Hello again! As you may recall, my blog normally appears here the third Monday of every month. That unexpected two-month hiatus was the result of my old computer’s motherboard suddenly dying a spectacular death. Glad to be back! I’d like to begin the New Year, then, by publicly thanking the amazing person who decided that taking care of our elders (something we’re talked a lot about here on the Agora) included giving me the wherewithal to have a custom computer built. May the Gods bless you always, lovely lady! And I also thank my dear friends Trent and Rick who built The Awesome Computer for me and are helping me learn its many bells & whistles. Blessed Be!
It’s been a wild ride these last few months, hasn’t it? In view of recent political events, a lot of us are fearful for our safety. People are asking what we can do to protect ourselves against the haters who, emboldened by the ascension to power of a pack of racists, misogynists, Randians, Dominionists and Trumpzis, seem to be running around everywhere attacking anyone they disapprove of. And they seem to disapprove of an awful lot of people. I’ve not yet heard of Pagans being the victims of hate crimes as part of this trend – Muslims and Jews and the gender-nonconforming are far handier targets – but it’s not at all unlikely that we could. That we will be, before too long. So we must Take Steps.
Political action is of course vital. Those who can are marching in the streets, contributing to progressive actions, and writing like their lives depended on it. There are common-sense steps also hiding in plain sight: if your home or vehicle is witchily decorated, now might be a good time to be sure nothing is visible to casual passers-by. Bring those pentagrams and Goddess statues indoors, or do as our ancestors did and disguise them. Lawn gnomes, anyone? Peel off that “My Other Car is a Broom” bumper sticker. And ditch the flashy Pagan jewelry. Of course all this feels like a retreat; it is. And it sucks. But as Sibyl Leek famously said, “Witchcraft don’t pay for broken windows.”
Bolivian Rose Salt, Photo by Lifar. From WikiMedia. License.
But we also need to take magical steps to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. So I’m offering some good old fashioned protection charms, with a modern twist. This is the first of a series of three articles: Protecting our persons, Protecting our homes, and Protecting our stuff. The emphasis is on warding off negative energies, which are always the precursor to negative actions. I’ll assume you have at least basic magical knowledge, or have friends who do, so the associated charms are to be considered just outlines or suggestions. I really don’t like locking magical practitioners into a script; your own words are always better.
One of the easiest personal protection charms covers us whether we’re at home or away, and involves nothing more than a box of rock salt. The kind for ice cream is easily available and cheap. You put it in your laundry, which means it will infuse your clothes, your sheets, your towels – everything you wash that touches your body. Pour it from the original container into a nice jar or box or tin (if you use a tin or wooden container, put a plastic bag in first to avoid corrosion) while reciting something like this:
Salt, your magical function has always been As a protector. And as a protector I charge you now: Infuse the water to which you are added With your protective energies. Protect me/us from the attentions Of hostile people. Protect me/us from hostile spirits And from fetches in the night. Thus I command, So shall it be.
Keep your charged salt with your laundry supplies. Each time you put some in a load of laundry – a tablespoonful will do – repeat a short charm reinforcing its purpose, such as:
Protective salt, work your magic. Keep me/us safe.
The first thing you may notice is that your dreams improve, from sleeping in protected sheets. Fewer death-glares on the streets (what is it with people, anyway?) Less drama at Starbucks. Subtle but pervasive.
For protection in high-stress situations, or where you know you’re going to be the target of negativity, you may want to construct a personal shield charm you can turn on and off. I got the idea from the priest’s robes in Fritz Lieber’s “Gather, Darkness,” in which, when threatened, they slapped a button on their robe and it instantly ballooned out into a bullet-proof, fire-proof, acid-proof (everything proof) ‘Armor of God.” I told you – modern twists.
This isn’t going to be quite that spectacular or quite that everything-proof. But it will deflect unwanted or negative energies from you, quite effectively. Last year I made one for a friend to wear into court but they’re also very useful in job interviews or when shopping at the Mall. Yeah, that exhaustion you feel after a Mall excursion is not from the exercise, it’s from all those random, undisciplined auras rubbing yours raw.
Photo by Mankey.
Acquire a brooch, fan-swag pin, old Boy Scout badge, whatever. Something you can pin onto your clothes. It needs to look innocuous, so no sigils, though you could certainly put one on the back if you’ve a mind to. I favor 1950s rhinestones, myself.
As you would with any magical tool, wash it and banish any negative or just random energies.
Instead of placing it on an altar or work table to charge it, pin it to your clothes in a spot where you can easily tap it with your dominant hand – for most of us, the right. This is where you will pin it every time. Tap the pin, which is your on/off button, envisioning a field of energy suddenly springing out all around you, as delicate and translucent, as iridescent if that’s how it looks to you, as a soap bubble. But impervious to negative energies. Charge the pin with its duty, saying something like:
Turn my shield on, Turn my shield off, When I tap you thus (tap) Even through cloth.
Shield me from hate, Shield me from harm, Shield me from draining, Shield from alarm.
Now all you have to do is pin it to your clothes in that spot every time you go somewhere you’re likely to need shielding. At the first sign of trouble, or even as you walk through the door, tap your on/off button. The activating cantrip, another theft from science fiction, is simple:
In late December, I decided to do a major house clean to have a fresh start to the new year. When moving a cabinet, I found a tiny fridge magnet amidst the dust and debris, with the single word — “Here”.
I laughed out loud, and immediately pinned this word up on my bulletin board as a reminder for 2017. The Mysteries, with their quirky, in-your-face communication style, were hammering home a message they’d been giving me over and over during the holiday season. In our community Yule and Winter Solstice celebrations, we have a tradition of pulling divination cards for the new year. Every card I pulled was a version of a common theme: surrender to the process; have patience and await the will of the Mysteries; don’t lust after outcomes; something must die for something new to be reborn.
Be here now, the Mysteries are telling me. This “here and now” is about process, not outcomes; it requires surrender and patience, not pushing and striving; it finds its roots in the will of the Mysteries, within and without, not the personal will of ego and mind.
Here and now in the Northern Hemisphere, January is in the throes of the winter season. This is the time of the Dark Goddess and Her rebirth magic, where new beginnings arise from the vast unknown of the sacred dark, and death, endings and wounding are essential for the birth of new possibilities and growth.
Like so many people, I find January a trying month. I’ve already had enough of the dark, cold, dreary days, and crave the return of bright sunshine and warm weather. Though I’ve done my deep magic at the Winter Solstice, come January 1st, my New Year’s resolution mindset kicks in, shifting me into the outcome focus of goal setting and action taking.
Yet something else in me, more primal and wise, resists these outer-directed activities in favor of rest, simplicity and a slower, inside-out focus and pace. Every January, including right now, I struggle with these counter impulses: one arising from my cultural conditioning, and the other from my soul-based knowing. I get the Mysteries’ message, loud and clear: this culture-soul split within me is my transformative edge and pathwork for 2017 (and beyond), as is the imperative to be here now, in presence and surrender to this journey that is my life.
Though this is most certainly a personal directive for me, it’s also a collective message for our spiritual pathwork in these edgy, world-changing times. When I open myself to this collective message from the Mysteries, this is what comes through.
