Necropolis Now

Medieval Baebe

2012-01-14T22:04:00.001-08:00

It's my birthday, I'm a medieval baebe, it's my birthday. Yeah. I'm 29 again, yes, I'm just always 29 these days, no matter what year it is. It's my press age - y'know, my fake age. Well I hardly see why I should be telling all and sundry my real age? Or.. is it better to say one is much older than one truly is, and then reap the compliments for looking younger? Hmmm....

Memento Mori Anthology

2011-12-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

I have two chapters in the forthcoming anthology “Memento Mori: Magickal and mythological perspectives on death, dying, the Underworld, Afterlife, ghosts, ancestors and mortality." This collection is edited by Kim Huggens and published by Avalonia Books. It will be out soon... quite soon... So stay tuned for that! Meahwhile... check out this interesting blog, Morbid Anatomy. There's lots to intrigue and entertain there.

What I did at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting in San Francisco, November 2011 - and why I was SO TIRED!

2011-11-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

Thursday November 17.

8.20 – 10.25am

Archaeology of Cyprus I

Theme: This session focuses on current archaeological research in Cyprus from prehistory to the modern period. Erin Walceck Averett Presiding. Paper (that I went to): Sam Crooks, University of Melbourne. “What are those Queer Stones? Baetyls: Aniconism and Ambiguity in Prehistoric Cypriot Cult.”

10.40am – 12.45pm

Theoretical Approaches to Near Eastern Archaeology I

Theme: Conceptualising Space and Place. Louise Hitchcock, University of Melbourne, and Andrew McCarthy (CAARI), Presiding. Introduction; Papers: Emily Miller Bonney, California State University, Fullerton. “Computer Modelling and the Epistemological Dilemma of Reconstructing the Past.”; Antonietta Catanzariti, University of California, Berkeley. “The Study of the material Culture of the Obelisk Temple at Byblos: An Insight into Social Customs of Middle Bronze Age Byblos.”; Rhian Stotts, Arizona State University. “Changes in Households through the Urbanisation Process: The Case of Bronze Age Cyprus.”; Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne. “The Sacred Life of Trees: What Trees Say About People in the Prehistoric Aegean and Near East.”; Susan Cohen, Montana State University. “Stability and Sustainability: Approaches to Urbanisation in the Bronze Age Southern Levant.”; Ann Schafer, American University, Cairo. “The Assyrian Palace as Microcosm: Current Theoretical Approaches to Empire and ‘Space’.”

2.00 – 4.05pm

Theoretical Approaches to Near Eastern Archaeology II

Theme: Materialisation of Status and Identity. Sarah Keilt Costello, University of Houston, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: Rick Bonnie, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. “Grasping a Developing Cultural Melting Pot through Archaeology: A Case Study from Galilee during the Second century, CE.”; Cynthia Colburn, Pepperdine University. “Performance Spaces in Prepalatial Crete.”; Stephanie Reed, University of Chicago. “Gift Ideology in the Persepolis Sculptures.”; Eudora J. Struble, University of Chicago. “Carving Culture: Ethnoarchaeology as a Tool for Understanding Ancient Near Eastern Stone Carvings and Craftspeople.”’ Rick Hauser IIMAS–International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies. “Sapir and Quantifiable ‘Crudeness’.”

4.20 – 6.25pm

Individual Submissions

Zev Farber, Emory University. “Egyptian Images of Death: A Reaction Formation?”
Lolita Nikolova, International Institute of Anthropology. “Health and the Prehistoric Terracotta Figurines from the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Friday November 18

8.20 – 10.25am

Archaeology of Cyprus II

Theme: This session focuses on current archaeological research in Cyprus from prehistory to the modern period. Elizabetta Cova, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, presiding. Papers: Catherine Kearns, Cornell University. “The Problem of Place: Refiguring the Landscapes of First Millennium BCE Cyprus.”; Johanna Smith, Princeton University. “Cypriot Iron Age Glyptic: New Evidence from Marion and Kourion.”; Pamela Gaber, Lycoming College. “Cypriote Sculpture and Israelite Pillar Base Figurines.”; Michael Toumazou, Davidson College, Derek Counts, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P. Nick Kardulias, College of Wooster, Erin Averett, Creighton University, Clay Coffer, Bryn Mawr College, and Matthew Spigelman, New York University. “Atheniou Archaeological Project, 2011: Investigations at Atheniou-Malloura, Cyprus.”; R. Scott Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and William Caraher, University of North Dakota. “A New Hellenistic Fortification at Vigla, Cyprus.”; Katherine Tipton, University of Calgary. “Idalion, Cyprus: Excavations of an Industrial Complex, 2010-2011 Seasons.”

10.40am – 12.45pm

Archaeology of Ritual and Religion I

Theme: This session features papers on the archaeology of ritual and religion in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Andrea Creel, University of California, Berkeley, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: Carl Savage, Drew University. “Assemblage at the Gate: Sacred Domestic Ritual?”; Eilis Monahan, Ruprecht-Karls Universität. “Community and Complexity in the Mortuary Landscapes of Prehistoric Bronze Age Cyprus.”; Sharon Zuckerman, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “Cult In and Out of the City: The Case of Bronze Age Canaan.”; Kim Shelton, University of California, Berkeley. “Reconstructing Ritual in the Cult Centre of Mycenae.”; Erica Hughes, University of Liverpool. “Structured Deposition in the Neolithic of Anatolia.”; Annlee Dolan, San Joaquin Delta College. “Communal Ritual Meals: Evidence for Feasting in Iron Age Transjordan.”

2.00 – 4.05pm

Archaeology of Ritual and Religion II

Theme: This session features papers on the archaeology of ritual and religion in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean. Dana DePietro, University of California, Berkeley, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: (that I went to) Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, St Joseph’s University. “The Bare Facts: Archaeological and Inscriptional Evidence for Phoenician Astarte.”; Darren Ashby, University of Pennsylvania. “Because of his Reverence for the Gods and his Respect for Kingship.”; Elizabeth Minor, University of California, Berkeley. “Conflict and Co-option: The use of the Egyptian Winged Sun Disk Motif in Nubian Burials of the Classic Kerma Period.”;

Yavneh – Celebrating the First Report of the Iron Age Favissa

Raz Kletter, University of Helsinki, presiding. Papers: (that I attended) Wolfgang Zwickel, Johannes-Gutenburg University. “The Character of the Sanctuary at Yavneh.”; Irit Ziffer, Eretz-Israel Museum. “Diminished Sanctuaries: The Cult Stands of Yavneh between East and West.”

4.20 – 6.25pm

Reports on Current Excavations and Surveys – ASOR affiliated II

Assaf Yasur-Landau, University of Haifa, presiding. Papers (that I went to): Eric Cline, The George Washington University and Assaf Yasur-Landau, University of Haifa. “The Four-Dimensional Palace: the Middle Bronze Age Palace of Kabri Through Time and Space.”; Nurith Goshen, University of Pennsylvania. “Building Technique and Cultural Identity: Floors, Orthostats and the Construction of the Palace at Kabri.”; Inbal Samet, University of Haifa. “A View from the Chrono-Typological pottery Sequence from the Middle Bronze Age Palace at Kabri.”; Ligh-Ann Bedal, Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College. “The Petra Garden and Pool Complex.”

Saturday November 19

8.20 – 10.25am

Archaeology of Gender

Theme: This session explores the interface between gender and archaeology and the ways in which archaeology and related disciplines can reconstruct the world of women and other gender groups in antiquity. Beth Alpert Nakhai, Univerisy of Arizona, presiding. Papers: April Nowell, University of Victoria, and Melanie Chang, University of Oregon. “Pornography is in the Eye of the Beholder: Sex, Sexuality and Gender in the Identification of Upper Palaeolithic Figurines.”; Kathleen McCaffrey, Independent Scholar. “Decoding the Rite and Image of Lamashtu.”; Rainer Albetrz, University of Münster. “Goddesses as Theophoric Elements of Levantine Personal Names.”; Sarah Dorsey Bollinger, Hebrew Union College. “The Mysterious Actions of the Captive Woman in Deuteronomy 21: 10-14.”; Jennie R. Ebeling, The Presentation of Women’s Lives in Antiquity in Museums in Israel and Jordan.”

10.40am – 12.45pm

Secondary Context for Objects with No Known Prevenance (A Workshop About the Ethics of Scholarly Research)

Theme: This workshop will consider how the field should deal with controversial areas of study, exhibition and publication of artefacts whose origins are contested or unknown. Rick Hauser, IIMAS–International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies, Christopher Tuttle, American Center for Oriental Research, and Christina Brody, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, presiding. Presentations: (that I heard) Elizabeth C. Stone, Stony Brook University. “Why Looting?”; Christina Luke, Boston University. “The Conventions in 2011.”; Giorgio Buccellatti, University of California, Los Angeles. “The Site as Book.”; Zahi Hawass, Minister for State Antiquities, Republic of Egypt. “The Value of Objects.”

12.45 – 2.00pm

Projects on Poster Session

2.00 – 4.04pm

Religions in Bronze and Iron Age Jordan

Theme: This session is devoted to material, written and artistic evidence for religious practices and ideas of Bronze Age and Iron Age Transjordan and to the interpretation of that evidence, including new discoveries and new insights on existing evidence, in view of both continuity and distinction within that larger chronological span. Joel S. Burnett, Baylor University, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: Paul Donnelley, University of Sydney, James Fraser, University of Sydney, and Jamie Lovell, University of Sydney. “Sacred Landscapes and Sovereign Territories: A MB–LB Migdol ‘Border’ Temple.”; Stephen Bourke, University of Sydney. “The Bronze Age–Iron Age Pella Temple and Cultic Artefacts.”; Ken Bramlett, La Sierra University. “The LB Temple at ‘Umaryi and Implications for the Interpretation of Religion in LBII Jordan.”; P.M. Michele Daviau, Wilfrid Laurier University. “Temples and Shrines in Central Jordan and the Negev.”; Chang-Ho Ji, La Sierra University. “An Iron Age Temple at Khirbat Ataruz, Jordan: Architecture, Cultic Objects and Interpretation.”; Rebecca Trow, University of Liverpool. “Beyond Religions of Identity: The Dhiban Figurines in Context.”

4.20 – 6.25pm

Alcohol and the Near East

Michael Homan, Xavier University of Louisiana, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: (that I heard) Louise Hitchcock, University of Melbourne, and Alex Zuckerman, Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. “Drinking the Sea Dark Wine: Performativity and Identity in Social Drinking in the Bronze-Iron Age Mediterranean.”; Brent Davis, University of Melbourne. “Alcohol and the Minoans: Interpretations of Ritual Libation and Consumption.”

“Figuring Out” the Figurines of the Ancient Near East

Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Bowling Green State University, presiding. Introduction.; Papers: (that I heard) Doug Bailey, San Francisco State University. “Uncertainty and Precarious Partiality: New Thinking on Figurines.”; Christopher A. Tuttle, American Center for Oriental Research. “Miniature Nabatean Coroplastic Vessels.”; Erin Darby, University of Tennessee and Michael Press, University of Arkansas. “Composite Figurines from the Iron II Levant: A Comparative Approach.”; Andrea Creel, University of California, Berkeley. “Manipulating the Divine and Late Bronze/Iron Age ‘Astarte’ plaques in the southern Levant.”

So... this is what I went to, there was much more going on that I did not go to, unfortunately. But doing this much at least is the reason I was so tired by the time I got to the CoG AAR Reception!

What I did - and did not do - at the American Academy of Religion 2011 annual meeting in San Francisco

2011-11-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

Thursday 17 November, 5.00pm

I was actually at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting – an archaeology conference – at this stage, having just presented my paper for that conference. On this night however, my friend Sam and I went out to dinner and the opera (Carmen) with Pagans, Fritz Muntean and Deborah Bender. I did not officially transfer over to the American Academy of Religion conference until the Saturday night, as per below:

Saturday, November 19, 9.00pm – 11.00pm

Northern California Local Council of the Covenant of the Goddess welcomes the American Academy of Religion and the San Francisco Bay Area Pagan Community! (Hilton Hotel).

This was an amazing event that included representatives of Afro-Diasporic, Ceremonial Magic, Druid, Heathen, Pagan, and Wiccan groups. There were over 30 different groups, organisations, and distinguished Elders present, representing the Bay Area’s diverse Pagan and Heathen scene.

Sunday, 20 November, 7.30am

Got up extremely early to attend a young scholars breakfast organised by the Academic Dean of Cherry Hill Seminary, Wendy Griffin (it wasn’t necessarily for ‘young’ people, more early career researchers). Then we all went over to the first session, listed just below:

Sunday, 9.00am – 11.30am

AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group and Religion and Ecology Group

Whitney Bauman, Florida International University Presiding. Theme: Elemental Theology and Feminist Earth Practices. Panelists: Rosemary R. Reuther, Claremont Graduate University; and Starhawk, Earth Activist Training. Responding: Marion S. Grau, Graduate Theological Union; Jone Salomonsen, University of Oslo; and Heather Eaton, Saint Paul University.

Lunch 11.30 – 1.00pm

I had lunch with Reclaiming Witch, Macha NightMare, who I have known online for years. It was great to get to chat intensively with her and I can see that if we had more time we could go on and on talking for hours. Hope to do that some other time!

1 – 2.30pm

AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group

Graham Harvey, Open University, Presiding. Theme: West Coast Pagan Practices and Ideas. Papers: Christopher W. Chase, Iowa State University. Building a California Bildung: Theodore Rozak’s and Alan Watts’ Contributions to Pagan Hermeneutics; Kristy Coleman, Santa Clara University and San Jose State University. Re-riting Women: Dianic Wicca; [and unfortunately cancelled] Kerry Noonan, California State University, Northridge. “Wish They All Could Be California Grrrls?”: The Influence of California Women on the Goddess Movement and Neo-Paganism. Responding: Fritz Muntean, Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies.

3.00 – 4.30pm

Simply had to go rest in my hotel room.

5.00pm – 6.30pm

Indigenous Religious Traditions Group

Jace Weaver, University of Georgia, Presiding. Theme: behind Enemy Lines. Papers: Lee Gilmore, California State University Northridge, and Sabina Magliocco, California State University Northridge. Pagans at the Parliament: Interfaith Dialogue between Pagan and Indigenous Communities; Carmen Landsdown. “Dances with Dependency”: An Indigenous Theological Exploration of Dependency and Development Theories and Their Influences on Liberation Theology for the Twenty-first Century; [and an unfortunate no-show] Comfort Max-Wirth, Florida International University. The Occult and Politics in Ghana: Tapping into the Pentecostal Discourse of Demonizing African Traditional Religion as a Political Strategy; [and another no-show!!!] Orenda Boucher, Concordia University. Violence and the Grotesque of Sacred Bodies: Iconography of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha.

6.30pm

Collapsed from tiredness in my hotel room.

Monday 21 November

7.30am

Through lack of sleep, unable to rise early enough to attend the Cherry Hill Seminary breakfast. (Grrr!) Slept in sufficiently to be fresh for presenting my paper today.

1.00pm – 3.30pm

AAR Contemporary Pagan Studies Group

Shawn Arthur, Appalachian State University, Presiding. Theme: Pagan Analysis and Critique of “Religion”. Papers: Suzanne Owen, Leeds Trinity. Definitions, Decisions and Druids: Presenting Druidry as a Religion; Christine Kraemer, Cherry Hill Seminary. Perceptions of Scholarship in Contemporary Paganism; Helen Berger, Brandeis University. Fifteen Years of Continuity and Change within the American Pagan Community; Caroline Tully, University of Melbourne. Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions. Business Meeting: Chas Clifton, Colorado State University, Presiding.

4.00pm – 6.30pm

Western Esotericism Group

Cathy Gutierrez, Sweet Briar College, Presiding. Theme: Western Esotericism and Material Culture. Papers: Egil Asprem, University of Amsterdam. Technofetishism, Instrumentation, and the Materiality of Esoteric Knowledge; Shawn Eyer, John F. Kennedy University. The Use of Tracing Boards and Other Art Objects as Physical Aids of Symbolic Communication in the Rituals and Practices of Freemasonry; Stephen Wehmeyer, Champlain College. Conjurational Contraptions: “Techno-gnosis”, Mechanical Wizardry, and the Material Culture of African American Folk Magic; Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg. “Objets d’Art Noir”, Magical Engines, and Gateways to Other Dimensions: Understanding Hierophanies in Contemporary Occultism; Joseph Christian Greer, Harvard University. Storming the Citadel for Knowledge, Aesthetics and Profit: The Dreamachine in Twentieth Century Esotericism.

6.30 pm

European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism and Aries Reception

The European Society of the Study of Western Esotericism and its associated journal Aries invite[d] current and potential members of ESSWE and current and potential contributors to Aries to a reception to hear briefly about plans for ESSWE and Aries, and to renew or extend contacts within the field.

(There was also a session on Saturday 19 November from 8.30am – 12.30pm that I was invited to present in but which I could not attend, as I was still at ASOR: Phoenix Rising Academy. Theme: Demons in the Academy? Renouncing Rejected Knowledge, Again. Description: Join us for a special session exploring the transdisciplinary options for balanced and integrative approaches to Western Esotericism, while drawing attention to issued relating to the focus on disinterested empiricism as the sole acceptable method for the study of these topics. Integrative models and approaches combining scholarly rigor with imaginative and sympathetic engagement have long been established in many areas of the humanities and social sciences. Yet the question of scholarly overengagment with their topic continues to be a point of contention, while voices calling from channels of dialogue and mutual understanding between scholars and practitioners in order to better explore the application and potential of such epistemologies are frequently met with suspicion in academic circles. In this session we seek to explore ways to build bridges of fruitful communication and mutual understanding between seemingly disparate voices and perspectives. Topics include: Legitimate ways of knowing: experiential knowledge and/or symbolic perception; How can we learn from each other? Bridging the practitioner-scholar divide; Is history and discourse analysis enough?; Paradigms for integration and applied transdisciplinary methodology. Details here.

That’s All Folks!

American Academy of Religion Conference 2011

2011-11-25T20:10:00.000-08:00

I've just come back from a fabulously stimulating time in San Francisco during which I attended the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) conference and the American Academy of Religion (AAR) conference. I'll report on ASOR later and concentrate on the AAR for the moment. Now that I've presented my paper at the AAR I will post my original proposal here - which I wasn't really even sure would be accepted. But it was, so I had to work hard on it, fortunately it was built from the paper I presented mid year at the Archaeology and Narration Conference at Melbourne University. Here it is:

Researching the Past, is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a response by practitioner Pagans to academic research on the history of Pagan religions.

Modern Paganism is a new religious movement with a strong attachment to the past. Looking back through time to an often idealised ancient world, Pagans seek inspiration, validation and authorisation for present beliefs and activities as espoused in the familiar catch-cries of “tradition”, “lineage” and “historical authenticity”. A movement that consciously looks to the past and claims to revive the ancient religious practices of pre-Christian Europe, modern Paganism has always been dependent upon academic scholarship—particularly history, archaeology and anthropology—in its project of self-fashioning. Dependant primarily upon late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship, Pagans often vociferously reject more recent research, especially when it contradicts earlier findings, perceiving it as threatening to their structure of beliefs and sense of identity. Not only do the results of such scholarship traumatise Pagans—however unwittingly on the scholars’ part—in some cases it rebounds upon the researchers themselves when Pagans seek to traumatise the scholars, the “bearers of bad news”, in return.

This paper will present case studies which display the contested nature of the past by highlighting the combative interaction between Pagans and academic researchers at three types of site-as-stage: the text, the archaeological site and the museum, and explain how the performers fail to communicate as a result of speaking different “languages”. The paper will initially focus upon the frequently negative reception, by Witches, of recent historical research on modern Pagan Witchcraft. It will also look at Goddess Tours to Crete and other ancient Mediterranean sites, as well as the “new indigene” prevalent in British Druidry and their involvement in the dispute regarding access to and interpretation of archaeological sites and museum objects. The paper will then discuss the infusion into Paganism of hybrid vigour through the activities of the Pagan Studies scholar, a researcher often in the role of participant-observer, who can function as a “go-between”, easing the sense of resentment by Pagans toward the perceived colonisation of their religion by “hackademics”.

Word of Tree and Whisper of Stone

2011-11-05T23:08:00.001-07:00

Well, this is what I did at the Mt Franklin Annual Pagan Gathering 30th anniversary - that is, when I wasn't maniacally socialising. I went for a nature/powerwalk around the crater rim and visited with trees and stones on the inside of the crater. For more social pictures of the event, see the official Mt Franklin blog.

My Upcoming Travels

2011-10-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

Oh boy! I have so much to do. On the 28th of this month (that's next Friday) I'm going up to the 30th Mount Franklin Annual Pagan Gathering in Central Victoria for Beltane (yes, it's Beltane in the southern hemisphere... at least in regions where a reversed northern hemisphere sabbat calendar fits). I first attended Mount Franklin in 1986 and I went regularly for 12 years, up to 1998. Then I stopped going as part of a general withdrawal from Pagan socialising on my part (but not from Paganism itself). So in the years in which Witchcraft boomed here in Oz, the late 90s and early 2000s - and as a consequence of which the which Mount Franklin event got absolutely huge, from what I hear - I just wasn't there. So, I'm going up for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday with my friend from my Pagan socialising days, Philippe. I haven't been camping for over 10 years so it's going to be, erm... interesting.

Next, the week I get back, I have to present a paper on Minoan tree cult at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies 'Work in Progress Day'. This is actually a slightly longer, practice version of the paper I am presenting at the American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meeting in San Francisco in November. A few days before that though, I am going to Pagan songstress, Wendy Rule's handfasting - that ought to be interesting. Wendy (who I last saw at Tim Hartridge and Tori Collins' handfasting in Sydney, where she officiated) and her partner Tim are having a British friend perform their handfasting. No doubt it'll be an Australian Pagan 'who's who' at that event and I look forward to wishing Wendy and Tim all the best for their nuptials.

As I said, I'm going to San Francisco in November, to the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) meeting to present my paper, 'The Sacred Life of Trees: What Trees say about People in the Prehistoric Aegean and Near East'. There will also be tons of other people presenting work there and I will be going to as many papers as possible - particularly those on the archaeology of ritual and of gender. After ASOR I am going to the American Academy of Religion (AAR) to present in the Contemporary Pagan Studies session. My paper is titled 'Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a response by practitioner Pagans to academic research on the history of Pagan religions'. This will be the first time in the USA for me, and also the first time I will meet many American Pagans in the flesh, particularly those Pagan Studies scholars who I've been corresponding with since 1999 and who - frankly - have kept my interest in contemporary Paganism alive in subsequent years.

So, basically I'm going to have to be very sociable within the next month...

Initiation

2011-10-20T23:49:00.000-07:00

I am naked, blindfolded. I can't see a thing but my other senses are heightened. I hear whispering, I feel my wrists chafe against the cord that restrains them. The smell of incense invades my nostrils and my mouth is dry with anticipation. I am disoriented, but I know where I am. No, not in the midst of a bizarre sado-masochism session as it might first appear. Nor am I a prisoner of any sort, here against my will. In fact, I have come to this place voluntarily, eagerly, with an attitude of perfect love and perfect trust. Although bound, paradoxically I am free. I am in the process of being initiated into modern Witchcraft.

Initiation is somewhat of a controversial subject in Witchcraft these days, different Witches holding attitudes toward it which range from the idea that you must be initiated by a recognised lineage, to the belief that a Witch can perform their own self-initiation. Some say that the initiatory current must pass from woman to man, others say that it’s ok to be initiated by someone of the same sex. Several traditions have multiple levels of initiation, whereas others have only one, and some Witches dispense with it altogether. With the explosion in popularity of Witchcraft as a spiritual path, the manifold Wiccan traditions all using similar terminology, and the often bewildering spectrum of techniques and styles, an aspiring Witch could get more than a little confused. What goes on during initiation? Is it scary? Is it safe? And most importantly, is it necessary to be initiated to call yourself a Witch?

Wicca: a modern Mystery Religion
The aptly-named Mystery Religions had their heyday in ancient Greece and Rome and were secret religious groups composed of individuals who decided to be initiated into the profound realities of a particular deity. Probably the most famous of the ancient Mystery Religions were the Rites of Eleusis which centred around the myth of Demeter and Persephone, but there were also many other types such as the Mysteries of Isis and Serapis, Dionysus, Cybele and Attys, and Mithras, indeed even Christianity started off as a Mystery Religion. Unlike the official state religions practiced by the majority of society, the Mysteries emphasised an inwardness and privacy of worship within closed groups, they were secretive, exclusive, and entry to the rites was through initiation.

The word 'mystery' itself derives from the Greek verb 'myein' meaning 'to close' referring to the closing of the lips or the eyes. An initiate was required to keep his or her lips closed and not divulge any secrets that were revealed at the ceremony. Most ancient initiates kept so quiet about what actually occurred during the rites that today we do not have much of an idea about what really went on. As a descendant of the Ancient Mysteries, admission to Wicca's secret rites is still via initiation, however these days, amid mixed reactions amongst the initiates, the Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wiccan initiations have been published and are widely available, so to a certain extent they are no longer secrets,(although in practice there is still unpublished oral content used only within the tradition). The actual Mysteries themselves however, cannot be revealed, indeed they cannot even be described because they occur within the soul of the initiate and are only triggered by the initiation ritual, they are not the ritual itself.

What is Initiation?
Initiation does not only occur within the context of a Mystery Religion, nor does it even necessarily require the use of ritual. Significant points within a person's life-cycle such as sexual maturation, marriage, childbirth, menopause, ageing and death are also forms of initiation which may, but do not have to be, accompanied by ceremonial rites of passage. In a general sense, an initiation is a transformative event or process which results in the initiate being irrevocably changed. According to author Michael Meade, "Initiatory events are those that mark a man or woman's life forever, that pull a person deeper into life than they would normally choose to go. Initiatory events are those that define who a person is, or cause some power to erupt from them, or strip everything from them until all that is left is their essential self... there is departure from daily life, a suffering of ordeals and dramatic episodes, and a return as a marked and different person. Initiation is the dramatic way the psyche shifts ground and orientation..."

