmal leader, accompanied by a horde of hounds and men, hurtled through the night sky, their passing marked by a tumultuous racket of pounding hooves, howling dogs and raging winds.
Cert
Fear is alive and well among Czech children on the eve of Saint Nicholas, known to them as Angels and Devils night and the star of Angels and Devils Night is a horned demon named Cert who looks rather like an upright goat but has the face and hands of a man, and who’s foot-long scarlet tongue will prevent you from ever mistaking him. His wrists are linked by iron chains and he carries a birch switch in one hand one and an empty basket on his back. Thanks to Cert, Czech children do not have to wait until Christmas Eve to get what’s coming to them. They might be carried off to Hell as early as December 5!
Knecht Ruprecht
German and dresses like a Trappist monk. He has been recited before many a German Tannenbaum on Christmas Eve. He wears a black or brown robe with a pointed hood, and might even carry a rosary. He is always bearded and soot smudged, and carries a bundle of birch twigs.
He can be seen carrying a long staff and a bag of ashes, and on occasion wears little bells on his clothes. Sometimes he rides on a white horse, and sometimes he is accompanied by fairies or men with blackened faces.
According to tradition, Knecht Ruprecht asks children whether they can pray. If they can, they receive apples, nuts, and gingerbread. If they cannot, he beats the children with his bag of ashes. In other versions of the story, Knecht Ruprecht gives naughty children gifts such as lumps of coal, sticks, and stones, while well-behaving children receive sweets from Saint Nicholas. He also can be known to give naughty children a switch (stick) in their shoes for their parents to beat them with, instead of candy, fruit and nuts, in the German tradition.
In related folk traditions more closely associated with certain regions of High-Alpine Europe, particularly the snowy villages south and west of Salzburg in Austria, the Knecht Ruprecht character functions as St. Nicholas’ assistant, rather than as the primary actor in the early December rituals; keeping a watchful eye on the benevolent saint during his journey. Both are, in turn, accompanied in these regions by an assortment of terrifying horned, goat-like creatures known as the “Krampus”, who seek out and terrorize misbehaving children identified by St. Nicholas for punishment.
Bellsnickle
Modern day Belsnickel in his travel attire on his way to scare children in the schools in Norwich, New York. December 2012 / Peptobismolman1- CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons
Bellsnickel is a crotchety, fur-clad Christmas gift-bringing figure in the folklore of the region of southwestern Germany along the Rhine, the Saarland, and the Odenwald area of Baden-Württemberg. The figure is also preserved in Pennsylvania Dutch communities.
Bellsnickel is a man wearing furs and sometimes a mask with a long tongue. He is typically very ragged and disheveled. He wears torn, tattered, and dirty clothes, and he carries a switch in his hand with which to beat naughty children, but also pocketsful of cakes, candies, and nuts for good children.
In Lower Austria he is sometimes followed by Krampus, covered with bells and dragging chains.
Belsnickel was known in Pennsylvania in the early 1800s. Amongst the Pennsylvania Dutch, Belsnickel is the character who visits homes prior to Christmas to check up on the behavior of the children. The traditional Belsnickel showed up at houses 1–2 weeks before Christmas and often created fright because he always knew exactly which of the children misbehaved. He would rap on the door or window with his stick and often the children would have to answer a question for him or sing some type of song. In exchange he would toss candies onto the floor. If the children jumped too quick for the treats, they may end up getting struck with Belsnickel’s switch.
Yule Lads of Iceland
The Yuletide-lads, Yule Lads, or Yulemen, are figures from Icelandic folklore who in modern times have become the Icelandic version of Santa Claus. Their number has varied throughout the ages, but currently they are considered to be thirteen. They put rewards or punishments into shoes placed by children in window sills during the last thirteen nights before Christmas Eve. Every night, one Yuletide lad visits each child, leaving gifts or rotting potatoes, depending on the child’s behaviour throughout the year.
Stallo resembles the troll of Swedish fairytale, with a huge nose, tiny eyes and knotted black hair. He has magical abilities and actually only half troll, the other half is human.