The here and now encompasses the totality of our life experiences.
The here and now includes both the everyday reality of what we know and directly engage, and the vast expanse of the unseen and unknown. It’s a whole, round, complex thing woven of the many strands of our life story and shared society: the light and the shadow; the beautiful and the wounding; the parts of us that we honor and cling to, and those that we repress and run from.
The here and now is a state of being.
To be here now requires that we be fully present — open, empty and curious — to this whole, round, complex thing that is our existence, and to the specifics of what is happening in and around us in real time. There is no past, other than how it’s currently revealing itself, and there is no future. All we ever truly have is this moment, then the next, and the next. Like breath, the moments and specific times in our unfolding life are here and then gone, here and then gone, one naturally following the next, over and over and over.
Substantive, life-changing healing and transformation happen in the here and now.
In any given moment, exactly what we need to heal and grow stirs in our inner landscape and shows up on our doorstep. The kind of truth that can mend our soul and set us free is already here, poking and prodding us to pay attention and do our spiritual pathwork. This is here and now pathwork, requiring our full presence and commitment to: follow where this healing moment leads us; seek out the missing parts of our Self and life story that are ripe for our conscious engagement; and do the hard, wondrous work of transforming our life. One healing moment naturally leads to the next in this unfolding journey of soul.
To be in the here and now, we need to step past our cultural conditioning.
Our Western-world culture is the antithesis of the here and now. We fixate on a physical, intellectual version of reality that represses and fears the unseen and unknown, and the shadowy, wounded aspects of our personal life and shared humanity. We cling to the past, obsess about the future, and rarely find ourselves in the present moment. Our conception of change is all about ego, willpower and concrete outcomes, skimming the surface rather than engaging the depths and mysteries of true, transformative, here-and-now change. To be in the here and now, we need to shed our cultural conditioning, and learn new ways of understanding and engaging ourselves and our world.
The here and now is this present time and moment.
The Mysteries have impeccable timing. They’re delivering this collective message in this present time of the winter season, with its Dark Goddess mysteries of the sacred dark and rebirth magic that can help us step past our cultural conditioning, and step into a greater reality and way of being that are in alignment with the here and now.
The Dark Goddess takes us into the depths of the sacred dark, within and without, where we can reclaim what our culture has taught us to deny and reject: the mysteries of the unseen and unknown; the shadow and wounding of our life story and collective humanity; and the lost treasures of our secret desires, sleeping beauty and dormant potential. This spiritual pathwork is truly of the here and now, requiring a loving presence of emptiness and curiosity, and an unwavering commitment to seek out the greater truths that are the lost strands of the here and now of our life, and the deep roots of our transformative change at this time.
The Mysteries offer us this message in this now moment as 2016, a year of world-changing turbulence and disruption, comes to a close, and 2017 begins with an edge that promises more of the same. Change is coming, deep, fast and bumpy, and the stakes have never been higher, personally and collectively.
Be here now, the Mysteries urge. Show up to your personal version of the culture-soul split that is your transformative edge and pathwork for 2017 (and beyond). Embrace the Dark Goddess mysteries of the sacred dark and rebirth magic. Let Her guide you in the ways and skills of the here and now, and help you to discover the very things that can mend your soul, and birth a better, more positive, loving and sustainable human society at this time.
Whatever you need to heal what is broken, inside and outside, awaits you in the vast unknown of the sacred dark. Whatever is coming next will be reborn from this whole, round, complex weaving of the here and now of your life and our world. This is the transformative, rebirth magic of these here and now times.
If you’d like to further explore this winter season pathwork with the Dark Goddess, check out the latest offering in the Path of She Guided Journey Series:
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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Among the many things I do, I’m a member of a 12-step program. My 12-step program helped me get my life back on track many years ago when things were out of control. Now that my life’s no longer in that state of crisis, I have found that a lot of my program suggestions are also applicable to everyday life. To be completely honest, a lot of what keeps me sane throughout all of my Heathen, polytheist, and interfaith work is my 12-step program. As much as I hate to say it, working with other Pagans can drive me crazy.
My program has taught me quite a few useful sayings that I carry around in my head, such as “Live and Let Live”, “How Important is It?”, and the all-important “HALT”—“Are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired?” (I usually add “Stressed, Sick, or Cold” to that checklist as well). My program reminds me that there are a trillion things that I have absolutely no control over, and only a few things that I do have a very small amount of control over. My program reminds me, on a weekly basis, that one of the biggest things I have no control over is what other people do. The good news being that I therefore have little responsibility for what other people do, as well. It’s very freeing notion. (I could go on ad nauseum about how useful working a 12-step program can be, but I’ll wrap it up here.)
One of the things I’ve realized over and over again in my 8 years of working a program is that the strategies and guides I learned in program also work in other areas of my life; all areas of my life–including spirituality.
The same is true for my relationship with my Gods.
If I’m burned out, or HALTed in any way, I can unconsciously lapse into thinking that my Gods and allies are only around at, say, a full moon, or during a particularly beautiful thunderstorm. Or I think that unless it’s a holiday, They don’t want any attention. Or, if I’m not feeling particularly mystical that day, or not feeling connected to the land around me (or not feeling connected to anything much except for the True Blood marathon on TV), then They must not have anything to say that day. Which is all profoundly absurd given that the Norse deities are always out doing something, and I’m dedicated to several earthy deities who have strong interests in the physical realm. They are still there. They always have things for me to do.
And that brings me to my main point for this post. If I have lost my connection to my gods—or if I just feel I’ve lost that connection, that they have walked away from me or they don’t care much about me—it is not necessarily They who have walked away; it could be I who has walked away from Them.¹
Yep, sometimes I hide from Them under the metaphorical covers, and then I whine because They are not talking to me anymore. As a polytheist, theologically I know—and experience has backed this up countless times—that the Gods are usually present, active, and waiting for me to tune back in and get back to work. Tuning them out–with TV or gaming, with social events or alcohol or planning a vacation–doesn’t work in the long run. They are still there, waiting for me to check back in and pick up the phone. Some wait patiently and don’t lecture me when I get back. Some understand the needs of a human to just be a normal human sometimes. And others get hurt or irritated or offended for being shut out, because relationships with Them are to a large extent just like relationships with other humans. (That’s polytheism in a nutshell. The Gods are real, and They have feelings, needs, and wants. If we agree to tango with Them, it’s on us to kee
If you are feeling disconnected from your deities, try opening up to them without expectations. Don’t limit or define what an interaction with a God can look like. Some Gods will give you a four-by-four to the head; but most won’t. Be open to what They do send you. Make an offering. Say a prayer. Read a myth, or an academic treatise on an aspect of their mythology. Act as though They are there, waiting to hear from you–because in all likelihood, at least one of Them is. It’s amazing how much we humans can block ourselves when it comes to having faith in the Gods and building a relationship with them.
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Endnotes
This doesn’t apply to specific cases where, for example, and deity has walked away or pulled back a bit, usually for a specific reason. This doesn’t also cover actual “dark night of the soul” times either. This is just about the average, day-to-day experience of tuning Them out. (back)
There’s nothing like coming face to face with the smell of a dungeon and the torture devices that were used in the past to extract a confession of Witchcraft from screaming souls to let you know that the freedoms we take for granted today are a far cry from those the people of the 16th and 17th century had.