Wiccan author, Vivianne Crowley, confirms that there are indeed many types of personal initiation, but that "there is also another form of initiation - initiation into a magical or spiritual tradition whereby we are grafted onto its group mind". This type of initiation is deliberate, it is not something which just happens to you as part of life, but something you consciously strive for. It is a voluntary step into the unknown, an acceleration of the deep processes of consciousness. However, initiation is not a reward, or merely membership within a group, or a one-off achievement, or the end of something - indeed the very word 'initiation' means 'beginning' - it is a dynamic process which takes its own time to manifest. A ritual cannot 'make' you an initiate: although someone might participate in an initiation ceremony, a genuine initiation only happens because a person has a profound, inner transformation. Ultimately it is the Gods who decide who receives true initiation.

What happens during Initiation rituals?
Plutarch (late 1st century AD) noted the similarity between the Greek verbs 'teleutan' meaning 'to die', and 'teleisthai' meaning 'to be initiated', and observed that people who die and people who go through initiation ceremonies experience comparable transformations. Initiation into a religion such as Wicca involves a symbolic death and rebirth; the novice 'dies' to their previous life and is then 'reborn' into their new life. Initiation ceremonies the world over also frequently consist of a three-fold structure involving the themes of separation, transition, and integration; the novice undergoes purification which separates them from their previous life, they then transit through various dedications, consecrations and initiatory teachings, which finally results in their being integrated into the new society of, for example, Wicca. Initiates are bound not to divulge the nature of the rites to ensure the content from being profaned, and also to enhance the novice's excitement, fear and reverence for the occasion. Initiations imprint upon the susceptible mind and symbolic content is likely to make a bigger impression if it is somewhat of a suprise.

As well as having the three-fold structure in common, initiatory rites of varying kinds may also include some, or a combination, of the following components: Pre-ritual meditation in a chamber of reflection, disrobing, restraining hands and sometimes feet with a cord, blindfolding, disorientation, obstruction or difficulty entering the ritual space, a purification/baptism with water or other liquid, consecration with incense and/or oil, a wholehearted acceptance of the new path, an oath of loyalty, scourging, passwords, secret handshakes or signs, an ordeal or test, creation of a magickal link with the tradition, communication with Deity, the receiving of a new name, the infliction of a certain mark which may be a tattoo, kissing, sex - symbolic or actual, receiving a special book of rituals, accepting new tools, special jewellery or clothing, and religious and magickal instruction. - Some of these things may cause the novice fear, however initiations are designed to be entirely safe. No one is ever forced to undergo initiation, and anyone applying for initiation into a group is at liberty to later decline because such rites are always done of your own free will. Conversely, initiations can also be withheld at the discretion of the Initiator or tradition, indeed the Roman Emperor, Nero himself, was denied entry into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

In Gardnerian and Alexandrian Witchcraft, initiation must pass from female to male and vica versa, a male Witch must be initiated by a woman and a woman must be initiated by a man. In other traditions, such as Dianic Witchcraft which only admits women, the High Priestess as representative of the Goddess initiates members of the same sex, and in some mixed groups the Coven member of highest status, the leader, whether this is a male or a female, initiates the members. The initiator is the vessel or conduit of the initiatory power which comes from the Gods and ultimately can be of either gender. As the famous occultist Dion Fortune said "All the Gods are one God, and all the Goddesses are one Goddess and there is one Initiator."

Wiccan initiation may be a single ritual, however it is usually tripartite, or there may even be up to ten initiatory gateways to pass through, again, depending on the individual tradition. In some variants of Witchcraft there is only one degree, attained after a year's apprenticeship (in fact it is not even really a 'degree' as such, but a swearing of loyalty and acceptance into the Coven). This sort of initiation can be quite simple and might only involve the novice Witch kneeling on one knee, putting one hand on the crown of her head and one under the sole of her foot, and offering all in between to the Deity who is represented by the Man in Black. He then places his hand on her head and asks her to give all under his hand over to him and to say "I place myself at every point in thy power and in thy hands, recognising no other God, for thou art my God." Multiple initiations, on the other hand, are akin to a series of significant thresholds and portals through which the novice passes along a path of self-development. Gardnerian and Alexandrian Witchcraft have three degrees of advancement which High Priestess, Judy Harrow, notes are in some ways "comparable to the ranks of Apprentice,
Journeyman and Master in the old craft guilds, or Bachelor, Master and Doctor in the university system."

In a three-degree system, after the year and a day of dedicated postulancy, the Wiccan novice applies for the First Degree. In this ritual they are introduced to the magickal tools, taught how to bless salt and water, how to use the athame, cast the circle, set up the altar, call the watchtowers, and basic Craft principles. They may also choose a new magickal name at this stage. At the conclusion of the rite they are acknowledged as a Wiccan initiate, a Priest/ess and Witch. During the Second Degree the Witch is introduced to the mysteries of death and rebirth and is elevated to the rank of High Priestess and Witch Queen, or High Priest and Magus. They are expected to have a deeper understanding of the Craft and the Deities, to have a magickal partner of the opposite sex, and to have enough knowledge to be able to teach a First Degree novice. They may also 'hive off' from the parent Coven, if they so desire, and form their own group under the watchful eye of their Initiator. A Third Degree initiate is introduced to the concept of the perpetual and infinite nature of existence signified by the Great Rite - the sexual congress of the Goddess and God - and must display extensive knowledge of the principles and workings of the Craft, an understanding of the symbols, magickal tools and ritual procedure, and be able to successfully invoke the Deities. As 'thrice consecrated' High Priestess and Witch Queen (High Priest and Magus) the Third Degree initiate is quite independent, answerable only to the Gods, and may found a fully autonomous Coven.

Wiccan or Witch?
So... do you need to be initiated into the Wiccan Mysteries to be a Witch? In a word, no. Wicca is a mystery religion and the Witch's craft is a separate magickal practice which is included as part of what Wiccans do. All Wiccans are Witches, but not all Witches are necessarily Wiccans. You can become a Witch by saying "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking seriously about what that means. All who declare themselves as Witches offer their lives to the service of the Goddess and God, exactly the same as those who stepped into some tradition's initiatory circle. An 'uninitiated' Witch can be just as wise, wonderful and witchy as a Wiccan initiate, the only difference being that they will not be privy to the initiation rituals of a specific tradition - which is in no way the same as saying they will not have access to the Mysteries - quite the contrary, the Gods are fully capable of providing powerful and effective initiatory experiences directly without any human intervention. Admission to a Mystery Initiation certainly is a worthy experience, but not an not essential one, what matters is that a Witch develops reverence for Nature, contact with Deity is achieved, and the power and guidance of the Goddess and Horned God informs all one's being and doing.

Further Reading
A Witches' Bible. Janet & Stewart Farrar
Descent to the Goddess. Sylvia Brinton Perera
The Ancient Mysteries. Ed. Marvin W. Meyer
Witchcraft For Tomorrow. Doreen Valiente
Witchcraft: A Tradition Renewed. Doreen Valiente and Evan Jones

Australian Beltane

2011-10-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

The constellations Cetus and Eridanus appear in the eastern night sky followed, as the season progresses, by Taurus and the Pleiades. In southern Australia this is early summer; warm, even hot in the day, but still quite chilly at night. Many trees and shrubs are in flower and the song of cicadas heralds the imminent summer. Birds are feeding their young and mountain pygmy possums give birth. In the north, it is the 'build up', the time of the pre-monsoon storms, characterised by hot, cloudy, humid weather, flickering lightning and intermittent rain. When the first rains fall, the dry earth rapidly becomes green, frogs are heard croaking, and the land regenerates after the fires of the previous dry season. Wallabies and tree kangaroos give birth, and estuarine crocodiles and turtles begin nesting.

Meditation: Like a cicada who leaves behind its brown underworld shell, as the weather warms up we eagerly strip off our winter coverings to reveal an invigorated summer self. Unveiled, pale-skinned, singing of the green season which will be over all too soon, we venture out to greet the sunlight. This is a time to make offerings to tree spirits, to listen to the earth, and to celebrate the life force. Scarab-like, the cicada symbolises the eternally returning sun-cycle, his shell a talisman of infinity.

Invocation to Thoth of the Ibis Head

2011-10-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

I invoke Tahuti, the Lord of Wisdom and of Utterance; the god that cometh forth from the veil.

Oh thou, majesty of the godhead, wisdom-crowned Tahuti, Lord of the gates of the universe. Thee, thee I invoke.

Oh thou of the ibis head. Thee, thee I invoke.

Thou who wieldest the wand of double power. Thee, thee I invoke.

Thou who bearest in thy left hand the rose and cross of light and life. Thee, thee I invoke.

Thou whose head is as an emerald, and thy nemyss as the night sky blue. Thee, thee I invoke.

Thou whose skin is a flaming orange as though it burned in a furnace. Thee, thee I invoke.

Behold, I am yesterday, today, and the brother of tomorrow. I am born again and again. Mine is the unseen force whereof the gods are sprung, which is as life unto the dwellers in the Watchtowers of the Universe. I am the charioteer of the east; Lord of the past and the future. I see by my own inward light; Lord of resurrection who cometh forth from the dust, and my birth is from the house of death.

Oh ye two Divine hawks upon your pinnacles who keep watch over the universe. Ye who company the Bier to the house of rest, who pilot the ship of Ra, ever advancing onwards the heights of heaven. Lord of the shrine which standeth in the center of the earth.

Behold! He is me and I in him. Mine is the radiance wherein Ptah floateth over the firmament. I travel upon high. I tread upon the firmament of Nu. I raise a flashing flame with the lightening of mine eye. Ever rushing on in the splendor of the daily glorified Ra, giving my life to the dwellers of earth. If I say come up upon the mountain, the celestial waters shall flow at my command. For I am Ra incarnate, Kephra created in the flesh. I am the eidolon of my father Tmu, Lord of the city of the sun.

The god who commands is in my mouth. The god of wisdom is in my heart. My tongue is the sanctuary of truth and a god sitteth upon my lips. My word is accomplished every day, and the desire of my heart realizes itself as that of Ptah when he created his works. I am eternal, therefore all things are as my designs.

Therefore do thou come forth unto me from thine abode in the silence, unutterable wisdom, all light or power.

Thoth. Hermes. Mercury. Odin. By whatever name I call thee thou art still nameless to eternity. Come thou forth I say, and aid and guard me in this work of art.

Thou star of the east that didst conduct the magi. Thou art the same all present in heaven and in hell. Thou that vibratest between the light and the darkness, rising, descending, changing ever, yet ever the same. The sun is thy father; thy mother the moon. The wind hath borne thee in it's bosom and earth hath ever nourished the changeless god head of thy youth.

Come thou forth I say, come thou forth and make every spirit of the firmament and of the ether, upon the earth and under the earth, on dry land and in the water, of whirling air and of rushing fire, and every spell and scourge of God the Vast One may be obedient unto me.

Veneficia

2011-10-04T17:59:00.000-07:00

This pic is an ad for my perfume of choice, Dior's Hypnotic Poison (although I've currently run out of it, except for some drops at the bottom of the bottle, despite having gone through the duty free perfumes section at the airport several times reasonably recently - apparently it's cheaper at those 'chemist warehouses', really must get some more). Perfumes with evocative names aside (did you know that Exael is the devil in charge of the perfume industry?)... One of my side interests, or I should say many interests, as they only become 'side' interests when one of them is requiring my full attention and pushing the others to the side, is poison. Yes, poison - the woman's weapon. It sounds glamorous, but in fact it's not. Actual poison works in most unaesthetically pleasing ways - and it's also easily detected. While I will write more on this soon - when I have time - I'll currently post my own bookslist of reading material on poison. Also, those in the UK can check out the Alnwick Poison Garden. This bibliography is split into two parts: books on the so-called 'Affair of the Poisons' in which members of Louis XIV's court, including his most important mistress at the time, Madame de Montespan, were embroiled in accusations of consorting with the infamous witch, LaVoisin, from whom they obtained love potions, poisons, congress with the Devil, and cosmetics (Azazel is the devil in charge of cosmetics). The next lot of books are on poisons in general, and may I especially recommend Deborah Blum, James Wharton and Gail Bell. Have a look at Nataniel Hawthorne's Rappacini's Daughter as well, and finally, try and get a hold of Seneca's Medea for an over-the-top description of making magical poisons. Here's the Loeb translation from 1917.

Poison Biblio

Strange Revelations: Magic, Poisons and Sacrilege in Louis XIV's France. by Lynn Wood Mollenauer (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).

The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV. by Anne Somerset (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2003).

Athénaïs: The Real Queen of France. by Lisa Hamilton (Little Brown, 2002).

The Affair of the Poisons: Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan, and one of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries. by Frances Mossiker (Victor Gollancz, 1970).

The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work and Play. By James C. Wharton. (Oxford University Press, 2010).

The Poisoner’s Handbook. by Deborah Blum (Penguin 2010).

The Bean of Calabar and Other Stories. by Steve Macinnis (Allen and Unwin, 2004).

The Poison Principle. by Gail Bell. (Picador 2001).

The Mammoth Book of Murder Science. by Roger Wilkes (Robinson 2000).

Silent Death. by Steve Preisler (Festering Publications, 1997).

Murder With Venom. by Brian Marriner. (True Crime Library 1993).

ABC Guide to Poisons. by Dr Leah Kaminsky (Haughton Miffin, 1991).

The Lady Killers. by Jonathon Goodman. (Piatkus, 1990).

Rappaccini's Daughter. by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844).

Seneca’s Medea.

Australian Eostre

2011-09-20T00:06:00.000-07:00

The constellation of Pegasus and the brightest star in the galaxy Andromeda are rising in the northeast at this time. In southern Australia, spring can be a changeable season and is often characterised by warm days interspersed with wind and rain, vigorous plant growth, abundant flowers and nesting birds. Young koalas leave their mothers’ pouches and mature koalas begin mating. In northern Australia this is the hot dry season; the atmosphere is sticky, water dries up and the ground is very dusty. Swamps and waterholes evaporate, and birds and animals gather around the shrunken billabongs. During this season Aboriginal people burn off the dry grass which flushes out game such as wallabies, goannas, snakes and lizards. Emus are laying their eggs now, and several turtle species, as well as brown snakes, mate.

Meditation: According to Aboriginal legends from the Murrumbidgee area of New South Wales and from the Murray River region in New South Wales and Victoria, the sun is created from the yolk of an emu egg which was thrown up into the air where it struck and then ignited a pile of kindling. Emu breeding habits display cooperation between the sexes: the female lays the eggs and the male hatches and rears the chicks which are striped light and dark – like the year. The emu’s egg, laid during the time of the equinox, signifies harmonious balance, partnership, sharing, polarity, duality and androgyny.

Witches of ancient Greece and Rome

2011-09-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

Ancient Greek epics such as the Odyssey, and the Voyage of Argo tell of princely heroes destined for kingship who seek out legendary sorceresses, appealing to them to wield their magickal power for the sake of a royal line. Witches had pivotal roles in these stories, acting as guides for such heroes as Odysseus and Jason; men who were required to enter the feminine, womb-like space of the underworld, or to travel to the ends of the Earth, as part of their courageous journeying. Later on, in Roman literature, such as in Horace’s Odes and Epodes, or Lucan’s Pharsalia, Witches degenerated into the cemetery-scouring hags familiar to popular culture, no longer sending the hero down to search the underworld, but instead, bringing the realm of the dead up to their customers by performing necromantic rites.

There are many Witches featuring in Greco-Roman literature, some of whom have familiar names such as Circe and Medea, and others who may be somewhat lesser-known such as Simaetha, Perimede, Agamede, Pamphile, Fotis, Erictho, Dipsas, Sagana, Canidia, Veia, Diotima and Oenothea. This article, however, focuses only on Circe, Medea, Canidia and Erictho. Circe and Medea are demoted Goddesses, whereas Canidia is based on an actual real life character, and Erictho is a fearsome composite of several Witches - as well as of the goddess Hekate. These intriguing sorceresses inhabited the margins of society, they personified peripheries, edges, boundaries, and were fringe-dwellers in every sense of the word - if they didn’t live far out to sea on an island like Circe, then they might come from foreign countries like Medea and Erictho, or inhabit the fringe of ‘decent’ society as did Canidia.

Dealing with Witchcraft was a step away from the confines of normality for both the mythic hero and the average citizen, it was an adventure between the worlds where transformation was possible. Apart from goddesses and queens, Witches were practically the only women with fleshed-out personalities and important roles to play in classical literature, and their characters acted as ‘templates’ for the portrayal of Witches in literature for centuries to come.

Circe
And then the demon goddess lightly laid
Her wand upon our hair, and instantly
Bristles (the shame of it! but I will tell)
Began to sprout; I could no longer speak;
My words were grunts, I grovelled to the ground.
I felt my nose change to a tough wide snout,
My neck thicken and bulge. My hands that held
The bowl just now made footprints on the floor.
And with my friends who suffered the same fate
(Such power have magic potions) I was shut
Into a sty.
~Ovid, Metamorphoses.

The first magical operation recorded in Greek literature is found in Book 10 of the famous Odyssey by Homer which was written in the 8th century BCE. This magic was performed by Circe, a Witch who lived on an island called Aeaea at the edge of the known world. Ancient Greeks believed the world was flat and that it was encircled by the ‘river of ocean’, Circe lived at the boundary of this world - practically as far away from civilisation as possible - near the entrance to Hades, the Underworld. She is a Heliade, a daughter of Helios the Sun God, and is sister to both Aeetes, the father of Medea, and Pasiphae, mother of the Minotaur. It is likely that Circe herself was also originally an ancient Goddess of some sort, perhaps a ‘Potnia Theron’, a Mistress of Animals. She is also a predatory seductress, and her name in Greek, Kirke, is related to kirkos which means a circling bird of prey, or a wolf, and which in Homer, denotes a hawk.

On their way home from the Trojan War, the hero Odysseus and his companions arrive at her island where "...all about them were lions, and wolves of the mountains, whom the goddess had given evil drugs and enchanted, and these made no attack on the men, but came up thronging about them, waving their long tails..." No sooner does Circe meet with the men than she waves her wand over them and "they took on the look of pigs, with the heads and voices and bristles of pigs, but the mind in them stayed as they had been before... Circe threw down acorns for them to eat, and ilex and cornel buds, such food as pigs who sleep on the ground always feed on." Pigs were sacred to Demeter and Persephone and associated with the fertility of the earth, so perhaps Circe is, in a way, designating the men as offerings to the chthonic Earth Mother/Daughter duo.

With the aid of the god Hermes, who supplied him with a magickal plant called ‘moly’, Odysseus becomes immune to Circe’s magic and so instead of transforming him into a pig as well, she invites him to become her lover. Eventually Odysseus persuades her to change his companions back to their human form, and they all remain living on her island for a year. However, Odysseus needs to obtain the advice of a famous prophet called Tiresias, (who unfortunately is dead), to find out exactly how to reach his home to reclaim his kingship. Circe explains the ritual processes required to enter the underworld so he can consult with the Seer, and shows him how to get there. Here she seems to be a type of gatekeeper, and her island, a portal to the realm of the dead.

In addition to her role in the Odyssey, in later literature Circe had dealings with the prophetic divinity, Picus, who loved the fruit goddess, Pomona, and was consequently changed by Circe into a woodpecker for preferring Pomona over her. She also loved Glaucus but he was in love with Scylla, consequently Circe put poisonous herbs into the fountain where Scylla bathed and she was turned into the famous monster which lurked in a cliff overlooking the strait between Italy and Sicily. Circe was also associated with Marcia, mother of Latinus by Faunus, and with Aphrodite.

Medea
My magic song rouses the quiet, calms the angry sea,
I move forests, bid the mountains quake,
the deep earth groans, and ghosts rise from their tombs.
Thee too bright moon, I banish...
~Ovid, Metamorphoses.

Medea is the niece of Circe, a Heliade, and also a Priestess and Witch in the lunar cult of Hekate. She is known to us from the Voyage of Argo, or as it is also known, Jason and the Argonauts by Apollonius of Rhodes, which was written in the 3rd century BCE. Probably the most infamous Witch of antiquity, many writers were fascinated by her and she also appears in works by Seneca, Euripedes and Ovid. In the story of the Argonauts, the goddesses, Athena and Hera, convince Aphrodite to send Eros to smite Medea with love for Jason, leader of the Argonauts, because it fits in with their plans which favour Jason. He had been sent to her kingdom of Colchis to find the Golden Fleece by his uncle who would not let him ascend the throne of his homeland without it. Medea consequently betrays her own people by helping Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, and then has to flee with him back to Greece.

Back in Jason’s kingdom Medea is seen as exotic and foreign and fails to be assimilated into society. Although she was instrumental in putting him on the throne and lives with him as a wife, ungrateful Jason later abandons her because he is offered a chance to marry a local princess for political reasons. Medea derives her sinister reputation from what she did to punish Jason - she made a poisonous robe for the princess he was to marry, who dies horribly, and then she kills her own children. Readers throughout later centuries have had difficulties reconciling their feelings of sympathy for Medea, with their abhorrence at her murderous behaviour. Many explanations for her actions have been suggested ranging from the obvious; that she was just desperate and furious, to the more subtle; that writers used it as a way of making her appear even more ‘alien’. Other versions of the story say that she left the children in the temple of Hera where they were stoned to death by the Corinthians and still other stories mention descendants of Medea and Jason, so if she did kill her children she only killed two of them. One of the survivors, Thessalus, was said to be the father of the Thessalian race.

Medea was not executed for her murders and infanticide, but flew away on her magical chariot and appealed to foreign kings for asylum. To one king, Aegus of Athens, she bore a son Medus whom in some versions of her story she took home to Colchis and who eventually became the father of the Medes, a powerful Asian race. Some writers say that she went to Italy where she was deified by people called the Marrubians as the obscure goddess, Angitia, whose name came from her abilities to kill serpents and cure snakebite; (anguis = serpent). She was also identified with the Roman goddess, Bona Dea, who was the chaste sister, or wife, to Faunus, and who was also associated with serpents. Bona Dea’s cult was a women-only affair, she was a goddess associated with healing, and medicinal herbs were sold in her temples.

Canidia
Canidia and Erictho appear in Roman poetry, not in epic stories or plays, and so their characters are less-developed than Circe or Medea’s. They are meant to be repulsive, frightening hags, not sexy, amoral sorceresses, which seems to be the way Roman authors perceived Witches. Nevertheless, these types of Witches were to make a big impression on the readers of such literature and this Roman stereotype persisted for the next two thousand years. Hag-like, spooky Canidia, along with her companions, Sagana and Veia, are thought to be (besides the Norns and the Fates), the inspiration for Shakespeare’s ‘Weird Sisters’ from Macbeth. Canidia appears in poems by the Roman writer Horace (65 - 8 BCE), and seems to have been based upon a real Neapolitan pharmacist and perfume-maker called Grattidia, famous for her potions and poisons.

Canidia orders funeral Cypresses,
wild fig trees dug out from tombs,
a nocturnal screech-owl’s feathers,
and eggs smeared with the blood of a nasty toad.
Herbs supplied by poisonous, fertile Iolcos and Spain,
bones snatched from a starving bitch,
to be scorched in the Colchian flames.
~Horace, At o deorum.

According to Georg Luck’s essay in Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Horace deliberately satirises Canidia as a depraved practitioner of the black arts in an effort to debunk popular belief in Witchcraft and discourage people from paying Witches for their services. Just as in northern Europe, southern European Witches were always ready with an elixir or a poison and many people sought their aid: The love-struck, seeking to ensnare a beloved or to destroy a rival; young women unable to conceive a child, begged the Witch to bestow upon them the blessing of fertility; and men with impotence problems implored Witches to straighten out their dilemma.

Arrest and persecution of Witches, whether they were hexers or healers, was not unique to Christian Europe’s Witch trials. In the years 184, 180-179 BCE, (which was, incidentally, before Canidia/Grattidia’s time), Roman magistrates ordered the execution of thousands of people accused of veneficia (poisoning) or malign magic, in one case killing 2000 alleged magic-workers and in another 3000. Performing magick, and especially being famous for doing so, like Grattidia, was a dangerous business and practitioners were always at risk of being denounced by an unsatisfied client.

Erictho
Nay, though the Witch had power to
call the shades forth from the depths,
‘twas doubtful if the cave were not a part of hell.
Discordant hues flamed on her garb as by a fury worn;
bare was her visage, and upon her brow dread vipers hissed,
beneath her streaming locks in sable coils entwined.
~Lucan, Pharsalia.

Such is the description of the Witch, Erictho, in Book 6 of the Pharsalia by the Roman author Lucan (39 - 65 AD). In this incredibly long epic poem about the Civil War between Julius Caesar and Pompey, we meet a fearsome figure who seems to be a combination of all the previous Witches, as well as being reminiscent of Virgil’s description of Hekate in The Aeneid. Erictho lives in Thessaly, the classic country of sorcery, and is consulted there by Pompey’s son on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus (48 BCE). She has enormous powers, more like a Goddess than a Witch, and emerges as a kind of Great Mother Kali scouring the cremation grounds, collecting the bones and ashes of the dead. In the Pharsalia, instead of guiding the supplicant to the underworld, Erictho brings the underworld up to him by performing necromancy and reanimating a corpse to foretell the future about the outcome of the battle. Such operations were believed to really work and reviving the dead was a subject discussed in scientific circles up to the 19th century. Georg Luck tells us that the poet Shelley read Lucan with his wife Mary, and that this is probably where she derived her idea about writing Frankenstein.

What can we learn from these Witches?
Investigation into the classical Mediterranean Witch figures (by reading the sorts of titles listed below) reveal the beginnings of the sexist stereotyping of women who practiced Witchcraft, as well as showing us interesting role models of what we would now call ‘Solitaries’ or perhaps ‘Hedge Wytches’: there are no covens (unless you call Canidia and her two friends a ‘coven’), no pentagrams, and no ‘Great Rites’. The Witches’ patron deity was Hekate and Witchcraft seemed to be more concerned with attainment of power, in a worldly sense, control of sex, fertility, life and death, and medicine for healing or harming, rather than any sort of religious practice. These ancient Witches are quite different to the rather pervasive ‘fluffy bunny New Age Wiccans’ of contemporary society. Although they are not necessarily based completely truthfully on real life ancient practitioners, personally I think that anyone who studies and/or practices Witchcraft today needs to be aware of these ancient Witchy prototypes and their role in the stereotype/archetype of the Witch.

Where to find Greco-Roman Witches
These once-popular classic works have been somewhat neglected of late by many Pagans, however these books are recommended reading for the popular revival/practice of Stregheria as well as any sort of Hellenic or Roman reconstructionist Paganism, and for those who have an affinity with Mediterranean cultures.

