BOOK OF SHADOWS VOLUME The SIXTH pp. 2400 -2856 RIDERS OF THE CRYSTAL WIND TABLE OF CONTENTS A Christian Speaks (J.C. Taylor) ...............................2460 A Minister Speaks Out (J. gordon Melton) ........................975 A Plea For Initiation Standards (Ellen Cannon Reed) .............908 A Tale of Two Witches (Mike Nichols) ............................147 A True History of Witchcraft (Allen Greenfield) ................1771 Aethyr, On the Nature of (Anthra Andromda) .....................1816 Against The Witch Hunters (R. Culain) ..........................1704 AIR - A Meditation (Charis) ....................................1559 All Hallows Eve (Mike Nichols) ..................................137 Altars, Misc Thoughts (Chris Olmstead) .........................2566 Altar Dedication (Durwydd) .....................................125 Amazing (Pagan?) Grace ..........................................959 Amerind Teaching Stories Rabbit (John Lone Wolf) ...................................1534 An Australian Aboriginal Myth (WoW #10) ........................2481 Ancient Art, The ................................................551 Answers (Grove of the Unicorn) ..................................479 Aridian (Strega) Information ...................................1947 Asatru (Rathulvf Jamieson) ......................................952 Asatru Blot (Lewis Stead) ......................................2338 Astral Projection (Monroe Technique) ............................783 Athame Dedication (Durwydd) .....................................125 Autarchic Creed .................................................562 Autonomatrix Manifesto .........................................1813 Badgers ........................................................2554 Banes, Bindings, and Mirrors (Judy Harrow, Hugh Read) ...........628 "Bardic" Circle Rituals from DragonHart Cove Beltane (The White Bard) ..................................1111 Candlemas (The White Bard) ................................1151 Samhain (The White Bard) ..................................1116 Bardic Wedding (RowanHart Circle) ..............................1526 Bardic Mythos (The Whyte Bard) Creation ..................................................2206 " Part II .........................................2251 Death .....................................................2204 Maiden Story ..............................................2199 Rebirth ...................................................2205 The Sacred King ...........................................2201 The Gifts of The Fool .....................................2202 The Story of The Pit ......................................2439 The Jesus Story ...........................................2440 A Yule Mythos .............................................2533 Bare Bones 3rd Degree (Humor) ...................................463 Basic Beliefs of WICCA (C.O.G.) .................................947 Basic Love Spell ................................................958 Basic Spell Construction ........................................113 Basic Principles (American Council of Witches)...................310 Basic Ritual Outline (ED FITCH) ...................................6 Being A Witch in Brittain Today (James Pengelly, WOW #10) ......2658 Beltaine Ritual (Firestar Coven, 1986) ...........................36 Beltane Ritual 1987 (Coven of The Serpents Eye) ................1743 Beltane Ritual (Seastrider) .....................................464 Beltane Ritual (Lynna Landstreet, W.C.C.) ......................1935 Beltane, Its Origins (Rowan Moonstone) ..........................126 Beyond Reason (Aries, W.o.W.) ..................................2240 Bible, Books not included .......................................652 Bibliography (annotated) ........................................929 Bibliography of Magic in Sci-Df (M. Griffith) ..................1737 Binding A Spell (Farrar & Farrar) ...............................157 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Bovinomicon (humor) ............................................1805 Blackout and Sigils (I.O.T.) ...................................1402 Blessing Payer (Traditional Gardnerian "Dryghten Prayer") ......1512 Blood Sacrifice (Althea Whitebirch) .............................547 Bridal Blessing (Julia Phillips) ...............................2572 Broken Heart Spell (Healing) ...................................1219 Bulb Planting Chant (Eileen) ...................................2853 Burning Times, The (Marios) .....................................951 "Calling Spell" (Rowan Moonstone) ..............................2577 Candle Colors ...................................................982 Candle Magic ....................................................417 Candle Scents ...................................................988 Candlemas Ritual 1987 (Coven of The Serpents Eye) ..............1750 Candlemas (Gwydion) .............................................537 Candlemas (Mike Nichols) ........................................168 Catharsis Circle (Judy Harrow).....................................8 Cauldrons (Elemental)............................................420 CAW (Church of All Worlds) Basic Info Pkg. (12/93) Bylaws.....................................................2484 Communion Ceremony (Morning Glory Zell) ...................2495 "Earthmom" ................................................2496 Electronic CAW (Irv Koch) .................................2527 History ...................................................2502 Neo-Paganism (Otter G'Zell) ...............................2506 Neo-Pagan Witchcraft vs. Satanism .........................2510 "What is it?" (CAW, Australia) ............................2514 Nest List (as of 12/93) ...................................2525 CELTIC NUMEROLOGY (Mike Nichols) ................................454 CELTIC BIBLIOGRAPHY (Rowan Moonstone) ...........................298 Celtic Bibliography (Annotated, by Eryn Darkstar) ..............1133 Celtic Deities/Origins (Lorax) .................................2351 Chakras, Greek .................................................2400 Chalice Ritual - Dragon Trad (C.J. Mandrake) ...................1468 Channeling (Jast) ...............................................969 Channeling for Fun and Prophet (F.J. McGovern) .................1736 Chants w/ASCII Notation (L.A.Hussey) ...........................1081 Chaos, Some Heretical remarks on Philosophy (K. Dykow)..........2264 Chaos Magic (Mark Chao) .........................................398 Chaos Magick vs. Thelema .......................................1240 Chaos-sphere ...................................................1393 Chaoism and Chaos Magick (Pete Carroll) ........................1404 Charge of the Phone Goddess (Magenta Griffith) ..................759 Charge of the God, The (Kyri Comyn) ............................1925 Charge of the Horned God [Rhyming] (V. West) ...................1927 Charge of the Goddess [Rhyming] (Kalioppe) .....................1928 Charge of the Goddess, The (D. Valiente) ........................193 Charge of the Goddess, The (Kyri Comyn) ........................1926 Charge of The Horned God, The ...................................936 Charging Crystals (Ian Kesser) .................................1707 Check List for A Well Working Group (Earthrite BBS) .............957 Child Blessings ................................................2572 Church of All Worlds ............................................353 Christian "Cults" ..............................................1000 Christmas Customs (Rick Hayward) ...............................2481 Christmas Past (Eric Maple, via Julia Phillips) ................2530 Circle Closing ..................................................540 Circle Casting (Avaloian)........................................541 Circle Purification for Asthmatics ..............................780 Circle Casting (after Valiente and Farrar) ......................130 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Circles, why use them? (Mel White) ...............................65 Cleansing (Rowan Moonstone) .......................................2 Cleansing Incense ..............................................2547 Comparison of Wicca and Christianity.............................622 Computer Blessing (Zahai Stewart) ...............................757 Coming of Age ritual (notes by Malakus) ........................2578 "Condensed" Definition of Wicca (Lady Phoenix) ..................948 Consciousness & Politics (Carol Moore)......................... Coven at Pooh Corner (D. Wadsworth) ............................1688 Coven Offices ...................................................762 Coven Leadership ................................................543 Covenant of the Goddess .........................................305 Covenant of the Goddess, History (Michael Thorn) ...............2459 Covenant of the Goddess Pledge ..................................309 Craft Ethics (J. Crowley) .......................................751 Craft Ethics Response (M.K.H) ..................................1216 CRAFT LAW Craft Laws (by Lady Sheba).................................1163 New Laws (Lady Galadriel, Grove of The Unicorn)............1174 The New Book Of Law, A Commentary (J. Random Folksinger)...1185 Aporrheton 5 (Judy Harrow?) ...............................1195 The Abbreviated Laws (including Comment by J.R.F.) ........1202 The Law (Humor) ...........................................1204 Commentary by a student ........................................1212 Commentary by L.A. Hussey.......................................1214 Compuserve Sabbats (Courtesy J. Quigley) Beltane. 90 ...............................................2090 Imbolc.90 .................................................2094 Imbolc.93 .................................................2110 Lammas.90 .................................................2104 Lammas.91 .................................................2099 MoonAPR.93 ................................................2114 MoonAUG.92 ................................................2121 MoonFEB.93 ................................................2127 MoonJul.92 ................................................2130 MoonJUN.92 ................................................2134 MoonMAR.93 ................................................2140 MoonMay.93 ................................................2148 MoonOCT.92 ................................................2154 MoonSEP.92 ................................................2161 SAMHAIN.91 ................................................2171 SAMHAIN.92 ................................................2177 Spring Equinox.92 .........................................2188 YULE.90 ...................................................2184 Coven Leadership, some food for thought ........................1943 Creation Story ..................................................619 Creed Of The People Of God (Catholic) ..........................1005 Crone Energies (Grey Cat) .......................................559 Crossroads .....................................................1794 Crystals, their care and feeding (Matrika).......................413 Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (P.E.I.Bonewits) ...................343 CUUPS (C.O.G. Salt Lake City) ..................................1002 Dangers of "Magical Thinking" in Magick (Nihasa)................1716 "Dark Night of the Soul".........................................286 "Dark Night of the Soul"........................................1411 Dangers of Deity? (a Conversation) .............................1820 DCW Landmarks ...................................................492 Death & Rebirth, A Modern Myth (Kalioppe) ......................2411 Degrees within Covens ...........................................623 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Dedication Ritual (Khaled Quicksilver) .........................1841 Dedication Pledge (Judy Harrow) ................................2549 Deity Engineering Worksheet .....................................607 Denver Area Wiccan Network ......................................200 Descent of The Goddess (Sewna Silvara) ..........................750 Descent of The Goddess (G.B.G.) ................................1769 Descent of The Goddess (D. Mac Tara) ...........................1923 Descent of The Goddess (Starhawk) ..............................1770 Descent Into Confusion (Robert Hughes, WOW) ....................2711 Dianic Wicca (Inanna Seastar) ...................................614 Dion Fortune & Gardnerian Wicca (C.S. Clifton in W.o.W.) .......2210 Divine Circle Scam .............................................1507 Divination (Bibliography) .......................................605 Divination (RMPJ) ...............................................603 Dragon, The Last (story by Gerald Decampo) .....................1226 Dragon Tradition (Phoenix Arizona) Circle Casting ............................................1228 "Quarter Calls" ...........................................1486 Drawing Down the Moon ...........................................557 Dream Problem Solving ...........................................573 Dream Bibliography ..............................................576 Dream Life ......................................................571 Dream-News ......................................................567 Dreams Precognition .............................................575 Dying God (Ammond ShadowCraft)...................................685 Eclectic Circle Ceremony (Durwydd) ...............................40 EcoMagick .......................................................614 EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD (Budge) ..............................2717 Egyptian Metaphysics (Michael Poe) .............................2032 Eight Paths to Altered States (Carrie McMasters).................222 Eight Magicks (Pete Carroll) ...................................1825 Elements, A Hermetic Summoning (Marios) .........................960 Elemental Correspondences (from Starhawk) .......................979 Elemental Correspondences .......................................560 Elven (Modern Mythic Prose by Par Garou) .......................1159 Essay on The Three-Fold Law (Paul Seymour) .....................1208 Ethics and Morals (RMPJ) ........................................315 Ethics and Magick (Warren Stott) ................................415 Ethics and Laws (Lifeway Shamanic Fellowship) ..................1220 Ethics and Love Magick (Mike Nichols) ...........................554 Ethics or Etiquette .............................................565 Etymology of "Wicca" ............................................356 Evolution of Wiccan Ritual (Paul Hume) ..........................946 Exegesis on The Wiccan Rede (Judy Harrow).......................1209 Exorcism ........................................................613 Eyes of a dyke [fiction] (vivienne West) .......................1931 Feminine Current in the G.D. (Peregrine, in WoW) ...............2228 Festivals .......................................................587 Film Guide '89 (Mike Nichols)....................................528 Firefawn (Masochistic Maiden) ..................................2356 First Degree, What is it? .......................................351 FISH (Creative use of Christian Symbology) ......................611 Five Fold Kiss ..................................................744 Food For Thought (Some notes for Coven Leaders) ................1943 Fool ............................................................590 Fortune, The (RMPJ) .............................................953 Full Deck Tarot Spread ..........................................625 Full Moon Ritual (Seastrider)....................................634 Fundamentals of Human Ecology ...................................616 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Fundies Visit Denver (Transcribed by Rowan Moonsone) ...........2366 Funeral Rites (Oz Caliburn) ....................................2363 Funeral Ritual, Generic Pagan (She-Wolf) .......................2524 GAEA Hypothesis (Green Egg) ....................................2398 Georgian Mythos (Zanoni Silverknife) ...........................2340 Glossary (Rowan Moonstone & Durwydd MacTara) ....................206 Gnosticism.......................................................694 God/Goddess Balance (Adrienne)...................................223 Golden Dawn (Calif.).............................................689 Golden Dawn Training (outline)...................................691 Goodwife (Story by L.A. Hussey) .................................644 Great Rite, The (Symbolic) ......................................656 Greek and Roman Deities (Thomas Palmer) ........................1698 Greek Fire Initiation............................................982 GREEK LBRP .....................................................2404 Halloween, Origins of (Rowan Moonstone) ..........................26 Halloween, A Witches Thoughts (Cecylina Brightsword) ...........2575 Handfasting ......................................................68 Handfasting (Lady Ardane, Prodigy) .............................2197 Harvest Home (Mike Nichols) .....................................176 Harvest Thoughts (Gary Dumbauld) ................................630 Harvest Home - 1987 (Michael Fix) ................................13 Heal The Earth (a meditation) ...................................661 Healing (one method) ............................................655 Healing Myth (Nihasa) ...........................................165 Heirophant, The (Khaled Quicksilver) ...........................1946 Helpful Hints (Humor) ...........................................966 Herbal "Quick Reference" .......................................2541 Heretic's Corner (RMPJ) .........................................869 Heyokah (RMPJ) ..................................................632 Hidden Codes in the Torah .......................................733 High Technology Meets The Ancient Wisdom ........................964 History (Weyland Smith) .........................................786 History of Witch Craft ..........................................791 Homeblessing (Selena Fox) .......................................663 Homeblessing (She Wolf) ........................................2545 Homeblessing notes (Scott Cunningham) ..........................2546 Hymns To The Star Goddess (O.T.O.) .............................1431 Hypnosis 101 ....................................................667 I.O.T. History (The Beginnings).................................1398 Ideology (I.O.T.) ..............................................1252 In Defense of Excellence (Adrienne, Quicksilver, Ottawa) .......2553 Imbolc (Solitary Ritual) ........................................664 Imbolc at the Covenstead (Erin) ................................2556 Imbolc Myth ....................................................2535 Imbolc Ritual ..................................................2536 Imbolg Ritual (Kalioppe) .......................................2420 Imbolg '92 (Julia Phillips) ....................................1757 Initiation, Outdoor (adaptation) .................................72 Initiation (Brad Hicks) ..........................................50 Introductory Book List ..........................................926 Ishtar, Inanna, & Ancient Astrology (Valkyrie) .................2466 INVOCATIONS Freyja (unknown) ............................................56 Frigg (Russ Anderson) .......................................55 Brigit (Russ Anderson) ......................................57 Baldur (unknown) ............................................55 Freyr (unknown) .............................................56 Herne (unknown) .............................................57 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Thorr (unknown) .............................................58 INVOCATIONS -QUARTERS- EAST ......................................................1542 SOUTH .....................................................1543 WEST ......................................................1544 NORTH .....................................................1545 Invocation of Lord and Lady (Ritual) ...........................2557 Irish Myth Concordance (Mike Nichols) ...........................422 Ishtar ..........................................................740 Issian Circle (Matrika) ..........................................59 Judeopagan Menopause Ritual (Randronoth) .......................2333 K.A.M. ..........................................................735 Kabballah (Colin Low)............................................236 Kali and Modern Physics .........................................730 Keeper of Wisdom, The (Kalioppe) ...............................2416 Keltria (The Henge of) ..........................................739 "Kids" (Kalioppe) ..............................................2250 Labeling Wiccans (Lucie) .......................................2330 Lady Day (Mike Nichols) .........................................171 Lady's Prayer, The .............................................2398 Lammas (Mike Nichols) ...........................................174 Lammas Ritual , "The Corn Play" (Julia Phillips) ...............1941 Lammas Ritual (1991, Celtic Temple of the Wiccan Way ...........2194 "Landmarks" (D.C.W.) ............................................990 LBRP, an Essay (Tim Maroney) ....................................103 Learning Process ................................................962 Leave it Out, Leviticus (Aries, W.O.W. #8) .....................2260 "Legitimacy" in the Craft (Khaled Q.) ..........................1766 Liber OZMA (Tim Maroney) .......................................1414 Lilith (BBS Conversation) ......................................1083 Literary Roots of Wicca (Diane Vera) ...........................1535 LLEW, Death of (Mike Nichols) ...................................179 Lucid Dreaming (Omni Magazine) ..................................955 LUPERCALIA (She Wolf) ..........................................2580 MABON Outline (anonymous) ........................................43 Magick, Physics, & Probability (Hurn) ...........................811 Magick (A. Crowley) .............................................817 Magick Vs. Prayer (Salgamma) ....................................684 Magickal Book List ..............................................923 Magick Course Outline (Amber K.).................................815 Magickal Ethics (Judy Harrow) ...................................502 Magickal History (Fra.: Apfelman) ...............................406 Magickal Definitions (RMPJ) .....................................814 Magickal Laws (after P.E.I. Bonewits) ...........................831 Magickal Musical Selection Guide ...............................1079 Magickal Pyramid, The (Durwydd MacTara).........................1096 Magickal Stones & Gems ..........................................912 Magickal Training Course (Phil Hansford) .......................1373 Manhood Rituals (RMPJ) ..........................................760 Mantra Web technique ............................................288 Mayan Deities (777 Supplement) ..................................834 Mayday Celebration (Mike Nichols) ...............................837 MAYDAY Celebration (Mike Nichols) ................................79 Maychants (4) (Tanscribed by SeaStrider).........................911 Mazes in Myth (Valkyrie) .......................................2471 Mead, Brew of The Gods! (Lewis Stead) ..........................2550 Media Management (Windfire Coven) ...............................851 Meditation Techniques, Basic (Bill Witt) .......................1513 Memory & Perception, a new Model (Paul Seymour).................1077 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Midsummer (Mike Nichols) .........................................45 Mind, A Treatise on The (The Tigress) ..........................1460 Mind Control Techniques (Dick Sutphen) ..........................512 Models of Magick (incomplete)....................................216 Modern Pagaism, Q&A .............................................920 Modern Pagan Persecution (Jonathan Hutchins) ....................942 Modified Assyrian Protection Spell (With Commentary) ...........1739 Mothers Day Message ............................................1076 Money Tree Spell (Rowan Moonstone) .............................2576 MONISM (Durwydd Mac Tara) ......................................1523 Monotheism vs. Polytheism (Dan Holdgriewe) ......................941 Muhammad .......................................................2699 Pagan Musings (Tony Kelly, Selene Community, Wales,1970) .......2435 Mycenaen Mysteries (J. Teller)...................................365 Mystical Pentagram ..............................................110 Nature Spirit Magick (Larry Cornett) ............................357 Necromancy (reprint) ............................................841 Nemesis Conjuration (I.O.T.) ...................................1250 Neo-Pagan Ritual (Brad Hicks) ....................................77 Neo-Pagan Theology (Cyprian) ...................................2426 Neo-Paganism (J. Brad Hicks) ....................................329 NeoPaganism (Eric S. Raymond) ...................................333 NeoPlatonism (Deborah Kest) ....................................2473 "New Age" Ministry (Steve Kalinowski) ..........................2705 NLP- Applied Magic (Brandy Williams).............................459 Notes On The Historical Egregore in Magick (I.O.T.).............1245 NROOGD SAMHAIN - 1987 (l.a. Hussey) ..............................21 Occult Resurgence, A theory .....................................224 ODINISM, What is it? ............................................764 Open Circle Ethics (Brandy Williams) ............................377 Open Letter to A New Witch ......................................910 Open Letter to Selena Fox (Isaac Bonewits) .....................1089 Opening (ending) The Circle ......................................12 Ordo Argentum Astrum ...........................................1230 Origins of the Mandan (Madoc) ...................................949 Orphic Invocations of God & Goddess (Phaedra) ..................1541 Pagan Churches? (Julia Phillips) ...............................2252 Pagan Folksongs (The Whyte Bard - THE GREENBOOK OF NEO-PAGAN SONGS - All Thru The Night ............................................2303 Bard's Song, The ..............................................2302 Bedlam Bells ..................................................2289 Blessed Be Again! .............................................2297 Burning Times/Chant ...........................................2290 Cambrian Dream ................................................2308 Celtic Circle Dance ...........................................2286 Childish Edda, The ............................................2312 Circles .......................................................2287 Cup Of Wonder .................................................2309 Cup Of Wonder II ..............................................2310 Fairies Love Song .............................................2301 False Knight Upon The Road, The (Child #3) ....................2306 God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot ..................................2214 Harp Song Of The Dane Women ...................................2298 High Holiday Song, The ........................................2329 John Barleycorn ...............................................2305 King Henry (Child #32) ........................................2283 Lord Of The Dance .............................................2284 Nottamun Town .................................................2307 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Nude ..........................................................2300 She Moved Thru The Faire ......................................2309 Song Of Wandering Aengus, The .................................2311 Spring Strathspey .............................................2288 Stand Up, Stand Up For Odin ...................................2299 Thong Of Thor, The ............................................2282 Two Magicians .................................................2304 Wiccan Rede, The ..............................................2280 Witch's Ballad, The ...........................................2281 Valkyrie Song, The ............................................2213 Real Old Time Religion, That ..................................2315 Yule Songs Christmas Time Is Pagan! .................................2295 Dancing In A Wiccan Wonderland ...........................2293 Gloria ...................................................2291 Glory To The New Born King ...............................2293 God Rest Ye Merry, Paganfolk .............................2296 Hark The Neo-Pagans Sing .................................2291 Joy To The World .........................................2295 Moon Of Silver ...........................................2294 Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful! ...............................2292 Share The Light ..........................................2294 Silent Night .............................................2292 Ye Children All Of Mother Earth ..........................2291 Pagan Unity Ritual (W.o.W. #5) .................................2246 Pantacle, The (Gary Dumbauld) ...................................392 Perscution, Ancient & Modern (Julia Phillips) ..................1627 Personal effects of Ritual (Nihasa) .............................868 Peyote & The Supreme Court (News Articles) .....................1725 Polarity and Single Sex Covens (Marios) .........................945 Pornography & Pagan Ideals ......................................972 Power Animals (RMPJ).............................................411 Prosperity [Famtrad] (Rowan Moonstone) .........................1485 Psychic Self-Defense ............................................594 Psychic Attack ..................................................563 "Quantum" Kaballah...............................................282 Quantum Magick (Larry Cornett) ..................................857 Quilting and "Craft" (J.M. Cortese) ............................1103 Rainforest Ritual (Michael Harismedes, 1988) ....................212 Raven Kindred Ritual (Asatru) ..................................2815 Reclaiming The God (Women's Ritual) ............................2853 Rede, The (J. Taylor, S.O.T.E.G.) ..............................1488 "Restorationist" Christianity (Chris Anderson) .................2385 Risk Assessment for The Craft Community (Weyland Smith) ........1723 Rite of Passage, Modern Female (Lady Shyra) ....................2694 Ritual of the Blessed Motherboard (Discordian Humor) ...........1471 Ritual Abuse Scandal in Britain (Michael Howard) ...............2233 Ritual Bath (Sewna Silvara) .....................................745 Ritual Theory and Technique (Colin Low).........................2668 Rosicrucianism (J. Phillips) ...................................1741 Rune Poem, A linguistic Analysis by Steph Parker ...............2476 Runes, What are they? (Lokrien) .................................215 Runic Thorn Ritual (Faunus) ....................................1097 Salem Anniversary Ritual (Sandy & Diug Kopf)....................1156 Samhain Notes (Farrar)...........................................143 Samhain Ritual (L. A. Hussey) ....................................19 Samhain Ritual (Kalioppe) ......................................2423 Samhain Ritual (O.T.O.) .........................................145 Samhain (United Wiccan Church) ..................................141 Table Of Contents (Continued) Samhain Ritual 1986 (Coven of The Serpents Eye) ................1759 Sangreal Sodality, The (Alfgar Maharg) ..........................944 Santa (Tane Jackson) ...........................................2573 Satanic Ritual Abuse (1992 FBI Report) .........................1575 Satanism Satanism 101 (Diaane Vera) ................................1536 Satanism Defined (Delohine) ...............................1539 Satanism as Media Hype (News Article) .....................1717 Satanism vs. Wicca (Diane Vera).............................194 Setian Symbolism (T.O.S.) .................................1560 Saxon Wicca (Matrika) ...........................................158 Scorpio Dragon (Sewna Silvara) ..................................749 Searching (Carol Neist, W.O.W. #8) .............................2255 Second Degree (Gary Dumbauld) .....................................3 Second Ritual for Bast .........................................1933 Sex and Magick (Fra. Apfelmann)..................................231 Shamanic Binding (Gaffer Maccluiunn) ............................937 Shamanic Lifeways Fellowship (Michelle Haas) ....................384 Shamanism (Internet FAQ) .......................................2683 Sigil Magick (I.O.T.) ..........................................1416 Smudging (Michelle Haas) ........................................184 Snake Venom & Altered States (Loren Petrich) ...................1419 Solitary Moon Rite, Issian (Ellen Cannon Reed) .................1100 Solitary Neophyte Ritual (C.M.) ................................2391 Sophia and Gnosticism (Terry J. McCombs) .......................1105 Spitual Emergence or Emergency (Paul Seymour) ...................939 Spring Equinox (Farrar and Farrar) ..............................182 Spring Equinox Ritual (Marian Starwatcher) .....................2687 Standing Stones Book Of Shadows (Scott Cunninham) ..............1010 Strings On The Winds (Bardic Fiction)............................778 "Super-Dimensionality" (I.O.T.)..................................289 Swastika, The (Paladin) ........................................2257 Sybillyne Tradition of Wicca ...................................2445 Taleisin's thoughts .............................................676 Tarot Divination (Tuppence) ....................................1710 Tea Ritual (Sewna Silvara, Triskelion)...........................747 Technology and The Craft (Fun!) .................................132 Temple Of Set (Lillith Aquino) .................................2709 Temples, Covens, & Groves - Oh My! (Khaled Q.) .................2221 Ten Ways to "Piss Off A Pagan (Humor) ..........................2247 The Goddess Movement (Denver Post) .............................2361 The Pact (IOT) .................................................1162 The Postures of Ecstasy .........................................617 The 12 Steps and Shamanism (Matrika, P.A.N.) ...................1504 The Last Dragon (Kalioppe) .....................................2360 Theological Discipline & Penance (Lisa Sergienko) ..............2258 Three-Fold Goddess, The (Eileen Turner) ........................2653 Thunder, Perfect Mind (Tony Ianotti) ...........................1254 Tools, etc. (Phoenix Whitebirch) ...............................2387 Tool List (Seastrider) ..........................................136 Tool Blessing Ritual ............................................122 Tool Consecration ................................................17 Traditional Wicca (K.A.M.) ......................................186 Traveling Chant (Julia Phillips)................................2571 Treatise On Mind (The Tigress) .................................1265 Travel Spell (Rowan Moonstone) .................................1487 Trickster Energies ..............................................234 Twelve Exercises Nobody Needs ...................................619 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Twenty-Two Commandments for the New Age (A. Waldrum)............1721 Vernal Equinox Ritual from OZ (Julia Phillips) .................1742 Verse: A Birthday In The Light (T. Digby) ........................1920 A Call To Lord And Lady (Jeff Bordeaux) ...................1853 A Dreaming Desire (Jeff Bordeaux) .........................1865 A Lady Called Truth (Geral Del Campo) .....................1921 A Riddle (Saracen) ........................................1919 A Victim of Ideologies (Jeff Bordeaux) ....................1876 "AINT!" (Ellen Cannon Reed) ...............................1929 ALOHA! Serge King (Hugh Read) .............................1848 Amphitrite (Sourdough Jackson) ............................1866 Amazing (Wiccan) Grace (Verna Knapp) ......................1909 Another One For Jim Morrison (Sourdough Jackson) ..........1870 Banishing The Circle (Devin Storm) ........................1892 Battle Hymn of the Eristocracy (Filk) .....................1898 Beneath The Full Moon (Sourdough Jackson) .................1870 BLOOD (Similodon) .........................................1889 Bowhunter's Prayer to Dianna (Kalioppe) ...................2249 Burning Times (L.A. Hussey) ...............................1849 Cauldron Chant (Ammond Shadowcraft)........................1899 Celtic Circle Dance (Joe Bethancourt) .....................1900 Chance (Hugh Read) ........................................1851 Charge of the Horned God ..................................1907 Circles (song, "Anon") ....................................2464 Comes The Dawn ............................................1914 Computer Blessing (Zahai Stuart) ..........................1871 Coven Spell (Doreen Valiente) .............................1887 Dark Time (Shadow Hawk) ...................................1902 Discoveries ...............................................2254 Earthdream (Jeff Bordeux) .................................1855 ELEGY: James Douglas Morrison (Sourdough Jackson) ........1869 ELEMENTS (r.m.p.j.) .......................................1897 Elf (Marcus) ..............................................1855 EQUINOX (Endumion) ........................................1908 "GIMMEE!" (Ellen Cannon Reed) .............................1930 Great Rite (Vivienne West) ................................2465 Green Grow The Rushes, Oh! ................................1901 Healing Spell (unknown) ...................................1891 Heaven is A Resting Place (Sourdough Jackson) .............1868 Horn of Plenty (Linda C.) .................................1910 Horn Song (Hugh Read) .....................................1846 House Blessing ............................................2247 HPS Disease (Vivienne West) ...............................2253 Hunter's Warning (Jeff Bordeaux) ..........................1857 Hymn to Artemis (Frater U.' D.') ..........................1893 Hymn To Demeter (Lyn Hubert) ..............................1916 I am Spring (J.H.R. Seymour) ..............................1912 I Saw Something Beutiful (Masochistic Maiden) ............1915 Inquisition ...............................................1894 Invocation (Doreen Valiente) ..............................1887 Invocation of the Horned God (Doreen Valiente) ............1885 Invocation of the Moon Goddess (Doreen Valiente) ..........1886 Jewel (Shadow Hawk) .......................................1860 Just A Poem (Masochistic Maiden) ..........................1918 Kill A Tree (Humorous Song)................................2462 LAMMAS NIGHT (Elexa) ......................................1904 LILITH (L.A. Hussey) ......................................1904 Lord of The Ants ("filk" by Karl Lembke ...................2463 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Love Is The Law (Unknown) .................................1884 LYRA (Hugh Read) ..........................................1856 Magic Man (Taarna Savet) ..................................1906 Magical Reveries (Hugh M. Read) ...........................1878 May Eve (Doreen Valiente) .................................1884 Minerva (Unknown) .........................................1883 Moose! (SCA Humor) ........................................2248 New Words and Old (Kihe Blackeagle) .......................1890 Night Wind (Shadow Hawk) ..................................1863 Ocean (skybane) ...........................................1921 Pagan Awakening (Jeff Bordeaux) ...........................1852 Pan To Artemis (Hugh Read) ................................1847 Pandemonium (Sonia Brock) .................................1890 Pegasus (Durwydd Mac Tara) ................................1911 Prelude to Discovery (Gerald Del Campo) ...................1913 Prayer Drive (Sourdough Jackson) ..........................1869 Quarter Chant (Damon) .....................................1871 RAINBOWS (Jennifer Holding) ...............................1897 RAP (Anony Mouse) .........................................2255 Red and Gold (Joe Bethancourt) ............................1906 Samhain Chant (Doreen Valiente) ...........................1845 Scarabeus (unknown) .......................................1883 Seeking The Sign To Dragonheim (Jeff Bordeax) .............1853 Shadowhawk (Marcus) .......................................1877 Simple (Gardenstone) ......................................1914 SLEEPR (Lynn Hubert) ......................................1921 Snow (Steve Earl) .........................................1873 Song (Vivienne West) ......................................2255 Spring/Summer Poem (Shadowhawk) ...........................1891 Storm (Shadow Hawk) .......................................1875 Storm (Stormy Gael) .......................................1893 Tears For An Angel (Gerald Del Campo) .....................1913 The Awakening (Andrew Daws) ...............................1922 The Cloud Sculptors (Jeff Bordeaux) .......................1865 The Coming of Lugh (Iarwin) ...............................1861 The Goddess is Alive (Unknown) ............................1856 The Lady's Brothel (filk) .................................1898 The Man In The Moon (Gerald Del Campo) ....................1919 The Moon Pool (unknown) ...................................1859 The Night Before Samhain (Masochistic Maiden) .............1915 The Pentagram (Similodon) .................................1889 The Prettiest One (Filk) ..................................1898 The Shaman's Call (Shadow Hawk) ...........................1873 The Spell of the Cord (Doreen Valiente) ...................1886 The River (Hugh Read) .....................................1872 The Tree Song (Kipling) ...................................1864 The Triple Goddess (Kalioppe) .............................2208 The Witches Ballad ........................................1894 To The Bonfires (Jeff Bordeaux) ...........................1866 To The Dragons Reborn (Jeff Bordeaux) .....................1854 To Greyshield, With Love ("Phoenix") ......................1851 Today The Moon is There (Hugh Read) .......................1893 Two Ritual Prayers (Anahita Gula) .........................1895 What is Love (Ravenna Michelle) ...........................1917 Why I Love The Dark (Gerald Del Campo) ....................1912 Witches Creed (Doreen Valiente) ...........................1843 Yule Carols (Green Egg, Yule '92) .........................1938 UEA '93 Main Ritual (Rowan Moonstone) ..........................2449 Walking With My Friends (Masochistic Maiden) ...................2355 TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued) Washington Post Article (1991) .................................1499 Warnke Expose (Cornerstone Magazine) ...........................2604 Wartime (Michelle Haas, 1991) ...................................117 Warriors .......................................................2548 Warriorship (Swein Runestaff W.o.W.) ...........................2236 Watch Towers, Rethinking The (Mike Nichols) .....................344 "Weasel Wicca" (Humor fm. Green Egg) ...........................1531 What is Myth? (Web of Wyrd, #10) ...............................2518 What is Shamanism? (Michelle Haas) ..............................354 What is Shamanism (Eliade) .....................................2567 What is WICCA? (Texas Pamphlet) .................................322 What is Wicca? (Amber K.) .......................................340 What is Wicca (Durwydd Mac Tara) ...............................1551 Wheel of The Year (Julia Phillips/Matthew Sandow) ..............1671 Wheel Visualization (Julia Phillips and Rufus Harrington) ......1682 When Magic Doesn't Work (Magical Blend Magazine) ...............1520 Why I don't Believe the "Survivors" (R. Moonsone)...............1719 Wicca and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (D. Wadsworth) .....1694 Wicca vs. Paganism (David Piper) ...............................2716 Wicca, from My Point of View (Lady Phoenix) .....................149 Wiccan History .................................................1656 Wiccan History (BTW, Julia Phillips) ...........................1566 Wiccan Information Network .....................................1087 Wiccan Way, The .................................................192 Wiccan Pentagram Ritual (Paul Hume) ..............................98 Wiccan Traditions, A comparison (Hurn, RMPJ) ....................154 Wiccan Path (Madoc)..............................................227 Wiccan Rede, An Exegesis (Judy Harrow) ..........................317 Wiccan Rede, The (J. Taylor, S.O.T.E.G.)........................1488 Wiccan Rede (Poetic) ...........................................1510 Wiccan Rede (Poetic, WCC) ......................................1540 Wiccan Shamanism (Selena Fox) ...................................162 wiccan Monism (Durwydd MacTara) ................................1556 Wiccan Principles (American Council of Witches, 1974)............190 "Wiccening" (article by Vivienne West) .........................2385 Wicanning Ritual (Earthworld Circle) ...........................1492 Wine Blessing, All Female (Lynna Landstreet, WCC) ..............2564 Wishing Well (I.O.T.) ..........................................1422 "WITCH" (Doreen Valiente, in WoW) ..............................2714 Witchcraft Q&A (Dr. Leo Martello) ...............................150 Witches Creed (Doreen Valiente_ .................................320 Witches Rede of Chivalry (Ed Fitch & Janine Renee) .............1803 Women vs. Men (Michele Haas).....................................195 YULE (Mike Nichols) ..............................................84 Yule in Britain (Tana) ...........................................94 Yule Ritual (Starhawk) ............................................8 Yule Ritual 1984 (Julia Phillips) ..............................1763 Yule Ritual (Georgian) .........................................2561 Yule Ritual (She Wolf) .........................................2562 The Parts of the Soul A Greek System of Chakras (first draft) by John Opsopaus Introduction This essay resulted from an attempt to find a Greek system of "energy centers" corresponding to the chakras of Eastern philosophy. Such a correspondence would help illuminate Greek mysticism and reveal some of the foundations of the Western Magical Tradition. This goal might seem to be a shallow exercise in analogies, but there are reasons to expect a substantial correspondence. First, the Eastern and Greek systems evolved out of a common Indo-European culture, so one would expect genetic correspondences; these connections were likely maintained over the millennia, since we know the Middle East mediated continual cultural transfer with both the West and East. Second, there is a certain degree of objectivity in the system of chakras, as reflected in the physical body, which would lead to correspondences even in the absence of cultural contact. The consequence of these two factors is a significant uniformity in ideas about the Spirit and its connection to the Body across the Eurasian continent, and even beyond, as documented, for example, in Onians's _Origins of European Thought_. How would we know a Greek system of chakras if we saw it? The standard I have used is that (1) they should be approximately seven energy centers; (2) they should be approximately located where the chakras are located; (3) they should have approximately the same "functions" as the chakras. It's worth keeping in mind that the chakra system best known in the West, with seven chakras, is not the only system; some have more than fourteen (Eliade, 243-5; Murphy, 156). Therefore, we should not expect an exact correspondence of number, since certain energy centers might or might not be counted depending on their strength or the "kind" of energy they concentrate. Furthermore, different systems differ in their exact placement of the chakras, so likewise we should not expect an exact correspondence in a Greek system. Nevertheless, it will be apparent that the Greek system corresponds closely to the system of seven chakras. My principal source has been Onians, especially Part I and Part II (chh. 1-7), but the overall structure is described in Plato's account of the "Parts of the Soul" in the Timaeus (69c-73d), which probably embodies Pythagorean doctrine. In the following I've numbered the energy centers from the top down with Roman numerals, since this accords better with Platonic doctrine; however, the chakras are conventionally numbered from the bottom up, for which I've (appropriately) used Hindu numbers (so-called Arabic numbers). I The Crown of the head (Gk. koruphe, Lat. vertex). Plato said the humans stand upright because of the connection between the Heavens and the Soul in their brains. People with especially great power in their heads were represented with a nimbus, a halo of flames, around their head (attested as early as the 3rd cent. BCE in Greece). This center corresponds to Chakra 7 (at the crown of the head), called Sahasrara, which means "thousand (-petaled)," an appropriate description of a nimbus. II The Brain (Gk. enkephalos, Lat. cerebrum), which contains the psuche (Gk.) or genios (Lat.). (I use the old Latin spelling "genios" to avoid confusion with the English "genius." The genios is sometimes called the anima.) In Homeric times the psuche was taken to be the "Vital Spirit" or Life Principal (the mind or consciousness was placed in IV, the chest), corresponding to Skt. asu. The later view, which is found in Plato and corresponds better to the Eastern system (cf. Skt. atman), is that the brain is the center of rational thought, the Intellectual center. In both Homer and Plato the psuche is considered the immortal part of the Soul. The physical substance corresponding to psuche was marrow (medulla), especially the cerebrospinal fluid of the brain and spine, but also in other parts of the body (see below). For this reason departed souls were thought to appear as snakes, which are all brain and spine. Scalp and facial hair were considered physical emanations of the psuche, and so the hair, scalp and chin were considered sacred (hence the dedication of locks and the touching of the chin or beard in supplication). This center corresponds to Chakra 6 (at the brow), called Ajna, which means "authority or command," an appropriate name for the rational faculty, which Plato said "controls and restrains" the lower faculties; Onians calls it the Executive function. III The Neck (Gk. trachelos, dere; Lat. collum), which Plato called the "isthmus or boundary" between the Superior, Divine or Immortal Soul and the Inferior or Mortal Soul. He said that it allows communication between the two, but prevents the Lower Soul from "polluting" the Higher. This center corresponds to Chakra 5 (in the throat), called Visuddha, which means "purgation or purity," that is, "the purging of the merely animal, physical system" (Campbell, 165). IV The Heart and Lungs (Gk. phrenes, Lat. cor), which contain the thumos (Grk.) or animus (Lat.), which is the Higher part of the Mortal Soul. In Homeric times the thumos was the Conscious Spirit, the vehicle of Thought and Feeling (cf. Skt. manas). Later, it was restricted to feeling, emotion, passion and especially spirit, courage and anger - the Affective function. This center corresponds to Chakra 4 (at the heart), called Anahata, which means "not hit" (referring to the mystical sound). This chakra is associated with prana (Skt.) - vital breath, vital spirit (Campbell, 164), as are the phrenes with pneuma (Gk.) or spiritus (Lat.) - breath, spirit. Campbell (164-5) says, "This is the aspiration, then, of spiritual striving," and "the birth of the spiritual as opposed to the merely physical life," and likewise the phrenes are associated with spirit, as opposed to the lower parts, which are associated with physical needs and desires. The "little foyer" (the Red Lotus of Eight Petals with the Kalpa Tree) below the Heart Chakra corresponds to the diaphragm, which Plato called the "midriff partition" separating the two parts of the Mortal Soul (associated with Spirit and Desire, respectively). V The Belly (Gk. gaster, Lat. abdomen), between the diaphragm and navel, is the site of the Lower Part of the Mortal Soul, which is the Appetitive Soul, which we share with the lower animals and plants; its function is nutrition and it is the source of Desire (both Nutritional and, by most accounts, Sexual). This center corresponds to Chakra 3 (at the navel), called Manipura, which means "city of the shining jewel," and its function is "aggressive: to conquer, to consume, to turn everything into oneself" (Campbell, 159-60), which is a good description of the Appetitive Soul. VI The Gonads (Gk. gonades, Lat. genitalia), representing the Procreative function. The "marrow," the stuff of which psuche or genios was made, was the Life Essence; Plato says that in it is made "the bonds of life which unite the Soul with the Body." This marrow or sap is passed down the spine, concentrated in the gonads, and is the source of the life of the offspring. In particular, semen was considered a kind of cerebrospinal sap. This center corresponds to Chakra 2, called Svadhisthana, which means "her favorite resort," an apt name for "the cakra of sexuality" (Campbell, 144). VII The Sacrum or Holy Bone (Gk. hieron osteon, Lat. os sacrum), that is, the base of the spine. Because this was a center of concentration of the Life Force, Middle Eastern people believed that the entire body could be regenerated from this bone, and Onians (p. 208) conjectures that its potency may account for "kiss of shame" (osculum infame) of the Witches and Templars (and perhaps the Cathars and Waldenses). This center corresponds to Chakra 1, called Muladhara, which means "root base," which Campbell (p. 144) associates with "hanging on to life" and a "reactive psyche," so in both cases we have the grossest form of the Life Force. Similarly, the Spine was called the Holy Tube (hiera surinx), which recalls the Sushumna (Spine), which is likewise considered a channel (nadi). Likewise the Egyptian Ded Pillar, which represents the spine, was a symbol of Life. I have not, however, found Greeks correspondents to the Ida and Pingala nadis. VIII The above are the "central" energy concentrations of Greek philosophy, and it is apparent that they correspond closely to the familiar seven chakras. The Greeks also recognized "peripheral" energy concentrations in the hands, thighs and knees (which have a large concentration of "marrow"). This explains the sacrifice of thigh bones, the use of the hand (especially the right hand) to exercise executive power, and clasping the knees when beseeching. (The knee - Gk. gonu, Lat. genu - was especially associated with the Life Force - genios - and with procreation or "generation"; cf. genital, genetic, gonad, etc.) So far as I know, corresponding chakras are not recognized in Eastern thought. As a general rule of thumb, Spirit, of one sort or another, is most concentrated where the flesh is thinnest (Timaeus 75a), thus, in the head, chest, sacrum, knees and hands. Summary No. English Greek Latin Function Chakra No. _______________________________________________________________________ I Crown Koruphe Vertex Illumination Sahasrara 7 II Brain Enkephalos Cerebrum Intellection Ajna 6 III Neck Trachelos Collum Purification Visuddha 5 IV Heart/Lungs Phrenes Cor Affection Anahata 4 V Belly Gaster Abdomen Appetition Manipura 3 VI Gonads Gonades Genitalia Procreation Svadhisthana 2 VII Sacrum Hieron Osteon Os Sacrum Basic Life Muladhara 1 References Campbell, Joseph. (1990). Transformations of Myth Through Time. New York: Harper & Row. Eliade, Mircea. (1969). Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, tr. Willard R. Trask. Bollingen Series LVI. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mead, G. R. S. (1967). The Doctrine of the Subtle Body in Western Tradition. Theosophical Publishing House. Murphy, Michael. (1992). The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam. Onians, Richard Broxton. (1951). The Origins of European Thought About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poortman, J. J. (1978). Vehicles of Consciousness: The Concept of Hylic Pluralism. Vols. 1-4. Theosophical Publishing House. finis RITUS OLYMPICUS PENTAGRAMMOU MINOR AD EXPELLENDUM (c) 1993, John Opsopaus Preface The following is an adaptation of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram to the Graeco-Roman Tradition, and so it is called the "Olympic Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram." Such a "translation" is possible because the LBRP is an enactment in a Qabalistic framework of certain shamanic practices that are nearly universal. Once the underlying shamanic cosmology has been identified, it's relatively straight-forward to reexpress the ritual in the terms of another cosmology, such as the Graeco-Roman. I would welcome criticism of the result, especially from Qabalists and Ceremonial Magicians. Criticism/correction of my Latin and Greek composition will also be appreciated. Finally, I beg readers to forgive the Early Modern English, which I've used to add dignity to the text. The Ritual follows in summary form; a separate posting will contain a fully annotated text. This information should make clear which aspects of the ritual follow from Ancient Tradition, which come from more recent Magical Traditions, and which are a result of my speculation or arbitrary choice; such information is all too often missing from Neopagan recon- structions. If anyone knows of a similar adaptation, please let me know. Gratias vobis ago, John Opsopaus 72747.154@compuserve.com ---------------------------------------------------------- Ritus Olympicus Pentagrammou Minor ad Expellendum The Olympic Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram which is The Traditional Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram Adapted to the Graeco-Roman Tradition (c)1993, John Opsopaus I. The Opening Tau Cross i. Close thine eyes, and by thy breath fan thou the Fire, which awakeneth the Serpent and the Eagle. Allow thyself to grow beyond all bounds of space, until the Universe is within thee. Be thou as a God; be thou as a Goddess. ij. Draw thou down the Fire of Heaven into thy Heart, and say: "From Celestial Fire" "Ab Igne Caelesti" "Apo tou Ouraniou Puros" [)Apo\ tou= )Oura/niou Puros/] [Suggested gestures for the preceding step: Raise your arms into a horizontal, cross position, with palms up (in Celestial Invocation). Bring them together above your head, palm to palm, and then draw the Celestial Fire down to your heart, while saying "From Celestial Fire."] [The words to be spoken by the practitioner are given in English, Latin and Greek. In an attempt to combine readability and accuracy, I've given the Greek text two ways, in a simple but approximate Roman transcription, and in "Beta code," a standard ASCII representation of Greek including all the accents, breathings, etc. Beta code transcriptions are enclosed in square brackets. The Beta code transcriptions should be reasonably comprehensible with the following information: ")" and "(" represent smooth and rough breathing, respectively; "/", "\" and "=" represent acute, grave and circumflex accents, respectively; "|" is iota subscript.] iij. Guide thou the bright Beam downward, until it stirreth the Subterranean Waters of the Abyss and bringeth Them to life; and while so doing, say thou: "To Watery Abyss" "Ad Aquosum Profundum" "Eis ten Hudroessan Abusson" [)Ei\s th\n (Udro/essan )/Abusson] [Suggested gesture: Keep the palms together and move them down in front of the groin. Then separate the hands and hold them to the sides and slightly forward, with palms down (in Chthonic Invocation).] iv. Direct thou the beam from thy heart through thy left shoulder, until it stretcheth to the Moon, and say: "By Way of Earth" "Via Terrena" "Kat' Hodon Chthonion" [Kat' (Odo\n Xqo/nion] [Suggested gesture: Raise the left hand up to your chest; then extend your arm into horizontal position, with the palm forward.] v. Direct thou the beam from thy heart through thy right shoulder, until it stretcheth to the Sun, and say: "By Way of Air" "Via Aeria" "Kat' Hodon Aitherion" [Kat' (Odo\n )Aiqe/rion] [Suggested gesture: Raise the right arm to the chest and then into a horizontal position, with forward palm.] vi. Feel thou the Sacred Tau Cross that blazeth inside thee. Now cross thy arms over thy Heart, and say: "Abiding always in the Center. So be it!" "Semper in Medio manens. Esto!" or "Fiat!" "En Omphaloi aei menon" (masc.) or "menousa" (fem.). "Esto!" [)En )Omfalw=| a)ei\ me/nwn] (masc.) or [me/nousa] (fem.). [)/Estw!] [Suggested gesture: Bring your arms together and cross them over your chest.] vij. As thou makest this gesture the Moon and Sun will stand together above thy head, nor will they ever move from there. Moon over Sun and Sun over Tau Cross; thou art the Holy Caduceus. Thou hast become the Center of the World, for the Cosmic Axis runneth through thy spine; on thy left standeth the Path of the Moon, and on thy right the Path of the Sun, above thee shineth the Cosmic Pole, below thee lieth the Abyss. viij. Thou standest upon the Sacred Mountain, the World Navel, under which hideth the Watery Abyss. At thy back groweth the Tree of Life, which stretcheth over thy head, the Navel Cord, for the Mountain and Tree are the Cosmic Pillar, which supporteth the four Quarters of the Heavens. From Calypso's Cave between the Tree's roots, which penetrate the Abyss, are the four springs, which flow to the four Quarters of the World, and they run with water, honey, milk and wine. Around the World Tree's trunk coileth thrice and half again the Serpent. In the Cosmic Tree's leaves percheth the Eagle of Zeus, guarding the Horn of Amalthea, from which Nectar floweth into the Libation Bowl, the Bountiful Breast, which overfloweth, raining Nectar on the World. Ambrosia floweth up the trunk of the Tree from the Deep. Illumination cometh from Above and Growth cometh from Below. The World Tree is the Tree of Destiny and Its leaves are the Book of Fate, for as they fall, so fall to earth the winged souls of the folk, ever singing in its foliage. ix. Divine Helen, Leto's Daughter, with large breasts, liveth in the Bountiful Cosmic Tree, for she is Its Spirit; and Her Brothers, the Dioskouroi, Sons of Zeus [Dios Kouroi] the All-Shining [Pamphaes], the Heavenly Twins of Leto, command the Sacred Paths on either side. For Castor, who resideth underground, knoweth the Lunar Discipline and controlleth the Way of Descent, and Polydeuces, who liveth above, is Master of the Solar Discipline and controlleth the Way of Ascent. x. For learn thou this about the Way of Ascent. It is under the jurisdiction of Zeus, the Sky Shaker, who giveth fertilizing rain and nourishing sunlight. He holdeth the Lightning Bolt of Illumination, and His lightning descendeth from the Sky. The Way of Ascent is to climb Scylla's Mountain, which riseth into the clouds, nor can its peak ever be seen. Prometheus or Apollo will show thee the Way. Thy Helper in this journey is the Horse Pegasos, but also the Soaring Eagle, Dove and Goose. Then wilt thou break through the Vault of the Heaven, and going through the Celestial Pole thou wilt ascend the Heavens. For this is the Way of Light, the Path by Day, the Sun's Way, the Path of the Sage. xi. And learn thou this about the Way of Descent. It is under the jurisdiction of Poseidon, the Earth Shaker, who giveth fresh water from springs, but also floods and earthquakes. He holdeth the Trident of Ecstasy and His lightning leapeth up from the Earth. The Way of Descent is by the precipice opposite Scylla's cliff, which is the lower of the two, and from it groweth the Sacred Fig Tree. Climb thou down from this Tree to Charybdis, by which thou wilt be drawn into the Watery Abyss. Circe or Herakles will show thee the Way past the Dog and Gatekeeper. Thy Helper in this journey is the Serpent Python, but also the Raging Lion and Bull. Then wilt thou break through the Vault of the Abyss and, going down the Well, thou wilt descend through its levels. For this is the Way of Darkness, the Path by Night, the Moon's Way, the Path of the Mage. xij. But the Wise know that the Way Up and the Way Down are the same, for they are both on the Cosmic Pillar, and sometimes our task demandeth that we go up it, and sometimes it demandeth that we go down it. When Duty calleth, we travel by Day or Night as is the need. Ask thou Hermes for guidance, for he frequenteth the Navel. II. Pentagrams of the Quarters xiij. This is the way thou wilt draw the Shining Pentagrams that wardeth each Quarter. The first ray goeth from the lower left to the top, and each ray continueth from the last. And as thou makest each ray, sing a letter of the Name of the Pentagram. xiv(a). In Greek the Pentagram hath the Name HUGIEIA [U(GI/EIA], which meaneth Soundness or Wholeness, so sing thou the sounds: "Huuuuuuu, Gggggggg, Iiiiiiih, Aaaaaay, Aaaaaaah." xiv(b). In Latin the Pentagram hath the Name SALUS, which meaneth Soundness or Welfare, so sing thou the sounds: "Ssssssss, Aaaaaaah, Llllllll, Uuuuuuuu, Ssssssss." xiv(c). Though in English we label the Pentagram WHOLE or SOUND, its spoken Name is WHOLENESS, so sing thou the sounds: "Hooooooo, Llllllll, Nnnnnnnn, Eeeeeeeh, Ssssssss." xv. Now go thou to the East and make the Pentagram. As thou callest: "Jupiter" or "Zeus" "Iuppiter" "Zeus" [Zeu/s] hurl thou His Thunderbolt through the center of the Pentagram, and see it fly away to Infinity. [Iuno / Hera [(/Hra] might also be appropriate for the East (She is not an Earth Goddess), in which case you should throw Her Cuckoo-bearing Sceptre, which represents the Celestial Spirit nesting on the top of the World Tree. (Zeus first came to Hera in the form of a Cuckoo.)] xvi. Now with thy Staff forge thou the Fiery Ring, drawing it from the center of the Eastern Pentagram and stretching it to the South, where thou wilt make another Pentagram, but call: "Vesta" or "Hestia" "Vesta" [pron. "Westa"] "Hestia" [(Esti/a] and throw thou Her Burning Circle. xvij. Then to the West: "Neptune" or "Poseidon" "Neptunus" "Poseidon" [Poseidw/n] Hurl thou His Trident. xviij. Then to the North: "Ceres" or "Demeter" "Ceres" [pron. "Keres"] "Demeter" [Dhmh/thr] Throw thou Her Torch. [Pluto / Hades [(/Aidhs] would also be appropriate for the North, in which case his Helmet of Invisibility should be projected through the Pentagram. Hades' name may mean "the Unseen" ["(/Aidhs" < "a) idh/s"].] xix. Then draw thou the Fiery Ring back to its beginning, so it burneth on every side. Then will the Barrier expand above and below until thou art surrounded by the Glowing Sphere. [When projecting the Four Weapons through the Pentagrams, the practitioner might find it helpful to make an appropriate gesture: as though throwing a dart for Zeus's Keraunos, as though throwing a frisbee for Hestia's Burning Ring, as though throwing a javelin for Poseidon's Trident, as though throwing a knife for Demeter's Torch.] III. Wards of the Quarters xx. Now raise again thy arms so thou art the Sacred Tau and, focusing thine attention before thee (Eastward), say: "Before, Apollo" "Ante, Apollo" "Prosthen, Apollon" [Pro/sqen, )Apo/llwn] Apollo will appear before thee in all His Glory, Bow in hand, facing thee. Then will He turn His back to watch the Eastern Quarter. [Mercurius/Hermes [(Ermh=s], with His Caduceus, would also be appropriate for the East.] xxi. West: Focusing thine attention behind thee, say: "Behind, Diana/Artemis" "Post, Diana" "Opisthen, Artemis" [)/Opisqen, )/Artemis] Artemis will appear with Her Bow. Then will She turn away to watch the West. [Venus/Aphrodite [)Afrodi/th], arising from the waves and holding Her Zona (Girdle), would also be appropriate for the West.] xxij. South: Focusing thine attention to thy right, say: "On the right, Minerva/Athena" "Dextra, Minerva" "Epidexia, Athena." [)Epide/cia, )Aqhna=] Athena will appear with Her Aegis and Spear, and turn to watch the South. [Mars / Ares [)/Arhs] (with Shield and Sword) or Volcanus / Hephaistos [(/Hfaistos] (with Hammer and Tongs) would also be appropriate for the South; Mars was also an Italic vegetation God, and so might be evoked in the North.] xxiij. North: Focusing thine attention to thy left, say: "On the left, Bacchus/Dionysos" "Sinistra, Bacchus" "Ep' aristera, Dionusos" [)Ep' a)ristera/, Dio/nusos] Dionysus will appear with His Thyrsus, and then turn to watch the North. [Pan [Pa/n], with His Pipes, would also be appropriate for the North. Pan may seem an unlikely Ward, but when Athens honored Him and asked Him to help defend them from the Persians, he did so (Herodt. VI.105.2-3).] xxiv. In thy mind, thank all the Wards of the Quarters for Their protection. IV. The Macrocosm in the Microcosm xxv. Spread thy feet apart and assume thou the form of the Sacred Pentagram, which Pythagoras hath called Hugieia (Salus, Whole/Sound). When the Pentagram flameth around thee, say: "For around flameth the Pentagram." "Nam circa flagrat Pentagrammon." "Peri men gar phlegei to Pentagrammon" [Peri\ me\n ga\r fle/gei to\ Penta/grammon] [If you prefer "For around flame the Pentagrams," then use: "Nam circa flagrant Pentagramma" "Peri men gar phlegousi ta Pentagramma" [Peri\ me\n ga\r fle/gousi ta\ Penta/gramma] ] xxvi. When the Sacred Hexagram shineth within thee, say: "And within shineth the Six-rayed Star." "Atque intra lucet Stella Sexradiata." "Entos de lampei ho Hexaktinotos Aster." [)Ento\s de\ la/mpei o( E(caktinwto\s )Asth/r.] [If you prefer your Hexagram shining above rather than within, then say "super" instead of "intra," or "Huper" [(Upe/r] instead of "Entos." However, I think it's better to have it within (see the notes for the reason).] xxvij. The Pentagram signifieth the Microcosm, and the Hexagram signifieth the Macrocosm. Thus the Macrocosm shineth within the Illuminated Microcosm. V. The Closing Tau Cross xxviij. Repeat thou the Tau Cross as it was at the beginning. [The following alternative gestures incorporate the relation of the elements embodied in the Hexagram: As you recite the text of the Tau Cross, (1) begin with arms crossed, right over left, on your chest; (2) raise your right arm to the Celestial Fire, (3) lower your left arm to the Watery Abyss, (4) let the Fire draw up the Water to yield Earth, by moving your left arm up to your chest and out to the left, the Way of Earth; (5) let the Water draw down the Fire to yield Air, by moving your right arm down to your chest and out to your right, the Way of Air; (6) cross your arms over your chest, indicating the Reconciliation, Union and Balance of the Oppositions (Bivium), Worlds (Trivium) and Elemental Quarters (Quadrivium). I must admit, however, that these gestures seem somewhat awkward.] xxix. Thou hast made for thyself a Sacred Space at the World's Navel. Ascending on thy Right is the Light Path and descending on thy Left is the Dark Path, but remember thou that the Wise One knoweth that the Way Up and the Way Down are the same and that together they make the one Path of Wisdom. So must it be. finis THE FARMER AND THE GODDESS - A MODERN STORY OF REBIRTH The night was quiet and peaceful, with only the occasional call of a whippoorwill to break the tranquil silence. The Moon was an iridescent ball of silver perched high in the heavens, illuminating the Earth below. The sky, a lovely shade of midnight blue, was sparsely speckled with the twinkle of stars. I peered out my window, enchanted by the beauty of the night. As my eyes wandered, they came to rest upon the corn field - the corn field that had broken my very heart. In the beginning, I had worked patiently and diligently tending the soil. I tilled it - turning it over and over, so that the new could surface and the old could rest. I carefully pulled away the weeds and the remnants of the old crop to make the field ready for new planting. I fertilized and nurtured it, smoothed and moistened it. Day after day, I toiled to make it ready. Finally, I plowed it into even rows and lovingly planted it. Every day, I tended the seed and watched for new sprouts. Tenaciously, I ripped the weeds from Earth that would rob the seeds of the nutrients necessary for their growth. And then one day, I saw it - a single, solitary sprout that had pushed its way through the soil! Within the week, the entire field was covered with a very thin mesh of green, and I felt a joy in my heart that words cannot describe! The hard work, the aching muscles, and the tender care with which I had nurtured the field was not in vain - the Earth which I loved had given birth, and was alive in the greening of the seed I had sown. Daily, I worked in the field, delighting in the growth of the corn - revelling in its freshness - exulting in the part I had played in its birth. The rains came down, drenching the earth and the roots grew deep. The sun shone brightly on the young plants and they grew tall, reaching for the sky. Ears began to form on the stalks, and all was well with the crop. But then the drought arrived, and the rains came no more. The sun still beamed brightly, and the roots moved deeper and deeper into the Earth in their desperate quest to find water. Alas, there was not a single drop left with which they could quench their thirst. The once luxuriant green leaves began to yellow and wither. The stalks which had stood so proudly against the sky began to shrivel and crack, and the tender ears, so newly born, dried up in death. Yes, the corn which I had helped to birth - that which I had loved so dearly - was gone. Dried up. Dead. A tear fell from my eye as I stood looking at the field that night, remembering. A gentle breeze rustled through the old and withered stalks as I wiped away the tear. And then...I saw something! Or was it someone? Slowly and silently I crept toward the corn field to take a better look. I felt my heart beating faster and faster, as panic began to consume me. After all, it was nearly midnight and too late for visitors! Whomever was in the field was obviously up to no good, and I wanted them to leave immediately! My legs moved faster and faster - more quickly than I had dreamed they were capable - until I was, indeed, on a dead run! When I reached the old oak tree that shaded the northern edge of the field, I opened my mouth to shout my displeasure at the trespasser; however, I fell silent as my eyes focused on the sight, and my mouth gaped wide. For there, in the center of the corn field, was a young woman in white - her hair as gold as the maize - glowing in the shimmering iridescence of the moonlight! Questions ravaged my tired brain, as I tried to assess the situation and size up the intruder. Who was She? What was She doing there? Surely She knew She was trespassing - and most certainly She knew that it was illegal! As much as I wished to call out to Her, I was mesmerized by Her very presence and found that I could say nothing. Helplessly, I watched as She moved through the rows of death. She stopped to caress a dry and withered leaf, and then smiling, held it to her cheek. Gently, She reached out and wrapped Her arms about the cracked, brown stalk, hugging it closely to Her breast. She released the stalk and bent down to look at one of the ears - perfectly formed, but shriveled in its deathly demise. Quickly, She snapped the ear from its stalk, tugged away its husk and swiftly moved toward the outside perimeter of the field. Holding the ear of corn high above Her golden head, She began to dance upon the barren Earth. As if in slow motion, She twirled about the outside edges of the field, as she softly hummed an unfamiliar tune. Round and round the field She danced, picking up momentum as She worked Her way toward the center. Louder and louder She sang, the volume increasing as Her feet flew faster and continued to spiral toward the center. Within the matter of a few seconds, She had become a whirling dervish - dancing with such wild abandon that the kernels of corn were loosed from their cob, flying helter-skelter across the field! She glistened in the moonlight as droplets of perspiration formed upon Her body, and in the frenzy of Her dance, they too, were flung upon the Earth. Her feet and voice reached the ultimate crescendo at the center of the corn field, and She fell upon the ground in total exhaustion. All was silent. The sounds of the nocturnal creatures had been stilled. All was enveloped in an unnatural hush - as if time itself, had stopped. She lay on the Earth, unbreathing, unmoving, immobile - as still as Death, itself! I stared at Her in horror, the panic which I had forgotten, rushing back into my brain with full force. Was She alright? Good Heavens! Was She dead?? Finally, I gathered my wits about me, found my feet and rushed toward the center of the corn field, where She had fallen in collapse. My heart beating wildly, I reached out to Her - but She was gone! She had disappeared into the very ether! All that was left in Her place was a single corn cob, void of its kernels - the kernels which had flung from their resting place in the midst of the Lady's spiral dance. The sun was shining hotly on my face as I rubbed my sleepy eyes into total alertness. Where was I? This didn't feel like my bed! What was causing this blinding light? I was soaked to the bone! Just what the hell was happening here? Cautiously, I opened my eyes and surveyed my surroundings. To my dismay, I was lying smack-dab in the middle of the corn field and my head was resting in a rather large mud puddle. Clenched tightly in my fist, like some precious jewel in need of protection, was a solitary corn cob. I scrambled to my feet and tried in desperation to collect my thoughts. What was I doing here? Had I lost my mind? And then...I remembered! I remembered the cornfield in the moonlight - the Lady and the dance. I also remembered how Her drops of perspiration had dropped to the ground in the frenzy of Her movements. I looked at my feet and the Earth beneath them. Joy and wonder rose in my heart. It had rained! Merciful Heavens! It had rained - the Earth was soaked with moisture - the drought was over! Gleefully, I ran through the cornfield, feeling my bare toes dig into the wet Earth - the same Earth which had been so cracked and dry and barren just yesterday. I ran in joy. I ran in ecstasy. I ran in sheer celebration of the soil's return to richness - and then, I stopped dead in my tracks. Something was amiss. Something had changed. Something was quite unlike it had been before. Scanning the field, I realized that it was once again covered with delicate green mesh of newly sprouting corn! In awe, I reached down to cradle a newly-formed sprout and as my fingers touched the verdant green leaf, a feminine voice began to speak: "You were born of me! You are my child and at death you shall return to me. Fear not of death, dear one, for within its realm I shall bring you new life! Just as the corn lives again - so shall it be with you! For all that falls shall rise again, and that which dies shall be blessed with the gift of rebirth - the gift of My love!" -Kalioppe- The Chocolate Ritual By: Buckmeister Thu 30 Sep 93 Materials required: On the altar there are brown candles; a Tootsie Roll (the great big one-as the athame); a large glass with milk in it,(the chalice); a small dish of Nestle's Quick and a spoon; a small dish of chocolate sprinkles; a plate of cupcakes and some Yoo-Hoo along with a goblet. CLEANSE THE SACRED SPACE: (Take the small bowl of chocolate sprinkles) Chocolate sprinkles where thou art cast No calories in thy presence last. Let no fat adhere to me And as I will So Mote It BE! Nestle's Quick where thou art cast Turn this milk to chocolate, fast. Let all good things come to me, and make my milk all chocolatey! CAST THE CIRCLE(using a toosie roll): CALL THE QUARTERS: Mousse of the East, Fluffy one! great prince of the palace of dessert. Be present, we pray thee, And guard this circle from all moochers Approaching from the East. Fondue of the South, Molten One! Great prince of the palace decadence. Be present we pray thee, and guard this circle from all diet Approaching from the South. Cocoa of the West, Satisfying One! Great prince of the palace of thirst. Be present we pray thee, And guard this circle from all carob Approaching from the West. Rocky Road of the North, Cold One! Great prince of the palace of crunchy. Be present we pray thee, And guard this circle from all cheap imitations Approaching from the North. MAIN RITUAL: HANDMAIDEN(Henceforth known as the Swiss Miss): Listen to the words of the Mother of Chocolate; who was of old called; Godiva, Ethel M, Sara Lee, Nestle, Mrs. See, and by many other names: HPS: Whenever you have one of those cravings, once in a while and better it be when your checkbook is full, then shall you assemble in a great public place and bring offerings of money to the spirit of Me, who is Queen of all Goodies. In the Mall shall you assemble, you who have eaten all your chocolate and are hungry for more. To you I shall bring Good Things for your tongue. And you shall be free from depression, and as a sign that you are truly free, you shall have chocolate smears on your cheeks, and you shall munch, nosh, snack, feast, and make yummy noises, all in my presence. For mine is the ecstacy of phenylalanine(FEEN-EL-AL-A-NEEN), and mine is also the Joy on Earth, yea, even into High Orbit for my law is "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand." Keep clean your fingers, carry Wet Ones always, let none stop you aside. For mine is the secret that opens your mouth, and mine is the taste that puts a smile on your lips and comfy padding pounds on your hips. I am the Gracious Goddess who gives the gift of joy unto the tummies of men and women. Upon earth, I give knowledge of all things delicious, and beyond death.......well, I can't do much there. Sorry about that. I demand only your money in sacrifice; for behold, chocolate is a business and you have to pay for those truffles before you eat them. SWISS MISS: Hear now the words of the Goodie Goddess, she in the dust of whose feet are the cheap imitations, whose body graces candy racks and finer stores everywhere: I, who am the beauty of chocolate chips, and the sastifying softness of big bars, the mystery of how they ge the filling inside of truffles, and fill the hearts of all but Philistines with desire, call unto thy soul to arise and come unto me. For I am the soul of candy; from me do all confections spring, and unto me all of you shall return, again.... and again....and again...... and again. Before my smeared face, beloved of Women and Men, thine innermost divine self shall be enfolded in the rapture of overdose. Let my taste be within thy mouth that rejoices. For behold, all acts of yumminess and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore let there be gooeyness and mess, crispness and crackling, big slabs and bite size peices, peanut butter and chocolate covered cherries all within you. And you who think to seek me, know that your seeking and yearning shall avail you not unless you know the Mystery; "We shall sell no chocolate until you pay for it." For behold; I have been with you since you were just a baby, and I am that which is attained at nearly any shop in the land. Messed Be. SWISS MISS: Hear now the words of the Chocolate God, who was called Ghirardelli, Milton Snavely Hershey, Bosco, Fudgesicle, and by many other names. HP: I am the strength of the candy rack, and the peice that fell on the floor, but looks like it might not have gotten too dirty, and the deepest bitterness of dark chocolate. No matter how you try to resist the call of chocolate, I will hunt you out and I will become your sacred prey. I am warmth of hot cocoa in the dead of winter, and the call of the road that leads you to that really expensive Godiva store downtown. I give you my creatures, the fire of love of chocolate, the power of jaw strength to bite off a piece of that frozen Milky Way bar, and the shelter of Haagen Daz when that big date didn't work out. You are dear to me, and I instill in you my power of a piece of chocolate that you had forgotten you had hidden, and the power of vision and magickal sight with which you can spot a candy counter a mile away. By the powers of the half melted bar in the glorious sun, I charge you, by the darkest depths of the bottom of the cocoa pot and lingering smell of bittersweet chocolate, I charge you, and by the beauty of a perfectly swirled vanilla butter cream, I charge you. Follow your heart and your instinct, wherever they lead you. The wealth in your pocket can buy you treats that a Mayan king would envy. Take joy in that first bite of lecithin emulsfied cocoa, and in the last satisfying slurp of Yoo-Hoo. Yet you must be wary of deciet. Eat not of that which is called "Baking Chocolate" for it is vile and bitter. Lastly, always remember to leave some chocolate behind you. Be not greedy, but let yourself be known as a connoisseur. Leave a little for someone else. I am with you always, just over your shoulder, or around the next corner. I am the Lord of Chocolate, and when you have reached the end of your hoard, I will never be farther away from you that that 7-Eleven on the corner. I am the spirit of the Wild Child; the Inner Child who can never get quite enough. If you are a true chocolate lover, then your soul and mine are interwined. CUPCAKES & YOO-HOO: (The blessing of the Yoo-Hoo) HP: Be it known that milk chocolate is not better that dark chocolate. HPS: Nor is dark chocolate better than milk chocolate. HP: For both are better than the falsely named "White Chocolate." HPS: And neither one is carob. HP: As the frosting is to the cupcake. HPS: So the creamy nougat is to the Milky Way Bar. BOTH: And when they are eaten, they are yummy in truth, for there is no greater snack in all the world than one made of chocolate. (The blessing of the cupcakes) HP: Frosting is keen, HPS: And the frosting is neat. BOTH: Great Goddess! Let's eat! Feasting and drinking(chocolate liquer, if possible), music and dance. Dismiss Quarters. HPS: Oh, ye mighty goodies of the _______________, We thank you for attending our rites and guarding our circle and ere you depart for your sweet and sticky realms, We say unto you, "N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best." ALL: "Chooooc-laaate." (After all the quarters have been dismissed, give a final, satisfying belch at the East.) Close circle. AUDIENCE WITH THE KEEPER OF WISDOM I sat on the cobblestone bridge, listening to the ancient song of the rushing waters in the brook below and contemplating the day's events. I had awakened this morning with the strange anticipation and wariness that generally accompanies the prediction of important occurrences in one's life. All day, I had gone about my usual routine, waiting and watching for something out of the ordinary - but to no avail. There had been nothing of signifance...just another normal day filled with the dull mundanity of household chores, grocery shopping and bill paying. Nothing more. I let out a heavy sigh, and turned my attention to the sheep grazing in the lush meadow. I pondered their lives and wondered if they ever felt the same anticipation I had experienced this morning. I smiled at the foolishness of my thoughts, knowing full well that the creatures of the field were content enough in the simpleness which life had to offer - ample food and water was all they required. No, the peaceful flock below couldn't be bothered with such nonsense. Maybe I should follow their lead and just turn my thoughts to the more mundane side of life. Looking down at my feet as they dangled over the rushing water, I became aware of the myriad of color that was reflected from the setting sun. Mesmerized by the beauty of the kaleidoscopic dance, I watched intently as the oranges, reds and purples whirled and twirled with each other on the surface of the brook. The rich shades of the sunset gradually faded into pastels and then, the irridescence of shimmering silver. An owl hooted nearby, jolting me fully back into reality. Good Goddess! Night had fallen! How long had I been there, lost in the absurdity of human thought? Obviously much too long, from the looks of things. I hurriedly scrambled to my feet, shivering as I gathered my shawl about my shoulders. The night had turned cool and damp, and the misty veil of fog was rolling into the valley at a rapid pace. The delicate breeze of early day had been replaced a heavy west wind, and my hair was whipping about my face and shoulders. Great! There was going to be a storm, and here I was - in the middle of nowhere - likely to be caught in it! As I neared the end of the bridge, I realized that it was too late. The fog had settled into a mist so dense and heavy, that I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. There was no use in searching for cover, as the visibility factor was nil. Aside from that, it was quite dangerous to wander blindly through the valley mists - even folks who knew the valley territory very well knew better than to try it. Several years earlier, one of the area residents had been caught in the steamy vapors while in search of a missing lamb, and had been found hours later - miles from the valley - still wandering about looking for his home. I cursed under my breath as I settled back onto the bridge to wait out the fog. No sooner than I'd gotten situated, the fog began to dissipate nearly as quickly as it had descended. The wind was still blowing in fierce gusts, but at least now, I reasoned, I should be able to find my way home. Without another thought, I hurried across the bridge and onto the path below. From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the silvery moonlight reflected on the water. Suddenly, I realized that something was wrong - genuinely wrong! The brook had ceased to run! Disbelieving, I rubbed my eyes and looked again. No, I wasn't seeing things! Despite the heavy winds and the decline of its course, the surface of the brook hadn't so much as a ripple. Goddess! The surface was as smooth as glass! Shock! That was it - I must be in shock! I began to conjure all sorts of excuses as to why my eyes were playing tricks on me. But then...it happened! The winds began to blow from all four directions at once, their forces concentrated at the center of the still and lifeless brook. A bit of mist was caught up in the forces of the gale - twirling this way and that, becoming larger in size and stronger in density - until all at once, the winds were hushed in deathly silence. There She stood - a beautiful and terrible visage - atop the glassy water. Robed and Hooded. Dark and black. Faceless. It was She! The Devourer of Souls. The Keeper of Wisdom. She Who stirred the Cauldron of Rebirth. The Shapeshifter. I shivered in fear and anticipation. From beneath the hood, She gazed upon me with the invisible eyes that saw all. Silently, She fixed Her eyes on mine and bade me not to turn away. Deeper and deeper into Her eyes I went. Deeper. Deeper still. A myriad of jewel-tone colors began to swirl in my very being - faster, darker, brighter - until I was the color and it was me! I began to feel ill. I knew I should turn away, but Her strength was such that I seemed incapable of the slightest movement. Just when I thought I would faint from terror, there was a tumultuous clap of thunder and I realized that it was too late. Goddess! My entire being had been consumed by Hers! The world began to change around me, and I found myself suddenly back in time. I witnessed firsthand the Tale of the Taliesin - which heretofore I had always thought a mere fairytale - and watched in horror as the Three Drops of Wisdom flew from the Cauldron and spilled onto Gwion Bach, imbuing him with infinite knowledge. I was taken on the frenzied chase between Cerridwen and Gwion, and felt my mortal body contort and twist with every shape that was shifted. As the greyhound, I tracked the hare who was Gwion. My muscles flexed again, and I dove into the water as the otter, chasing the salmon who just moments before, had been the hare. Gwion then took to the sky as a sparrow, and in flight, I swiftly pursued him as the hawk. I watched knowingly as Gwion, thinking himself quite safe, smugly turned himself into a single grain of wheat. And it was I, who in sorrow and pleasure, shifted into the black hen and supped upon that grain. I felt the swell of pregnancy and the pains of labor as I delivered the new-born babe. For the very first time, I began to understand...*really* understand! Suddenly, I was once again caught up in the rapid whirl of color. There was a blinding streak of blue-black lightning and after a moment of excruciating pain, I was hurled forcefully from the essence of the Goddess and back into my own! So frightening and traumatic was this experience, I wasn't really sure whether I was alive or dead! I drew a long breath, blinked my eyes and gingerly flexed my toes. Apparently, I was allright and everything seemed to be working okay! I quickly dusted myself off and got to my feet. We stood looking at each other - I from the bank, and She from her realm atop the water. Unexpectedly, She opened Her hand and held it out to me. Inside were three drops of liquid, sparkling like diamonds in the night. She tossed Her hand to the North, and one of the drops splashed into the water, forming a very large circle - the Circle of Causes and Necessity. I drank of its earthy waters and tasted the poignant flavor of lessons learned, as pieces of my life flashed before my eyes. She cast a second drop to the West, and a smaller circle appeared: The Circle of Blessedness. As I carefully sipped of its waters, my spirit left my body and for a split second, stood on the water facing the Wisdom Keeper before re-entering its physical realm. The third drop, She flung cautiously to the East. From it, too, a circle materialized - though much smaller than the rest: The Circle of the Infinite. As I bent to partake of its knowledge, She stopped me with Her upraised hand. I understood. Gently, I dipped my finger into the waters, and for a moment saw all the knowlege that is and ever will be! At that very moment, She raised Her hands skyward and Her form shifted into that of a great red dragon. Opening Her arms, She moved to the South and lovingly gathered all three circles to Her breast. The winds gusted from all four directions again, their forces centered toward the spot where She stood. I watched as She twirled furiously in the wind and in a matter of seconds, She was gone. The winds died quickly to a gentle breeze. The brook which had been so deathly still, quickly burst forth with new life. All was as it had been. It was just after daybreak, and the promise of a new beginning was well underway. I sat on the cobblestone bridge to contemplate with awe and wonder the night's events. I felt exhilarated, happy and humbled all at once! I had been visited by the She, The Stirrer of the Cauldron. I had been devoured and rebirthed again from Her body! I was newly alive with the mysteries she had unfolded to me! I finally understood! I jumped up from my seat and blew a kiss to the Triple Goddess in thanksgiving, then happily skipped across the bridge. As I neared the path toward home, the sheep were being let into the meadow for their morning repast. One of them had strayed from the flock and seemed to be coming in my direction. I walked toward him in an effort to herd him back to the others, and as I grew near, he raised his head and looked at me. Stroking him gently, I looked into his eyes and saw a strange look - an odd look - a look of anticipation and wariness. -Kalioppe- IMBOLG RITUAL Two women are selected to represent the Maiden and the Crone. the Priestess will represent the Mother. The members of the group should bring with them the candles which they will use for the year for blessing. The altar is at the Northeast and is covered with a white cloth. Evergreens are used as decoration. A basket filled with tiny bundles of straw or wheat rests on the altar [there should be one bundle for every person participating in the ritual], as well as two (2) white candles. A black ribbon at least twelve (12) inches in length is placed in the basket. A single white flower tied with a white ribbon (to symbolize Bride) and the wand rest together in front of the altar. Four (4) white candles stand between the quarter candles. The cauldron is placed at the South, and a white candle is situated inside. A dark colored scarf or shawl (for the Crone) and a bouquet of flowers (for the Maiden) are on the altar, as well as a single white taper (for the Mother). Full Circle is cast. The two women prepare "Bride's Bed." The MAIDEN and the CRONE pick up the flower and the wand respectively, and take them to the center of the Circle. They place the flower and the wand side by side in the center of the Circle, with the heads toward the altar. They place the altar candles on either side of the "bed" and light the candles. The two women and the Priestess stand around the bed and say together three times: The Maiden comes to bring us light! The Winter dies, and all is bright! The frozen ground shall disappear - And all shall sprout, for Spring is near! The Priestess now summons the two women, and the three of them stand in front of the altar, assuming their Triple-Goddess roles. The MAIDEN kisses the Priestess (MOTHER) on both cheeks and hands her a white candle. The CRONE lights the MOTHER's taper. The CRONE stands to her left. The MAIDEN drapes the shawl over the CRONE'S head and shoulders. The MAID stands to the MOTHER'S right and picks up the bouquet of flowers. The PRIESTESS says: Behold the three-fold Goddess; Maiden, Mother, and Crone; She is one - yet She is three Together and Alone Summer comes not - without Spring Without Summer, comes no Winter chill; Without the Winter, Spring isn't born The Three, life's cycles, fulfill! The Charge of the Goddess is then recited. After the recitation is finished the Priestess says: Now let us celebrate Imbolc! The MAIDEN picks up the besom and makes her way SLOWLY deosil around the inside edges Circle, ritually sweeping it clear of all that which is old, useless and unnecessary. MOTHER and CRONE walk behind her in stately procession. While sweeping, the MAID says: With this besom filled with power Sweep away the old and sour Sweep away the chill of death As Winter draws its last cold breath Round, round, round about Sweep the old and useless out! The Maiden replaces the besom and the women resume their places in front of the altar. The MAIDEN picks up the basket of straw bundles and presents each member of the group with one. The CRONE goes to the South, kneels before the cauldron and lights the candle inside. She explains to the group that the bundles of straw which they have been given are symbolic of Winter and Death, but also that any negativity with which they are charged will be burned along with it. A few moments of silence are allowed so that each person may charge their bundle with their own negative thoughts, habits and shortcomings. The CRONE then collects the bundles, walking widdershins. She then ties the bundles together with the black ribbon, lights the "community straw man" and places him in the cauldron to burn, saying: Thus we melt the Winter! And warm the breath of Spring! We bid adieu to what is dead, And greet each living thing. Thus we banish Winter! Thus we welcome Spring! The Rite of Cakes and Wine is appropriate at this time. All members have libation, sit and relax and visit amongst themselves. When libation is finished, the MAIDEN collects candles from the coveners to be blessed for use during the coming year, placing them in a basket. The basket is placed on the altar. The PRIESTESS says: I bless thee creatures of wax and light Casting out all negativity Serve your purpose, flaming bright Infused with magic, you shall be Instruments of light and strength Wick and wax though you may be I give you life of needed length To aid in creativity! In the Names of the Lord and Lady, so mote it be! The candles are then redistributed to the coven members. The Priestess says: As we close this celebration of Imbolg, let each of us find joy in the power of the returning Sun! As each new day dawns and the light of day becomes brighter and stronger, remember that your inner light should burn as brightly. Feel the changes in the earth around you, as the chill of Winter recedes and all sprouts in the greeness of fresh, new life. Remember the wonder you felt as you awakened from Maidenhood to Womanhood - from Boyhood to Manhood. Relive the joy of that awakening and heal any emotional scars you may have! Breathe deeply of the harmony of the Earth's new life and and rejoice in your own! Dearest Bride, Maiden of all that is fresh and new, we warmly thank you for attending our Rite of Imbolc. As this Circle is dissolved, we ask that you guide us in our new beginnings and inspire us with the fresh creativity that you bring to all life. Routine dissolution. Outdoor libation to the Lord and Lady. -Kalioppe- 812 Courtney Sikeston, MO 63801 This ritual was written at a time when I did not have a qualified Priest in my group. However, it may easily be adapted for those groups in which the Priestess and Priest work together. It may be just as easily adapted to solitary work. SAMHAIN RITUAL Place an apple and pomegranate upon the altar. There should also be a "planted" pot of earth for each participant - these may be arranged on the altar as well, if there is ample space. Instruments of divination may be placed within the Circle perimeter for use during the ritual if you wish. Arrange the altar as usual and decorate with Autumn leaves, pumpkins, etc. The Circle is cast and purified the Circle in the usual manner. Dancing around the Circle in a shuffle step (deosil), all chant three times: The Moon is bright, the Crone is old The body lifeless - the bones so cold We all live and pay our dues To die in ones and threes and twos. Death, dance and play the harp Piercing silence in the dark The Woman's old with withered limbs Death beckons Her to dance with Him As She accepts the Dance of Death The Earth is cooled by ghostly breath To lie in dormancy once more To have Her strength and life restored Go to the Western Quarter and draw an invoking pentagram with the athame to open the gate. Then evoke the dead by saying: All ye spirits who walk this night - Hearken! Hearken to my call! I bid you in our Circle join! Enter! Enter - one and all! Come ye, spirits of the dead: Be ye spirit of plant or pet Or human being who still roams! Into this Circle you are let! Speak to us of things unknown! Lend your energies to this rite! To speed your journey, we have joined On this sacred Samhain night! All ye spirits who walk this night - Hearken! Hearken to my call! I bid you in our Circle join! Enter! Enter - one and all! Bestow blessings upon the dead, saying: Oh Mighty Pan of the Summerlands: Guardian of the beloved dead We pour forth love on those you keep Safely, in your peaceful stead We bless those who have walked the path That someday, we as well, shall rove We offer peace unto their souls While resting in your arms, below Now is the time for divination (Ouija Board, pendulum, cards, etc.) and communication with those who have gone on before us. Allow plenty of time for this. [Note: I have found that it is helpful to have a tape recorder handy within the Circle for recording any communications that may be "channeled" during this time. Some people disagree with this suggestion, saying that the metal of this electronic device causes scattered energies in the Circle; however, if the recorder has been cleansed and purified as the rest of the ritual tools, the problem seems to be resolved.] When the divinatory processes are completed, the Priestess goes to the Western Quarter and draw the banishing pentagram, saying: Blessings be upon thee, oh wondrous Spirits of the Summerlands. We humbly thank thee for your presence in our Circle and honor you in celebration this sacred night. We beseech thee, oh Pan, keeper of the sacred dead, embrace once again those souls within your keep and hold tightly to your breast those which have been lost and wandering. Grant them safe passage to the Summerland, where they may rest peacefully in your strength until they are refreshed and reborn again in perfect love. We bid thee all a fond farewell. So mote it be! The gate is now closed. The Priestess goes to the altar and hold up the pomegranate, saying: Behold the pomegranate, fruit of Life ... The athame is plunged into the pomegranate, splitting it open to display the seeds. She says: Whose seeds lie in the dormancy of Death! The Priestess eats one of the seeds, saying: I Taste the seeds of Death. The pomegranate is then passed hand to hand through the participants of the ritual, each eating a seed and saying to the next person, "Taste the seeds of Death." The Priestess then holds up the apple, saying: Behold the apple: fruit of wisdom, fruit of Death... She then cuts the apple crosswise, saying: Whose symbolism rewards us with life eternal! She holds up the apple, displaying the inner pentagram, and says: Behold the five-fold star - the promise of rebirth! Consecrate the fruit and wine. Each person then tastes of the apple and sips the wine, saying to the next person: Taste the fruit of rebirth and sip from the cup of wine of Life. After libation, the Priestess presents each member of the group with a small pot of earth, planted with three seeds [preferably rue or lavendar]. She briefly explains to the group that this is the season of the seed - it is a time of dormancy, but also a time of re-generation for growth. Further, as the seed rests in the earth, they should also take time to rest and re-evaluate their lives, metaphorically planting only those values which will enrich and enhance the growth within the Divine Self. She then instructs them to name the seeds within their pots with three values they wish to incorporate into their lives, knowing that as the seeds sprout with new life, their lives will be new, as well. After the presentation, all join hands and hold them skyward. PRIESTESS Thus is the Circle of Rebirth. All pass from this life through the great god, Pan But through My love you are all reborn In the cycles of nature - through the Cosmic Plan. In living we die - in dying we live The fruit is first seed, yet seed comes from the fruit In the mystery of life and death and rebirth The Circle turns ever, and I am its root. ALL RESPOND The Sun conceived in Darkness, cold In the Shadow of Death, a Life unfolds A shred of Light begins to burn From Death comes Life - the Circle turns. Dismiss Quarters and Dissolve Circle. PRIESTESS The rite is ended. ALL Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again! Outdoor libation to the Lord and Lady, and the spirits of the dead. -Kalioppe- A BRIEF ASSESSMENT OF NEOPAGAN THEOLOGY (As offered by Cyprian at the Pan-Pagan Festival August, 1980 CREATION... Physicists currently interpret physical creation, that is, the universe as we know it, as having occurred within a time span o about three minutes...the "Big Bang." Our physical universe is thought to have been created with the explosion of a hyper-dense particle which contained every bit of matter and energy that now exists in the universe, including the matter which forms our living bodies as we meet here today. This hyper-dense super molecule also is thought to have been quite small. Dr. Leon Friedman, director of the FermiLab near Chicago, has indicated it may have ben no larger than a basket ball. Into this "ball" was jammed all matter and all energy in our universe. It remained there until some creative force, some creative urge, disrupted the status of this primal "egg" and set into being the universe as we know it. this event occurred with the so-called "Big Bang," echoes of which have been detected by scientific instruments. Our interpretation of the nature of this creative force or creative urge is opposed to that of Judeo-Christianity in that we perceive it as feminine...they see it as masculine. We hold that pre-creation was feminine and this divergence in concept of first Things, creation, forever separates our Neopagan world-view from the Judeo-Christians. Briefly consider this, and you may want to dwell upon it later, our Goddess, of Her own will, receives Her consort, the God whom she created, and from Their union our creation is ever revived and sustained. The Christian reviver and sustainer, on the other hand, was conceived in a most singular manner. The omnipotent God sent a neuter third party messenger, and angel, to announce to a virgin that she was pregnant with the child, Jesus. So there. Zap! What a put-down! What revival and sustenance can we find in such a sterile and asexual concept? Even masculine old Zeus copulated with human females so at least somebody got some fun out of the process! What we Neopagans find difficult to understand is why Judeo-Christianity so vehemently turned its back on sex and not just sex as a physical act but also sex as a gender, specifically, sex as a feminine gender. When we seek to deal with Creation we also must situate our place as human beings within the totality of Creation. The orthodox Judeo-Christian view gives humans a special place within Creation; that is, that we are not part of general creation but a special creation..."Man was created in the image of God"...and the rest of creation is our plaything..."Yours is the earth and everything on it." There is no need to expound upon our rejection of these two fundamental points: of course we are not created in any special way, any more than is a rock or a tree or a raccoon or a galaxy, nor do we have dominion over anything. We are a part of general creation along with every other particle of matter in the universe. I hope you grasp the vast difference this makes; it forever separates us from the Judeo-Christian heritage and it s a gulf that cannot be bridged. They must forever consider themselves special and we must forever consider ourselves general and one with creation. And it is given to us to look at a grain of sand and in that grain see the sum total of creation and to see ourselves as part of it and to gibe thanks for the creative force of the Goddess and Her consort that sustains this creation. CHAOS... With Chaos, as with so many other concepts, we must think on at least two levels, the physical and the mythical, to come to any sort of understanding of ourselves and what we really believe about our place in creation. And it is this belief, this understanding that is the ultimate determination of how we live as human beings upon this beautiful Earth. That is what we Neopagans are trying to do right now: learn to think differently that Western man has thought in nearly two-thousand years in order that we may live in a renewed relationship with creation. It is an exciting adventure. Before there was form, there was Chaos. We may well suppose Chaos represents the disordered formlessness of matter and energy in that initial "Big Bang" of the primordial egg in those first three minutes when creation began. Mythologically, we see this formlessness as before the Earth and Sky were separated, as before the four elements, actually the four states of matter, had coalesced into their separate forms. The myths speak darkly of this time, of the births of the Titans, Cyclops and 100-handed monsters, of a father who devours his own young...what better way to represent Chaos! We may assume, too, we have our own dark and personal counterpart to this primal Chaos. Is it that black win that whips at the raveled edge o sanity? I believe our ancestors felt far more keenly than we can understand in this present age a constant fear that what order they had managed to being to their lives, indeed, what order they could see in creation around them, would suddenly collapse and they would be plunged into chaos and madness. Greek myths are redolent with stories of madness and possession. Even great Heracles fell victim. It is no wonder, then, the gods of chaos are said to have been chained beneath the Earth, castrated, even devoured. But they still live, they still can escape. Brrr! And to some degree, escape they have from time to time. How else can we account for the chaos of war, of a Hitler, a Napoleon, a Viet Nam? Modern psychology recognizes the chaotic madness that dwells in all of us, ever ready to pounce and destroy. We may think of it as a chained and raging primal demi-god, that psychologists probably use more scientific language but when that chain snaps, the result is the same; concentration camps, starvation, and on and on. History is too full of such dismal lists. There is no need to go on with a recitation or horrors. But that does turn us at once to the next topic...the consideration of evil. EVIL... Every religion, great and small, has had to wrestle with the problem of evil because evil poses a fundamental question: how can an all-omnipotent god who is all good permit evil to exist?...and this is whether you interpret evil as some dark malevolent Satan or whether you see it as death camps, war, starvation or whatever. Judeo-Christian theologians have wrestled with the problem of evil since the very beginnings of the Judeo-Christian faith. When boiled down, all the more reasonable answers go something like this: The all-powerful God permits evil to exist so that man, who is created in God's image, may have a choice between good and evil. Ultimately, in the Last Days, evil will be defeated and woe betide those who made the wrong choice! At first glance this seems satisfactory but we Neopagans cannot accept it because it sets man apart, as being different from the rest of creation. This is absolutely contrary to what we believe. We hold that man is VERY MUCH a natural part of creation and we have no special place in it. We have no more choice between good and evil than the stars or a bumblebee. To the non-Pagan, then, who asks us to explain the existence of evil we must give a two-fold reply: one, we are not special creatures so we cannot truly know what evil is or if it even exists; that which we perceive with our limited faculties as evil may not be evil at all within the creative scheme. Two, our three-fold Goddess is possessed of a dark visage, the Hag, which we no more understand than we do the Lusting Nymph or the Loving Mother-Creator. The Hag, the Old Woman who lays us out and prepares our remains for the journey to the Land behind the North Wind, is no "Satan" but an integral part of the creative process, which we see as our three-fold Goddess. If we are pressed hard enough, at the end we must say a Hitler, a Vietnam war, a starving child are all part of the creative process although we cannot pretend to know exactly how or why. We must confess, too, that a statement we simply don't know and cannot know the nature of evil is easily interpreted as a cop-out. This is not rue in our case, though, because we do not believe in special creation, that is, man is not a special creature molded in the image of the Creator and sharing the Creator's mind. No, man is simply a part of the overall creative urge and therefore it is not given to us to know good and evil anymore than it is to my two cat friends, Buzz and Fang. But the problem of what we think of as evil is not resolved by casting it aside with a simplistic explanation we are not given to know what it is...although we Neo-Pagans, I think, pretty generally agree this is a true statement. But just because it is true does not put the question to rest. There is another approach, however, and this approach to the problem makes a lot of ultimate sense for us Neo-Pagans. As stated earlier, the astro-physicists and we agree on the probable pre-creation existence of a super-molecule or, in mythical terms, a "world egg." This egg exploded to create the universe, Creation, as we know it. If we accept this cosmology, and it makes sense with our mythos, then we must also accept the fact there is only a finite amount of matter and energy in creation. There can be no "new" matter or energy, only matter and energy that have been recycled. And were not only matter and energy re-cycled and interchanged then we would run out of matter and energy and creation would reach a state of status wherein matter and energy were forever locked in cold sterility. Don't we, in fact represent this constant play-interplay of matter and energy as the reviving and renewing union of the Goddess and Her consort? Even more germane to our problem of evil; may that which we perceive so dimly as evil actually be an essential part of this re-cycling of matter/energy? If so, then we have the key example of our Wiccan/Neopagan belief in BALANCE. That is, creative forces must be balanced by destructive forces in order to preserve the interplay between matter and energy...and we represent this by the copulation of the Goddess and Her consort. Perhaps we shouldn't fear our Goddess as Hag nor run in fear when Pan tosses his horns and roars. Perhaps dimly we can understand life and death, construction and destruction, the coming together and the tearing apart, are necessary to sustain Creation. SIN... The true nature of sin generally is misunderstood in Western society and has been for many centuries...one is tempted to suspect, by design. Sin does not involve right and wrong or good and bad; these are moral and ethical concepts. Sin concerns itself with man's deliberate and willful separation from God and man's disobedience of the Law. The Law is that agreement established between man and God: "I'll do this if you'll do that." Although all the major religions and even the so-called primitive religions deal with concepts which my be equated with sin, only Christianity has developed sin to a fine art...indeed, it may be the single pivotal idea which not only separates Christianity from our Paganism but also from the rest of the religious world. Obviously, the "sin and guilt" trip has paid pretty good dividends within the Judeo-Christian heritage. But these dividends have been garnered at a terrible, terrible price. We Wiccans and Neopagans may be almost alone in rejecting the concept of sin. Yet, we must reject it if we are to follow logically our view of creation and our place in it. Put it together this way; can a tree sin? no, it can only be a tree; can your cat sin? no, he can only be a cat; can a human sin? no, he can only be a human. In other words, none of us can be wither more or less than our creation. Now, remember what we said about general creation. If we accept this idea of general creation, that we are no different from the other life around us, then we are just as incapable of true sin as the tree or the cat, we can only be what we are...human. To accept the idea of sin means you must also accept the idea of special creation, that our human race is somehow special and god-like and therefore is capable of sin, and if you think so then you are in the wrong pew. It seems almost blasphemous to me to think our Goddess would in some way create us flawed and imperfect...creatures somehow able to deny our own creation...did She create the tree imperfect, or your cat? Then why should we be??? We are created as humans to be humans and we should find joy in that fact, not sin. This is the great freedom of Wicca and Neopaganism; that we are free of sin and its guilt trip...that we are left with the admonition that all joy, all mirth, all pleasure are our Goddess' rites. Fully stated, our Rede declares, "An' it harm none, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Law, in this usage and as we've mentioned, refers to the relationship between Man and god and this Rede, then, is in total keeping with our contention that man is not special creation but has just the same relationship to divinity as does any other part of creation. If you have trouble dealing with this, then you are confusing sin and ethics. And ethics is our next topic. ETHICS... Unlike sin, which is a religious concept and which may be considered as a constant from one age to another...that is, willful separation from God must be the same for any time and place...ethics involve a moral choice between what is deemed right and wrong and with this we come to the realization that which is right in one time and one society, is wrong in another. Thus, the moral and ethical standards of, say, 18th century England and 20th century America hardly are congruent despite a common heritage. But it is at exactly this point that we Wiccan/Neopagans have introduced a novel idea: a moral and ethical constant: "Eight words the wiccan Rede fulfill; An' it harm none, do what ye will." Now, you and I are fully aware that outsiders first learning of our Rede smirk behind their hands and conjure in their minds all sorts of images or orgies and such. Well, I've been a Crafter for thirty years and more, and I've yet to attend a Craft orgy. so, if any of you are planning on throwing one, I wish you'd invite me, and do hurry before I get too old to enjoy it! All of which is by way of saying the Rede is widely misunderstood. It simply sounds too much like an unbridled license for hedonism. Of course it is not. But to seek its true meaning we must first go back a few centuries. the earliest known literary reference to our Rede, "Do what ye will," appears in that marvelous Renaissance satire, Gargantua, written by the French doctor-monk, Francios Rabelais, in 1534. In Book I, a certain monk is very helpful to Gargantua in winning a battle and Gargantua offers him several rich abbeys as reward but the monk rebukes Gargantua, saying, "For how shall I be able to rule over others that have not full power and command over myself?" The monk then asks Gargantua to found an abbey like no other and thus is established the Abbaye de Theleme and the rule of the order is, "Fay ce que voudras"...Do what thou wilt. And this is no libertine license but it is an essential and straightforward clue to our understanding of the Rede. The second clue to our Rede occurred during the summer of 1918 when Aleister Crowley painted on the Hudson River cliffs south of Kingston, New York, this slogan: EVERY MAN AND WOMAN IS A STAR! DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW Crowley, a man of great scholarship and magick, had recognized the truth expressed in Rabelais and taken it a step further, which Rabelais could not have dared. (Rabelais' printer was burned at the stake for heresy.) Now, keep in min the Law refers to the relationship established between man and his creation/divinity. All religions have this relationship spelled out as their Law and this Law usually is employed to establish the ethical/moral relationship relationship between men because it is also the ethical/moral relationship between man and God. One, then, is used to justify the other. Thus, there was the attempt to trap Jesus between the religious Law and the moral law but he very handily fielded the question by answering: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." And as Jesus recognized a new Law so Crowley saw in Rabelais' "Fay ce que voudras" a further interpretation of the Law and he expressed it in red paint on the Hudson River cliffs. At this point is is possible, even tempting, to go off on some very fine semantic nit-picking but that is not our purpose and it would be counter-productive because we are simplistic religionists and such goings on would be like trying to determine how many elementals can dance on the point of an athame and it would only serve to muddy some already confused thinking. Instead, let me offer two very broad brush strokes based on the clues already offered. If these are helpful, then I am more than rewarded; if they are useful thinking tools, then I am twice blessed! So here goes: When Gargantua's helpful monk refused the offer of rich abbeys, saying, "For how shall I be able to rule over others that have not full power and command over myself?" he established the first part of our understanding of the Rede. Unless and until such time as you are able to exert your own will over yourself, "full power and command," then our Rede, "Do as ye will," has very little meaning because you can't truly will anything, and you are no more than a plaything for every wind that blows. Hardly could you have rule over others. Thus, the first part of the monk's statement, "For how shall I be able to rule over others," has within it the implicit meaning of the first part of our Rede, "An' it harm none." what the monk is saying here is, "How can I be responsible for someone else until I can be responsible for myself?" It would be interesting to further press this declaration because it stands in contradiction to some classical Judeo-Christian concepts concerning man's responsibility to God. And that, no doubt, is the reason Rabelais did not do it. Remember what happened to his printer! However, Crowley did press the issue another step. If self-responsibility is the Law, then Man is responsible for himself and God is responsible for Himself. So, the interplay between God and Man suddenly is changed; god must be God and man must be Man. And now we are back to where we said we were in our brief discussion of sin...Man can only be man, he can be nothing else. But he is responsible for that. I hope all of us see in some way the very deep and even mystical and certainly always constant ethical demands placed upon us by our Rede. The Rede is demanding but it yields freedom from the chronic guilt of the past twenty centuries. And it does not leave us the luxury of a cop-out, be it God, Satan, Karma, Fate or a white mule beside a red barn (the mule counts two points). WORLD VIEW... In this topic I use the term "World View" to mean how we, as Neopagans, see the material creation around us. I know I already have intimated a great deal about this in previous topics but there is such a fundamental difference between us and the rest of Western society that I believe we must deal with it more directly. To do this, we will work from two premises: 1. That Christianity has taught, objectively and subjectively, material creation somehow is "bad, sinful, evil and corruptive" as opposed to the so-called pure spiritual creation. that the Earth, a material