Witch Hunt Capital of the World
In the 1600s, Edinburgh was the torture and witch hunt capital of the world. Even someone pointing at you and calling you a witch in the marketplace was pretty much a death sentence. The conviction process was sadistic and long.
It started with the walking of the witches, where suspects were made to walk or crawl back and forth continuously in front of the Cathedral for days. Stopping even for a second was an admission of guilt. If this test was passed, then the subjects hands and feet were bound, and they were thrown into the city sewerage ditch to sink into the waste and excrement. If by some miracle the victim did not drown, then they were taken to the castle and burned alive.
Torture
Although the use of torture to extract a confession was illegal in England, Ireland and Wales, it was permitted in Scotland.
Implements of torture / Danette Wilson
In Scotland, thumb screws and leg crushers were also used. Another, more public and informal type of trial was ‘swimming’ the accused to prove their guilt. The victim’s right thumb would be tied to their left big toe and they would be thrown into a nearby pond or river. If they sank, they were innocent, if they floated, they had been rejected by the water as a servant of the devil.
Edinburgh Castle played a key role in the trial and execution of condemned witches, and an estimated 300 were put to death on the castle’s esplanade. One such figure was Agnes Finnie, an Edinburgh shopkeeper who was charged with 20 counts of witchcraft and sorcery, including placing “so frightful a disease on Beatrix Nisbet, for some other trifling offense, that she lost the use of her tongue”. Arrested in 1644, Agnes was found guilty of witchcraft and held in the castle’s dungeon. After strangulation, her body was burned on the esplanade.
Between 1479 and 1722, thousands were accused of witchcraft and were burned alive in Edinburgh. One 1576 record of the execution of Bessie Dunlop states she was burned at Castle Hill for being a member of a coven of eight women and four men, and for receiving herbs from the Queen of the Faeries.
A series of records from 1595 tell of a woman named Alison Balfour who confessed to witchcraft under torture, recanted and was burned alive. Her family met equally gruesome ends simply because they were family members. Balfour’s husband, an eighty-one-year-old man, was pressed under 700 pounds of iron bars. Her son’s legs were destroyed by a torture device, developed by the Scots, called the Boot. Made of iron or wood, the Boot was fastened on the leg and wedges were driven in between the Boot and leg by blows from a mallet. After each blow a question was put to the victim, and the ordeal was continued until he gave the information or fainted. Balfour’s 7-year-old daughter was tortured with thumbscrews. Even the house servant was implicated, tortured and burned at the stake.
Another entry in this ancient record book shows the sheriff of Caithness killing two witches based on the complaint of one William Montgomery. It seems Mr. Montgomery was plagued by cats and blamed the two unlucky women for cursing him with their unwanted presence.
The Story of Agnes Sampson
One of Edinburgh’s most infamous ghost stories involves a well-respected woman of high society named Agnes Sampson who was tortured, tried, and convicted of witchcraft by Scotland’s King James VI in 1592.
Under torture, Agnes suffered the humiliation of being stripped naked and having every hair shaved from her body. She was burned with ropes pulled across her face and bare breasts. Agnes was made to wear a witches bridle which pierced her cheeks and tongue with sharp spikes and was fastened by spiked iron spikes to the wall of her cell. This sadistic torture was intended to bring forth a confession. There is no doubt that this torture succeeded in bringing about the required result in virtually all cases as in this one. Agnes confessed to working with other witches to conjure up a storm in order to sink a ship carrying King James of Denmark.
Isobel Gowdie, the renowned “Queen of Scottish Witches”, was a young Scottish housewife who was tried for witchcraft in 1662. Her detailed confession, apparently achieved without the use of torture, relates her fifteen years of involvement with the Devil, and offers one of the most detailed looks at European witchcraft folklore at the end of the era of witch-hunts.
According to her story, she had initially encountered Satan at the church at Auldearne, and made a pact with him, beginning with her renunciation of Christianity. The Devil placed his mark on her shoulder, sucked some of her blood, and re-baptized her with it, giving her a new name, Janet. She confessed her new faith while placing one hand on her head and one on the bottom of her foot.
In her four separate confessions given over a six-week period, she claimed to have flown through the air to her coven meetings (a group of 13 that would later become standard fare in witchcraft accounts), slaying any Christians she passed unless they were able to bless themselves first. The Devil himself would attend their Sabbats and would whip them if they had displeased him in some way.
Gowdie also claimed to have been entertained regularly by the King and Queen of the Fairies, in the land of the elves “under the hills”, which she entered through various mounds and caverns. It was the fairies who taught her to fly by climbing beanstocks and cornstraws and shouting, “Horse and Hattock, in the Devil’s name!” She also claimed to have the ability to transform herself at will into an animal such as hare or a cat, and to be able to affect the weather.
Pandemonium by Jake Stratton-Kent (Photo: Camelia Elias)
One could argue that the whole mystery tradition in the West is characterized by typologies and catalogues.
The general rule is that when you catalogue, you categorize and when you categorize, you make distinctions.
Making distinctions is in fact precisely that which separates the various mystical and magical traditions. You go East, distinctions tend to blur and nondualism is in focus. You go West, you go structuralist, focusing on binary opposites and exclusion.
Categorization creates exclusion by definition. So when you create a catalogue you relegate the idea of exclusion to a higher level. This can be either good or bad, depending on your cultural orientation. I myself don’t get too excited, as my leanings are precisely nondualist.
But I do get excited when I see what people do when they catalogue and classify. In fact, in academic circles where I’ve been roaming for most of my life, cataloguing equals human imagination.
The whole Western discourse on magic can be said to be about human imagination and its intricate ways of mediating embodiment. That’s right, you heard that correctly: embodiment.
Although what we call Western mysteries is mostly all about spirits, high and low, what we make of these spirits is very much the work of imagining embodiment and form. If you think that you’re good at scrying, conjuring, or reading smoke, what you do is conceptualize form. This is indeed a very useful method, and can be very efficient in your magical working. Especially if you don’t dig nondualism.
Cataloguing various forms of spirits, all according to their embodiments and functions, is a way of conceptualizing what you think in words. Imagine invoking or conjuring Baal and not having a clue as to what Baal looks like or what he can do for you. It’s rather time consuming to sit there and stare into emptiness, scratching your brain. You will get not only tired of it, but also disappointed.
As a general rule, in any act of conjuring or working with the spirits of the grimoires, if you expect to see a particular kind of demon, you see precisely a particular kind of demon. If you expect to have an encounter with a particular kind of angel or a spirit king, you will have precisely an encounter with a particular kind of angel or a spirit king.
In fact, we could argue that your imagination rules over your distinctions, but the inverse is also the case, your distinctions rule over your imagination. That’s what we call a system of classification.
Classified spirits is called a grimoir. According to what rule exactly we classify spirits and gather them in various grimoirs is very much a matter of cultural distinction, but we could argue that while spirits are not of your mind, they are very much part of your awareness of them, with awareness overruling your own internal and external psychology that is mainly the product of your own cultural history.