In the folklore of the Sami, a Stallo is a large human-like creature who likes to eat people and who therefore is usually in some form of hostilities with a human. Stallos are clumsy and stupid, and thus humans often gain the upper hand over them. The Vindelfjällen Nature Reserve contains the remains of ancient, large building foundations, considered by the Sami to be the remains of Stallone dwellings. There is also a huge stone placed on some small pebbles on top near Lake Giengeljaure named stalostenen, which literally means stone Stallo. Legend dictates that a Stallo would have placed a stone here to prove his strength.
Trows
A squat, misshapen fairy dressed entirely in gray creeps along a misty landscape on a Shetland Island. They dress in gray to blend in. They only go out during the hours of darkness to visit the Islanders cottages as soon as humans have gone to bed and like to warm themselves by the fire and are mortally offended to find a locked door. To this day islanders leave their house is unlocked so ass not to anger the Trows. Especially fond of music and dancing , the Trows great festivals are Yule and Midsummer, u when they leave the mounds and can be seen performing a lopsided crouching and hopping dance called the henking. Trows kidnap human children and leave changelings in their place. Even now islanders will refer to someone who looks pale or ill as a trowie.
Jack Frost
Everyone knows Jack Frost, the winter fairy who scatters ice in his wake making the trees and grass sparkle like diamonds. He paints windowpanes with the elaborate frozen patterns, he nips people’s noses, fingers, and toes in his chilly grip. He dresses entirely in white, with icicles dripping from his clothes. Jack Frost is a creature from English folklore and he is the personification of the spirit of winter weather. One of a large number of fairies who control the weather: wind, storm, rain and lightning.
Thatched houses along a narrow street of a village, on a winter’s night, with the snow falling steadily. It is silent, but then you hear a strange laugh. The prince of the winter fairies, with mischievous delight, he paints an intricate pattern on each cottage window, while all are tucked up in bed.
Father Frost
In Russia Father Frost, soul of winter who’s ice embrace brings death to helpless travelers, he slips from tree to tree snapping his fingers causing them to be covered with Frost and he is a Smith binding water and earth together with heavy chains. A sly and clever liar, he embodies winter. A mighty spirit in a country where when the weather is at its coldest your breath may freeze as it leaves your lips and hit the ground at your feet in a tinkling shower of tiny icicles.
You see, in the stories of the fairies, and in their activities we can trace remnants of the religion of the old Gods.
Foletti
Have you heard of Wind Knots? There are mischievous weather fairies called Foletti in Italy and these Wind Knots are slender, elfin creatures who love to raise storms so that they can travel on the wind. They can be cruel, rousing destructive storms that ruin the harvest, cause rivers to break their banks and blizzards to strike. They also whirl up the dust in miniature tornadoes. Some of the Foletti look like little boys who wear silk hats and shake castanets. They ride on whirlwinds and get into houses through cracks, where they cause all sorts of rattling noises. While many of them are well intentioned, some are more sinister. Another species is called Grandinili and brings hail, although they can be driven off by the ringing of church bells.
♦ ♦ ♦
Yule truly exemplifies the great darkness before the dawn and before the growing light takes hold. A time to purge ourselves of that which is no longer useful, and an opportunity to make room to receive all the gifts of the returning light.
Since the show Westworld stole my main analogy for mysticism, I thought I’d share the analogy that came to me while in devotional practice. It is important to distinguish between a maze and a labyrinth when comparing my analogy to the TV show: a maze has dead ends while a labyrinth does not. In the show, the “maze” was an allegory for artificial intelligence, and the artificial humans who got to the center of the maze, fully traversed the process of achieving full sentience. Bernard in the show states, “Each decision brings you closer to the center, or further away from the center into madness.”
So what is the Lamp and the Labyrinth after which this column is named?
This is precisely how I see self-realization, self empowerment, and shadow work. In an Indo-European context, this is something that I call finding your Sovereignty Seat, your seat of power. While there are mysteries along that path, the labyrinth causes you to circle back and spiral in, revisiting past events from new angles and new perspectives.