The Odyssey by Homer, (Penguin 1946), the Voyage of Argo by Apollonius of Rhodes (Penguin 1959 & 1971), Medea by Euripides (Penguin 1963), Metamorphosis by Ovid (Oxford University Press 1986) the Aeneid by Virgil (Penguin 1990), Complete Odes and Epodes by Horace (Penguin 1983), and Pharsalia by Lucan (Penguin 1992).

Other helpful titles
Arcana Mundi by Georg Luck. (John Hopkins University Press USA 1985), Women of Classical Mythology by Robert E. Bell (ABC-CLIO USA 1991) (Has lots of obscure goddesses as well as more familiar ones listed). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome. Ed. Bengt Ankarloo & Stuart Clark. (Athlone Press 1999) The Rotting Goddess by Jacob Rabinowitz. (Traces the development of Hekate from a local fertility deity into a somewhat sinister Witch Goddess). (Autonomedia USA 1998) and Goddesses of Sun and Moon by Karl Kerenyi. (Highly recommended for his analysis of the figures of Circe and Medea) (Spring Publications USA 1979).

Originally published in The Cauldron #106 (November 2002).

The Upper Palaeolithic... and me.

2011-09-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading the sixth and final book in Jean M. Auel’s “Earth’s Children” series, The Land of the Painted Caves. This series – for those who don’t know – is set in Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic (or Late Stone Age) period, dating between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. Auel’s books are meant to be set around the 28,000 BCE (30,000 BP) mark. The first book in this series, The Clan of the Cave Bear, came out in 1980 but I didn’t discover and read it until around 1986. That was also the year that the film of the book, starring Daryl Hannah, came out – although I didn’t see it until several years later. I’ve heard that it was voted worst film of that year and I agree, it was not good. The book on which it is based however, is excellent.

Back in 1986 when I was reading Clan of the Cave Bear, inspired by a magazine devoted to rural self-sufficiency called Grass Roots, I had recently moved from the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda (yes the seedy carnivalesque one) to rural Central Victoria. It was the absolute tail-end of the Back to the Earth Movement that had been prominent in the 1970s, and I was really sorry that I’d – apparently – missed it. My boyfriend and I thought we’d do rural self-sufficiency anyway; I was already spinning my own wool, weaving and making clothes in my St Kilda flat. We made a pact to move to the country whether we were ready to or not. When we first arrived in Central Victoria we squatted in an abandoned farmhouse from which we soon got evicted (it wasn’t so abandoned after all) and by the time I discovered Clan of the Cave Bear, maybe a month or so later, I was living in a tiny caravan in a forest on a rural property belonging to the first other witches ever I’d met. (They were friends of the bohemian artist father of my boyfriend’s best friend). One of the witches had turned me onto Auel’s book – she was always good for supplying interesting books of the 80s witchy zeitgeist.... Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, for example.

At this rural retreat there was no electricity, water came from rainwater caught in a dam, and if you wanted it hot it had to be heated over a fire. The heroine of Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla, was the perfect role model for me at that time. Did I need to make a fire? – Ayla was my role model. If I had to bathe in a chilly dam – Ayla swam in much colder rivers. Making one’s own clothes or building dwellings like Ayla did was all a part of the modern Back to the Earth Movement (Ayla didn’t grow veggies though, but she knew all about recurring seasonal plants for harvesting – oh hunter-gathers, the first affluent society). One of the stand-out things in Clan of the Cave Bear was the description of herbal medicine and we all knew that was a part of [modern] witchcraft. Author Jean M. Auel excelled in the description of herbs and other plants, as well as the characteristics of the landscape. She had researched hunting and butchery, and ancient crafts. It was the perfect headspace for alternative life-stylers.

One of the really interesting things about the Earth’s Children series was the background of what we understood, in a Goddess Movement-Gimbutas kind of way, as an ancient religion of the Great Mother Goddess. The inside flap of Clan of the Cave Bear had a picture of the Venus of Willendorf, and Ayla’s partner Jondalar (who appeared in book 2, The Valley of the Horses) came from a people who called this goddess Doni. I was already familiar with the forms of witchcraft deriving from British Wicca, as explained by Doreen Valiente and the US Feri/Reclaiming Tradition of Starhawk, with their focus on a Goddess as well as a God, from when I lived in the city. Now, in the country, along with Clan of the Cave Bear I was reading up on Celtic and other mythological systems and the American Goddess Movement. Marija Gimbutas’ books were also available for me to peruse. It all made absolute sense: there was an ancient Great Mother Goddess who had a younger male paramour, and this is where the gods of witchcraft came from. I was deeply intrigued with the tiny bronze Venus of Willendorf pendant that the above-mentioned witch provided for me, and hung it immediately on a leather thong around my neck. Living in the forest, with a fire burning to keep me warm at night and the southern stars whirling above my head, I really felt I could be someone like Ayla.

It didn’t really matter that this was 1986 and we weren’t actually hunting our own food with spear throwers or pit traps. We made clothes, used herbal remedies, believed in a weird religion, attended the Mount Franklin Annual Pagan Gathering for Beltane and the Down to Earth Confest, an alternative lifestyle festival held on the Murray River in northern Victoria, around Litha – such events seemed exactly like the Summer Meetings that Jean M. Auel described for Ayla’s people in deep prehistory. At the 1989 Confest at Walwa (one of my favourites ever) I even met a woman whose new baby girl was called Ayla. As far as I was concerned I was living the life! I didn’t know much about historical periods, about archaeology... I just wanted to live a dreamy, aesthetically pleasing life, in a utopia of nude swimming, handmade objects, herbalism and magical spells and rituals. To paraphrase a now absolutely cliché bumper sticker, the Goddess was alive and magic was afoot.

Sure, Jean M. Auel’s characters, Ayla and Jondalar, were the Stone Age Barbie and Ken. Yes, Ayla was suspiciously responsible for discovering many things – too many things for one woman; she was a Stone Age “Everywoman”, no, a Superwoman! – but that was good for me. It was empowering to think that women did important things in the past; it meant we could do them again now, and in the future. Yes, the social aspects of real Upper Palaeolithic Europeans may not have been anything like the way Auel described them in her books, they probably weren’t. As I said above however, she had done a lot of research on the environment, flora, fauna, crafts, cave paintings and other characteristics of this period – and these are novels after all, not academic textbooks. Back in the late 80s however, from what I can recall, I think we generally thought of them as “history”. How – why – would we have thought otherwise?

The third instalment in the series, The Mammoth Hunters, was just great (I wasn’t too thrilled with the second one, The Valley of the Horses, it was OK...it was necessary) and I think that a reader could be satisfied finishing the series there, with the third book, and never reading another one. I don’t actually recall where I lived when I read this one; it came out in 1985, so maybe I was still in the country. (It was in The Mammoth Hunters that the Venus of Brasempouy, thought now to be a forgery, featured). After I’d read the third book I think I forgot about the series for a while. It wasn’t until quite a bit later, after I had moved back to Melbourne in the early 90s, that I met someone (in the context of his being interested in the Church of All Worlds, the Australian branch of which I had co-founded with Anthorr and Fiona Nomchong in 1992) who, during our conversation, told me a strange tale about the books. He said that Jean M. Auel had become an alcoholic, that she’d had to give back her most recent advance to the publisher and that there would be no more books in the Earth’s Children series. I couldn’t believe it and hoped it wasn’t true.

I still don’t know whether this story was actually true. I never got confirmation of it. You can imagine my consternation however when, sometime in what must have been the early 2000s, contrary to what this informant had told me I heard of a fourth instalment in the series, The Plains of Passage, that had apparently been out for a while but which I had been oblivious of. I immediately bought and read it to catch up on Ayla’s and Jondalar’s movments (you know how you can get attached to fictional characters...). This was a particularly satisfyingly descriptive instalment of their story, particularly in regards to what Auel does best: the vivid descriptions of flora, fauna, landscape, crafts, hunting, herbalism, the construction of dwellings, and dealing with horses. I read the next book, The Shelters of Stone, in 2002 in the wake of a traumatic birthing experience (which is detailed in Celebrating the Pagan Soul, edited by Laura Wildman, New York: Citadel Press, 2005. 226–230). While I was pleased to be continuing with the story and it distracted me from my ordeal, there may have been a little too much description of caves in the book... yes, it was interesting, but we don’t need to hear about so many.

This was also the point in my life at which I became disillusioned with believing in the Venus of Willendorf and other prehistoric figurines as “goddesses”. As I had discovered (simultaneously, not as a result of) in Ronald Hutton’s The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, we do not know whether such objects depict deities, humans, or what these statuettes were used for. Were they fertility figurines, anti-fertility – or something else entirely? Coincidently however, as a result of my reproductive trauma, Marione, editor of the Goddess magazine The Beltane Papers, sent me a little statue of this very Venus as comfort... It was a kind gesture on her part and I do love it. I’ll always be fascinated, from an aesthetic angle, with ancient art. Another of my absolute favourite Stone Age female figurines is the Venus of Lespuge; it’s so...‘modern’.

And now it’s 2011, twenty-five years since I started the Earth’s Children books (how time flies!) and I have finally finished the series. And that’s it. Auel isn’t going to write any more, I hear. Maybe 6 books is enough – although I bet fans would welcome more. Yes, the prehistoric society Auel depicted is largely based on the peaceful Earth Mother worshippers soon to be taken over by the patriarchal Kurgans model, so prevalent within the Goddess Movement and criticised by Cynthia Eller in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory... Yes, you could read Margaret Elphinstone’s The Gathering Night for a less Ken-and-Barbie inhabited rendition of European prehistory... and I recommend it heartily. You could also watch the French-Belgian movie, Quest for Fire, for a more believable and aesthetically pleasing film adaptation of the Stone Age than the abysmal Daryl Hannah Clan of the Cave Bear film. Yes, there are things to be critical of in Auel’s Earth’s Children series... but there is also something really evocative about this story of a European “Adam and Eve”. Maybe it’s just escapist reverie, but then again, perhaps there is actual value in such a tale of what Cro-Magnons – what we early humans – may have been like.

Stregheria: An Introduction to Italian Witchcraft

2011-09-04T23:23:00.000-07:00

Now at last I salute your potent art,
and kneeling I beg by Proserpina’s realm,
by Diana’s immovable godhead, by your books
of incantations strong to unfix the stars
and call them down from the sky, Canidia,
leave off at length your supernatural spells
and let the swift wheel reverse, reverse.
- Horace, Iam iam efficaci.

To mention practical Witchcraft these days almost always means British Witchcraft of some sort, a religious, magical or shamanic system from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland or thereabouts. Owing to the publicity that Witches such as Gerald Gardner and Alex Sanders received in the past, English Witchcraft in particular was highlighted, so to speak, on the world map. Any research on Witchcraft history however, will show that it actually occurs all over the world in different variations. One of these Witchcraft varieties is the Italian version called ‘Stregheria’. The word ‘Strega’ (stray-guh) means a female witch, singular, ‘Streghe’ (stray-gay) is the most common plural form, a male witchcraft practitioner is a ‘Stregone’ (stray-go-nay) and when talking about a tradition of Italian witchcraft it is a ‘Stregheria’ (stray-guh-ria) tradition not a ‘Strega’ tradition. If you find yourself drawn to the gods of classical antiquity, those majestic deities from ancient Greece and Rome and if the cultures of the Aegean and the Mediterranean resonate within you, then Stregheria may be the Pagan religion and folk witchcraft for you.

Popularised in the later twentieth century by such public Italian-American witches as Leo Martello, Lori Bruno and Raven Grimassi, Stregheria is rapidly increasing in popularity amongst Pagans in the USA and is rather more slowly making inroads into Australia as well. Stregheria, in a roundabout way, has already had a profound influence upon modern British Wicca. One of the major Stregheria texts which is also an old Wiccan favourite, ‘Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches’ compiled by Charles G. Leland and published in 1899, is believed by several scholars to be the inspiration for the Charge of the Goddess, the primary invocation used in Wiccan ritual:

...Whenever ye have need of anything,
Once in the month, and when the moon is full,
Ye shall assemble in some desert place,
Or in a forest all together join
To adore the potent spirit of your queen,
My mother, great Diana...
-Aradia. p.6

In his essay accompanying the new 1998 translation of ‘Aradia’ by Mario & Dina Pazzaglini, Wiccan author Robert Chartowich suggests that ‘Aradia’ is also responsible for the use of nudity within British Wiccan ritual:

And ye shall be freed from slavery,
And so ye shall be free in everything;
And as the sign that ye are truly free,
Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men
And women also.
-Aradia. p.7

Consequently, Anthropologist and Folklorist, Sabina Magliocco, suggests that ‘Aradia’ should be looked at ‘as the first real text of the 20th century Witchcraft revival.’

So what is Stregheria then? The Streghe worship Diana, the Roman moon goddess who is recorded in Roman history as having three aspects and is known as Diana Triformis. Her three-fold nature consists of Luna, the moon, Diana the huntress and Hecate the underworld goddess, thus she has influence over the three worlds, celestial, terrestrial and chthonian. Usually represented in mythology as Virgin, in Stregheria Diana is the mother of Aradia by her brother Lucifer the Light-Bringer (Apollo). Streghe believe that Aradia, or as she is also known, Herodias, once manifested as an earthly incarnation and as a lunar ‘avatar’, taught witchcraft to mortals.

‘Tis true indeed that thou a spirit art,
But thou wert born but to become again
A mortal; thou must go to the earth below
To be a teacher unto women and men
Who fain would study witchcraft in thy school...
...And thou shalt be the first of witches known;
And thou shalt be the first i’ the world.
Aradia. p.4

Why Herodias in particular would be a daughter to Diana is a puzzle. Herodias is a name most often associated with the wife of the Biblical Herod Antipas and the mother of the infamous dancer Salome however, she is also a figure associated with Night Flying and as the Canon Episcopi recorded Diana as a generic goddess name associated with the Wild Hunt it is possible the two eventually became conflated. Early Witch Trial records list confessions of night-journeys following ‘Erodiade’, the Italian name of Herodias.

Speaking of Night Flying, the word ‘Strega’ actually comes from the Latin word ‘strix’ meaning screech owl. Pliny the Elder wrote about ‘Striges’ (plural of strix), who were women who could transform themselves into birds of prey by means of magic. The Roman author Apuleius (b. early 2nd century CE) gives a description of this metamorphosis in his book ‘The Golden Ass’: “...watched Pamphile first undress completely and then open a small cabinet containing several little boxes, one of which she opened. It contained an ointment which she worked about with her fingers and then smeared all over her body from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. After this she muttered a long charm to her lamp and shook herself; and, as I watched, her limbs became gradually fledged with feathers, her arms changed into sturdy wings, her nose grew crooked and horny, her nails turned into talons, and soon there was no longer any doubt about it: Pamphile had become an owl.” It certainly seems then that Stregheria once was a shamanic type of witchcraft such as the sort Carlo Ginzberg writes about in his brilliant book ‘Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath’. In that sense then it belongs to the collective archetype of the so-called ‘9th Sabbat’: the perpetual Sabbat in the center of the Wheel of the Year, accessed through spirit-flight, in this case manifesting through a Mediterranean lens.

Although certain contemporary authors such as Raven Grimassi claim to be practicing and teaching an hereditary form of Stregheria, and in Grimassi’s case have published ‘how to’ books on the subject which are very popular, (although his detractors call it ‘Wicca Florentine style’), Stregheria is really a Pagan religion under re-construction. Grimassi’s books are not the last word on the subject and if you are interested in digging deeper, books such as ‘Etruscan Roman Remains’ and ‘Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches’ by Charles G. Leland are your next step. These have their limitations though and making the effort to study particularly Italian folklore, Roman and Etruscan magic, Paganism and history will also prove rewarding. A suggested booklist appears below. Nor is it actually necessary to be of Italian descent to successfully practice Stregheria, but it helps if you have a deep interest in Roman Paganism, as well as both ancient and recent Italian history. Some students go as far as to learn Latin and/or modern Italian for performance of rituals and to access texts in those languages. For those who do have Italian heritage, the revival of Stregheria has also stimulated much family folklore collecting and different traditional paths within Stregheria are now evident.

A Note on Amulets.
If, like me, you are partial to wearing amulets and other decorative clutter, just as many Wiccans often wear Pentagram jewellery as both an amulet and as a symbol of their faith, Streghe may be identified by the wearing of a Cimaruta. ‘Cimaruta’ means ‘sprig of rue’ in Neapolitan and it was probably originally carved in red coral which has a naturally branching form. The Cimaruta is usually a three-branched amulet and is supposed to resemble the top of a rue plant. It is cast in silver and has other traditional Italian charms at the end of its branches. The charm as a whole can be said to consist of thirteen components sacred to Diana: these are Rue, the triformed branch shape, the metal silver, a hand, a horned crescent, a serpent, a key, heart, rooster, eagle, sword or dart, fish and vervain flower. Not every Cimaruta will have all thirteen attributes however, up until the end of the 19th century it was reputedly difficult to find two Cimaruta which were exactly the same, but now that they are less common there tend to be copies made of a few particular types.

This article is only the briefest general introduction to Stregheria. There are many websites and internet discussion lists devoted to this subject however, for further information I suggest the following books.

Useful References
Apuleius. The Golden Ass. translated by Robert Graves. Penguin. London. 1954.

Mary Beard, John North, Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Vol.2. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1998.

Frederick Elworthy. The Evil Eye. Colier Books. New York. 1958.

James G. Frazer. The Golden Bough. abridged edition. Macmillan. London. 1983.

Carlo Ginzburg. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath. translation R. Rosenthal. Pantheon. New York. 1991.

Carin M.C. Green. Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2007.

Raven Grimassi. Italian Witchcraft. (originally Ways of the Strega). Llewellyn. St Paul. 1995.

Raven Grimassi. Hereditary Witchcraft. Llewellyn. St Paul. 1999.

Horace. Complete Odes and Epodes. Trans.W. G. Shepherd. Penguin. London. 1983.

Charles G. Leland. Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches. (new translation). Mario & Dina Pazzaglini. Phoenix. Washington. 1998.

Charles G. Leland Etruscan Roman Remains. Phoenix. Washington. Reprint of 1892 version.

Sabina Magliocco. Spells, Saints and Streghe. The Pomegranate #13. August, 2000.

Ovid. Metamorphosis. translation A.D. Melville. Oxford Uni Press. Oxford. 1986.

Ovid. Fasti. translation A.J. Boyle & R.D. Woodard. Penguin. London. 2000.

Virgil. The Aeneid. translation D. West. Penguin. London. 1990.

Lucas Cranach - The Golden Age

2011-09-02T16:52:00.000-07:00

I'm studying Edens and other treed utopias at present... so thought I'd post this.

Jerusalem Old City Spraypaint

2011-08-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

These images are from 2011 and continue on from my 2010 pics of Jerusalem Old City Spraypaint. [P.C. Disclaimer: I'm not 'favouring' Islamic religion over Judaism here (in Jerusalem), by focussing on these images]. I am interested in the bright spraypaint on the old Jerusalem stone, plus of course I am intereted in the religious theme as well as in the beautiful Arabic script.

Evocative Writing

2011-08-06T07:39:00.000-07:00

While I'm loathe to bump my favourite history professor off the front page of my blog, I think he's being relaced by something of similar interest - although of an entirely different genre.

Excerpt from Emma Tennant’s The Bad Sister (in Travesties, Faber and Faber, London, 1995), page 95–7.

I was in a forest, which was dappled with light and shade, so much so that the proportions of darkness and light seemed exactly right: small clouds raced over the portions of the sky that were visible, exactly corresponding with the delicious patches of shade on the ground under the trees; pale gold and green grass was as light as wheat in the sunlight, and cushions and banks of moss as deep green as if they had been saturated with water from an underground spring. Birds were flying about in the forest. They were black and bright blue and their song was harsh. Where they flew the forest changed, into a blue metal forest, without the light and the shade. In those parts of the forest where they flew I could see wolves, and sometimes movement like a figure in the trees. In that part of the forest the trees were as straight as metal, and without shadow. The wolves never stopped pacing, under a sun unfiltered by leaves.

Where I was, however, seemed to me the most beautiful place I had ever seen The black and blue birds never flew into the part of the forest where I was standing – they stopped short, always, on the other side of a small round clearing, a kind of fairy ring, some distance away. There was a stream a few feet in front of me, and it too was dappled evenly, like tortoiseshell. White flowers – Solomon’s Seal and Star of Bethlehem – grew under the light, graceful trees, which had bark spotted and light as a leopard’s back.

I sat down by the stream and picked some of the white, bloodless flowers. I felt balanced, contained by the shade as if this place, this forest, was the most perfect combination of the world’s beauties, at the same time bright and obscure, warm and cold, concrete and hallucinatory, like the forest on the other side of the clearing, the hard minerals at the core of the world, and the hunger and evil walking the streets. The word was all around me in its unchangeable balance. I looked down at my body, and saw how the chameleon dappling moved to accommodate the white flowers I held against my dress, and the dark shadow made by my head tilting down. The light and shade flowed endlessly, like film, the essence of illusion positive and negative light.

When I looked up again I looked directly and the clearing. There was something there. The sun and the leaves had become agitated in their patterns on the ground. The symmetry of the carpet was disturbed. And the walls of the clearing, the silver birches tainted with gold, knobbles protruding on the bark like bruises on the moving, swaying trunks, seemed to have closed ranks behind the clearing, to be shutting out the hard forest beyond. I rose and walked slowly to towards the clearing.

The figure in the middle of the ring was hard to see, for the light and the goldness and the darkness played over him continually. He seemed to be wearing a coat made of shadow and light, of reflected leaves and pinstripe of bark, a patchwork of sylvan colours. His head, blindingly clear at one moment in the flashes from the sun, would vanish, and the change again. He was tall, but only as tall as the bolt of the sun that fell over him - when the leaves overhead rustled and changed he disintegrated into an autumnal chaos before reassembling in the mossy ring.

I walked up to the edge of the circle. A thin haze of light like a mesh wall kept me from going any further. I saw him as he stood before me, as he melted into striped and filmy air and came back into split second focus. He was extraordinarily like me. I felt that sense of recognition and disbelief which jars at the sight of an unexpected mirror: the thing before you that is too familiar and too strange. But I knew him. I reached out my hand, and the light and shadow fell evenly on my arm making gold bars on the dusky, dim skin. He smiled: I saw him clearly then. But before I could speak a wind that soughed like an evening wind came down over the trees around us. The branches were tossed as if a hand had come up from below and squeezed them into a broom to scour the sky. They sighed and rattled, and as they divided, the evenness of the light and shadow was gone, and he disappeared. He might have flown up one of the shafts of white air in the parted trees. Or he might have gone into the ground like a fox. The light in the ring was flat and tired – round a tree stump there was a slight enhancement from the dying goldness of the day, and a sense of shadow on the moss. I went to sit there, I was disconsolate.

Interview with Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom

2011-05-20T02:31:00.000-07:00

Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol in the UK. A leading authority on the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Hutton is probably better known amongst Pagans for his writings on topics such as the ritual year in Britain, ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and modern Paganism. A prolific author, Hutton has produced many books of immense interest to Pagans including The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (Blackwell, 1991), The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (OUP, 1996), Shamans: Siberian Spirituality and the Western Imagination (Hambledon, 2001), Witches, Druids and King Arthur (Hambledon, 2003), The Druids: A History (Hambledon Continuum, 2007), and Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (London: Yale University Press, 2009).

The book he is arguably most famous for however, at least amongst modern witches, is The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (OUP, 1999). This book has been received positively by many leading Pagans, as well as Pagan Studies scholars, amongst whom Hutton is considered to be a trailblazer responsible for making the study of modern Paganism acceptable within academia, thus paving the way for younger scholars to investigate it via disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, religious studies, theology, history and archaeology. Other Pagans have not been so pleased with his work however, and in January of this year – over a decade after the publication of The Triumph of the Moon – a vitriolic war of words erupted on the internet as a result of discussion over a publication by New Zealand Wiccan, Ben Whitmore, called Trials of the Moon.

Professor Hutton, thank you for consenting to this interview. You don’t often give interviews. Why have you agreed to this one?

Because I really like your own scholarship, as expressed in your publications, and because there is currently so much misunderstanding and misinformation being put out about my work in some parts of the Pagan world that I thought it was time to set the record straight about certain things.

You have recently been described as a ‘maverick historian’. Do you think that you are one?

The Wiccan who made that remark never explained what it was supposed to mean, but within the academic world the term carries only negative connotations, of eccentricity, marginality and controversy. My own career has, on the contrary, been remarkably orthodox for a professional scholar, while my work has actually provoked less controversy among my fellow professionals than that of most university-based historians.

So what has that ‘remarkably orthodox career’ actually been (so far)?

I took my degrees at Cambridge and then Oxford, Britain’s oldest and best-known universities, and held a temporary post at Oxford for a couple of years before Bristol University invited me to a permanent one in 1981. Bristol is often reckoned to be the third best in England after Oxford and Cambridge, in terms of the quality of its students, and gave me a freedom to teach new subjects that the older universities could not. In 1988 I was promoted to the middle rank of the British academic profession, of Reader, and in 1996 to the top rank, of Professor: some confusion is created abroad by the fact that in most countries ‘professor’ is a term used for any university teacher, while in the United Kingdom it is reserved for the highest grade. In 1981 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the national body of professional historians. In 1994 I was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the national body of professional archaeologists (who gave me this honour for my book Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles). In 2011 I was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, for my services to the study of Welsh history and literature. It is very rare for anybody to receive all three honours, and this reflects both the wide range of my interests and the fact that my work is generally accepted by experts in all three fields. In 2009 the government appointed me as the historian on the commission which runs English Heritage, the body which cares for the physical remains of the nation’s past, and in 2010 it made me chair of the committee of experts which advises it on which buildings should be protected as having historic importance. The only unorthodox thing about my career, in fact, has been my interest in modern Paganism.

So are you a Pagan?

I keep my personal religious beliefs a private matter. I am really sorry for the confusion that this may cause, but I have found by trial and error that it is in practice the only sensible course in view of the work that I do.

In that case what is your relationship with Paganism?