In other words, while your mind creates worlds, spirit worlds and other, awareness is busy with mirrors and modalities of holding mirrors up in your face, if we care to assign agency to awareness – a rather dumb thing to do, but for the sake of illustrating, we’ll go with it.
Say, you decide to hang out with Lucifer at the crossroads. How do you do that? You can do that in several ways: some easy, some hard.
Here is the easy way: You can pick up a grimoir and start reading descriptions. What is Lucifer? How does he manifest? What is his history? What is his personality? What is his rank? What can he do for you?
I hear he’s very beautiful, and a prince of princes. But how do we know that? The truth is that we don’t know anything. If you think you know, then think of where this knowledge is derived from: Either you’ve just read that about Lucifer in a book, or, you’ve ‘seen’ it with our own eyes. Fair enough. Each event is valid as it is based on experience: The experience of reading, and the experience of emotion. When Lucifer hits you in the gut, you can swear he hit you in the gut. So you can’t be in doubt.
If you’re a little bit in doubt, you can grab some item in your magical arsenal and divine for your experience. My specialty, for instance, is cards, or smoke from burning wormwood. Take out your cards and pay attention. The story of your experience can suddenly become very specific: It’s not just a world you encounter, but the infernal world of Hell itself. Cards for me can make that world very vivid and specific. According to the good books, Lucifer presides in Hell and spirits obey him in recognition of his lordship over hell. How do they all go about it? Read some bones and some stones, while you sit there sweating through your fears.
Here is the hard way: You go to the crossroads and consciously use language to utter the words of conjuration as a means of conceptualization of form. You can list all the names too. Preferably in Latin.
If you’re good at practicing awareness, you can allow for each name to move from conjuration to co-creation. If you are an adept at awareness, you will look into an empty mirror, for what is there that you conjure? Names? Language? Alphabets made up of symbolic glyphs? You start laughing at yourself.
This is the point where it gets interesting, for you realize instantly that as you gaze into the empty mirror, you actually gaze into the very working of Lucifer. Above all, and in my own experience, Lucifer loves language. He gives life to your glyphs. That’s his domain.
Those familiar with Stratton-Kent’s work know already what to expect: Solid and robust scholarship. Pandemonium lives up to this reputation: It’s solid and robust. It is an excellent reference-work in the grimoir tradition with focus precisely on the personalities of spirits, rather than their strictly contextual histories.
As a storyteller myself I like this very much, just as I also appreciate greatly the research that went to into gathering spirit stories. Stratton-Kent is a meticulous historian with a penchant for the painful work of classification. In this aspect, his Pandemonium is nothing short of marvelous.
As to the stories that this book tells, by way of charting spirit hierarchies, from Lucifer to the Four Kings and a host of Goetic spirits, one can say that they are all stories of encounters. Told in a clever and witty way.
Photo: Camelia Elias
Any conjuration act is a story of an encounter. Pandemonium delivers concrete opportunities for such experiences, and it does a great job at creating exactly what it promises: A discordant concordance.
The work suggests that when we deal with the grimoirs, we deal invariably with what Stratton-Kent calls ‘infernal multiplication’ (52). Here, in reference of how names undergo transliterations that can change the story of a particular spirit.
The work is packed with charts, side-by-side hierarchies, spirit functions and embodiments, and visual representations. I commend the great job that went into the layout of this book, as it’s not easy to fit everything elegantly onto a page.
Photo: Camelia Elias
Some dictionaries choose to define the word Pandemonium by first referring to Milton’s Paradise Lost, a work of poetry and the imagination in which the infernal in envisioned very graphically and elaborately.
Although no reference is made here to Milton, as his is a work that falls into the category of literary grimoir, the poetic aspect that goes into the descriptions of the spirits in Stratton-Kent’s Pandemonium, as precisely dramatis personae, is not lost on this reader. For this alone, I recommend this book.
But I also recommend it for this other reason: Jake Stratton-Kent’s Pandemonium is a rare treasure. It actually makes you think that what makes the world go round is fear. Fear of the infernal and demonic forces.
Indeed, unless, you’re completely Zen – if such a state is possible – and unimpressed by the movement of the holy and unholy ghosts in you, you’re bound to be fascinated by the way grimoirists throughout the ages suggest you transact for your experiences of the occult, exchanging your fear for something else.
Don’t hesitate to get this book if you like stories of the human imagination, solid research and scholarship, and the promise of fantastic encounters if you dare to do the work of uttering the name.
Next Sunday, a new show premieres on HBO — “The Young Pope.” The show stars Jude Law as an ultraconservative Archbishop of New York who is elected to the Papacy, and who embarks on a traditionalist mission reminiscent of Pope Benedict XVI’s, if Benedict had been a narcissistic New York chain-smoker with visionary dreams and an American nun played by Diane Keaton as his close advisor. Jude Law’s Pope is essentially the polar opposite of Pope Francis, and has more in common with the fictional Pope Hadrian VII, the main character of Frederick Rolfe’s 1904 decadent novel Hadrian the Seventh. Here’s a taste:
Apostolic Succession and Occultism
Glitzy, decadent, and conspiratorial portrayals of the Papacy might not seem to have much in common with the contemporary occult scene.Outside of conspiracy theories about the Pope and invaders from outer space, there is not much precedent in contemporary occultism for a meditation on the role of the Papacy.
Image of an episcopal consecration by Claude Bassot (1580-1630)
Yet the notion of apostolic succession does hold an important place. In the literature, we find countless discussions about the apostolic lineages of “wandering bishops,” about the valid succession (or lack thereof) of the clergy of various strands of French Gnosticism and Liberal Catholicism, and, up until the late twentieth century — crossing debates about apostolic succession with Aeonic theory — carefully argued treatises on the legitimate apostolic succession of the clergy of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.
Understandably, the modern O.T.O. has more or less argued that such a lineage, whether true or not, is unnecessary to the validity of the E.G.C.’s New Aeonic liturgies, and that the only lineage that matters is the succession from Aleister Crowley (see, for example, the statement that the E.G.C.’s “ecclesiastical powers are founded on a spiritual succession from the Master Therion and the constituent originating assemblies of O.T.O., rather than on Christian Apostolic Succession” on the O.T.O.’s US Grand Lodge website).
The Office of Pontifex Maximus
Such discussions provide one starting point for an esoteric examination of the Papacy. Tau Apiryon, in his “The Role and Function of Thelemic Clergy in Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica,” spends a considerable amount of time discussing the meaning of the title “Pontifex Maximus” for both the Catholic Pope and the modern Thelemite.
Emperor Augustus dressed in the robes of the Pontifex Maximus.
Apiryon believes that the apostolic succession contains spiritual successions from the ancient Jebusite Order of Melchizedek, from Moses (questionably labeled here as both a Hebrew and Egyptian priest), and from Jesus and the apostles. But it was through the syncretization of the Christian episcopacy with the Roman religious system — specifically, through the assumption by the Bishop of Rome of the Roman religious title Pontifex Maximus — that the apostolic succession acquired the spiritual successions of the ancient pagan world. Apiryon writes:
We may never know whether Pope Damasus I was actually appointed Pontifex Maximus of the Roman Church. Nonetheless, that mantle fell squarely upon his shoulders and those of his successors. Having either actually or effectively absorbed the Sol Invictus cult, the apostolic succession of the Roman Catholic Church has, since the time of Damasus, conveyed the spiritual successions of nearly all of the pre-Christian pagan/solar faiths of the Roman Empire. … Thus, the “apostolic” succession, though considered within the exoteric Christian community to begin and end with Jesus, actually embodies the spiritual successions of the entire Western religious heritage: Christian, Judaic, and Pagan.