creation, is only a way-station toward some higher spiritual creation, be it heaven or hell, and that this earthly creation eventually will be destroyed come the Millenia/Last Judgement as it must be because it is "sinful" and corruptive of spiritual man. 2. That Neopaganism teaches there is no division between material and spiritual creation and neither can be considered inherently good or bad, pure or corruptive. that the Earth is our home, our only home, and is not some battle ground designed to determine our future existence in a spiritual heaven or hell. There are deep-rooted implications behind these two differing points of view. In the first case, because the material creation in which we live and are "tested" is somehow inferior and sinful and is only a way-station en route to a "higher" spiritual creation then we are free to despise and abuse this material creation as we see fit. "Yours is the Earth and everything in it." Love Canal, then, has a perfectly sound and reasonable Judeo-Christian premise. However, in the second case, if we, as part of general creation, abuse our Earth, we are abusing ourselves, exactly as Love Canal had demonstrated. And we must at the end finally admit the ecological frustration and fury of this age is because the whimpering ecologists and the Sierra Club have no theology to guide them...only guilt. The Judeo-Christian trip all over again. I'm sure we stand in a much better position. But don't make the mistake of thinking planetary plunder is an invention of the 20th Century and its technology...far from it. Man has abused his Earth since pre-historic times. Primitive farming and herding practices are among the most destructive ecological force know. The stripping of the Mediterranean Basin is ample proof. So is the collapse of the one great Mayan civilization and the fact that once heavily forested Scotland was forced to import timber for the Baltic as early as the Middle Ages. Indeed, we might well argue the concept of a "sinful" material creation with its implicit license to ravage had to be invented to excuse the earthly pillage that had been going on for several thousand years. REINCARNATION... I sometimes refer to reincarnation as "the secret belief" because any number of Christians have admitted to me they believe in reincarnation as opposed to orthodox Christian teaching or had had experiences which can only be interpreted as a reincarnitave experience. whether these people actually understand what reincarnation really is may be open to question. At the outset, then, let's establish the very essential difference between reincarnation and resurrection, as taught in Christian doctrine. Resurrection means at some future time, the Millenia, the Last Judgement, etc. you will be pulled from the grave intact in your present body and you will be in full awareness of yourself and your previous earthly life; that is, you will retain your personal identity. thus, with your present body and personal identity you may be meaningfully rewarded in Heaven or amply punished in Hell. Heaven and Hell have no meaning and no promise or threat unless these conditions of body and identity are met. What good would it be to punish or reward a disembodied spirit with no knowledge of what it was being praised or punished for? Our concept of reincarnation does not meet either of these criteria. Reincarnation, unlike resurrection, does not automatically imply ultimate survival of the physical body and retention of personal identity. So, any discussion of a Pagan heaven or hell is simply meaningless. What reincarnation says is survival of life-energy and life-energy has no one body and no one identity. One of the best examples to illustrate this concept of reincarnation is the later stage of the Osiris-Horus myth. In this myth, Osiris is killed by Seth but he is reincarnated as the child Horus and, in various forms, the myth repeats. There is no indication Horus ever remembers himself as Osiris. thus it is with us, sometimes we have a sort of "leakage" across this reincarnation insulator and, with some exceptions, the best we ever get are only picture-postcard glimpses of our previous life-energies. ESCHATOLOGY... Eschatology is only a fancy word for the study of "last things"...that is, death, the Last Judgement, and so forth. For us, eschatology must have an entirely different meaning because we really have no "last things." We are involved in cycles, not beginnings and endings. As Pagans we must view the entire continuum of matter, energy, life force and even time itself as circular. We do not see these things as a piece of string with a beginning and an ending but as that same piece of string tied together to form a circle...our Circle...a repeating cyclical process. Although definitive physical proof still is lacking, there is a growing belief among some astronomers and astro-physicists that the expanding galaxies of our creation will one day stop their head-long flight and by mutual gravitation slowly and then faster and faster plunge back together again to form a new primal super-molecule world egg. From there, it is only reasonable to assume the creative urge of our Goddess once more will explode this primordial egg to begin a fresh creation. And, thus, we have come full circle. PAGAN MUSINGS [Tony Kelly of the Selene Community in Wales wrote this piece in l970. It was published in l97l in the British edition of The Waxing Moon under the title "Pagan Movement." Under the title "Pagan Musings" it has passed from hand to hand and group to group all over the United States. Tony Kelly was one of the founders of the Pagan Movement in the British Isles, which, with the Pagan Way in the United States, began as a single group of researchers into ancient goddess cults. They later divided, agreeing that each country required a different approach in bringing back Paganism.] We're of the old religion, sired of Time, and born of our beloved Earth Mother. For too long the people have trodden a stony path that goes only onward beneath a sky that goes only upwards. The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for the people are scattered in this barren age and the winds carry his plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy moors and into the lonely grasses. who know now the ancient tongue of the Moon? And who speaks still with the Goddess? The magic of the land of Lirien and the old pagan gods have withered in the dragons breath; the old ways of magic have slipped into the well of the past, and only the rocks now remember what the moon told us long ago, and what we learned from the trees, and the voices of grasses and the scents of flowers. We're pagans and we worship the pagan gods, and among the people there are witches yet who speak with the moon and dance with the Horned One. But a witch is a rare pagan in these days, deep and inscrutable, recognizable only by her own kind, by the light in her eyes and the love in her breast, by the magic in her hands and the lilt of her tongue and by her knowledge of the real. But the wiccan way is one way. There are many; there are pagans the world over who worship the Earth Mother and the Sky Father, the Rain God and the Rainbow Goddess, the Dark One and the Hag on the mountain, the Moon Goddess and the Little People in the mists on the other side of the veil. A pagan is one who worships the goddesses and gods of nature, whether by observation or by study, whether by love or admiration, or whether in their sacred rites with the Moon, or the great festivals of the Sun. Many suns ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across the pagan sky, man grew out of believing in the gods. He has yet to grow out disbelieving in them. He who splits the Goddess on an existence-nonexistence dichotomy will earn himself only paradoxes, for the gods are not so divided and nor the magic lands of the Brother of Time. Does a mind exist? Ask her and she will tell you yes, but seek her out, and she'll elude you. She in in every place, and in no place, and you'll see her works in all places, but herself in none. Existence was the second-born from the Mother's womb and contains neither the first-born, nor the unborn. Show us your mind, and we'll show you the gods! No matter that you can't, for we can't show you the gods. But come with us and the Goddess herself will be our love and the God will call the tune. But a brass penny for your reason; for logic is a closed ring, and the child doesn't validate the Mother, nor the dream the dreamer. And what matter the wars of opposites to she who has fallen in love with a whirlwind or to the lover of the arching rainbow. But tell us of your Goddess as you love her, and the gods that guide your works, and we'll listen with wonder, for to do less would be arrogant. but we'll do more, for the heart of man is aching for memories only half forgotten, and the Old Ones only half unseen. We'll write the old myths as they were always written and we'll read them on the rocks and in the caves and in the deep of the greenwood's shade, and we'll hear them in the rippling mountain streams and in the rustling of the leaves, and we'll see them in the storm clouds, and in the evening mists. We've no wish to create a new religion for our religion is as old as the hills and older, and we've no wish to bring differences together. Differences are like different flowers in a meadow, and we are all one in the Mother. What need is there for a pagan movement since our religion has no teachings and we hear it in the wind and feel it in the stones and the Moon will dance with us as she will? There is a need. For long the Divider has been among our people and the tribes of man are no more. The sons of the Sky Father have all but conquered nature, but they have poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for the butterflies are dying and the night draws on. A curse on the conqueror! But not of us, for they curse themselves for they are nature too. They have stolen our magic and sold it to the mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has no outlet for they fear the real for the One who guards the path. Where are the pagan shrines? And where do the people gather? Where is the magic made? And where are the Goddess and the Old Ones? Our shrines are in the fields and on the mountains, in the stars and in the wind, deep in the greenwood and on the algal rocks where two streams meet. but the shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms of the Moon for our ancient rites to be with our gods as we were of old, we would be stopped by the dead who now rule the Mother's land and claim rights of ownership on the Mother's breast, and make laws of division and frustration for us. We can no longer gather with our gods in a public place and the old rites of communion have been driven from the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where barely a handful of heathens have remained to guard the old secrets and enact the old rites. there is magic in the heath far from the cold grey society, and there are islands of magic hidden in the entrails of the metropoles behind closed doors, but the people are few, and the barriers between us are formidable. The old religion has become a dark way, obscure, and hidden in the protective bosom of the night. Thin fingers turn the pages of a book of shadows while the sunshine seeks in vain his worshippers in his leafy glades. Here, then, is the basic reason for a Pagan Movement; we must create a pagan society wherein everyone shall be free to worship the goddesses and gods of nature, and the relationship between a worshipper and her gods shall be sacred and inviolable, provided only that in her love of her own gods, she doesn't curse the names of the gods of others. It's not yet our business to press the law-makers with undivided endeavour to unmake the laws of repression and, with the Mother's love, it may never become our business for the stifling tides of dogmatism are at last already in ebb. Our first work, and our greatest wish, is to come together, to be with each other in our tribes for we haven't yet grown from the Mother's breast to the stature of the gods. We're of the earth, and sibs to all the children of wild nature, born long ago in the warm mud of the ocean floor; we were together then, and we were together in the rain forests long before that dark day when, beguiled by the pride of the Sky Father, and forgetful of the Mother's love, we killed her earlier-born children and impoverished the old genetic pool. The Red child lives yet in America; the Black Child has not forsaken the gods; the old Australians are still with their nature gods; the Old Ones still live deep in the heart of Mother India, and the White Child has still a foot on the old wiccan way, but Neanderthaler is no more and her magic faded as the Lli and the Archan burst their banks and the ocean flowed in to divide the Isle of Erin from the land of the White Goddess. Man looked with one eye on a two-faced god when he reached for the heavens and scorned the Earth which alone is our life and our provider and the bosom to which we have ever returned since the dawn of Time. He who looks only to reason to plum the unfathomable is a fool, for logic is an echo already implicit i the question, and it has no voice of its own; but he is no greater fool than he who scorns logic or derides its impotence from afar, but fears to engage in fair combat when he stands on his opponent's threshold. don't turn your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly; but confound him and he'll yield for his code of combat is honorable. so here is more of the work of the Pagan Movement. Our lore has become encrusted over the ages with occult trivia and the empty vapourings of the lost. The occult arts are in a state of extreme decadence, astrology is in a state of disrepute and fears to confront the statistician's sword; alien creeds oust our native arts and, being as little understood as our own forgotten arts, are just as futile for their lack of understanding, and more so for their unfamiliarity. Misunderstanding is rife. Disbelief is black on every horizon, and vampires abound on the blood of the credulous. Our work is to reject the trivial, the irrelevant and the erroneous, and to bring the lost children of the Earth Mother again into the court of the Sky Father where reason alone will avail. Belief is the deceit of the credulous; it has no place in the heart of a pagan. But while we are sad for those who are bemused by Reason, we are deadened by those who see no further than his syllogisms as he turns the eternal wheel of the Great Tautology. We were not fashioned in the mathematician's computations, and we were old when the first alchemist was a child. We have walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green Thinks; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many and the many in the one; we know the Silver Maid of the moonlight and the sounds of the cloven feet. We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns, and we've seen the spells of the enchantress, and Time be stilled. We've been into eternal darkness where the Night Mare rides and rode her to the edge of the Abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face of the Rising Sun. spin a spell or words and make a magic knot; spin it on the magic loom and spin it with the gods. Say it in the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in her name. Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a stone. There are no signposts on the untrod way, but we'll make our rituals together and bring them as our gifts to the Goddess and her God in the great rites. Here, then, is our work in the Pagan Movement; to make magic in the name of our gods, to share our magic where the gods would wish it, and to come together in our ancient festivals of birth, and life, of death and of change in the old rhythm. We'll print the rituals that can be shared in the written work; we'll do all in our power to bring the people together, to teach those who would learn, and to learn from those who can teach. We will initiate groups, bring people to groups, and groups to other groups in our common devotion to the goddess and gods of nature. We will not storm the secrets of any coven, nor profane the tools, the magic, and still less, the gods of another. We'll collect the myths of the ages, of our people and of the pagans of other lands, and we'll study the books of the wise and we'll talk to the very young. And whatever the pagan needs in her study, or her worship, then it is our concern, and the Movement's business to do everything possible to help each other in our worship of the gods we love. We are committed with the lone pagan on the seashore, with he who worships in the fastness of a mountain range or she who sings the old chant in a lost valley far from the metalloid road. We are committed with the wanderer, and equally with the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's milk in the darkness of the industrial webs. We are committed too with the coven, with the circular dance in the light of the full moon, with the great festivals of the sun, and with the gatherings of the people. We are committed to build our temples in the towns and in the wilderness, to buy the lands and the streams from the landowners and give them to the Goddess for her children's use, and we'll replant the greenwood as it was of old for love of the dryad stillness, and for love of our children's children. When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure, and the sun never more rises unrenowned nor the moon ride in the skies unloved; when the stones tell of the Horned God and the greenwood grows deep to call back her own ones, then our work will be ended and the Pagan Movement will return to the beloved womb of our old religion, to the nature goddesses and gods of paganism. --------------------------------------------------------------- The Pit The Lord looked askance at the Fool, who was busy making faces behind the Lady's back. "So, which of your Aspects have you enjoyed the most?" he said. The Fool looked up, wiggling his ears. "Stop that!" grinned the Lord, "I'd really like to know!" "Well.....I suppose that it would be a toss-up between Dionysus, Tyl Eulenspiegel, and Krishna, I guess. Tyl had a whopping good time, Dionysus got to be pretty much drunk, mostly, and Krishna had those sweet little milk-maids......THAT was a good time! But Coyote gets to do most everything. I guess I like Him the best." The Lord sat back against a tree, folded His hands, and smiled. "Yeah, ol' Coyote gets to do everything all right...except catch the Roadrunner," he said. "Well," said the Fool, with a lopsided grin, "I guess I'm the only One of Us that perpetually chases Myself!" The Lady turned, and, Aspecting the Nymph, dropped a large grasshopper down the Fool's back. She giggled, and ran off over the fields of Summerland. The Lord laughed, pounding His fists on the ground as the Fool jumped and twisted, trying to reach the insect. Between whoops of laughter, He said, "Did you ever figure out what 'Updoc' was?" "Shaddup!" said the Fool. --------------------------------------------------------------- The Fool leaned back against the brick wall of the alley and said, "I'd like to tell you a story. It seems that a man fell into a deep pit, and couldn't get himself out. He was in a world of hurt, and pretty unhappy. Pretty soon, a Subjectivist type of person came along and said, 'I feel for you down there,' but did nothing." "An Objectivist wandered by next, and said, 'It's logical that someone would fall down there.' But he just stood around looking too." "A Pharisee said, 'Only bad people fall into a pit,' and put his nose in the air and kept walking." The Fool took a drag from his cigarette and then flipped it expertly into a nearby puddle. Somewhere in the distance of the city a siren wailed. "Then, a mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit. But all he did was calculate." "A news reporter wanted the exclusive story on his pit, but was too busy interviewing everyone in sight to help." "A fanatic fundamentalist shouted, 'You deserve your pit!'" "Then a government tax-man asked if he was paying taxes on the pit." "A self-pitying person then whined, 'You haven't seen anything until you've seen MY pit!'" "Then a Christian Scientist came by, and said, 'Just believe that you're not in a pit.' But that didn't seem to help." He paused, and brushed His hair back from His eyes. After looking around that those who were listening, He continued. "An optimist said, 'Things could be worse!' But the pessimist disagreed, and said, 'Things -will- get worse!' " "A Wiccan said, 'MURPHY! You &*$%^#@,' while a New Ager jumped into the pit to share the experience." A couple of people laughed at this, a bit nervously. "A Baha'i looked over the edge of the pit and said, 'See the pit as a Spiritual Experience!' while a Moslem murmured that it was God's Will that he was in the pit." "A Satanist just laughed at the man in the pit and kept walking." "A conspiracist rubbed his hands together in glee, and said, '-They- threw you into the pit! I -knew- it!'" "A Jew said, 'Why are we -always- in a pit?' " "A Communist shouted 'Why are you in the People's Pit without permission?'" "An Alcoholic muttered to himself, 'It's not -my- fault you're in the pit.....' " "A Liberal said, 'Those Conservatives must have dug this pit!'" "A Conservative said, 'See where Liberalism has gotten you?' " "A TV Evangelist came by and promptly took up a collection from the bystanders." " Then, several well-meaning people came by, and wanted to help, but they were too busy arguing whether to throw him a ladder, or a shovel, or to hire a helicopter with a rope ladder, or to call the fire department or police to manage to get anything done." "A well-known radio cult hunter said, between requests for money, 'See! Satan threw you into the pit!'" "A doper looked blearily at him, and said, a bit incoherently, 'Far out! Got any more pit?'" "A Hindu said that the man's karma had put him into the pit, and a television news commentator shouted, 'Man in a pit! Why is the government responsible?'" But then, a Good Samaritan came along, looked at the man in the pit and at all the others standing around pursuing their own agendas, and said, quietly, 'Here are two shovels. Let's get you out of the pit.'" The Fool looked around at His listeners, grinned, and said, "He that hath ears to hear with, let him hear." He shoved His hands into his jacket, and walked away thru the puddles, idly kicking at an empty beer can. "Pretty good!" said the Lady. "Maybe," said the Fool, "But not up to the Sermon On The Mount." "That one -was- one of Your best," She agreed. "Yeah," He said, "But even then, they ignored most of it. Oh well. Some of it caught on, at least." "It takes a while," said the Lord, "But they -are- learning." "Yes, they are," said the Fool, "But they have a long way to go yet." The Lady smiled warmly, and said, "They'll get there." Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so! --------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------- The Lord and the Lady (and the Fool, of course) looked at the Men and Women, and were not pleased. "Look at that! They saw Your Sacrifice, and went and elaborated it into some kind of magic." The Lady spoke disgustedly. "Cutting out human hearts. Sacrificial Kings. Ritual burnings. Ritual torture. Blood sacrifices. Cannibalism. Blood, killing and more blood! What -do- they think they're doing?" "I agree it's pretty grim," said the Sacred King, "But it does work, though in a very limited way. So....what can we do about it?" "I know what We can do, but it will take all of Us," said the Fool, unsmiling. "Listen up...." As he began to explain, the faces of all Three grew grimmer and grimmer, and sad beyond words. The Fool incarnated as a Child within a Woman, who was the Mother and the Maiden. He was born in poverty, and laid in a straw bed. He grew up in a small village in a backwater nation on the edges of a great Empire. Some, a very few, knew Him and honored Him, seeing Him as the Child, truly the Child of Promise, but most simply went on with their lives, unknowing. When He was of age, He turned, and from Child became Transformer, and He began to teach. As Transformer, He went out on the dusty roads of the small, conquered nation, and taught the Way of Love. Love for -all,- not just some. He taught of the Brotherhood of Man, and of the Fatherhood of the Lord. He taught of the Way of Salvation: to love. To love the Diety, and to love your neighbor, whoever he might be. He brought a message of hope to the poor, and a warning to the opressor. Around Him, He assembled a small band of men and women, and taught them His Mystery. But one was given a role to play, and the role was Betrayer. A man asked, "Teacher, what shall we do when those that hate us strike us?" And He answered, "Turn the other cheek, and let them strike you again. Give them love in return for hate. If you must take up the sword, then do it in great reluctance, and only after you have stepped aside time and time again. Remember that I bring you not peace, but a sword, for this Path will separate you from your families and friends, and your enemies will persecute you in their ignorance." "And forgive your enemies, and those who wrong you, that you may put away your anger and live in love." Another asked, "Sensei, what of the poor?" And He answered, "The poor you shall always have with you, but give them the tools to lift themselves out of their poverty. Clothe and feed them, but give them the means of independence also." "But what of the rich, then?" said a wealthy man. "Give what you have to the poor. give them of clothing, and food, and, more importantly, of learning, for if you feed a man, then you have only given him one meal, but if you teach him to feed himself, then he may eat for a lifetime, and move from the cycle of poverty and ignorance," He said. "Lay not treasures up for yourself on earth, save that you give of that treasure to those in need, but rather lay up treasure in heaven, for it would be easier for a camel to pass thru a needle's eye than for an avaricious man to leave his earthly treasure for heaven." A Doctor asked Him, "Healer, what of the sick?" "Verily, let them be healed by the knowledge of man, and by prayer," He answered, "For whatsoever you ask in prayer, if you have faith even as small as the tiniest grain of mustard seed, what you need will be granted you. But be wary of what you ask for, for you will get what you need, and not always what you want." A woman asked, "Rabbi, what of those that follow other Teachers?" And He answered, smiling, "There are many rooms in your Father's house, and many fields in Heaven. And I come again, and yet again, and as there are many languages of mankind, so are there many Names for Deity. Rejoice in it, and be glad of the diversity of Deity, and do not hate those that call the Diety by other names, but rather weigh them by their deeds." And one asked of Him, "How should we pray?" And He answered, saying, "Pray in your own fashion, as you will, for all prayer is good. But if you wish, pray thusly:" "Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our errors, as we forgive the errors of others. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." "And if you feel this prayer should be given to the Mother, then let it be so." And a Priest shouted, angrily, "Shall God be then female?" And He answered, "The Deity is what It will be, not what you make It into. You see the Diety in your own image; if you are vengeful, then your God is vengeful. If you are full of hate, then your God is hateful. But if you have love, then you shall know the Deity's love. Listen, and be wise." A child asked, "Father, how shall we know what is right, and what is wrong?" And He replied, "Weigh it by it's fruits. If it gives a bad fruit, then it is wrong, but if the fruit is good, then eat of it and be happy." "But Brother, what of a fruit that seems to be good, yet will poison us slowly?" asked another. And He answered, "If a man die of it, then it is an evil fruit. Look you to the past, see the mistakes therein, and learn therefrom. And beware those who would lead you into error thru their own need of power over you; leave them to the trap of their own making." One of the Priests came to Him, a man enmeshed in legalism, and, thinking to trap Him said, "Teacher, What is the Law?" And He looked at the Priest and said, "Love God. Love thy neighbor. All else is commentary, and the Law of Man. Study the holy books of all faiths, weigh the good and the bad in each, and learn." And the Priest went away abashed. And a person came to Him and said, "What of magic?" "Know that your will is that of a human, and you are not omniscient. You cannot see all the results of your actions. Therefore ask 'Not my will, but Thine be done' and leave the ordering of the MultiVerse to Deity, not to human will," He replied. "Order yourself, not the MultiVerse." And two came to Him, and asked, "O Mahatma, We are of the same sex, and love each other. What shall we do?" And He looked upon them, and said, "An it harm none, do as you will. You are all the Children of the Deity, and the Deities' Love for you is greater than you can imagine." A policeman asked of Him, "But what of the Laws of Man? If these Laws of Man conflict with the Law of the Diety, what shall we do then, Padre?" And Transformer answered, "Listen and hear. Obey the Laws of Man, for these Laws have power over your body. But if there is a man-made law that is not good, then strive to change it, in peace. But if you cannot change it, then obey it. And, if you must disobey it to change it, then accept the judgements of Man's Law in good grace until it is changed. But put not your trust in Rulers, and Kings and Princes, nor in those that would lead you, be they Priest, Priestess, or any other Office and Position, but weigh their words carefully, that their words match their deeds, and no hypocrisy enters into them, for as your leaders you have given them power over you. And always remember that Man's Law is made for humanity, and not humanity for Man's Law." And with the policeman was a woman, who had violated the Law of Man, and had been taken for her crime. She said, "But what of me, Lord? I am to be stoned by the crowd." And He picked up a stone from the ground, looked at her, and said, simply, "Let he who is without mistakes cast the first stone at you." And He dropped His stone from His hand. And there was a silence from the crowd, and those with stones in their hands dropped them guiltily to the ground. And He said to her, "Learn from your error, go in peace, and make error no more." And he said to those that had dropped their stones, and who were burdened by their guilt, "Be not guilty, for guilt is but a warning from your conscience. Be you delivered from your hell. Learn from your error, put it from you, and err no more." "And equally, if the tree that gives a bad fruit can be taught to give a good fruit, then do so. But if it persist in giving bad fruits, then leave it." And He walked to a nearby hill, and turned to the people, and spoke thusly: "Blessed be those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." "Blessed be those that mourn, for they shall be comforted." "Blessed be the meek, for they shall live to inherit the earth, long after the strong, and the proud, and the warlike have killed each other in their pride." "Blessed be those that hunger and thirst after the Truth, for they shall know it." "Blessed be the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown unto them." "Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see the Deity all the days of their lives and after." "Blessed be those that make peace among men, for they shall be called the Children of the Diety." "Blessed be those that are persecuted for the sake of the Truth, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Blessed be you, when men shall persecute you, and perjure themselves against you, and lie about you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for your reward is great indeed." "Let your Light so shine before all humanity, that they may know the Truth of you, and learn to live in love." And he placed His hand upon the head of a dog, and said, "Your Brothers and Sisters in fur are your Brothers and Sisters in truth. They are in your care, and in your hands. Treat them with kindness, and that kindness will be returned to you a thousandfold. To those that give themselves to be eaten by you offer thanks, and be grateful to them for your sustenance." "Treat your Mother the earth likewise with kindness, and all the growing things thereon will sing your praises to the Highest, and you shall eat and drink of Her fruits, and live in joy and gladness all the days of your lives. Little children, love one another!" In truth, there was much more that He taught, and much of it is written for our study and learning, and the study of His teachings is a good and worthy thing. But the following of His teachings is a better thing, for He was who He said He was, and that is also a Great Mystery. And the Betrayer spoke to Him, and said, "Renounce this Path. It only leads to destruction. Give over to me, and I will give you rulership of all the kingdoms of Earth." And He gazed upon the Betrayer, and spoke, and said, "Get thee hence, foolish one, for I have no need of earthly treasure, nor earthly power, for all such is false, and an illusion." And on the night that He was betrayed, during a Festival that celebrated the conquered people's deliverance from tyranny, (and to choose such a time and place is also a Great Mystery and a great lesson) He took of the Sacred King, the Bread of Life, blessed and broke it, and gave it to His followers, and said, "This is My body. Do this in remembrance of Me." And then he took wine, fruit of the Mother, and blessed it, and gave it to them also, and said, "This is My blood. Do this in remembrance of Me." And Transformer was betrayed by the Betrayer, betrayed to the legalists and the soldiers of the occupying army, accused of sedition and taken by the Law of Man, and sentenced to die. And they fastened Him to an instrument of torture, to kill Him like a common criminal, with cruel jokes. And He was hung from a Tree. And, watching, was the Mother, and the Maiden, and the Crone, and They all three mourned Him. He turned, and was the Sacred King, and simultaneously the Fool (and that is a Great Mystery indeed) and, as He died, he said, "It is finished." And His Blood ran out upon the Earth, and worked a great magic. His body was buried in a tomb of rock, and the soldiers of the occupying army guarded it. But after three days and three nights, a greater magic was done, and He took His body again, sitting with the Lord and the Lady, and showed Himself to His followers, to show them that Death is not to be feared. And He said, "You have been bought, and redeemed, and nevermore shall you make sacrifice of blood, for this is the Final Sacrifice for all time, for all places, and for all those there are and were, and will be." "And fear not Death, for it it but a change in a MultiVerse of changes; another turning of the wheel on a road all must travel." And He shall come again, as He has throughout all history, teaching the Great Truth: that we shall love the Deity, and love our neighbor, for Love is the heart of the Law, and that Law is Love. For He is always with us and in us all. "I don't -ever- want to go through that again!" The Fool spoke vehemently, thru tears. "I don't think you'll have to go quite -that- far the next time," said the Lady. "They'll still play their stupid games with blood, but not for very much longer." "I hope not," said the Sacred King, "But do We have to put up with that Paul fella? He's a bit of a nut-case." "If you want it to work out right, yes," said the Lady. "He may be a nut-case, but he'll spread the Word quickly, and, after a time, they'll get the idea. And from that will come the seed of My future believers." "Sorry about that," said the Fool. "I did my best, but in such a patriarchal society as that one was, I just couldn't make much headway about You." "No problem," She said. "They can deny Me all they want to, but I'm still here." Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so! --------------------------------------------------------------- THE SYBILLYNE TRADITION OF WICCA by Virginia Stewart, M. Ed., TP. Our tradition is a moderate branch of Dianic Wicca, with an emphasis on equality, ecology and wo/men's mysteries. The tradition is open to women and men, over the age of 18, who have previously identified Wicca as their path. Someone under legal age must be accompanied by a parent and will not be initiated until they are of legal age. (Yes, there is a catch: few people under 21 will have studied other religions enough to have narrowed it down this much; therefore, a person without this study must spend at least a year pursuing comparative religions before they will be accepted for training.) The subject matter that each student must master prior to initiation is wide-ranging and intended to strengthen knowledge and interest in a number of areas, as well as increase the student's desire to "get involved" in the ecological/political issues which are important to them as individuals. This is not an exclusive tradition; one can be an initiate of other traditions and still participate. We have closed rituals only when the participating members desire it. Our initiation is open to initiates of other traditions (who would be asked to assist, no one gets to stand around.) Sybillynes do not have degrees, unlike Gardnerians; we have three stages. The Novice (or WIT, coined by one student -- it means "Witch in Training") is one who is actively studying, but has not yet been initiated. A Sister or Brother has been initiated and holds the title of Priestess or Priest (there is no High Priestess or High Priest.) The Chronicler is the one in the Coven or Circle who assumes the responsibility for making phone calls and keeping the Book of Shadows, but the position carries no authority. All decisions are reached by consensus, and the rituals are written and performed by various members of the group on a voluntary basis (it works, it really does). After a long period of study, in which one might specialize in a particular area, one is Ordained as a Priestess or Priest in that area; for example, one might be a Teaching Priest/ess, or a Healing Priest/ess. To become a Novice, one must ask to be taught, then show a sincere interest in the Craft and a willingness to study and learn about the various areas presented. One must also exhibit a willingness to do independent study in areas of personal interest. The Course of study is presented in two parts. The first is lecture/discussion/reading -- after which the novice must demonstrate knowledge and understanding in the following areas: I. Feminism and politics of Dianic craft A. Gaia and green magic B. balance of Male/female energies C. power over vs. power from within II. Feminist herstory/facts and theory A. Origins of the Goddess 1. prehistoric evidence 2. early myth (China, Sumer, Ur, India, Mesopotania, Egypt, Crete) 3. The patriarchal shift -- a. Theories on how it happened b. How to read around it i. Greek Myth ii. Mesopotamia/Sumer iii. Egypt c. Modern Approaches -- overcoming patriarchal repression d. The God in Dianic Wicca i. prehistory evidence/belief ii. Modern approaches III. Feminist interpretations on the origins of people A. creation Myths -- world samples B. "star" myth C. birth/genetic engineering myth D. the principles of myth writing IV. Goddess and Gods in Every Person A. Manifesting the God/dess in Everyday Life -- theory B. Archetypal Theory and how it relates to everyday life V. Magic and Physics -- Why Everything is Related To Everything A. Holographic Universe B. Gaia as a Living Being VI. The Goddess and Sexuality A. Living in our bodies is healthy B. how patriarchy/Christianity perverted sex C. healing the wounds of sexual oppression D. exercises VII. Beginning Meditation A. purpose B. some eventual goals C. visualization D. exercises IX. Psychic gifts A. How they have been suppressed B. What they are C. How to develop them D. Exercises X. Festivals A. The wheel of the Year B. Women's festivals/men's festivals C. Creating celebration for everyday life XI. Ritual tools and aspects A. Tools B. Symbols XII. Creating Ritual A. The Structure of a ritual B. Creating Sacred space -- theory C. Elements of ritual -- possibilities XIII. Drawing a circle -- demonstration & practice A. How to form a circle B. What to do if something goes wrong C. Group dynamics Our actual reading list is two double-columned pages, and takes about a year to get through. This is the short list, with which one must show a working knowledge. The Spiral Dance Dreaming the Dark Truth or Dare / Starhawk Holy Book of Women's Mysteries / Z. Budapest The Holographic Universe / Michael Talbot The New Inquisition / Robert Anton Wilson Real Magic / Issac Bonewits When God Was A Woman Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood / Merlin Stone Priestesses / Norma Goodrich Women's Encyclopedia of Sacred Symbols and Objects / Barbara Walker Drawing Down the Moon / Margot Adler Iron John / Robert Bly The Hero with A Thousand Faces / Joseph Campbell The second part of training focuses on ritual and practice, as no one will be initiated until s/he can write, perform and understand ritual; work with energy in a SAFE way, and guide meditations for the others. The following are the requirements for this level of training, in which one must demonstrate proficiency. 1. Circle Drawing 2. Healing (different types) 3. Energy Work 4. Journey to Lower World (working with totems) 5. Astral Realms (working with place of power and spirit guides) 6. 9 Inner Planes 7. Past Life Regression 8. Elements, Tools, and Aspects 9. Women's Mysteries/Men's Mysteries (5 Mysteries) 10. Blessing of Tools 11. Personal Belief Systems 12. Spells and Spellwork 13. Full Ritual (writing and performing without assistance) Written assignments 1. A 4-10 page paper explaining and analyzing the Wiccan Rede and how it applies to one's personal life (Ethics are vital) 2. A 5-10 page paper explaining one's personal belief system (it does not conform to any particular standard, but an initiate must have one; this is a spiritual tradition). 3. A 5-10 page paper explaining and analyzing the 5 Mysteries of Wicca with particular attention paid to Wo/man's mysteries, Chalice and the Descent. 4. A 2-5 page paper explaining the Three-Fold Goddess and Her Relationship to the Three-Fold God. 5. A 5-10 page paper describing one's personal ethics 6. A Book of Shadows (to be reviewed by Teaching Priestess) that includes major rituals, meditations, observations and results of spell work and energy work. The final requirement for initiation includes the demonstration of Ritual functions of Maiden/Mother/Crone or Priest without written assistance; the demonstration of ritual writing and participation in/ directing the energy in a circle. Finally, the demonstration through daily life of a sincere commitment to the Way of the God/dess. The training period lasts anywhere from twenty-six weeks to over a year and is dependent on the completion of requirements, not number of months in training. A Novice (WIT) will be told that they may request Initiation when they have completed all requirements to the satisfaction of the Teaching Priestess. They will be told once, after that they must ask. Sybillynes do NOT recruit members. After Initiation, a Priest/ess may form a Circle (a loosely organized group that performs ritual together) or a Coven (a close-knit group with bonds of perfect love and trust). It is suggested that Circles be formed and allowed to evolve into Covens. All Initiates are encouraged to become politically/ ecologically active to whatever degree that they are able. Each group exists as an independent organization -- the job of a Teaching Priestess is to make herself unnecessary. Those who desire control over a coven or absolute authority within a coven are discouraged from attempting it within this tradition -- the labrys, our symbol, is sharp for a reason... We are also interested in tradition sharing, and can be found in the Hunter's Moon camp at CMA. Inquires can be made by leaving a message at Celebration! in Austin, or at the Magic Cauldron in Houston, for Virginia Stewart or Howard Gerber (sysop of THE WHEEL BBS in Houston). Merry Meet and Bright Blessings. --- MAIN RITUAL, UEA 20TH ANNIVERSARY This ritual came together in strange ways. We are indebted to Tony Kelly of Celene Community in Wales who wrote the body of it in a piece called "Pagan Musings" in 1973, Kenny and Tzipora for the Wine Blessing, and Thomas Palmer of Denver for the Cakes Blessing. The Quarters calling and dismissals were written by Rowan Moonstone and revised by Bristlecone Glen. Devin Storm, Harper to Bristlecone wrote the God and Goddess Invocations, the Circle Closing, and the Crone's speech. We learned this particular version of "We All Come From the Goddess/Hoof and Horn" with the God verse from the Old Timers from United Earth Assembly and the Witches' Version of " Amazing Grace" was taught to us by Margot Adler at the America the Beautiful celebration in Colorado Springs in July of 1993. All these various parts came together into one of the most powerful rituals we have ever seen. We give it back to the community now with love and thanks. It is our heritage and our future. We give back to the Earth that which we have been given. - Bristlecone Glen Cast: High Priestess High Priest Harper Grey Man Crone Quarters Callers Props: Cauldron Cakes & Wine Dry Ice Glow Sticks Chalice Basket Flash Paper Quarters candles should be set up and lit before Circle. Altar Candles lit. A cauldron sits in the north. In the cauldron should be glow sticks to light it from within, a pan of dry ice, a candle, and the chalice. The Crone sits, cloaked and hooded, by the Cauldron. The Harper sits in the east, an empty stool sits beside the Harper. Cast Circle and purify sacred space as is the custom of your circle. Spirits of the East! Air, Breath of our ancestors Be with us in this Circle That we may KNOW we are the children of the Gods. Spirits of the South! Fire, Will of our ancestors, Be with us in this Circle That we may have the WILL to claim our heritage. Spirits of the West! Water, Blood of our ancestors, Be with us in this Circle That we may DARE to do the work of the Gods. Spirits of the North! Earth, Bones of our ancestors, Be with us in this Circle That we may NO LONGER BE SILENT, but may meet as one in love to do the work of the Old Ones. HP: Maiden bring Your Flowers Mother, Bring Your Child Old One bring your Wisdom Bright Lady, Cerridwen We welcome Thee to this Circle in Herne's name. For we are the blush of Thy silken cheek. We are the children You hold to Your breast. We are the Carriers of Your ancient way. Bright Lady, Cerridwen, Welcome! HPS: Hunter, bring Your prowess Warrior, bring your skill. Father, bring your guidance. Ancient One, Horned Crown We welcome Thee to this Circle in Thy Lady's name. For we are the flight of the arrow from Thy bow. We are the edge of the sword of Thy honor. We are the sparks of the flame of Thy love. Ancient One, Horned Crowned, Welcome! HPS: We're of the old religion, sired of Time, and born of our beloved Earth Mother. For too long the people have trodden a stony path that goes only onward beneath a sky that goes only upwards. HP: The Horned God plays in a lonely glade for the people are scattered in this barren age and the winds carry his plaintive notes over deserted heaths and reedy moors and into the lonely grasses. (Grey Man raps staff on ground comes into center of Circle unobserved by the HP/S. When he speaks, HP/S should be startled.) Grey Man: Who know now the ancient tongue of the Moon? And who speaks still with the Goddess? The magic of the land of Lirien and the old pagan gods have withered in the dragons breath; the old ways of magic have slipped into the well of the past, and only the rocks now remember what the moon told us long ago, and what we learned from the trees, and the voices of grasses and the scents of flowers. (HP/S begin to spiral into the center of the Circle to meet the Grey Man.) HP: We're pagans and we worship the pagan gods, and among the people there are witches yet who speak with the moon and dance with the Horned One. HPS: But a witch is a rare pagan in these days, deep and inscrutable, recognizable only by their own kind, by the light in their eyes and the love in their breasts, by the magic in their hands and the lilt of their tongue and by their knowledge of the real. HP: But the wiccan way is one way. There are many; there are pagans the world over who worship the Earth Mother and the Sky Father, the Rain God and the Rainbow Goddess, the Dark One and the Hag on the mountain, the Moon Goddess and the little People in the mists on the other side of the veil. HPS: A pagan is one who worships the goddesses and gods of nature, whether by observation or by study, whether by love or admiration, or whether in their sacred rites with the Moon, or the great festivals of the Sun. Grey Man: Many suns ago, as the pale dawn of reason crept across the pagan sky, man grew out of believing in THE GODS. Harper: He has yet to grow out of disbelieving in them. Grey Man: He who splits the Goddess on an existence-nonexistence dichotomy will earn himself only paradoxes, for the gods are not so divided and nor the magic lands of the Brother of Time. Harper: Does a mind exist? Grey Man: Ask her and she will tell you yes, but seek her out, and she'll elude you. She is in every place, and in no place, and you'll see her works in all places, but herself in none. Existence was the second-born from the Mother's womb and contains neither the first-born, nor the unborn. Show us your mind, and we'll show you the gods! Harper: No matter that you can't, for we can't show you the gods. But come with us and the Goddess herself will be our love and the God will call the tune. Grey Man: But a brass penny for your reason; for logic is a closed ring, and the child doesn't validate the Mother, nor the dream the dreamer. (Grey Man turns to face the seated Crone. Speaks almost as if talking to himself) And what matter the wars of opposites to she who has fallen in love with a whirlwind or to the lover of the arching rainbow. Harper: (To HP/S) But tell us of your Goddess as you love her, and the gods that guide your works, and we'll listen with wonder, for to do less would be arrogant. but we'll do more, for the heart of man is aching for memories only half forgotten, and the Old Ones only half unseen. HP: We'll write the old myths as they were always written and we'll read them on the rocks and in the caves and in the deep of the greenwood's shade, and we'll hear them in the rippling mountain streams and in the rustling of the leaves, and we'll see them in the storm clouds, and in the evening mists. We've no wish to create a new religion for our religion is as old as the hills and older, and we've no wish to bring differences together. Harper: Differences are like different flowers in a meadow, and we are all one in the Mother. HPS: What need is there for a pagan movement since our religion has no teachings and we hear it in the wind and feel it in the stones and the Moon will dance with us as she will? Harper: There is a need. For long the Divider has been among our people and the tribes of man are no more. The sons of the Sky Father have all but conquered nature, but they have poisoned her breast and the Mother is sad for the butterflies are dying and the night draws on. Grey Man: A curse on the conqueror! HP/S: But not of us! Harper: For they curse themselves for they are nature too. Grey Man: They have stolen our magic and sold it to the mindbenders and the mindbenders tramp a maze that has no outlet for they fear the real for the One who guards the path. Where are the pagan shrines? And where do the people gather? Where is the magic made? And where are the Goddess and the Old Ones? HP: Our shrines are in the fields and on the mountains, in the stars and in the wind, deep in the greenwood and on the algal rocks where two streams meet. But the shrines are deserted, and if we gathered in the arms of the Moon for our ancient rites to be with our gods as we were of old, we would be stopped by the dead who now rule the Mother's land and claim rights of ownership on the Mother's breast, and make laws of division and frustration for us. HPS: We can no longer gather with our gods in a public place and the old rites of communion have been driven from the towns and cities ever deeper into the heath where barely a handful of heathens have remained to guard the old secrets and enact the old rites. There is magic in the heath far from the cold grey society, and there are islands of magic hidden in the entrails of the metropolis behind closed doors, but the people are few, and the barriers between us are formidable. HP: The old religion has become a dark way, obscure, and hidden in the protective bosom of the night. Thin fingers turn the pages of a book of shadows while the sunshine seeks in vain his worshippers in his leafy glades. Harper: Here, then, is the basic reason for a Pagan Movement; we must create a pagan society wherein everyone shall be free to worship the goddesses and gods of nature, and the relationship between a worshipper and their gods shall be sacred and inviolable, provided only that in their love of their own gods, they doesn't curse the names of the gods of others. HPS: It's not yet our business to press the law-makers with undivided endeavor to unmake the laws of repression and, with the Mother's love, it may never become our business for the stifling tides of dogmatism are at last already in ebb. Our first work, and our greatest wish, is to come together, to be with each other in our tribes for we haven't yet grown from the Mother's breast to the stature of the gods. HP: We're of the earth, and sibs to all the children of wild nature, born long ago in the warm mud of the ocean floor; we were together then, and we were together in the rain forests long before that dark day when, beguiled by the pride of the Sky Father, and forgetful of the Mother's love, we killed her earlier-born children and impoverished the old genetic pool. Grey Man: The Red child lives yet in America; the Black Child has not forsaken the gods; the old Australians are still with their nature gods; the Old Ones still live deep in the heart of Mother India, and the White Child has still a foot on the old wiccan way, but Neanderthaler is no more and her magic faded as the Lli and the Archan burst their banks and the ocean flowed in to divide the Isle of Erin from the land of the White Goddess. Man looked with one eye on a two-faced god when he reached for the heavens and scorned the Earth which alone is our life and our provider and the bosom to which we have ever returned since the dawn of Time. Harper: He who looks only to reason to plum the unfathomable is a fool, for logic is an echo already implicit in the question, and it has no voice of its own; but he is no greater fool than he who scorns logic or derides its impotence from afar, but fears to engage in fair combat when he stands on his opponent's threshold. Don't turn your back on Reason, for his thrust is deadly; but confound him and he'll yield for his code of combat is honorable. So here is more of the work of the Pagan Movement. HPS: Our lore has become encrusted over the ages with occult trivia and the empty vapourings of the lost. The occult arts are in a state of extreme decadence, astrology is in a state of disrepute and fears to confront the statistician's sword; alien creeds oust our native arts and, being as little understood as our own forgotten arts, are just as futile for their lack of understanding, and more so for their unfamiliarity. HP: Misunderstanding is rife. Disbelief is black on every horizon, and vampires abound on the blood of the credulous. Our work is to reject the trivial, the irrelevant and the erroneous, and to bring the lost children of the Earth Mother again into the court of the Sky Father where reason alone will avail. Harper: Belief is the deceit of the credulous; it has no place in the heart of a pagan. Grey Man: But while we are sad for those who are bemused by Reason, we are deadened by those who see no further than his syllogisms as he turns the eternal wheel of the Great Tautology. HP: We were not fashioned in the mathematician's computations, and we were old when the first alchemist was a child. HPS: We have walked in the magic forest, bewitched in the old Green Things; we have seen the cauldron and the one become many and the many in the one; we know the Silver Maid of the moonlight and the sounds of the cloven feet. We have heard the pipes on the twilight ferns, and we've seen the spells of the enchantress, and Time be stilled. We've been into eternal darkness where the Night Mare rides and rode her to the edge of the Abyss, and beyond, and we know the dark face of the Rising Sun. Harper: Spin a spell or words and make a magic knot; spin it on the magic loom and spin it with the gods. Say it in the old chant and say it to the Goddess, and in her name. Say it to a dark well and breathe it on a stone. HP: There are no signposts on the untrod way, HPS: but we'll make our rituals together and bring them as our gifts to the Goddess and her God in the great rites. (HP/S turn to Circle) HP: Here, then, is our work in the Pagan Movement; to make magic in the name of our gods, to share our magic where the gods would wish it, and to come together in our ancient festivals of birth, and life, of death and of change in the old rhythm. HPS: We'll print the rituals that can be shared in the written work; HP: We'll do all in our power to bring the people together, to teach those who would learn, and to learn from those who can teach. HPS: We will initiate groups, bring people to groups, and groups to other groups in our common devotion to the goddesses and gods of nature. HP: We will not storm the secrets of any coven, nor profane the tools, the magic, and still less, the gods of another. HPS: We'll collect the myths of the ages, of our people and of the pagans of other lands, and we'll study the books of the wise and we'll talk to the very young. HP: And whatever the pagan needs in their study, or their worship, then it is our concern, and the Movement's business to do everything possible to help each other in our worship of the gods we love. HPS: We are committed with the lone pagan on the seashore, with he who worships in the fastness of a mountain range or she who sings the old chant in a lost valley far from the metalloid road. HP: We are committed with the wanderer, and equally with the prisoner, disinherited from the Mother's milk in the darkness of the industrial webs. HPS: We are committed too with the coven, with the circular dance in the light of the full moon, with the great festivals of the sun, and with the gatherings of the people. HP: We are committed to build our temples in the towns and in the wilderness, to buy the lands and the streams from the landowners and give them to the Goddess for her children's use, and we'll replant the greenwood as it was of old for love of the dryad stillness, and for love of our children's children. HP/S: This we will do. What will you? (At this point, HP/S should walk around the Circle and "gather" the pledges from those in Circle who wish to give them. Participants should think carefully about what they wish to pledge before the Gods in this ritual. When all pledges are gathered, HP/S takes them to the Grey Man) HPS: When the streams flow clear and the winds blow pure, and the sun never more rises unrenowned nor the moon ride in the skies unloved; HP: when the stones tell of the Horned God and the greenwood grows deep to call back her own ones, then our work will be ended HP/S: and the Pagan Movement will return to the beloved womb of our old religion, to the nature goddesses and gods of paganism. (Grey Man nods, receives the pledges and palms flash powder unobtrusively. Conducts HP/S to the Crone. Grey Man opens hands and lets paper fall on candle. Crone pours hot water on dry ice, stands up, throws back hood of cape) Crone: I have heard your call across the mountains. I have heard your cries within the web of life and I have come once more. Single is the race, single of men and Gods. From a single source we both draw breath, but a difference of power in everything keeps us apart. You are the children of my heart - the light of my Soul. And I bring with me the seeds of your ancestors that I have kept safe for you. Like the cycle of the seasons, I give them again that you may plant yet again. Sow the seeds for yourselves , for your children, and your children's children. (Crone hands basket of seeds to HP/S. Reaches into the well again and draws out chalice from cauldron.) The chalice contains the blood of those who have died for the crime of being different, the sweat of those who toiled that the path of the Old Ones might survive, and the tears of those who thought themselves alone. The cauldron of the Gods is that of change - of turning evil to good, death to life. Through the power of the Cauldron, turn the blood of death to the water of life, turn the crime of being different to the strength of being whole. Turn the sweat of toil to the joy of work well done. Turn the tears of those alone to the tears of family reunited. The present is the balance between the past and the future. The power lies within your heart, within your hands. Do you have the courage? The choice is his, the choice is hers, the choice is yours. Can you make a difference? WILL you make a difference? (Crone hands chalice to HP/S and wraps cloak around her, sitting down once more.) HP/S spiral back out to the Circle. Chalice blessing: HP: Be it known that a man is not greater than a woman HPS: Nor is woman greater than man HP: For what one lacks HPS: The other can provide HP: As the athame is to the male HPS: So is the cup to the female HP/S: And when conjoined, they become one in truth. For there is no greater magick in all the world than that of love. Cakes Blessing: HPS: Be it known that death is not the end of life ... HP: But the beginning of the cycle of rebirth. HPS: As grain is touched by death's scythe ... HP: And passes through fire to be reborn as bread ... HPS: So are we reborn, passing through death into the next life. (High Priest draws Invoking Pentagram over cakes with Athame, while both say: HP/S: As the Earth gives its life to strengthen us, so shall we, in death, strengthen the Earth, for life and death together are the cycle of rebirth. HP/S take of cakes and wine and pass the basket and chalice to quarters callers to take to the Circle. We all come from the Goddess And to Her we shall return Like a drop or rain Flowing to the ocean We all come from the Horned One And to Him we shall return Like a flash of flame Ascending to the heavens. Hoof and Horn Hoof and Horn All that dies shall be reborn Vine and Grain Vine and Grain All that falls shall rise again. (The chant may evolve into others such as the Isis Astarte and corresponding God chants. Go with the flow. When all in the Circle have partaken of cakes and wine, the chalice comes back to the HP and HPS, who take it to the Harper. Harper eats and drinks, takes cakes and wine to Grey Man. Grey Man eats and drinks, takes cakes and wine to Crone, who eats, drinks, and receives seeds and chalice again. Replaces chalice in Cauldron, covers seeds with cloak. When HPS feels energy has built to a peak, she calls a halt to it by raising her arms and dropping them to her sides.) HP/S: Remember this night. Take the energy that has been raised here by your sisters and brothers and put it into your pledges. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! HPS: Hunter, for Your prowess Warrior, for Your skill Father for Your Guidance Ancient One, Horned Crowned, We thank you and bid you Hail and Farewell! HP: Maiden, for Your flowers. Mother, for Your child. Old One, for Your Wisdom. Bright Lady, Cerridwen, we thank You And bid you Hail and Farewell! Spirits of the North! Earth, Body of our ancestors. Go with us from this place United as heirs of our ancestors. Spirits of the West! Water, Blood of our ancestors. We have the courage to dare to do the work. Go with us from this place United as heirs of our ancestors. Spirits of the South, Fire, will of our ancestors. We have the will to do that which we promised Go with us from this place United as heirs of our ancestors. Spirits of the East Air, breath of our ancestors. We KNOW that we are the children of the Gods and all one family. Go with us from this place United as heirs of our ancestors. HP draws power back up into the blade of the sword/athame and earths the power. HP, HPS, Harper, Grey Man and Crone move into a circle. The next five lines should be shot from person to person, to form a pentagram: HPS: The Circle is Open HP: But not forgotten! Harper: The Circle is unbroken. Grey Man: Nothing is forgotten Crone: The Circle is Free All: Nothing is ever forgotten HPS, HP, Harper, Grey Man, and Crone join the larger Circle. HPS or Harper calls out lines of Amazing Grace to the Circle as all sing. Amazing Grace! How sweet the Earth That formed a Witch like me I once was burned, now I survive Was hanged, but now I sing. Twas grace that drew down the moon And grace that raised the sea The magick of the people's will Will set our Mother free! Amazing Grace! How sweet the Earth That formed a Witch like me I once was burned, but now I thrive Was hanged but now I sing. HPS: Blessed Be! C.O.G. History By: Michael Thorn 20 Nov 93 12:09 The Covenant of the Goddess is one of the largest and oldest Wiccan religious organizations with members in North America, Europe and Australia. Wicca, or Witchcraft is the most popular expression of the religious movement known as Neo+Paganism, which, according to the Institute for the Study of American Religion, is the fastest growing religion in the United States. It practitioners are reviving ancient Pagan practices and beliefs of pre-Christian Europe and adapting them to contemporary life. The result is a religion that is both old and new, both +traditional+ and creative. Witchcraft is a life-affirming, earth+ and nature-oriented religion which sees all of life as sacred and interconnected, honors the natural world as the embodiment of divinity, immanent as well as transcendent, and experiences the divine as feminine and often as masculine, as well. Like the spiritual world view and practices of Native Americans and Taoists, Wiccan spiritual practices are intended to attune humanity to the natural rhythms and cycles of the universe as a means of personally experiencing divinity. Rituals, therefore, coincide with the phases of the moon, the change of the seasons, solstices and equinoxes and days which fall in between these such as May Day and Halloween. This calendar of celebrations is referred to as the Wheel of the Year. Most Witches consider their practice a priest/esshood, akin to the mystery schools of classical Greece and Rome, involving years of training and passage through life-transforming initiatory rituals. All Witches agree on an ethical code known as the Wiccan Rede, "An it harm none, do what ye will," which honors the freedom of each individual to do what she or he believes is right, but also recognizes the profound responsibility that none may be harmed by one+s actions. In the 1970+s there was a marked rise of interest in Witchcraft not only in the United States, but throughout the world, reflecting a growing feminist awareness and global concern for the environment. In the Spring of 1975, a number of Wiccan elders from diverse traditions, all sharing the idea of forming a religious organization for all practitioners of Witchcraft, gathered to draft a "covenant" among themselves. These representatives also drafted bylaws to administer this new organization now known as the Covenant of the Goddess. At the 1975 Summer Solstice, the bylaws were ratified by thirteen member congregations (or covens). The Covenant of the Goddess was incorporated as a nonprofit religious organization on October 31st, 1975. The Covenant is an umbrella organization of cooperating autonomous Witchcraft congregations with the power to confer credentials on its qualified clergy. It fosters cooperation and mutual support among Witches and secures for them the legal protections enjoyed by members of other religions. The Covenant is non+hierarchical and governed by consensus. Two-thirds of its clergy are women. The Covenant is coordinated by a national board of directors. Many of its activities are conducted at the regional level by local councils. The Covenant holds an annual national conference open to the Wiccan community, as well as regional conferences, and publishes a newsletter. In recent years, the Covenant has taken part in spiritual and educational conferences, interfaith outreach, large public rituals, environmental activism, community projects and social action, as well as efforts to correct negative stereotypes and promote accurate media portrayals. Its clergy perform legal marriages (handfastings), preside at funerals and other rituals of life-transition, and provide counseling to Witches including those in the military and in prisons. The Covenant also provides for the need of it members and their families with disaster relief, health insurance, Scouting awards, sponsorship of college and university student groups, and legal assistance in instances of discrimination. The Covenant+s participation in the 1993 Parliament of the World+s Religions continues its efforts to restore the respect due to a legitimate and deeply-rooted religion, protect and preserve the earth through its public dissemination of its wisdom and traditions, and participate in dialogue as a contributing member of the world+s community of faiths. A CHRISTIAN SPEAKS ON THE FAITH AND PATH OF WICCA by James Clement Taylor I am a Christian and not a Wiccan. A Christian is one who has been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and who has made a personal, free-will decision to commit himself and all his or her life to our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Both of these things are true of me. I am a member of St. Mary's Eastern Orthodox Church, Calhan, Colorado. In this paper, I am not speaking as agent for any church, but I am, entirely on my own responsibility, speaking the truth in love, as we Christians are supposed to do. A Situation of Strife and Shame: There are many Christians today who believe that anyone who is not a Christian is doomed to an eternity of suffering in hell. Any decent person, believing this, would be compelled to try to save as many people from this fate as possible. But is this belief correct? Jesus Christ, having noted the faith and righteousness of a Roman centurion, a Pagan, proclaimed: "Assuredly I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel! And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the king- dom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 8:10-12) If we accept these words as true, and surely we should, then it is clear that heaven will contain many who are not Christians, and hell will contain many who are! Clearly, throughout the Gospels, Jesus Christ sets forth the criteria for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, and those criteria include love, kindness, forgiveness, and a refusal to judge others: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Matthew 6:14-15) "For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you." (Matthew 7:2) "But go and learn what this means: `I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'" (Matthew 9:13) "Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be for- given." (Luke 6:36-38) Is it not clear? Anyone who fails in these things, will calling himself a Christian save him? Anyone who obeys God in these things, will being unbaptized condemn him? Jesus said, "Not everyone who says to Me, `Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." (Matthew 7:21) Yet it is not by good works that we earn our way into heaven, because there is no way we can earn the free gift of God's mercy and grace, which alone can save us. But it is clear that it is not by faith, in the sense of sharing the Christian faith, that we are saved, either. The faith which saves us is not faith in the goodness of our works, nor faith that we have the right theology and/or belong to the right church. Rather, it is faith in God, and in His mercy: "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy." (Romans 9:16) But the Wiccans, you will say, do not have faith in God. Yet by their own theology, they certainly do. Those who call them Satan-worshippers are entirely wrong. They do not worship Satan, or even believe that Satan exists. Instead, they worship a Goddess and a God whom they understand as manifestations of a higher and unknown Deity. Now if you are a Christian, this will sound familiar to you, and it should. In the Bible we find the following: "Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, `Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and con- sidering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you" (Acts 17:22-23) The Wiccans worship the Unknown God, as manifested to them in the form of a Goddess and a God. Therefore, our Bible tells us they worship the same God we do; and if they do not know this, we should know it! For those of us who are unable to simply stand on God's Word, and must prove to themselves the truth of what it proclaims the holy Apostle John has given us the method for doing this. You have only to attend any public Wiccan ceremony, and test the spirits which are there, to see "whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). You will find that, while the power manifested there may be less than what you have experienced as a Christian, that power is clearly the power of God. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, these people of Wicca have been terribly slandered by us. They have lost jobs, and homes, and places of business because we have assured others that they worship Satan, which they do not. We have persecuted them, and God will hold us accountable for this, you may be sure, for He has said, "Assuredly I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me." (Matthew 25:40) Let us, from this point onward, repent of our misdeeds and declare that henceforth we shall obey Christ our God, and not judge others or condemn them, so that He will not have to judge and condemn us for our sins. KILL A TREE From: Ali Katz to the tune of "Jingle Bells": Dashing to the mall in a fleet of rented trucks, a million hairless apes are out to spend some plastic bucks. It's Christmas time again -- or maybe World War Three -- and to keep their spirits happy now, they've got to kill a tree. Oh, kill a tree, kill a tree, kill a tree for Christ. (Jolly Old Saint Nicholas, accept this sacrifice.) Kill a tree, kill a tree, kill a tree for Christ, not sure what we're doing, but it seems to work out nice. We know we each deserve a ton or two of crap, but to keep the goodies coming now, we've got to spill some sap, and string electric lights, and raise the ritual star, and bribe our friends and families to forget what jerks we are. And kill a tree ... (etc.) We always kill a tree. That's always been enough for videos and GI Joes and all that kiddy stuff. But Mommy wants a Harley, and Daddy wants a boat; that's prob'ly gonna cost at least a chicken and a goat. But kill a tree ... (etc.) To enhance everyone's holiday cheer, I highly recommend singing this one at the mall. But depending on where you live, you may want to make sure you've got a good bail bondsman's number first. Lord of the Ants By: Karl Lembke (tune: "Lord of the Dance") Well we cleansed with sugar 'cause the salt was gone, And the color was right though the substance might be wrong, And when the water dried, it was sticky, my oh me, It attracted all of the ants, you see, (chorus) Ants, ants, all over they shall be, I am the lord of the ants, you see. I'll crawl on you, and you'll itch from me, And you'll dance with ants in your pants, said he. We have ants in the carpets and we've ants in the drapes, We have ants in the kitchen dancing galliards on the grapes, We have ants in the bedroom and what may be more fun, We have ants in our circles now from sun to sun. (chorus) 'What to do' cried the priestess, 'what to do' cried the priest, 'All the baits and the sprays haven't helped us in the least, 'The buggers eat it up and it only makes us sick, 'All in all I'd say it is no pic-nic!' (chorus) We stood round the fire while the flames lept up high, With the sound of the sirens wailing up to the sky, Though the bug bombs exploded it could still have been worse, At least now we're free of the ant lord's curse! (spoken: "Oh hell!") (chorus) ...........Karl It's from a Pagan version of the song CIRCLES. I'm not sure who wrote it - I want to say a group of women in Lansing, Mich. Unfortunately, my copy says "ANON". CIRCLES TUNE: WINDMILLS (1) In days gone by, when the world was much younger, Men wondered at Spring, born of Winter's cold knife, Wondering at the games of the moon and the sunlight, They saw there the Lady and Lord of all life. CHORUS: Around and around, and around turns the good Earth, All things must change as the seasons go by, we are the children of the Lord and the Lady, Whose mysteries we know, but will never know why. (2) In all lands the people were tied to the good Earth, Plowing and sowing, as the seasons declared, Waiting to reap of the rich golden harvest, Knowing her laughter in the joys that we shared. Chorus. (3) Through Flanders and Wales and the green lands of Ireland, in the kingdoms of England and Csotland and Spain, Circles grew up all along the wild coastlines, And worked for the land, with the Sun and the rain. Chorus (4) Circles for healing, and working the weather, Circles for knowing the Moon and the Sun, Circles for thanking the Lord and the Lady, Circles for dancing the dance never done. Chorus (5) And we who reach for the stars in the heavens, Turning our eyes from the meadows and groves, Still live in the love of the Lord and the Lady, The greater the circle, the more the love grows. Chorus twice. Blessed be, and keep dancing. Keipa ght, and the clock silent. Water from somewhere drips, A breeze moves amongst your hairs. The Bird, her beak poised, watches As I caress you, child, With an absent movement of my hands, My mind elsewhere. She of the Silver Wheel Wheeling in darkness her silver overhead Watches more than passively As in Her name I take you and bless you; And the Dark Hunter, Jewels in His belt, Takes you for His own, Takes me in your flesh His magical scabbard at His side, Sword outraised, unutterably distant Yet manifest here in you... And I, primal woman and primal queen, Feel Her powerful darkness stirring And shouldering me aside within my own flesh As I call Her forth, She of the sky-castle Spinning dizzily overhead seen unseen; And I stand by and watch as the Hunter fills your body (you, no doubt, standing by and watching) As the Dark Lady fills my body and clothed in our flesh They mate (...but I did not tell you, nor did you ask that this is the time of my greatest fertility...) Ishtar, Inanna, & Ancient Astrology By Valkyrie Many might be interested in some information that I came across awhile back that might shed some light on this for you. Some may have seen part of this already. Someone in a shamanic echo was asking about how scorpions and spiders were related to each other in dreams, and what meaning the scorpion had, especially in regards to an earth goddess. I ran across a reference in one of those 'feminist revisionists'" books and the statement was made that the Scorpion was found nearly world wide associated with an old Mother Goddess and the constellation Scorpio. I think it might provide some of the connections you are looking for. So I found a book that wasn't cross-referenced by that author, which is recognized in its field (astronomical history) and was surprised to find that it wasn't an exageration. Richard Hinckley Allen, _Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning_, Dover Publications, Inc., New York:1963. The book was originally published by G.E. Stechert in 1899, under the former title: _Star-Names and Their Meanings_. I consider this a reliable source to balance a perhaps more "revisionist" view since it was written during a period by an expert who probably never questioned it theologically and reported facts as facts. Bear with me, the first part becomes significant as you go along. pg 360-365. SCORPIO, or SCORPIUS, the SCORPION, was the reputed slayer of the Giant, exalted to the skies and now rising from the horizon as Orion, still in fear of the Scorpion, sinks below it; although the latter itself was in danger, --Sackville writing in his Induction to the _Mirror of Magistrates_, in 1565. Whiles Scorpio, dreading Sagittarius' dart Whose bow prest bent in flight the string had slipped Down slid into the ocean flood apart. Classical authors saw in it the monster that caused the disastrous runaway of the steeds of Phoebus Apollow when in the inexperienced hands of Phaethon. For some centuries before the Christian era it was the largest of the zodiac figures, forming with the [Greek name] it's Claws, --the _prosectae chelae_ of Cicero, now our Libra,--a double constellation, as Ovid wrote: Porrigit in spatium signorum membra duorum; and this figuring has been adduced as the strongest proof of Scorpio's great antiquity, from the belief that only six constellations made up on the earliest zodiac, of which this extended sign was one. With the Greeks it universally was [Greek]; Aratos, singularly making but slight allusion to it, added [Greek]; while another very appropriate term with Aratos was [Greek], the Great Sign. This reported magnitude perhaps was due to the mytholgical necessity of greater size for the slayer of great Orion, in reference to which that author characterized it as [Greek] 'appearing huger still.' The Latins occasionally wrote the word _Scorpios_, but usually _Scorpius_, or Scorpio; while Cicero, Ennius, Manilius, and perhaps Columella gave the kindred African title Nepa, or Nepas, the first of which the Alfonsine Tables copy, as did Manilus the Greek adjective, [G], Walking Backward. Astronomical writers and commentators, down to comparatively modern times, occasionally mentioned its two division under the combined title Sorpius cum Chelis; while some representations even showed the Scales in the creature's Claws. Grotius said that the Barbarians called the Claws Graffias, and the Latins, according to Pliny, Forficulae. In early China it was an important part of the figure of the mighty but genial Azure Dragon of the EAst and of spring, in later days the residence of the heavenly Blue Emperor; but in the time of Confucius it was Ta Who, the Great Fire, a primeval name for its star Antares; and Shing Kung, a Divine Temple, was applied to the stars of the tail. As a member of the early zodiac it was the _Hare_, for which, in the 16th century, was substituted, from Jesuit teaching, _Tien He_, the Celestial Scorpion. Sir William Drummond asserted that in the zodiac which the partriarch Abraham knew it was an Eagle; and some commentators have located here the biblical Chambers of the South, Scorpio being directly opposite the Pleiades on the sphere, both thought to be mentioned in the same passage of the _Book of Job_ with two other opposed constellations, the Bear and Orion; but the original usually is considered a reference to the southern heavens in general. Aben Ezra identified Sorpio, or Antares, with the K'sil of the Hebrews; although that people generally considered those stars as a Scorpion, their Akrabh, and, it is claimed, inscribed it on the banners of Dan as the emblem of the tribe whose founder was 'a serpent by the way." When thus shown it was as a _crowned Snake_ or _Basilisk_. A similar figure appeared for it at one period of Egyptian astronomy; indeed it is thus met with in moder times, for Chatterton, that precocious poet of the last centruy, plainly worte of the Scorpion in his line, " The slimy serpent swelters in his course;" and long before him Spenser had, in the _Faeirie Queen_, " and now in Ocean deepe Orion flying fast from hissing snake, His flaming head did hasten for to steepe. But the Denderah zodiac shows the typical form. Kircher called the whole constellation [Gk] _Statio Isidis_, the bright Antares having been at one time a symbol of Isis. The Arabians knew it as Al Akrab, the Scorpion, from which have degenerated Alacrab, Alatrab, Alatrap, Hacrab, --Riccioli's Askrab and Hacerab; and similarly it was the syrians' Akreva. Riccioli gave us Acrobo _Chaldaeis_, which may be true, but in this Latin word he probably had reference to the astrologers. The Persians ahd a Scorpion in their Gherzdum or Kdum, and the Turks, in their Koirughi, Tailed, and Uzun Koirughi, Long tailed. The Akkadians called it Girtab, the Seizer, or Stinger, and the Place where One Bows Down, titles indicative of the creature's dangerous character, although some early translators of the cuneiform text rendered it the _Double Sword_. With later dwellers on the Euphrates it was the symbol of darkness, showing the decline of the sun's power after the autumnal equinox, then located in it. Always prominent in that astronomy. Jensen thinks that it was formed there 5000 B.C., and pictured much as it now is; perhaps also in the semi-human form of two Scorpion-men, the early circular Altar or Lamp being shown grasped in the Claws, as the Scales were in illustatoins of the 15th century. In Babylonia this calendar sign was identified with the eigth month, Arakh Savna, our October-November. Early India knew it as Ali, Vicrika, or Vrouchicam, --in Tamil, Vrishman; but later on Varah Mihira siad Kaurpya, and Al Biruni, Kaurba, both from the Greek Scorpios. On the Cingalese zodiac it was Ussika. Dante designated it as Un Secchione, "Formed like a bucket that is all ablaze; and in the _Purgatorio_ as Il Friddo Animal of our motto, not a mistaken reference to the creature's nature, but to its rising in the cold hours of the dawn when he was gazing upon it. Dante's translator Longfellow has something similar in his own _Poet's Calendar_ for October: On the frigid Scorpion I ride. Chaucer wrote of it, in the _Hous of Fame_ as the Scorpioun; his Anglo-Norman predecessors, Escopiun; and the Anglo-Saxons, Throwend. Caesisu mistakenly considered it one of the Scorpions of Rehobam; but Novidius said that it was "the scorpion or serpent whereby Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was enforced to let the children of Israel depart out of his country;" of which Hood said "there is no such thing in history." Other Christians of their day changed its figure to that of the Apostle Bartholmew; and Weigel, to a Cardinal's Hat. In some popular books of the present day it is the Kite, which it resembles as much as a Scorpion. Its symbol is now given as [Astrological symbol], but in earlier times the sting of the creature was added, perhaps so showing the feet, tail and dart; but the similarity in their symbols may indicate that there has been some intimate connection, now forgotten, between Scorpio and the formerly adjacent Virgo. Ampelius assigned to it the care of Africus, the Southwest Wind, a duty which, he said, Aries and Sagittarius shared; and the weather-wise of antiquity thought that its setting exerted a malignant influence, and was accompanied by storms; but the alchemists held it in high regard, for only when the sun was in this sign could the transmutation of iron into gold be performed. Astrologers, on the other hand, although they considered it a fruitful sign, "active and eminent," knew it as the accursed constellation, the baleful source of war and discord, the birthplace of the planet mars, and so the House of Mars, the Martis Sidus of Manilus. But this was located in the sting and tail; the claws, as [Gk] Jugum, or the Yoke of the Balance, being devoted to Venus, because this goddess united persons under the yoke of matrimony. It was supposed to govern the region of the groin in the human body and to reign over Judaea, Mauritania, Catalonia, Norway, West Silesia, Upper Batavia, Barbary, Morocco, Valencia, and Messina; the early Manilius claiming it as the tutelary sign of Carthage, Libya, Egypt, Sardinia, and other island of the Italian coast. Brown was its assigned color, and Pliny asserted that the appearance of a comet hre portended a plague of reptiles and insects, especially of locusts. Although nominally in the zodiac, the sun actually occupies but nine days in passing through the two portions that project upwards into Orhiuchus, so far south of the ecliptic is it; indeed, except for these projections, it could not be claimed as a member of the zodiac. Scorpon is famous as the region of the sky where have appeared many of the brilliant temporary stars, chief among them, perhaps, that of 134 BC., the first in astronmical annals, and the occasion, Pliny siad of the catalogue of Hipparchos, about 125 BC. The Chinese She Ke confirmed this appearance by its record of the "strange star" in June of that year, in the sieu Fang, marked by [.....] and others in Scorpio. Serviss thinks it conceivable that the strange outburst of these novae in and near Scorpio may have had some effect in causing this constellation to be regarded by the ancients as malign in its influence. But this character may, with at least equal probablity, have come from the fiery color of its _lucida_, as well as from the history of the constellation in connection with Orion, and the poisonous attributes of its earthly namesake. In southern latitudes Scorpio is magnificently seen in its entirety, nearly 45 degrees,--Gould catolguing in it 184 naked-eye stars. Along its northern border, perhaps in Orphiuchus, there was, in very early days, a constellation, the Fox, taken from the Egyptian sphere of Petosiris, but we know nothing as to its details. "Antares" The Ariabians Kalb al Akrab, the Scorpion's Heart, which probably preceded the [Gk] and Cor Scorpii of Greece and Rome respectively. -=*=- In Buffie Johnson's _Lady of the Beasts_ (Harper, San Francisco, 1981) pgs 332-335, there are illustrations and photos of statuatary and pottery which show the representation of the Scorpion Goddess, as Selket, a woman with the lower torso taking the shape of a scorpion wiht a raised tail. On her head is the "horned" headdress with the disk between the horns,the horns and sun disk of Isis. (New Kingdom 1570-332 bce). A Stamp seal showing two scorpions protecting the rosette of the goddess Inanna, from Sumer, ca 3300 bce, and a statue of Selket wearing a scorpion on her head, as well as a drawing from Ur, ca 2400 bce showing the goddess giving birth guarded by scorpions. In the _Book of the Dead_ seven scorpions accompany Isis, when her son Horus was bitten by one scorpion of the most deadly species, her scorpion friends saved her son out of love for her...and bit the son of a woman who had refused to help, then with her magic, Isis then saved the bitten boy. (A classic shamanism motif(. Selket is shown as beneficial when associated with Isis, and it is possible that the "other" woman is Isis's dark aspect. Selket symbolizes resurrection into a new life beyond earthly existence. "Gathering the setting sun into her outstretched arms she becomes the link between the living and the dead and helps the dead accomodate themselves to their new land. In another aspect, Selket isunited with Sirius, as a consequence the star if placed in her crown." (ibid. p. 334) Johnson also compares Chamunda, the scorpion deity of the central Indian tradition with the other scorpion goddess with the endowment of poison which indicates her connection with death and rebirth. "The Scorpion expresses the vital spirit in humans which, transformed, becomes the divine pneuma. One of its symbols is the scorpion which stings itself to death (E. A. Wallis Budge, _The Gods of the Egyptians_ vol. 2 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1969), 377-78. "The association between serpent and scorpion, both sudden and dangerous stingers, appears in the Babylonina and Greek astrological sign of Scorpio, which corresponds to the Ctyptian sign of the autumn equinox, the serpent. In esoteric traditions, the scorpion is recognized as a spiritual insect rhough its gift of self-immolation and rebirth. The venom of the scorpion is said to contain its own antidote." the Scorpion as the dual Mother, the one who gave birth to and then "swallowed" the divine son (sun) is found in Egyptian myth as the Scorpion which killed Horus, sending him to his midwinter death and resurrection as his Mother Isis gave him rebirth. Spirits of the four points of the year were called Sons of Horus and placed as small images on the pharoah's tombs...a man, bull, lion and scorpion or serpent...which seem to have become the four angels of the Apocalypse. Istar, Babylonian, "Star" was the Great Goddess who appears as Ashtoreth, Anath, Asherah. She was refered to as the Great Whore, and described in Revelation 17:5 as Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots. Another of her titles was the Goddess Har, who called herself the compassionate prostitute. Interestingly enough, in the Voluspa there is mention of the Hall of Har, where Gullveig was mentioned as being, who was "held up by spears" and who supposedly started the war between the Vanir and the Aesir by being attacked in the hall of Har...which is usually translated as Odin. There might be a better explanation, now that I think of it... I wonder how I missed that before. Anyway, Ishtar was also called in Bablyonian prayers: The Light of the World, Leader of Hosts, Opener of the Womb, Righteous Judge, Lawgiver, Goddess of Goddesses (Vanadis?), Bestower of Strength, Framer of all Decrees, Lady of Victory, Forgiver of Sins, among many other 'kennings'. Other sources suggest Ishtar was the same Great Goddess as Dea Syria, Astarte, Cybelle, Aphrodite, Kore, Mari, Mari-Ana and others. Preceding her though were supposedly the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, who rescued and/or gave birth to Dumuzi her sacred son/lover just as Ishtar did with Tammuz. Correlating to both was the Egyptian goddess Isis, who was the "Oldest of the Old," and the "Goddess from whom all becoming Arose," and her title was the same as the Queen Mother of Egypt's. Apuleius, a Roman philosopher, poet and Isis-worshipper, addressed her under several goddess names: For the Phrygians that are the first of all men call me the Mother of the gods of Pessinus; the Athenians, which are sprung from their own soil, Cecropian Minerva; the Cyprians, which are girt about by the sea, Pahphian Venus; the Cretans, which bear arrows, Dictynian Diana; the Sicilians, which speak three tongues, infernal Proserpine; the Eleusinians, their ancient goddess Ceres; some Juno, others Bellona, others Hecate, others Ramnusie...the Egyptians, skilled in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies and call me by my true name, Queen Isis. (Richard Knight, _the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology_. New YOrk: J.W. Bouton, 1892.) Isis/Nephthys was, or were, the Egyptian version of the creating-and-destroying Goddess, who were also typified as "weeping goddesses." And with other goddesses of this type were known as Guardians and Keepers of the Dead, and with the power over life and death, and healing. They can be found in shamanic traditions the world over as the Underworld deity and as the Lady of the Beasts. [Gk] _Statio Isidis_, the bright Antares having been at one time a symbol of Isis. This part becomes particularly interesting to me, since the Isidis is very similar to a term used for a particular group of ladies, comparable to the Disir of the Norse tradition, the OHG 'itis' or OE "ides" meaning applied to earthly women, but also used in kennings as 'goddess.' As a term for 'woman' it also has the meaning of 'virgin'. The worship of the Disir occured during the winter nights. And interesting correlation that could be made is that the Celtic and the Norse "winter" rites both involve some of the same archtypes and ceremonies, especially the duality of life and death and the door being open and "unguarded" at that time. The Wild Hunt Motif would be a defining factor here, including both the Dark Mother and the Lord of Death. The disir had two appearances, bright (swans feathers) and black (raven or crow feathers)...they were psychopomps, and hardly distinguishable from valkyrie at times. In the Wild Hunt they were accompanied by various Gods, Herne, Woden and others in various traditions and countries. Mazes in Myth Valkyrie I've been working with the labyrinth myths and stories myself. And there is another version or way of viewing the Maiden at the center of the labyrinth that I thought you might be interested in. The maze/labyrinth theme is central not only to the Celtic legends, but the Norse and others besides European. In some of the turf/snow games still played with the 'classical' unicursal labyrinth the Maiden at the center is guarded or held by a troll. In the symbolic analysis of the hero rescuing the maiden from the labyrinth there is the concept of the hero going through a rebirth process and recapturing the feminine, intuitive side of his nature (according to folks who like to do this sort of thing). In many of the later Grail stories, the hero soon abandons the feminine, rejecting it. Those that don't are the ones who remained with the old faith, with the "abandoning" ones the ones who rejected the feminine and went with the male dominant religion of Christianity. The maze can be interchangeable with a dragon or serpent in the same sort of stories as meaning basically the same thing, since the labyrinth is a symbol of a descent and ascent of death and rebirth through the Earth Mother. Old Anglo-Saxon castles were guarded by mounds of earth with basically the same name as dragon. At the center of the Underworld maze is also found the castle and the Cauldron of Regeneration or Plenty. Women undergoing the traditional challenge and initiation comprable to the Underground journey, were "given" to the trolls. The trolls, being the underground guardians (and not the nasty demons Tolkein and other Christians made them out to be...just ask any Swede) taught the girl secrets as she "served" in the Underworld, in many legends for Frau Holle, who has many well-known counterparts, including Hel, Annwyn, Hecate and others. This is a fairly well known theme in fairy tales also, but not as well recognized as being an initiatory story as the Heroic journeys are. In many Northern folktales, a girl is "given" to the trolls, or abandoned in the woods. In some stories she with her brother, in others she is alone, and the hunter is told to kill her. This journey into the wilderness is the beginning of her wandering through the maze. Or in some of the stories she is taken to a castle and beset with tasks that she must accomplish in order to "marry" the king or prince. She spins straw into gold with the help of the trolls, dwarfs or gnomes, all names for the Underworld beings who guard the fertility of the Upperworld. The spinning of straw into gold is the power of insuring the crops come to fruitful harvest as the grass winds through the season to gold. She is usually set three tasks by either the King who will marry her, or the Queen Mother of the Prince. When she accomplishes the tasks set for her, she "claims" the masculine side of herself and "marries" or becomes united with her masculine side. The story is told in different ways, but the journey to the center of the labyrinth/maze is form of the Spiral Dance of life and death. One of the themes that is found in conjunction with these stories are the ones that have the "poison" apple in them. The apple was a symbol of life and rebirth for many ancient cultures. Apples were associated with the Roman/Etruscan goddess Pomona, the Greek Hera, Demeter, Morgan in her Crone form in Celtic legends, and Holle or Hel in Norse and Germanic legends. Idunn was the Maiden form of Holle or Hel, who kept the apples of immortality in a basket. In the Volsung Saga it tells of the belief that a man could be perserved in death by the apples given to him by his wife. In other legends children are conceived after eating a magical apple. When the Bible was translated, the apple of life and death was found in the Garden of Idunn. The Apple, Rose and Hawthorn are all members of the same family. The Hawthorne, especially as a hedge or protective enclosure is found with the maze, either protecting it, or actually forming the walls. They are sacred trees/plants, the first to begin blooming in the spring. The Hawthorn is especially sacred because it can have blossoms, ripe fruit and ripening fruit on it at all times, as well as protective thorns. I'm posting from the Seattle, Washington area of the United States. Blessings V By: Deborah Kest To: Rose Dawn Re: PAGAN SEMANTICS RD> OK, having some more thoughts about this. If there is/are one/two RD> original 'creators,' the system would still be polytheistic if the RD> original(s) created a bunch of gods/demi-gods and cut 'em loose so RD> to speak--not assigning them roles in the grand scheme of the RD> original(s)? If so, what would be a counter-example--something like RD> Yahweh & Son and the angelic hosts? I think I'm following you, it's RD> just a bitch to put into words, LOL! It's hard to imagine an original creator with a grand scheme who would "cut 'em loose." "Well, yes, I have this plan, you see. And things are going pretty well according to plan. But this demi-god was supposed to be in charge of the dinosaurs, and he really doesn't do his job very well. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to fire him, and let him shift for himself." Just an extra force in the universe, which doesn't really play any role at all in the "grand scheme?" This would be rather contradictory if the Grand Poo-Ba were omnipotent and omniscient, for if he wanted things to work according to plan, he would always have the power to make them work. But, much to my distress, I taught Neoplatonism in my sections this week. One of my students, (the only one who has displayed a mystical bent), has been to section every single time, and I was relying on him to defend the Neoplatonists. Figures this would be the only time he oversleeps. The reason the Neoplatonists bother me so much is that they do have the different levels of reality schtick, with The One, aka "The Good" at the top of the ladder. Because the cause is greater than the effect, (the first premise which I don't accept), The One emanates from itself the next level of reality, Intellect. (I still don't understand how something which is in no way differentiated, entirely uniform, could cause anything. After all, isn't causation a process involving some sort of differentiation?) But, anyway, like the sun emanates the halos around it without diminishing itself, or without being anything other than what it is, so too does The One have great fecundity and emanates Intellect. Intellect is still unified, as a mind thinking upon itself. But insofar as it can have thoughts, it has differentiation within its unity. Intellect is the act of unifying. All of the things it thinks on are Platonic Forms, like Beauty, which unify all of the particular instances (of beauty) in our world, (and all other worlds which the World-Soul spins). But Intellect doesn't think of the particular, it thinks only of true Beauty, true Justice, etc. It is not separate from all of these forms, so the way it thinks is from the perspective of each form onto all of the other forms. So from Beauty it contemplates Justice and Equality, and from Justice it contemplates Beauty, etc. Well, somehow in all of this pure thinking on itself, it too emanates another less perfect level of reality, which is Soul, explained as the higher Soul, or World-Soul, and the lower Soul, or our souls. The World-Soul is less fertile than the level before, so it can't manage to produce real babies, but "less real" babies, imitations of the Forms in the mind of Intellect. So it spins all of the myriads of combina tions of Forms, aka our world. This process of causality, where the effect is always inferior to that which causes it, continues down to the point where no causality is possible any more. This point is Prime Matter, which has no form left at all. As something approaches Prime Matter, it is less and less formed, less and less intelligible. Something is ugly not because it partakes in a form of ugliness, but because it does not partake in the form of beauty at all. This breakdown of order is responsible for what we call evil. According to Plotinus Prime Matter *is* Evil. This would suggest that either The Good is responsible for Evil, or there is more than one principle in the universe, which would deny the premise on which The One is based. The way they try to weasel out of this problem is by saying that Prime Matter is the least real of all, or that it isn't real. That doesn't mean that evil doesn't exist, but it exists because of holes, which are in themselves nothing-ness. It's like Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese has holes, but the holes are in themselves not anything. You wouldn't say that Swiss cheese is made up of cheese and holes, but that there are places in the cheese which simply lack cheese. Holes can't make up anything. So too Prime Matter can't cause anything. Well, anyway, the reason I laid the skeleton of the system out is because Neoplatonism would seem to be a system whose first cause was The One, and who followed necessarily according to a single principle, to produce a manifold which is, in a sense, independent of its "creator." But though there is order, there isn't a divine plan, in that The One can't have any goals. It just emanates from itself, from which all else is derived. The manifold is independent of The One because it isn't itself The One. While there are unifying principles which can only be derived from Unity itself, because they are not perfectly uniform, they are not part of The One. The One can't have parts!!! So, are they monotheists, (The One), duo-theists, (The One and Prime Matter), polytheists, (all of the levels of the hierarchy of reality, which includes levels of spirits which I didn't spell out), or all of the above? One could argue for all of the options, since The One is responsible for all, (but then where does matter, the building stuff of our world, come from, if by itself it is evil), and since the efficient causes of every phenomenon we experience comes from the lower deities, not The One itself. If I *had* to accept such a system, (which I don't feel myself obliged to accept at all, since the arguments which Plotinus and Proclus give are terribly flawed), I would be inclined to favor polytheism, since even though The One is the first principle, not everything is incorporated into The One. In fact nothing is, since that would violate its Unity. So, The One is sort of off by itself, just emanating, while the efficient cause of our world is the World Soul, and all of the levels of spirits can have their hand in our pie. It's my understanding that the Neoplatonic hierarchy of spirits is what much of magic is still based on today. Their nature isn't determined by The One, except insofar as they are caused by The One and this process of diminishing causation, which makes them worse than that which caused them. They have more unity than we do, being higher up the chain, but less than The One. So while they couldn't do terribly disunified things, they can still do somewhat disunified things, and thus aren't determined. If they aren't determined by The One, then they are powers unto themselves, and the ones which actually do stuff which matters to us. > Well, the "specific group" would be neo-pagans, of course. But then > the argument is circular, and I'm not surprised that you would be > confused. I think there is such a thing as neo-pagans. They are > defined, more or less, by a few distinguishing traits: polytheism, > feminist spirituality, environmental spirituality, and belief in/use of > magic. (This would be my starting list). (Again, none of the traits > are either necessary or sufficient, except *maybe* polytheism, as > sufficient, but not necessary.) So, if we start with the foundation of > neo-pagans, then their reclamation would be of religions which resemble > that which they seek. RD> RD> OK. It still sounds a little tautological to me! I definitely also RD> think there is such a thing as neo-pagans, but the major identifier RD> for me personally is that they define their religion *as* neo-pagan, RD> which is also tautological... oh hell, my head hurts. Reminds me of a RD> local GLAAD meeting a while back; roundtable discussion, topic: What RD> Is A Lesbian? (After much discussion, the answer everyone agreed on RD> was 'Anyone who says she is.') I think the way to get out of the tautology is to differentiate between the questions "what are they" and "how are they identified." My foundation was that there *is* such a thing as a Neopagan, and I gave a rough description/definition. Your challenge was that *is* is dependant on *what we know to be the case*. If our knowledge is dependant on their self-identification as a Neopagan, we are back in the circle again. I'd like to break the circle by claiming that *is* is not dependant on what we know to be the case. There are Neopagans, separate from the issue of identification of Neopagans. The issue of identification is important for different purposes, but not to the purpose of whether there are Neopagans. If we break the circle, and give rough starting definitions, then the reclamations would be of those religions which have traits which would fit those starting definitions. This means that if just anyone found something appealing from ancient times, and worked to reclaim it, it wouldn't automatically get the label "Pagan." The "just anyone" would have to fit the rough starting definition, or convince the rest of us to include them in a revised definition, before they would count as Neopagans, and their reclamation count as "Pagan." Furthermore, if a Neopagan wanted to reclaim something which had nothing to do with religion, that wouldn't count as Pagan either. RD> Hmm, I don't think I was looking at it in terms of counting them as RD> pagans. I seem to recall you'd questioned whether Hinduism had RD> features that neo-pagans would find desireable, Yes, but I had made the argument that the fact that they wouldn't apply the word to themselves wasn't sufficient to prove that we shouldn't apply the word to them, if they had the features which we thought of as Pagan. Since the purpose of our discussion is to better understand our own word, we are concerned with whether, as we use it, it fits them, whether they use it or not. RD> and I was pointing out RD> the beliefs/practices of different denominations that might be RD> attractive to various neo-Pagan religions. But yes, I'd say the RD> argument against counting them as Pagans is pretty much spot-on. RD> If not originally a neo-Pagan word, it definitely *was* a western RD> word, no? As to the second, I hadn't even considered it & it's an RD> interesting point. I wouldn't say it was an argument in favor of RD> counting them as Pagan, but there's a lot of truth in it! Why isn't it an argument in favor of counting them as Pagan? If the major things which we use to define Paganism we share with them, and if their sects are closer to some of our "sects" than the sects of each respective religion (understood loosely) are to each other, why not? The Anglo - Saxon Rune Poem By: Steph Parker Anyway, here is the Anglo-Saxon Rune poem. The OE version is in West Saxon though the spelling hasn't been regulised (though I'm using the standard 'ae' for 'ash' and 'th' for 'thorn' and 'eth'). The translation will be Anthony E. Farnham's from A Sourcebook in the History of English as it's much too late for me to bother doing my own and I'll be too busy over the next few days. Where the number '7' appears that is the Old English equivalent of the ampersand (&) and should be read as 'and' or 'ond'. One last point - the poem here has not been proofread so there is a chance that there are errors in the transcription (particularly with ommission of the letter 'e' as there is a slight problem with my keyboard). Feoh byth frofur fira gehwylcum - sceal theah manna gehwylc miclun hyt daelan gif he wile for drihtne domes hleotan. (Wealth is a joy to every man - but every man must share it well if he wish to gain glory in the sight of the Lord.) Ur byth anmod 7 oferhyrned, felafrecne deor, feohteth mid hornum, maere morstapa: thaet is modiy wuht! (Aurochs is fierce, with gigantic horns, a very savage animal, it fights with horns, a well-known moor-stepper: it is a creature of courage!) THorn byth thearle scearp, thegna gehwylcum anfeng ys yfyl, ungemetun rethe manna gehwylcun the him mid resteth. (Thorn is very sharp, harmful to every man who seizes it, unsuitably severe to every man who rests on it.) Os byth ordfruma aelcre spraece, wisdomes wrathu and witena frofur and eorla gehwam eadnys and tohiht. (Os is the creator of all speech, a supporter of wisdom and comfort of wise men, and a blessing aand hope to every man.) Rad byth on recyde rinca gehwylcum sefte, and swithhwaet tham the sitteth onufan meare maegenheardum ofer milpathas. (Journey is to every warrior in the hall pleasant, and bitingly tough to him who sits on a might steed over the mile-paths.) Cen byth cwicera gehwam cuth on fyre, blac and beorhtlic, byrneth oftust thaer hi aethelingas inne restath. (Torch is to every living thing known by its fire; bright and brilliant, it burns most often where the princes take their rest within.) Gyfu gumena byth gleng and herenys, wrathu 7 wyrthscype, 7 wraecna gehwam ar and aetwist the byth othra leas. (Generosity of men is an ornament and praise, support and dignity, magnificence and existence to every suffering man, who is otherwise destitute.) Wenne bruceth the can weana lyt, sares and sorge, and him sylfa haefth blaed 7 blysse and eac byrga geniht. (Joy he possesses who knows few woes, pain and sorrow, and has for himself prosperity and bliss, and also the abundance found in the fortified dwellings of men.) Haegl byth hwitust corna, hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte, wealcath hit windes scura, weortheth hit to waetere syththan. (Hail is the whitest of seeds, it comes down from the air of heaven, the gusts of wind toss it about, afterward it turns to water.) Nyd byth nearu on breostan: weortheth hi theah oft nitha bearnum to helpe and to haele gehwaethre, gif hi his hlystath aeror. (Necessity is oppressive to the heart: yet it often becomes for the children of men a help and salvation for each, if they have hearkened unto it.) Is byth oferceald, ungemetum slidor, glisnath glaeshluttur gimmum gelicust, flor forste geworuht, faeger ansyne. (Ice is extremely cold, excessively slippery, it glistens glass-clear, most like to gems, it is a floor wrought by frost, fair of sight.) Ger byth gumena hiht, thon God laeteth, halig heofones cyning, hrusan syllan beorhte bleda beornum and thearfum. (Year (the growing season) is the hope of men, when God, holy king of heaven, causes the earth to give forth shining fruits to wealthy and to needy.) Eoh byth utan unsmethe treow, heard hrusan faest, hyrde fyres, wyrtrumun underwrethyd, wynn on ethle. (Yew is a tree with unsmooth bark, hard and fast in the earth, keeper of fire, supported by roots, a joy in the land.) Peorth byth symble plega and hlehter wlancum [and wisum], thar wigan sittath on beorsele blithe aetsomne. (Peorth is always sport and laughter to the noble [and the wise], where men sit together in merriment in the mead-hall.) Eolhx secg eard haefth oftust on fenne, wexeth on wature, wundath grimme, blode breneth beorna gehwylcne the him aenigne onfeng gedeth. (Eolhx-sedge has its home most often in the marsh, it grows in the water, wounds cruelly, darkens with blood every man who touches it in any way.) Sigel semannum symble bith on hihte, thonn hi hine feriath ofer fisces beth, oth hi brimhengest bringeth to lande. (Sun is always a hope to seamen, when they guide the sea-steed over the fish's bath until it carries them to land.) Tir bith tacna sum: healdeth trywa wel with aethelingas, a bith on faerylde ofer nihta genipu, naefre swiceth. (Tir is a sign to remember: it holds faith well with princes, is always on course above the mists of the nights, it never wanders or deceives.) Beorc byth bleda leas, bereth efne swa theah tanas butan tudder, bith on telgum wlitig, heah on helme hrysted faegere, geloden leafum, lyfte getenge. (Birch (referring to the poplar?) is seedless, yet without fruit it nevertheless puts forth sprouts; it is beautiful with its branches, lofty in its crown, fairly adorned, sprung from shoots, pressing aloft.) Eh byth for eorlum aethelinga wyn, hors hofum wlanc, thar him haelethe ymb welege on wicgum wrixlath spraece, 7 bith unstyllum aefre frofur. (Horse in the presence of warriors is a joy to princes, a steed proud of its hoofs, where mounted men and wealthy exchange speech about him, and is ever a joy to the restless.) Man byth on myrgthe his magan leof - sceal theah anra gehwylc othrum swican; fortham Dryhten wyle dome sine thaet earme flaesc eorthan betaecan. (Man in merriment is beloved of his fellow - yet shall every one betray the other; for this reason God wills by his decree that the unhappy flesh be committed to the earth.) Lagu byth leodum langsum gethuht, gif hi sculun nethan on nacan tealtum 7hi saeytha swythe bregath and se brimhengest bridles ne gymeth. (Sea is to men a thing which seems everlasting, if they must dare to venture on the unsteady and untrustorthy ship and the sea-waves greatly terrify them and the sea-steed cares not for its bridle.) Ing waes aerest mid Eastdenum gesewen secgun, oth he siththan est ofer waeg gewat; waen aefter ran. THus Heardingas thone haele nemdun. (Ing was first among the East-Danes visible to men, until he later eastward departed over the sea; his chariot followed him. Thus did the Heardings invoke that hero.) AEthel byth oferleof aeghwylcum men, gif he mot thaer rigtes and gerysena on brucan on bolde bleadum oftast. (Homeland is most precious to every man, if he may therein enjoy justice and courtesies in his house, in frequent and abundant prosperity.) Daeg byth Drihtnes sond, deore mannum, maere Metodes leoht, myrgth and tohiht eadgum and earmum, eallum brice. (Day is the envoy of the Lord, dear to men, the great light of God, happiness and hope to blessed and to miserable, an enjoyment for all.) Ac byth on eorthan elda bearnum flaesces fodor, fereth gelome ofer ganotes baeth: garsecg fandath hwaether ac haebbe aethele treowe. (Oak is for the children of men on earth a provider of meat (acorns are food for swine); it journeys continually over the bath of the gannet: Neptune the spearman proves if the oak keep faith in honorable fashion.) AEsc bith oferheah, eldum dyre, stith on stathule, stede rihte hylt theah him feohtan on firas monige. (Ash (used for spears) is very tall, precious to men, stubborn in standing, holds its place well even though many men attack it.) Yr byth aethelinga 7 eorla gehwaes wyn and wyrthmynd, byth on wicge faeger, faestlic on faerelde, fyrdgeatewa sum. (Yr is for every prince and noble a joy and an hononr, it is fair on a horse, dependable on an expedition, a fine piece of military equipage.) Ior byth eafixa, and theah a bruceth fodres on foldan; hafath faegerne eard, waetre beworpen, thaer he wynnum leofath. (Ior is of the river-fish, and yet always partakes of food on land; it has a fair home, surrounded by water, where it dwells in joy.) Ear byth egle eorla gehwylcun thonn faestlice flaesc onginneth hraw colian, hrusan ceosan blac to gebeddan: bleda gedreosath, wynna gewitath, wera geswicath. (Earth is loathsome to every man when relentlessly the flesh, the carrion body, begins to cool, lividly to accept marriage to its fellow dust: blossoms fall, joys pass away, friendships fail.) Wyrd wes eower weard. Steph. Traditional Aboriginal myth, which was printed in Web of Wyrd #10 Back in the Dreamtime, Gidja the Moon lived by the river with the Bullanji people. They made fun of him, because he was round and fat, with little stringy legs and arms. Gidja loved Yalma, the Evening Star, but she laughed at him too. So Gidja made a magic circle of stones, and at dusk every night, sat in his circle and sang of his love for Yalma. He made so many songs! So, Yalma agreed to marry him and the Bullanji people held corroboree for them. Now Yalma had a baby daughter - Lilga, the Morning Star. Lilga would go hunting with her father, Gidja. One day, while gathering honey, a limb fell off a tree and crushed Lilga, so she died. This was the first time that anyone had ever died. Poor Gidja mourned his daughter, but the Bullanji people were afraid, and blamed Gidja for bringing death to the world. When Gidja carried his little Morning Star in her coffin over the river, some men cut the ropes holding the bridge, and he fell into the river. The coffin drifted out to sea, and today, you can still see little Morning Star shining out at sea. Gidja climed out of the river, and made a fire. He carried a bright burning brand from the fire, and walked through the forest. The people saw him and were afraid. The they saw it was Gidja, and were angry. They tried to kill him, but couldn't, so they picked him up and threw him up into the sky. As he rose up, he cursed the people, and said they would all die, and remain dead. But he, and the grass, would die, and would come back to new life. And so it is. Gidja grows fatter and fatter, and then fades away like a little old man. Lilga though, shines brightly. Just like he said, Gidja comes back to life. At dusk on the third day after he dies, you can see him again, floating like a baby's cradle, waiting to start again. Christmas Customs by Rick Hayward Now that Christmas is fast approaching and the year has once more come full circle, most of us will soon be busy adorning the house with brightly coloured decorations, a Christmas tree and all the other paraphernalia that goes to create a festive atmosphere. Holly and mistletoe will almost certainly be included in our decorations as evergreens have been used in the winter festivities from very ancient times and definitely long before Christianity appeared on the scene. What Christians celebrate as the birthday of Christ is really something that was superimposed on to a much earlier pagan festival--that which celebrated the Winter Solstice or the time when the Sun reaches its lowest point south and is reborn at the beginning of a new cycle of seasons. In Northern Europe and Scandinavia it was noted by the early Christian scholar, Bede, that the heathens began the year on December 25th which they called Mother's Night in honour of the great Earth Mother. Their celebrations were held in order to ensure fertility and abundance during the coming year, and these included much feasting, burning of lamps, lighting of great fires (the Yule fires) and exchanges of gifts. The Romans, too, held their great celebrations--Saturnalia-- from December 17th to 25th and it was the latter date which they honoured as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Saturnalia was characterised by much merry-making, sometimes going to riotous extremes, with masters and slaves temporarily exchanging roles. The use of evergreens to decorate the streets and houses was also very much in evidence at this great winter festival. That we now celebrate the birth of Christ at the same time is largely due to the early Church Fathers who found it was much easier to win converts to the faith by makng Christ's birthday coincide with an already long established pagan festival. In fact, it wasn't until the 4th century that Pope Julius I finally established the 25th as the official birthday of Christ; earlier Christians differed widely as to this date-- some choosing September 29th, while others held that January 6th or March 29th were the correct dates. As we have seen, the pagan element in Christmas lives on in the festival at the Winter Solstice. But these elements are also very much alive in our use of evergreens as decorations at this time of year. Like most evergreens, the holly and mistletoe have long been held to symbolise eternal life, regeneration and rebirth. Holly, with its bright red berries and dark spiky foliage, has been revered from ancient times as a symbol of life everlasting. It was associated with strength and masculinity and was considered useful in the treatment of various ailments which were seen to lower the vital spirits. In old England, a decoction of holly leaves was considered a cure for worms; but most of all this prickly evergreen was looked upon as a luck bringer--particularly in rural areas where a bunch of holly hung in the cow shed or stable was thought to favour the animals if placed there on Christmas Eve. Many people used to take a piece of holly from the church decorations at Christmas as a charm against bad luck in the coming year. Holly was also considered a very protective tree which, if planted outside the house, was believed to avert lightning, fire and the evil spells of witches. An old holly spell describes how to know one's future spouse. At midnight on a Friday, nine holly leaves must be plucked and tied with nine knots in a three-cornered cloth. This is then placed under the pillow and, provided silence is observed from the time of plucking until dawn the next day, your future spouse will come to you in your dreams. In certain areas of Wales, it was thought extremely unlucky to bring holly into the house before December 24th and if you did so there would be family quarrels and domestic upheavals. You would also be inviting disaster if you burned green holly or squashed the red berries. Turning now to mistletoe, it seems that this is by far the most mystical of the plants associated with Christmas and has, from very ancient times, been treated as magical or sacred. It is often included in modern Christmas decorations simply for the fun of kissing beneath it and, though this seems to be a peculiarly English custom, it probably harks back to the mistletoe's association with fertility. The real reason why mistletoe is now associated with Christmas is very much a carry-over from ancient practices, when it was considered as somehow belonging to the gods. The Roman historian, Pliny, gives an early account of how the Druids would hold a very solemn