The Black Fast In the Year of Our Lord, 1537, the potato arrived in Europe, the Dissolution of the Monasteries (which commenced the year prior) was under way in England and the ten year old John Dee (derived from Welsh du, meaning ‘black) attended Chelmsford Chantry School. In the Summer of that same year, Mabel Brigge, a widow and serial faster, house servant to the Lokkar family in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was hired to perform the Black Fast.... Read more
What better way to kick off 2021 than with a brand new occult and paranormal conference from seasoned connoisseurs of high strangeness and magick at the historic and mythic town of Glastonbury, Somerset. Let’s be honest, 2020 has been, at best, a write off. There have been admirable conferences hosted online, and some creative solutions to the challenges of this uniquely difficult and collective annus horribilis. Of course, 2021 will bring with it its own share of struggle, but there is much to... Read more
Pax Deorum Being the First Book of the Wanderer (previously unpublished © Ian Chambers 2018) The following is taken from the privately published work Pax Deorum, and introduces the philosophy behind the working relationship between deity or spirit and operator in the Classical Roman period which informed early medieval Europe. The formula is further expanded upon throughout the book and leads elegantly into the subsequent (and as yet unpublished) companion and follow up, Pax Diaboli. All that is gold does not glitter,... Read more
Traditional Witchcraft has become rather popular among the neopagan and occult milieu today, allowing freedom to explore through personal experience and learning. A decade or two ago, things were a little different and there were certain phrases and sayings you might hear in studying this area. One example is the Crooked Path, a reference coined by the late Andrew D. Chumbley in reference to a particular aspect pertaining to Sabbatic Witchcraft embodied in the outer through the conclave known as... Read more
…the distribution of the castes in the city exactly follows the march of the annual cycle, which normally starts at the winter solstice. (Guenon, 2004, p. 97) The origins of the Castle in the witchcraft of northern Europe incorporates the spectacular mythologies of the Grail, Celtic legends, medieval Christian mysticism, and the most ancient cosmological systems. An oft misunderstood concept, the Castle informs a large part of Traditional Witchcraft since the 1960s, made popular perhaps through the subsequent publishing of... Read more
From the birthplace of the world’s most famous modern magician, Aleister Crowley, Golden Dawn founder William Wynn Westcott, as well as playing home to the coven of Bob Clay-Egerton in the early-late Twentieth-Century, Warwickshire has been a host to stories of magic and witchcraft for many years. With the mysterious death of Charles Walton on Valentine’s Day 1945 at the ancient and wind-swept Iron Age camp of Meon Hill, Scotland Yard’s premier detective descended, as did the media. In the... Read more
The Devil’s Noctuary: Being a Prophetic Fragment of the First Song of Qayin, is the latest offering by author and artist Gavin Semple, contributing an intriguing and fascinating addition to the Sabbatic Witchcraft current. The latest addition of Semple to the stable of writers at Atramentous Press, founded by husband and wife team of Peter and Carolyn Hamilton-Giles, is a welcome one and injects with this piece another work of spellbinding brilliance. We spoke with Peter Hamilton-Giles previously and it is evident... Read more
The role of the Devil in the early Medieval period incorporated mostly a capacity similar to, and reflecting, early Christian and late Jewish ideas of the 'Adversary'. However, as the church matured and scholasticism increased, demonology progressed and the Devil's image shifted too, including Free Will in witchcraft. Read more
Myths of the flood represent the crisis of the soul when the psyche plumbs the depths of the abyss, abandoning the crutches of the ego, experiencing fate. Read more
The following is an extract from Pax Deorum – A Modern Witchcraft Primer, 2018, by Ian Chambers …Sir Gawain is himself the Verdant One, then he himself becomes the Green Knight. Symbolically, his transformation is effected by the act of cutting off the head of the Green Knight; for in mythic initiation, what we overcome we become. (Howard, 1995) Headless Midsummer Midsummer is a time of mirth and merriment and it is believed to be as old as our... Read more
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