Tau Apiryon’s purpose in detailing the spiritual meaning of the apostolic succession here, specifically the universal spiritual role of the Pope, the Pontifex Maximus, is of course to establish that the episcopacy of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica unites “virtually all of the various spiritual successions of the Western religious tradition in service to the Law of Thelema.” Whether or not this is true is debatable — indeed, many occultists have pointed out the potential flaws in this reasoning (Crowley’s probable lack of an episcopal consecration; the broken or unbroken nature of the lineage; whether the proper form of episcopal consecration is carried out within the E.G.C., etc.).
For the traditional Roman Catholic, however, it wouldn’t really matter whether or not a valid apostolic lineage has been maintained within the Thelemic clergy. This is because, since such clergy — as well as the clergy of most non-Catholic Christian denominations — are not in communion with the See of St. Peter, they do not actually hold a full apostolic succession from Jesus and the apostles, let alone the “spiritual successions of nearly all of the pre-Christian pagan/solar faiths of the Roman Empire” through the Pontifex Maximus. Unlike traditionalist Catholics, I do not believe that lack of communion with the Pope invalidates the sacraments and spiritual lineages of non-Catholic clergy; I just mean to state that the succession thus inherited is limited in an important way.
The Pope as a Universal Religious Figure
Of course, all of this proves that there is a religious figure that “actually embodies the spiritual successions of the entire Western religious heritage: Christian, Judaic, and Pagan” — the Pope. The Papacy, as is clear from the vast popularity and spiritual influence enjoyed by Pope Francis (and the pop cultural relevance of a fictional Pope played by Jude Law), is the only global institution to potentially embody a universal religious authority — even beyond the confines of Christianity. There is a reason the Catholic Pope becomes the Pontifex Maximus of the “Enigma Babylon One World Faith” of the Antichrist’s “Global Community” in the evangelical Christian apocalyptic fantasy series Left Behind. The Pope offers the possibility of universal, one world religion, and indeed the Catholic Church (before the Second Vatican Council) traditionally preached the necessity of uniting the world beneath the banner of Catholic Christendom.
But what of service to the Law of Thelema? Even in the New Aeon of Thelemic occultism, one figure understood the importance of the Papal prerogative — Frater Achad. One legend surrounding Achad’s 1928 conversion to Roman Catholicism, related by Lon Milo DuQuette in his introduction to Achad’s Q.B.L. or the Bride’s Reception, suggests that Achad converted to Rome in order to bring the Law of Thelema to the Catholic Church. The fact that this story is almost certainly untrue aside, it does convey an important point. In order to be a universal, rather than a merely partitive religious tradition, Thelema really would have to unite all the “various spiritual successions of the Western religious tradition,” which is why Crowley consistently claimed the succession of pre-Aeon of Horus religious and occult groups such as the O.T.O., the Gnostic Church, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and more. It is why Crowley also launched several quixotic campaigns to be recognized as the “World Teacher” of the Theosophical Society, and to gain control of groups like the American AMORC.
The Pope and the Universal Brotherhood
The World’s Parliament of Religions at the Columbian Exhibition.
However, there is one group that really does claim to unite all of the spiritual heritages — exoteric and esoteric — of all organized and unorganized groups throughout the world. The influence of this group is the real reason Frater Achad joined himself to the See of St. Peter in 1928, and it finds its intellectual underpinnings in the World’s Parliament of Religions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, one of the first historical moments of true interfaith dialogue and communication to occur in the modern age. This group is the Universal Brotherhood — also known as the Integral Fellowship, the Mahacakra, the Great Circle. It is the group for which Frater Achad served as Mahaguru or leader from the early 1930s to his death in 1950.
In his closing address to the Parliament of Religions, Dr. Merwin-Marie Snell — comparative religion scholar, director of the Scientific Section of the Parliament, and founder and first Mahaguru of the Universal Brotherhood — asked, “Can the religious federation of humanity be regarded as within the limits of a rational and legitimate hope?” Dr. Snell himself answered, “This question has already been answered before all the world. The ideal of universality has been in the world, however well or illy we may think it to have been carried out. The standard of organic union has long been unfurled, whatever we may think of the beauty of its blazoning.”
Where can this “ideal of universality” be found? According to Snell, in the Papacy:
O white-robed Pontiff of eternal Rome! thee do we hail as the living embodiment of our enrapturing dream. Thou hast handed on from generation to generation the sacred torch of cosmic thought; thou hast kept alive the flame of cosmic love. Thy name is inherited from prehistoric mysteries; thy mission is the preservation of the heritage of doctrine which unites the best thought of the flower of the Aryan and Semitic nations; thy home is amid the traditions of universal empire; we dare to see in thy triple crown the symbol of a unity in which Jew and Christian and pagan can alike participate; and we hail thee once more as the apostle of cosmic unity, the king of the first great brotherhood of the world. Hail to thee! and hail still more to the divine Master who taught and crowned thee! (Snell, “The Future of Religion,” The Open Court, a Quarterly Magazine, Oct. 5, 1893)
Revolutionary Ultramontanism
Hugues-Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1826); portrait by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin.
Surprisingly, there is some precedent for this idea in the history of Roman Catholicism. Felicite Lammenais, the French radical cleric, published a journal called L’Avenir in the first half of the nineteenth century. This journal advocated a revolutionary Ultramontanism — a concept that seems improbable, if not impossible, at first blush. Ultramontanism was the predominantly nineteenth century movement that supported the absolute authority of the Papacy and the rights of the Church over the temporal authority of the national powers, culminating in the declaration of Papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. Major theorists of Ultramontanism, like Joseph de Maistre, saw the Pope as the only figure capable of standing above the petty struggles of Napoleonic-era nationalism and colonialism.
Ultramontanism was particularly active in the anti-clerical environment of post-revolutionary France, which allowed for L’Avenir‘s Ultramontanism to take on a subversive aspect — the Papacy as the one institution able to unite people beyond national lines, against corrupt temporal powers, and in support of religious freedom. “God and Liberty” was the journal’s motto. Of course, Lammenais’ ideas were crushed by the Pope himself, who was bemused at best by the idea of enforcing true religious liberty and going up against the powerful national governments of the mid-nineteenth century. Lammenais eventually left the Church, became a Christian socialist, and was elected a deputy for Paris during the period of the French Second Republic.