It has been long and close. As I mentioned in my book Witches, Druids and King Arthur, I was in fact brought up Pagan, in a modern English tradition which combined a reverence for the natural world with a love of the ancient Greek and Roman classics. I have been acquainted with Wiccan witches since my teens: I learned some things from Alex Sanders in his hey-day, and attended my first Wiccan rite at Halloween 1968. I have never undergone a conversion experience to any religion, and so my relationship with others, such as Christianity, is one of entirely benevolent neutrality. Over the years, I came to build up friendships with more or less all of the leading figures of British Paganism. For example, Doreen Valiente’s respect for me meant that I was one of the few people whom she specified should be invited to her funeral, a gesture which still deeply moves me.

My attitude to the history of modern Pagan witchcraft has altered with changing knowledge of it. Back in the 1960s I believed, following scholarly orthodoxy, that the witchcraft of the early modern European witch trials was a pagan religion. In 1973 I debated against the historian Norman Cohn (author of Europe’s Inner Demons (1975), the work that accused Margaret Murray of having tampered with her sources to make them conform to her ideas about witchcraft) at Cambridge University, where I defended the historical legitimacy of Charles Godfrey Leland’s ‘witches’ gospel’, Aradia, and was floored by him. After that, as I read more and more of the new research and checked the original records (for England and Scotland) myself, my belief in the idea that witches were members of an ancient pagan religion gradually evaporated.

So, you are not actually hostile to Paganism as some people seem to think?

The story of my life would be inexplicable if that were the case.

Did you write The Triumph of the Moon to demolish the traditional history of Pagan witchcraft?

Absolutely not: I wrote Triumph to fill a vacuum created by the collapse, within Britain, of that traditional history: which is why I do not devote any space in the book to a sustained attack on that history itself. The concept of early modern witchcraft as a surviving pagan religion, which had been scholarly orthodoxy in the mid-twentieth century, began to disappear among professional historians around 1970, along with many other nineteenth-century beliefs. At the same time, many Pagan witches who had worked with founding figures of traditions, such as Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders and Robert Cochrane, had always expressed doubts regarding the truth of what those founders had claimed about the history of those traditions. By 1990 these two developments had converged to produce a general disbelief in the origin story of modern Paganism among its British leaders. During that year (before I had published anything on Paganism myself) I attended a conference held at Kings College London at which a succession of them declared that its traditional historiography should be regarded as myth and metaphor rather than literal history. As I mention in Triumph of the Moon, this had already also begun to occur in the United States from the 1970s: Isaac Bonewits, Aidan Kelly and Margot Adler all alerted American Pagans, in different ways, to the fact that the traditional account of their historical origins was problematic.

Then The Triumph of the Moon was not some sort of attack from the outside but a contribution to a debate which had already begun inside Pagan witchcraft itself?

That is broadly true, but in Britain the debate was really over by the time that I wrote the book, at least among the Pagan leadership. I wrote the book to suggest a real history for Pagan witchcraft which could be substantiated from the sources, and to rescue it from the accusation that it was an invented modern religion produced by a few cranks on the fringe of society. I showed that it represented instead a distillation of cultural developments which were actually central and very important to modern Britain. Its goddess and god, for example, were the two ancient pagan deity forms most honoured and needed by British writers for about one and a half centuries before the appearance of Wicca. This process, by which certain divine forms suddenly become vivid and important to the human mind at particular points in history, is what is usually termed revelation. Rather than remain regarded as a rather suspect cult on the cultural margins, Wicca could, I argued, be recognised as a worthy religion, of some importance, not least because it was the only one which England has ever given to the world; and one of which it could be proud.

To judge by the reviews that the book received from establishment figures, I generally succeeded in this aim, with positive consequences for the acceptance of Paganism in national life which I have sought to enhance since in my role as an advisor to national bodies. In that role, I have repeatedly played a key part in countering misinformation and misrepresentation regarding Paganism in Britain, especially in the mass media and the educational, judicial, police and caring services. Occasionally, in certain high-profile court cases, this has achieved spectacular, and well-publicised, results. My effectiveness in this regard has depended heavily on my lack of a publicly-professed personal religion, which is the main reason why I keep my religious beliefs, if any, to myself. I have, however, been elected an honorary life member of both the British Pagan Federation and the Council of British Druid Orders in recognition of the practical effects of my work.

I have faced a difficulty, however, in that when my book reached other parts of the world, in which the traditional account of Pagan history was still accepted as orthodoxy and I was not personally known, notably in regions of America and Australasia, it was taken as an attack on that traditional account and not a replacement for it. There was nothing much that I could do about this, as the cultural contexts were so completely different and I had no relationship with the communities concerned.

But why does it look like, to many practitioners, that there is a surviving ancient pagan witch religion? Is it a failure to define witchcraft and therefore recognise it?

There are at least two different reasons. The first is that the view of early modern witchcraft as an ancient pagan religion had been around for one and a half centuries before it was abandoned by professional scholars, so it will take a while completely to disappear. The second is that the figure of the witch is, once redeemed, an extremely attractive one to modern radicals. It represents one of the very few images of independent female power which our society has traditionally bequeathed to us. It also speaks to anybody who has felt marginalised by their community because they are in some way different, and feel that this is because they are essentially special, possessing psychic powers and abilities to recognise elemental truths which most people lack. I myself think that it can be turned around in this way, providing that the process is recognised as a recent reorientation of the witch figure and not a reflection of what most people have always believed.

So what have ‘most people always believed’?

The English word ‘witch’ has always been the equivalent in this language of those used across the world, in many different tongues, for somebody who uses magic to hurt other people. A fear of this sort of person has existed across most of the inhabited world and in all times (though not among all peoples), and given rise in many places to mass persecutions of suspects. The trials of suspected evil magicians held by the ancient Roman republic, long before the birth of Christianity, produced rates of execution surpassing any in the early modern witch persecutions. Witchcraft was not a religion, nor the remnants of one, but a way of blaming somebody else for uncanny misfortune. If witchcraft were the same thing as a pagan religion it would not have been persecuted within pagan societies – in fact they would not have even noticed it, because it simply would have been part of their religion. Between 1400 and 1800 Western Christianity did, however, add something new to the image of witchcraft in that, uniquely, it reclassified it as a rival religion, serving the Christian devil.

Every society across the world which has believed in witches has also believed that they could be opposed by a different kind of specialist who used magic for helpful purposes, although commonly for a fee. This sort of person was traditionally known in English as a ‘cunning’ or ‘wise’ woman or man, though also by many local names. Individual people could move, in the perception of others and perhaps in reality, from one category to the other, but in the early modern trials the percentage of cunning folk who were accused of witchcraft is a very small one, across most of Europe.

The distinction was, however, blurred from the late sixteenth century in England by Protestant evangelists (such as Reginald Scot) who tried to demonise all magic by claiming that cunning or wise folk were also witches, being equally inspired or deluded by the Devil. In the early seventeenth century they coined the term ‘white witch’ in pursuit of this objective. They seem to have had virtually no impact on ordinary people before the very modern period, but in the nineteenth century the expression ‘white witch’ was taken up by folklorists to describe cunning folk, and entered popular parlance in the twentieth. In traditional folk language it is a contradiction in terms.

It seems to me that Pagans I know aspire more to be pagan priests or priestesses rather than what is traditionally defined as a ‘witch’.

Certainly I don’t know any Pagans who would aspire to be the malevolent witches of popular tradition. The difficulty here is that many whom I know do aspire to be both priestesses or priests and witches of a different sort from the traditional: and the distinction is important. To be a priestess or priest can mean simply serving the divine passively, but a witch is more of an independent agent, making a relationship with the supernatural more on her or his own terms and working to change things. Pagans today are commonly trying to do both, but more the second. I think that the term ‘magician’ also fits the latter role just as well as ‘witch’, without the same connotations of fear and suspicion. ‘Witch’ however, also carries today associations of power and glamour, especially for women, so perhaps it is worth carrying on the struggle to redeem the word in popular parlance anyway. I think the choice must be up to individuals, as long as they have a good understanding of where the old prejudice against the words ‘witch’ and ‘witchcraft’ comes from, and how deeply and widely a fear of the witch-figure runs, through many societies which are not Christian.

You seem to be saying that people should be free to behave in ways that are not sanctioned by historical tradition.

That is exactly what I am saying. The past can be changed or rejected by us instead of acting as a tyranny, and historians are here to inform people better about it and not to suggest what anybody then does with it.

As I understand it, historical scholarship currently proposes that while some people accused as witches may have believed that they were harming others by witchcraft, there were not actual societies – or traditions – of witches, despite the fact that people believed that there were? Is that right? And this leads into the aspect of witchcraft studied by Carlo Ginzburg.

You are correct, but the part played by ancient ideas in the formation of early modern witchcraft identities and the inner mental world of early modern witchcraft and magic are two aspects of early modern witchcraft that have been less studied by British and American academic historians than those outside the universities or academics on the Continent. Authors well known to modern pagans such as Carlo Ginzberg and Emma Wilby have worked in this area, but valuable work has also been done by Gustav Henningsen, Lyndal Roper, Philip C. Almond and Thomas Robisheaux which Pagans might follow up.

Many modern pagans take Ginzburg’s work as proof of real societies of witches.

As I have already explained as clearly as I can, in both Triumph and my debate with Jani Farrell-Roberts, neither Carlo nor any other reputable historian since 1980 has argued that the people accused of witchcraft in early modern Europe were practitioners of a surviving pagan religion. What Carlo and many others have acknowledged (as I do) is that medieval and early modern Europeans constructed their world-picture out of materials taken from both Christianity and ancient paganism, making a mixture of both which they believed to be a form of Christianity. Thus there were plenty of pagan elements in the stereotype of witchcraft which they developed: unsurprisingly as ancient pagans had themselves persecuted witches. Sometimes different groups of early modern people disagreed over what was actually permissible, and Christian. The most famous case, and the extreme one, consists of the benandanti of north-eastern Italy, whom Carlo discovered for modern historians. They were a group of people, themselves devout Christians, who believed that their spirits left their sleeping bodies at night to fight witches in order to defend their communities. In the years around 1600, however, they fell foul of the local Catholic Church, which, influenced by new theological thinking, decided that their belief was itself demonically inspired. The benandanti were neither pagans nor witches, but they were motivated by beliefs that were almost certainly pre-Christian. Unfortunately it is difficult to find another group of people in Europe like them. What is much easier is to find beliefs about what witches were supposed to do which were inspired by pre-Christian tradition.

Are you opposed to Ginzburg’s work?

No: rather, I have a different view of the subject which complements his. Carlo and I are friends, with a mutual respect perfected by an international gathering of scholars convened by Harvard University in 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of his great book Storia Notturna, translated into English as Ecstasies. I was the British historian invited to the event, and when my turn came to present I acknowledged that Carlo’s use of shamanism, as an interpretative framework for the beliefs that underpinned the early modern witch trials, drew useful attention to linkages and similarities across Europe. I also felt, however, that it obscured major regional differences in ancient conceptions of the supernatural which explained important variations in the trials, such as why it was mainly women who were accused in most places but mainly men in some, why some areas experienced intense witch-hunts and other none, and so forth. Ireland, Scotland and Iceland, for example were all neighbouring societies very similar in structures of economy, society, gender relations and religion, and yet had utterly different experiences. Ireland had very few witch trials, and none among the Gaelic population. Scotland had almost none in the Gaelic areas but one of the most savage rates of execution in Europe in every other region, in which women predominated. Iceland also had an intense witch hunt, of which almost all the victims were male. The solution, I propose, may be found in their ancient traditions. Gaelic areas differed from the European norm in blaming land-spirits (fairies) for misfortune rather than human beings, while Iceland had a genuine tradition of shamanism, in which men were regarded as more magically dangerous than women. This model was accepted by the company at Harvard as viable, with Carlo being especially complimentary. I shall make it the subject of a large book to be written in the next few years.

While there is no decisive evidence to substantiate the existence of Pagan witchcraft before Gardner, many Pagan witches would say that this is because their religion was secret and passed down via oral tradition. What are we to make of claims regarding oral tradition?

I have no interest in contesting the claims of modern Pagans to represent a secretly surviving tradition, as long as the practitioners do not attack me or offer any actual historical evidence for scrutiny. If they do neither, then they are effectively standing outside history and are not the concern of a historian. I regularly read articles by contemporary witches, expounding one system or another which they say has been passed down through their family or their initiatory tradition for centuries, and offering no evidence to support this claim. They are no concern of mine, and it is open to others to believe or disbelieve them as they will. Gerald Gardner’s Wicca was, however, based on specific historical evidence, above all the early modern trials, and academic framework of interpretation of it, which were very much the business of historians.

If modern Pagan witches do not represent a continuation of a religion that survived the Witch Hunts and can be traced back to the pre-Christian era, then what is our lineage?

Most notably in a chapter in a collection entitled Paganism Today, published in 1996, I have taken direct issue with the view generally held by academics that there were no links between ancient and modern paganism at all. In reply I identified no less than four cultural streams which connected the two: ritual magic, cunning craft, folk rites, and (above all) the persistent love affair of Christian culture with the art and literature of the ancient world. All these streams of images and ideas were, certainly, maintained between the early medieval and modern periods by people who were at least nominally Christian, but none the less they were preserved. The great development of the modern age was for them to be filtered back out of general Christian culture and recombined with an active allegiance to pagan deities to produce a revived and viable set of Pagan religions. This essay in Paganism Today was my manifesto for Triumph of the Moon and intended to be read in conjunction with it, which in Britain it certainly often was. Abroad, however, the essay tended to be unknown and the book read outside of its vital context.

Some might wonder how ‘Christian’ those who maintained those four ‘streams’ really were?

They certainly thought that they were Christians, and it requires a very narrow definition of Christianity to declare that they were wrong. The pagan and Christian elements in medieval culture, as indeed in all European culture between 400 and 1900, are so closely woven together, in every aspect of life, that it seems pointless to try to separate them out. Indeed, the most narrow-minded and intolerant of medieval and early modern Christians tended usually to be far more worried by what they thought to be the wrong sort of Christianity, or by Judaism or Islam, than by pagan elements in their world. There is, moreover, a strong positive argument for Pagans in the present day in drawing attention to the massively important and ubiquitous contribution of ancient paganism to mainstream European culture: that they can now claim to be the heirs of a tradition of enduring central relevance to all levels of society even during the period of Christian dominance, rather than to a furtive, marginalised and outlawed one.

So, how do you reply to those who believe that you argue that there is no direct and consistent connection between ancient and modern Paganism?

I can offer no less than three, quite different but equally important, replies. The first is that ever since I first began to write about paganism, in my Pagan Religions book, I have emphasised that there is a direct line of transmission between the ancient and modern kinds, though the medium of ritual magic. This was a clear counter-cultural tradition, in opposition to both pagan and Christian religious norms in Europe, but rooted firmly in the orthodox attitudes to religion and magic taken in ancient Egypt. Not only does it represent a demonstrable continuity, text to text and person to person, across the centuries, but Egyptian magical texts contain the clearest parallels to the beliefs and practices of modern Pagan witchcraft in the ancient world. In Witches, Druids and King Arthur, I went further, to show how astral magic in particular had opened a space for the continued veneration of pagan deities within a broadly Christian framework, which more or less spans the gap between the end of ancient paganism and the appearance of its modern counterpart. I am tempted to speculate that modern Pagans would have recognised the importance of this connection, and been able credibly to claim a direct and unbroken lineage of descent from antiquity, had they not been sidetracked by an error made by academic scholars in the nineteenth century and perpetuated by them into the early and mid twentieth, of identifying the people prosecuted for witchcraft in the early modern period as pagans.

My second reply is that it is ridiculous to declare that no religion has validity unless it can claim unbroken descent from the remote past. Most of the major faiths of the world have undergone periods of reform in which members have jettisoned the norms of those faiths during the recent past to renew them by reference to much older practices. To take the example which has produced the most influential effects in the Western world, Protestant Christianity was founded on the claim that the faith of Christ had been corrupted by medieval Catholicism and that it was necessary to return to its earlier texts for the inspiration to purify and renew it, vaulting over the many centuries between. Pagans today are likewise perfectly entitled both to filter out the elements of paganism preserved in medieval and early modern Christian culture and to return directly to those preserved in the texts and art of the ancient world, to rebuild a paganism suited to the needs of the present. Indeed, the appearance of postmodernism as a major school of philosophy powerfully reinforces this justification, highlighting the way in which the present always appropriates and transplants aspects of the past in order to serve its requirements, and celebrating that process.

My third reply is that I am surprised and dismayed by the heavy emphasis which Pagans who are attempting to reassert an unbroken tradition of pagan witchcraft, of the kind developed by scholars in nineteenth-century universities, place on tradition itself as the main test of authenticity in religion. It seems to relegate to second place, if not to discount altogether, what are usually taken to be the two most important aspects of religious authenticity: the relationship between the adherents of a religion and the deities or spirits whom it honours, and the impact that this makes on a society. If those practising a religious tradition have an overwhelming sense of the genuine in the contacts that they make with their divine beings, then that tradition is a viable one, and those contacts, not claims of initiatory descent or length of practice, are the core of it. It seems to me that in this regard Pagans score very highly. As for impact, Paganism has been in existence in its present form now for over half a century, with precursors going back another hundred and fifty years, and enriched the society around it with images and ideas that make a significant contribution to art, literature and music, while attracting members who are remarkably tolerant, well-adjusted and well-behaved in comparison with some of those belonging to more evangelical and monopolistic belief systems.

Do you think that Triumph of the Moon should be the definitive history of Pagan witchcraft?

I don’t believe in definitive histories: the writing of history is and should be something that is ever changing and developing. Triumph is not a general history of witchcraft or paganism, or even a general history of modern pagan witchcraft. It set out to answer the question of how, if the old-fashioned academic idea of an enduring English witch religion no longer has firm historical foundations, the basic model for modern pagan witchcraft across the world happened to appear in England in the 1940s: why there and why then? I think that I did propose such an answer, based on sufficient primary research. My hope was that it would inspire or provoke others to further original work, and in the case of friends such as Philip Heselton it did. I am disappointed that so few Pagans have as yet tapped into the very rich resources of Victorian and Edwardian literature, folklore collections and legal records, which provide ample, and easily accessible, material for the history of modern Paganism in the period in which it was taking shape. There is also a need for more books or web sites, which make accessible to Pagans the riches of pagan imagery and ideas as developed both in the ancient world and in the Christian centuries, as resources for creative use in the present.

Are you intending to write those?

In order to keep my job, I need to write books for a general audience, with many aspects that appeal especially to my academic colleagues, rather than for Pagans. I do have an article that is designed specifically for them, coming out in the next issue of The Pomegranate journal called “Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View” in which I discuss the history of witchcraft scholarship within the last forty years and the effect it has had on the self-image of modern pagan witches. I situate my own work within this wider scholarship and suggest avenues of further research that could be taken up by both professional historians and pagan practitioners. As part of this process I also provide a section by section reply to Ben Whitmore’s Trials of the Moon. The piece is designated a ‘review article’, which means that it can be read on the Internet free of access and charge. It will provide proper source references to the information that I supply at points in this interview. One of the problems that Pagans encounter in dealing with academic work is that they can gain access to it on the Internet (where it is least commonly found) or (with more difficulty) in books, but few have access to the specialist journals and collections of edited essays in which most professional scholarship is published. My article provides some access to the research aired in these, including my own, of which a lot of Pagans outside of the academy are completely unaware.

In addition, my books will continue to be of interest to Pagan readers. I am writing one at present called Britain’s Pagan Heritage, which is a more detailed and updated version of Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. Although I put a lot of my own comments into the latter, and recognised the existence of alternative views to those of academic scholars in a manner rare for an academic, that earlier book was mainly a synthesis of the ideas of specialist archaeologists and historians about ancient British and Irish religion, as expressed in the 1980s. That is, of course, why they liked it so much, and why the archaeologists elected me to the Antiquaries as described. The new book is confined to Britain to allow me to go into more detail, and in addition it contains much more original research of my own, tested over the past two decades in a string of essays and conference papers. It covers the current evidence for, and interpretations of, pre-Christian religions in Britain from the Old Stone Age to the triumph of Christianity, and also deals with the question of subsequent pagan survivals.

After that I am going to write a book on the history of witchcraft itself, something that I have never actually done hitherto. Again, I have been working towards this for twenty years, and road-testing its more important arguments in articles and presentations, of which my participation in the Harvard colloquium represented one step.

In addition I continue to support the work of others, both inside and outside the academy. I have sixteen postgraduate students at present, working on such topics as the image of witchcraft in English literature; the history of Hallowe’en; the early modern witch trials; the history of theurgy in Western occultism; and the image of the Goddess in ancient, medieval and modern contexts.

Thank you Professor Hutton, that was fascinating. As usual you have provided a mountain of important and useful information on a contentious subject (at least amongst Pagans) in an inoffensive and educational manner. I'm sure it will prove interesting to readers of this blog and I expect it will contribute to the continuing enhancment of discourse within Paganism.

Australian Samhain

2011-05-08T02:45:00.000-07:00

Scorpius rising in the eastern night sky followed, as the season progresses, by Ophichus herald winter, and towards the southeast, Saggitarius returns to complete the star-cycle of the year. In southern Australia, the weather really begins to cool down, birds fly north, and fungi emerges from the forest floor. However, it is a fertile season: there are many flowering and fruiting plants, quolls breed, the dingo mating continues, and whales migrate along the coast to calve and mate. In the north, it is the end of the wet and the start of the dry season; the rains are diminished, the days are hot, but the nights are cool. The land is covered in long grass and in some areas the indigenous 'firestick farming' method of burning the grass begins. At this time goannas mate, the eggs of magpie geese hatch and many other birds begin nesting. As May progresses into June, the cold season approaches and it is the start of the great harvest of bush vegetables.

Meditation: Mysterious fungi sprout above the earth's surface in faerie rings while the greater part of their plant-body remains beneath the ground. These portals to the Underworld beckon to us: mushroom doorways leading to secret passages within our consciousness. This liminal season stands between the old year and the new; it is a time to traverse the otherworlds, greet the dead and divine the future. Enter the dark tranquility and explore the mind's labyrinth.

Samhain: The altar is draped with a cloth the colour of midnight and covered with numerous candles. 'One light for each Spirit here with me tonight,' whispers the Witch. Magic mushrooms steep in a goblet of wine and a crystal ball rests on a nearby black cushion. Sipping from the concoction she stares fixedly at the orb and as it begins to cloud over, utters a greeting to her ancestors.

Cute Cypriot Ceramics

2011-02-27T00:52:00.001-08:00

How cute is this Early Bronze Age red polished jug with figural decoration from Pyrgos? Yes, it is indeed cute. Ancient Cyprus seems to have a lot of cute ceramic objects. A while ago I posted a really cute little model shrine which is a perfect example of such things. The ceramic featured above is part of an exhibition of Cypriot objects that is being held at the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, up until May 2011. So all you Americans can go see it much easier than I can. There are 200 artefacts on display in this exhibition, including this jug. When I first saw it, on the cover of the CAARI newsletter, I thought the projecing "spikes" were intended to evoke bovine horns - which may very well be correct - but as you can see in the second image, those horns are pouring spouts. This does not preclude simultaneously being "horns". I must admit that I don't know much about this object and can only speculate that it is some sort of ritual libation tool or offering. Here's a little article here, the jug certainly seems to feature a lot in the promotion of the exhibition. So, happy viewing.

Precession and the Zodiac

2011-02-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

I’m a Capricorn......Right? The Precession of the Equinoxes and the individual’s Horoscope.

By Caroline Tully.

The phenomenon termed “Precession of the Equinoxes” concerns the shift over the years which has resulted in the Zodiac signs no longer occupying precisely the position in relation to the Earth that they occupied several thousand years ago. Precession occurs because of the wobble of the Earth’s axis caused by the combined gravitational pull of the Moon and Sun which causes movement of the Earth akin to that of a gyroscope, forming a complete circle over 25,000 years. Because of this precession the 30-degree divisions called the Zodiac Signs do not now coincide with the actual constellations which they represent. Today the astronomical point known as “the first point of Aries” or 0 degrees Aries, is actually to be found around 7 degrees of the previous sign of Pisces. This makes a difference of 23 degrees. This supposedly does not affect Western Astrological theory as Western Astrologers use the constellation’s names to denote 30 degree areas of the ecliptic, the Sun’s apparent path around the Earth, rather than the constellations themselves. Western Astrologers argue that the system is not devalued by this phenomenon, however, as I will demonstrate, Precession of the Equinoxes can make a big difference to an individual’s Sun sign and Natal horoscope.

There is a fundamental difference between the Zodiac used in Hindu Astrology and the one used in the Western system. The Zodiac is an imaginary sphere of 360 degrees encircling the heavens inside of which the Sun, Moon and planets travel in their orbits. This circular space is divided into twelve equal parts of 30 degrees each, known as the Zodiac Signs. At one time, these signs corresponded to actual fixed star constellations, however, due to the Precession of the Equinox, which moves at a an average rate of 50-and-a-quarter seconds per year, or 1 degree every seventy-two years, the same connection between the Zodiac Signs and the constellations no longer exists. Because this difference adds up to around 23 degrees, when a Westerner refers to the Sun being in 15 degrees of Libra for instance, the statement is technically inaccurate, because the Sun, after being backed up by 23 degrees, would actually reside in Virgo.

The system that Western Astrologers use which is unrelated to the constellations is called the Tropical Zodiac. The older and more traditional Zodiac employed by the Hindus, where there is no difference between a star constellation and the sign name given to it is called the Sidereal Zodiac. To find the Sidereal position of a planet when looking in a Tropical (Western) ephemeris, 23 degrees will have to be subtracted from the planet’s position in a sign to give the actual, Sidereal location. Obviously our Western Horoscopes as we know them are “out” by 23 degrees which therefore changes the degree of every planet in the Horoscope and may move some planets into a different sign.

I will use my own Natal chart as an example. My Sun, in the Tropical system, is at 24degrees Capricorn. In the Sidereal system, 23 degrees are subtracted from my Sun’s position and the result is 1 degree Capricorn. My Sun is still in Capricorn, but if I had been say, 15 degrees Capricorn instead of 24 degrees, and subtracted 23 degrees to get a Sidereal position, my Sun would have become 22 degrees Sagittarius! This changes everything. My Sun would have actually moved into a completely different sign, and so anyone with a planet degree of less than 23 degrees in a sign will find that planet in a different sign when the Sidereal system is applied to their Horoscopes. This is most noticeable with the Sun sign as it is the sign most people identify with when we talk about “our horoscope”. I won’t have an Astrological “identity crisis” when I apply the Sidereal Zodiac to my Sun’s position because it is still in Capricorn – barely – but when I apply the Sidereal Zodiac to my Moon’s position I get a bit of a surprise.