ceremony at the Winter Solstice when the mistletoe had to be gathered, for the Druids looked upon this unusual plant, which has no roots in the earth, as being of divine origin or produced by lightning. Mistletoe which grew on the oak was considered especially potent in magical virtues, for it was the oak that the Druids held as sacred to the gods. At the Winter Solstice, the Druids would lead a procession into the forest and, on finding the sacred plant growing on an oak, the chief priest, dressed all in white, would climb the tree and cut the mistletoe with a knife or sickle made of gold. The mistletoe was not allowed to touch the ground and was therefore caught in a white linen cloth. On securing the sacred mistletoe, the Druids would then carry it to their temple where it would be laid beneath the altar stone for three days. Early on the fourth day, which would correspond to our Christmas Day, it was taken out, chopped into pieces and handed out among the worshippers. The berries were used by the priests to heal various diseases. Mistletoe was considered something of a universal panacea, as can be gleaned from the ancient celtic word for it--uile, which literally translated means 'all-healer'. A widespread belief was that mistletoe could cure anything from headaches to epilepsy; and indeed modern research has shown that the drug guipsine which is used in the treatment of nervous illnesses and high blood pressure is con- tained in mistletoe. Until quite recently the rural folk of Sweden and Switzerland believed that the mistletoe could only be picked at certain times and in a special way if its full potency as healer and protector was to be secured. The Sun must be in Sagittarius (close to the Winter Solstice) and the Moon must be on the wane and, following ancient practices, the mistletoe must not be just picked but shot or knocked down and caught before reaching the ground. Not only was mistletoe looked upon as a healer of all ills, but if hung around the house was believed to protect the home against fire and other hazards. As the mistletoe was supposed to have been produced by lightning, it had the power to protect the home against thunder bolts by a kind of sympathetic magic. Of great importance, however, was the power of mistletoe to protect against witchcraft and sorcery. This is evident in an old superstition which holds that a sprig of mistletoe placed beneath the pillow will avert nightmares (once considered to be the product of evil demons). In the north of England, it used to be the practice of farmers to give mistletoe to the first cow that calved after New Year's Day. This was believed to ensure health to the stock and a good milk yield throughout the year. Underlying this old belief is the fear of witches or mischievous fairy folk who could play havoc with dairy produce, so here mistletoe was used as a counter magic against such evil influences. In Sweden, too, a bunch of this magical plant hung from the living room ceiling or in the stable or cow-shed was thought to render trolls powerless to work mischief. With such a tremendous array of myth, magic and folklore associated with it, reaching far back into the pagan past, it is understandable that even today this favourite Christmas plant is forbidden in many churches. Yet even the holly and the ivy, much celebrated in a popular carol of that title, were once revered as sacred and magical by our pre-Christian ancestors. In view of what has been said, one could speculate that even if Christianity had never emerged it is more than likely that we would still be getting ready for the late-December festivities, putting up decorations, including holly and mistletoe, in order to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun, the great giver and sustainer of all earthly life. BYLAWS OF THE CHURCH OF ALL WORLDS, INC. As amended by General Meeting August 9, 1992 PREAMBLE Section 1: Recognizing the necessity for the affirmation of life in a world choked by the worship of death, we, the Priesthood and Councils of the Church of All Worlds do re-establish and re-ordain on this fair planet a vital new Pagan religion, dedicated to the celebration of Life, the maximal actualization of Human potential, and the realization of ultimate individual freedom and personal responsibility in harmonious eco-psychic relationship with the total Biosphere of Holy Mother Earth. To which end we do hereby adopt and enact the following Articles: ARTICLE I Name Section 1: The name of the corporation shall be the Church of All Worlds, Inc., and is a non-profit religious organization, incorporated under the laws of the States of Missouri and California. ARTICLE II Purpose Section 1: The purpose of this Corporation shall be as outlined in the Articles of Incorporation; and specifically the following: A. To present an alternative to war, hatred, violence, frustration, insecurity, fear, ignorance, jealousy, brutality, dishonesty, apathy, misery, loneliness, guilt, anxiety, alienation, paranoia, dominance, killing, force, hypocrisy, envy, malevolence, irresponsibility, intolerance, prejudice, persecution, greed, addiction, authoritarianism, and presently established religions and institutions, and to aid and support individuals in their rejection of these; B. To provide mutual help and encouragement in the search for meaning and identity through association with similarly oriented fellows in a context of acceptance and love; C. To aid individuals and groups in the maximal actualization of Human potential and the realization of ultimate individual freedom and personal responsibility: to help people become what they potentially are; D. To furnish a central headquarters and branch offices (called Churches, Nests, Centers, or Temples) through which seekers may locate and communicate with each other, and to buy, sell, own, hold, mortgage, or otherwise encumber, lease, or otherwise hold and dispose of real and personal property necessary to properly establish, fit up, and maintain such places; E. To encourage reading, study and growth on the part of members and friends, and to make available literature in various relevant fields; F. To publish newsletters, papers, magazines, pamphlets, books, directories and other materials deemed appropriate to the purposes of the Church by the Board of Directors or their delegated authority; G. To work, associate, and affiliate with other similarly oriented individuals, churches, agencies and groups promoting peace, love, joy, freedom, brotherhood, conservation, personal awareness and development, celebration of life and the eco-psychic recovery of Natural Wilderness, and to aid and support such people in such efforts as shall be found not to be in conflict with the purposes and principles of this Church; H. To establish and maintain Wilderness sanctuaries, retreats, camps, and communities in various regions; I. To establish and maintain schools, colleges, libraries and research facilities based on the principles of the Church; J. To receive money, property, and values of every kind heretofore donated, contributed, collected, and held, and to receive, and hold money, property and values of every kind that might be donated, contributed, collected and held, for the benefit of this religious organization; K. To engage in and promote any functions, services and activities deemed appropriate, necessary or expedient for the purposes of the Church by the Board of Directors , their delegated authority, or the directors of the various subsidiary groups; L. To do all in our power to increase the total degree of consciousness, individually, collectively, and synergically, at all levels of Being, in the unfolding course of emergent evolution; M. To provide all possible means for recycling the bodies of deceased members consistent with eco-psychic awareness and personal will; N. To make provision to establish and ordain various sacraments of the Church of All Worlds. ARTICLE I Membership Section l: Membership shall consist of those who understand the principles of the Church, who have made written application, paid the annual dues, and have been accepted by the Board of Directors or their delegated authority. The form of application shall be that approved by the Board of Directors or their delegated authority. Section 2: Members whose annual dues are current shall be referred to as active members, with full voting privileges and discounts at paid functions. Those whose dues are in arrears shall be regarded as inactive members, and their voting privileges and discounts at paid functions shall be suspended until such time as they renew their memberships with a payment of the annual dues. Section 3: Membership shall be organized in degrees of ranking, as follows: A. Three Rings of three Circles each, to be known (from outer to inner) respectively as Seekers, Scions, and Priests/Priestesses, or Clergy. B. Members may be referred to by designation of a Circle, one through nine. ARTICLE IV Seekers Section 1: The First Ring shall consist of Seekers, to be identified by the color green, as used on membership cards, newsletters and in ceremonial vestments. They shall be grouped in the following three Circles, by qualifications to be determined by combined Councils of all Rings; A. First Circle (identified with the planet Pluto and its symbols.) B. Second circle (identified with the planet Neptune and its symbols.) C. Third Circle (identified with the planet Uranus and its symbols.) ARTICLE V Scions Section l: The second Ring shall consist of Scions, to be identified by the color red, as used on membership cards, newsletters, and in ceremonial vestments. They shall be grouped into the following three Circles by qualifications to be determined and amended by the Board of Directors: A. Fourth circle (identified with the planet Saturn and its symbols.) B. Fifth circle (identified with the planet Jupiter and its symbols.) C. Sixth circle (identified with the planet Mars and its symbols.) Section 2: Duties of Scions shall include management of various Church programs, functions, and activities, as well as studies directed toward qualification for the Clergy, determination of qualifications for advancement through First and Second Rings, and any other such duties as may be determined by the Board of Directors. Section 3: In the event no Priest or Priestess is available to serve an established Nest, the Scion who takes on major responsibility for coordinating that Nest shall be designated High Scion by consensual agreement of the members of said Nest. The High Scion shall assume the administrative and organizational functions normally assigned to Clergy, until such time as said High Scion or any other member of said Nest shall become ordained. If members of the Nest desire, the position of High Scion may rotate among qualified members of the Nest. Section 4: In areas where no Nest exists, Scions may, with the approval of the Board of directors, establish proto-nests of the Church of All Worlds, Inc.; such proto-nests shall conduct meetings in accordance with the Bylaws and principles of the Church of All Worlds and shall forward monthly reports of activities to the Board of Directors via the Membership Officer. Section 5: In special cases the Church may license a Scion of 6th Circle as a Minister and iissue Ministerial Credentials, which shall consist of a Ministerial Certificate and wallet-sized ID card. Licensed CAW MInisters shall function as the equivalent of Chaplains, and be authorized to perform such sacraments as authorized by the Council of the Third Ring. In order to qualify for this special status, the Scion must present a Ministerial Proposal to the Board of Directors indicating the nature of the Scion's intended Ministry and his/he qualifications to fulfill it. Examples of such Ministries shall include (but not be limited to): Prison Ministries, Hospital Ministries, Armed Services Ministries. ARTICLE VI Clergy Section 1: The Third Ring shall consist of Priests and Priestesses, to be identified by the color purple, as used on membership cards, in newsletters, and in ceremonial vestments. They shall be grouped into the following three Circles, by qualifications to be determined and amended by the Board of Directors. A. Seventh Circle (identified with the planet Earth and its symbols.) B. Eighth Circle (identified with the planet Venus and its symbols.) C. Ninth Circle (identified with the planet Mercury and its symbols.) Section 2: Duties of the Clergy shall include hosting and officiating at various ceremonies and services, administering the sacraments, writing and preparing rituals, arranging meetings and councils, supervising the training of Seekers and Scions, sponsoring and aiding postulants to the Clergy, voting for and serving as members of the Board of Directors, maintaining communications with other Nests, and any other such duties as may be determined by Councils of the Third Ring or the Board of Directors. Section 3: The Priest and/or Priestess establishing a Nest or assuming responsibility for an established Nest shall be known as High Priest or High Priestess of that Nest. The duties of High Priest or HIgh Priestess include primary responsibility for all Church activities in that Nest, including reports to the Board of Directors, and any other such functions as they themselves shall determine, subject to approval by the board of Directors. The term of office for High Priests and High Priestesses shall customarily be for a period of not more than seven years, during which time it shall be the duty of such persons to select and train their successors. Any High Priest or High Priestess who does not step down before this seven year period is up may, at any time after the seven years, be summarily eliminated at the consensual agreement of the rest of the Nest. Section 4: Ordination into the Priesthood may be bestowed upon Scions who have completed all the currently stated qualifications of the Sixth Circle and have been recommended for the Seventh by any sponsoring member of the Clergy, provided the candidate has first been approved unanimously by the Board of Directors through the submission of such data as the Board may choose to require. ARTICLE VII Primate Section 1: The primary authoritative and not authoritarian spokesperson for the Church of All Worlds shall be known as the Primate, and shall hold this position for as long as he or she can adequately demonstrate his or her capability to perform its duties and functions, or until successfully challenged for the position by a would-be successor, or for life, or for as long as he or she desires to hold the position. Any of the foregoing conditions may serve to limit the term of office of the Primate. Section 2: Duties of the Primacy shall include all appropriate duties of a general spokesperson, coordination and integration of programs, activities, information and input included in the Church gestalt, and coordination of relationships with other groups within the larger Pagan and Neo-Pagan community. It shall be the responsibility of the Primate to keep well informed enough on all phases of both the Church of All Worlds and Paganism/Neo-Paganism as a whole that such duties may always be competently and effectively performed. Section 3: As the Primate is largely an honorific position awarded by the membership in respect for a person's years of service to the Church of All Worlds, a successor may or may not be chosen upon the discontinuation of one Primate's term of office. Should it be desired, a successor shall be chosen by the same method as any other elected official. ARTICLE VIII Directors Section 1: Management of the Corporation shall be vested in a Board of Directors, consisting of not less than three nor more than thirteen persons, consisting of a representative of each chartered subsidiary and the following officers: President, Vice-President in charge of Membership, Treasurer, and Secretary. A minimum of one-third of the Board of Directors shall be members of the Clergy. The Board can approve the calling of qualified persons among the membership to the positions of Secretary and Treasurer by unanimous decision. An individual may hold the position of an officer and a representative of a subsidiary group, if necessary. Decision-making shall be by consensus, but if agreement cannot be reached, decisions will be made by two-thirds majority vote. In such a case, the votes of all members of the Board of Directors are equal, regardless of the Ring status of the person voting. Section 2: At the first annual meeting of the Board of Directors, the Board shall elect from its own number, a President, one or more Vice-Presidents, a Secretary and a Treasurer, who shall serve as officers both for the Board of Directors and for the Corporation. At the discretion of the Directors, the same person may serve in more than one office. The President and Vice-President in charge of Membership must be members of the Clergy. Section 3: The powers of the Board of Directors shall be those usually assigned to such Directors. They are subject to limitation or specification at any meeting of the Board or the Third Ring. They shall specifically include the following powers: A. To call regular or special meetings of the Directors, the Councils, or of the membership, on initiative of the President, or by mutual agreement of two or more of the Directors. B. To make rules and regulations not inconsistent with the laws of the State of California or the Bylaws of this Corporation, for the guidance of officers, Directors, and members. C. To make rules and regulations for the use and management of all Church property, whether real or personal, and to change such rules and regulations at such time and in such manner as to said Board of Directors, or Directors of subsidiary groups, shall seem right and proper. D. To accept, review, and approve or reject applications for Priesthood, and to issue certificates of ordination to those applicants who shall have fulfilled their qualifications and shall have complied with the requirements of the rules, Bylaws, and Articles of Incorporation, and who are recommended by their High Priests or High Priestesses, to serve as Clergy or for other special purposes recognized by act of the Board of Directors. E. To issue certificates of Charter to members in other areas when they wish to establish a local Nest, or to establish Subsidiary Organizations, upon conditions to be determined by the Board. F. To determine what shall be due and reasonable compensation to be paid any member of the Corporation for services rendered to or for the Corporation, affecting one or more of its purposes. G. To maintain, at the Central Nest, confidential files on all members, active and inactive, and such other records as may be deemed necessary adequately to carry out the purposes of the Corporation. Section 4: The Board of Directors shall have full power and authority to borrow money on behalf of the Corporation, including the power and authority to borrow money from any of the members, Directors, or officers of the Corporation, and to otherwise incur indebtedness on behalf of the Corporation, and to authorize the execution of promissory notes, or other evidences of indebtedness of the Corporation, and to agree to pay interest thereon to sell, convey, alienate, transfer, assign, exchange, lease, and otherwise dispose of, mortgage, pledge, hypothecate, and otherwise encumber the property, real or personal, and the franchises of the Corporation to purchase, lease, and otherwise acquire property, real and personal, on behalf of the Corporation; and generally to do and perform, or cause to be done and performed, every act which the Corporation may lawfully do and perform. Section 5: The Board of Directors shall have summary power by vote of a two-thirds majority of its members to suspend, or to expel and terminate the membership of any member of the Church, including the Priesthood and the Board of Directors, for conduct which in its opinion disturbs the order, dignity, business or harmony, or impairs the good name, popularity or prosperity of the organization, or which is likely in its opinion, to endanger the welfare, interest or character of the organization, or for any conduct in violation of these Bylaws or of the rules and regulations of the Corporation, which may be made from time to time.Such action by the Board of Directors may be taken at any meeting of such Board upon the initiative of any member or members thereof. The proceedings of the Board of Directors in such matter shall be final and conclusive, unless overruled by majority vote of the Council of the Third Ring, acting as a Board of Appeal. It is expected that any Clergy serving on such a Board will absent themselves if s/he is unable to be impartial, or is affected personally by the decsions of such a Board. Section 6: The Board of Directors shall constitute a nominating committee for Directors to serve on the Board. Their recommendations shall be presented by the Secretary to the Council of the Third Ring at any regular meeting. Other nominations may be made by any member present at the said meeting. ARTICLE IX Officers Section 1: The officers of the Corporation shall be a President, a Vice-President in charge of Membership, a Secretary, and Treasurer. Other officers may be created by resolution of the Board, not to exceed thirteen. Doubling of roles is permissible with the agreement of the Board. Section 2: The term of all offices shall be one year. Section 3: The President shall be the chief executive officer of the Corporation, and shall preside at all meetings of the Board of Directors. S/he shall have general charge of the business of the Corporation, and shall execute, with the Secretary, in the name of the Corporation, all deeds, bonds, contracts, and other obligations and instruments authorized by the Board of Directors. The President shall also have such other powers and shall perform such other duties as may be assigned by the Board of Directors. Section 4: Unless the Board of Directors shall specify otherwise, the Vice-President shall be the regularly designated authority to act on applications for membership and ordination, and may head a committee which performs this task. It shall be the responsibility of the Vice-President to keep addresses and other information relating to membership up-to-date. The Vice-President shall be vested with all the powers and shall perform all the duties of the President, in case of the absence or disability of the President. The Vice-President shall also have such other powers and shall perform such other duties as may be assigned by the Board of Directors. Section 5: The Secretary shall keep records of all regular and special meetings of the Board of Directors, and forward these records to the members of the Board and the Third Ring. The Secretary shall also mail notification to members of the Third Ring and the Board of the time, place, and planned agenda of the regular Board meetings. Subsidiary representatives are asked to send the secretary a record of the quarterly business of each subsidiary three weeks prior to the regular meeting, for inclusion in the quarterly meeting notes. Notices should be sent at least two weeks prior to each regular meeting, and as early as possible before a special meeting. The Secretary also serves as the correspondent of the Corporation with persons representing the State of California, and files whatever reports and forms may be required by the State on an annual or ongoing basis. A. In case of the absence or disability of the Secretary, or refusal or neglect to act, notices may be given and served by the President, or by the Vice-President, or by any person authorized by the President or the Vice-President, or by the board of Directors. Section 6: The Treasurer shall receive and safely keep all funds of the Corporation and deposit same in such bank or banks as may be designated by the Board of Directors. Such funds shall be paid out only on the cheque of the Corporation signed as directed by the Board of Directors. The Treasurer shall also control the keeping of the books and accounts of the Corporation, and is responsible for the filing and payment of any monies required by the State of California. Subsidiary representaives are responsible for the forwarding of quarterly financial records of each subsidiary to the Treasurer in advance of each quarterly Board of Directors meeting. ARTICLE X Councils Section 1: Seekers of the First through Third Circles shall be the general laity, and shall relate peripherally to the Inner Circles, members serving on committees, participating in open meetings, and fulfilling any other such functions as shall be designated by members of the Second and Third Rings. Section 2: Scions shall constitute the Council of the Second Ring, or the Scion Council, which shall function in the interest of the Corporation in such matters as cannot conveniently be brought before a regular or special meeting of the First Ring. This council shall have one representative sit on each meeting of the First Ring as Chairman. This Council shall fulfill any other particular functions as shall be designated by members of the Third Ring, and may hold such regular or special meetings as shall be found necessary adequately to carry out the purposes of the Corporation. Section 3: Clergy of the Seventh through Ninth Circles shall constitute the Council of the Third Ring, or the Clergy Council, which shall function in the interests of the Corporation in such matters as cannot conveniently be brought before a regular or special meeting of the First or Second Rings. This Council shall have one representative sit on each meeting of the Second Ring as Chairperson. This Council shall fulfill any other such functions as shall be designated by the Board of Directors, and may hold such regular or special meetings as shall be found necessary to adequately carry out the purposes of the Corporation. Section 4: The officers of the Board of Directors shall constitute the Executive Council, which shall function in the interest of the Corporation in such matters as cannot conveniently be brought before a regular or special meeting of the Board of Directors or of the Ring councils. This Council may hold such regular or special meetings as shall be found necessary adequately to carry out the purposes of the Corporation. Section 5: Each Nest shall establish a Nest Council, which shall function in the interest of that Nest in such matters as cannot appropriately or conveniently be brought before meetings of any of the other aforementioned Councils or the Board of Directors.The Nest Councils shall deal with all those matters which are the exclusive concern of the particular individual Nests, rather than of concern to the Church or Corporation as a whole. Such Nest Councils shall consist only of Second and Third Ring members of such Nests, in number not to exceed thirteen. Application for membership on a Nest Council must be made in person before the assembled body of the Council, during which the applicant should be questioned on his or her reasons for wanting to serve on the Council and his or her understanding of the principles and purposes of the Nest and the Church. Acceptance to the council must be by unanimous vote or consensus of the current Nest Council membership. Candidates for Priesthood must first have served at least six months on a Nest Council, and that Council must unanimously approve the candidate's application for ordination before it can be submitted to the Board. The advancement and training of members of each Nest through the Second Ring shall be under the supervision of the Priesthood of that Nest, who may consult the Nest Council if such consultation shall be found useful or necessary. Second Ring members who are not affiliated with a particular Nest shall be trained under the supervision of the Priesthood of the Central Nest. At meetings of the Nest Councils, the High Priest, High Priestess, or High Scion shall be Chairperson, and shall be familiar with the rudiments of parliamentary or consensus procedure. Section 6: Any of the aforementioned Councils are authorized to appoint such committees as shall be found useful in the conduct of the activities of the Corporation. Section 7: Each of the aforementioned Councils and Committees shall elect or appoint, for any term necessary, such officers as may be found necessary to the conduct of the Councils. Such offices shall include a Secretary, whereby minutes shall be taken and notices of meetings disseminated. Section 8: General membership shall have the prerogative of vetoing any action taken by the Board of Directors, which it finds objectionable. Such veto to be taken by two-thirds majority at the Annual meeting. ARTICLE XI Nests Section 1: The basic local organizational/congregational unit of the Church of All Worlds shall be the nest. A nest is a group of Church members, with at least one member 4th Circle or above, organized in a local area to learn about, discuss, and creatively practice the purposes of the Church. Nests shall be largely autonomous units which have agreed to adopt and practice the values and purposes of the Church and have, after applying to the Board, been granted a charter by the Board of Directors pursuant to a recommendation of the Nest Co-ordinating Council. Section 2: In order to form a nest, a group of at least three Church members of at least 2nd Circle must apply to the Nest Co-ordinating Council for a charter as a proto-nest, or Chapter. Chapter charters are issued a the discretion of the Nest Co-ordinating Council. In order to be granted a full Nest Charter, a group must function for at least a year and a day and have at least one member who has reached the level of Scion (4th Circle). Granting of a Nest Charter will be by vote of the Board of Directors. Section 3: Nests chartered by the Board of Directors shall be legal subsidiaries of the Church of All Worlds as incorporated under the laws of the States of Missouri and California. Nest shall not have the power to incur debt in the name of the Church of All Worlds. Section 4: The Board and Clergy of the Church of All Worlds do not wish to impose any doctrinal restraints upon local nests beyond the requirement that their activities be in accord with the purpose of the Corporation as stated in Article II of these bylaws. The board and Clergy in fact encourage creativity and innovation on the part of all local nests and groups in the lawful pursuit of the goals of the Church of All Worlds. Section 5: The Board of Directors does, however, reserve the right to revoke either a Chapter or Nest Charter on the recommendation of either the Council of the Third Ring or the Nest Co-ordinating Council for one of the following reasons: A. The conduct at its meetings and public functions or in its public statements is found to be incompatible with the purposes of the Corporation as stated in Article II of these Bylaws, or contrary to the laws of the United States or the State of residence of the Nest or Chapter; B. The conduct or statements of the Nest or Chapter in its meetings and public functions or in its public statements, in the judgement of the Board of Directors, reflects unacceptable discredit on the Church of All Worlds, its purposes, members and Clergy; C. The Board of Directors has reason to believe -- on recommendation from either the Council of the Third Ring or the Nest Co-ordinating Council -- that the chartered group is not truly functioning as a Nest or Chapter in that the contact person of that Nest or Chapter does not respond to queries, show evidence of membership or the holding of regular meetings or other evidence that the Chartered Nest or Chapter is, indeed, functioning as a viable organizational unit of the Church of All Worlds. ARTICLE XII Meetings Section l: General meetings of the Corporation shall be held in conjunction with the first yearly meeting of the Board of Directors. Regular meetings of the Board of Directors shall be held quarterly, approximately three weeks before cross-quarter Sabbats. The first annual meeting shall propose the meeting dates for the remaining quarters of the year. Special meetings may be held whenever deemed necessary. Section 2: Notice of the Annual Meetings of the General Membership shall be made each year at least one month in advance of the date of the meeting by a special mailing to all registered members of the Church of at least 2nd Circle. Notices of regular meetings of the Board of Directors, together with quarterly subsidiary reports and proposed agenda items, shall be sent to members of the Board two weeks prior to such meetings by the Church Secretary. Notice of special Board meetings shall be made as early as possible. Notice of regular meetings of other councils shall be sent to relevant members two weeks in advance by the appropriate council secretary, and notices of special meetings, as early as possible. Meetings of Nest Councils shall be held at least quarterly, the frequency and dates to be determined by said councils. Section 3: The privelege of decision-making at any meeting shall be limited to those present who are actual active members both of the Church and of the particular Council or Ring convening the meeting. If the number present is thirteen or less than thirteen, all decisions must be made by consensus, and if consensus cannot be reached, by a twothirds majority. If the number present is greater than thirteen, all decisions must be by a two-thirds majority vote. In meetings where more than thirteen voting members are present, the number of votes carried by each member shall be equal to the ring (1,2, or 3) that member has attained. Section 4: A quorum to conduct business shall consist of a number of voting members equal to two-thirds majority plus one of the members of that particular council. Section 5: The fiscal year of the Corporation shall be from January l to December 31, inclusive. ARTICLE XIII Subsidiary Operations Section 1: The Corporation, acting through the Board of Directors or their delegated authority, may organize, charter, establish, and operate such subsidiary operations, agencies, groups, and institutions as may be found necessary or expedient adequately to carry out the purposes of the Corporation. Section 2: Each subsidiary shall send a representative to serve on the Board of Directors. The subsidiary representatives shall be responsible for reporting the activities of the Subsidiary to the Board, and for relaying information from the Board to each subsidiary. In addition, the subsidiary representatives shall submit reports to the Secretary and the Treasurer detailing the activities of each subsidiary. Section 3: Chartering and serving as Directors of subsidiary organizations is open only to active members of the Church with Scion or Clergy status. Under exceptional circumstances, and by special dispensation of the Board of Directors, a project or provisional subsidiary may be approved for inception by a Church member of only 3rd Circle status, conditional upon that person's attainment of 4th Circle within a year from the date of approval, or the appointment within that time as a Director of the aforesaid subsidiary of another active Churcdh member of at least 4th Circle. Subsidiaries should begin as projects or provisional subsidiaries and be considered for full subsidiary status if they have been active for two years and two days. Provisional subsidiaries should send a contact person to the Board of Directors' meetings. Section 4: The governance of subsidiaries shall be by Directors and Councils, the combined total number of which must always be an odd number, from one to seven, of whom one to three shall be designated Directors. Should the subsidiary be authorized to open a bank or checking account, there shall be three approved signatories on the account, at least one of which must be a Scion or Clergy. Directors of subsidiaries must be Scions or Clergy, but other members of the subsidiary councils may be any active members of the Church that the subsidiary Directors wish to delegate. Section 5: Decision-making in subsidiary councils should follow the procedures outlined in Article XI, Section 3 above. ARTICLE IV Amendments Section 1: Amendments or changes in these Bylaws may be made by recommendation of the Board of Directors at the Annual meeting, by unanimous vote or consensus of voting members present. A Pagan Sacrament of Holy Communion (as performed in the Church of All Worlds) by Morning Glory Zell The Priestess, Priest and Congregation sit in a circle, with the Priestess to the right of the Priest, on the ground outside or the carpet indoors. An altar is set in the center, with Bread and Water and either fresh flowers and greenery (when outdoors) or a potted plant (indoors). When everyone is settled and silent, the Priestess begins the blessing: P'ess: Blessed be this Bread, the body of our Lord, And Blessed be this Water, the blood of our Lady. As our bodies are nourished by Their divine energy, So let Them ever nurture our spirits. We are the conscious product of Their eternal passion, And so do we give Them our gratitude in celebration of Life. The Priest takes the Bread from the altar and raises it aloft in consecration: Priest: Seed fallen on the wet Spring table, embryos bedding in the night. The Sun is joy on the Earth in the morning, And the wheat reaches up for the food that is Light. He holds his child to the Sun and would free him to the wind. Then we take them both, Father and Son, both still young. We fold them into tight brown loaves, Rocks of Sun for the tables of the People. The Priest takes a piece of the Bread and places it into the mouth of the person on his left with the words: "May you always have sufficiency". He then passes the plate on to that person, who does the same actions and gives the same blessing to the next person to the left, and so on round the circle. When the loaf comes around to the Priestess sitting on the Priest's right, she gives him his share while taking a small piece and crumbling it onto the Earth , if outdoors, or into the potted plant if indoors, saying: "Mother Divine, take back what is Thine." The Priestess then takes the chalice of Water from the altar and holds it aloft in consecration: P'ess: Ice in the North will melt into the Earth. She will soften and breathe again. Water, sweetened by the lungs of the Earth, our Mother, runs South To the houses of the people, and the clouds give birth and die. They tremble on beds of air giving birth. Their trembling rocks the Earth with thunder; all their life is gone. Their last breath is in our cup, Let us drink the rain. The Priestess then holds the chalice to the lips of the Priest on her left, who drinks as she says: "Water shared is Life shared." He then holds the cup and repeats the phrase for the person on his left, and so it goes, clockwise, around the circle. Other phrases may be spoken, such as "May you never thirst", or "Drink deeply". As the chalice passes from each person, they link hands with those who already shared the water, until, as the chalice completes its round, all hands are joined. Finally the person to the right of the Priestess gives her back the chalice and the blessing, whereupon she pours out the remainder of the water onto the ground or the plant as a libation to the Earth, speaking again the words: "Mother Divine,take back what is Thine." She places the chalice back onto the altar, then returns to her place to link hands and complete the circle. Then may follow a silent meditation, a chant or song, a breathing exercise to raise energy, or whatever is desired. When the exercise or meditation has reached its conclusion, the Priest pronounces the Benediction: Priest: O Gracious Lady and Laughing Lord, We would ever have Thee here with us. Now the time is come to break the circle and return to the world. May Thy love be ever with us and Thy wisdom guide our steps. Blessed Be. Everyone repeats the words "Blessed Be" simultaneously dropping the hands they are holding, thereby breaking the link and ending the Rite. "Earthmom" "Well, for instance, who is this All-Mother you're always talking about?" "Why, you are, Edward. . . The All-Mother. You're the All-Mother, I'm the All-Mother, that little bird singing out there, it's the All-Mother. The All-Mother is everything. The All-Mother is life..." The primal and supreme deity of the ancient world, the oldest and most universally worshipped, was the Great Mother, Mother Earth. Images of Her date back to Aurignacian Cro-Magnon peoples, from 27,000 years ago, and are found all over the Eurasian continent from Spain to Siberia. For thousands of years before there were any male gods, there was The Goddess, and Her worship continued unabated clear up until its violent suppression by Iron Age patrism. When and where worship of the Mother prevailed women and Nature were held in esteem. The Chinese called Her Kwan Yin; the Egyptians knew Her as Isis; the Navajo call Her Changing Woman. To the Greeks She was Gaia, and to many black peoples She is Yemanja. She is Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and She says: "All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals." She is also the ancient Crone Hecate,who gives us both wisdom and death. The Goddess is diversity. She represents both darkness and Light and Her worship is the reconciliation of opposites. There can be no such thing as a "Good Goddess" or an "Evil Goddess". Death is part of the natural cycle as night follows day and we accept it with grace as Her final gift. The search for Balance is the goal of Her people, and it is achieved by the acceptance of multiple paths and truths. Dion Fortune once commented that all goddesses are manifestations of the One Great Goddess whose identity is as the universal feminine spirit of Nature. The eldest and greatest aspect of the Goddess is as Great Mother Nature, the all-encompassing energy of Universal Life. Her womb is the Quasar, the white hole through which all energy pours into creation, and Her all-devouring mouth is the Black hole itself through which all matter is consumed to be reborn once again as between Her thighs the universe is squeezed from spirit. Her energy then coalesces into Matter-Mater:the Mother of all forms. She ignites, becoming the Star Goddess Nuit, whose galactic breast is our Milky way. Of Her are born star systems and planets including, of course, our very own Earth Mother, Gaia. Because of the diversity of the Goddess, She is seen as manifesting in many different aspects. She is often called The Triple Goddess, which refers to Her link in the fertility cycle where She appears as Maiden, Mother and Crone. Some ancient cultures personified this Triplicity as the waxing, full, and waning Moon, and other three-faced Goddess aspects are familiar to us as the Fates, the Graces, the Furies, the Muses, or even as Faith, Hope and Charity. Another familiar division of Her aspects is into Mother and Daughter (Demeter and Persephone), or as Sisters/Lovers (Fauna and Flora). Such polarities are also important in Her worship. Sometimes the polarity can exist with two different aspects of the Goddess representing both poles, but more commonly it is the great gender polarity, for the Goddess is a deity of sexual loving. She is Ishtar or Aphrodite, the eternal Lover who awaits with eager arms the mortal man brave enough to risk Her immortal favor. Many men have worshipped Her as a lover, but she may never be possessed, for She belongs only to Herself. She is Parthenos, the eternal Virgin (in the prepatriarchal meaning "of her own household"). She represents the Strong Woman : not dominant, but independent. Her lovers are not truly human but divine. She has been the Beloved of many gods, and though jealous male gods eventually suppressed Her worship, She shared the co-rulership of Heaven and Earth for thousands of years of marital bliss. She is the inescapable Yin necessary for the cosmic balance of Yang/Yin. Symbols associated with Her (the Tree of Life, the Sacred Serpent, the Labryrinth) are found in all parts of the globe, at the heart of all the Mysteries, and underlying all the later accretions of successive religions. The search for Her is the search for our deepest ancestral roots.I am the star that rises from the twilight sea.I bring men dreams to rule their destiny.I am the eternal Woman; I am She!The tides of all souls belong to me-Touch of my hand confers polarity-These are the moontides, these belong to me. Honor Thy Mother In all the cultures where She is still worshipped, there is no confusion over Her identity : She is Nature, and She is the Earth. She is not an atavistic abstraction, not a mystical metaphor, not a construct of consciousness. Her body is of substance as material as our own, and we tread upon Her breast and are formed of Her flesh. "Walk lightly on the bosom of the Earth Mother," says Sun Bear, and traditional Native Americans agree. Cherokee shaman Rolling Thunder emphasizes that "It's very important for people to realize this: the Earth is a living organism, the body of a higher individual who has a will and wants to be well, who is at times less healthy or more healthy, physically and mentally."3 Frank Waters, author of Masked Gods and Book of the Hopi, makes the same point::. . . To Indians the Earth is not inanimate. It is a living entity, the mother of all life, our Mother Earth. All Her children, everything in nature, is alive: the living stone, the great breathing mountains, trees and plants, as well as birds and animals and man. All are united in one harmonious whole.4 Renowned historian Arnold Toynbee, writing on "The Religious Background of the Present Environmental Crisis," also observed that:For pre-monotheistic man, nature was not just a treasure-trove of "natural resources". Nature was, for him, a goddess, "Mother Earth," and the vegetation that sprang from the Earth, the animals that roamed, like man himself, over the Earth's surface, and the minerals hiding in the Earth's bowels, all partook of Nature's divinity.5 Before ever land was, before ever the sea, Or soft hair of the grass, or fair limbs of the tree, Or flesh- coloured fruit of my branches, I was : And thy soul was in me. The Gaia Thesis In order to understand the nature of the Earth Mother, we must first understand our own origins. Biologically, unisexual organisms are always considered to be female, since only the female brings forth life from her own body; in the act of reproduction single cells are referred to as mothers and their offspring as daughters. Each of us began our individual life as a single fertilized cell, or zygote. In the process of its innumerable divisions and multiplications, that cell kept dividing up and redistributing the very same protoplasm. That protoplasm which now courses through all of the several trillion cells of your adult body is the very same substance which once coursed through the body of that original zygote. For when a cell reproduces, the mother cell does not remain intact, but actually becomes the two new daughter cells. And this is why, no matter how many times a cell fissions in the process of embryological development, all the daughter cells collectively continue to comprise but one single organism. We may imagine that, should our cells have consciousness akin to our own, they may very well fancy themselves to be independent entities living and dying in a world that to them would seem to be merely an inanimate environment. Blood cells race along our arterial highways, but we know them to be in fact minute components of the far vaster living beings that we ourselves are. Over three billion years ago, life on Earth began, as do we all, with a single living cell containing a replicating molecule of DNA. From that point on, that original cell, the first to develop the awesome capacity for reproduction, divided and redivided and subdivided its protoplasm into the myriads of plants and animals, including ourselves, which now inhabit this third planet from the Sun. But no matter how many times a cell fissions in the process of embryological development, all the daughter cells collectively continue to comprise but one single organism. All life on Earth comprises the body of a single vast living being:Mother Earth Herself. The Moon is Her radiant heart, and in the tides beats the pulse of Her blood. The protoplasm which coursed through the body of that first primeval ancestral cell is the very protoplasm which now courses through every cell of every living organism, plant or animal, of our planet. And as in our own bodies, Earthly life was biologically female for the first 3 billion years, before sexual reproduction, complete with males, evolved around 600 million years ago. In evolutionary theory we say "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (the development of the individual repeats the development of the ancestry)~ ancient people anticipated such scientific ideas when they intuitively conceptualized our planetary Divinity, like that first single cell, as feminine: our Mother Earth. The soul of our planetary biosphere is She whom we call Goddess. First life on my sources first drifted and swam. Out of me are the forces which save it or damn. Out of me man and woman, and wild-beast and bird. Before God was, I am.6". . . Be the terror and the dread of all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven, of everything that crawls on the ground and all the fish of the sea: they are handed over to you." (Gen. 9:2-3) Since the time of the Exodus, 3,500 years ago, Western Civilization has been pursuing a course that has taken it farther and fhree great monotheistic religions of the West, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have from their beginning activity suppressed the worship of the Goddess, and have tortured and brutally murdered millions of Her people. Today, she is all but forgotten in the hearts of Her children, and Her body lies raped and ravished in the wake of human progress. The Goddess is the concept of feminine divinity incarnate. The denial of feminine divinity results in the oppression of all women, including Mother Nature. As Toybee says:The thesis of the present essay is that some of the major maladies of the present-day world:for instance the recklessly extravagant consumption of nature"s irreplaceable treasures, and the pollution of those of them that man has not already devoured:can be traced back in the last analysis to a religious cause, and that this cause is the rise of monotheism. 5 This is not to say that all non-monotheistic religions have a perfect track record for the treatment of women in those societies. Certainly Hindu cultures revere various goddesses and yet are among the more sexist and female-suppressive societies in the modern world. Nevertheless, there is abundant archeological evidence to indicate that things were not always as they are now, especially in truly ancient societies like India. Before the Aryan Indo-European invasion around 1,500 BCE many Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures, including the Harrapan culture of the Indus Valley and the Minoan people of Crete, had societies that appeared remarkably egalitarian. These societies were universally characterized by the worship of a powerful Great Mother whom the Hindu people still call Maha Devi Ma. She was later broken into a multiplicity of minor goddesses which were demoted to the position of wives or concubines of the gods. By the time sacred writings were codified in the Vedas, the Primal Goddess Maha Devi in India had been divided into a triplicity of goddesses characterized as Creator, Preserver and Destroyer: Saraswati, Laksmi and Kali~ respectively the consorts of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. In Greece, a similar process led to Kore, Demeter and Persephone (or Hecate) created from the original Cretan Rhea. Once the Great Mother had been married off She became easier to control and the way was paved for Her dowry of natural wealth to be handed over to the financial control of Her divine consorts. Whether this new mythical development was a simple mirror of the social diminishment of women"s rights or whether it preceded it and was invoked as a justification is really a moot point. But the land, formerly tied to matrilineal territorial clans, passed into the hands of patriarchal kings and princes who began to treat it as their private property and to lay waste to the forests in order to build vast temples and palaces to house their harems and other slaves. The Goddess of Nature went from the position of being the body and soul of all that lives to that of a wife, mother and household servant. Many traditions have given lip service to the so-called "Female Principle," either in the form of a divided identity like the Hindu Shakti or as a semi-divine emanation. But the power of the Goddess of Nature has gradually lost its ability to inspire the necessary respect and reverence once accorded to the Source and Bearer of Life. Where are You, then, Mother, whose strength was before All other powers? Your name is the only freedom.8 Pantheism is the view that everything in Nature is alive, and that all living is Divine. In that context, then, the simplest explanation of Divinity is as "an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together." (Star Wars: "The Force") Thus a pantheistic theology of Immanent Divinity ("Thou Art God/dess") contrasts sharply with the theology of Transcendent Divinity ("God is Out There") presented by most of "The World"s Great Religions." Unlike the God worshipped by Christians, Moslems and Jews, the Goddess is not an all-powerful, indestructible, non-physical being who created the world and exists apart from it. Though Mother Nature is Life on the universal scale, Gaia, the Earth Mother is the very soul of this living planet, and she lives or dies as all life on this planet lives or dies. . . Mother, not maker~ born, and not made. Though her children forsake her, allured or afraid, Praying prayers to the God of their fashion, She stirs not for all who have prayed. O my children, too dutiful towards Gods not of me, Was not I enough beautiful? Was it hard to be free? For, behold, I am with you, am in you, and of you: Look forth now and see!6 "Earth Mother, Your Children Are Here!" Current environmental crises are legion. Chlorofluorocarbon chemicals are destroying the ozone layer in the atmosphere~ industrial pollution is creating the greenhouse effect which will melt the polar icecaps, drowning the coastal regions~ and the destruction of the rainforests and the pollution of phytoplankton in the seas is causing worldwide droughts. The problems are so vast and the politics of greed and corruption are so complex that it will truly take a miracle to reverse such global destruction. The only thing that can save us is a total and electrifying change of consciousness. Nothing short of a worldwide realization of our planetary awareness will bring home the desperation of our plight. We must activate our Gaian identification so that we regain our shattered empathy with the Spirit of Nature. We must become one with the Earth Mother in order to feel Her pain/our pain and make it stop before the cancer we have become reaches the terminal phase. The word religion derives from the Latin re-ligio~ "relinking." The very purpose of true religion, then, is to heal the rifts and alienations which have caused us to become separated from the divine Source of Being: the rifts between humanity and Nature~ between matter and spirit~ between mind and body~ between man and woman~ between our own egos and the Soul of Nature. Recent books analyzing the trends of our wayward world have, with increasing frequency, been calling for a return to the worship of the Mother. So many wistful comments made by writers such as Merlin Stone, Mary Daly, James Lovelock, Judy Chicago, Dolores LaChapelle, Rene Dubos, Daniela Gioseffi, Paolo Soleri, Elizabeth Gould Davis, Arnold Toynbee, Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler reflect a craving for such a religious revival. The truth is that such a revival has been going on for some time now:since the early 1960"s:in the form of what we call the Neo-Pagan movement (from Latin paganus:"peasant" or country dweller:Paganism now refers to all nature religions). To the several hundred thousand Neo-Pagans who have been actively practicing and publishing for more than a quarter of a century, the greatest mystery of this religion is its continuing obscurity and invisibility to those such as the above-named writers, who continue to publish books advocating such a movement as this, while remaining ignorant that it is already in effect. The new Paganism encompasses many Nature-oriented groups such as Feraferia, Church of All Worlds, Madrakara, Bear Tribe, Venusian Church, Pagan Way, Church of the Eternal Source, Odinic Fellowship, Reformed Druids, Earth Church of Amargi and Children of the Earth Mother. The largest contingent of modern Goddess-worshippers, however, is found in Witchcraft, or Wicca. Wicca is a pre-Christian European Pagan magical tradition; European Shamanism. The violent suppression to the point of eradication of the followers of Wicca by the Inquisition can only be compared to the Jewish Holocaust of Nazi Germany (estimates of the number of martyrs run as high as nine million!), but today the Craft is making a powerful comeback on the wings of the re-emergent Goddess. The Neo-Pagan movement, and especially Feminist Witchcraft, has recently been joined by increasing numbers from the Women's Spirituality movement and lately also by many thinkers from the Deep Ecology movement and even such radical environmental activists as Earth First!. These are some of the forces which form the core of the movement to restore the Earth Goddess to Her rightful place; a movement which has its roots in the combined studies of feminism and ecology and is the logical spiritual application of such studies. If Witches can be priestesses of feminism, then Neo-Pagans are the chaplains of the ecology movement. The overall movement, though variously called Eco-feminism and Ecosophy, is truly an attempt at expressing Gaian Spirituality. These three streams of spirituality:Deep Ecology, Goddess Spirituality, and Neo-Paganism:have met and mingled with Native American, Hindu, Tibetan, Hawaiian and other ancient spiritual teachings and fused somewhat with the more nebulous New Age Movement. What is struggling to be born from this blending of pathways is a truly planetary religious metaphor that will transcend all the tradition-specific patterns in the same way the idea of Neo-Paganism absorbed and united a multiplicity of wildly differing but basically polytheistic religious groups in the 1970's. Perhaps what we are looking for could be called Gaean religion, because at the heart of our Unity is our identity as children of the same Mother:Gaia Herself; Mother Earth. It is said that it's a wise child who knows its own Mother! A brief digression on etymology here: Who is Gaia, that we would name a movement after Her? The name Gaia is the Greek name for the Earth Mother Goddess, She who was created by Light and by Love from the primal cosmic chaos. Pierced by the arrows of Eros, Gaia gave birth to all the plants, animals, gods and goddesses and of course the human race. So Gaia is the Mother of us all according to ancient Greek mythology. From the moment that the people of Earth achieved the ability to observe the image of our planet spinning in all Her radiant blue-and- white splendor through the black velvet night, we have been impelled towards planetary identification. We must inevitably begin to think of ourselves as one planet, one people, one organism. The power of that image alone unites us, not to mention the concept that the past three-and-a-half billion years of terrestrial evolution resembles one vast embryogenesis. Something is developing, hatching, unfolding as a self-reflexive mind capable of contemplating its own existence. Gaia developed increasingly complex eyes and extensions of Her eyes/our eyes in order to contemplate Her own image. And now, having seen Herself through our satellite eyes, She is awakening to consciousness. She has a face, an identity and now even a name, and so we inevitably come to identify ourselves through Her as Gaian. A Gaian movement would be deeply committed to communication and education. Many tribal people and many of the old nature-based folk religions such as native Australians, Hawaiians, Siberians, Tibetans and Americans have come to the brink of extinction rather than to allow the mysteries of their sacred rites to pass outside their tribes. Others have realized the need to become more eclectic if they are to survive. The Gaian movement is presently small and largely unrecognized, since it is anarchic and not evangelical, but it has tremendous potential in having no single head and presenting a genuine answer to so many of the world's problems. Its vision is, in fact, an idea whose time has come. Yet there are still many obstacles, and revolutions in consciousness rarely happen overnight. The greatest forces operating against a new Gaian renaissance are inertia and apathy_ the watchwords of the _70s and _80s. But winds of change are blowing, and by the time the century turns we will see that once again Goddess is Alive and Magick is Afoot!And you who think to seek for me -Know that your seeking and yearning will avail you naughtUnless you know the Mystery:That if that which you seek you find not within you,You shall never find it without.For behold: I have been with you from the beginning,And I am that which is attained at the end of desire.9 Footnotes: 1. Mack Reynolds, Of Godlike Power, 1966, pp. 146-1472. 2. Dion Fortune, "Charge of the Moon Goddess" 3. Doug Boyd, Rolling Thunder, 1974, p. 51 4. Frank Waters, "Lessons From the Indian Soul," Psychology Today, May 1973 5. Arnold Toynbee, "The Religious Background of the Present Environmen tal Crisis," International Journal of Environmental Studies, 1972, Vol. III 6. Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Hertha" 7. Tim Zell, "The Gods of Nature; The Nature of Gods," Gnostica #15, 1973 8. Ramprasad Sen, Grace and Mercy in Her Wild Hair; 18th Century Bengal 9. Doreen Valiente, "Charge of the Star Goddess" (This article was first written in 1978; revised and updated in 1990.) The Church of All Worlds, a Brief History It all began on April 7, 1962, when, after reading Stranger in a Strange Land, Tim Zell and Lance Christie shared water and formed a water-brotherhood called "Atl" at Westminster College at Fulton, Missouri. During the mid-1960s the group was centered on the University of Oklahoma campus at Norman under the name Atlan Foundation. A periodical, The Atlan Torch (later The Atlan Annals), was published from 1962-1968. Following a move to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1968 the Church of All Worlds was legally incorporated. In March of that year, the first issue of Green Egg appeared and over the years made Tim Zell, its editor, a major force in Neo-Paganism, a term which Zell coined. CAW was the first Neo-Pagan/Earth Religion to obtain full federal recognition, although it was initially refused recognition by the Missouri Department of Revenue on the basis of its lack of primary concern about the hereafter, God, the destiny of souls, heaven, hell, sin and its punishment, and other supernatural matters. The ruling was overturned as unconstitutional in 1971. The Church of All Worlds took much inspiration from the science fiction classic, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. In the novel, Valentine Michael Smith was a human being born on Mars and raised by Martians. Upon being brought to Earth, he established the Church of All Worlds, built around "nests", a combination of a congregations and an intentional communities. A basic concept was "grokking", i.e., the ability to be fully empathic. Heinlein's CAW emphasized non-possessive love and joyous expression of sexuality as divine union. Their greeting was "Thou art God" or "Thou art Goddess", a recognition of immanent divinity in each person. The basic theology of the CAW is a pantheism focused on immanent rather than transcendent divinity, which is worshiped in female as well as a male form. The most important thealogical statement came in revelatory writings by Zell in 1970-73, on a theory which later came to be known as the Gaia Thesis, a biological validation of the ancient intuition that the planet is a single living organism, Mother Earth. Pantheists hold as divine the living spirit of Nature. Thus the CAW recognizes Mother Earth, the Horned God, the Green Man and other spirits of animistic totemism as the Divine Pantheon. Church of All Worlds was an early forerunner of the Deep Ecology movement. Through its focus on Mother Nature as Goddess and its recognition and ordination of women as Priestesses, CAW can also rightly be held to be the first Eco-Feminist Church. Its only creed states: "The Church of All Worlds is dedicated to the celebration of life, the maximal actualization of human potential and the realization of ultimate individual freedom and personal responsibility in harmonious eco-psychic relationship with the total Biosphere of Holy Mother Earth." In 1974, CAW reported nests in Missouri, California, Illinois, Kansas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Wyoming, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, and Ohio. It was then publishing two periodicals, Green Egg and The Pagan. Two years later Zell moved to Oregon with his new wife, Morning Glory, an ordained Priestess, for a rural life of writing, research and the practice of the religion he had developed. They left the administration of the CAW and the publication of the Green Egg in the hands of other Church leaders. After only a few more issues, the magazine ceased publication. Subsequently many Church Nests dissolved due to internal conflicts. By the mid-1980s CAW survived only in California, focused around the sanctuary land bequeathed to the Church by its Bard, Gwydion Pendderwen. On and around this rural retreat, a Pagan homesteading community grew which included the Zells (Tim Zell had changed his first name to Otter in 1979 following a vision quest) and other long-time Church members who had moved to California, as well as many new people. Two new clergy were ordained during that time, Orion Stormcrow (a Church member since 1969) and Anodea Judith. (In 1991, Deborah Hamouris was ordained, bringing the present number of active clergy to six.) In the late 1980s, following Otter and Morning Glory's emergence from eight years of living in the wilderness, the Church of All Worlds began reorganizing under the leadership of Anodea Judith. The membership program was radically upgraded to include a Progressive Involvement Program (PIP), intensive training courses and a new members newsletter, The Scarlet Flame. Activities and membership increased dramatically during this period as CAW emerged from its slumber. The first issue of Green Egg (The Next Generation!) appeared in May, 1988, the 20th anniversary of its original publication. It has risen to a position of prominence among Pagan periodicals. Diane Darling, who joined the Church in the mid-'80s, is its editrix, Otter its publisher and designer. In 1991, with 52 pages and a four-color glossy cover, Green Egg won the Silver Award from the Wiccan/Pagan Press Alliance (WPPA) for "Most Professionally Formatted Pagan Publication". In 1992 Green Egg won the WPPA Gold Award for "Readers' Choice" as well as the Dragonfest Awards for "Most Attractive Format" and "Best Graphics". Diane won the Pentacle Award for "Favorite Pagan Editrix", and Otter for "Favorite Pagan Writer". The non-fictional Church of All Worlds has grown far beyond Heinlein's dream. There are nine concentric circles of member involvement, named after the planets and grouped into three rings. Each circle's activity includes study, writings, magical training, sensitivity and encounter-group experience, as well as active participation in the life of the Church. The First Ring, Circles 1, 2, and 3, is for Seekers, those who are only participants. Second Ring, Circles 4 through 6, is made up of Scions, members who help run the church. The clergy, Council of the Third Ring, consists of legally ordained priests and priestesses; longtime members who have worked through the other circles, undergone personal and leadership development, religious training, and completed the Church's ordination requirements. There are two governing bodies in addition to the Clergy: the Board of Directors, which determines policy and business matters, and the Fun Committee, which implements the activities and functions of the Church. The Fun Committee is made up of a Board member, a clergy member, and one representative from each of the church functions, such as Rites and Festivals, Publications, Membership, Communications and each subsidiary. There is an annual General Meeting to elect officers and make changes in the Church's ever-evolving Bylaws. Worship involves attending weekly or monthly Nest meetings usually held in the homes of Nest members. Autonomous nests are composed of at least three members of 2nd Circle meeting monthly or more often. The basic liturgical form is based on a circle where a chalice of water is shared around as part of the ritual part of the Nest meeting. Longer events are celebrated at the Church sanctuary, Annwfn, a 55-acres of land in northern California. Annwfn has a two-story temple, cabins, garden, orchard and a small pond. It is maintained by a small community of resident caretakers. In addition to the eight Celtic seasonal festivals, the Church holds handfastings (marriages), vision quests, initiations, workshops, retreats, work parties and meetings on the land. As of 1993, the Church has ten chartered nests in California, with others in Florida, Illinois, Arizona, Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Australia (where CAW has become the first legally-incorporated Pagan church in that country). A number of proto-Nests are in the process of forming. Current President is priest Tom Williams (a member since 1968). Otter is presently engaged in the formation of the Universal Federation of Pagans (UFP), a worldwide association with which he hopes to unify the global Pagan community. 1992 was the 30th anniversary of the Church. A Grand Convocation was held in August, with an attendance of nearly 300. Membership at the end of 1993 was around 600. The Mission Statement of the Church of All Worlds is as follows: The mission of the Church of All Worlds is to evolve a network of information, mythology, and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaea, and reuniting Her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and the general evolution of consciousness. Over the years, the Church of All Worlds has chartered a number of subsidiary branches through which it practices and teaches its religion: * Forever Forests : Box 212, Redwood Valley, CA 95470. Founded in 1977 by Gwydion Pendderwen; the ecology branch. Sponsors tree-planting events and rituals. * Lifeways : 2140 Shattuck #2093, Berkeley, CA 94704. Founded in 1983 by Anodea Judith; the teaching branch. Offers workshops, classes, healing rituals, recovery programs, wilderness excursions, and training for the priesthood. Handles the Progressive Involvement Program. * Nemeton : Box 610, Laytonville, CA 95454. Founded in 1972 by Gwydion Pennderwen and Alison Harlow; the marketing branch. Tapes and CDs, songbooks, T-shirts, philosophical tracts and books. Catalog available. * Ecosophical Research Assn. (ERA) : Box 982, Ukiah, CA 95482. Founded in 1977 by Morning Glory Zell; devoted to research and exploration in the fields of history, mythology and natural sciences. Produced the Living Unicorn, the New Guinea Mermaid expedition and a Peruvian Pilgrimage. * Holy Order of Mother Earth (HOME) : Box 212, Redwood Valley, CA 95470 Founded in 1977 by the Zells and Alison Harlow; magical and shamanic branch open only to trained initiates. Creates and conducts the Church's rituals and ceremonies.* Peaceful Order of the Earth Mother (POEM) : Box 5227, Clearlake, CA 95422. Founded in 1988 by Willowoak Istarwood; dedicated to children and child nurturing. Provides enriching activities for children at gatherings, summer camps and a quarterly magazine for Pagan youth, How About Magic? (HAM) :$7 per year. * Green Egg : Box 1542, Ukiah, CA 95482. Award-winning quarterly journal of the New Paganism and the Gaian Renaissance, founded in 1968 by Otter Zell. Sample $6; subscription $15/yr US bulk mail; $21/yr US/Canada 1st class/envelope; $27/yr trans-Atlantic; $30/yr trans-Pacific. * Annwfn : Box 48, Calpella, CA 95418. CAW's 55-acre land sanctuary and retreat in the Misty Mountains of Mendonesia. Write for Visitor's Policy. * CAW Membership and General Correspondence : (Australian Headquaters) PO Box 408, Woden, ACT 2606. References: Further information on the Church of All Worlds may be found in the following books: Adler, Margot, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess- Worshipers and other Pagans in America Today, Beacon Press, 1979; revised and updated 1987. (essential!) Ellwood, Robert, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America, 1973. Gottleib, Annie, Do You Believe in Magic? The Second Coming of the Sixties Generation, Times Books, 1987 Guiley, Rosemary, Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, Facts on File, 1989; (extensive!) The Perennial Encyclopedia of Mystical and Psychic Experience, 1990. Jade, To Know, Delphi Press, 1991. Martello, Leo Louis, Witchcraft, the Old Religion, University Books, 1973. Melton, J. Gordon, The Encyclopedia of American Religions, from the Institute for the Study of American Religions, POB 90709, Santa Barbara, CA 93190 1979 ( 3rd edition, 1988); The Essential New Age, 1990. Wilson, Robert Anton, Coincidance, Falcon Press, 1988 Neo-Paganism: An Old Religion for a New Age by Otter G'ZellFounder, Church of All Worlds As founder and priest of a Neo-Pagan church, I have often been asked to explain exactly what we mean by the term "Pagan". We find ourselves in the peculiar position of having a public image that was created not by ourselves, but by our persecutors. It is much as if the Nazis had succeeded in eradicating Judaism to the extent that, generations later, the common opinion of what the Jewish faith was all about was derived solely from the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Third Reich. In Europe alone, from tens of thousands to millions (the figures are still in dispute) of Pagans were martyred by the Christian churches during the Inquisition and Witch trials. Those figures do not even count the millions of other Pagan peoples in North and South America, Africa, Polynesia, Melanesia and Asia who fell before the advancing plague of Western Christendom. Today, the conception most people have of Paganism is the lurid one drawn by the Christian church to justify its own reign of terror, and bears about as much relation to reality as the similar propaganda Christianity once fostered about Jews. In the 13th century the Church opened its long-drawn-out conflict with Paganism in Europe by declaring Witchcraft to be a 'sect' and heretical. It was not til the 14th century that the two religions came to grips. All through the 16th and 17th centuries the battle raged. The Pagans fought a gallant, though losing, fight against a remorseless and unscrupulous enemy; every inch of the field was disputed. At first victory occasionally inclined to the Pagans, but the Christian policy of obtaining influence over the rulers and law-givers was irresistible. Vae victis was also the policy of the Christians, and we see the priests of the Papacy gloating over the thousands whom they had consigned to the flames while the ministers of the Reformed Churches hounded on the administrators of the law to condemn the 'devil worshipers'. What can have been the feelings with which those unhappy victims regarded the vaunted God of Love, the Prince of Peace, whose votaries condemned them to torture and death? What wonder that they clung to their old faith, and died in agony unspeakable rather than deny their God. (Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches, 1931, Oxford GB 332, pp. 21-22) 'Pagan' does not mean "irreligious" or "barbarian". It is the correct anthropological term to describe indigenous folk religions, being derived from the Latin paganus, "peasant," which derives in turn from pagus, "village". The Latin comes from the Greek pagos, "standing stone," and paga, "sacred spring," representing, respectively, the male and female generative powers. Paganism is basically Nature worship. 'Pagan' is a proper noun or adjective denoting the name of a religion, and as such, is properly always capitalized, as is 'Jewish' or 'Hindu'. Religions can be roughly divided into two distinct categories: the naturally evolving, indigenous "folk" religions of particular regions and peoples (the Pagan religions), and on the other hand the "revealed" religions: those religions owing their existence to a "revelation" taught by some great "prophet" and formulated in various creeds and dogmas. The latter category, of course, includes most of the "Great Religions of Mankind:" Judeo-Christian-Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, etc. Though articulated by a great teacher, Lao-tsu, Taoism is essentially Pagan in philosophy and attitude, while Hinduism and Shinto are Pagan in origin and essence even though they have become institutionalized as State religions. Pagan religions are characterized by being "natural," both in origin and mode of expression, as opposed to the artificiality of constructed revealed religions. Paganism emerges out of the processes of Life and Nature, and continues to evolve as a living, growing, organic entity. Revealed religions are like buildings: an architect (prophet) get an inspiration (revelation) and lays down his vision in blueprints (prophecy; scriptures). Then contractors, carpenters, masons, etc. (disciples and followers) build the structure more or less according to his specifications. It is made of non-living materials, and does not grow naturally; it is assembled. When it is finished, it cannot grow further, and begins to deteriorate, until it is eventually so outmoded and rundown it is demolished to make way for new buildings. A world of revealed religions is like unto a city, with all the problems (hunger, war, hatreds, crime, pollution, dis-ease) of a city, and for much the same reason: alienation from the life-flow. A Pagan religion, on the other hand, is like a tree: it emerges alive from the Earth, grows, changes (both cyclically through the seasons, and continually in upward and outward growth), bears flowers and fruit, and shares its life with other living beings. It is not made or designed according to any blueprint other than genetic. And when, after many thousands of years, perhaps, it should come to the end of its time, it does not pass from the world entirely, for its own progeny have, in the interval, begun to spring up all around, again from the Earth, and again, similar yet each unique. A world of Pagan religions is like a forest. Paganism includes Animism, Pantheism, Shamanism and Totemism. (Witchcraft is the survival or reconstruction of European Shamanism; i.e., the magical arts of tribal peoples.) Pagan are the native religions of the American Indians, the Africans, the various Island peoples, many peasants in the mountains of Asia, the Aborigines of Australia, and, at one time, the Gauls, Teutons, Norse, Celts and Faeries (as the invading Saxons called the pygmy neolithic race they encountered in the British Isles). Long before they encountered Christianity, the Faeries (known to archaeologists as Pretani, or Picts) had been forced by the Saxons onto the inhospitable Heaths of Britain, later to be called "Heathens" by the Church. By 1500 CE, they had been virtually exterminated, save for those who managed to intermarry or exchange their infants for those of the invaders ("changelings"). Moreover, as it was later to do in the case of the Witches, who inherited much of the Faery lore and religion, the Church began a campaign to convince the world and future generations that these people had never existed in the first place, but were merely imaginary! The old Pagan religions were never "created". They had no founding prophets and no saviors. They grew up with their people, and their origins are lost in the mists at the dawn of humanity. What little we can trace indicates a descent from paleolithic and neolithic "fertility cults," hence the common symbols of the Earth Mother Goddess, the Green Man and the Horned God_the fecund embodiments of living Nature. We find them therefore unanimous in their veneration of Nature and their sensual celebration of life, birth, sex and death as expressed in the seasonal Festivals of the Sacred Year. All these Great Festivals of Paganism, wherever they may be found, correspond in common with the Solstices, Equinoxes, and other natural annual cycles of life (animal mating and birth seasons, planting, harvest). Most of these remain with us today in more-or-less disguised form as the so-called "Christian" holidays of Christmas (Yule), Easter (Ostara), May Day (Beltane), Thanksgiving (Mabon or Harvest Home), Halloween (Samhain) and even Groundhog's Day (Oimelc). In addition to these six, there are two others, Litha (Midsummer) and Lughnasadh, comprising a total of eight Festivals (or Sabbats, as they are known, sometimes under different names, in Witchcraft). Thus it is obvious that the rich heritage of Paganism forms a solid foundation for the spontaneous emergence of a Neo-Pagan revival today. In the midst of our current spiritual and ecological crisis, it is highly appropriate that natural religions are once again finding a place among the children of Earth. Modern Neo-Paganism, however, is somewhat distinct from the Old Religion, in that it is to a large measure a relatively new phenomenon. Neo-Pagan religions are many and diverse. They range from the sublimely artistic Paradisal vision and reconstruction of old Pagan Mysteries of Feraferia to the astrological divination and ancient Egyptian religion of the Church of the Eternal Source, and from the Wiccan-oriented myth and ritual of the Pagan Way to the transpersonal psychology, science- fiction mythology and deep ecology of the Church of All Worlds. All of the dozens of Neo-Pagan religions now in existence, and most of the countless sects of Witchcraft, however, do hold certain values in common, and it is these values which relate them to Paganism in the older sense. One of the key values of Neo-Paganism is its insistence on personal responsibility. The Church of All Worlds expresses this in the phrase, "Thou art God/dess," implying total personal freedom and individual responsibility on the part of every one of us. Paganism has no concept of "original sin," and hence has no need of saviors. Neo-Pagans do not expect Divine retribution for breaking social taboos. Rather, concepts of "sin" and "atonement" are restated in the framework of ecological awareness and karma. If our actions are discordant and in opposition to the evolutionary flow of Life, we suffer the ecological consequences, in much the same way, and for exactly the same reason, as diseased cells in the body are attacked by the antibodies and other natural defenses. Whatever energy we put out returns to us multiplied threefold. Love returns love; hate returns hate. Robert Ingersoll observed: "In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences". The total responsibility (and hence the total freedom) rests in our hands. As in the Old Religion, Neo-Pagans conceptualize Divinity as manifest in the processes of Nature. Indeed, in a very literal sense, Mother Nature, Mother Earth, is "Goddess," and She has been recognized as such since time immemorial. Thus ecology is seen as the supreme religious study: "Nature is Divinity made manifest...It is creativity, continuity, balance, beauty and truth of life. "Everything we encounter in the Biosphere is a part of Nature, and ecology reveals the pattern of that is-ness, the natural relationships among all these things and the Organic Unity of all of them as a Biospheric Whole. Thus ecology shows the pattern of man's proper and creative involvement with Nature, that Nature which encompasses his own life and on proper relation to which his survival and development depend: Of all man's secular studies, ecology comes closest to bringing him to the threshold of religious relationship to his world. Ecology not only confirms the wonders of form and function that other secular studies have revealed, but it brings these into organic union with each other as one dynamic, living Whole; and it points out the conditions for the wellbeing of both this overall Unity and the parts that comprise it. An intensive realization of these conditions, and of one's own immediate role in their sustainment and development, brings one to the threshold of religious awe. To worship Nature, therefore, is to venerate and commune with Divinity as the dynamically organic perfection of the whole. (Council of Themis, from Green Egg #43) Neo-Paganism is a recent mutation of the Old Religion which had its earliest emergence during the European Renaissance with the rediscovery of the ancient Greek philosophers via Arabian texts brought by travelers. However, this was also the time of the Burnings, and the budding Neo-Pagan emergence was suppressed until the late 1700's, when it found expression in the Romantic Period of art, music and literature, especially in Germany. This Romantic flowering of Neo-Paganism, especially the element known as the Bavarian Illuminati (whose mottoes were "eternal flower power" and "eternal serpent power"), greatly appealed to a visiting American named Benjamin Franklin, and upon his return to the colonies, it became a major spiritual force in the post-Revolutionary America of the 1780s, where its influence continued to shape the new nation through the presidencies of the Adams family. It was Monroe and the War of 1812 that managed to suppress this movement for a time, but it re-emerged 60 years later in the form of the Transcendentalist Movement, exemplified in the poetry and writings of Whitman, Thoreau and Emerson, and the overnight mushrooming of the commune movement in the 1840's. The Civil War, Reconstruction, the conquest of the West and the Gold Rush drained the Nature-oriented spiritual energy from the people of America for another 60 years, but it blossomed again through the Art Nouveau movement in the 1900's. Then came the World Wars, the Depression, McCarthyism...60 more years had to pass before the gathering impact of Eastern religious philosophy, especially Zen, and Existentialism gave birth to the "hip" "underground" counter-culture of the Beatniks, whose experimentation with drugs, sexuality, music, poetry, communal living and alternate lifestyles paved the way for the Hippie phenomenon of the 1960's (which spontaneously resurrected the old Illuminati motto of "flower power"). The seeds of Neo-Paganism which had again lain dormant for three generations took root in such fertile soil, and emerged once more into the light, to be joined in the '70s by the heirs of Wicca, the last vestiges of the Old Religion of Europe. The New Religion is still very much Paganism, for its inspiration and orientation today is based, as was that of its predecessors, upon an understanding and relationship of Humanity within the larger perspective of Life, Nature and the Universe. Fred Adams of Feraferia coined the term "eco-psychic" to describe the type of awareness that permeates the New Religion. Revealed religions, especially of the monotheistic variety, tend to see man as a special creation, exalted above all Nature, and the epitome of God's handiwork. Thus the Biblical injunction to Man to "have dominion over all the Earth" is not seen by Judeo-Christians as outrageously presumptuous; nor is God's destruction of all life on Earth in the legend of the Deluge seen as insanely immoral ecocide. Both God and Man are considered to have a "divine right" to desecrate the Earth at their pleasure. This is in direct opposition to the view of Paganism, which sees humanity's duty not to conquer Nature, but to live in harmony and stewardship with Her. Every revealed religion claims to have its own direct pipeline to the Divinity, and its own essential precepts from direct, unassailable revelation. Neo-Pagans, on the other hand, have outgrown egotistical and temperamental gods, and expect no intervention from some Big Daddy in the Sky to solve the problems of our times. Instead, we look to Nature (through the clear glass of ecology) for inspiration and direction, and to ourselves as the instrumentality for all that needs to be done. Thou art God/dess! Otter G'Zell, 1970 (revised Jan. 8, 1991) Neo-Pagan Witchcraft vs. Satanism:Confusions and Distinctions by Otter and Morning Glory Zell It seems to be necessary to preface every discussion of Witchcraft with an explanation that, no, Neo-Pagan Witches aren't Satanists. The Christian anti-God, Satan, has no place in Pagan pantheons, either mythologically or theologically. Plainly and simply, Satanism is the dark side of Christianity, and Satan is nothing other than the collective Id of Christendom. Even today, Witchcraft is frequently misrepresented by being confused with Satanism. Often the word Witchcraft is used to represent two wholly opposite phenomena: the survival of ancient Paganism in one instance, and the inversion of Christianity in another. Let us make it clear: a Satanist is a renegade Christian, who, in his rebellion against the authority of the church, worships Satan rather than Christ. Such people are at times called witches and warlocks in popular books and movies but they have little to do with Pagan Witches. Satanists, for one thing, accept the Christian duality between good and evil; Pagans do not. Satanists may choose to worship evil rather than good: but they have utterly bought the Christian world view".1 The word Pagan derives from the Latin paganus, meaning "peasant" or "country dweller". It is correctly applied to indigenous (native) pantheistic folk religions and peoples. The term "Neo-Paganism" is applied to the current revival of ancient Pagan religious values, including the sacredness of all Life and the worship of Nature. Modern Witchcraft has been a major component of the Neo-Pagan resurgence since England repealed its anti-Witchcraft laws in 1951.The Goddess and the God of Witchcraft The many traditions of Neo-Pagan Witchcraft have few universal theological precepts, but one of them is certainly the veneration of the Moon Goddess, known most commonly by her Roman name, Diana. She is perceived as manifesting in triple form: as Maiden, Mother and Crone. These triple aspects are identified respectively with the waxing, full, and waning moons. Witches gather at esbats every full moon, to sing and dance in Her moonlight, share cakes and wine, and work magic to heal each other, their friends, and the Earth. Many modern Witches expand the concept of the Goddess considerably, and see Her also as Mother Earth and Mother Nature. Most traditions of Neo-Pagan Witchcraft also honor the Consort of the Goddess in the form of the Horned God, who is seen as Lord of Animals as well as seasonal ruler of the Underworld. The most familiar version of the Horned God is the Greek Pan, goat-horned and goat-hooved, playing His panpipes, guzzling wine from His freely-flowing wineskin, and seducing nymphs in the woods. He is regarded as lusty and jovial, epitomizing masculine attributes of ideal father, brother or lover. As the Goddess of Witchcraft is closely identified with the Moon, so the God is identified with the Sun. In this way He may be seen mythologically as the lover both of the Moon and of the Earth. Another of His many epithets is "Lord of Light". Every light casts its shadows, and the Lord of Shadows is the other face of the Lord of Light. Lord of the Underworld is the title of the God in Winter when He goes underground with the animals to hibernate. Some traditions had Him alternate with His brother as husband to the eternal Goddess. Others, as in the Greek Hades, had a year-round God of the Underworld, "The Devil." It is essential to clarify the historic relationship of Pan and the Devil, as Christianity has tended to confuse the two, giving rise to the accusation that Pagans are Devil-worshipers because some Pagan gods have horns. Once and for all, the Christian Devil is not the God of the Witches! The genesis of the Devil comes from a merging of two concepts: Satan and Lucifer. The original meaning of the word satan is "adversary", and his inclusion in the Bible represents an attempt by later apologists of the Old Testament to justify the more negative actions of a benevolent God (such as the persecution of Job) by attributing the actual dirty work to a testing spirit; the original "devil's advocate". This entity was not considered evil until after the Persian conquest introduced the Hebrews to the Zoroastrian dualism of Ahura-Mazda (the good God) vs. Ahriman (the evil God). This later manifested in Christianity as Manichean dualism. The Manichean equation was brutally simple: God=Good; Devil=Evil. But it was not until the year 447 CE that the Council of Toledo declared the legal existence of the Devil as an actual entity, though he was still not thought of as necessarily manifesting in human form. The Lucifer story is a mish-mashed retelling of the Canaanite myth about the overthrow of Baal by Mot and the usurpation of Baal's throne by Athar, the god of the morning star. The original Hebrew name for Lucifer was helel ben shahar meaning "son of the day star" (the planet Venus). The name Lucifer ("light bearer"), a Romano-Etruscan title of the Sun God, was erroneously used when the Bible was first translated into Latin.2 Various shadow gods or divine adversaries contributed to the creation of the Devil, including the Canaanite Moloch or Mot, the Egyptian Set or Suteck and the Roman Saturn. Judeo-Christian theologians placed all Pagan gods and goddesses in an adversary position to Yahweh, the god of Israel, who, as a monotheistic deity, cannot share a pantheon. This is a profound cultural difference from Pagan pantheons and polytheistic peoples who co-existed together, whether or not in harmony. Also since unbridled sexuality, especially for females, was defined by Judeo-Christianity as evil, Pagan gods and goddesses who were especially sexual or sensual garnered the new sect's particular hatred. Pan (who instills panic) and Dionysus were neither evil nor adversary deities, but because of their riotous celebrations the Devil acquired Pan's horns and hooves and Dionysus' ambiguously mad and bibulous nature. This final equation of the Pagan Horned God with Satan was not established, however, until the year 1486, when the Dominicans Kramer and Sprenger published the Malleus Malificarum, or "Hammer of the Witches", wherein they gave the first physical description of the Devil as he is commonly depicted today, declaring that this was the god worshiped by those they wanted to call "witches", thereby justifying the centuries of terrible persecution inflicted upon those who clung faithfully to their worship of the elder gods. Witchcraft and Shamanism Witches were the shamans, or medicine men and women, of the tribal Celtic peoples of Europe, and they functioned in the same fashion as shamans of any other tribal culture, be it American Indians, Africans, or Australian Aborigines. In fact, and in time-honored tradition, shamans are still commonly referred to as "Witch Doctors". Shamans are specialists in herbal lore, and the Witches of Pagan Europe were no exception. Usually, but not exclusively, women, they practiced herbal medicine, midwifery, augury, spellcasting, and counseling. Often dwelling alone out in the woods, Witches lived close to Nature, and attuned to Her cycles. Their gardens grew not only food, but also many kinds of herbs, including those valued for their medicinal, anesthetic and hallucinogenic properties. In a period of time when good Christian folk maintained only those domestic animals that could be considered "livestock" (i.e., useful to humans), Witches frequently kept wild animal pets: foxes, ferrets, owls, ravens and of course, the ubiquitous cats. Such became known, appropriately enough, as familiars. When Witches came to be persecuted, so did these familiar animals, and the brutal capture, torture and burning of millions of cats that accompanied the Witch burnings begat the horrible Black Plague that devastated Europe in the 14th century, for the cats had kept the rat populations under control, and it was rat fleas that were the carrier of the bubonic plague bacillus."The Burning Times" It is sadly ironic that, though the practitioners of Witchcraft have historically suffered real abuse and persecution, the Witch has somehow continued to be misrepresented as the villain. Christianity did not become the world's dominant religion by peaceful conversion, but by the sword and stake. As the legions of Caesar had forged the Roman Empire over the dead bodies of countless tribal peoples of Europe, so did its heir, the Holy Roman Empire, continue the tradition. Declaring them "heresies", agents of the Holy Inquisition hunted out and ruthlessly exterminated every religion, sect or tradition that would not convert to "The One True Right And Only Way". Witches, however, lived outside of any organized religious structure and were largely ignored until the 13th century, when the Church had finally gained enough power to deal with grass-roots Paganism. "In the 13th century the Church opened its long-drawn-out conflict with Paganism in Europe by declaring "Witchcraft' to be a "sect' and heretical. It was not til the 14th century that the two religions came to grips. . . In 1324 the bishop of Ossory tried Dame Alice Kyteler in his ecclesiastical court for the crime of worshiping a deity other than the Christian God. . . "The 15th century marks the first great victories of the Church. Beginning with the trials in Lorraine in 1408, the Church moved triumphantly against Joan of Arc and her followers in 1431, against Gilles de Rais and his coven in 1440, and against the Witches of Brescia in 1457. Towards the end of the century the Christian power was so well-established that the Church felt the time had come for an organized attack, and in 1484 Pope Innocent VIII published his Bull against "Witches.' All through the 16th and 17th centuries the battle raged. The Pagans fought a gallant, though losing, fight against a remorseless and unscrupulous enemy; every inch of the field was disputed, but the Christian policy of obtaining influence over the rulers and law-givers was irresistible. Vae victis ["woe to the conquered"] was also the policy of the Christians, and we see the priests of the Papacy gloating over the thousands they had consigned to the flames while the ministers of the Reformed Churches hounded on the administrators of the law to condemn the "devil worshipers.' What could have been the feelings with which those unhappy victims regarded the vaunted God of Love, the Prince of Peace, whose votaries condemned them to torture and death? What wonder that they clung to their old faith, and died in agony unspeakable rather than deny their God".3 It should also be pointed out that the court recorders at the Witch trials were specifically instructed that, whatever gods or goddesses the accused actually claimed to worship, what went into the record was "Satan" or "The Devil". And what wonder if some of those who had come to believe the Biblical history taught them by the missionaries, monks and priests of the conquering faith, concluded that the story must have gotten it wrong somehow? That if there had indeed been a rebellion in heaven, it was clearly evident that the winner had not been the God of love and peace, as his propagandists claimed, but rather a God of cruelty and evil; of war and violence, wrath and jealousy. (This had, in fact, been an old Gnostic tradition.) The clear implication was that the defeated Lucifer must have been the good guy, and surely many must have swarmed to his allegiance in this belief. While true adherents of the Old Religions certainly knew better, and continued their faith entirely distinct from Christianity, there were surely, then as now, many ignorant people who were simply too unsophisticated or too illiterate to question the Christian paradigm once it became established. And thus did Satanism as a belief and a practice come into being, spawned by the Church, and forever to be locked together with it in a fatal embrace of mutual antagonism. Whether or not the persecuted peasantry who came to side with Satan against their oppressors thought of themselves as "Witches", the Church and the authorities of the Holy Inquisition certainly identified them as such: "The heart and centre of the persecution of Witches was that they were Satanists, that they had rejected the rightful God and given their allegiance to his arch-opponent, and that in their "sabbaths' or meetings they worshiped the ruler of evil, carnality and filth. Some of those accused as Witches do seem to have taken the Devil for their god, worshiping him as an equal opponent of the Christian God, over whom he would eventually triumph. They looked to Satan for power and pleasure in this world and for a happy future in the next, and they vilified Christ as a traitor and a cheat, who had made promises which he did not keep, and who had gone away to live in heaven while Satan remained with his faithful on earth".4 "The Witches and sorcerers of early times were a widely spread class who had retained the beliefs and traditions of heathenism with all its license and romance and charm of the forbidden. . . in their ranks every one who was oppressed or injured either by the nobility or the church. They were treated with indescribable cruelty, in most cases worse than beasts of burden, for they were outraged in all their feelings, not at intervals for punishment, but habitually by custom, and they revenged themselves by secret orgies and fancied devil-worship, and occult ties, and stupendous sins, or what they fancied were such. I can seriously conceive: what no writer seems to have considered: that there must have been an immense satisfaction in selling or giving one's self to the devil, or to any power which was at war with their oppressors. So they went by night, at the full moon, and sacrificed to Diana, or "later on' to Satan, and they danced and rebelled. It is very well worth noting that we have all our accounts of sorcerers and heretics from Catholic priests, who had every earthly reason for misrepresenting them, and did so. In the vast amount of ancient Witchcraft still surviving in Italy, there is not much anti- Christianity, but a great deal of early heathenism. Diana, not Satan, is still the real head of the Witches".5 Since Witchcraft is still little understood by the general public, whose images are shaped mostly by the popular media, Witches continue to be easy targets for persecution. It must be remembered that, in the previous episodes of Witchcraft persecution hysteria, it was the Witches who were the victims, not the Christians. Witches, and those conveniently accused of being Witches, died by the millions during the terrible centuries of the holocaust they remember as "The Burning Times". They do not wish to repeat that experience today.6 Notes and References: 1. Jong, Erica, Witches (New American Library, New York,1981) p. 52 2. Zell, Morning Glory, "The Lord of Light", Green Egg, Vol. XXI, No. 82; Aug. 1, 1988 (POB 1542, Ukiah, CA 95482) p. 12 3. Murray, Margaret, The God of the Witches (Oxford Univ. Press, NY, 1931) pp. 21-22 4. Cavendish, Richard, "Satanism", Encyclopedia of Man, Myth and Magic, Vol. 18 (Marshall Cavendish, NY, 1970) p. 2479 5. Leland, Charles Godfrey, Legends of Florence, (David Nutt, London, 1896) 6. Guiley, Rosemary, Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft (Facts on File, NY, 1989) WHERE THE HELL IS THE CHURCH OF ALL WORLDS WHERE WE'RE AT: The Church of All Worlds offers a religious position uniquely suited to the enlightened, inquiring modern mind. In harmony with the principles and conclusions of science, receptive to the values and wisdom of the ancients and the great religions of humanity, sensitive to the deep psychological and spiritual needs of all people, the Church of All Worlds aspires to be the kind of free, growing and unifying religion that today's and tomorrow's world so urgently needs. The Church of All Worlds is Neo-Pagan : a modern Earth Religion - an orientation chosen because of its traditional associations with Life and the processes of Nature, which we consider an appropriate religious orientation for the emerging Aquarian Age. As Western civilisation has been to a great degree the product of the past two thousand years of Piscean Age Chrisianity, so do we envision a new whole-Earth culture of transformative religious ecology to become the product of the next epoch of Aquarian Age Neo-Paganism. In common with many other Neo-Pagan religions, CAW presents a life-affirming religious philosophy for the joyous unification of eros, ethos and ecos; of cult, culture and cultivation. We consider the Church of All Worlds to be radically evolutionary in concept, rather than revolutionary. We see the evolution of Life on Earth as moving towards a point of actualisation whereby the entire planet will come to share a single vast global consciousness. We see humanity being instrumental in the course of that evolution. As humans seem to be the only creatures on the planet capable of disrupting entire ecosystems, it becomes our manifest responsibility through our unique freedom of choice to prevent such systems from being disrupted. We are not anti-technology or science, for we recognise that certain scientific and technological advances, such as ecology, geology, astronomy, psychology, archaeology, cybernetics, astrophysics, communications and the technology of the bio-renaissance can be positively evolutionary and in harmony with the accelerating advance of planetary consciousness. What we oppose is the senseless use of industrial technology to wreak havok with the planetary ecosystem, often in the name of the Biblical injunction that Man is to have "dominion over the Earth." We percieve our not as dominion, but as responsible stewardship. Applying evolutionary concepts to each individual, we agree with Erich Fromm that the purpose of life is "to become what we potentially are." We identify strongly with the concepts of human self-actualisation identified by Abraham Maslow and found in transpersonal psychology and ethics. Rejecting utterly concepts of predestination and inherent sin, we affirm the ultimate freedom and responsibility appropriate to conscious entities, which we express in the phrase "Thou Art God/dess," derived from Robert Heinlein's novel, 'Stranger in a Strange Land.' This implies that each one of us must define our own specific purpose. There is no excuse; no shelter from the awesome responsibility of total freedom. Recognising that all Life on Earth comprises a single vast living Entity, which has been intuitively conceptualised as a feminine from time immemorial, we are in harmony with our Pagan ancestors who worshipped The Goddess: Mother Earth, Mother Nature. Thus we also affirm mystically and mythically the pantheistic conceptualisation of immanent divinity inherent in all living entities, as synergic living Nature, for we define divinity as the highest level of aware consciousness accessible to each living being, manifesting itself in the self-actualisation of that being. Hence, "Thou Art God/dess" applies equally to a person, a tree, a grasshopper or a planet. As Neo-Pagans, we are concerned, not with life after death, but with life after birth. We have no dogmas of immortality, considering that whatever one believes about an afterlife, may very well be what one gets. We view death as an evolutionary prerequisite for the emergence of new life, and so we return the dead to the Earth, from which the elements of their energy and matter will eventually be recycled and reconstituted into the energy and matter of other life forms. Other than our ecological responsibility of returning to the Earth that which we have taken from Her, we are not concerned with dying, but with living. We are deeply concerned with improving the quality of that life, to which end we agree with population ecologists that its quantity (in sheer numbers of people) must be drastically reduced. Thus we are strongly supportive of the various measures of birth control advocated by such agencies as Planned Parenthood, including full legalisation of abortion. We greatly fear that if humanity does not choose to limit its numbers by reducing births, Nature will do it for us by increasing deaths. WHERE WE'RE GOING: The word 'Religion' means "re-linking." The basic committment of the Church of All Worlds is to the re-integration of people with themselves, their fellow humans, and with the whole of living Nature. In company with all other Pagan peoples, we create no artificial demarkations between the sacred and the secular, for we recognise that religion must ultimately be an entire way of life, not merely some ritual acts performed once a week. We are committed to developing an organic, vitalistic philosophy of life and its expression in an organic culture. To this end, then, the Church of All Worlds devotes itself to those who need or want the help and understanding through the processes of unlearning and learning. It is our aim to offer assistance through any personal expansion programs found to be effective. Furthermore, we intend to remain openminded and receptive to new ideas, interests and goals, and learn to live responsibly and responsively with each other. We advocate envolvement with every conceivable aspect of the emerging Gaian culture, from religious service and mythology to family relations and child rearing; from education to ecology; from psychic development to space travel; from the sensual to the sexual; from intentional communities to planetary government and world peace. "Nothing short of everything will ever really do." We are engaged in the eclectic reconstruction of ancient Nature religions, combining archetypes of many cultures with other mystic and spiritual disciplines. But we are not just trying to re-create a Paradise Lost; we are actively working to actualise a visionary future. With roots deep in the Earth and branches reaching towards the stars, we evoke and create myths not only of a Golden Age long past, but also of one yet to come... Since we are concerned with the emergent evolution of a total new culture and lifestyle, and since we perceive no distinction between the sacred and the secular, we consider every activity to be essentially a religious activity. For us, taking our cans and bottles to the recycling centre is as much a religious duty as prayer and meditation. And so are composting our garbage, growing organicl vegetables, practicing birth control, using bio-degradable products, boycotting tuna, training and study, protecting animals and celebration of the seasons. We recognise that the essence of a religion is in the living of it. WHERE WE CAME FROM: The Church of All Worlds traces its history back to 1962, when a "water brotherhood" called "Atl" was formed by Tim Zell and Lance Christie at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. During the mid 60's the group was centered on the University of Oklahoma campus at Norman and operated under the name "Atlan Foundation". A periodical "The Atlan Torch" (later "The Atlan Annals") was published from 1962-1968. In 1968, following a move to St. Louis, the Church of All Worlds was incorporated, becoming the first of the Neo-Pagan/Earth Religions to obtain full federal recognition. In March of that year, the Green Egg appeared. From its inauspicious beginnings as a one page ditto sheet, it grew over 80 issues into a 60 page journal, evolving into the most significant periodical in the Pagan movement during the 1970's. After a 10 year hiatus while the original staff moved to northern California to experience a life of homesteading in the mountain wilderness, the Green Egg resumed publication in 1988 with its 81st edition. The Church of All Worlds took much inspiration from the 1961 science fiction classic, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' by Robert Heinlein. In the novel, the stranger, Michael Valentine Smith, was an earthman born on Mars and raised by Martians. Among his other adventures upon being brought to earth was the formation of the "Church of All Worlds". The "Church" was built around "Nests," a combination of congregation and expanded family. A basic concept was "grokking" i.e. the ability to be fully empathic. It also emphasised the experience of co-equal love between sexes. The common greeting was "thou Art God;" as recognition of the immanent divinity in each person. The basic theology of the real-life Church of All Worlds is a form of pantheism which focusses on immanent rather than transcendant divinity. The most important theological statement came in the form of revelatory writings by Tim (now Otter) Zell in 1970-1973, on the theory which later became known as the "Gaia Thesis". This concept is a biological validation of an ancient intuition: that the planet is a single living organism; Mother Earth (Gaia). Pantheists hold as divine the living spirit of Nature. Thus to CAW recognises Gaia, Pan and other nature spirits as the Divine Pantheon. In this manner, the Church of All Worlds became a forerunner of the Deep Ecology movement. Though the Church maintains an egalitarian rather than matriarchal social structure, nevertheless, through its focus on Mother Nature as Goddess, its recognition and ordination of women to the priesthood, and the important central policy making positions held by women in the Church, CAW can rightly be held to be the first Eco-Feminist Church. We are not a secret or members only organisation, and we welcome participation by all who are sincerely interested in our path regardless of race, sex, national or cultural origins or sexual preference. We support unity through diversity. Our only creed states: "The Church of All Worlds is dedicated to the celebration of life, the maximum actualisation of human potential and the realisation of ultimate individual freedom and personal responsibility in harmonious eco-psychic relationship with the total Biosphere of Holy Mother Earth" Worship in the Church involves weekly or monthly meeting which are held usually in the homes of nest members on a rotational basis. The basic liturgical form is a Circle where members take turns in sharing their creativity. A chalice of water is always shared around the Circle either as the opening or closing of the ceremony. Other events are celebrated at the Church retreat sanctuary, a 55 acre parcel of land called "Annwfn" in Northern California. It is maintained by a small residential community of caretakers. In addition to various campfire and ritual areas, the land has several hand-built buildings including a two-storey temple, plus a garden, an orchard and a small pond. It has limited solar electricity, propane hot water and a radio telephone, but no TV. In addition to the eight Celtic seasonal festivals, we hold handfastings, vision quests, rites of passage, workshops, retreats, work parties, summer camps and staff meetings on the land. As in "Stranger in a Strange Land", congregations of the Church of All Workds are called nests, and quite a few are currently in existance around the world. See the latest issue of Green Egg for listings to find the nest nearest you. Over the years, the Church has founded a number of subsidiary branch orders through which we practice and teach our religion. These include: NEMETON - Founded in 1972 by Gwydion Pendderwen and Alison Harlow, this is the publishing arm. Tapes, records, songbooks, T-shirts, figurines, jewelery and philosophical tracts. Catalog $US 1. FOREVER FORESTS - Founded in 1977 by Gwydion Pendderwen, this is the Churches ecology branch. Sponsors tree planting rituals and environmental actions. Has stewardship of Annwfn, the Church land. ECOSOPHICAL RESEARCH ASSN - Founded in 1977 by Morning Glory Zell, the ERA is devoted to research and exploration in the fields of history, mythology, and natural sciences. LIFEWAYS - Founded in 1983 by Anodea Judith, this is the teaching order. Offers workshops, classes, healing rituals and training for the priesthood. PEACEFUL ORDER OF MOTHER EARTH - Founded 1n 1988 by Willowoak, POEM is dedicated to children and child nurturing. Provides enriching activities for children at gatherings, summer camps,and a quarterly childrens magazine, 'How About Magic?' FOR MORE INFORMATION: Director of Australian Operations, PO Box 408, Woden, ACT, 2606, AUSTRALIA. FAX (06) 299 4100 PHONE (06) 299 2432 What is Myth? This article appeared in Web of Wyrd #10, and is by Anna from Canberra. Mythology can be approached from various perspectives, such as anthropological, sociological, folk-lorist, psychological and metaphysical. Our understanding of what myth is depends on the perspective we use. The folk-lorist is interested in the variety of myths and their spread with migrations of peoples. The anthropologists study myth as part of a peoples' culture. The sociologist is interested in how it helps society to function. The psychologist studies its effects on peoples' perspectives, and how it helps them cope with the world in which they live. The occultist and mystic regard it as a tool to help them achieve their aims, whether that be union with the divine, or a greater understanding of themselves and the divine within. Myth occurs in the history of most, if not all, human traditions and communities, and is a basic constituent of human culture. It occurs both with and without associated rites (though not all rites have myths associated with them). This paper discusses the purpose of myth, and how we may use myth more effectively in the magical context. Some definitions of myth: "Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energy of the cosmos pour through into human cultural manifestation." (Campbell: The Masks of God - Primitive Mythology) "Myth is a psychic phenomenon that reveals the nature of the soul." Jung: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious) "Myths are accounts about how the world came to be the way it is, about a super-ordinary realm of events before (or behind) the natural world." (Keesing: Cultural Anthropology - a Contemporary Perspective) "A myth is a statement about society and man's place in it and the surrounding universe." (Middleton: Myth and Cosmos) "Myth is a collective term used for one kind of symbolic communication and specifically indicates one basic form of religious symbolism, as distinguished from symbolic behaviour (cult, ritual) and symbolic places or objects (such as temples and icons). Myths are specific accounts concerning gods or superhuman beings and extraordinary events or circumstances at a time that is altogether different from that of ordinary human experience." (Encyclopaedia Britannica) From these definitions it can be seen that myth has two functions, esoteric and exoteric. The exoteric function is to: "...bind the individual to his family's system of historically-conditioned sentiments, as a functioning member of a sociological organism." (Campbell: ibid) In this role myth is exploratory and narrative. An example is the North American tale: Old man saw a circle of cottontail rabbits singing and making medicine; they would lie in the ashes of a hot fire and sing while one of their number covered them up; it was lots of fun. Old Man asked to be shown how to do this, and was covered in the coals and ashes and was not burnt. Then he wanted to be the one to cover up the others, and all the rabbits jumped into the fire. Only one got out, who was about to have babies; Old Man let her go so that there would continue to be rabbits. She went off with a dark place on her back where she got singed, which all rabbits since have had. The others he roasted and laid on red willow brush to cool. The grease soaked into the branches and even today, if you hold red willow over a fire, you will see the grease on the bark. This myth is explanatory; it explains two observed features of the natural world. Another myth explains not the natural world, but the use man puts it to. This is an Ojibway myth explaining the origin of maize and man's use of it. To summarise this myth: a young man went to the forest to fast for seven days and search for his spirit guide or guardian. During this period he was visited by a richly-dressed handsome young man, sent by the Great Spirit, whom he had to wrestle, despite his weakness from his fast. Before the last time the visitor told him he would prevail this time, and gave him instructions: how to prepare the ground, how to bury his body, how to care for the ground after, and how to harvest the maize that would grow. This he did, so his people now have maize. This myth not only explains the origin of maize, but also gives instructions for planting, care and harvesting, thus ensuring that all the tribe know how to grow it, as well as learn where it came from. Other myths are justifying and validating, answering questions about the nature and foundation of ritual and cultic customs. An example is the Blackfoot myth about the origin of the Buffalo Dance. The Blackfeet hunt buffalo by chasing them over a cliff, but at one time they could not induce the animals to the fall, and the people were starving. A young woman, seeing a herd of buffalo near the edge of the fall said, "if you will only jump into the canal, I shall marry one of you." The buffalo did so, and a big bull came and carried her off. Her father came looking for her, but was trampled to pieces by the buffalo. The woman got a piece of his backbone and sang over it until his body was restored and he was alive again. The buffalo allowed the woman and her father to go, on condition that they learn the dance and song of the buffalo, and not forget them. For these would be the magical means by which the buffalo killed by the people for their food should be restored to life, just as the man killed by the buffalo was restored. This myth tells the people why they do the dance, and the consequences if they don't. It is also a piece of sympathetic magic designed to increase the fertility of the buffalo herds when the dance is performed. As such it gives them a sense of control over some of the important factors of their environment and indicates appropriate action if the buffalo do decline. Myths also have a descriptive function, explaining facts beyond normal reason and observation. Creation myths are an example. The Norse creation myth describes Niffleheim forming out of the Abyss, with ice to the north and fire to the south. From the melting ice where these two realms met formed a giant, Ymir, and a cow, Audmulla, who became the wet-nurse of the gods. From Ymir came the frost giants, and Audmulla's licking of the ice freed the progenitors of the gods, Odin, Vile and Ve. And so the myth goes on, describing the creation of the world, the gods and mankind. This myth does not describe or explain the world as it is, but how it came about in the first place. It is an explanation of something that man couldn't see or comprehend, that is beyond his knowledge and experience. One purpose of myth is to help tie a community together. When myth is expressed in ritual, it builds the community, or specific segments of it, together. An example is the Aborigines' use of myth in boys' initiation rites. Myths are revealed to the boys as part of their initiation to manhood; since the women and children do not know these mysteries, they serve to bind the men together, and important factor for a group that needs to hunt together. Myth gives a community a common framework, a common view of the world. The whole community has the same understanding of why the world is the way that it is. It also tells them how to behave in certain circumstances and why they should do so; why their society is structured the way that it is, and what will happen if they break cultural taboos. An example in our cultural context is the myth of David and Goliath. This myth tells us how to behave in a situation where we are faced with overwhelming odds. It teaches us courage rather than running away, and suggests an approach that can be used to cope with the situation. Myth provides the moral values of the culture. Many of our moral values, for example, come from the Christian myths. The story of David and Goliath is one reason why we revere courage. Murder and theft are regarded as wrong, evil, as the myth of Moses teaches us. The myth of Noah and the Ark tells us of the consequences of evil and righteousness. To summarise then, myth provides a guide for the individual throughout his life; one that aids him to live in health, strength, and harmony in the particular society in which he was born. Myth also has an esoteric function, which is almost the opposite of the exoteric function. Myth transforms the individual, detatching him from his local historical and cultural condition, and leading him to some kind of ineffable experience. It provides a bridge between an individual's local consciousness and universal consciousness. Myth and rites constitute a mesocosm, a mediating middle cosmos through which the microcosm of the individual is brought into relation with the macrocosm of the all, the universe. Myth, "... fosters the centering and unfolding of the universe in integrity with himself (microcosm), his culture (mesocosm), the universe (macrocosm) and finally with the ultimate creative mystery that is both beyond and within himself and all things." (Houston: The Search for the Beloved) Myth bridges the gap between ourselves and godhead, providing a path that we may use to become aware of the cosmos, the godhead. In this context, R J Stewart describes creation myths not as explorations but as, "... resonant re-creations that echo the original creation... an organic timeless flow of images and narrative within which such questions [of the nature of the world] were by-passed altogether, for the 'answers' of such mythology come from deep levels of consciousness, in which universal patterns or intimations are apprehended." (Stewart: The Elements of Creation Myth) When we imagine a creation myth, irrespective of our belief or disbelief in the myth, we re-create or re-balance ourselves. Another function of myth is to act as a filter. The full, unadulterated experience of the universal consciousness is more than our minds are capable of holding, and there are those who went too far and fell into psychosis and other