Occult Ultramontanism
Lammenais’ ideas were radical, heterodox, and idealistic. But they didn’t go away. Like many subversive ideas that were before their time, Lammenais’ revolutionary Ultramontanism went underground and became a part of the colorful esoteric scene of the French occult revival. Ideas like Lammenais’ allowed figures as significant as Éliphas Lévi to foresee a coming universal age in which the Pope would rule over a spiritual empire of diverse religious perspectives, united through the office of a universal pontiff:
When the spirit of understanding shall have spread over the whole earth, a time will come when the Gospel spirit shall be the light of nations … For one day all nations shall be one nation, all thrones be subject to one throne … This King shall reconcile the East with the West and the North with the South; he will endow the peoples with true liberty, for he will immoveably establish the pillars of justice … There will be then only one religion in the world, and the universal pontiff will declare from the pinnacle of supreme authority that Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, &c., are Christians ill-instructed, of whom he is none the less father and head. He will bless them and convene them to the great council of the nations; he will throw open to them the inexhaustible wealth of prayers and indulgences, and will really and truly bestow his benediction ON THE CITY AND ON THE WORLD. (Éliphas Lévi, The Mysteries of Magic, 279)
And notorious Catholic occultist Josephin Péladan, decadent writer and founder of L’Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique du Temple et du Graal, could exclaim:
God must be for us the ideal that we shall have loved; and eternity will be the realization of our will … I will deny all collectivity … I will deny the work of blood, I will deny military glory, I will deny nationality … I will deny the heredity of the power and the titles … I shall proclaim humanism and the dogma of individuality. I shall renew the doctrine of Enoch, in kissing before the whole world the mule of the Pope, the sole power I shall ever recognize. (Josephin Péladan, dedication to Curieuse!, 1885; cited in Tobias Churton, Occult Paris)
The Pope and Universal Reformation
Arms of Pope Julius II, early 16th century. This “Papal oak” was said by Mercurius to be the potential “world-tree” and the perch of the alchemist’s phoenix. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Of course, Lammenais, Lévi, and Péladan were only drawing on a long and deep esoteric tradition of aligning an ideal Papacy with a Universal or Hermetic Reformation. Renaissance figures like Tommaso Campanella, who argued for the Pope’s role in creating a universal City of the Sun — before spending decades in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and shifting his aspirations to the King of France — and Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio — who declared himself to be the reincarnation of Hermes Trismegistus, and wrote On the Oak of Pope Julius, or On the Philosopher’s Stone, which describes “the pope’s oak” as a “world tree” upon whose upper branches the phoenix (associated here with the philosopher’s stone) is perched — would utilize the idea of the Papacy for their schemes of building Hermetic utopias.
More recently, and less esoterically, mainstream Catholic theologian Karl Rahner articulated a role for the Pope reminiscent of his status with regard to the Eastern Catholic Churches — a central spiritual authority who ensures a plurality of religious rites, rather than enforcing a Latinization of all perspectives.Rahner’s book The Shape of the Church to Come includes this possibility in a manifesto of ideas for the transformative potential of the future Church.
Alas, Rahner’s book was released in 1974. Later Popes like Benedict XVI have not exactly embraced the radical, pluralistic potential of the office of St. Peter, though Benedict, like Jude Law, did embrace a plurality of Papal clothing styles.
Yet Pope Francis signals some new possibilities, if not the potential of a Universal World Reformation on Hermetic and occult lines. Already he has embraced the liberating and transformative power of grassroots popular movements — probably the closest thing in today’s political and social sphere to the “Rosicrucian furor” of the early modern period. Perhaps the possibility of a universal Pontiff, who upholds both “God and Liberty,” is not as implausible as we might think.
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If you enjoyed this article, check out my new personal blog, The Light Invisible, for more pieces on Christian esotericism.
With 2017 upon us, many witches are feeling uncertainty for what the new year will hold. I’d like to suggest some new habits that will build you a strong magical foundation for the new year and beyond.
When you are doing divination with tarot or another oracle and a card that perplexes or worries you appears in your reading pull an extra card for clarification. If your Celtic cross shows a less than ideal outcome, ask the cards what would happen if you took an alternative action or made a change in your perceptions. Then pull another card to see how it might affect the outcome. This year use divination as a tool to change your fortune not as a mere predictor.
Make a statement
Take a few minutes every day to check in with yourself and the path you are paving. So often we act on instinct or from habit rather than embracing the opportunities presented to us. Witches make their own luck, so wear charm to attract what you want to achieve for the day. If it’s wealth you might put a gold coin and a magnet in your pocket, if you are ready to love someone you might wear a rose quartz necklace, for more focus you might meditate with a white candle in the morning.
Be generous
If you bless what you believe in then you will bless yourself with that magic too. Give a little love to something you care about today in the service of making the world a better place for you and those around you. I suggest saying a prayer, setting up an altar, or doing a magical blessing for the change you want to see in the world. Allow your actions to follow your heart.
Look around you
Witchcraft is about ourselves and our surroundings. Stop and gaze at the moon, greet your mountain in the horizon, pick up things you could use in spells like sticks and stones or even dandelions growing in between the pavement. Traditional witchcraft practice is animist and local-based so tuning your senses to your surroundings grounds and strengthens your spirituality. A simple moment lying on the ground and just feeling the land can become a profound empowerment.
Dream big in 2017
Dig deep into your heart and soul to determine your purpose in this life and do some serious witchcraft to make it so. Sometimes people declaw witchcraft and imply it cannot do stellar amazing things. Challenge your doubts this year. Believe in magic and its power and try to do your biggest dream now. Depending on your magical style you could make a simple sachet and candle spell or do a full out ritual. But pump up your witchcraft and manifest your chosen destiny.
As if turning the page on the calendar could make a difference, my gratitude that 2016 was over felt like a weight was removed. As if the waiting was complete. I looked ahead to 2017 so eagerly I wrote every appointment and goal in the planner long before the turning.
Yet it is with a twinge of nostalgia that I glance at the rear-view mirror to see the year 2016 recede behind me. So much has happened. It was the first full year I spent without my mom to talk to. That was hard, but I’ve heard it gets easier over time. Maybe you just get more used to it.
At the beginning of the year I labeled a large Mason jar with “Happy 2016” placing blank notepaper and a pen inside. On New Year’s Eve, after the year was over, I opened the jar and read each thing as it had been written. This friend came to dinner… Spent time with all the kids on this day… a fantastic seasonal celebration! …I am glad I remembered to write dates down or it would have been a blur.
Through the year, a lot of things worked out better than I could have hoped at the onset. Other things were disappointing, but despite my ‘blindness’ to the overall plan I learned to get over myself (sometimes), becoming in the process well acquainted with any brick walls in my path. It seems I am determined to learn the Alchemist’s Admonition the hard way.
To Will ~ To Dare ~ To Know ~ To Be Silent
This is the admonition, each phrase corresponding to a symbol, a color, and an Alchemical Element. As I approach my second Saturn Return, my super-consciousness is frantic to avoid his sickle, in a way that I couldn’t the first time. In their story, his wife the Goddess Rhea had to get it right when she had her chance. I have a few years to go before Saturn’s second return for me, but the lessons are hitting harder.
To Will~ the imagination to envision desired goals, an it harm none.
To Dare~ the courage to move in that direction, no matter what.
To Know~ the faith that your path is true, if only for you.
To Be Silent~ how could it be otherwise?
As I get older, my heart still yearns for loveliness, beauty, and (in a word) perfection. Things are more complicated than they ever seemed in my youth. My standards of acceptability have softened. I can no longer afford to spend the energy getting my shorts in a twist over some passing detail, however major or minor it may appear at the time.