In the Tropical position, my Moon is situated at 15 degrees of Scorpio. I fancy this position as I like to flatter myself with the Scorpionic traits such as an interest in the Occult, a relentless searcher into hidden realms and a deep, complicated type of person. After subtracting the 23 degrees from my Tropical Moon’s position however, I am alarmed to discover that my spooky, Scorpionic Moon has become a nice, helpful 22 degrees of fashion-designing Libra! My Ascendant, the sign on the horizon at the time of birth, in the Tropical Zodiac is at 25 degrees of Virgo, after adjusting to the Sidereal Zodiac, I am still in Virgo but only by 2 degrees. Everything else in my Horoscope progresses backwards into the previous sign. So the ACTUAL positions of the planets in your Sidereal Horoscope are NOT the same as those that you might find on your familiar Natal chart: they have all moved backwards by 23degrees.

The first scientific description of the cycle of Precession is credited to Hipparchus (2nd century BCE). As well as changing one’s Horoscope, Precession of the Equinoxes is also what determines what is known as the Astrological “Great Year”. It is generally agreed by Astrologers that it takes around 25,000 years for the wobbling axis of the Earth to make one revolution causing a “Great Year”, thus a different Zodiac sign is said to rule each period of around 2000 years within that “Great Year” of 25,000 years. These 2000 year periods are called “Great Months”. In recent decades, the concept of Precession has taken root in the popular imagination of the New Age with the supposed dawning of the Age of Aquarius. However, the assumption that we are at the dawning of this Great Age owes very little to the observation of the sky. Since about 100 BCE, the Equinox point has slowly been making its way through the constellation of Pisces and is only now beginning its progress through the second fish of the Pisces pair. It will not reach the same degree of longitude as the star Beta Piscium at the head of the fish until around CE 2813. The point of the Vernal Equinox is currently at Iota Piscis, which is around the center of the second fish in the Pisces constellation.

For readers who would like to obtain their own Sidereal Horoscope to compare with their Tropical, Western chart, I suggest that if you know your planet’s positions, just subtract 23 degrees from each position, which will often cause a planet to regress into its previous sign, or buy an Ephemeris which is a book with the Tropical positions of the planets in the signs and then subtract the 23 degrees, or find an Astrologer who calculates Sidereal charts. Some Western Astrologers have adopted the Sidereal Zodiac method, however it is usually thought of as an esoteric practice in a Western context.

COLLABORATIVE ARTIST–WEAVER PROJECTS IN MAJOR COLLECTIONS

2011-02-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

I worked as a Gobelin style tapestry weaver at the Australian Tapestry Workshop for 14 years where we used haute lisse looms to create mural sized, as well as domestic, small and even miniature woven tapestries. I started in 1996, just after I graduated from a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Monash University, had a year off in 2000 for Maternity Leave, and then worked up until early 2010 after which I left to do a full time PhD in Aegean Archaeology at the University of Melbourne. During my time at the Workshop I worked in collaboration with artists and other weavers, and sometimes alone, on many projects. The above pics are of Emma Sulzer, Louise King and myself when we were working on the Nyankulya Watson project. This was the second-last tapestry I worked on for the ATW. I've listed a pile of other projects that I did over the years here:

Yvonne Boag, Bush Scene, Victorian International School in Shahjah, United Arab Emirates. 2009.

Nyankulya Watson, Ngayuku Ngura (This is my country), Australian Embassy, Rome. 2009.

Robert Ingpen. Birds of the Clarence II, private client. 2008.

David Larwill, At the Box, Foxtel, Sydney. 2008.

Belinda Fox, Messenger. Australian Tapestry Workshop collection. 2008.

Roger Kemp Tapestry Suite, Great Hall, National Gallery of Victoria. 2007.

Peggy Nappangardi Jones, Green and Yellow Cocky, private collection. 2007.

Rosella Namok, private collection. 2006.

Irene Barberis, Neon Excerpt, private collection. 2005.

Gulammohammed Sheik, Mappamundi, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne Collection. 2005.

John Young, Open World, Nanjing Library, China. 2005.

Chris Pyett, Misericordia, Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney. 2005.

Christine Johnson, Australian Tapestry Workshop collection. 2004.

Robert Ingpen, Melbourne Cricket Ground Tapestry, Melbourne. 2003.

Arlene Textaqueen, Textanudes, Collection of the Australian Tapestry Workshop. 2003.

Reg Mombassa, Ned Kelly Approaches Albury in a Stolen Truck, State Library of Victoria. 2002.

Reg Mombassa. Alone in the Bush, Federation Tapestries, Melbourne Museum. 2001.

Mirka Mora, Home Sweet Home, Federation Tapestries, Melbourne Museum. 2001.

Murray Walker, Federation Tapestries, Melbourne Museum. 2001.

William Barak, Dancing scene of figures with boomerangs and people in possum skin cloaks in And Now Exploration and Settlement are Underway, Federation Tapestries, Melbourne Museum. 2001.

Patrick Heron, private collection. 1999.

Chris Pyett, Morning Skies, private collection. 1997.

Ken Done, Twenty-Eight Views of the Opera House, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. 1997.

Kristen Hedlam, Night Garden, Crown Casino Melbourne, High Rollers Room. 1995.

Jon Bannenberg, Theran Frescoes, Private Yacht. 1994.

Celia Rosser, Banksia Serrata, Monash University. 1994.

Australian Lughnasad

2011-01-30T22:26:00.000-08:00

Australian Lughnasad falls on the 1st of February (or, to be strict according to the stars, the 4th February). Gemini is high in the eastern night sky, followed subsequently by Cancer, and Leo's brightest star appears low on the horizon. In the south of Australia, this is late summer, often much hotter than Litha itself, and bushfire danger is high. Some birds begin to fly north, bogong moths emerge and are preyed upon by kestrels, the beautiful gum emperor caterpillars inhabit eucalypts, native trout spawn, and Tasmanian devils begin mating.

In northern Australia it is the time of the late monsoon. In January, February and March, the weather can manifest in furious cyclones that may last for several days, bringing torrential rains. Forests can be devastated, large trees uprooted or stripped of nearly all their foliage, and animals have difficulty finding food. The heavy thunderstorms mean that the land is readily flooded. It is the maximum growth period for native vegetables although they are not ready to harvest, magpie geese and brolgas lay their eggs, estuarine crocodiles hatch, and platypus juveniles venture out of their burows for the first time.

Lughnasad. The drums beat out a steady pulse as we move deosil within the circle's boundary, round and round we dance. Hands rise, clash the cymbals, shake the tambourine. Arms outstretched, whirl on the spot, hair streaming. Oscillating between two poles of consciousness: the drums a lulling heartbeat, the percussion a harsh awakening. Drum--clash, step--whirl, rise--plunge, relax--tense, calm--storm.

Into the circle spin Bushfire and Cyclone, volatile deities of the season. One clad in raggedy red, the other in tattered dark blue, costumes trailing behind them like two Chinese dragons. Travelling widdershins, dancing separately and then together, they rush the perimeter, circling the edge and returning to the centre, creating a chaotic vortex of energy.

Arms linked, we dance back-to-back, the ground tilts, the sky is inverted, and the elements mix in the topsy-turvy world of the sabbat.

It's confirmed that I'm Confirmed

2011-01-19T14:03:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday I went before the Chambre Ardente (I just cannot resist mentioning one of my favourite, unrelated in any way, pieces of witchcraft history here: the Affair of the Poisons, it has absolutely nothing to do with this post except for the evocative name of the chamber! I guess I just have to romanticise and Gothicise everything out of all proportion, all of the time!). This 'chambre' consisted of two archaeologists and a historian and I was in there in order to be assessed in regards to my first year of PhD research. In the US it's called 'Defending your Dissertation' I think. We call it 'Confirmation' as it means you become a confirmed PhD candidate rather than a probationer. The exprience was a bit like an initiation, but only really in regards to waiting outside the 'temple', entering it, being grilled, going out to the Chamber of Reflection while further mysteries occurred within the chambre, coming back into the temple, some further grilling, and then success! Now I understand what Ronald Hutton was saying in one of his books - I think it was 'Witches, Druids and King Arthur' - about academia being a kind of secret society into which one penetrates through ascending grades, and I'm paraphrasing of course, as I'm too lazy to look up the reference, even though the book is not 2 meters away. Anyway, I'm decorating this post with a Mark Ryden animated tree, as that's what my PhD topic is on, but in the prehistoric Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.

Fire and Water

2011-01-16T01:13:00.000-08:00

Well, if the news reports are anything to go by - and they definately are - Australia at this time of the year is certainly living up to the seasons according to my southern hemisphere sabbat calendar [pictured]. While it's a bit early for Lughnasad here - only two weeks early - a large amount of Australia is being severely flooded, primarily in the north, but also in the south. Only two summers ago it was being severely burned. Both extremes, I suggest in my chapter on the southern hemisphere sabbats in 'Practising the Witch's Craft', are aspects of our Lughnasad.

It is a season of extremes and contradictions. Bushfires in the south and cyclones in the north threaten to engulf the land, and yet, the water regenerates the indigenous plant life and so too does the bushfire: many native seeds require burning before germination. Life and death dance upon the same ground. This is a time to appreciate the inscrutable wisdom and power of nature. Earth is the cauldron and all beings are transmuted by her alchemy.

Crowley and Liber AL article

2011-01-11T04:34:00.000-08:00

Huzzah! My article, 'Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley's Reception of The Book of the Law ' that I've been talking about for quite a while is now available in electronic version. (You need a subscription or a university or other library that can get it for you). So, please do read it and tell me what you think.

Capricorn

2010-12-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

This is really just an excuse to post an image of a fresco fragment from Stabiae, one of the towns that was destroyed by the erruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. I really adore Roman fresco painting, and seeing as the sun is currently in Capricorn - according to the Tropical Zodiac which classifies Capricorn as covering December 22nd to January 20th, whereas the Sidereal Zodiac puts Capricorn from January 15th to February 14th - I thought it was a good time to post an image of Capricorn. Personally, I don't think the northern hemisphere attributes of the Zodiac signs fit in the southern hemisphere. You can read my opinion on southern hemisphere astrology here. I have a certificate in Natal Astrology from The Astrology School of St Kilda and have been studying astrology, astronomy and their relation to the seasons and thence the sabbats since the 1980s. I wrote quite a few articles on such topics for the Australian magazine 'Pagan Times' in the early 2000s. A rather old article on my take on the southern hemsiphere sabbats can be seen here, but for more recent work on the topic see the post below on Australian Midsummer and the book it came from 'Practising the Witch's Craft' edited by Doug Ezzy (Allen & Unwin, 2003).

Australian Midsummer

2010-12-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

Australian Litha: 22 December: The Night sky unveils Orion the Hunter and his dogs, including Sirius the brightest star in the sky, rising in the east. Summer is Australian society’s festive time, school holidays begin and workers take time off. Down south, many native plants are flowering and fruiting, pygmy possums, kookaburras and sacred kingfishers are attending to their young, and dolphins can be seen along the coast playing and hunting near the shore. In the north, it is the time of the early monsoon. The wet season begins after the summer solstice and is caused by seasonal change in the direction of the winds. After the sun moves south of the equator, Australia warms up while Asia cools down. Dry, chilly winds blow outward from Asia, gather warmth and moisture from the oceans, and subsequently bring summer rains to northern Australia. As the season progresses, heavy rains fall daily and plants grow quickly. Freshwater crocodiles hatch, blue-tongued lizards and bats give birth, and the dangerous box jellyfish was out of creeks into the open sea.

Meditation: In the south, the increasing heat summons the cold-blooded snake to bask in the sun and outdoor revellers must give him a wide berth, his fangs more immediately deadly than the sun’s harsh rays upon the skin. Up north, the Rainbow Serpent revitalises the land with the first monsoon rains, greening the flora and bringing fertility to the people. At the sun’s zenith, the twin snakes encircle the arms of the primordial Goddess, delivering creation and destruction. Revere the double serpent-power, giver of life, bringer of death.

Litha. We sit on the dusty earth, fanning out in concentric circles around the Priestess who stands alone in the centre. ‘Close your eyes,’ she instructs, ‘and look within’. Continuing in a slow, meditative voice, she says: ‘Focus your mind inside your body, at the base of your spine, the area directly connected with the Land. Two snakes are becoming restless there. The cool, white moon snake on the left side and the hot, red, sun snake on the right are stirring tonight. Allow them to uncoil and begin rising up your spine, rising, rising. Now they cross sides, the sun snake on the left, the moon snake on the right, rising, rising. They cross back again. Let them continue up, crossing, returning, crossing returning, making a double helix pattern, all the way up your spine to the back of your head. Rising over your crown they come down to rest at your third eye'. We stand, linking hands. Accompanied by a slow drum beat, we spiral deosil in a snake-dance toward the centre. The Priestess, whirling widdershins, leads the spiral back out again. In, then out, in, out. Visions arise, time slows down, and above us wheel the starry arms of the Milky Way.

[From 'The Sabbats' – Caroline Tully. In Practising the Witch’s Craft: Real Magic Under a Southern Sky. Ed. Doug Ezzy. Allen & Unwin, 2003. pp 181-2].

Walk Like an Egyptian

2010-12-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

My article, Walk Like An Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley's Reception of The Book of the Law, has been accepted by The Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies and is currently in press and due out very soon. The reference is The Pomegranate 12.2 (2010) pp. 20-47. I will link to the journal issue as soon as it appears on the web and if you want to access the article you'll need either a subscription to the journal, to pay for access to the article, or academic library access or a friend with academic library access (which means it'll be free). Meanwhile I'll post the abstract here: This article investigates the story of Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt, in 1904, focusing on the question of why it occurred in Egypt. The article contends that Crowley created this foundation narrative, which involved specifically incorporating an Egyptian antiquity from a museum, the 'Stele of Revealing', in Egypt because he was working within a conceptual structure that privileged Egypt as a source of Hermetic authority. Crowley synthesized the romantic and scholarly constructions of Egypt, inherited from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as the uses that two prominent members of the order made of Egyptological collections within museums. The article concludes that these provided Crowley with both a conceptual structure within which to legitimise his reformation of Golden Dawn ritual and cosmology, and a model of how to do so.

From Witch to Archaeology PhD

2010-12-13T14:00:00.000-08:00

I was initiated as a Witch on the 19th of January 1985 and I'm doing my PhD Confirmation on the 19th of January 2011. I'm studying Tree Cult in the prehistoric Aegean, Cyprus and Israel (see the post below this one for details). One of the reasons I became interested in academia was the publication of Professor Ronald Hutton's book 'Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft' -- that and Robert Turcan's 'Cults of the Roman Empire' about Mystery Religions in the Roman world, both of which I read on the cusp of 1999/2000. Another factor in my becoming an academic was the Natrel email list run by Chas Clifton, (now called Pagan Studies) which alerted me to the fact that there was a vibrant international scholarly discussion going on about various aspects of Paganism and that in order to be part of it I had to "learn academia". I've been on that email list since 1999 and many times it has been the only thing maintaining my interest in modern Paganism which, since the late 90s, has seemed increaingly infiltrated by the New Age and consequently lite-weight. Initially I went back to university in 2004 in order to learn more about ancient Pagan religions and to see whether what academic experts in various ancient religions told me was the same as, or different to, what modern Pagan leaders claimed. You know: "Wicca goes back to the Neolithic", "the world used to be matriarchal", "casting the circle is an authentic ancient Pagan practice", "our lineage is derived directly from [fill in ancient celebrity here]"... that kind of thing. It didn't take long to discover that contemporary Paganism differed enormously from ancient pagan religions, both conceptually and structurally, and that's when I began to realise that contemporary Pagan leaders' claims were, in many cases wrong, deluded, or were a case of deliberate lying. This is one of the reasons why I like Hutton's work so much, as a professional historian he has done the historical leg-work that many Pagan insiders were simply unable (because they were not historians themselves) or unwilling (because it suited them to maintain a self-aggrandising, comforting and/or useful "history") to do and highlighted many instances of questionable historical claims that we now need to categorise as myth rather than fact. I guess this is why in some quarters of the practitioner spectrum, Hutton has become an object of hatred. This has raised its head again recently in the wake of the publication of a challenge to Hutton's 'Triumph of the Moon' called 'Trials of the Moon' by Ben Whitmore. While many of the anti-Hutton camp have lunged upon Whitmore's book, seeing it as a deserving slap to Hutton, as seen on the comments to a post on The Wild Hunt blog and on the Talking About Ritual Magic blog, academic researchers into Paganism have only just started to pay attention to it, as seen on The Witching Hour and Letters from Hardscrabble Creek. It is on the latter blog, in the response to the post about Peg Aloi's review of Whitmore's book, that comments about Hutton are actually getting quite nasty. (I could reply less nastily, but still snidely, that whatever the strengths and weaknesses of Whitmore's book prove to be, it doesn't really matter because one of the tricks of publicity is to attack a big target and attacking Hutton means that Whitmore can ride on Hutton's more famous coattails). Regarding some of the comments on Chas' blog, I'm still baffled as to why anyone would react so strongly toward Hutton's research. Have they even read his books? I look forward to an academic review of Whitmore's book, which I hear is in the making for Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies, where hopefully the reviewer can enlighten us all on the strengths and weaknesses of his challenge to Hutton (because they are likely to be qualified in the subjects they are discussing, not simply because they are an "evil academic" with the demise of Paganism as their goal). Many within academic Pagan Studies are actually Pagan themselves, which makes the accusation that they are somehow deluded conformists to the "academic machine" unlikely. The looming stoush between the anti- and pro-academic history camps that seems to be [re]generating as expressed on the above blogs will, I hope, provide another injection of fascinating dialogue into the continuing conversation that is the research into ancient and modern Paganism.

Minoan Tree Cult Experiment

2010-12-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

As some of you know, I am doing a PhD in Aegean Archaeology, specialising in sacred trees and gardens. I am wondering whether anyone would be interested in participating in a tree and baetyl cult experiment at some stage (in the next year, in Australia), possibly at Mt Franklin (not necessarily at the time of the Beltane celebration), or another rural (or even urban) site altogether, in order to assess the bodily and cognitive effects of tree and baetyl cult? I probably should not give too much away and prejudice the experiment, but as brief background, the idea is that these natural objects, the tree, the baetyl (rock), are numinous and that ritual interaction therewith caused a certain effect - communication with the Otherworld, divination, prophecy. While I'm primarily looking at Minoan tree cult (that's Minoan Crete, as well as Mycenaean Greece, with comparative material from Cyprus and Israel), you might be more familiar with the biblical examples of the Asherah, both a tree and a goddess, and the Beth El (Beth = house, El = God : baetyl) the stone that Jacob used as a pillow, subsequently had a communication with G*d through a dream while lying upon, and then set up as a massevoth (sacred stone). In Israel tree and pillar cult were enacted at bamot (high places) in the landscape. I need to enact tree cult with some other people, and record the effects. I'm just putting this idea out there. I have previously participated in (someone else's) experimentation with Minoan gestures known from cultic imagery and figurines along with 'sonic driving' by the shaking of a sistrum, and whether this caused or aided trance, and that was a very interesting experiment.

Sex, Sentiment and Wonder

2010-11-27T22:17:00.000-08:00

According to Anton La Vey there are two types of magic: High Magic and Low Magic. High Magic refers to ‘ritual magic’ and Low Magic to the magic of ‘situation-manipulation’. In La Vey’s system ritual magic is performed in a similar way to that which many contemporary magical practitioners would be familiar with: there is a general circle format, an evocative setting, supernatural beings are asked to assist, symbolic tools are used, and the practitioner needs to be specific about and concentrate on their goal. The point is — unlike a lot of other types of modern magic — to actually achieve a result, not to just revel within a magic ritual, that being enough of a result for many people.

In addition, the High Magic system of La Vey has only three types of ritual: rituals for Compassion, for Lust and for Destruction. In each of these rituals the practitioner is required to be fully involved emotionally with the purpose of the ritual, for example in a recent Lust ritual I needed to become physically lustful — La Vey says that if you can’t achieve an orgasm over the person you are lustful toward within a ritual designed to attract that person, then you don’t deserve to have them! So what one is meant to do in these sorts of rituals is to evoke as best as possible the real-world scenario of the desired result and become immersed within that — essentially fantasy — world as if it is real.

If I want to attract someone sexually I need to be actually desirous of them, otherwise I need to analyse whether I should be doing, say, a Compassion ritual instead. It depends on what I want the person for. La Vey liked to pare back human needs into simple categories: desire, hunger, anger. He believed that humans are simply clever animals — which we are — and so when you take on his type of system you have to do a lot of analysis of yourself and of the situations you find yourself in and then try and work out what kind of ritual approach is the best one, or if ritual actually is the correct approach to a problem or situation. I need to stress that many La Veyean Satanists do not do a lot of structured ritual, certainly not a lot of group ritual, because effective ritual needs intense concentration and that’s not easy to achieve in a group, unless you are very close.

As for the ‘Low Magic’ which really is the type of magic I like best these days and, in my opinion, is actually more difficult than the more formal ritual magic which is just a case of following procedure. La Vey’s Low Magic also involves a three-fold category, the Witch or Warlock (yes, La Veyean male Witches are called Warlocks) need to assess themselves first because they are their own tool in this type of magic. You need to assess your effect on other people — because this is really about interacting with other people and getting them to conform to your will — so you need to be well-informed about your appearance, your sound, your smell, the subtle and not-so-subtle animal cues that people give to each other all day without thinking about it.

La Vey believed there are three general categories that people fit into: Sex, Sentiment and Wonder. Sex is pretty self-explanatory, sentiment means that you evoke pleasant memories in another thus making them open up to you and wonder can incorporate a range of reactions ranging from admiration to fear. Other people will view you and classify you (semi- or subconsciously) into one or a combination of these categories. La Vey believed that there are predictable responses different types of people have to the Sex, Sentiment and Wonder categories and you need to assess yourself in regards to those categories and assess your quarry and how their type is known to react to those qualities. You need to work out which category you fit into and then take it from there. It’s about appearing to become a ‘package deal’ and people thinking they have you all worked out, when they actually don’t.

Basically it is about acting. For example, I seem to come across as a mixture of sex and wonder, I don’t think I project any sentiment. Depending on whom I am dealing with and what I want from them I may have to modify my ‘normal’ projection to one that they will be responsive to. For example, an overconfident, macho he-man would be more receptive to a coy ingénue who appears to think everything he says or does is “really amazing”; a submissive male would be more likely to shiver with delight if I were to come across as very stern, dominating and no-nonsense—neither of those are the ‘real me’, it’s a case of me assessing a quarry and then putting on an act.

But is it magic? Well, Aleister Crowley defined magic(k) as the art and science of causing change in accordance with your will — he never specified a particular way to achieve that change, just that you do achieve it. So my opinion regarding La Vey’s Low Magic system is that while it is not a ritual procedure, it is definitely ‘magic’.

Strange Days have found us...

2010-11-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

I swiped this photo from Facebook because I thought it was so unusual. What's going on here? Does anyone know the history of this photo? Is it a real event? Anyway, despite its rather destructive imagery, I rather like its composition...

The Hwicce

2010-11-18T01:24:00.000-08:00

I'm surprised that Stephen J. Yeates' books on the Hwicce aren't having more fuss made about them from within the Wiccan/Pagan scene - at least not so as I could notice. I would have thought that they'd be a wonderful source of potential evidence for the historical authenticity of British Wicca beyond the 1950s when Gerald Gardner claimed to have met some witches. Especially seeing as since the publication of Ronald Hutton's book, The Triumph of the Moon, many of the historical claims of Wicca have been shaken and stirred - to quite an extent (although, see an interesting new critique by an Alexandrian witch of Hutton's book here). One would think that Stephen Yeates' books might redress Hutton's historical destabilising of Wicca somewhat. At the least, he has specifically used the word 'witches' in his title, suggesting that he's wanting to point the books in that direction. I've searched quite a bit for reviews of his books and have only come across the Cambridge Archaeological Journal review on the first book, a review of both of them on The Twisted Tree, and apparently there's a forthcoming review of the second book coming out in British Archaeology Nov/Dec 2010 issue (which I don't have yet). There might be others that aren't showing up in my search, so I'd be interested to hear of more. There are some quite good reviews of the books on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Apparently 'Hwicce' means, according some 'chest or trunk' and according to Yeates, 'vessel or cauldron'. Either way, it sounds like it means something to do with a container. Plus I've always been told that 'wicce' is the feminine form of the Anglo-Saxon word for 'witch' (and that 'wicca' was the masculine form). Why sure, the Hwicce might not have anything to do with Wiccans (as we know them today)... but then again they might - we all know how much part a sacred vessel plays in modern Witchcraft. Frankly, I need to read these books myself, which I am about to do. Then I'll post a review of them. The third book pictured here The Anglo-Saxon Landscape also covers the territory of the Hwicce, which is why it is included.

Major Nostalgia

2010-11-11T01:26:00.000-08:00

Ever since my article on the reception of The Book of the Law by Aleister Crowley got accepted by The Pomegranate (in press), I've been haunted by My Past just "appearing". This has led me to re-visit that past, which is weird, as I usually cut the past off with a guillotine blade... I don't usually look back at it. There are simply heaps of people I used to hang out intensively with that I now don't. Anyway, I have followed it up and come across my very first magickal instructor, various past friends (some of whom are still friends) and weird ancient memories from when I lived in the country, particularly 1987 at Mount Franklin. Why is this so weird... Can't I have a past? I guess I have such intense experiences with people - whether lovers or close friends - we tend to "break up" quite dramatically, so to see or hear from them again is surprising, but it probably shouldn't be. Anyway, I've gone through some of my past photo albums, three pics from which are shown here: Me and pals at Mount Franklin; me, MJ and DGM somewhere in Central Victoria where we used to live; and me with herbalist-witch David O'Connor, he and I shared a flat for about a year. I suppose I've been such an antisocial hermit for the last decade... Hmm, maybe I should re-think that.

Books, BOOKS, and MORE BOOKS !!!