The labyrinth has ordeals, mysteries, and puzzles; the walls move and change like the clouds. It is multidimensional; you exist within it on the physical level but it also represents the map of all thinking. It’s the questions you ask yourself in order to become new things. Some parts of the labyrinth are treacherous and keep you spiraling inward or turning back on yourself.
In several visions and ecstatic practices I’ve experienced, I can’t help but see my thoughts as a place–a dimension–that is being constructed, as if the thoughts were blocks set into place to be read by possible multi-dimensional immortal deities. These are parts of the labyrinth, the place that represents my thoughts.
The lamp that you carry is your observation–your awareness–but above all, it’s radius is proportional to your degree of lucidity. If your lamp light is dim, you won’t even realize you’re circling back, seeing a cycle from a new angles. For these folks, it is easy to move back and forth in the labyrinth without ever gaining ground or progress. While folks with a bright lamp might even be able to see over walls and progress very quickly. Increasing your lamp light, reaching your positions of power, unlocking the mysteries which include empathy, compassion, and interconnection–these things increase the will manifesting power of the Mage.
The Back Brain
I’ve learned over the years that as you move toward knowing, you also move away from knowing. When you can see new things, you lose the ability to see old things. Fintan Mac Bochra is Ard Brehon, the Otherworld God, likely standing for Agni and Odin in the act of creation from dismemberment of a Giant. He had the ability to shut off his back brain–the inchinn cúil–though mystic practice, or he’s the deity of the Fili who could do just that.
“As J. Carey informs me, the ray that goes to the back of Fintan’s head may be connected with the statement in Cath Maighe Rath that it was specifically the loss of his inchinn cúil ‘back brain’ which gave Cenn Faelad his powers of heightened remembrance (O’Donovan 1842: 282.6).” <http://uir.ulster.ac.uk/25529/1/00-214_StudiaCeltoSlavica6_c.pdf>
I’ve shut off my back brain only about five times in various ways. When doing so, the wisdom of illumination is there and I can see the entire analogy of labyrinth at once. When I come back, I can barely remember any of it. I’ve brought back like two or three real bites of wisdom out of a vast sea. Just like in the descent of Inanna, Ereshkigal will whoop your ass if you go into the underworld with ego; there are more negative things to accept about ourselves than wisdom we can bring back. So, for the novice, or the weak egoed, this experience seems like a bad trip. You have to go in wearing your insignificance, and you’ll be comforted.
But, you can see the inconsistent parts of yourself and rearrange the walls in this state. You can not only change the labyrinth in your favor, you can then achieve good progress on your journey to be a master of yourself, your beliefs and excuses which impede you, and a master at all the skills to which you have talents.
So when the final episode of Westworld jacked me for my metaphorical goods, I was more pleased than anything. As a hack-together programmer and a reverse engineer of various sciences, I found the Bicameral Mind philosophy to apply here.
You are the carrier of the lamp; you are also the labyrinth. The labyrinth is the parts of you which you have to work through everyday just to be you. Because you are closed off from your subconscious, you are unlikely realize how much work this is for you. But, if you drink from the head of the five streams and not the mouth, you get a glimpse of how massive your mind really is.
So, when we try to become happy and express ourselves toward those ends, we’re being the carrier of the lamp. When we make excuses based on fear and anxiety, which I do as I’m diagnosed with GAD, we’re being the listener and obey-er, rather than the speaker. You’re being the walls of the labyrinth that close and change the path on you.
I boil these down to the Expresser and the Oppressor in my mystic practice. And, I’ve integrated these two into something that works together toward the goal of survival, mystic bliss, self-knowledge, and self-agency. This is what Plato’s allegory of the dark and light horses are all about in Hermetic Mysticism.
That question started as a bit of a joke among some of my friends, but it’s a good question. Scent is a powerful trigger for the subconscious and can immediately create emotions and powerful states of mind, whether it’s physical smell that we can actually sense or it’s something we connect with our magic on a different level. What smells do you most associate with your own magic, your own spellcasting, your own personal power? What scents, real or imagined, immediately trigger that feeling in you that some serious magic is happening?