imbalances as a result. Myth provides a way of experiencing universal consciousness or godhead without it overwhelming us to the point where we cannot return to ourselves. There is an alternative way of looking at the esoteric levels of myth. C G Jung considers mythological processes to be, "symbolic expressions of the inner unconscious drama of the psyche which becomes accessible to man's consciousness by way of projection." (Jung: ibid.) He views the unconscious as having two levels; personal and collective. The personal unconscious contains experiences that have been forgotten, whereas the collective unconscious has contents and modes of behaviour that have never been through consciousness, and are more or less the same everywhere and in everyone. The contents of the collective unconscious are called archetypes.They are expressed in myth and fairy-tale in a specific form, but can also be experienced by the individual in a more naive and less understandable form as dreams and visions. An archetype is a memory deposit, derived from endless repetition of a typical situation in life. It is the psychic expression of an anatomically physiologically determined natural tendency. Archetypes are normally referred to as figures; the wise old man, the mother, the trickster. However, they also include experiences, of which an example is the birth experience. Everyone goes through this experience, so it has made a strong imprint on the collective unconscious. As a result, rebirth experiences are a very powerful mythic image, and form the core of initiation rites and the process of becoming a shaman. For example, as part of his initiation into manhood, and Arandan boy, after the trauma of circumcision (which mirrors the birth trauma), stands in the smoke of a fire, a repetition of the smoking he underwent as soon as he was born. Similarly, many shamans, ind escribing the experience that made them a shaman, report being swallowed or eaten by an animal or spirit person, then being reborn. Taking on a new name at initiation is an outward symbol of the rebirth that has occurred. Archetypes have given rise to the eternal images in myth and religion. These are meant to attract, convince, fascinate, overpower. They give man an experience of the divine, while at the same time protecting him from being completely overwhelmed. In this sense, archetypes and mythic images are the same; they are both the gateway for this experience of the divine. They are an image or a reflection of a god or goddess, but are not the divine itself. In the Greek creation myth Gaea is the archetype of the earth mother, the image of that aspect of godhead; the image that allows us to reach out and touch that aspect of godhead. However the mythic image of Gaea, the archetype image from the myth, is not actually godhead itself. Both are filters, not the actuality. Jung sees archetypes as having psychological as well as metaphysical significance. In our daily lives our attention is focused outwards to deal with the world, and we lose contact with our inner world, powers in our psyche such as creativity. Myth is a means to bring us back in touch with these inward forces. When archetypes are activated in our lives we have two choices: either let the archetype have its way irrespective of other factors, or block it, producing a conflict that leads to neurosis. Jung sees the symbols of modern psychology analogous to those of myth, and considers that we have replaced myth by psychology. We have done so as a result of a growing impoverishment of symbols; as our culture has become more scientific and rational, we have analysed our cultural mythic symbols until they have appeared to die, leaving us with a culture that seems superficial to many. Some individuals have coped with this by turning to the myths of other cultures, leading to the popularity of eastern philosophy in western culture. Others haven't coped at all, hence the increased violence, crime, despair, suicide, and so on, of our culture. Some are developing new modern myths, imspired by visions such as the blue-green jewel of the earth seen from space. Because myth is a means of regeneration for both the individual and the group, this turning to old myths, to myths of other cultures and to new myths coming out of our culture is seen by people such as Campbell as the beginning of a new age, a rebirth of mankind. Whether this is so remains to be seen. What does this teach us about the use of myth in magic? What we often do in Wicca is to take an old myth and apply it or adapt it in some way for our use in ritual. Understanding the distinction between the two levels of myth, exoteric and esoteric, aids in this adaptation. To modify a myth for use in ritual, those aspects of the myth relating only to the exoteric, ie the explanatory and justifying aspects, can be excluded with impunity. However, those aspects relating to the esoteric function (some, of course, may relate to both) cannot be excluded or modified without changing or destroying the myth's ability to take us beyond ourselves and towards the universal consciousness. Another aspect to consider is how this journey to universal consciousness is achieved. To experience myth fully requires the willing suspension of disbelief. Logic is set aside, imagination comes into play, and the masks used change from the symbolic to the actuality. Enactment of the myth becomes, not people masked and dressed up, but reality itself. Children do this easily; to a child playing, a piece of wood is a person or a horse, to the extent that the child can become terrified of a piece of wood that at the beginning of the game he or she pretended was a monster. To the adult westerner with his developed rational mind this is more difficult, and much of western occult training is aimed at attaining this child-like state of experiencing the world and myth again. Meditation stills the active mind. Visualisation and imagination create the symbols, the game, the mythic images. Ritual gives the images life, enacting the myth so that it might impact upon the individual. Concentration maintains the images long enough that the desired effect is attained. The result: contact with, and experience of, universal consciousness. Finally, the fate of our cultural myths warns us of a danger that lies in wait with the myths we use. The mind is a powerful tool that is very useful in magic; eg, it can prevent us from falling into the trap of self-delusion. However, abuse of the mind in relation to myths can be destructive. Myths are experiential. If we analyse and explain away the myths we use in the same way our culture has recently done with its own myths, we run the risk of devaluing them to the extent that they no longer have an impact on us and can no longer be used effectively to touch godhead. References Campbell J: "The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology" (Penguin Books, New York, 1969) "Myths to Live By" (Bantam Books, New York, 1972) Encycopaedia Britannica, vol 12, macropaedia, 15th edition,1978 Houston J: "The Search for the Beloved. Journeys in Mythology and Sacred Psychology" (Jeremy P Tarcher Inc., Los Angeles, 1987) Jung C G: "The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious" (Bollingen Series XX, Princeton University Press, New York,1969) Keesing RM: "Cultural Anthropology: a Contemporary Perspective"(Halt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1976) Middleton J: "Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism" (University of Texas Press, London, 1967) Stewart RJ: "The Elements of Creation Myth" (Element Books Ltd, Longmead, 1989) "Magical Tales: the Story-telling Tradition" (Aquarian Press, London, 1990) Generic Pagan Funeral for a Elder Woman By: She-Wolf (as written, to be conducted by a group of Priestess, Priest, chief mourner and possibly other coven members as attendants, i.e. ushers.) The room (perhaps of a funeral home) is decorated with evergreen boughs and roses. This supposes there is a casket, but may be adapted if there is a picture only of the deceased. Before anyone comes into the room, the priest and priestess may cast a circle, summon the quarters and invoke the Lady and Lord. As the mourners enter, they will be greeted at the door (and portal to the circle) by the Priest and Priestess. When all are seated, the priestess begins. PRIESTESS: (adapted from the "Decent of the Goddess," in the Farrars' Witches Bible Complete ) There are three great events in the life of a person: love, death and resurrection to a new life. Of these love is the most important. For by love and in fulfillment of it, we may again be joined with our families and friends, remembering and loving them again. Death cannot take away love or our loved ones. Without love there is no birth, without birth no death, without death no rebirth. This is the miracle of love. PRIEST: -------(name of Chief mourner, here a son), loving son, all here feel your sorrow and with you honor --------(name of deceased). Nearest relative or chief mourner tells about the persons life and accomplishments. Others may speak also. When this is finished, the priest continues. PRIEST:(adapted from memorial service of "Magical rites from the Crystal Well") For a while we have lost one who is dear to us, but it is only for a time and we should not be sorrowful. There is a reason to be here and a reason to go when we have fulfilled the tasks of a life's work. Dying is only a way of forgetting, of resting, of returning to the eternal source to be renewed and made strong. PRIESTESS:(adapted from the rite of the Three-Fold-Goddess in the Witches Bible) Behold a woman who has been three women. First a girl full of dreams and hope. Then a mother who brought forth life and gave love. Finally an elder, rich in knowledge and experience. Her journey is ended and a new one begun. Let us bid her farewell and entreat all her loved ones who have gone before her to greet and guide her on her way. The priest may then instruct the mourners to bid a personal farewell if they desire, then proceed to the foyer or otherwise outside the room. This is the traditional time to play the departed loved one's favorite song or hymn. Again, some attendant should be at the portal to see all out of the circle. The priest, priestess and perhaps the chief mourner may then thank the Gods, release the quarters and open the circle. Some refreshment in the outer area might be available to help the people ground a bit. The pall bearers may then return and carry the casket to the conveyance. At the grave side, salt or ashes, water and wine, and aromatic oil may have been poured to bless the site. "We wish you all love and happiness. Do not forget us. We will not forget you. We find our peace and hope in the sure and certain knowledge that we shall meet again and at that time we will celebrate in perfect love." After the casket is lowered, the chief mourner throws earth upon the grave. This is again a traditional time for all to eat together. This helps in grounding. CAW Contacts Tue 21 Dec 93 20:58 By: Irv Koch Copied from "Nesting Notes" in GREEN EGG Winter '93-94 (Issue # 103) Accuracy NOT guaranteed: contact Nest Coordinator, Tony Navarra, 692 SanJose Ave #6, SanFrancisco, CA 94110; 415-282-1872 or Voicemail at 510-549-7745 or e-mail (responds slow) at navarra@well.sf.ca.us to further confuse the issues. (Newletters -- samples = $2 standard). This may be "freqed" as CAWNEST1.txt (see below re complete set). CAW OZ HQ (DRAGONSONG), Anthorr & Fiona Nomchong, Box 408, Woden, ACT 2606 Australia; 06-299-2432 or Fax 299-4100. Draconis Nest (DRAGONSONG), Bunz, 5 Sollya Pl, Rivett, ACT 2606 Australia; 06-288-8732. Ectopia Nest (ECTOPIA NEST NEWS), Aeona Silversong, Box 335, Redwood Valley, CA 95470; 707-485-0098. Eleusis, c/o Carrie McMaster, Box 300762, Arlington, TX 76007; (This is Dallas-FtWorth) 817-827-1218. Fog City (THE FOGHORN), Don Eigenhauser, 756A 12th Av, SanFrancisco, CA 94118; 415-751-4009. Holy Oak Nest,Paul Moonoak,Box12625,Gainesville,FL32604;904-472-9395. Home (GREEN SPIRIT), Gerald Osgood, 1/105 Washington St, Vic Park, WA 6100. Hornet's (THE ELEMENTAL), Helen & Quinton Phillips, 13 Reiby St, Newton, NSW. Ides Nest (IDOL CHATTER), Melissa Ellen Penn, 2140 Shattuck Av, Box 2093, Berkely, CA 94704; 510-549-9606. Lake Nest Monsters, Willowoak Ishtarwood, Box 5277, Clearlake, CA 95422; 707-994-1742.MACAW Nest (VOICE OF THE HERETICS), Kris Jensen, Box24124, Milwaukee, WI 53224; 414-357-6571. Moon-in-Redwoods Nest (MIR NEWS), Eric HeBert, Box2610,McKinleyville, CA 95221; 707-839-6113. Osprey Protonest, 855 Leesburg Ct, Huntington,MD 20639; 301-855-9479. South SF Bay & San Jose, CA, Jeff Williams; 408-378-5173. Our Lady of the Lakes Nest (WAVE INTERSECTIONS), Tess Kolney, Box 80792, Minn., MN 55408; 612-824-2893. Outpost (OUTPOSTULATE), c/o Danae, 86223 Franklin Blvd, Eugene, OR 97405; 503-744-2517. Primeval Soup, Carline Tully, 7 Turner St, East Malvern, VIC 3145, Australia; 03-751-9385. Star City Sanctuary (CORONA), Avilynn Waters, 20851 ShermanWay #101, Canoga Park, CA 91306; 818-888-NEST. Two Rivers Nest (BARSOON FISH 'RAP), Wilma McCann, 4247 Sloan Dr, N. Highlands, CA 95660; 916-344-9561. Triskelion (CROWINGS ON), Larry Cornett, 10310 Main St #110, Fairfax, VA 22030; 703-904-8559(VoiceMail). E-mail: torin@netcom.com Valley of the Moon Nest (The LUNATIC FRINGE), Dragon Singing, Box 5622, Santa Rosa, CA 95402. Amber Agawela, 601 Brown Tr #421, Hurst, TX 76053-5754. Chane Alvarez, Box 11183, Huntsville, AL 35814; 205-837-7628. Inanna Arthen, Box 1233, Pepperell, MA 01463. Gabriele, 335 NW 19th Ave #352, Portland, OR 97209; 503-335-0975. David Hall, 2111 Lido Cr, Stockton, CA 95207; 209-474-7421. Damien Markland, Box 2135, Crescent City, CA 94431. Kathryn Millar, Box 138,Gabriola Is, BC, VOR 1XO Canada;604-247-8929. Parris McBride, 102 San Salvador, Santa Fe, NM 87501. John Percy, 1137 Borden St #202, Prince Rupert, BC V8J 1V6, Canada. Diana Parr, 7717 Brashear St #2, Pittsburg, PA 15221; 412-371-7065. Silver Ravenwolf, Box 1392, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055; 717-432-9118. Paul Shumway, 239 1/2 W.Mulberry, Lancaster, OH 43130; 614-654-5061. Jeanmarie Simpson, 454 Glenmanor Dr, Reno, NV 89509; 702-786-3969. "Mr Bill" Stewart, Box 24731, Winston-Salem, NC 27114; 919-723-8024. Silva Viridis Thorne, Box 8853, Atlanta, GA 30306; 404-522-2131. Brett Culloden/Les Kiss, 6/L15 Leichardt St, Bronte, NSW 2113; 02-387-2923. Electronic CAW (Draft1 for SCARLET FLAME) Sat 18 Dec 93 21:22 By: Irv Koch When Triskelion Nest et al imported or diverted Otter up here for our Summer's End festival this past Oct/Nov, I in turn diverted him to my apt. and put him online to the International CAW "echo" on computer bulletin board systems. As a result I was to do a more extensive article on BBSes, Internet, and the like, with a shorter version directed at the membership, here. Events have been moving faster than I am, so this is just the basics of what is already happening and what, in my opinion (and there seems to be a lot of agreement) NEEDS to happen. The overall object of the entire exercise is for every CAW nest and activity to have a reasonably stable internet AND PODS phone number. These should be listed in SCARLET FLAME (not necessarily GREEN EGG) and used so ALL OF CAW can TALK TO EACH other, with only a few days "lag" as opposed to trying to pile the world on the shoulders of one small group putting out the central publications quarterly. This is BY FAR the fastest, least effort, way to meet the challenge of everyone outside Northern California tending to be isolated. It is also the easiest, SAFEST, way to growth of the membership while still acculturating and assimilating new persons, not being overrun in such a way as to change the character of the organization. It not only can be used to conduct national business, in a way, ADF and other groups are already doing it to some extent. If you don't understand the following, wait for the main article. If you do have a computer with a modem, just "go for it." There are plenty of computer experts who love people who listen to them. Once you get online at all, there are even more, if you ask politely. If you have access to the Internet, and can get alt.religion.all-worlds then you have found CAW. Reports say that it's rarely posted to. You can change that by posting. Introduce yourself as a CAW member, ask a question or talk about what you're doing or want to do in CAW. It can build fast. Non-members will be drawn in to the discussion and even if they never join, if we can get 100 people -- and remember this is worldwide so you have access to many thousands -- this "newsgroup" can be moved to the main "rel" "hierarchy" and accessible by incredible numbers. And, for some reason the culture of the net tends to favor tolerance. Access to "THE net," however, isn't always easy to come by. Access to BBSes usually, more or less, is. Like pagan (or sf fan) publications, once you find one, it will lead you to many others. The object of your game here is to find one of the "fidonet TYPE," that either belongs to a network called PODS (Pagan Occult Distribution System) or is willing to join. Then you politely ask them to carry the CAW "echo" if they don't already. It's currently a hot item on PODS so that shouldn't be a problem. This operation, thanks to Bunz of OZ CAW and others is already a going operation. Bunz and myself are also building sets of downloadable files such as the bylaws, application, nesting-notes, other new member, and general information about CAW. (And we need help, people to furnish us ASCII copies of such stuff. It doesn't make any difference if it was created on a Macintosh, PC, or school Vax -- if you can get it into ASCII and fire it at either of our boards or any similar site, it is available to the world MUCH easier than people having to phone or mail someone and wait for the person to be available to stuff the material into the mail.) It's looking like we'll see 1 - 3 protonests formed in the next year or so, JUST from people who became interested by the Aussies and a few of us up here chatting, and already having Dancing Hummingbird's old electronic copy of the CAW application online. These new people will likely be knowledgeable stable types also, not your suburban kid cruising for new groups to play in. Because these, unlike internet, are systems sitting in people's homes, possible targets of attacks, in some cases for reasons having nothing to do with beliefs, I'm not yet ready to list any system phone numbers besides my own. Some sysops don't want it. The following, however, are the Fidonet (more universal) addresses of PODS systems either known to be interested in the CAW echo or good candidates. Therefore if you can find ANY nearby Fidonet system (and they're EVERYwhere) and are VERY nice to the sysop, they can find you the phone number. Of course, if you dial in to a Fidonet system and they are spouting hellfire and brimstone -- you won't ask THAT sysop. (On the other hand, if you find a Fidonet system where half the people are talking Hebrew (but not Yiddish), there's a fair chance they're ALSO a PODS system -- go figure.) Also, all Fidonet addresses convert into internet e-mail-only addresses, thus: My own BBS is 1:109/629 so to get me by normal internet, you send to Irv.Koch@f629.n109.z1.fidonet.org The board is 703-354-4176 if you want to dial straight in (Washington, DC area). Contact me one way or another and I can give leads on your area. CAW Central OZ and Draconis Nest, Bunz (Ian Metcalfe), Anthorr Nomchong, et al in Canberra= 3:620/259 Hornets Proto-nest, Quintin & Helen Phillips in Werrington Co, NSW= 3:713/805 Primeval Soup Proto-nest, Nigel Cooper and Caroline Tully in Melbourne= 3:632/360 Home Proto-nest, Gerald Osgood in Perth=3:690/115 So far only Ian, Anthorr, and Quintin have equipment to call in; the others may or may not be reachable, yet, indirectly, but have systems near them, as listed. Cary/Raleigh, NC = 1:151/186 (also possible "gate" to WWIVnet and Virtualnet) Reno/OKC-North, OK = 1:147/1701 Providence, RI = 1:323/101 Millington/Memphis, TN = 1:123/422 (REALLY good) Cincinatti, OH = 1:108/215 SanDiego, CA = 1:202/909 Oakland, CA= 1:125/33 (Also the Buddhist net HQ) San Francisco, CA = 1:125/28 (not a sure bet) Fairfield, CA = 1:161/609 (not a sure bet) Aurora/Denver, CO = 1:104/680 ("DarkLing," #2 in PODS, pretty much has sworn to do "anything which contributes to Pagan BBS networking") Austin, TX = 1:382/502 (Chuck Haynes, PODS HQ) NorthMetro, NJ = 1:107/585 (very helpful) KC, MO = 1:280/89 There is, reportedly, a third type network with a CAW "sub" in operation: WWIVnet. Work is proceeding on linking it to PODS, and the PODS online CAW to the one on Internet. Then it won't matter which you can access as what you say on one will show up on all, and you'll get answers from all. If you're on WWIVnet, ask for "Subtype 5303 Host 5303 from Mind Game BBS." Last, you can send e-mail to people in CAW FROM BBSes (ask the Sysop) as well as from Internet, and they mail back, even if they aren't on a BBS or directly on the Internet. Here are some key addresses: GREEN EGG, Otter, etc. = 5878037@mcimail.com Tony Navarra,Nest Coord. = navarra@well.sf.ca.us Quintin (in OZ) = elemental@peg.pegasus.oz.au Triskelion/Torin = c-a-w@netcom.com or torin@netcom.com ... willing/able to be an FTP site! Eric HeBert (nest, Chaplain project, etc.) = 5986758@mcimail.com [The previously published addresses will NOT work from outside MCI's piece of the net. Use ONLY this format when sending to someone on MCImail. There is also a trick for Compuserv, besides converting the comma to a period, but I haven't figured it out yet. If you're sending FROM Bitnet, enclose the whole address in braces thus: {Irv.Koch@f629.n109.z1.fidonet.org}:internet Sending TO "Bitnet" is a normal path name however it may NOT be the one your recipient is used to. Gates. Have them ask their Sysadmin.] Don't be surprised if this is only the first in a series of stuff about Electronic CAW. /s/ Sysop of Ice Fire (where Hell DOES freeze over?) Ghosts of Christmas Past by Eric Maple Every December 25th the normally phlegmatic British let down their hair and plunge into an orgy of fun which one would normally associate with the people of more exuberant nations. Complete strangers wish one another a Happy Christmas as a parting greeting and the public houses are filled with revellers strenuously keeping up the spirit of the season of goodwill. Few of these light-hearted souls will be aware that the celebration of Christmas had its origins in the pagan worship of the Sun or, for that matter, that the funny hats, the evergreens and the festive board have nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, but rather with the older gods worshipped by our ancestors in the twilight world of pre-Christmas Europe. It is strange to consider that the presence of pork on the Christmas table and the custom of carrying in the boar's head was once associated with the sacrifice of a sacred Boar to the Sun god. At the festival of Frey, the dispenser of rain and sunshine in the mythology of Northern Europe, a boar was a good luck offering for the New Year and its head, with an apple in its mouth, was borne into the banqueting-hall amid singing and the sound of welcoming trumpets. Later in history, the boar's head gave way to the goose and the turkey. But where this custom survives, it should be seen as one of the many curious ghosts of Christmas past. Consider the evergreens and their modern counterparts: the paper-chains which festoon the house at Christmastide. The evergreen was once the symbol of immortality, declared sacred to the Teutonic nations, and given pride of place in celebrations associated with the Winter Sol- stice from which our modern Christmas is descended. As a symbol, the evergreen means constancy and eternity, and even in the Orient we find that it expresses a similar idea, for the Japanese believe the evergreen needle brings longevity and prosperity. The holly, especially, brings happiness and friendship, but if kept in the house after New Year's Day misfortune is ordained. Generally speaking, however, all evergreens must be taken down by Twelfth Night-- then all will be well. When we look around the room that has been decked with the regalia of the Christmas party our eyes inevitably settle on one of the focal points, the mistletoe. In pagan times, it was customary to celebrate the death of the old year and the birth of the new by kissing under the mistletoe's berries. Old enemies were then expected to forget their quarrels and take a ceremonial kiss, promising to live in amity from that time forth. It is not generally known that the mistletoe became a powerful life symbol because it grew' berries in winter when other plant life seemed dead. Once known as All Heal, it was employed as an ingredient in many folk medicines. It was the golden bough of the ancient Druids and, because of its association with sacrificial ceremonies, was outlawed by the Church as an emblem of paganism. Oddly enough, the sole exception was York Minster where a sprig of mistletoe was placed on the altar each Christmas. A general pardon for crimes remained in force throughout that city for as long as it remained there. The central symbol of the Christmas scene, the evergreen Christmas tree, had its origins in Germany where St Boniface cut down a sacred oak which was worshipped by the pagans and, to placate them, offered a fir tree in its place. However, later research indicates that traces of a similar custom existed in other lands, notably Greece and Rome, where trees were decorated at the time of year later dedicated to Christmas. There is also reason for believing that the same or a similar custom was known in ancient Egypt. The mystical heritage of Christmas is very strongly represented in one of the principal characters in the celebrations, Santa Claus, the embodiment of the spirit of goodwill. The name Santa Claus is in fact a corruption of the fifth century St Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, who was honoured with special ceremonies by the Greeks and Romans on December 6th, later changed to December 25th. This distinctly un- ghostlike genus of happiness was a 'reincarnation' of Odin, God of the Scandinavians who, on the conversion of Northern Europe to Christianity, was transformed first into St Nicholas and later into the modern Father Christmas. Christmas has no equal as a religious feast; it is the most important as well as the most enjoyable festival of the entire year. Yet even the good things spread out on the table have their religious aspects, particularly the mince-pies which were originally fashioned in the shape of small cribs in honour of the Christ Child. Among the superstitions associated with mince-pies is one which demands that the Christmas reveller makes a pilgrimage among his neighbours and friends demanding the gift of a mince-pie wherever he calls. For each one eaten, so goes the tradition, the visitor may expect a month's good health for the ensuing year. Originally, mince-pies contained a far more potent filling than mere mincemeat. They were stuffed with flesh of game hashed together with pickled mushrooms. One should always make a wish when taking the first bite of the first mince-pie of the season. The Christmas pudding qualifies as a magical ritual in its own own right, for it is surrounded by the most curious ceremonies. Prior to the 18th century the pudding was known as Plum Porage and was a concoction of plums, spices, wines, meat broth and breadcrumbs. It was eaten in a semi-liquid state and only later in its history were the plums replaced by raisins. To preserve good luck, the pudding should be stirred deasil or clockwise: a ceremony known to most psychic cooks. Lucky charms and silver coins have to be incorporated in the mix to bring good fortune to the eater, usually a silver coin, a silver thimble and a ring, with the following meanings: the silver coin brings good luck; the ring promises a happy marriage to the girl who finds it; while the thimble hints that she is likely to remain a spinster. The most interesting feature of Christmas pudding lore is the custom of setting fire to the brandy, so that the pudding can be brought to the table all aflame. This is a curious reminder that in ancient times special fires were lit at the midwinter feast to honour the Sun god. One ghost which has been finally exorcised from the Christmas scene is the Dumb Cake which in times past was prepared by single girls for consumption on Christmas Eve. Its ingredients were salt, wheatmeal and barley, and it had to be baked in complete silence. It was carefully placed in the oven and the front door opened precisely at midnight. The spectre of the girl's future husband was expected to enter the house at that time and march into the kitchen to turn the cake. In some areas the cook would prick her initials on the cake and in due course her future husband would materialise to add his initials to hers. Alas, this custom seems to have vanished for ever. The modern Christmas cake is still with us. It is supposed to have originated with a cake presented by the people of ancient Rome to their senators. A custom among Scots demanded that the cook should rise in the early hours of Christmas Day and bake sowen (oatmeal) cakes. These were distributed to the family at Hogmanay. If a cake happened to break, bad luck followed, but if it remained unbroken the eater could look forward to a Happy New Year. Although there is no clear-cut tradition that Christmas Day was ever associated with the giving of presents prior to modern times, it is known that a similar custom was observed by the Romans on New Year's Day. The Roman gift would have been a goodwill symbol only, consisting of branches of evergreen, but in time the presents became more lavish. Many of the enjoyable rituals which involve our lives at Christmas time are but the shadow survivals or 'ghosts' of very ancient customs performed around the close of the old year and the birth of the new, and the feast of fire celebrated at the time of the Winter Solstice to honour the Sun god. But the season of fire and light, as it is sometimes called, would be nothing without the Yule-log,for Christmas is also known as Yule, which was the Scandinavian feast of the Winter Solstice. In the days of old, an oak log was cut down on Yule Eve, and borne with much ceremony into the house and rolled onto the huge fire that was to burn during the days of the Nativity, especially Christmas Day. Little did the pious Christians of the medieval world realise that originally it had been burned in honour of the god Thor and represented the sacred element: fire. No doubt it was due to this association with the old gods that the hearth fire at Christmas assumed the important role which it retained until the advent of artificial forms of heating. The hearth was the centre for the telling of Christmas ghost stories and for those curious superstitions relating to the mysteries of fire. Throughout Northern Europe there were traditions that the family ghosts returned at Christmas time to share the festival with their living relatives. In Brittany there was the custom of leaving food for the ghosts while the family attended church. In Scandinavia, stories were told of trolls (who were ogres not ghosts) returning at this season to rattle the window-panes. In the British Isles there were contradictory beliefs, some people thought, erroneously, that no ghost had power to haunt during the Christmas season. It is when the light is extinguished save for the glowing embers that the ghost-story teller comes into his own and, surrounded by the family, describes some ancient haunting which is calculated to chill the blood of his listeners. Traditional hauntings include the posthumous adventures of Anne Boleyn who haunts her old homes during the Christmas season. Her ghost has been reported at Rochford Hall in Essex and Hever Castle in Kent, wandering headless during the 12 days of the festival. There are a number of cheerless proverbs which surface at the season of goodwill, as when someone observes, 'A green Christmas brings a full church-yard,' possibly to counteract any excessive exuberance among the party. However, the children turn to less ghostly rituals, including divination to discover the future. Each of them cuts an apple and counts the pips. The one whose apple has the most pips can look forward to the most happiness in the 12 months ahead. And so young and old join in quiet communion with Christmas- es past, present and future, united in quaint ceremonies whose origins are lost in history - a celebration presided over by ancestral spirits who have been lured into the home from outer darkness by the glow of the pagan fire. A Yule Mythos The Bard Thu 23 Dec 93 From "The Mystery of the Bards: The Book of the Fool" --------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey! Wake up there!" The Fool opened His eyes, stretched, and rolled over on the soft grass of the Summerland. "I suppose you're talking to me?" he murmured. "I certainly am!" The Lady, shimmering in Her Aspect as the Goddess of Love, smiled at Him. Had He been human, that smile would have sent Him into a transport of happiness. As it was, He felt a little shiver of joy run on catfeet down his spine. "What's up?" He got to His feet, brushing back his hair. "What's up? WHAT'S UP?" The Lady looked at Him in disbelief. "Dummy! It's almost Your birthday!" The Fool looked puzzled for a moment. "My birthday? I thought We have been....for always. We don't -have- birthdays, do we?" The Lady grinned, shifting into the Nymph for a delightful moment. "No, we don't, but Humanity likes to give Us birthday parties, and yours is probably the biggest.....so you need to get moving!" "So I do! And this Aspect is probably one of my favorites!" The Fool jumped in the air, landing on His hands in a perfect handstand with a jingling of bells. Then he took His hands off the ground, and hung suspended, upside down, in mid-air. One leg was folded at the knee. "Can You stand on Your head?" He grinned. "Not with -this- dress on!" She laughed. Humming a tuneless melody. the Fool strode thru Summerland, and thru the cloudy space between the Worlds of the MultiVerse, finally ending up on a small, very green-and-blue planet that the natives called "the Earth." "It's My Birthday a-comin'!" He shouted, and there was a stirring, and a movement. The Life that was locked in the grip of Winter remembered that Spring would come, as it always will, and the half of the world that was in Summer gave a little quiver of happiness. He went to a Place, and put on the suit, and the Aspect to fit it. He hitched the nine animals to His sleigh, grooming them with loving hands. Then He loaded it with gifts for all the people of the Earth. He was helped by quite a lot of the smaller elves, who found the game most enjoyable. Most of these gifts were toys, but many of them were practical, useful things. Some, like Love, and Peace, and Happiness, were quite insubstantial....but they were His Gifts nonetheless. He laughed. No longer slim, but chunky (if not fat), and dressed in a red suit lined with white fur, His laughter was a "Ho! Ho! Ho!" of gladness that rolled over the Earth. He spent the next instant of Time ("And what a clever concept Time is," He thought in self-congratulation) delivering His gifts, riding the sleigh to the music of tiny bells thru the Night. "Good Yule! Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukka! Io Saturnalia! Hail Mithras! Welcome Cernunnos!" He shouted. "And a Happy Birthday to Me," He added under His breath, with a grin. He landed the sleigh, and unhitched His animals. Each one was Named, and each one nuzzled Him as an old friend. The last was younger then the rest, and full of energy, bounding across the Place like a puppy in a warm kitchen. The red light from his nose reflected on the snow, and gave a joyful light that lit the sky in a glowing aurora. The Fool laughed at the sight, and hung up His suit, and took off the Aspect, and returned to the Summerland over the paths He knew so well. "Well," She said, "Did everything go all right?" The Fool leaned back against a tree and watched a butterfly land on His nose. "Yep. Got all My presents delivered. Did the usual sleigh-and-reindeer thing with the red suit and all.....great fun! I sure like to see the children happy." "Well, You sure are bass-ackwards sometimes!" The Lady shook Her finger at Him in mock anger. "Huh? Whattya mean?" The Fool was puzzled. "Well....everybody else -gets- presents for their birthdays. You gotta reverse it and give presents away!" The Fool giggled, and said, "That's my Nature, dearest. By the way, your fly's open." The Lady looked down and reached to zip up Her fly, and then did a perfect double-take. "But....I don't -have- a fly!" And the Fool leaned back against the World Tree and laughed and laughed and laughed. Thus it was, and so it is, and evermore shall be so! --------------------------------------------------------------- The following is from The Mysts of Annwfn Book of Shadows, and appeared in NightScapes Vol. 1, No. 5 (a journal of Magick, Paganism and the Occult). Subscriptions are $13.00 a year/six issues, sample copy $3.00. Write to: NightScapes, P.O. Box 4559, Mesa, AZ 85211-4559. Phone: (602) 898-3551. Information about The Mysts of Annwfn (who publishes NightScapes), can also be obtained by contacting the above information. THE LEGEND OF THE MAIDEN The Mysts of Annwfn Book of Shadows In Ages long past, the lovely Lady Brighid came to Hibernia to dwell in that land among her people. She brought to them many special treasures from the Outer Realms to enrich their lives. She gave them the art of Smithcraft, Poetry, and Inspiration. Brighid also shared a sacred Cauldron that overflowed with inspiration and love. She was adept at the healing arts, and in the Magick of Medicine. Her people loved her deeply, and kindled a fire in her honor which was constantly attended by nineteen maidens, and was never allowed to go out. The Lady Brighid eventually became a mother, and her people rejoiced, knowing their lands would be fruitful just as their Goddess was fertile. However, Brighid also knew the misery of loss. When one of her beloved sons was killed, the whole land wept. She lamented so deeply that she invented "keening," the mournful song of the bereaved women of Erin. Her Flame burned so brightly, however, that happiness soon returned to the land. She bestowed upon her people, yet, another gift: The Art of Whistling. However, in the fullness of time, the beloved Lady could no longer dwell openly with her people, and she made her home in the Sidhe. There, she would dwell close to her people and her land, and they could call upon her name at the appointed times, and keep her Flame burning within their hearts. The Eternal Flame continues to burn! The following ritual derives from The Mysts of Annwfn Book of Shadows, and was publicly conducted by Goddess Moon Rising Coven in San Diego, Ca. on Imbolg, 1988, and by The Mysts of Annwfn Coven in Mesa, Az. at Pagan Arizona Network's Imbolg celebration in 1993. This ritual appeared in NightScapes, Vol. 1, No. 5 (a journal of Magick, Paganism and the Occult). Subscriptions are $13.00 a year/six issues, sample copy $3.00. Write to: NightScapes, P.O. Box 4559, Mesa, Az 85211-4559. Phone (602) 898-3551. Information on The Mysts of Annwfn (who publishes NightScapes), may also be obtained by contacting the above information. CANDLEMAS RITUAL Mysts of Annwfn Book of Shadows The following ritual calls for the participation of eight people, and is best performed at a large gathering. The participants include: The Maiden Goddess, the Young Lord, the High Priestess, the High Priest, and the four Watchtowers. Specific items needed for this ritual are: a Crystal Ball, a cross of rushes, a mat, a basket, a phallic wand, a sprig of evergreen, pieces of paper, cakes, wine, and basic Altar and ritual equipment. All participants shall write upon the paper things and qualities they wish to gain during the coming season, and then place them in the basket prior to ritual. Candlemas is the festival of the Flame, and is best performed at night. This is Brighid's celebration. Winter is bade farewell, and as Spring approaches, it's a time to think of love. * * * * * All members of the ritual enter the Circle except for the Maiden. She should be wearing white, and is adorned with a garland of flowers in her hair. She stands out of sight, awaiting her cue. All attendants of the ritual should line the outer ring of the Circle, leaving a walkway into it. The Young Lord is to position himself among the attendants. The High Priest starts the ritual by saying: The young Sun King now begins to feel the first stirring of desire for the Lady. The Goddess patiently awaits her future lover. The Rites of Spring are near, and the year is in its waxing phase. The Sun's presence is ever-more increasing and the darkness runs and hides. The Invocation of the Four Quarters comes next, starting with the East: We welcome the Guardians of the East. Your breath of life is sacred, and greetings to the lovely Fand, the Pearl of Beauty, and gracious Olwen, the White Lady of the Day. Your presence is most welcome at this Festival of Imbolc! South: We welcome the Lords of the South. Your warmth flows through us all, and greetings to the Honored Lady Brighid, and to beautiful Branwen, the White Bossomed One. Your presence is most welcome at this Festival of Oemlic! West: We welcome the Holy Ones of the West. Your moisture is refreshing and precious to life, and greetings to our Queen Arianrhod of The Silver Wheel, and sweet Aine of the Wisps. Your presence is most welcome at this Festival of Lights! North: We welcome the Watchers of the North. Your power and wisdom is ours, and greetings to the Wise Cerridwen of Lake Tegid, and to the desirable Rhiannon of the Netherworld. Your presence is most welcome at this Festival of Candlemas! The High Priest continues: From now to Beltane, is the pathway less dark. Thus, shall the journey be made through to Beltane, renewed in strength and happy in love. The High Priestess now turns slowly, addressing those assembled. As she speaks, the Maiden walks slowly into view down the processional towards the Circle, until she stands at the Northern Gateway. She is holding the Cross of Rushes. The High Priestess says: Long Winter is now passing away and the buds will soon swell on the Apple tree bough. The Earth gladly receives the plow in preparation for the celebration of life. For the Queen and the King will begin to wear the garden's green and will speak in a single voice! The High Priest acknowledges the physical presence of the Maiden, and exclaims: Behold!!! Brighid has come! Brighid is welcome! The Maiden enters the Circle and lays the Cross on a mat situated just South of the Altar. She says: Greetings to you, not only from myself, but from the Mother and the Crone as well. All seasons of the Earth are important and must have their course.....but now, I weary of Winter, and I long for the greenness of Spring, and all that it encompasses. I strongly desire the companionship of my Lover-to be! She searches the Circle of people and draws him out. She kneels before him and invokes the God Lugh: Lord of Death, Resurrection, Life, and the Giver of Life! Lord who is within us, whose name is Mystery of Mysteries! Descend we pray thee, upon thy servant and Priest! Lugh, after indwelling the Priest, now moves over to the Altar, picks up the Phallic Wand, and places it on Brighid's Bed (the mat). The Maiden addresses the God: I grow weary of the darkness. Let's join to hurry Winter along its way so we can enjoy the pleasures that await us! (She motions to the mat). The God starts the Balefire in the South, and while doing this, the Maiden sweeps the Circle three times while everyone chants: Return, return, return, return The earth, the water, the fire, and the air. At an appropriate time, the singing comes to an end and the God says: The Key to unlocking Winter's hold is to erase its memories! He now holds up a sprig of evergreen and hands it to the Maiden Goddess. She tosses it into the Balefire. She then picks up a basket full of everyone's desires and wishes for the coming season, and says: Behold! In my hands I carry Hopes and Wishes for the coming seasons. I place them in this fire and as quickly as the memories of Winter fade, let the Hopes and Wishes just as quickly take root! She tosses them into the Balefire, and Lugh now says: My dear Lady and Lover-to-be, do us great honor by gazing into the Crystal and give your people words they can hold as their own! Brighid picks up the Crystal Ball and holds it between her hands. She gazes into it momentarily before saying: All the gods are one God, and the goddesses, one Goddess, and there is but one Initiator. And to every man, his own Truth, and the God within. Upon hearing this, he smiles and says: Come! Let's feast and make merry on this great occasion! The High Priestess steps in front of the altar and raises the water and Wine. She faces North and says: In celebration of Brighid's Day, we open the Moongate and let the Westwind blow! We bring Water, life's elixir, to refresh ourselves. We bring the Fruit of the Vine, the drink of the gods! Let us sip and enjoy. Hail to fair Brighid! The High Priestess now picks up the plate of cakes and says: Upon this plate are gifts from Erin! Farrels for us to enjoy! Let us eat and remember the Gods. These are holy Sabbat Cakes. They bring us sustenance and fill the hunger. Blessed Be Brighid's Feast! Let us dance in joy and mirth! The High Priestess now raises the honey as all say: Here is the Sweet Nectar! Sacred to the Gods! All now partake of the Cakes and Wine. Sing songs, dance, and do anything else that feels appropriate. (Brighid's Day is a traditional time for initiations). When the celebration is winding down, the God, taking the Maiden Goddess into his arms, declares: Now that we all have feasted and made merry, come with me now, our bed of Love awaits us! The Maiden, protesting lightly, responds: Oh! How I've longed for you through the Dark days of Winter! But My Love, though our bed is ready, we still must wait a short while. Our time of Union is not yet upon us, but the Rites of Spring, and of Beltane, are not far off! The Sun King looks slightly disappointed, but smiles lovingly at her. They embrace and kiss passionately, while everyone starts to sing, "Lady Weave Your Circle Tight." While the song continues, she slowly leaves his arms and exits the Circle. He follows her, not wanting her to leave, but stops at the Circle's edge. She turns and says to him: My Heart is with you, and Destiny will bring us back together soon! As the Cup is to the Knife, so am I to you! She now disappears out of sight, and the singing shall die down. The High Priest now says: Even though the Maiden has departed, her presence continues to increase! Light chases away the Darkness, and soon, the Maiden shall reign Supreme! The Winter grows short, and the leaves shall return to the trees! New Life shall spring forth, and New Love along with it! The Wheel turns, and the Young Lord and his Lady shall meet to consummate their Love. So ends this prelude to Spring! May the coming season bring you much joy and happiness! The Watchtowers are now given their release: Farewell to the Watchtowers of the North, and to Rhiannon and Cerridwen. May we depart in love and peace until we gather again. West: Farewell to the Holy Ones of the West, and to Queen Arianrhod and Aine. May we depart in love and peace until me gather again. South: Farewell to the Lords of the South, and to Branwen and the Maiden Brighid. May we depart in love and peace until we gather again. East: Farewell to the Guardians of the East, and to Olwen and Fand. May we depart in love and peace until we gather again. Everyone: Merry meet, and merry part, and merry meet again! References for inspiration: Gwydion Pendderwen Dion Fortune Janet & Stewart Farrar Marion Zimmer Bradley An Herbal "Quick Reference" Acicia - Protection, Psychic Powers Adam & Eve Roots - Love, Happiness. Adders Tongue - Healing African Violet - Spirituality, Protection Agaric - Fertility Agrimony - Protection, Sleep Ague Root - Protection Alfalfa - Prosperity, Anti-hunger, Money Alkanet - Purification, Prosperity Allspice - Money, Luck, Healing Almond - Money, Prosperity, Wisdom Aloe - Protection, Luck Aloes, Wood - Love, Spirituality Althea - Protection, Psychic Powers Alyssum - Protection, Moderating Anger Amaranth - Healing, Protection, Invisibility Anemone - Health, Protection, Healing Angelica - Exorcism, Protection, Healing, Visions Apple - Love,Healing, Garden Magic, Immortality Apricot - Love Arabic Gum - Purify negativity and evil Arbutus - Exorcism, Protection Asafoetida - Exorcism, Purification, Protection Ash - Protection, Prosperity, Sea Rituals, Health Aspen - Eloquence, Anti-Theft Aster - Love Avens - Exorcism, Purification,Love Avocado - Love,Lust,Beauty Bachelor's Buttons - Love Balm, Lemon - Love,Success, Healing Balm of Gilead - Love,Manifestations,Protection,Healing Bamboo - Protection, Luck, Hex-Breaking, Wishes Banana - Fertility, Potency, Prosperity Banyan - Luck Barley - Love, Healing, Protection Basil - Love, Exorcism, Wealth, Flying, Protection Bay - Protection, Psychic Powers, Healing, Purification, Strength Bean - Protection, Exorcism, Wart Charming, Reconciliations, Potency, Love Bedstraw/Fragrant - Love Beech - Wishes Beet - love Belladonna - astral projection *DEADLY POISON!! Benzoin - Purification, Prosperity Bergamot, Orange - Money Be-Still - Luck Betony/wood - Protection,Purification,Love Birch - Protection, Exorcism, Purification Bistort - Psychic Powers, Fertility Bittersweet - Protection, Healing Blackberry - Healing, Money, Protection Bladderwrack - Protection, Sea Spells, Wind Spells, Money, Psychic Powers Bleeding Heart - Love Bloodroot - Love, Protection, Purification Bluebell - Luck, Truth Blueberry - Protection Blue Flag - Money Bodhi - Fertility, Protection, WIsdom, Meditation Boneset - Protection, Exorcism Borage - Courage, Psychic Powers Bracken - Healing, Rune Magic, Prophetic Dreams Brazil Nut - Love Briony - Image Magic, Money, Protection Bromeliad - Protection, Money Broom - Purification, Protection, Wind Spells, Divination Buchu - Psychic Powers, Prophetic Dreams Buckthorn - Protection, Exorcism, Wishes, Legal Matters Buckwheat - Money, Protection Burdock - Protection, Healing Cabbage - Luck Cactus - Protection, Chastity Calamus - Luck, Healing, Money, Protection Camellia -Riches Camphor - Chastity, Health, Divination Caper - Potency, Lust, Luck Carawy - Protection, Lust, Health, Anti-theft, Mental Powers Cardamon - Lust, Love Carnation - Protection, Strength, Healing Carob - Protection, Health Carrot - Fertility, Lust Cascara Sagrada - Legal Matters, Money, Protection, Cashew - Money Castor - Protection Catnip - Cat Magic, Love, Beauty, Happiness Cattail - Lust Cedar - Healing, Purification, Money, Protection Celandine - Protection, Escape, Happiness, Legal Matters Celery - Mental Powers, Lust, Psychic Powers Centaury - Snake Removing Chamomile - Money, Sleep, Love, Purification Cherry - Love, divination Chestnut - Love Chickweed - Fertility, Love Chicory - Removing Obstacles, Invisibility, favors, Frigidity Chili pepper - Fidelity, hex Breaking, Love China Berry - Luck Chrysanthemum - Protection Cinchona - Luck, Protection Cinnamon - Spirituality, Success, Healing, Power, Psychic Powers, Lust, Protection, Love Cinquefoil - Money, Protection, Prophetic Dreams, Sleep Citron - Psychic Powers, Healing Cloth of Gold - Understand animal languages Clove - Protection, Exorcism, Love, Money Clover - Protection, Money, Love, fidelity, Exorcism, Success Club Moss - Protection, Power Coconut - Purification, Protection, Chastity Cohosh,Black - love, courage,protection,potency Coltsfoot - Love,Visions Columbine - Courage,Love Comfrey - Safety during travel, Money Copal - Love, Purification Coriander - Love,Health, Healing Corn - protection,luck, divination Cotton - Luck,Healing,Protection,Rain,Fishing Magic Cowslip - Healing,Youth,Treasure Finding Crocus - Love, Visions Cubeb - Love Cuckoo-flower - Fertility,Lover Cucumber - Chastity,Healing,Fertility Cumin - Protection,Fidelity, Exorcism Curry - Protection Cyclamen - fertility,Protection,Happiness, Lust Cypress - Longevity, Healing, Comfort,Protection Daffodil - Love,Fertility, Luck Daisy - Lust,Luck Damiana - Lust, Love, Visions Dandelion - Divination,Wishes,Calling Spirits Datura - Hex Breaking,Sleep,Protection Deerstongue - Lust, Psychic Powers Devils Bit - Exorcism, Love, Protection, Lust Devils Shoestring - Protection, Gambling, Luck, Power, Employment Dill - Protection, Money, Lust,Luck Dittany of Crete - Manifestations, Astral Projection Dock - Healing,Fertility, Money Dodder - Love,Divination,Knot Magic Dogbane - Love Dogwood - Wishes, Protection Dragons Blood - Love,Protection,Exorcism,Potency Dulse - Lust, Harmony Dutchmans Breeches - Love Ebony - Protection, Power Echinacea - Strengthening Spells Edelweiss - Invisibility, Bullet-Proofing Elder - Exorcism,Protection,Healing,Prosperity,Sleep Elecampane - Love,Protection,Psychic Powers Elm - Love Endive - Lust,Love Eryngo - Travelers Luck, Peace, Lust, Love Eucalyptus - Healing,Protection Euphorbia - Purification, Protection Eyebright - Mental Powers, Psychic Power Fennel - Protection, Healing, Purification Fenugreek - Money Fern - Rain Making, Protection,Luck,Riches,Eternal Youth, Health, Exorcism Feverfew - Protection Fig - Divination,Fertility, Love Figwort - Health,Protection Flax - Money, Protection,Beauty,Psychic Powers, Healing Fleabane - Exorcism, Protection, Chastity Foxglove - Protection Frankincense - Protection, Exorcism, Spirituality Fumitory - Money, Exorcism Fuzzy Weed - Love,Hunting Galangal - Protection, Lust, Health, Money, Psychic Powers, Hex breaking Gardenia - Love, Peace, Healing, Spirituality Garlic - Protection, Healing, Exorcism, Lust, Anti-Theft Gentian - Love, Power Geranium - Fertility, Health, Love, Protection Ginger - Love, Money, Success, Power Ginseng - Love, Wishes, Healing, Beauty, Protection, Lust Goats Rue - Healing, Health Goldenrod - Money, Divination Golden Seal - Healing, Money Gorse - Protection, Money Gotu Kola - Meditation Gourd - Protection Grain - Protection Grains of Paradise - Lust, Luck, Love, Money, Wishes Grape - Fertility, Garden Magic, Mental Powers,Money Grass - Psychic Powers, Protection Ground Ivy - Divination Groundsel - Health, Healing Hawthorn - Fertility, Chastity, Fishing Magic, Happiness Hazel - Luck, Fertility, Anti-Lightning, Protection, Wishes Heather - Protection, Rain Making, Luck Heliotrope - Exorcism, Prophetic dreams, Healing, Wealth, Invis ibility Hellebore,Black - Protection *POISON* Hemlock - Destroy sexual drives *POISON* Hemp - Healing, Love, Vision, Meditation Henbane - POISON Not used Henna - Healing Hibiscus - Lust,Love, Divination Hickory - Legal Matters High John the Conquerer - Money, Love, Success, Happiness Holly - Protection, Anti-Lightning, Luck, Dream Magic Honesty - Money, Repelling Monsters Honeysuckle - Money, Psychic Powers, Protection Hops - Healing, Sleep Horehound - Protection, Mental Powers, Exorcism, Healing Horse Chestnut - Money, Healing Horseradish - Purification, Exorcism Horsetail - Snake Charming, Fertility Houndstongue - Tying dogs tongues Houseleek - Luck,Protection, Love Huckleberry - Luck, Protection, Dream Magic, Hex Breaking Hyacinth - Love, Protection, Happiness Hydrangea - Hex Breaking Hyssop - Purification, Protection Indian Paint Brush - Love Iris - Purification, Wisdom Irish Moss - Money, Luck, Protection Ivy - Protection, Healing Jasmine - Love, Money, Prophetic Dreams Jobs Tears - Healing, Wishes, Luck Joe-pye weed - Love, Respect Juniper - Protection, Anti-theft, Love, Exorcism, Health kava-Kave - Visions, Protection, luck knotweed - Binding, Health Ladys mantle - Love Ladys slipper - Protection Larch - Protection, Anti theft Larkspur - Health, Protection Lavendar - Love, Protection, Sleep, Chastity, Longevity, Purifica tion, Happiness, Peace Leek - Love, Protection, Exorcism Lemon - Longevity, Purification, Love, Friendship Lemongrass - Repel snakes, Lust, Psychic powers Lemon Verbena - Purification, Love Lettuce - Chastity, Protection, Love, Divination, Sleep Licorice - Love,Lust, Fidelity Life Everlasting - longevity, Health, Healing Lilac - Exorcism, Protection Lily - Protection, Breaking Love spells Lily of the Valley - Mental Powers, Happiness Lime - Healing,Love,Protection Linden - Protection, Immortality, Luck, Love, Sleep Liquidamber - Protection Liverwort - Protection Liverwort - Love Looestrife - Peace,Protection Lotus - Protection, Lock-Opening Lovage - Love Love Seed - Love,Friendship HOUSE BLESSING Assemble: 1. Salt & Water 2. Incense (fire and air) 3. Milk & Honey 4. Oil (for anointing) 5. Wine (for offering) 6. Bells, Pots, Pans, Whistles, etc. Cast a circle in the main room (livingroom) and after casting, visualize the circle expanding to include the entire house. Call upon the spirits and energies living in the house (or apartment). Invite those who will be harmonious with the new household and its energies to remain. Invite/ask those who will be happier elsewhere to depart. Release all "energies" not compatible with the new household. (This may be expressed as a "release" in order to unbind anything that may be stuck.) Then call upon, greet, and invite ancestors, patron deities, and all harmonious spirits and energies to dwell in the house as they please. Gather up the pots, pans, and all the noise-makers. Go to each door and window, not forgetting the fire-place and dog-door, making as much racket as humanly possible--to shoo out anything unwanted. (This is hysterical fun, and also raises lots of energy for the next important step.) Go again throughout the house and at each portal (door, window, etc.) sprinkle salt-water and cense, saying: "By the Elements I purify and charge this portal." Then anoint the portal with milk and honey, saying: "By Milk and Honey I ensure prosperity and peace within this place." Finally, anoint the portal with oil, saying: "With Oil I seal this portal and protect all within." At the front door a special prayer is said, asking the guardian deities (God & Goddess) to freely grant entry to all frien ds and loved ones, and to prevent passage (turn aside) to any who would do harm." Then, if it's a house--pour wine across the width of the threshold; if it's an apartment anoint the threshold with light touches of wine. The house-holders then each take a sip of wine, leaving some as an offering to the Gods, and the Circle should be closed. The remaining wine, milk, and honey should be offered to the Gods. (In our case to the fruit tree and the oak tree in our yard.) Addenda: This is very effective if done as part of a house-warming party, followed by much feasting. It has also been done very effectively by two people. It only takes about 30 minutes to do a large house. You _can_ take the time. Do make certain to "ground" afterward, by closing the circle and by eating. This ritual can "stir" up everybody and make the house feel full of "buzzy" energy. By: Pirate Jenny To: All Re: Re: House Blessing notes In the spirit of house blessings, and because I'm basically a kitchen witch at heart, and like little projects over serious ritual, I offer some selections gleaned from Cunningham's The Magical Household. I'm typing these without permission but with the hope that they'll inspire you to pick up the Cunningham book, because it's wonderful stuph... :> For the doorway: o Suspend over the door a fresh sprig of dill, tied with a blue cord (or red, if you prefer), to prevent those who mean you harm from entering. o Cross two needles, and stick into or tie onto a corner of your doormat, to prevent evil from entering. o Grind Dragon's Blood herb into a powder and sprinkle it on door and window sills, to protect your house from harm. "Witch Bottles" o Powder some more Dragon's Blood herb with a small quantity of sugar and salt, and place in a small corked or screw-lidded bottle. Shake and seal with red wax, then place it where it won't be found (or at least not easily seen). This will ensure harmony and peace within the house. o Place three new needles, three new pins, and three new nails in a glass jar. Fill with salt and shake vigorously nine times. Seal with white wax and place in kitchen cupboard where it will not be seen. This protects your food from contamination. o Gather rosemary, along with several needles and pins, into a small glass jar with a tight-fitting lid or cork. When full, pour in red wine and shake. Seal with black or red wax, and place in an inconspicuous place in the apartment. If you own your own house, bury this at the furthestmost corner of your property. The book also adds this: As you're filling the jar, say these words... "Pins, needles, rosemary, wine, In this witch's bottle of mine; Guard against harm and enmity; This is my will; so Mote it Be!" Personally, I'm not hip on anything but, "Hey, Gods? It's me again", but I know, I'm CONSIDERABLY less formal than most! An Anti-Theft Sachet o Mix caraway, rosemary, juniper berries, and elder leaves or mistletoe, and place into white square of cloth. Tie with white yarn and hang prominently. I'd assume either at the place you think thieves are most likely to enter--this being an anti-theft sachet--or at every entrance and doorway. This will require more cloth and more herbs, but most of the above are fairly inexpensive. Finally, on Moving Day itself: o Bring two things into the house first: a small amount of salt, half to be scattered upon crossing the threshhold, and a small loaf of bread. Break the bread into as many pieces as you have people moving in, with one extra piece for the gods' portion. Sprinkle a dash of salt on each piece; share, when you have a moment. (I'd say have water on hand as well--at the very least, to clear the salt!) Next, bring in an apple and do the same thing--Cunningham recommends a fruit and cheese basket--I'd stick with just the apple and maybe a few slices of cheddar, or something. Lastly, bring in a sturdy chair and place it either near the apple and bread bits, or facing the door. This ensures that you will never know poverty, for there is bread and salt, hunger, for there is fruit (and cheese), and instability (for there's your stable chair guarding the door. After that, heave and lift until you're moved in! ------- A Note: I think ritual is very important, and I do admire rituals I've picked up here and those I've found on my own. In the long run, though, I know myself well enough to think that if I have to wait for a certain day and have a certain robe on, or need a special tool or altar lay-out, it'll never happen. But I can put my hands on needles, pins, wine and spices at virtually any time, and can easily make up witch's bottles for the shelves and cupboards, sachets for the windows, and incenses for household protection and cleansing. These simple items can have just as much power as just about any major ritual, and are sometimes easier to "whip up" for the busy pagan... :> ------- Cleansing Incense 2 parts Dragon's Blood 1 part Valerian Root 1 part Sulphur 1 part Asafoetida In conjunction with any banishing ritual this WILL remove ANY psychic or magical impression from your home. Then you can start fresh filling it with the energies you want. It may sound strange but it works! (Though it WILL GAG a Maggot!) WARRIORS ** Gwydyon Masengale, P.O.Box 4, Tolleson, Az 85353** A Warrior is born with Three Things, A Body, A Mind, and A Spirit... With these three things a Warrior is to build a Life, A Life of Balance, A Life of Peace, A Life of Will. A Warrior is born with Three Things, A Body... Speed, Dexterity, and Reflexes, these are the gifts of the Gods to A Warrior. Skills can be learned, but the gifts are rare, and are to be honed to the sharpest of edges and used to build... A Life of Balance. A physical battle is quite simply an exercise, in which A Warrior is given the opritunity to use the gifts of the Gods, and test the skills learned on this plane. It will at times be necessary to use the gifts and the skills knowen to A Warrior to build... A Life of Peace. Through training, the development of the gifts and skills combined can become a formidable weapon. Perfect Balance, Peace of Mind, and An Indomitable Spirit are necessary for A Warrior to build... A Life of Will... A Warrior is born with Three Things, A Mind... Intellect, Creativity, and Common Sence, these are the compasses and maps given A Warrior to help in navigating this existance. In life A Warrior will make mistakes. The way these mistakes are handled will set the tone of countless lives determining the measure of A Warrior's steel. A Warrior will accept responsibility for the actions taken, learn from them, and use the experiance to build... A Life of Balance. A Warrior must constantly endeavor to learn all that is to be learned of the path ahead, always drawing inspiration from the path which lies behind. For strength is the knowledge drawn from the past, and discretion is the wisdom of the future which empowers the Warrior to build... A Life of Peace. A Warriors mind is to be constantly sharpened, for the mind alone IS the most formidable weapon the Warrior will ever posses. The balance of knowledge and wisdom is the temporing of the steel that makes A Warrior, lending the strength necessary to build... A Life of Will. A Warrior is Born With Three Things, A Spirit... A Warrior will carry a shield of Honor. The strength of which is in perfect balance with the Honor of the Warrior. The Warrior will carry a sword of Truth. With an edge that mirrors the inner peace and honesty of the Warrior. A Warrior will wear a helmet of Integrity. With power matched only by the will of the Warrior. While battles can be fought and won with the well trained body. While wars can be waged and won with the tempored and sharpened mind. The most perilous test A Warrior will face is the test of the Spirit. Here the Gods give no gifts. A Warrior will have only the strengths of the spiritthat have been developed in the short life on the physical plane. A Warrior is born with Three Things, A Body, A Mind, and A Spirit... With these Three Things A Warrior must build a Life, A Life Eternal... My Name is Nite Hawk, A pledge By: Judy Harrow The ceremony originated with Judy Harrow and one of her coveners who co-wrote the dedication ritual. During the ritual, the dedicant is asked several questions and is expected to respond in whatever way s/he feels appropriate. I will include all the questions here for completeness sake: 1. Do you understand that Witchcraft is the Priesthood of the Old Gods and Old Ways of Nature, and that every Witch is a Priestess or Priest? 