Of course, there are lots with the word ‘witchcraft’ in the title, but not all contain useful material for the solo student, or one who wants to walk unhampered in the old ways. Do look out for the books of Doreen Valiente, for she was one of the people most closely involved in the rebirth of ‘coven witchcraft’, being one of Gerald Gardner’s High Priestesses, and it is her poetry which gave voice to much of the pagan ritual used in groups all over the world. She learned much of her own lore from the Sussex folk and wove threads of that traditional wisdom into some of the more public of her writings. Gerald Gardner, in his novel High Magic’s Aid, and other books The Meaning of Witchcraft and Witchcraft Today, first brought together enough ideas to set in train the forms of witchcraft which are used by many covens worldwide today.
The various works of Stewart and Janet Farrar trace the varieties of coven craft spreading from the ideas of Alex Sanders, who mixed some of the arts of High Magic ritual into the fragments of craft knowledge he had accrued over many years. Read all such books with these questions ever in your mind, ‘Can I imagine the simple, ordinary country folk doing this, using this instrument, or even being rich enough to possess a sword, for example? Would they gather in this way, have a structure of priests and priestesses, a regular calendar of feasts fixed by the days of the month, and not by Nature and her cyclic harvests?’
Whatever you read, try not to restrict yourself to just those books marked ‘Witchcraft’. Look at country life, seasonal festivals, ancient religions, local customs and sacred places. As you read, jot down in your Book of Illuminations those facts, poems, ideas and odd bits of lore and folk magic that interest you so that you can come back to them, try them out and really understand them as your knowledge grows.
Exercises
Read the chapter a couple of times and note the things which most seem to click with you. If you are going to follow the thirteen lessons month by month you will have to choose a day on which to start, preferably that after a new moon. Buy a large A4 notebook and a hardback spring-clip file to keep your pages in. You can decorate the cover, for this will become your personal Book of Illumination, so find a secret place to keep it in so that honest accounts of dreams, ideas, wishes and discoveries can be entered without fear of their being read by others. Later on, you will need to enter details of spells you have worked, indications about divinations and their outcome, and information on all sorts of things.
Go to the children’s section of your library or bookshop and see what they have on Comparative Religion. You need basic information to understand what people believe, ordinary Catholic or Anglican Christians, Quakers, Methodists and some of the other world faiths, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto, Islam and any others which interest you. You will also come across Greek, Roman and Egyptian religions from the ancient world, and they have close bearings on some aspects of modern paganism.
Become really nosy and curious about where you live, why it is there, what was there before. Find out what is sacred or special in the area, the origin of the place name. If you have contact with any old people, your grandparents or other elderly folk, ask them about how the place used to be, any local celebrations or curious customs. Look hard at things, as suggested in this chapter, especially out of doors. Watch the moon growing and changing her position in the sky, night by night, when the sky is clear. Go and feel the atmosphere at the nearest sacred place. How does it feel different?
Read up on the farming year, the old agricultural practices and the seasonal work. Find out if there is a local museum with old tools and kitchen equipment, or layouts of traditional cottages. Try to get the feel of a cruder, simpler past, and the people of long ago.
Ask yourself questions about what you know about witchcraft, what you believe it to be like, what it can do for you, and what you can offer to the Craft in return. Compare what you have read in books about pagan ideas with what you are finding out about the lives of people in earlier times. Write down notes on all you discover on the first pages of your Book of Illumination.
Here are a few books to get you going:
Vivienne Crowley, The Principles of Wicca (Thorsons) Marian Green, Practical Magic (Lorenz)
Marian Green, The Gentle Arts of Aquarian Magic (Aquarian)
Prudence Jones and Caitlin Matthews, Voices from the Circle (Aquarian) Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (Harper and Row, USA)
Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow (Robert Hale)
2 - Meeting the Goddess and God of the Witches
I am that soundless boundless, bitter sea All tides are mine and answer unto me Tides of the airs, tides of the inner earth, The secret, silent tides of death and birth
Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destiny - Isis Veiled, and Ea, Binah, Ge …
(Dion Fortune The Sea Priestess)
The pagan religion of witchcraft is one in which each seeker sets out on a personal inner quest to meet and communicate directly with various aspects of the goddess or god of their chosen tradition. It is not a faith, so ‘belief in invisible deities, and orthodox dogma should have no part in the matter.
In this chapter I will try to set out some of the widely held ideas about the Goddess and about her consort, the Sun God, so that you can make your own choices as to whether they have any validity for you, if their attributes appeal to you, or if you feel drawn towards their myths or their symbols.
No one, inside the Craft, would ever insist that someone has to accept these Great Ones in a particular form, or that they have to be worshipped in only one way. The seasonal festivals celebrated by coven witches often act out the life cycles of the Goddess in her various guises, and her Son/Lover. In some cases the High Priestess and the High Priest raise their own consciousness to become united with these deities, and so perceive them and show them to the rest of the coven in a very intimate way.
Those who follow the Old Ways alone will come to know each aspect as a real being, as a friend and guide.
What is said about the nature of the Old Ones by someone other than yourself can only ever be their own personal description, just as another person may try to describe a piece of music or the flavour of a rare delicacy to someone who has sampled neither. Words are inadequate, and can at best only be vague impressions of what can often be a very deep and emotional experience. Because there is no ‘bible’ of witchcraft, there is no single source of inherited myths and religious stories, shared by all neo-pagans. It is felt that the gods are continuing to live out their own lives, and so with each cycle of the Earth among the stars, there will be a slightly different version of their story.
The pagan gods and goddesses are not fixed and completed beings, whose will is immutable and whose actions are distant. All of them are immanent, close to us, accessible. If we make the effort of prayer, invocation or magic, we will be able to perceive them, in a way we can actually comprehend, seeing them as great beings of power. All that can really be taught is the simple ways in which this meeting, on another level of our being, can be brought about, so that seekers can see for themselves how that religious relationship will best fit into their own concepts and philosophy.
Firstly, though, we do need to understand something about the eternal, ever-changing, many-faceted and varied guises in which the Great Mother and the Sky God are perceived among those who try to walk in their ways. The Goddess is an undying, threefold being, who can be understood as our
original starborn Mother. She is commonly associated with the planet Earth, as Mother Nature, the Earth Goddess, Gaia, the First Parent, self-fertile, bearer of all living creatures, human, animal, and often all plants and other sentient life forms.