Life in 2016
2016 has been a difficult year and many people, for many reasons, are feeling afraid. That fear is not misplaced. Change is in the air and with that change comes uncertainty, and with widespread uncertainty comes energetic upheaval, roiling up like mud stirred from the bottom of a previously still pond. In the mundane world we are seeing it and in the esoteric world we are seeing it as well. Boundaries have been broken. The spirit world seems unusually present and the Otherworld is making itself known intensely. Like blood in the water draws predators, an atmosphere of ugly emotions draws predatory spirits, and while that muddy water is swirling, it becomes a vicious cycle of agitation. We are in it now, and likely it will get worse before it gets better–no doom and gloom prophesying, that just stating the obvious; things usually have to get worse before they get better.
A crow perched on sign near the Mound of Hostages, Teamhair, Ireland / Copyright M Daimler 2016
The thing about fear though is that as Frank Herbert said “fear is the mind-killer.” Fear tends to make us withdraw and stop taking action, to pull back, to hesitate. Fear brings paralysis and despair. Fear all too often kills the magic in us by making us feel powerless and disconnected. We look around and we see too many battles, too much loss, too much death, and we lose hope – and with that loss we stop fighting and we stop making our unique magic. We let the fear win. And it’s understandable that the fear is present and that it is so overwhelming for some of us.
I found myself wondering recently, when I was in a place where I was afraid of the changes going on, why I had become a witch in the first place. When I was feeling powerless and worried about my own safety and the safety of people I care about I asked myself why I was remaining passive instead of actively working to do what I could – however little or much I could – to change things. I asked myself then what value magic has at times like these, when the rubber is hitting the road and even the illusion of safety is crumbling, and my answer came in the realization that it brings power to the powerless. I had already known that actually but I needed to be reminded of it, and I’m writing this today because I think maybe I’m not the only one.
Life After 2016?
We are coming to the end of the secular year. 2016 is almost over, and a new year is set to begin. The difficulties and uncertainties are still here, still swirling around us, but we are poised at a turning point when we can choose a new beginning, a new direction. After all for those of us in Western culture how deeply programmed is the idea that the new secular year is a fresh start? A time for resolutions and for new beginnings? Even if this isn’t when you personally celebrate your spiritual new year – I know it isn’t when I see my year renewing – the energy is still here, the potential is here, deeply rooted in cultural belief and secular practice. And I for one think that it would behoove us as magical practitioners of whatever flavor to seize this opportunity to take action. To get your witch on, as it were.
Now is the time to act, to make some magic to take back your sense of personal power. To remember what it means to be a magical practitioner and cause “change in conformity with will.”¹ If you are afraid then do something magical to feel safer: ward, shield, create a talisman or charm. If you are worried about others then do magic to protect them. If you feel hexing is in order, then hex as needed². If you think there is rampant injustice going on then do some magical work aimed at creating justice. If you want peace, do some magic for peace. If you want healing then do healing work. If you belong to a group see what you can do as a group, if you are alone do what you can on your own. But one way or another do something. Don’t let fear control you and make you feel powerless, rather act to take back your power and remind yourself of the value of witchcraft to the disenfranchised and powerless. Historically witchcraft was usually a tool of those who didn’t have social or political power, which is part of why it was so feared. Witchcraft wasn’t a nice-plays-by-the-rules-conformity thing but an out-of-bounds, wildcard thing, the method used by those with no other recourse. Women. The poor. The socially unacceptable and outcast. The people with the most to fear.
The smell of magic is in the air. Make sure it’s strong, powerful magic.
As for me? I’m doing what I can when and where I can; seizing the moment and being proactive. I’m getting my witch on, and as I told my friends when they asked, my magic smells like clove cigarettes and black rainbows³.
Endnotes:
Quoting Crowley’s definition of magic here: “Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.” (back)
I’ve written about my view of hexing and cursing before, but if you’re new to my blog the tl;dr version would simply be that I’m dedicated to a Goddess whose most well known story may be the one where she curses 9 generations of people for their cruelty to her, so I have no issue with a well placed, justified hex. Just take responsibility for your magic, but that’s true of anything you do. (back)
Black rainbows, if you are curious, smell like ozone and petrichor. (back)
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