2010-11-10T22:09:00.000-08:00

When I first got a blog I'd just missed a blogging trend where people had posted photos of their piles of books onto their blogs. I really wanted to do it too, but I think I must not have had a digital camera at that stage or something. I was recently reminded of these pics of books, while looking through some year-old photos - they actually date to 2009. So I thought I'd post 'em up here. I love books, I now have some new bookshelves in my 'office' - yay! - but before that some of my books (as you can see in these photos) were stacked up in the most messy and crazy way... on the floor, on a desk... But now they are in bookshelves. All the other books in the domus are in bookshelves, starting with the blue bookshelf in the last pic that I got for only $20 from some student in the next street - bargain. Then all down the hall, into the lounge room, bookshelves everywhere. I'll leave those pics for another day (primarily because I haven't actually taken them yet). Can one actually have too many books? I don't think so. I do think I need a new house to put them in though. I'm thinking the 'white cube' look might be good, like an art gallery, with books lining all the walls. My ‘office’ is also somewhat re-arranged now too. The desk is under the fresco paintings calendar now, and in the corner are my bewdiful Officeworks bookshelves. (Despite the many bookshelves in this domus, we really could still do with more…).

Do Minority Religions Own the Past?

2010-11-01T04:27:00.000-07:00

Modern Druids are making a fuss about ancient human remains on display in museums in Britain. How it is any of their business one cannot begin to guess. I suppose they need to think of ways to stay in the media's ever-hungry headlights... and claiming to be 'new indigenes' - likening themselves to colonised peoples such as Australian Aboriginals or Native Americans who do have a legitimate claim to have their actual relatives owned by museums re-buried - seems to be working for them. It is difficult however, to see how Druid claims regarding museum objects such as, for example the Babylonian plaque, the 'Queen of the Night', are actually 'Druid'. The behavior of Honouring the Ancient Dead (HAD), the group spearheading this activity, is unnecessary, appears contrived, and smacks of self-publicity under the guise of a virtuous ‘cause’.

Interestingly, one of the articles on this subject uses an image (above) of the transvestite Roman-era mummy that Golden Dawn member, Florence Farr, believed was her ancient Egyptian 'Adept' spirit guide, Mutemmenu, a Chantress of Amun. Indeed, this mummy was in Mutemmenu's coffin, which dates from the 19th or 20th Dynasties (1295-1186 or 1186-1069 BCE). The actual mummy however, dates to the Roman period (30 BCE–395 CE) and is actually that of a man whose wrappings are padded and swathed so as to imitate feminine features such as breasts and rounded thighs. I've written all about it in 'Women's Voices in Magic'. Not all contemporary Pagans are pro-reburial of human remains in museums however. Pagans for Archaeology are not, and I don't think Florence Farr would have been either, seeing as she used to visit this mummy regularly for conversation and advice. It is interesting that HAD’s attitude is a complete turnaround in this regard.

Calling the Great God Pan: The Horned God in Witchcraft Today

2010-10-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

“Hear me, Lord of the Stars.
For thee I have worshipped ever
Witch stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lilywhite goat
Crisp as the thicket of thorns
With a collar of gold for thy throat,
A scarlet bow for thy horns.”
-Aleister Crowley.

“Our way is the way of the serpent in the underbrush,
Our knowledge is in the eyes of goats and of women.”
-Jack Parsons.

In the last decade or so Witchcraft’s membership has swelled considerably, making it one of the fastest growing spiritual paths in the Western world. Many of the new recruits are female and this has led the media and other outside observers to adopt a skewed image of just who Witches are. Witchcraft is frequently portrayed as a women’s religion: indeed, many people are surprised to learn that men can be Witches at all. Within the Craft itself there has also emerged a strong tendency to promote the Goddess over the God and to see the feminine as more worthy than the masculine. One of the reasons for this is to correct the imbalance incurred by thousands of years of women’s oppression by patriarchal society, and this is admirable. However, we need to take care that we don’t make men into second-class citizens in the Craft, or the Horned God into a scapegoat.

I asked prominent Pagan, Hawthorn, if he thought the Craft was too girly? “The relative lack of attention to the male aspect in some forms of modern Craft is unfortunate. When I got into the Craft there were a lot more men than women involved in the groups I was aware of, particularly in positions of responsibility. That situation has changed considerably since then. There are now many more active women facilitators and I think that is a good thing. However, the apparent perception that the Craft is women’s business is a worrying trend. The Craft has much to offer men and men have much to offer the Craft.”

One of the most attractive things about the Craft for women is undoubtedly the emphasis on a female deity, the Goddess. It is so empowering to discover God in our own image, a Goddess who actually understands us. Unlearning all the traditional taboos of femininity – submissiveness, silence, sin – and reclaiming menstruation and sexuality become spiritual journeys in themselves that Witchcraft actively encourages. It’s therefore no wonder that women feel like we’ve “come home.” Witchcraft can be a welcome respite from the “men’s world” so prevalent in contemporary society, and a haven for many women who, quite often, have been so turned off the idea of any sort of male Gods that they see no reason to include them in their practice.

Witchy woman, Briar, says that: “When I first came to realise my Path as a Witch, it was through discovering women’s spirituality and Goddess worship. I come from a particularly negative Christian church experience, which also involved an abusive marriage, and I didn’t want anything male in my sacred space... It’s only now, five years down the track, that I can even consider the thought of learning about and working with male Gods. I will always primarily work with Goddesses but I am in a place now where I am moving toward accepting God energy into my life.”

Many men also welcome the chance to see deity as female. Regional Pagan Alliance coordinator, Kim Robertson, explains that: “For the last year or so most of the magickal work I have done has been with Luna, the Moon Goddess in her raw and natural form, and also with Gaia, Mother Earth. Both of them are gentle. Luna is a wise teacher of those on the path to spiritual growth and is also a great deity to work with in ritual – she is like an older sister or young aunt. Gaia is more the one who is with me all the time, letting me know that I am loved as a person wherever I go, that I am the child of the Gods and will never be alone.” It can also be exhilarating for men to work in partnership with the Goddess’s priestesses – strong, assertive, intelligent women. Indeed, according to Hawthorn: “being surrounded by lots of powerful, self-confident women is a big turn-on for many Pagan men, myself included.”

Unlike many female Witches however, as much as Pagan men love and revere the Goddess, they are less likely to exclude her consort, the masculine aspect of deity known as the Horned God – and why would they? One of humanity’s most ancient deities, the Horned God of Witchcraft has a great deal to offer men, including a model of masculinity which rejects patriarchal “power-over.” In her ground-breaking book The Spiral Dance Starhawk describes the Horned God as “the power of feeling, and the image of what men could be if they were liberated from the constraints of patriarchal culture.”

Hawthorn explains that: “A lot of male Pagans are attracted to Paganism partly because the ideal of manliness doesn’t buy into a lot of the aggressive male stereotypes that mainstream society does.” Auld Hornie is strong but not violent, playful yet deep, sexual but not sleazy, loving without being possessive, and emotional without fearing disintegration. He is a God, a man, an animal, a plant, even a soil-bug, and is so connected to the Earth that if he lies down for too long he is likely to sprout leaves!

The Horned God also has a lot to give women. As a male paradigm which exists outside the cabal of stern father Gods and their sons, the Horned One offers a way for women to learn about, make peace with, and embrace masculinity if they choose to. Obviously no one should be coerced into acknowledging the traditional male aspects of the Witch Gods, and certainly within the Craft there are perfectly satisfying, exclusive women’s mysteries honouring the Great Goddess. But that is only half the story. In Traditional Craft, alongside the Goddess there is an equal presence of a male deity: he of many names and faces, Lord of Life and Death. Like the Chinese symbol of Yin and Yang, the Goddess and God of Witchcraft are complementary and inseparable, the two sides to the one coin.

Even if women choose to ignore male deities, and men in general, the masculine principle in nature is not simply going to disappear. Fathers, brothers, sons, the man in the local diner – men are unavoidable and the Horned God exists, whether we choose to acknowledge him or not. Maybe we are a bit scared of him? Pagan writer, Gavin Andrew, proposes that: “...a lot of women (and men) exploring the Craft are dealing with a great deal of cultural imprinting as it relates to the Horned God/Devil paradigm. I’d suggest that the reason why the Goddess is more appealing is that the fear factor, learned at Sunday School or other places very early in life, isn’t there. I think that men as well as women should look into the God of Witchcraft more, if only to help identify and alter this cultural imprinting within themselves.”

The Goddess image provides a divine personage for women who extol the special attributes of being female. Yet I feel that it is important to balance the feminine force with the masculine, as night is complemented by day and the moon by the sun. According to a Jungian interpretation of the Craft, for in individual to attain inner unity, unrealised aspects of our inner self must be acknowledged and embraced – for women the animus or inner male, and for men, the anima or inner female. So, for women, invoking the God is actually psychologically healthy, just as it is for men to invoke the Goddess. Meeting the divine opposite becomes a personal alchemical marriage. In Kim’s experience: “As a man and an active eclectic magickal practitioner, I have evoked and invoked Gods and Goddesses and played all parts in ritual. I find that playing either gender role in ritual is a journey where you learn, either about your own gender, or that of the opposite.”

Restricting the deities we work with to a single gender decreases the number of magickal experiences available to us by half. Why limit ourselves in this way? If we refuse to let biological gender determine the other aspects of our lives, why would we allow it in Witchcraft? Through familiarity with an energy which is dissimilar to our own, we grow and become wiser, our sphere of consciousness becomes broader – and connecting with the Horned God doesn’t have to mean abandoning the Goddess!Katherine, a Witch who is very much involved in women’s blood mysteries, says: “I relate to the Horned God as a lover mostly, the face of the primal, sexual masculine, erect, virile, powerful... He’s a big part of my pantheon. Him, the Green Man, Pan and Odin are the faces of the Gods that I relate to the most at present. The Gods don’t tend to have much to do with Menstrual Magick, although Odin has his own relationship with it, sly bugger.”

The Horned God can be approached in many ways and it might be more useful to meet up with him in trance, before going all out and invoking him. Environmental activist and Witch, Indigo, describes a vision she had in which she encountered a Hunter figure: “He stands to face the growing light of sunrise, and from behind I see that what I took to be a headdress is the mass of his own tangled hair with a small set of horns protruding from his skull. As I watch, the horns change from one form to another. They are the horns of a goat, the antlers of the elk, the curved horns of the ibex, the heavy burden of the buffalo. They are the weapons of the bull, the curled protection of the ram, the tines of the stag, and the pointed scimitars of the oryx. In this half light, he is all these things, the hunter, the hunted, prey and predator, poised to both flee and fight, the wild and free, and the beast of burden.”

Or he may come to you of his own volition. I love this description of an epiphany which Hawthorn had: “I’ve always felt a strong relationship with the God. The last time I was in England I went to see the Cerne Abbas Giant. Whilst wandering around the site I saw an amazing beech tree that was bent so that the upper trunk was at 90 degrees to the lower trunk and parallel with the ground. The top branches of the tree were brushing the top of a small earthen mound. I don’t know if it was natural or man-made, ancient or modern – it could have been a midden for all I know – but the tree drew me to it. I sat on the mound and closed my eyes. Within a short time the area around me as filled with the sounds of footsteps and rustling vegetation, but there was no wind. I heard and felt footsteps walk up behind me and felt an overwhelming presence. I opened my eyes and noticed my shadow – jutting out from my head were the shadow outlines of a pair of horns. The feeling was uncanny, I did not look around, but stayed there in a sort of trance for an indeterminable time.”

One of my own favourite manifestations of the Horned God is Pan who reminds me that we are all animals – smart ones, but animals nevertheless. The ancient Greeks represented Pan as having the legs and horns of a goat but his appearance can actually range from that of a real goat standing upright, through to a man with a goatish face, human torso and goat legs, to a wholly human form sporting curved horns upon his head. A very popular deity in antiquity, Pan survived in medieval Europe as the goat-footed God of the Witches. The Christian church turned him into the Devil and the cloven hoof, once the sign of fertility and abundance, was regarded as evil. Anyone who has had much to do with real goats will know why they have a reputation as consorts of Witches. A buck goat looks like a man with a beard and wants to hump anything – including human females! Female readers, you might try going up to the fence next time you spy a billy goat and see if he doesn’t curl his lip in an epicurean fashion whilst inhaling your woman scent! It can be quite confronting for a city-dweller, but that’s Nature in all her incomprehensible glory.

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By Caroline Tully. This article is first appeared in Pop! Goes the Witch: The Disinformation Guide to 20th Century Witchcraft. By Fiona Horne (Ed). (New York. Disinformation. 2004). Available online from www.fionahorne.com

Nut: Whence the Star Goddess?

2010-10-27T04:36:00.000-07:00

This is part of a presentation I did in conjunction with Tim Hartridge at the Australian Wiccan Conference 2007. I did Part 1 Nut: Whence the Star Goddess? and Tim did Part 2 Nuit's Veil: An archetype of a witches’ coven.

Nut Presentation - Australian Wiccan Conference 2007.

Almost two thousand years after the closure of the Egyptian temples by the Roman Empire, an English magician receives a communiqué from an ancient Egyptian goddess, Nut (Nuit). The goddess asks him to help her unveil herself, to become in effect, her prophet. The magician – Aleister Crowley – does this by publishing “The Book of the Law”, the first chapter of which contains the voice of Nuit. Who exactly is this goddess, and how did she come to be speaking to Aleister Crowley?

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Goddess of the Milky Way

Nut is the ancient Egyptian goddess of the Milky Way, in fact she is the Milky Way.

So, what is the Milky Way? If it is clear tonight we will see it above us – it always looks so great in the country. The Milky Way is an enormous spiral galaxy containing, at one edge, our solar system. We’re not even in a particularly important place within this galaxy – if you think centrality is important. When we look at the Milky Way above us, we’re looking through the flat disk of the galaxy. When we look away from the Milky Way we’re looking into the rest of Space. It can give you a wonderful sense of vertigo!

As the personification of the heavens, Nut is usually represented in profile as a woman arched over like a bridge, whose hands and feet touch the earth. She is often accompanied by her partner, the earth god Geb, depicted beneath her, and sometimes the air god Shu is shown between them, separating Nut and Geb. Nut is primarily depicted in anthropomorphic form, she can also be shown as a cow – Hathor the goddess of love was also depicted as a cow – and as a pig, sometimes with piglets.

Creation Myth

According to the Heliopolitan creation myth (different districts had different creation myths – this one is from Heliopolis) Nut is the daughter of Shu and Tefnut, who are in turn the children of the primeval god, Atum.

Atum – the self-engendered one – arose at the beginning of time and created the first gods by masturbating (sometimes his hand is personified as a goddess). These were Shu (god of air) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture). Shu and Tefnut then become the parents of Nut (sky) and Geb (earth).

In many pantheons, sky deities are male while earth deities are female. The apparent reversal of this symbolism in the Egyptian pantheon may be connected with the fact that in Egypt, the regular source of water (associated with fertilizing semen) was the Nile – which came from the earth – rather than as rain from the sky. For time to begin, sky and earth needed to be separated and this is shown by Shu raising Nut up away from Geb.

Nut and Geb are the parents of Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nepthys. And Osiris and Isis are the parents Horus. Osiris is the god of order, fertility and lush vegetation, he represents deceased Pharaoh and is also god of the underworld (underworld gods are often providers of food). Isis is a mother goddess, a magician and the personification of king’s throne. Their son Horus represents the living king. Set is the god of the desert, chaos, foreigners, and is the usurper of the throne. Nepthys is a funerary goddess.

Celestial Nut, mother of Sun and Pharaoh

The Egyptians believed that the earth was a flat plate and that the sky was a vast body of water. The name “Nut” may mean “the watery one”, although this does not mean that she rained, the idea is more like a Great Lake or Sea. The movement of the sun across this water was understood as a voyage by boat.

As well as being the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set and Nepthys, Nut also was the mother of the stars and sun which she gave birth to daily. The sun, Re, is often depicted in astronomical ceilings being swallowed by Nut in the evening, traversing through her body at night, and being born again at dawn. It was understood that Nut’s head lay in the West where the sun set, and her vagina in the East where he rose. The image of Nut swallowing the sun and stars led her to be identified with the Great Sow who eats her piglets.

It was the sun’s capacity for rebirth that the Pharaoh sought to identify with after death, hence the image of the sun travelling though the body of Nut appears in royal tombs. Later on it also appears on coffin lids. Nut’s depiction on the coffin lids emphasises her role as the coffin, she literally embraces the deceased - originally only the king, but later on anyone who could afford a coffin.

Goddess of the Dead

Before being depicted on coffins, Nut was an important deity in the Pyramid Texts in which she appears almost 100 times. The Pyramid Texts, written on the walls of the pyramids, instructed the Pharaoh how to behave, and advised him on what he would encounter, in the afterlife. Originally the instructions in the Pyramid Texts were only for the Pharaoh. Nut played a central role in them regarding his resurrection. She was known as his “mother Nut in her name of “sarcophagus”… in her name of “Coffin” and… in her name of “tomb”.

As the afterlife became more inclusive the Pyramid Texts evolved into the Coffin Texts. These contained similar instructions but were written on coffins, so what was originally an exclusive relationship between Nut and the Pharaoh now incorporated the non-royal elite as well. Eventually the Coffin Texts became The Book of Going Forth By Day, or as we know it, The Book of the Dead, written on papyrus.

When depicted on coffins, Nut was represented frontally on the underside of the lid, often showing the solar disk in the process of being swallowed or reborn. Sometimes she was also depicted on the sides and inside the coffin. When the lid was placed over the deceased a kind of union was achieved. The coffin symbolically became the body of the goddess from whom the deceased would be reborn.

Lady of the Sycamore

This connection with the wood of coffins may have been what led Nut to be identified with the divine sycamore tree who nourishes the deceased in the afterworld. In the private tombs of Thebes and in images in the Book of the Dead, Nut is depicted as a goddess rising from the trunk of this divine tree, offering life-sustaining water and nourishment. She is the Tree of Life.

Why a sycamore tree? Egypt was not famous for its trees, although it did have them of course. In the oases the weary traveller arriving from the desert would come across the sycamore – actually a sycamore fig – from which he could obtain fruit, as well as water from the spring which bathed its roots. In chapter 59 of the Book of the Dead it says “Hail thou sycamore of Nut, give thou to me of the water and of the air which are in thee”. The accompanying image shows the deceased kneeling at a pool in the midst of which a sycamore is growing. The goddess extends her arms toward him, with a tray of food in one hand and a jar of water in another.

Worship

The ancient Egyptian cult of Nut appears to have been relatively modest, with evidence of few, if any, sanctuaries or priests. However she is known to have received food offerings as a mortuary goddess and been presented the sacred menat necklace in a ritual scene. The minimality of her cult should not be construed as signifying her lack of importance however: her roles of mother goddess, mortuary goddess, sky goddess, and orderer of the day and night each constitute significant functions. While she did not have huge temples, her place in popular religion is evident from the many sow amulets that have been excavated.

New Aeon Nut / Nuit

How did this sky and funerary goddess - who did not have huge temples, cult or priesthood - come to be important today? Why Nut? ... Why Egypt?

To answer this question we need to fast forward from ancient Egypt to England and the year 1888 when three prominent Freemasons – William Wynn Westcott, Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers and Dr. W.R. Woodman chartered the Isis-Urania Temple of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This was an exclusive magical order incorporating, among other things, explicit Egyptian components.

Again, why Egypt? It was a sign of the times. After the French and British campaigns in Egypt of 1798-1801, the Napoleonic investigations of Egyptian architecture were published in 1802 and again in 1828. Subsequently, enthusiasm for all things Egyptian became widespread in 19th century taste, particularly in France and Britain, but also in Spain, North and South America, South Africa, and Australia. It was during this century that Egyptology evolved into a professional discipline. [Interestingly, one of the major figures in modern Witchcraft - Margaret Murray, author of The Witch Cult in Western Europe and The God of the Witches – was a professional Egyptologist, being in fact an assistant to Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the “Father of Egyptology”.]

The general enthusiasm for Egypt in the 19th century ensured a continuous passion for Egyptian design in the decorative arts and architecture and, if the Golden Dawn is anything to go by, spirituality. Macgregor Mathers is known to have said “I have clothed myself with hieroglyphics as with a garment.”

Aleister Crowley was initiated into the Golden Dawn on the 26th of November 1898 when it was under the leadership of Florence Farr. It may have been while under her influence that he became aware of the importance in ceremonial magic of Egypt, as she had a particular interest in it. Farr had formed a separate group within the Golden Dawn called the “Sphere” which had a specific Egyptian focus – although Crowley was not a member of this group. Farr obtained inspiration for the direction of the group from an “Egyptian Adept”, Nem-Kheft-Ka, possibly a priestess of the temple of Amon at Thebes, who she was in communication with through her coffin in the British Museum. As we will soon see, Egyptian antiquities in a museum context - albeit a different museum - will be significant for Crowley as well.

In 1904, Crowley and his new wife Rose Kelly were honeymooning in Egypt. Although Rose was not trained in magick and did not really know anything about it, Crowley continued his regular magickal practices. On March 16th he performed the “Preliminary Invocation” or “Bornless Ritual” intending to entertain Rose by showing her the Sylphs (Air Elementals). Rose did not see any Sylphs but began behaving strangely, telling Crowley “They’re waiting for you”. He didn’t know what she was talking about and did not pay much attention.

The next day, 17th of March, they both successfully invoked the Egyptian god of writing and magic, Thoth. Rose was still saying weird things. This time she told Crowley “It was all about the child” and “all Osiris”.

On the 18th March, Rose claimed that the god Horus was waiting for Crowley at the Boulak Museum - in Cairo. They went to the museum and after walking straight past several images of Horus, which seemed to confirm to Crowley that she did not know what she was talking about, Rose singled out a funerary stela depicting Horus that had the catalogue number 666. Crowley very much identified with the Biblical “Beast of Revelations” so this number was significant for him. This stela was later to be known as The Stele of Revealing.

Between March 23 and April 7 Crowley had the hieroglyphs on the stela translated into French by a museum assistant and then made a versified English version of them. He subsequently composed several Horus invocations in order to directly encounter and explore the deity and find out what, if anything, he wanted. This is known as the Cairo Working.

The culmination of the Cairo Working came on April 8, 9, and 10 of 1904. Following Rose’s instructions, Crowley entered his temple space at noon each day and wrote down what he heard for an hour. He received a direct voice dictation from an intelligence that described itself as “the minister of Hoor-paar-kraat” (or Harpocrates, the Greek name of Horus the child) named Aiwaz or Aiwass. This dictation forms what is known as The Book of the Law (Liber AL vel Legis sub figura CCXX).

The Book of the Law consists of three chapters. The first is devoted to the goddess Nut, now called Nuit (French for “Night”). Subsequent chapters concern Nuit’s male complement, Hadit (possibly derived from a form of Horus called Behdet), and their “child” Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Re-and-Horus-of-the-Two-Horizons). This god is actually two god-forms – the active Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and the passive, Hoor-paar-kraat.

Nuit describes herself as “Infinite Space and the Infinite Stars thereof” – like her ancient Egyptian counterpart. In the second chapter she is described as “the circumference” while Hadit, her male complement, is the “centre” - the point within the circle. Nuit’s sign is a five-pointed star with a red circle in the middle of it, symbolising Hadit, “the flame that burns in the heart of every man and the core of every star”. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is the synthesis of Nuit and Hadit and – if we look at the ancient Egyptian Horus - the deified living Pharaoh. Ra-Hoor-Khuit is actually quite warlike. I interpret this as the energy needed to go through life.

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Although this explains how Nuit reappeared as an important goddess today, it does not explain why it happened - or why it happened to Aleister Crowley. Was he just the best self-publiciser of all the Golden Dawn? Crowley interpreted the reception of the Book of the Law as the “Equinox of the Gods” – a cosmic changeover time in the divine “rulership” or “influence” of the planet from the dying-and-reborn god of the Aeon of Osiris to the Crowned and Conquering Child of the Aeon of Horus. Is that what it was… or is? There are many who would say yes.

Happy Birthday AC

2010-10-12T00:55:00.000-07:00

Today, which happens to be Aleister Crowley's birthday (happy Birthday AC, you'd be 135 today if you were still alive!), I received the joyous news that my article "Walk Like An Egyptian: Egypt as authority in Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law", has been accepted by an academic journal - Pomegranate: International Journal of Pagan Studies. Now, I'm thrilled about that because I worked hard on it... and also bemused, as several 'synchonistic' things have been happening during the process of preparing the piece for submission - nothing dramatic, but noticable... Firstly, while I was working on it I got an email from a magickal order dedicated to Crowley's works (which shall remain nameless, as I'm sure they'd prefer) and which, while I have been a member thereof on and off, am currently 'inactive' within and so we tend not to talk; secondly, the person who introduced me to Crowley, Thelema, and Magick in general, and who I haven't spoken to for way over a decade contacted me... and thirdly of course, is that the article was accepted on Crowley's birthday. Synchronicity? Who cares, as long as people read my article! Stay tuned for actual publication, after which I will post the abstract and links for university library and/or subscriber access.

Spray Paint and Stencils in Jerusalem's Old City

2010-09-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

When I was walking through Jerusalem's Old City this past July-early August, I was intrigued by the bright spray paint and stencil work I saw. One of the reasons was the juxtaposition of modern, sometimes flouro, spraypaint with the old white(ish) stones of Jerusalem's Old City. Another reason is that some of these images were of trees, and I'm studying tree-cult in my PhD, so I tend to collect tree images (check these out). In fact, speaking of trees, there is a really interesting book on the use of trees within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict called 'Planted Flags' by Irus Braverman (Cambridge 2009). OK, obviously these examples here are probably political, being Arabic (which I cannot read), or else records of the Haj - and I was after all, staying in the Muslim Quarter. I'm not, however, meaning to insult any of my darling Jewish and Israeli friends or associates by exhibiting these photos. This is simply my record of an aesthetic reaction to colour and shape, and the surprise of it being on what I might consider 'heritage' buildings. (If you want to see the Magen David in spray paint, go and look at my Israel and Jordan photos on my Facebook site.) Yes, us tourists do, no doubt, expect Jerusalem to be all ye-oldey Biblical and not have any modern concerns or behaviours jutting in to awaken us from verging on Jerusalem Syndrome - I certainly do... But good luck with that, because it is 2010 - even in Jerusalem's Old City.

Who has time to blog?