I find myself using the 1,000 year measure to help me prioritize the battles I choose. Will it matter in a thousand years? Of course, this leaves me in more than a few theoretical arguments, discussions over GMOs, women’s rights, the accumulation of knowledge ancient and modern, and how to best impart this to future generations. Some light breakfast conversation, if you will.
It is perhaps the last of these admonitions that I struggle most with, oddly enough in both directions. Learning who you can tell what to is an important lesson. Easier to keep quiet about my little projects until they are well under way and have gained their own momentum. If the agendas conflict, even friends and loved ones can work to cross ones’ purpose, however unknowingly.
It took a long time to understand that no one else will do the things that only I can do. And in the long run, how can anyone read my books if I don’t write them? I am grateful for this lesson. The reminder of Hemmingway who said, “A writer must act like his writing is the most important thing in the world, even when he knows it isn’t.”
In retrospect, it is the things too numerous to mention I am most grateful for. Roof over my head, Love in the home, food on the table, and waking up each morning, even when I didn’t want to – the joys of the day after making even a rotten one before worth surviving. And each time a member of our household came home again was a cause for personal inner-celebration. My heart overwhelmed with gratitude because it wasn’t otherwise breaking.
I used to think that if I became a certain type of person, somehow different, I could avoid troubles or achieve this or that, but the truth is I have always been the same me. Honest to a fault, perfectionist, and all the rest of it – this will not change. My grandmother once proclaimed that I have a “tender conscience” as if this magickal, inner Jiminy Cricket would somehow help in life. And since the striving is also a part of me, it is my persistent faith that it does help. It must, eventually.
I’ve been reading the original story of Pinocchio. It is not the same as the Disney version at all. Spoiler alert: In the first few pages the naughty puppet smashes the fragile cricket against the wall because Jiminy wouldn’t shut up. It is the ghost of the cricket who thereafter chastises the puppet-wanna-be-boy. This too, sounds strangely familiar.
And while some people have trouble saying ‘I’m sorry’, for me it is ever on the tip of my tongue, offered even to furniture on occasion. The words are so often unworthy of me as I stumble through moments of social awkwardness and confusion. And I am tempted again to beg forgiveness for being disappointingly human once more. In truth, it is vain to think anyone even notices my silly inner-transgressions.
Fact is, the struggle to become ‘real’ has been over since the moment of birth. Perhaps I just forgot. Or maybe I didn’t know what to do after that. Where some seem to understand and embark upon their path and purpose, right away—mine it seemed was in the being. Only now have the roots set deep enough for flowering and the fruit to show. A little.
So this is a note of praise for the lessons and mercies of 2016. A note of encouragement and quiet resolution for the plans of 2017. The tapestry of our combined work is so much bigger than any of us know. I am happy to work on my little bit and trust that it fits in somewhere, like a puzzle piece…just right… here. And wishing a bright and prosperous New Year for all creatures of good will in the Earth.
If you’re interested in the mechanics, basics, and caveats of polythestic mysticism, Ian does a great job of laying everything out here, here, here, and here . What he doesn’t cover is the wisdom I really wanted to know all these years: what’s the experience of it like, articulated by a skeptic experimenter. I am not afraid to be profaned in public. As a Druí of a local sliocht and a Feartuaithe, I consider myself a taboo maker and breaker, my fate is my own and I’ll face the fairies and gods, who usually do not like it when you talk about these things, as Morgan Daimler will tell you.
When you enter the mystic, gnostic, or entheogenic state, or go to Fairy, one of the first things you’ll notice is either a very solid unity or a battle of all the dichotomies in your mind. Which one you experience tells you a lot about yourself, and in that state, you know exactly what you should do to remedy any part of that, or if you should at all. Enlightenment isn’t a goal, it’s just a tool, it’s turning the damn light on so you can see the work. Needless to say the former is the state of the superior mystic, one who has been experienced for more than a year in reaching the Wisdom of Illumination.
Unfortunately, for most people which consume content on mysticism, they’re being sold a river of shit, and have been for a long time. Enlightenment isn’t the gate to nirvana, yes infinite bliss is there, sometimes, but there are still aeons of work to be done for those we care about to reach for their lamps and start helping with the Tribes work. I hate the term soul group so I use Tribe, which includes any kind of blood-kin, heart-kin, or animal-kin.
Further exploration into this state yields a unity that bridges what is inside your mind to what is outside of your mind.
The core of mysticism is to attain states of consciousness that circumvent the psychological filters and algorithms which match patterns and filter our senses and subconscious world away from our hunting, surviving mind. Now here is where things go wrong in articulating each of our perceived real reality, outside of our psychological filters.
Folks like Alan Watts, Lao Tzu, Late Vedic Prophets, et al., decide it is something different than what they’ve already lead themselves to perceive, simply on account of the increased sense of unity and connectedness with the things around them.
The problem, is, these philosophers, visionaries, and mystics come from a starting position of what am I, their pursuit is about their self, it starts with them. Lao Tzu was a hermit, he wrote about what was good and worked for him, didn’t write at all about the chinese folk religion or ancestor veneration. Not saying these mystics didn’t bring back wisdom, I just think it, like bronze age scripture, was filtered through the programming of the times.
I think they need to evaluate that the individual Self isn’t a single person, but rather the family and extended family. I believe this is evinced by the need of one individual of many skills of other individual specialists. The biggest individual human is the village, the smallest individual human is the family. You’re just a part of an individual, complete with the magic of being an interchangeable part who can go out and start an entirely new individual human with other ‘parts’.
Cliché, Woo-Woo, Mystical Bullshit
In the 2006 BBC documentary which reveals Castenda mostly a fraud, a real anthropologist, Dr. Jay Courtney Fikes, visited the Mexican Shamans in Don Juan’s region, for lack of a better word, and even spoke with Don Juan’s wife. They, the Mexican mystics, held practices which had less to do with self-realization and enlightenment, and more to do with tribal facilitation and maintenance– polytheistic or animistic view.
At about the time of Paramahansa Yogananda, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, and others, our western culture of orthodoxy and frigidity stifled folks who are naturally avant-garde to the point where these revolutionary ideas almost filled a negative vacuum. This was so fast, swift and profitable that anyone could simply create anything, co-opt anything, remove all the nuances out of it, and simplify it so they could explain it to an American crowd. And now people take it for cliché, woo-woo, mystical bullshit.
To think that you are one with this entirety of the Universe in these states, is just one perspective, and I’m glad to say that when I am in this state, I don’t get the sense that we are all one. I understand when folks come from a monist or monotheist over-culture how this would be the first path in the labyrinth they’d go down, and they might certainly find a seat of power in that, but they wouldn’t be headed toward the Sovereignty Seat of Indo-European (IE) Polytheism Mysticism.
If we were all one, then when our psychological filters dropped we’d be able to perceive the 5 senses of every sentient being in the universe, and because that doesn’t happen, we’re going to look toward a polytheist mysticism, one which explains what we feel when we perceive these same states through our IE worldview. One which explains the feelings of intense unity but from one perspective.
So the funny thing about polytheist mysticism, these sensations also occur to a us in the same way, yet we arrive at an entirely different view of reality. These are a few beliefs I’ve garnered from a state I call the “Wisdom of Illumination”.
Tenets of IE Polytheistic Mysticism:
We are not all one, but we are all.
Maybe we were in the beginning, and that may be what mythical persons like Ymir are about. But, while we are certainly all variations on the same fractal system of cells and organ though to a solar system, we are provably not of the same mind; I don’t care how much mescaline you took, Alan, all minds are not of the same personalities.
What essentially is happening here is the notion of a god, a word which first finds its origin in Indo-European polytheism, is taken by monotheists who apply it to their gods who previously conformed to the standards of polytheism. They then further inflated that from supreme sentience or personality to infinite being, then onto immanent in every particle in nature. So, if you go this crooked method of defining the non-personal with words that are meant for personal beings, you get silly notions like you are god when you experience said unity and mystic bliss.
All gods are not one.
Simply stated, all gods are not one; hard polytheism is not monotheism, nor is it monism.
You are a god; every sentience is.
Being accused of having a god complex in western civilization when you say you are god or are a god, is the result of language and meaning attachment, bias, but most of all, is an expression of what Alan Watt’s calls the taboo of of our society: knowing who you really are. In India calling yourself a god is a regular occurrence. As monists or polytheists, doing so doesn’t come with any implied ranking. Such is the same as saying, I am a spirit.
Alan Watt’s was right about this: our bodies come from the material from the dismemberment of the cosmic giant, Bith, Ymir, Purusha, and any other surviving or reconstructed IE cognates. This material makes up the universe, this world, and our bodies, the spirit houses for our observing spirit.
Ego deaths do not invalidate the individual, they reveal what the individual truly is.
The sense of self is not gone, it just doesn’t refer to the same thing as it does when you are reading this text. The sense of self being associated as part with the world around you is neither literal nor figurative, it is both equally and not the other. What is really happening in the mind of the polytheist is that you are identifying with the web of causality that is around you, it’s the same web of causality the ancestors did to make your body (which is a spirit house for the god that is you, the spirit).
During such an experience, your deeds, honor, sense of self is ripped from you, but not from your reach entirely, rather they are part of the world and you are just the observer who wears them as clothes. This observing spirit is what you are, you as a soul, a spirit, or a low ranking god. It really is a multi-dimensional tesseract-like form of you throughout eternity, but let’s not go there just yet, that’s scary talk.
As we move into the new year we enter into the territory of new year’s resolutions. The idea of resolutions always makes me thinks of the somewhat related concept of oaths, since to me there’s a thin line between publicly declaring a goal you will accomplish and making an oath to accomplish that same goal. In both cases people are witnessing your words, but in one it’s only a personal statement while the other is a more formal promise.
Oaths
Newgrange, Image by Morgan Daimler 2016
Oaths are a pretty serious business, or they should be. An oath, after all, is a promise to do/not do something or calling on something to verify your truthfulness. The first kind of oath is usually invoking either a higher power to witness it or offering something as a surety if the oath is broken. The idea with a surety is straightforward – you agree to offer something in payment if you break your word.
In the story of ‘How the Dagda Got His Magic Staff‘ for example the Dagda gives the sun, moon, sea, and land as securities against his promise to return the staff to it’s original owners. The idea of a divine witness is a bit more complicated but generally seems to be that you are calling on the deity, spirit, or such to hold you to your word or act to prove if what you are saying is false.
In the Tain Bo Cuailgne Cu Chulainn swears an oath by saying ‘I swear by the God my people swear by’ and in the same tale Fergus swears by his sword as a sacred thing of the goddess Macha. The Romans recounted that the Gauls made oaths by the sea, land, and sky, saying that should their oath be broken the sea would rise up and drown them, the land open and swallow them, and the air smother them.
Oaths were not something to be taken lightly. Once made an oath was not supposed to be broken, and a person’s honor rested on their ability to keep their word. Even the Gods were held to this standard, something we see in the story of how Oengus mac ind Og won the Bru na Boinne as his home. In the story he had gotten the Bru’s original owner – some say Elcmar, some say the Dagda – to promise him the use of the place for a day and a night. But when the original owner returned the next day to reclaim his home, Oengus replied that since all time was measured by a day and a night he was entitled to keep the Bru. Rather than be foresworn the owner gave up his home to Oengus. If an oath was broken a person’s reputation was negatively impacted and often they would have to take some reparative action to compensate for it.
a bronze sword dedicated to Macha. In the Tain Bo Cuailigne Fergus calls his sword a halidom of Macha. Image by M Daimler 2014
Thinking Before Oathing
This is one of those things that’s a lot more serious than most people seem to treat it. An oath is a big deal. Failing in an oath has consequences, whether that oath was a promise related an action or an affirmation of truthfulness. Failing in a regular oath or promise to another person weakens your honor and the strength of your word, but what about when you break an oath to or in the name of a deity? When we swear to a deity or call on a deity to witness an oath we are making we are directly involving that deity in the situation. If we succeed, good. But what if we fail? What if we are knowingly lying? The Gauls who swore by sea, earth, and sky believed those elements themselves would rise up and punish the oath breakers.
I cannot answer the question of what will happen if you break an oath to a deity or spirit, because I believe it depends a lot on which deity or spirit we are talking about. I can say looking at folklore that breaking an oath to the Fair Folk is a profoundly bad idea, and I don’t recommend it. Breaking one to your ancestors? Well how do you think that will go over? Each individual deity has their own personality and inclination to respond differently, but at the least I imagine some éraic, some weregild, some compensation will be expected of you one way or another.
Who Do You Swear By?
As a pagan or polytheist who or what do you swear to and by? How do you handle making oaths? There is something of a running joke in my house with my children, Whenever someone slips into the cultural expression of saying ‘oh my god’ or ‘I swear to god’ whoever is around them will ask, ‘which one?’, and ‘what are you swearing?’. It seems silly but it has taught my children pretty quickly to think about what they are actually saying and to be more careful with their words. I want them to understand that words do matter and oaths shouldn’t be taken lightly. Not when you believe in Powers with agency and independence and in a magical system where the strength of your word impacts the strength of your magic.
A corvid among the grass at Teamhair, Ireland. Image copyright M Daimler 2016
As for me, I try not to make oaths unless I think it’s essential to. When I do I am fond of oaths as they are made in the old ballads. In ‘The Well Below the Valley‘ the woman ‘swore by grass’ and ‘swore by corn’; although knowing that corn was a general term for grain and loving alliteration I tend to prefer saying grass and grain. As an animist swearing by grass and grain has just as much weight for me as swearing by land, sea, and sky did (I imagine) for those historic Gauls, and as making a solemn oath to any God. I certainly do not want the grass and grain rising up against me for breaking my word. I will also sometimes swear by something sacred within my Tradition, with the same logic, that I don’t want to break my word and have that turned against me.
Oaths are a serious business, and one I think that we as Pagans and Polytheists should put more thought into. If you haven’t before, perhaps take a moment to contemplate what significance oaths have for you. When you make an oath are you prepared to pay a price for breaking it? Who do you swear to and by? These are important questions I think, and worth considering.
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