2010-08-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

Who has time to actually blog? Not me. I often think of things to blog about when I'm in bed - the computer is turned off and I'm not planning to get up again until the morning. Then I forget what they were. Recently I was thinking of topics like 'How short people are evil (under the guise of cuteness) and tall people get the blame for everything', 'How institutionalised learning (university) is privileged over DIY study from both inside and outside the university and how annoying that is/can be', and 'How I hate people in my street who cut down trees (why don't they cut themseves down?)'. But those topics are really rants - well not the short people one. That's a fact. I have come across some amazing blogs though, by people who obviously do have time to blog. I'll show them to you, so you don't get bored when you visit my hardly-ever-updated blog. There's arty archaeologist Michael Shanks, with its downlaodable books and interesting pics and links, Egil Asprems' Heterodoxlolgy, British Mage, Jake Stratton-Kent's Underworld Apocathery, Jim West's Zwinglius Redivivus, there's effort gone in there... Neurologica, Epiphenom, Mary Beard's blog (she'd get paid for doing that), the incredibly prolific The Wild Hunt, and there's the fabulous Morbid Anatomy. So, people do have time to blog, some blog a lot and I assume people read their blogs. One day I'll have time to blog again. I'm sure I will.

Yisrael

2010-08-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

Lotsa (OK, some) pics from Israel. First, me above the Dead Sea, before we'd got there and I discovered that the water was hot! Hot!!! Hot sea is intolerable! Second, me and the smouldering Erin. Third pic, sitting around outside our kibbutz room, fourth, being strangled by Jo, fifth standing round watching the Australian Ambassador do some digging, and sixth, some sort of mysterious non-working, sitting around pic. Can't imagine what we're doing there. Picture credits Amanda and Erin, I believe. Some of mine will eventually appear when I get them off my camera. Meanwhile get an update on Tell es-Safi/Gath the dig here.

Find Me on Facebook

2010-08-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

Just a note to anyone who wants to talk to me (apart from comments here) to come find me on Facebook. I recently had a guy email me about my interest in Spiritual Egyptomania - Keith from the USA, it was you - but when I replied to you, your email address bounced. So I can't follow it up. So... come find me on Facebook. More interesting posts here to come, as soon as I get the photos of Israel and Jordan off my camera.

Digging at Gath

2010-07-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Some pics from the dig at Gath. First, me digging, second me and sometime controversial archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, and last a group pic of the Australian team for 2010. Check out this pot I excavated here. I haven't dug up an Ashdoda figurine however, but I have dug up a lot of sherdy floor. Hm, I wonder who it is that Aren Maeir on the Gath blog is talking about in regards to being excited about Finkelstein's visit? Could it be me the shameless groupie?

I dig Ashdoda

2010-06-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

I want to dig up an "Ashdoda" figurine at Gath (see above picture). Or an Astarte plaque, that would also be good. Or... perhaps I'll just have to settle for seeing them at a museum, I know Ashdoda is in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. I could spend ages writing up stuff about Ashdoda on this blog, but it's really easier for me to point you in the direction of Aegaeum 22 "Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age" and its free pdf's, one of which is "The Mother(s) of All Philistines? Aegean Enthroned Deities of the 12th - 11th Century Philistia." which will give you more information on Ashdoda than I could. Now... back to pre-dig reading.

Off to the Monotheism Theme Park

2010-06-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of year again - digging season in Israel. I'm off to work at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath, which is the Philistine city of Gath, for a month. Not only will it involve incredibly strenuous manual labour in the form of digging up pottery and bones and lugging rocks, causing one to have to eat halva for energy (see the above pic), but there will be some respite in the form of afternoon pottery washing and nightly lectures. Plus, field trips to other sites. Weekends will no doubt be spent recovering, then browsing the antiquities market in Jerusalem, which, from what I can gather is almost entirely looted or fake, bustling amongst the monotheistic religious sites, visiting other ancient (monotheistic and pre-monotheistic) sites in regional Israel, and eating. After the dig I'm spending five more days in Israel, during which I'll hit the museums - particulary the Israel Museum (if the archaeological wing is open) and the Bible Lands Museum, possibly the Eretz Israel Museum, then five days in Jordan. Then back home to icy winter.

O Mighty Isis, I've been tutoring

2010-05-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to update my blog - not that I'm a very frequent blogger anyway - because I have been FLAT OUT doing nine tutorials per week in first year Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Not only do I take nine hours of tutorials, I have to correct Two Lots of 1000 word essays from all those tutes. Plus assess class presentations. (Ha ha, my friend Jason is tag-teaming me to correct the next lot of assessment. Wonder if I'll get roped into that as well?) I think I've marked more than 140 essays so far, and there's still more to do. I quite like marking, because it seems like editing to me. However, such an enormous load starts to make one occasionally nauseous - unless one has sufficent rest from it occasionally, like daring to have a one-day break from marking to refresh one's brain before getting back into it. Tutoring, by which I mean 'facilitating discussion by the students' is sort of interesting... Of course it is much more interesting for all concerned when the students actually do the required reading which would - if they did it - provide something to talk about. Otherwise I just can't stand the silence and tend to fill it myself with, well this week, stories of how Aphrodite was responsible for the Trojan War, to a large extent. This led into comparing the Aphrodite in the Iliad with the one in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, as well as highlighting links suggested in the Hymn, to Anatolian Kybele. Sure, I was veering off into Classics when I should have been in archaeology discussing the mound of Hisarlik (pretty much believed to have been Troy) and its layers, but hey... it's really the students who should be filling the void, not me! Today I made them get into groups, read the reading that they hadn't read, and then answer the question "What were the relationships between the Greeks, Trojans and Hittites?" It wasn't that successful because that was one of the most complicated sections of the reading, but if I had not done it, they'd have all stared at me expecting me to answer it. As it was, I put it back on them... Ha. I might try that again tomorrow. I am starting to see how students at university can be of interest to Romanist academic blogger, Mary Beard. In a previous comment to one of my blogs I was saying how I liked her blog but not the bits where she discussed how students can get into Cambridge... now that seems more interesting to me, seeing as I am dealing with the cream of school-leavers in my own tutes. Pity some of them don't realise how special a place at our university is and that they shouldn't slack off and waste it. Many of the students are brilliant, for what must be 18 year olds, I'm constantly astonished at some of them. Some of the work I am marking is extremely sophisticated. I can only imagine where they'll go with such brains!

My Favourite Sanctuary Model

2010-04-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

Isn't this the most gorgeous, evocative little sanctuary model? When I first saw it, in an archaeology class, I found it compelling. It is Cypriot, from Kotsiatis, dates to the Middle Bronze Age, and basically depics a female figure and a large jar in front of triple bucrania (bull's skulls) erected upon some sort of probably wooden pillars or structure. There is at present no evidence out in the landscape for this sort of structure, probably because it disintegrated, being wooden and bone - although it may have had a paved floor (or simply beaten earth) - but this is a type of ephemeral cult structure that would have been erected within the landscape or else possibly within a chamber tomb. It seems easy to envisage how it was constructed, and I can't help but think that structures such as this add historical authenticity to some of the imagery of Traditional Witchcraft, such as the stang. It's such a simple little shrine, as is the stang when embedded in the ground (but with a skull attached, not naked). I like that sort of minimal but evocative outdoor temple. Images of a mask of Dionysus and simple garment on a pole, as seen in Classical vase painting, are also in this vein. Although this Cypriot example looks a little more permanent than a single-pole version, but only just a little. Oh, and another thought... Wasn't Wiccan founder, Gerald Gardner's, novel "A Goddess Arrives" set in Cyprus? (I haven't read it). Not that I am suggesting any connection really... Just doing free association.

Once Was Tarot Reader

2010-03-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, Once Was Tarot Reader! I'm referencing the New Zealand film title "Once Were Warriors". Trusty Facebook has materialized an ex-boss and long lost friend, Nigel Cooper, who employed me as a Tarot Reader in his shop Mythical Moon back in the very early 1990s. Today he posted this photo of me onto his and my Facebook pages. It comes from newspaper coverage of his shop from back then, but I've never owned a copy of it and had only seen it once before in a tiny newspaper version several years after it was taken. I like it because it brings back memories of my life then - before I was a Tapestry Weaver, a job I took up straight after the Tarot job and which I've only just left in order to do a full time PhD. I'm also quite fascinated by the way I look so skinny in this photo. Not that I am saying that skinny is great, I'm just interested in how the older you get the fleshier you can also get - but not always and not everyone - apparently it's our metabolism... Not that I'm phat now, but I am rather... embonpoint. Sorry if all this mirror-gazing comes across as plain vain, I do admit to being quite interested in my own life - which doesn't mean that I am not also interested in others, I am!

I Love Roman Frescoes

2010-03-10T00:42:00.000-08:00

Reading Mary Beard's blog It's a Don's Life, has encouraged me to blog about whatever I want and throw a bit of my university life in there too - seeing as I'll be intensively involved in that realm for the next three, if not more, years. So, while I'm formally studying - and love - prehistoric Aegean religion(s), mainly Crete but also Greece, Cyprus and the Levant, my secondary interest, or my back-burner interest, is Roman Religion. It seems fitting then to post an image that is Roman, yet that harks back to the Greek Bronze Age through the Trojan Epic, Homer's Iliad, intended to depict events in the Bronze Age. The Romans liked to claim Trojan ancestry, maybe that's why the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis featured in this Roman fresco. This version of the story - the sacrifice bit - does not actually feature in Homer, but in the Epic Cycle which are later compositions designed to 'fill out' parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Remember when the Greek fleet wanted to set out for Troy there was no wind, in some versions because of the anger of Artemis. Various reasons for her anger are proposed: either Agamemnon (father of Iphigenia) had illicitly shot a stag within her grove; he had boasted that he was a finer hunter than the goddess; or he had broken a vow to give Artemis the most beautiful thing born the year of Iphigeneia's birth - which had been the girl herself. Anyway, whatever the cause of the deity's wrath, it would only be appeased by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. She was therefore summoned to Aulis on the pretext of marrying Achilles, and then sacrificed. In some versions of the story Iphigeneia is substituted at the last minute for a deer - as in Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis - which is what this fresco depicts: Iphigeneia escaping. I just love the colours and I love the scratchy appearance of most Roman frescos. Roman Frescoes = Big Fan. [But please excuse the excessive use of wikipedia in my links! To tell the truth, all this text is simply an excuse to post this beautiful fresco!]

In Uni Land

2010-03-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm now doing a full time PhD which I enjoy very much. I read, read, read, and type, type, type and also... think, think, think. The more time I have to do this the more I actually do. I'd do even more if I didn't have to sleep - pesky sleep. Consequently I have absolutely no spare time for anything else. I have no time to move the new bookshelves from the loungeroom, where they were initially constructed, to the 'office' where they are meant to help improve on floor space - by providing a vertical storage system for all the books currently in piles on the floor. Nor do I really have time to do food shopping, I just can't be bothered. Can't somebody bring it to me? The only reason I'm writing this blog entry is that I feel a little tired, haven't actually started my research work for the day yet, and am awaiting lunch to be brought to me (which doesn't always happen, usually I have the indignity of having to get it myself!). So, you can take it that I love researching and studying above practically all else. I've also been given a tutoring job at the university, although it doesn't start till May. I thought that was also nice and dandy, exepting that it takes time out of my research. But I always like to be entertained, and being paid to tutor seems a wonderful thing - especially as it is a lot more than I was getting for my last job. However, according to some fellow students, apparently I shouldn't be thinking it's so great, apparently I should be dissatisfied. Apparently the university takes advantage of Postgraduate labour. Well maybe my rose-coloured glasses will be smashed. I suppose I'll find out soon enough. Still, intellectual stimulation is a big plus for me, so I'm willing to weigh the pros and cons of being employed by the university and will decide upon it's 'goodness' or 'badness' when I can speak more knowledgably about it - in May. Meanwhile, I'm kinda having fun taking very occasional time out from researching to read classicist Mary Beard's blog A Don's Life, to see what professional academics in classics actually do - not that I am a classicist (although I do have a major interest in Roman religion). I like reading about universities though. From reading books such as Helen Garner's The First Stone and Mary Lefkowitz's History Lesson however, I'm getting the impression that universities are very weird places. But I don't want university to be a weird place - especially like in the latter two books. I suppose I am naive though, people are weird, so why wouldn't they be weird in a university? It's like a strange little city, or a big palace... the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul perhaps? Wonder if there will be any court intrigues, hierarchical struggles over rulership, conniving to get one's son on the throne, bagging up of harem women and throwing them in the Bosporus? OK, now I'm just getting silly...

Juno Sospita

2010-02-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

These two photos show terracotta acroteria of the head of Juno Sospita from a temple of Juno that was once on the Palatine Hill. They are now in the Palatine Museum, a museum that seems to be open every day - even Mondays when other museums in Rome are closed. When I first saw these in 2006 I was quite struck by Juno's goat-skin headdress because it looked to me a lot like... well, what we would now expect a certain founder of The Church of Satan to be wearing - as if a goat-skin really means the Satan of the New Testament (as the ha' satan of the Hebrew Bible is another thing altogether)! Consequently when I was in Rome in 2009 I marched through the Roman Forum in the boiling midday heat and up on to the Palatine Hill, almost getting heat-stroke, to find the museum to have another look at these terracotts and photograph them. So here they are. And what can I say about Juno Sospita? Well, according to Price and Kearns in the "Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion" p.305, the cult of Juno Sospita was imported to Rome from the city of Lanuvium which from 338 BCE was administered jointly with Rome. The distinctive iconography of this goddess, who wears a goatskin and carries a spear and shield, indicates a martial character. Dumezil believed that her full epithet Sospita Mater Regina confirmed his thesis that Juno was originally trivalent, with influence over military prowess, fertility and political organisation. In Beard, North and Price's "Religions of Rome Vol 2: A Sourcebook" p.37-8 Cicero is quoted (On the Nature of the Gods I. 77, 81-2) saying "...Just as much, I'd swear, as you believe in the divinity of that Juno Sospita of your own native town - the one you never see, not even in your dreams, without a goat-skin, spear, shield and shoes turned up at the toe. But the Argive Juno does not appear like that, nor the Roman. So it follows that Juno has one appearance for the Argives, another for the people of Lanuvium, another for us." Anyway, while I am less amazed at her goat-skin headdress than I once was, I still think it's pretty remarkable. See these interesting coins with Juno on them.

Trees and Clothes

2010-02-11T23:25:00.000-08:00

I am really struck by this photograph by artist, Simryn Gill, from her exhibition, 'Inland'. I don't actually know what the title of this work is, but I find it evokes in my mind a Vodou aesthetic, possibly as mediated through black and white films, either ethnographic, or horror. Basically it is an image of banana trees wearing clothes. I love it, and I would never have thought to do that myself, dress up banana trees. I don't think the artist's intention was to evoke Vodou, well, I don't know, but that's what it suggests to me.

I know what to do, you do Voodoo.

2010-02-06T00:11:00.000-08:00

Dance in a ring of flames, shadows fall the same, fire, love and pain. Do voodoo, voodoo, voodoo. ~Chris Isaak. 'Voodoo'.

Since the earthquake in Haiti "Voodoo" or more properly Vodou is a hot topic on people's lips - especially religious nutters who think it's demonic. Having originally come across Vodou through a simultaneous mix of reading Anne Rice books, buying the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot Deck by author and practitioner Sallie Ann Glassman, and film maker Maya Deren's book 'Divine Horsemen' in the early 1990s, when Vodou was a huge trend in Australia's occult scene (Religious Studies academic Lynne Hume discusses a "vodou ritual" she attended, in which I was one of a group of Hounsi, in her book 'Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia' - we had no idea how inauthentic we appeared!), I later went about reading more ethnographical works on the subject in an effort to understand it from that angle. I guess I'd say I was actively interested in Vodou for about five years and only moved on to other topics because, well, there are just so many things to know about. Seeing as it's now featuring in the news - especially the religious news, including Pagan religious news - I am inclined to Google it and see how it's going here in Oz these days. Of course there is still musician Kerri Simpson , a student of Glassman, who has some interesting things to say, there is also Mambo Racine in New Zealand, and I just discovered this group, Sancista, in South Australia. I'm mainly interested in Vodou nowadays from an art angle (sequined flags, vodou sculpture) as well as in regards to deified aspects of landscape and the natural world for the purposes of analogy with prehistoric Aegean religion(s) - not from the syncretistic angle of African religions and Catholicism of course, but from the possession angle. It seems poignant that the only tattoo I have is the Vodou veve of Ayizan, the first priestess (pictured above). It's a schematized palm frond mask and that is exactly where I'm currently going with my PhD research. We circle around, it seems.

I Love Aegean Glyptic

2010-02-01T20:28:00.000-08:00

Really, who wouldn't love it? I've been spending days going almost blind, scrutinising the CMS volumes in the uni library, and I've only done about half of them. Yay! This one, the Isopata Ring, is particularly gorgeous, but there are hundreds of other beautiful ones too. I saw some of these 'celebrity' rings and seals in the Athens Archaeological Museum in July. Haven't been to Crete yet though to see famous examples there, anyway the Heraklion Museum was closed last year, I think it is still closed. I'd feel irritated to go to Crete and be confronted with a closed museum, like how in Israel the archaeological section of the Israel Museum was closed, but I already knew that and the Rockefeller Museum, the Bible Lands Museum and Eretz Israel Museum were compensation enough.

I'm in Biblical Archaeology Review

2010-01-19T02:52:00.000-08:00

Last year I spent the first half of the year scrimping, saving and scrounging money to attend an archaeological dig at tell es-Safi/Gath in Israel. Part of my trip was funded by a scholarship from the Biblical Archaeology Society, publishers of the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review. I had to write a report on my dig experiences and it has recently been published in the online version of the magazine. The above pic shows myself with co-students Jason and Dean in Jerusalem before we got to the dig, hence clean. See two dig pictures in the article.

Green Gown

2010-01-10T22:27:00.000-08:00

Me in a green crushed velvet dress with a ram skull. Green is the theme colour for my Edenic PhD. The topic is green, the folders and notepads are green, I am green. Bright grassy green. (Like the Wicked Witch of the West's skin tone? Hopefully not). Over on Facebook, where comments tend to be rather fleeting because of the quick turnover, Peg Aloi commented about this blog post so I thought I'd include what she said here: "Nice! In my Color in Cinema class, the film we study for green is ATONEMENT. The gown's bright green color represents the lost romantic past; and after the pivotal scene where it is last seen, the color is never again seen in the film except in flashback or in battle/war scenes of the present." Then Jeffrey Winters commented below that "Hopefully you're studying the Green Fairy as well. Absinthe makes the tart grow fonder." I replied to these posts thus: "Wow, Peg, I like the idea of a green gown representing a lost romantic past, because that's pretty much what the photo of me in the green gown represents! And no Jeffrey, I'm not drinking the Green Fairy, at least not right this minute." I must say I'm not familiar with the film Atonement, better look that up.

Florence and the Mummy

2009-12-28T16:21:00.000-08:00

Huzzah! I have just received my contributor copy of 'Women's Voices in Magic' edited by Brandy Williams, in which I have a chapter on Golden Dawn member, Florence Farr, and her approach to Egyptology. My chapter is titled 'Florence and the Mummy' and pictured above is the mummy in question. The chapter is a sequel to the one on Macgregor Mathers in 'Ten Years After Triumph of the Moon', 'Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers and Isis'. I have also written on Aleister Crowley and Egypt, as well as the legacy of the Golden Dawn's approach to ancient Egyptian religion and its influence on contemporary Paganism, particularly in Britain. Stay tuned for more on that.

I'll reproduce the Table of Contents of 'Women's Voices in Magic' here to whet people's appetites for the book: Introduction - Brandy Williams; Florence and the Mummy - Caroline Tully; The Bride of the Snake - Amy Hale; Magic and Pregnancy - Lesa Whyte; Enochian Motherhood - Soror Inde Seraphina; Are Ingredients Important? - Shellay Maughan; The Active and the Receptive - Kayla Block; Radical Feminist Alchemy - Helen Honeycutt; Desire-The Seeker - Kat Sanborn; My Life in Satanism - Venus Satanas; Women and the Left Hand Path - Sybil Black; The Rose of Sharon or a Thorn Among Lilies - Alison More; Every Time You Play the Red, The Black is Coming - Kirsten Brown; Whore - Leni Hester; The Female Kink - Lupa; Words beneath the Willow - Theresa Garcia; Cove Witches and Curanderas - Byron Ballard; What I Hold in my Hand - Kris Leet; The Accidental Magician - Grace Victoria Swann; His Mother's Whole Body Heals - Erynn Rowan Laurie; Where Do I Go From Here? - Jaymi Elford; The Feminist Adept - Brandy Williams; Three Chapters from a Magical Life - Mordant Carnival; Conclusion - Brandy Williams. I believe many of these contributors will be at Pantheacon 2010 and that Brandy is organising a Women's Magic panel.

Thirteen Years of Tapestry Weaving

2009-12-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

You could say it's 14 years, but I did have a year off for maternity leave. Well, tomorrow is the last day that I work at the Victorian Tapestry Workshop. After starting off there in 1996 fresh from a Bachelor of Arts at Monash University, I am about to finish in order to start something else, a full-time PhD in Aegean Archaeology at Melbourne University. I'm excited, but a teeny bit apprehensive. It's comfortable to stay the same, but it's time for a change. Plus, although like Archane I'm as good at weaving as Athena, I don't want to become a spider.

It was the snake that led me astray and I ate...

2009-12-12T21:55:00.000-08:00

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4-5).

Then the female principle came in the snake, the instructor; and it taught them, saying "What did he say to you? Was it 'From every tree in the garden you shall eat yet from the tree of recognising evil and good do not eat'?" The carnal woman said, "Not only did he say 'Do not eat,' but even 'Do not touch it; for the day you eat from it, with death you are going to die.'" And the snake, the instructor said, 'With death you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather your eyes shall be open and you shall come to be like gods, recognising evil and good." And the female instructing principle was taken away from the snake and she left it a thing of the earth." (The Hypostasis of the Archons 89-90).

A sadder but wiser pair were they. (The Devil's Mischief 47).

Women's Voices in Magic Anthology

2009-11-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Well hooray, I've got a chapter in another book: Women's Voices in Magic edited by Brandy Williams. (Here I'm showing the front and back of the book cover, as that's the image I was sent). My chapter is on Golden Dawn member, Florence Farr, and her approach to ancient Egyptian religion. While this book is aimed toward a popular audience, my chapter derives from the academic research conducted as part of my Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (Classics and Archaeology) thesis. Having not yet seen the book, I don't know what the other contributors have done so cannot comment. I look forward to receiving my contributor copy asap!

My PhD Begins Today!

2009-11-27T03:33:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of my PhD in Aegean Archaeology. While I have been virtuously focussing on my actual topic for the last three months or so, I - perversely(?) - spent today writing an article on an entirely different matter for an academic journal. Hence I am now almost blind and the article is not finished at all. I want to get it out of the way however, in order to finish - at least temporarily - with that particular subject and get back to my PhD topic. Perhaps I will find that I can end up doing both: researching my PhD and ocassionally foraying into academic article-land with non-PhD-related articles. Of course I will have to write journal articles on my PhD subject as well. It looks like I will have the time to do so. The last six years of exertion toward my university work means that I received an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship and can therefore do my PhD full time. Studying for a living, can you think of anything better than that?

Ten Years After Triumph of the Moon

2009-11-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

I am thrilled to be one of the contributors to the anthology, 'Ten Years After Triumph of the Moon' edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green (Hidden Publishing 2009) - inspired by Professor Ronald Hutton's original historical investigation into contemporary Witchcraft, 'Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft' (Oxford University Press 1999). Hutton's book was - and is - of immense importance and interest to everyone who has a spiritual, emotional, aesthetic or historical interest in modern Witchcraft. I, for one, pre-ordered it at Borders as soon as I heard of its imminent publication. When I received it I read it avidly each morning, as I breastfed my newborn son, in the early months of 2000. It was Hutton's book - and the Pagan Studies mailing list run by Chas Clifton - that eventually led me to academia on my own quest to discern the characteristics of ancient Pagan religons in order to judge whether they were in any way similar to modern Pagan religions, as claimed by many pracititoners. Hutton blazed the trail for what is now academic Pagan Studies - as, if not its absolutely first academic researcher, then at least its most famous - and both researchers and practitioners have benefitted from his erudition. Not only in regards to his work on modern Witchcraft, but also his books on ancient British Pagan religions, seasonal festivals and most recently, Druidry, have been of enormous importance in providing fascinating information as well as spurring further research by others. In addition, they have helped 'alternative' spiritual paths such as Witchcraft present a less frightening face to the interested public. Let's hope that the Pagan Studies field gets stronger and even more interesting.

And now for our more dreadful sacrifice...

2009-08-24T02:28:00.000-07:00

Collages by me.

Pompeiian Votive Offerings

2009-08-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

Fascinating terracotta votive offerings of phalli, breasts and uteri from the Naples Museum, and the marble ones from Athens.

Italian Charms and Egyptian Kitsch

2009-08-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

Slightly Random Holiday Pics

2009-08-05T01:30:00.000-07:00

Some holiday pics: Isis from Hadrian's Villa now in the Vatican Museum; Paestum; Amalfi; Live at Pompeii; a very gorgeous cult object from the favissa of a Yavneh temple on display at the Eretz Israel Museum; a visit with members of the Gath excavation team to Tel Zeit in Israel; Mount Vesuvius looming over Naples.

My Frenetic Trip

2009-08-03T02:09:00.000-07:00

OK, as promised below, here's a proper report about my overseas trip (from which I've only been back less than a week). It went like this: Melbourne to Rome, to Naples, to Herculaneum, then the Amalfi Coast - Sorrento, Amalfi and Positano - with side trips to Pompeii and Paestum. Then back to Rome to visit musuems, walk around the city, and try and understand the geographical relationship between the Capitoline Hill and the Temple of Isis in the Campus Martius (which doesn't actually exist any more although we know where it was). I also attended the SAMR Conference (mentioned in a post below) which was fantastic because I met Carin Green, author of Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia - a book anyone interested in contemporary Wicca, Stregheria and the portrayal of the Rex Nemorensis by J. G. Frazer in The Golden Bough should read - and also had lunch with her during which I pestered her non-stop about Diana's sanctuary. I also met Lauren Petersen, author of The Freedmen in Roman Art and Art History, which is important to me because of its chapter on the Popidius Family and their relationship to the cult of Isis in Pompeii. Lauren did a fantastic presentation on the sacred places of Isis in Rome.

***

Then I went to Israel, met up with Jason and Dean and went screaming down south on a bus to Eilat in order to cross the border into Jordan and visit Petra. This we did, and that's when I began to realise that I was much less fit that I had thought. I could only do one (extremely demanding) day at Petra whereas Jason and Dean did two. Then it was back to Jerusalem and on to the dig at Tell es-Safi Gath. I stayed on the dig for two weeks. It was very educational regarding field archaeology and pottery sherd processing and there were lectures at night and field trips to other sites some afternoons. I also met interesting people. It was very physically demanding however, and because I'd been debilitated by Petra (yes, in one day!) I began the dig very stiff and weak. The constant manual labour soon toughened me up however and by the end I was able to ascend the near-vertical hill up to the dig site with only a couple of rest stops (as opposed to about four) and also carrying heavy containers of water (as opposed to being unable to carry anything because it just made the ascent even harder). One of the highlights was the visit to Gath of (celebrity) archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein - yeah, I'm impressed by such things. Before I knew it I'd let out a solicitous wolf whistle - hey, he's sexy, it was a normal reaction - but luckily I don't think anyone really heard me because no doubt it would have been considered un-PC. I received a grant from the magazine, Biblical Archaeology Review, to attend the dig at Gath so in return will write up a report and supply photos to them, within the next month.

***

After the dig I went to Jerusalem and stayed in the Old City in the Muslim Quarter for five days. My hotel, the Hashimi Hotel, does have the best view of the Dome of the Rock - just as Lonely Planet said - and I spent a lot of time on their rooftop veging out, staring at the view and reading. I went to museums, sites, ate food and relaxed. Next I had to go to Tel Aviv, because I was flying out of there, and so went to the excellent Eretz Israel Museum which consists of several separate pavillions clustered around the excavation site of Tell Qasile. Fascinating. I particularly loved the ceramics and metal pavillions, the former contaning wonderful cult objects and the latter all the objects from the copper mine and Temple to Hathor at Timna in southern Israel. I'm very taken with Timna.

***

Then it was off to lovely Athens to visit three museums. All up I went to twelve museums on my trip and yes, I am now going to list them: In Italy I went to the Vatican, Palatine, Naples, Paestum, two separate collections of the National Museum of Rome (the collections of which are housed in several different buildings around the city) and the bookshop of the Capitoline Museum (I couldn't be bothered going into the actual museum that day and I have been there before). In Israel I went to the Rockefeller, Bible Lands and Eretz Israel Museums, and in Greece the Museum of Cycladic Art, the Athens Archaeological (simply enormous) which also, fortuitously, was showing the Worshipping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens exhibition, and lastly the New Acropolis Museum. It was all highly satisfying and I took lots of photos (where permitted) and bought catalogues and other fabulous books (consequently my suitcase was extremely heavy).

***

Images: Three Sirens and a (rather decayed but I think it looks very evocative) Sphinx from the Athens Archaeological Museum.

Been on 'oliday.

2009-08-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's right, a holiday. Well... it started off as a holiday, a research trip/holiday. Top picture is me relaxing at a hill-top hotel (which used to be a monastery) in Naples - sorry you can't actually see Naples in this pic (yes, I could be in Melbourne for all you know). Next pic is me in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii - and yes, the red colour in the frescoes really is that bright! But no, I have not become a cow-girl, its just that it was so hot I simply had to wear a hat. Then I went to an archaeological dig in Israel which involved a lot of early rising and physical exertion. It was mentally stimulating and educational for sure, but these pics show me boiling hot and sweaty - at least there was shade cloth. A more sensible and informative post to follow - as soon as I have time.

Spiritual Egyptomania

2009-06-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

After around twenty years participation in contemporary Witchcraft, Neo-Paganism and Ceremonial Magick I went back to university as a mature age student in 2004 in order to assess, from an academic standpoint, the claims to historicity of the Neo-Pagan founders I had encountered both through literature and in person. I wanted to find out what academic professionals who specialised in the ancient societies whose religions Pagans purported to be representing and practising had to say about the character of ancient pagan religions. Did they look in any way like modern ones? This was definitely motivated in part by Ronald Hutton's investigations into Modern Pagan Witchcraft in his book 'Triumph of the Moon'. I think Hutton inspired a healthy phase of self-reflexivity within the more honest quarters of modern Paganism and I for one believe we should not be afraid to look critically at both those who were integral to the formation of contemporary Paganism, as well as its current practitioners. Critical investigation is not going to kill Paganism. I was also inspired, on the other hand, by Pagan Reconstructionism, a historical approach to the practice of ancient pagan religions rather than the 'ceremonial magic format' approach of the 'magic circle and four elements' which derived from Wicca and is generally believed to be representative of 'pagan religion' by those who can't be bothered doing much research.

I have just submitted my last essay for my Postgraduate Diploma in Arts (Classics and Archaeology) which was on whether classical accounts of human sacrifice performed within Celtic groves had any basis in reality or were simply part of an imperialist smear-campaign designed to make the 'barbarians' look bad (there is evidence of human sacrifice). I have also just handed in my thesis, which was stimulating to research and exhausting to write, entitled 'Spiritual Egyptomania: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn'. This thesis shines a harsh spotlight - like Sauron's eye - on the activities and claims to authority of four famous British magicians and investigates their not-inconsiderable legacy today, particularly in Britain. Here's the abstract: This thesis investigates the reception and appropriation of aspects of ancient Egyptian religion by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an exclusive late-nineteenth century British alternative spirituality movement. Initially contextualising the Golden Dawn as standing outside the development of scholarly Egyptology, its direct relationship with the modern Pagan movement is subsequently explained and the implications thereof for contemporary archaeology are outlined. Specific case studies of four Golden Dawn members highlight the order’s imaginative method of obtaining knowledge about ancient Egypt and the erroneous conclusions arrived at thereby. The historically inaccurate, self-serving and misleading picture of ancient Egyptian religion promoted by the Golden Dawn, as well as its unscientific method of obtaining information about the past through revelation rather than reason, is shown to have been adopted by contemporary Pagans who subsequently attempt to impose their erroneous interpretations of the past on to archaeologists, museum curators and heritage workers, to the detriment of archaeology.

I am now excited to be moving on to my higher degree research topic: a comparative study of the symbolic and ritual meanings of trees and pillars in Prehistoric Greece, Egypt and Israel. Trees and pillars are important from the perspective of both landscape and gender. Both trees and pillars occur in images and texts in religious contexts, often in conjunction with women. Represented symbolically when brought into the human sphere, they signify domesticated versions of aspects of wild nature such as groves and mountains. The study of trees and pillars provides us with information about how features of the natural world were perceived as sacred, as well as how women acted as mediators in the relationship between nature and culture. Hooray, I'm looking at three of my favourite topics: ritual, gender and landscape.

WHAT'S RELIGIOUS ABOUT ANCIENT MEDITERRANEAN RELIGIONS?

2009-05-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

What's religious about ancient Mediterranean religions? This is the theme of the Inaugural Meeting of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religion, held on June 28 2009, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome, Italy. And I'll be there! Wah-hoo!

At the inaugural meeting of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions, we plan to begin our discussions by considering the ways in which the conceptual category 'religion' is applicable to the study of ancient cultures. Sacrifice, prayer, pilgrimage, private and public devotion, beliefs about gods and goddesses - all of these practices and ideas seem to fall safely enough within the category of 'religion'. A question worth thinking about, however, is whether the boundaries of this modern category - and indeed the category itself - match up with any patterns of practice or belief held by the people we hope to understand. In other words, what did it mean to be 'religious' in the ancient world? Perhaps behaviors that we might now call 'religious' are better understood as falling within the realm of political acts, or as practices that delineate certain tribal or familial identities. Matching up ancient and modern ideas about this cluster of ideas and practices promises to reveal significant mismatches in our conceptual lexica where religion ancient and modern is concerned. We hope that it will also give rise to useful reflections about this inter-disciplinary project that we have initiated: what different methodological presuppositions do students of ancient Mediterranean cultures bring to the study of religious phenomena and what do we stand to learn from each other?

Spirit Cheesecloth

2009-05-16T03:44:00.000-07:00

It turns out that Marina Warner did write that book on ectoplasm after all - in 2006. I just hadn't heard about it, which is the way of things, I mean I didn't realise there was a fourth book in J.M Auel's 'Clan of the Cave Bear' series until it had already been out for ages (and yes I have read it, and the fifth one too - but hey, is she ever going to write any more? I'm waiting!). Actually, Warner's book, which is called Phantasmagoria, is not just on ectoplasm, but explores angels, ghosts, fairies, revenants, and zombies as well. Not that I have actually read it, I have not - as yet - seeing as I only discovered its existence half an hour ago. Here, by the way, is a fascinating little essay by Warner in Cabinet Magazine about looking at Helen Duncan's (see picture above) ectoplasm, although now I'm confused because at the bottom it says "Marina Warner's most recent book is Signs & Wonders: Essays on Literature and Culture (2003). She is currently finishing a study of spirit images, Figuring the Soul about waxworks, fata morgana, and ectoplasm." - maybe that's an entirely different book from the Phantasmagoria one. Whatever. I can't keep up and [come closer, while I whisper] frankly, while I do own about four or so Marina Warner books, and have all good intentions of reading them, last time I tried I found her too difficult to actually read. However, I haven't tried them for several years, I may find that I can read them now. Anyway, I like the types of topics she covers, and I admire her obvious braininess. But regarding Spiritualism, perhaps it is easier to actually read Alex Owen's 'The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England'. Janet Oppenheim's 'The Otherworld: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914.' is the most famous book on Spiritualism, possibly being eclipsed now by more recent publications. (A quick Google search turns up that Oppenheim died in 1994! I see... another thing I didn't know - can't know everything, I suppose). Other interesting books on the topic of Spiritualism and the history of Psychical Research are Deborah Blum's 'Ghost Hunters', Mary Roach's 'Spook' - which is quite humorous - and for a specifically Melbourne flavour: Alfred Gabay's 'Messages from Beyond: Spiritualism and Spiritualists in Melbourne's Golden Age.'

The Importance of Words and Writing in Ancient Magic

2009-04-22T01:21:00.000-07:00

By Caroline Tully.

Magic is a rather general term which, when referring to ancient Mediterranean practice, can have various meanings. It can cover activities ranging from the attempt to control supernatural forces and direct their power toward a specific end, to private rituals performed outside of an official cultic context. Magic can describe the activities of charismatic wonder-workers, the seeking of direct revelation concerning the nature of the divine, and also be used as an accusation designed to marginalise an alleged practitioner of illicit ritual. In this article “magic” is used to describe the content and performance of spells designed to achieve material results. Words and writing were used in this sort of practical magic as components in what could be considered a type of technology for achieving material success. In this context words and writing were important because they were used to communicate with, in order to compel, the forces such as spirits or deities thought to be capable of and responsible for making change in the world. As well as a means of communication with these beings, both spoken and written words were thought to be effective in themselves because of an innate power within their very nature. Spoken words in the form of incantation, real or pseudo-foreign languages, secret languages thought to be understood by supernatural beings, apparently meaningless vowel-based chants, and words believed to have the inherent power to manifest reality, were all major components of ancient magic. Writing in the form of Greek, Latin, hieroglyphic, Demotic and Coptic Egyptian, and indecipherable charakteres, were used in spells as transcribed directives communicated to the “engines” of reality, the supernatural beings. Writing was also used to direct, record or perpetually transmit the speech of the ritual, in a visual capacity incorporated into iconographic spells and amulets, and in the transmission of magical lore in handbooks.

In a time of widespread illiteracy it was in the interests of the literate scribe in classical and Hellenistic Greece, the temple attendant in first century Rome or professional ritual expert such as the lector-priest or “magician” in Roman Egypt to promote the idea that knowledge of words and writing were vital for the effective utilisation of the technology of success. The idea that magic worked through precise enunciation of special words and the mysteries of letter-meaning and construction left the illiterate consumer of magic dependent upon the knowledgeable specialist. Understanding the actual mechanics of how to write, possessing mastery over a secret language, having knowledge of the esoteric meanings and correct pronunciation of the alphabet, as well as access to written secret magical formularies, was vital for ensuring that professional magical practitioners maintained an aura of expertise, capability and proficiency. In order to explore the ways in which words and writing were used in ancient magic this paper will focus on oral, transcribed and pictorial examples of spells from literature, defixiones and the Greek magical papyri. Examination of the evidence will lead to the conclusion that words and writing defined the magician as a source of competency within a sea of humanity subject to the whims of fate.

Before the development of writing, magical acts would have been spoken, perhaps in a form similar to the sung curse in Aeschylus’ “Eumenides” (Lines 305-414):

Now by the altar
Over the Victim
Ripe for our ritual,
Sing this enchantment:
A song without music,
A sword in the senses,
A storm in the heart
And fire in the brain;
A clamour of Furies
To paralyse reason,
A tune full of terror,
A drought in the soul!

and the healing charm in Homer’s “Odyssey” (19. 457-59).:

The dear sons of Autolykos were busy to tend him,
and understandingly they bound up the wound of stately
godlike Odysseus and singing incantations over it
stayed the black blood, and soon came back to the
house of their loving father.

Early inscribed lead curse tablets, defixiones, from the fifth - fourth centuries BCE often contained only the name of the intended target, the rest of the spell was presumably accomplished verbally. Examples from later centuries, such as those found in the Athenian Agora dating to the third century CE, tended to involve more writing indicating that inscription was now considered a more important aspect of magic. The evidence from a magical formulary such as “The Greek Magical Papyri” which contains material dating from between the second century BCE and the fifth century CE shows that verbal, scriptural and iconographic elements of language were often combined within the one ritual. The spoken words in the rituals take various forms. There are prayers in which one or several spirits or deities are asked to attend the ritual to lend their supernatural aid to power the spell. Words are used deceptively in diabolae, a technique designed to anger and motivate a deity by telling them that the target of a spell had insulted them. Historiolae, or the recitation within a ritual context, usually a healing spell, of a mythological precedent thought to be similar to and hence effect the present situation, are examples of the idea that the narration of sacred stories could affect material reality.

Vowels spoken in just the right way made magical ritual more precise. Seemingly unintelligible strings of vowel-chants were thought to be effective because of an innate power inherent within them which reflected elements of the cosmos or the gods themselves. Written vowels were even licked or eaten, such was their power. They were also combined with visual imagery by being arranged in patterns such as squares, triangles, wings or diamonds, recitation of which may have added iconographic power to their already potent nature. Words and writing were also components of voces magicae, generally untranslatable words that appear throughout the Greek magical papyri, on lead defixiones and in Roman medical speculation. Voces magicae may have been considered a divine language understood by supernatural beings. They were also thought to be secret names of the gods, knowledge of which compelled them, and they may even have contained actual foreign divine names. Foreign languages were thought to be more powerful than the magician’s own language. The use of Greek on defixiones, originally simply the language of the inscriber, over time came to be thought essential for their efficacy.

Writing was used in ancient magic for purposes such as the inscription of defixiones in which it was a way to achieve precision. Inscribing the maternal lineage of a victim identified them to the powers invoked and a written description of the desired effects perhaps seemed a more official directive than speaking the request in a one-off vocal spell. The contents of a spell could be written in various special ways. Names were scrambled, possibly working as a persuasive analogy which via the formula of similia similibus was probably intended to confound the target. Writing backwards, upside down, in palindromes, spirals or boustrophedon (the back-and-forth pattern made when plowing a field) used on defixiones may have been intended to make the target of the spell move correspondingly. Words such as the ephesia grammata, a group of six untranslatable words said to derive from an inscription on the cult statue of Artemis of Ephesus and which may have been forerunners of the voces magicae, were thought to have an innate power and were both spoken within spells, as well carried or worn on the body as physical talismans. Written voces magicae appeared throughout the magical papyri, on defixiones, apotropaic lamellae and inscribed gems. Charakteres, a type of “writing” that has no apparent source in any known alphabet but which may be associated with star patterns, also appear within the texts of magical formulae. While voces magicae may have been intended to represent a magical language, so charakteres might have been seen as a transcendent alphabet understood by supernatural powers. Charakteres verge on the iconographic and may have, like Egyptian hieroglyphs, been considered powerful within themselves. In their visual capacity charakteres even form part of explicit figurative drawings, as seen in the feet of the horse-headed figure in the “Seth” tablets. Writing was combined with images such as the ouroboros snake and was also used in conjunction with three-dimensional “voodoo” dolls such as the inscribed lead curse tablet accompanying the Louvre doll, and the “gingerbread man” defixio and Mnesimachos doll and coffin, both of which have identifying inscriptions.

Finally, as well as being a major part of the spoken content of spells, a real or imagined written language and a form of visual imagery, writing was also important for the recording and transmission of complicated magical lore, formulae and recipes as evident in a collection of grimoires like the Greek magical papyri. The Greek magical papyri may have come from an Egyptian temple library and been used by priests working as itinerant ritual specialists after Roman annexation of Egypt in 30 BCE and the subsequent crippling of the temples. According to literary sources a large number of magical texts existed in antiquity, however most were destroyed in purges conducted by the civil or religious authorities of the time such as Augustus, who in 13 BCE ordered the destruction of 2,000 magical scrolls, and the burning of books that took place in the early centuries of the Christian era. If other books of magic contained anything like the type or amount of material that the Greek magical papyri do then it is evident that complicated magical rituals requiring instructional scripts were being performed by literate magical practitioners. Such books of magic were important because a written version of a lengthy spell which incorporated directions for constructing wax figurines, pronouncing voces magicae, performing complex gestures, reciting magic words, and the physical inscription of specific charakteres or drawings, is a lot easier to enact correctly when the instructions are available to follow to the letter, rather than having to memorise the procedure from oral transmission.

In conclusion, it is evident from the examples of defixiones and the spells in the Greek magical papyri that words and writing were important in ancient magic in numerous ways. Words and writing were learned techniques, not available to just anyone. In order to utilise the power of letters and sounds for the purpose of specific spells the lay person was dependant on the literate ritual specialist who understood the written and spoken language of the gods. Through words and writing the magician maintained his status as an intermediary between his clients and the awesome powers of the cosmos. By shrouding the contents of magical recipe books in secrecy the magician ensured that an aura of exclusivity and an impression of inexplicable wisdom surrounded his profession. The ritual specialist, whether a descendant of a once influential priestly cast, a freelance charismatic thaumaturge or a lofty theurgist, through knowledge of the magic of words and writing carved an influential place for himself in ancient society.

Lucan's Marseilles grove

2009-03-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

A grove there was, never profaned since time remote,
enclosing with its intertwining branches the dingy air
and chilly shadows, banishing sunlight far above.
In this grove there are no rustic Pans or Silvani,
masters of the forests, or Nymphs, but ceremonies of the gods
barbarous in ritual, altars furnished with hideous offerings,
and every tree is sanctified with human blood.
If antiquity at all deserves credence for its awe of the gods,
the birds fear to sit upon those branches,
the beasts fear to lie in those thickets; on those woods
no wind has borne down or thunderbolts shot from black
clouds; though the trees present their leaves to no breeze,
they have a trembling of their own. Water pours
from black springs and the grim and artless
images of gods stand as shapeless fallen tree-trunks.
The decay itself and pallor of the timber now rotting
is astonishing; not so do people fear deities worshipped
in ordinary forms: so much does ignorance of the gods
they dread increase their terror. Now it was rumoured that often the hollow caves below rumbled with earth-quakes,
that yew-trees fell and rose again,
that flames shone from trees which were not on fire,
that snakes embraced and flowed around the trunks.
That place the people do not visit with worship near at hand
but leave it to the gods: when Phoebus is in mid-sky
or black night commands the heavens, even the priest dreads
to approach and fears to surprise the master of the grove.

- Lucan. Pharsalia. 399-428.

Drawing Down the Moon

2009-03-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

Three nights were lacking before the moon's horns met, to make their complete orb. When she was shining at her fullest, and gazed on the earth, with perfect form, Medea left the palace, dressed in unclasped robes. Her feet were bare, her unbound hair streamed down, over her shoulders, and she wandered, companionless, through midnight's still silence. Men, beasts, and birds were freed in deep sleep. There were no murmurs in the hedgerows: the still leaves were silent, in silent, dew-filled, air. Only the flickering stars moved. Stretching her arms to them she three times turned herself about, three times sprinkled her head, with water from the running stream, three times let out a wailing cry, then knelt on the hard earth, and prayed.

~Ovid. Metamorphoses. Book 7.

In modern Wiccan and subsequently, non-Wiccan Witchcraft practice the ritual of Drawing Down the Moon is one of the most important parts of a coven’s Esbat ritual.

Whenever ye have need of anything,Once in the month, and when the moon is full,Ye shall assemble in some desert place,Or in a forest all together joinTo adore the potent spirit of your queen, My mother, great Diana.

~G.G. Leland. Aradia, Gospel of the Witches.

The “moon” or Lunar Goddess is invoked into the High Priestess by the High Priest and in effect comes to possess her in what can often appear as an almost Voodoo-esque manner. Known in the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft as “Aspecting”: a magical practice in which a priestess or priest channels the presence of a deity or quality, Drawing Down the Moon is intended to bring the real, actual presence of the Goddess into the Circle. From the time She overshadows the High Priestess’s consciousness, the Lunar Goddess considered to be physically present amongst the coveners.

A generic Wiccan-style Drawing Down the Moon ritual might look something like the following:

The High Priestess stands in front of the altar, assumes the Osiris position (arms crossed), holding the wand in her right hand and the scourge in her left.

The High Priest kneels in front of her, says “I Invoke and beseech Thee, O mighty Mother of all life and fertility. By seed and root, by stem and bud, by leaf and flower and fruit, by Life and Love, do I invoke Thee to descend into the body of thy servant and High Priestess [name].”

The Moon having been now drawn down, the High Priest give the high Priestess the Fivefold Kiss, saying (kissing feet) “Blessed be thy feet, that have brought thee in these ways; (kissing knees) Blessed be thy knees, that shall kneel at the sacred altar (kissing womb); Blessed be thy womb, without which we would not be; (kissing breasts) Blessed be thy breasts, formed in beauty and in strength; (kissing lips) Blessed be thy lips, that shall utter the sacred names.”

Different types of Witches will construct this ritual according to their tastes. The main thing is that the Moon Goddess descends and blesses the coveners. In a coven situation Drawing Down the Moon tends to take on the aspects of a religious ritual because Wicca is a religion. However, drawing down of the Moon Goddess can also be done alone by experienced Witches or Magicians as part of a magical ritual, just as one would invoke any deity for such purposes. [I recall invoking Hekate in her Crone form alone when I was a novice Witch. I must say that I was rather unnerved when she descended - my voice changed and I noticed that my shadow on the wall was that of an old woman! Still, I had no choice but to continue on with the ritual. I was just surprised at the level of manifestation and wished someone else could have been there to witness the rite].

Many people point backwards to ancient Greece for the origins of the idea that Witches “draw down” the Moon. Evidence is thought to lie in texts by Classical authors such as Euripides, Horace, Ovid, Seneca and Apuleius, as well as a particular image of two female Witches seemingly drawing down the moon (see above). This image derives from an ancient Greek vase, the whereabouts of which are currently unknown. What we see is a later line drawing of the vase from Roscher 1884-1937.

It seems that what we would call “Drawing Down the Moon” in modern Wiccan practice is really quite a different thing to what the ancients actually meant by the practice. According to Daniel Ogden, the drawing-down of the moon was one of the most familiar commonplaces of literary magic in the Greco-Roman world, and it was associated above all with the performance of erotic magic by witches. The principle features of the act were as follows:

The drawing-down of the moon was the characteristic activity of Thessalian witches. [Thessaly is in northern Greece, below Macedonia, and in antiquity was considered the country of Witches]. The author Statius in the Thebaid 3.558-9 refers to Drawing Down the Moon as “the Thessalian crime“.

It is drawn down for the purpose of erotic attraction magic.

It is either made to turn pale, or blood red when subjected to drawing.

The drawing down can be counteracted by the clashing of bronze cymbals.

When brought down to the earth it deposits its foam on plants as “moon juice” (virus lunarae). This can then be collected and used in a love potion.

The control of the moon in this way is sometimes contextualised against the witches’ wider ability to control the sun and stars and consequently time itself.

The Thessalian women pay a terrible price for drawing down of the moon: they must lose either children or an eye.

The poetic image that the moon, like the sun, rides in a horse-drawn chariot, is frequent.

The origin of the notion that the moon could be drawn down remains obscure. Plutarch gives the hint that it was the way of thinking about lunar eclipses, and many follow him in this belief. The moon does indeed turn blood-red during a full lunar eclipse, as it reflects only the sunlight refracted red through the earth's atmosphere. If the above points are considered on their own terms, without seeing them as metaphors for what we might be doing today, it is evident that ideas about Witches have completely changed from antiquity to the present day. Drawing down the moon in antiquity was performed in order to obtain virus lunare for use in love potions, whereas today it is performed as a communion with the Moon herself, and in the case of the High Priestess, to actually become the Moon for the duration of a ritual.

Incantations draw down the horns of the bloody moon and call back the snowy horses of the departing sun. By an incantation snakes are burst and their jaws broken off, and waters turn around and flow back to their sources. Doors have yielded before incantations, and the bar, fixed into the post, has been overcome by an incantation, though made of oak.

~Ovid. Amores. 2.1.23-8.

Despite the difference between ancient and modern ideas regarding Drawing Down the Moon, I think we can learn a lot from our magical forebears such as the Witches of Thessaly. Meditating on the above points is one way to start. For those interested in following this subject up, I suggest the following books and websites.

Further Reading

Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden, Oxford University Press 2002.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses

Apuleius’ Golden Ass

Golden Ass commentary page

Reclaiming Quarterly E-Zine

Drawing Down the Moon ritual

Longer Drawing Down the Moon ritual

Aradia, Gospel of the Witches

THE EQUINOX: BRITISH JOURNAL OF THELEMA

2009-03-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

I've had the good fortune to be published in The Equinox: British Journal of Thelema which is produced by Hadean Press. My rather large article is on the origins - or one of the origins - of the figure of the harridan-witch. I hope readers will find my suggestions provocative and my conclusions controversial. And isn't this a beautiful cover!