2. Do you understand that initiation into that Priesthood will change your life forever, in ways that you cannot now forsee? 3. Do you understand what priesthood requires: that, if you become a Witch, you serve the Lady and the Lord by serving Their People, to the fullest of your ability? 4. Knowing these things, do you want to study Witchcraft and its related arts until you know enough to decide whether this is truly your Path? 5. Do you understand that Witchcraft is one of many means to serve the Old Gods and awaken the Old Ways, and that even if this is not your way after all, you may learn and grow while you are here? Can you accept that the decision may be, "No?" 6. Teaching what I love is a great joy. But I can only teach in joy if I know that what I love will be used and shared with care and honor. Before I am willing to teach you, there are three things and a fourth that you must promise me: Will you respect and protect the confidence of all who you meet in this Circle and all who seek our aid, revealing their identities to no one except by their explicit permission? 7. Will you practice and teach the Craft for love alone, using this knowledge or teaching it only as a free gift, as I give it now to you, never accepting payment for it in money or goods or labor? 8. Will you promise never to use what I teach you to affect another person, avoiding not only baneful magic but all well-intentioned meddling, unless you have that person's explicit permission? 9. And if time brings fullness, as all here hope and expect it will, when you teach new students of your own, will you require these three pledges of them, along with their pledge to similarly bind their own students, so that all that spring from this line may be so pledged? MEAD: THE BREW OF THE GODS! Lewis Stead Mead is the oldest alcoholic drink known to mankind. More recently it has been taken up in the Pagan and other _alternative_ communities such as the SCA as a favorite for years. It's a form of wine made with a honey instead of grape juice. Mead is most often associated with the Vikings and in the Pagan community with modern day Norse Paganism or Asatru. Mead is an important part of the Asatru religion and has a place in both of the major Norse rituals: the blot and the sumble. The sumble is a drinking ritual where stories, oaths, and poetry are shared and mead_s function here is obvious. In this day and age mead is even more important to the blot or sacrifice ritual. The blot is actually quite simple. A God or Goddess is called upon and a sacrifice is poured in their honor. In ancient times this was most often an animal sacrifice and blood was poured out onto the ground or altar. Today an alcoholic beverage of some kind is the usual sacrifice. This is not only an adjustment to modern feelings about animal sacrifice, but is appropriate from an esoteric point of view as well. In ancient times the Norsemen were primarily farmers and an animal would have been a product that they had raised. Also, sacrifices were not a wasting of the animal, merely given to the Gods and left to rot, but were usually feasts where the Gods got their portion and the humans their own. Today mead making has been a frenzied activity among Norse Pagans, and it is most appropriate that something be sacrificed to the Gods which has been made by your own hands in a sacred manner. Mead fits the bill. It has the immediate links to our farming ancestors, but it can be easily made from household items in even a small apartment. While we really don_t know a great deal about how the ancients viewed mead, other than as an intoxicant, we do have a few clues. One interesting item to start with is that mead was apparently sometimes strained through rye, which contains the hallucinogenic chemical ergot. This may offer some insights into Seidhr, a Nordic shamanic practice, and the frenzy of the berserkers. Another interesting item is that Frey, a God of farming and harvest, was said to have two close companions, Bygvir and Beyla. Bygvir was the spirit of the barley and Beyla of the honey _ both important Gods to brewers and appropriate companions for the God of fertility. Finally, we have a few myths involving mead directly. Mead was known as Kvasir_s blood and it_s primary association was with wisdom. Kvasir was a being who was the wisest in all the universe, but he was killed and a mead created out of his blood that when drank brought the drinker wisdom. Aegir, a God of the Sea, was held to be the patron of brewing and the finest of mead and ale for the Gods to drink in Valhalla. Odin is said to never eat, but to exist purely on mead, just as the Greek Gods had their nectar. Even if it were not for any mythological importance, mead is of interest to the modern brewer because it is easy to produce and delicious. One merely introduces a yeast to the sugary liquid, and the yeast converts the natural sugars into alcohol. After all the sugar is converted, the yeast dies off and the wine can be bottled. However, this is not always as easy as it sounds. The largest problem in brewing is keeping inappropriate yeasts out of the drink. While the correct wine (or beer) yeasts eat sugar and excrete alcohol, other yeasts produce vinegar instead. Because of this it is absolutely vital to keep all brewing equipment absolutely sterile. This is the most important thing you can do in brewing. All the great equipment purchased as your wine making shop and the finest ingredients cannot beat a glass jar filled with welfare honey if the former is contaminated and the latter sterile. There are two major ways to sterilize your materials, one is a commercial "sanitizer" found in wine making shops. Follow label directions and you_re all set. The other is to make a solution of 25% bleach and rinse very thoroughly. Let_s make some cheap and easy mead. You_ll need a large pot, a one gallon vinegar or cider bottle, a 4' or 5' length of plastic tubing (try _airline_ tubing from a pet shop), a balloon or non-lubricated condom, a package of wine yeast (not bread yeast), wine bottles, corks, a corking device, and 2 1/2 pounds of honey. First you need to prepare the mixture that will be fermented. Take your pot and add the honey and enough water to finish filling up the one gallon bottle. Bring these to a boil slowly. If you don_t want scum in your mead and it forms on the top, skim it off. You don_t need to boil it for any length of time, you just need to bring it up to this temperature. Boiling for a while will release a lot of scum and additives which you can get rid of right now and it will also allow the mead to age more quickly. However, some of this _scum_ as I_ve called it is made up of those very things which can create flavor nuances. I don_t boil mine. When you decide it_s done, let it cool long enough so it won_t melt the plastic tubing, then siphon the mead into the gallon jug , cap and let cool overnight. The gallon jug is your primary fermenter. Did you sterilize the pot? the bottle? the cap? the plastic tubing? No! Pour it out and start again _ yes I am serious. Once the mixture is cooled to room temperature you will need to pitch the yeast. Get a small cup half full with warm, but not hot, water and add the yeast. Let it sit for about ten minutes and absorb water and liven up, then pour it into your gallon jug and mix it in. As of now your honey and water mixture is now being converted into mead. However, this will take about two weeks, perhaps more, to complete. During this time the mead mixture will bubble and foam, and this is what the balloon is for. Cover the top of the bottle with the balloon and about an hour later, when the balloon has started to inflate but has not become too stretched, poke a few holes in it with a pin. (I understand this may make you wince if you are using a condom.) This balloon takes the place of a fermentation lock and allows the gas to escape while not allowing air in, thus keeping the fermentation bottle sterile. The holes may become clogged with foam and you may need to poke a few more. Just remember the purpose of this and use your common sense. I_ve accomplished this with plastic wrap and a rubber band, but I wouldn_t advise others to try unless you_re fond of unmet expectations. About two weeks from this point the balloon will cease to be greatly inflated and will eventually go limp. When it has been completely limp for a few days and the mead is clear rather than cloudy, fermentation is over. At this point sanitize your wine bottles and plastic tubing and bottle the mead. Be careful not to get the yeast into the bottles as it_s not exactly tasty stuff. I stop about an inch before the bottom of the primary fermenter and we siphon off the last inch into cups and toast the new mead. My mead has been very tasty at this point, other people describe theirs as tasting like paint thinner. In any case, you may not mind a little yeast in your cup now, but don_t inflict it on yourself in the future by bottling it. Wait two to six months and then enjoy. Since the above recipe has no additives which would hasten aging, it may take a while for it to become truly fine mead, perhaps years. There are a lot of chemical additives that one can use to improve the flavor and process. The most common and important addition is a teaspoon of yeast energizer or yeast nutrient. Others include grape tannin (1/4 teaspoon), malic acid (2 or 3 teaspoons), tartaric acid (1 to 2 teaspoons). I recommend all of these chemical additives in your first batch, but if you can_t find them you can make do with natural ingredients or nothing at all. One can also add slices of fruit, raisins, or berries for flavor and in place of grape tannin. One recipe I know of adds some apple jelly. A few lemon peels will substitute for malic acid and a spoonful of strong tea will do replace tartaric acid. Hops are a common additive and will give the mead a bit of a bitterness to offset the sweetness of the honey. The more bizarre ingredient I have heard of was Szechuan peppers, use your imagination. All of the above additives should be made to the honey and water mix when it is boiled. Depending on the ingredient, some, such as fruit, may have to be boiled in this mixture for a while to break them down. Obviously hunks of fruit should be strained out after the boiling. Also, all the above ingredients are based on 1 gallon of mead, adjust appropriately with the exception of the yeast itself, one package of which will do for anywhere between 1 and 5 gallons. Another semi-useful item is sulfite tablets which can be added to the mead mixture a day before bottling. This will kill all remaining yeast and will assure that you are not contaminated by vinegar yeast after bottling or worse that the fermentation process does not continue in the bottle, causing it to explode or pop its cork. I don_t use sulfite and I_ve heard negative comments about a sulfurous aftertaste. It_s probably the better part of valor to simply wait a while longer and make sure the fermentation process is truly ended. The above instructions also assume you are not interested in spending a great deal of money on equipment. The only things you really must obtain from a wine making store are the yeast, the corks, and the corker. If you are willing to spend $50 to $100 more you can improve your chances of making a good mead by purchasing equipment made for the purpose. A balloon works, but it is a poor substitute for a proper fermentation lock that is custom fit to a vat built for the purpose. Likewise there are many other devices which will useful. In Defense of Excellence Adrienne I've noticed a trend, particularly in paganism, toward "elite" becoming a derogatory term. "Elitist" has very unpleasant connotations. In the mad scramble toward equality and egalitarianism, perhaps the trend has gone too far. I am all in favour of equality of opportunity. I believe in Martin Luther King's dream, "I have a dream that someday my children will be judged, not upon the colour of their skin, but on the content of their character." Yet, I am deeply disturbed by structures and titles meant to reward excellence downgraded and dismissed as being elitist and hierarchical. It the Wicca, this is most strongly epitomised by the continuing attempts to do away with degree systems on the basis of being elitists and hierarchical. So I ask, what is wrong with elites? Elites exist as an informal (and often highly formal) network of persons who, by virtue of personal qualities, or power, or money, or birth status, are capable of shaping and changing the structure of society. Some elites are based on nothing more than bank balances or parentage. Others are firmly based on intelligence, wisdom, commitment and ethical stance of their members. I have no problem with the concept of elites. Not everyone has the desire or capability to belong to every group. The problem lies with the qualification for membership, not with the concept. Hierarchy has an even nastier reputation. Yet in all societies, regardless of size, structure of purpose, have a hierarchy. Leadership roles exists and will be filled by those who can fill them. Leaders are necessary to achieve the goals of the group, regardless of how that leadership manifests. It is only when a hierarchy becomes closed and fixed that the structure becomes abusive. The concerns of those who dislike the concept of hierarchy due to experience of its abuses are valid. It is very easy to fall into a system where power rests, not on those who are qualified, but upon other,less desirable criteria, such as birth status, or wealth, or loudness of voice. However, doing away with the formal structure of hierarchy does not solve the problem. Non hierarchical groups often fall into leadership by peer pressure. Those that are thick skinned and dominant will lead de facto, especially if there is no de jure leader. Hierarchies exist. They exist because, like physics, nature abhors a vaccuum. A power vaccuum will be filled regardless of the good intentions on all sides. The solution is to have structures where all persons have the opportunity to become leaders, to participate in the decision making process, based only upon ability and desire to do so. Equal opportunity,equal access. The degree system within the Craft is not perfect. Like any other system,it has its abuses. However, if properly used, it has rewards far greater than having no such system. First, there is the reward for excellence. Those who have personal qualities such as commitment, talent, study, intelligence and open mindedness, should be rewarded for their abilities. The reward is not just a fancy title, but a recognition of that excellence, and membership in an elite. Second, there is a benchmark for others to judge by. If I know what degree a person holds, mundane or Craft, I have some idea of their abilities and can assume a certain level of understanding. Third, there is the recognition of self. A standard of excellence is required and achieving a degree is a feedback upon the levels achieved. There are other aspects dealing with the magic rite itself, but even if there were not, the hierarchy of degrees and the elite groups formed by having them are a mark of excellence for those who belong. Within my tradition and, according to my faith, within the Wicca itself, there are no barriers of opportunity to the system. Therefore, I see no reason to abandon it. I do not say that the system cannot be improved or that another system cannot provide the same benefits, but I haven't seen one that provides a reward for excellence while avoiding the pitfalls. Without active encouragement of excellence, whether in Craft or in the mundane world, entropy says that we will end up with mediocrity and least common denominator. And a world where mediocrity rules is not a world I wish to live in. (This article previously appeared in "The Messenger") BADGERS I looked through all my information, but as far as the Seminoles go I couldn't find any reference to the Badger. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, I just couldn't find any. Here is something from one of my books that I thought you might find interesting: "Badgers are 2-3 feet long and are about 12 inches high. Family members mark each other with scent for recognition since their sight is poor. Their senses of smell and hearing, however, are excellent. Their diet includes a wide variety of roots, herbs, plant, and many small animals. They dig with remarkable speed to catch burrowing prey and when they need to get underground quickly. Badgers live in simple but extremely clean, well kept dens. They pay close attention to details within their home environments. They change their bedding often, backing carefully into their dens with straw, so as not to make a mess in the process. Badgers bring us gifts of tidiness and organization. They are fastidious about their surroundings and will correct any disorder quickly. If Badger has come to you in some way, it may be saying that you need to concentrate on maintaining an orderly environment to better facilitate your day to day living. Badger can also be helpful to call upon for aid in managing your time. This can be useful for those of us who are trying to satisfy our need to devote time to ceremonies and the spirit realm and still work a job. Badger will fight to the death if cornered. While this may be a useful trait in the wild, men used this quality of Badger to exploit it in the so-called sport of Badger-baiting. Captured Badgers were put into small enclosed areas with a dog or dogs, and bets were placed on the outcome of the fight. Are you stuck in a pattern that served you well once, but is now damaging? Badger could be warning you that a change of behavior is in order if you don't want to be cornered or used." [From _Animal Energies_ by Gary Buffalo Horn Man and Sherry Firedancer - Dancing Otter Publishing] Here's something I think you might find interesting. It's from a book on Zuni fetishes. (Author: Hal Zina Bennett) BADGER (Guardian of the South) Zuni name: Black Mark face Wide, bulky, compact body, spread out along the ground, legs and tail barely suggested. Narrow, blunt face, prominent nose. (Describing the fetish itself) AS TALISMAN: This fetish helps you focus your attention and deepen your passion. It is an antidote to passivity and 'victimized' feelings. It helps you become more tenacious and grounded, for achieving any goal. PERSONALITY TYPE: If you are a Badger person, you are aggressive, highly goal oriented, able to concentrate on a single task or mission for long periods; and a good provider. Imbolc for the Covenstead Erin First, the cleansing. We do covenstead cleansing on this day, partl because of the (somewhat) purificatory nature of Imbolc, and partly because it coincides with the date a Japanese custom called yokubrai, if memory serves correctly, is carried out. Yokubarai means the same as exorcism, and is done with beans! More about that in a minute. I give as many parts to the cleansing as there are people to perform them. The last house cleansing we did had about 10 people take part and I found something for each of them to do. But that wasnt easy. Lessee, I think the most necessary elements for me to go around with are salt water, incense and beans. But Ive also had people waving away negative energy with brooms and wands. Ive had them sprinkle with salt water, and with water in which basil had been soaking for awhile. Ive had people carry around bells, incense and candles (not quite bell, book and candle, but close enough ). I live in a loft apartment, so we start in the closet up there, partly because its in the heart of the house, partly because I like the humorous aspect of coming out of the closet to do the blessing. Anyway, we banish in a counterclockwise diretion, single file, sprinkling, censing, or chanting into each corner each mirror, light fixture, appliance or outlet, as well as the walls themselves. In other words, we banish negative energy from all things giving ingress or egress from the house, as well as walls and mirrors. Sometimes we just take in everything in one room at once if its small, or everything along one wall--saves time. I usually come at the end of the line throwing beans at things (I find beans for MONTHS afterward) and chanting in Japanese: Funiki ga ire; oni ga soto! (Good luck, come in; devils, begone!) Then someone follows me making a banishing pentagram with an athame. We circle around the house in a counter-clockwise spiral till were back where we started--downstairs by that time. Then we go back upstairs for the blessing part. For the mos part, this uses the same tools, but no beans this time, and we go clockwise. We bless the corners, walls, outlets, appliances, and mirror, doors and windows. We concentrate on blessing and on making a seal that cannot be broken on the windows and doors especially. I usually come last and seal everything with a pentagram drawn by my atham. Then I draw a large permanent circle around the house, call in the elements, and ask the Lord and Lady to guard and bless the house for another year. Consecrating the dirt is simpler. I usually buy potting soil and place it in the center of the circle. All the ritual is done around it. We usually consecrate it just before we do cakes and wine by placin our hands on it and channeling energy into it. Then everyone takes some home. The last thing we do is to make up Bridgets bed. We take some long grass, or herbs and fold them into the shape of a doll about a foot long We dress her up and name her Bridget. Then we make her a soft bedof some grasses (all on a sheet of newspaper, of course, so the Virgo HPS doesnt get her nose, or her carpet, bent out of shape), lay her down and put a phallic image in the bed with her. We use a large dried seed pod with a rounded head for this. Then we place some of the consecrated dirt on a sheet of newspaper beside her. She was put by the hearth in days of yore, but, alas, I have no fireplace! In the mornng, if there are prints in the dirt (ashes), it foretold a favorableyear. When we did it last year, I swear there was the image of the phallic figure in the dirt, though no one had moved him! And it was a very good year for the coven, all in all. Hope you can use some of this. Blessings, Erin Invocation of Lord and Lady (Ritual) Dan Holdgreiwe The following is the text of a ritual titled Invocation of the Lord and Lady which was presented by the Fellowship of the Sacred Grove at a local gathering in November of 1993. Prayers and invocations are not included in the text as these are delivered spontaneously by the Priest and Priestess. PART ONE: THE PREPARATIONS [Priest, Priestess, Bard and Quarters begin standing in circle just outside the circle that will be consecrated for the ritual. Other participants begin outside of circle and will later enter through South gate. Customarily, East and North are male, South and West female.] 1. The Warning [The Bard moves to center of circle and addresses all.] "We gather tonight to open the veil between the worlds. This is not safe -- To pass beyond that threshold we must leave behind the protections of the mundane world. We must remove the veils which disguise us and lay aside the jewels which dazzle our eyes. We must take the risk of Seeing, and of being Seen. For our protection we rely upon the Lord and the Lady, whose Children we are. Any who are not ready to approach Them in reverence, love and trust should leave now. [Pause] Those of you who have chosen to walk this path, prepare yourselves to meet God and Goddess. [Bard remains in center.] 2.Claiming the Circle [East takes one step forward into the circle and speaks, facing inward.] "In the name of the Lady of Light, and in my own name, I claim this circle as a place of Men. Let all who enter be bound to speak, and hear, the Truth. So mote it be." [West takes one step forward into the circle and speaks, facing inward.] "In the name of the Sacred King, and in my own name, I claim this circle as a place of Women. Let all who enter be bound to Perfect Love and Trust. So mote it be." [South takes one step forward into the circle and speaks, facing inward.] "In the name of the Lord of the Greenwood, and in my own name, I claim this circle as a place of Nature Let all who enter be bound to the sacred web of life. So mote it be." [North takes one step forward into the circle and speaks, facing inward.] "In the name of the Queen of Heaven, and in my own name, I claim this circle as Sacred Space. Let all who enter be opened to the presence of God and Goddess. So mote it be." 3. Marking the Circle [All sing Listen to the Lord and Lady while Priest and Priest mark circle. When finished Priest and Priestess stand before alter in North, facing South.] 4. The Challenges [East and West move to South gate and form Arch with athames. North crosses to South gate. Participants enter through South gate one at a time and are challenged at knife point by North and South, then shown to places by Bard.] Who seeks to join this fellowship? Will you support and defend your companions on this quest? Do you swear to use that which you learn in this circle only in service of the light? Are you ready to meet the Mother and Father of All life? Then enter and be welcome. [Comment: This took several minutes, but the effect of the delay was positive rather than negative. The lengthy challenge process acted to center and focus the entire circle.] 5.Sealing the Circle [Bard speaks from center.] We have stepped beyond time, to a place not of earth. In the presence of the Lord and Lady, we join together and are one. [Bard crosses to take place in circle, then takes hand of next person deosil and says We are one. Each participant takes the hand of the next repeating We are one until the whole circle is joined. When the circle is complete, the Bard announces again We are one!] PART TWO: THE MYSTERY 1. Pathworking [Priest moves to center and leads all in pathworking. After preliminary relaxation and centering, the working takes the participant first to four symbols -- a living tree, a sword, a cup, and a standing stone -- each of which holds a message for the visitor. Then the participants journey to an ancient clearing around a weathered stone alter where, in times long past, their ancestors honored the Lord and Lady. In that holy place, the participants call the Guardians of the Quarters, then prepare to invoke the Lord and Lady.] [Comment: The actual invocation of the Lord and Lady follows without transition, inviting the participants to continue to experience it in the ancient clearing.] 2. Calling the Lord and Lady [Priestess joins Priest in center. Priestess invokes the Lord. Other celebrants invoke Lord and/or Lady as they feel inspired. Priest closes invocations by invoking the Lady. All invocations end with Come join with us. which is repeated by all.] 3. Chant: Priestess begins chant alone, all join in after first time through. Participants should stand, clap and dance as they feel moved.] Isis, Osiris, Woden and Freya; Lord and Lady, Brigid and Lugh [Chant builds in power to be cut off at peak by Bard striking staff on the ground.] 4. Readings [During chant East and West have stepped outside circle and deliver readings from opposite sides of circle. Bard is at center. Bard speaks.] Hear now the words of the Great Mother who is called Isis, and Freya, and Brigid, and many other names. [West speaks.] Think not that I am far from you, for you can see my visage in the moon, and hear my voice upon the wind. I am the silence of the sea, and the secret of the standing stones. I am the beauty of the green earth, and the mystery of the stars. I am the Mother of all things, and the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. I am the source of your beginning, and I am the fulfillment of your desire. [Bard speaks.] Hear the words of the All Father who is called Osiris, and Woden, and Lugh, and other names beyond counting. [East speaks.] You know me not, but I am with you. My face is the sun, and my voice the thunder. I am the strength of the forest, and the keenness of the sword. I am the rune giver; the patient teacher; the revealer of secrets. I am the warrior, the defender of the weak and the companion of heroes. I am the Horned One. I am the gateway to the Mysteries, and I am Mystery itself. [West speaks.] Arise and come unto us, for mine in the womb that bore thee and the breast that nursed thee. Your joy is our joy, and your sorrow, our sorrow. We would teach you the ways of healing, and the joys of love, for our law is love unto all beings. We give the knowledge of the eternal spirit, and beyond death we give peace and reunion with those who have gone before. We would lead you to love and to freedom. Call on us, and we will show you the hidden paths. [East speaks.] Follow my white stag into the deep forest. There is mystery in the wild places, and a path that leads between the worlds. The path is not easy, for it leads to that which cannot be given by another. Those who would share our freedom must create it anew within their own hearts. But no one who walks that path walks alone. Fear not to call on us, for we have not forgotten our Children. 5. Great Rite [Priest and Priestess take positions in center of circle, Priest kneeling with chalice, Priestess standing with athame. Priest makes spontaneous prayer to Lord and Lady. Priestess prays and/or responds on behalf of Lord and Lady, customarily ending with So mote it be as she lowers the athame. [Comment: a common theme here is to invite the Lord and Lady to join with us as they join with each other, but sensitivity to the inspiration of the moment is the prime concern.] 6. Blessing [All sing We all come from the Goddess as Priest and Priestess circle group, touching and offering a blessing to each in turn. When all have received a blessing, Priest and Priestess return to circle and all join hands. Priest and Priestess signal end to song by returning to center.] PART THREE CLOSING 1. Thanking the Lord and Lady [Priest thanks Lady, Priestess thanks Lord.] 2. Return to Mundane Consciousness [Priestess return to circle. Priest resumes pathworking in ancient clearing, thanks quarters and draws participants back into normal consciousness. Priest returns to circle.] 3. Opening the Circle [Bard moves to center and addresses all.] The rite is ended, the circle is open, may the blessing of the Lord and Lady be with you all. So mote it be. (All respond.) END Yule Ritual YULE DIVINE PLAY - by Lady Allusha, Coven Tara, publiched in the Georgian Newsletter, December 1983 Characters: Narrator, Earth Goddess, Handmaidens, Sun God Props: Yule Fire Narrator: It has been a long cold winter. Here, where the trees are all barren and the snow covers the ground the nights are dark and long. Earth Goddess enters, followed by her Handmaidens. They all move slowly around towards the birthing spot. Narrator: We see shadowy figures in the distance, moving slowly. The delicate footprints lead into the deepest realms of the forest. It is the Earth Goddess, pregnant with Life, followed by her Handmaidens. Earth Goddess stops. Handmaidens gather before her and kneel. Earth Goddess starts to make soft birthing sounds. Narrator: Listen! The Earth Goddess is about to give birth. In the midst of deepest darkness, light shall be reborn. Lend her your aid! Handmaidens start swaying gently, joining in the birthing sounds. Narrator encourages all present to join in the birthing sounds. The sounds get louder and louder until ... Narrator: The Sun is Born! Sun God jumps out from hiding into the center. He appears small and weak. Earth Goddess: Go, my faithful Handmaidens, and build up the Yule fire. That the weak Sun God shall grow in warmth and strength by its flames. She collapses with a sigh. Handmaidens build up the fire. The Sun God slowly grows as the fire grows, until he stands tall with his arms outstretched. He says, " I have returned" Then he dances a little jig. YULE RITUAL The celebrants gather in a room apart from the ritual area. It is best if the ritual can be held in a room without lights and with no heat. Priest and Priestess may choose to cast the circle before hand and allow all to enter through a portal, or cast after the candle lighting. At the time for the ritual to begin, the warden and maiden lead all into the ritual area with only one dim candle to light the way which circles to the Southern tower and stays there. As all shiver in the darkness, the priest and priestess, at the Southern tower begin, alternating: It is winter. It is night. We await the Sun. We await the light. In this darkness In this night, We await the warmth. We await the light. (Together:) And slowly it comes. (As they have moved around the cirle saying these things, the Priestess Widdershins and the Priest Deosil, they light candles which completely surround the circle. By the time they have finished, the room should be very bright.) Circle is cast if not already. Salt and water. Fire and air. Quarters summoned in manner appropriate to the season. God Invocation Priestess: Horned God, Winter God, Father of the Sun, with frost upon your beard and the blazing of Yule fires in your eyes, you bless us with your presence. We greet you. Goddess Invocation The Winter God (lighting the appropriate candles, which are held by women appropriately dressed): White is for the Maiden, divine and joyous child. Fresh as the snow is her taper. I give greetings, Blessed One. Red is for the Mother, warm embracing creation queen. Scarlet as the winter sunset is her taper. I give greetings, Regal One. Black is for the Crone, keeper of magical mysteries. Ebon as the stormy night is her taper. I give greetings, Wise One. Queens of winter, Sister, Mother, Grandmother, I greet you and ask your blessings upon your people gathered here. The three Goddesses, dividing the parts appropriately, invoke the Sun (the Maiden then crowns the God with a crown of candles or other appropriate crown, the Mother gives him a staff with a pine cone tip and the Crone gives him a kiss): Return, oh, return! God of the sun, god of the light, return! Darkness has fled -- Thou hast no enemies. O lovely helper, return, return! Return to thy sister, thy spouse, thy mother who loveth thee! We shall not be put asunder. O my brother, my consort, my son, return, return! When I see thee not my heart grieveth for thee, mine eyes seek for thee, my feet roam the earth in search of thee! Gods and men weep for thee together. God of the sun, god of the light, return! Return to thy sister, thy spouse, thy mother, who loveth thee! Return! Return! Return! The God raps three times on the altar with his wand Sun King: Newly born, am I. What wisdom says the watcher of the east to aid me and those gathered here with me? East: This is a time for entering wilderness and seeking its magical strengths. A time for standing alone and godlike, and seeing all things clearly. It is a season of joy! Sun King: What wisdom says the watcher of the south? South: This is a time of active seeking, both without in nature and within oneself. Eagerness and resolution shall concern mysteries and create results. It is a season of courage! Sun King: What wisdom says the watcher of the west? West: This is a time for devotion to the way of the wild places and seeking the calmness of solitary locales. A time for finding understanding, and confiding only in trusted friends. It is a season of meditation! Sun King: What wisdom says the watcher of the north? North: This is a time to know the endurance of the hills, and to so grow in one's own inner firmness. A time for scrupulousness and thoroughness and considering all things. It is a season of confidence! The Winter God: Rich are these gifts of knowledge. Soon I will give way to my Son, but until that time mine is the feast and the season of joy. (The God blesses the feast as is customary for the group.) Each Deity and Watchers is thanked and bid farewell as they were invoked. The circle is released as is appropriate to the group. Notes: If anyone is crowned with a crown of candles, a veil helps with the dripping wax. Holly can be pretty uncomfortable, too, so ditto. Portions of this are liberally stolen from the Magical Rites from the Crystal Well by Ed Fitch. It's great stuff and you may want to use it outright, rather than my mutilated version. If you have enough people and candles, everybody may be naked by the end of this. It's great to use your oldest male as Winter and your youngest male for the Sun (kids are great suns). Same for the Goddesses. Obviously, this is just an outline that can be spindled, folded and mutilated any way you like. The opening part with the candles we have used for more than one Yule and it's really great. We have also done a guided meditation into Herne's Grove, rather than a Winter God invocation. It involves a treck through the winter forest, trudging through snow until you find the lone pine tree in the clearing in the heart of the Female Wine Blessing The Goddess calls originate from an all-female version I wrote of the Dedication ritual of the Odyssian tradition. The original was written by Richard and Tamarra James. This version follows the structure of the original fairly closely, and maintains some of the original lines, so if you like it, send your compliments to Richard as well as to me. Ditto for the Wine Blessing, as it is a modified version of the Odyssian standard WB. One priestess represents the Moon Goddess (the conventionally feminine role), and the other the Sun Goddess (the conventionally mascualine role). We half-jokingly called this the butch-femme wine blessing... Goddess Calls: SG: I am She who shone forth from the Dark of Night, When time was begun. Lady of the Sea, join Me, And let all things be formed of Our union. Thou who art called Artemis, Hecate, Cerridwen, Isis. Giver of love, protection, and the joy of life, Goddess of the Earth, Moon and Sea, Ruler of the Night, Mistress of Magic, Keeper of the Mysteries. Ascend to Me on bright and silvered wing. For lo, I receive these gifts of Thee: Life, and love, and gifts from the Sea. I am the Sun, the Sun that calleth Thee. I am the arching Sky that covers Thee. Come unto Me, my Lady, come unto Me, And be welcome. Hail, and blessed be. MG: I am She who rose from the depths of the Sea, When time was begun. Lady of the Bright Sky, join Me, And let all things be formed of Our union. Thou who art called Athena, Bast, Sekhmet, Amaterasu. Giver of strength, guidance, and the will of life, Goddess of the Sun, Sky, and Winds, Ruler of the Day, Bringer of Justice and Voice of Truth. Descend to Me on bright and golden wing. For lo, I receive these gifts of Thee: Life, and strength, and fullest ecstasy. I am the Sea, the Sea that calleth Thee. I am the waiting Earth that welcomes Thee. Come unto Me, my Lady, come unto Me, And be welcome. Hail, and blessed be. Wine Blessing: MG anoints SG and hands her the athame. MG: Bright Lady, thou art the Sun. Thy heat is radiant. Warrior Maiden, Giver of the Law, Here is the athame, The Air and Fire are contained within it, As are their powers. SG anoints MG and hands her the chalice. SG: Dark Lady, thou art the Moon, Giver of dreams and visions. Wise One, Teacher of the Mysteries, Here is the chalice, The Earth and the Sea are contained within it, As are their powers. SG: I am the spark of life, The well of flame wherein dwells all power and potential. MG: And I am the primal matter, The core of earth that gives shape and form to that power. Both: Neither one can work without the other. One without the other is incomplete. SG: Mine are wisdom and knowledge, passion and pride. MG: And mine are love and dreams, silence and mystery. Both: To learn you must suffer, To live you must be born, To be born you must die. The beginning, continuation and the end, Over and over. SG: The Sun brings forth light, MG: And the Moon holds it in darkness. SG: As above, MG: So below. SG: (Raises athame) And as the athame is one half of our divine nature, MG: So the chalice is the other. Both: (Athame into chalice) And conjoined they be one in truth, For it is in the Dance that Life is born, In the balance that truth is found, And there is no greater power in all the world Than that of Love. Altars (misc. Thoughts) Chris Olmstead As for Altar set ups... 1. I once read Crowley's remarks on how he contrived his stuff while he was out wandering the world or climbing mountains. He found ways to just use the simple things from his kit...cook knife became Athame, tin cup became the Cup...etc. This sort of 'kitchen witch' working is accepted by lots of folks. You can set an altar up and take it down as fast as you can set a table. 2. I also have noted the "Porto-Pagan" set-ups at some of the Pagan Fests I've attended. Carry the stuff in a cardboard box that can be up-ended for an altar, or even placed on it's side for a rain-proof 'shrine'. Close and carry off at the end of the visit with a minimum of re-wrapping to protect the fragiles. Some just contrive one with the natural objects at hand...a rock, a stick, a lantern or candle, etc. 3. Some folks (including myself) have a small duffle into which I've placed a second set of "traveling" working tools. I have the great good-fortune of having friends who give me cool things. The coolest stay on my Altar, the second-coolest hang out in the sac, and sometimes I shift the goodies around. 4. I have a buncha books that offer arrangements I find a bit Overwhelming, but I can certainly post them, if you really need them. If you want me to fetch out Official Altar diagrams from some of the slick commercial works I have on the shelf, RSVP. 5. For "public" Altar, in my home, I 'clutter' a shelf, a mantle, or a small window sill. It sounds to me as though, since all your stuff is packed andyour space is totally compressed, that the "window sill" Altar is a good solution for you. I put a little origami pinwheel up on an Eastern sill, a small shell on a Western one, a tiny oil lamp on a Southern one, and a pretty rock on a Northern one. The whole House is the Altar "Table". To clear my space I have been known to light a stick of incense, scaling it upward in my mind until I am swinging a huge flaming brand before the various Darks I'm dispelling, and run through the house screaming and raving aloud until they back off. A joss stick lasts about 20 minutes. I can almost guarantee that if you summon your Ki and Incant over a flaming brand for 15 minutes, most Shadows _will_ go elsewhere. I haven't had to do it in THIS house more than twice in 3 years. What Is Shamanism? Since the term "shamanism" has been used in a number of ways during the discussions here I thought it might be helpful to present some basic information on shamanism as the inter-disicplinary subject that it has become since Mircea Eliade wrote _Shamanism_. The following is from the Foreward, which explains the approach that Eliade took to study Shamanism as a magico-religious phenomena, and which has been the foundation that shamanism as a spiritual tradition, as well as explaining how other academic disciplines approach the subject. --------------------------------------- Mircea Eliade _Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy_ Princeton University, Bollingen Series LXXVI 1964 Originally published in French as _Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaiques de l'extase_, Librairie Payot, Paris, 1951. Revised and enlarged for the Bollinger edition. ISBN 0-691-01779-4 pbk 0-691-09827-1 hdbk To the best of our knowledge the present book is the first to cover the entire phenomenon of shamanism and at the same time to situate it in the general history of religions. To say this is to imply its liability to imperfection and approximation and the risks that it takes. Today the student has at his disposition a considerable quantity of documents for the various shamanisms--Siberian, North American, South American, Indonesian, Oceanian, and so on. Then too, a number of works, important in their several ways have broken ground for the ethnological, sociological, and psychological study of shamanism (or rather, of a particular type of shamanism). But with a few notable exceptions--we refer especially to the studies of Altaic shamanism by Holmberg (Harva)--the immense shamanic bibliography has neglected to interpret this extremely complex phenomenon in the framework of the history of religion. It is as a historian of religions that we, in our turn, have attempted to approach, understand, and present shamanism. Far be it from us to think of belittling the admirable studies undertaken from the viewpoints of psychology, sociology, or ethnology; we consider them indispensable to understanding the various aspects of shamanism. But we believe that there is room for another approach--that which we have sought to implement in the following pages. The writer who approaches shamanism as a psychologist will be led to regard it as primarily the manifestation of a psyche in crisis or even in retrogression; he will not fail to compare it with certain aberrant psychic behavior patterns or to class it among mental diseases of the hysteroid or epileptoid type. We shall explain why we consider it inacceptable to assimilate shamanism to any kind of mental disease. But one point remains (and it is an important one), to which the psychologist will always be justified in drawing attention: like any other religious vocation, the shamanic vocation is manifested by a crisis, a temporary derangement of the future shaman's spiritual equilibrium. All the observations and analyses that have been made on this point are particularly valuable They show us, in actual process as it were, the repercussions, within th epsyche, of what we have called the "dialectic of hierophanies"--the radical separation between profane and sacred and the resulting splitting of the world. To say this is to indicate all the importance that we attribute to such studies in religious psychology. The sociologist, for his part, is concerned with the social function of the shaman, the priest, the magician. He will study prestige originating from magical powers, its role in the structure of society, the relations between religious and political leaders and so on. A sociological analysis of the myths of the First Shaman will elicit revealing indications concerning the exceptional position of the earliest shamans in certain archaic societies. The sociology of shamnism remains to be written, and it will be among the most important chapters in general sociology of religion. The historian of religions must take all these studies and their conclusions into account. Added to the psychological conditions brought out by the psychologist, the social ocnditions, in the broadest sense of the term, reinforce the element of human and historical concreteness in the documents that he is called upon to handle. The concreteness will be accented by the studies of the ehtnologist. It will be the task of ethnological monographs to situate the shaman in his cultural milieu. There is danger of misunderstanding the true personality of a Chukchee shaman, for example, if one reads of his exploits without knowing anything about the life and traditions of the Chukchee. Again, it will be for the ehtnologist to make exhaustive studies of the shaman's costume and drum, to describe the seances, to record texts and melodies, and so on. By undertaking to establish the "history" of one or another constituent element of shamanism (the drum, for example, or the use of narcotics during seances), the ethnologist--joined when circumstances demand it, by a comparatist and historian--will suceed in showing the circulation of the particular motif in time and space; so far as possible, he will define its center of expansion and the stages and the chronology of its dissemination. In short, the ethnolgist will also become a "historian," whether or not he adopts the Graebner-Schmidt-Koppers method of cultural cycles. In any case, in addition to an admirable purely descriptive ethnographical literature, there are now available numerous works of historical ethnology: in the overwelming "gray mass" of cultural data stemming from the so-called "ahistorical" peoples, we now begin to see certain lines of force appearing; we begin to distinguish "history" where we were in the habit of finding only "Naturvolker," "primitives," or "savages." It is unnecessary to dwell here on the great services that historical ethnology has already rendered to the histroy of religions. But we do not believe that it can take the place of the history of religions. The latter's mission is to integrate the results of ethnology, psychology, and sociology. Yet in doing so, it will not renounce its own method of investigation or the viewpoint that specifically defines it. Cultural ethnology may have demonstrated the relation of shamanism to certain cultural cycles, for example, or the dissemination of one or another shamanic complex; yet its object is not to reveal the deeper meaning of all these religious phenomena, to illuminate their symbolism, and to place them in the general history of religions. In the last analysis, it is for the historian of religions to synthesize all the studies of particular aspects of shamanism and to present a comprehensive view which shall be at once a morphology and a history of this complex religious phenomena. pg. xi-xiii Chapter One, General considerations. REcruiting Methods. Shamanism and Mystical Vocation. Since the beginning of the century, ehtnologists have fallen into the habit of using the terms, "shaman," "medicine man," "sorcer," and "magician" interchangeably to designate certain individuals possessing magico-religious powers and found in all "primitive" societies. By extension, the smae terminology has been applied in studying the religious history of "civilized" peoples, and there have been discussions, for example, of an Indian, an Iranian, a Germanic, a Chinese, and even a Babylonian "shamanism" with reference to the "primitive" elements attested in the corresponding religions. For many reasons this confusion can only militate against any understanding of the shamanic phenomenon. If the word "shaman" is taken to mean any magician, sorcerer, medicine man, or ecstatic found throughout the history of religions and religious ethnology, we arrive at a notion at once extremely complex and extremely vague; it seems, furthermore, to serve no purpose, for we already have the terms "magician" or "sorcerer" to express notions as unlike and as ill-defined as "primitive magic" or "primitive mysticism." We consider it advantageous to restrict the use of the words "shaman" and "shamanism" precisely to avoid misunderstandings and to cast a clearer light on the history of "magic" and "sorcery." For of course, the shaman is also a magician and medicine man; he is believed to cure, like all doctors, and to perform miracles of the fakir type, like all magicians, whether primitive or modern. But beyond this, he is a psychopmp, and he may also be preist, mystic and powet. In the dim, "confusionistic" mass of the religious life of archaic socieites considered as a whole, shamanism--taken in its strict and exact sense--already shows a structure of its own and implies a "history" that there is every reason to clarify. Shamanism in the strict sense is pre-eminently a religious phenomenon of Siberia and Central Asia. The word comes to us, through the Russian, from the Tungusic _saman_. In the other languages of Centeral and North Asia the corresponding terms are Yakut _ojuna_ (_oyuna_), Mongolian _buga_, _boga_ (_buge_, _bu_) and _udagan_ (cf. also Buryat _udayan_, Yukut _udoyan_: "shamaness")_, Turko-Tartar _kam_ (Altaic _kam_, _gam_, Mongolian _kami_, etc.) It has been sought to explain the Tungusic term by the Pali _samana_, and we shall return to this possible etymology (which is part of the great problem of Indian influences on Siberian religions) in the last chapter of this book. Throughout the immense area comprising Central and North Asia, the magico-religious life of society centers on teh shaman. This, of course, does not mean that he is the one and only manipulator of the sacred, nor that religious activity is completely usurped by him. IN many tribes the sacrificing priest coexists with the shaman, not to mention the fact that every head of a family is also the head of the domestic cult. Nevertheless the shaman remains the dominating figure; for throught the whole region in which the ecstatic experience is considered the religious experience par excellence, the shaman, and he alone, is the great master of ecstasy. A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = _technique of ecstasy_. pgs 3-4 Yet one observation must be made at the outset: the presence of a shamanistic complex in one region or another does not necessarily mean that the magico-religious life of the corresponding poeple is crystallized around shamanism. This can ocur (as, for example, in certain parts of Indonesia), but it is not the most usual state of affairs. Generally shamanism coexixsts with other forms of magic and religion. It is here that we see all the advantage of emplying the term "shamanism" in its strict and proper sense. For, if we take the trouble to differentiate the shaman from other magicians and medicine men of primitive societies, the identification of shamanic complexes in one or another region immediately acquires definite significance. Magic and magicians are to be foudn more or less all over the world, where as shamaism exhibits a particular magical specialty, on which we shall dwell at legth: "master over fire," "magical flight," and so on. By virtue of this fact, though the shaman is, among other things, a magician, not every magician can properly be termed a shaman. The same distinction must be applied in regard to shamanic healing; ever medicine man is a healer, but the shaman employs a method that is his and his alone. AS for the shamanic techniques of ecstasy, they do not exhaust all the varieties of ecstatic experience documented in the history of religions an dreligious ethnolgoy. Hence any ecstatic cannot be considered a shaman; the shaman specializes in a trance during which his sould is believed to leave his body and ascend to the sky or descend to the underworld. A similar distinction is also necessary to define the shaman's relation to "spirits." All through the primitive and modern worlds we find individuals who profess to maintain relations with "spirits," whether they are "possessed" by them or control them. SSEveral volumes would be needed for an adequate study of all the problems that arise in connection with the mere idea of "spirits" and of their possible relations with human beings; for a "spirit" can equally well be the sould of a dead person, a "nature spirit," a mythical animal, and so on. But the study of shamanism does not require going into all this; we need only define the shaman's relation to his helping spirits. It will easily be seen wehrein a shaman differs from a "possessed" person, for example; the shaman controls his "spirits," in the sense that he, a human being, is able to communicate with the dead, "demons," and "nature spirits," without thereby becoming their insturment. To be sure, shamans are sometimes found to be "possessed," but these are exceptional cases for which there is a particular explanation. These few preliminary observations already indicate the course that we propose to follow in odrder to reach an adequate understanding of shamanism. In view of the fact that this magico-religious phenomenon has had its most complete manifestation in North and Central Asia, we shall take the shaman of these regions as our typical example. We are not unaware, and we shall endeavor to show, that Central and North Asian shamanism, at least in its present form, is not a primordial phenomenon that has a long "history." But this Central Asian and Siberian shamanism has the advantage of presenting a structure in which elements that exist independently elsewhere in the world--i.e., special relations with "spirits," ecstatic capacities permitting of magical flight, ascents to the sky, descents to the underworld, mastery over fire, etc.--are here already found integrated with a particular ideology and validating specific techniques. pgs. 5-6 ------------------------- By: JULIA PHILLIPS Re: Travelling Chant Some time ago I promised to post some of the BoS material I have which (allegedly) pre-dates Gardner. No guarantees , but I was told that this chant dates from the 1920s: Let's ride, let's ride, to the sabbat tonight, we'll ride over hill, over dale. We'll ride to the feasting and ride to the dance, and ride to the October ale. Let's dance, let's dance at the sabbat tonight, We'll sing with a heart full and glad. We'll sing and we'll love through the chill autumn night, and remember the loves we have had. Let's ride, let's ride when the sabbat is done, let's ride back to hearth and to home. Let's ride back together all under the stars, and wait for the next sabbat to come. I think it's rather a nice chant, whenever it was written. B*B Julia Bridal Blessing Song This is one of a collection which I have been told dates from the 18th century. As with the previous one, no guarantees ! Blessing Song for a Bridal Bless the furrow, bless the plough and bless the seed that springs. Bless the fruit and bless the corn the blossoms on the bough. Bless the man and bless the maid and bless the bed they share. Bless the babe that's got this night and in the Lady's care. B*B Julia ---- A WICCANING PART 4 --- THE DIVULGENCE OF THE NAMES (explained to the Witnesses): ANCIENT EUROPEAN PEOPLES BELIEVED THAT YOU MUST HAVE TWO NAMES, ONE PUBLIC AND ONE A SECRET NAME THAT ONLY THOSE PRESENT AT THE BLESSING CEREMONY KNEW. THIS SECOND NAME IS FOR USE AFTER PUBERTY, WHEN THE SOUL CHANGES INTO ITS FIRST ADULT SELF, WHEN IT CAN BE UTTERED ONCE MORE, AND MADE PUBLIC. THE PURPOSE OF THE FIRST PUBLIC NAME WAS TO DIVERT THE EVIL EYE, TO GAIN FAVOR WITH THE FATES, TO KEEP AWAY SICKNESS, AND TO HELP THE CHILD REACH ADULTHOOD. Priestess: "Great Spirit of Nature, protect and guide these young souls among us. May the Blessings of the wise and joyous Father of the Gods far-seeing and far-knowing be upon thee. May the blessings of the Triple Goddess, of Maiden, of Mother, of Crone, and all their power be upon thee." The following blessings/invocations were spoken and followed by the child being immersed in the ocean water of the beach where the ritual was held: ELIZABETH'S DUNKING: Anna Perenna Great Goddess, Mother of All Envelope this daughter of yours in the waters of Your womb Grant her protection from wrong-doing Wash away the memories of her pain Shower her with Your blessings in a life everlasting Bless Elizabeth Mae Luzerne. So Mote it Be! PATRICK'S DUNKING: Great Goddess, Nurturer and Bearer of all Men, great and small Without whose womb they would not be Mother of Gods, of Sacrificial Kings, Presidents, Emperors, and beggars Welcome this son of Yours into Your Light and as you have taught us, let him find "Beauty and strength, power and compassion, mirth and reverence, honor and humility" within his heart. Wash his fears away with your caress! Bless Patrick Howard Lloyd! Blessed Be! MORGAINNE'S DUNKING: Hail, o gracious and most magnificent Lady whose slender hand turns the vast wheel of the sky. whose triple aspect does see the beginning, the life, and the end of all things. whose wells of mystery do give inspiration and rebirth thoughout eternity, receive here this small daughter of yours with blessings and with love. Bless Morgainne Ellayne! So mote it be! Santa TANE JACKSON Christmas has two distinct themes running through it, as study of any collection of Christmas cards shows. One is the religious aspect, involving Wise Men, angels, the Star and shepherds, and refers to the Gospel story of the birth of Christ. The other theme seems totally unrelated and depicts reindeer, stockings, a sleigh and, of course, Santa Claus. The two main Christmas personalities are Jesus and Santa, as most people will agree. Everyone brought up in a Christian country knows the significance of Jesus at this time but just who is Father Christmas and why should he become part of a religious festival? We must first look back at history and see why December became such an important month in the religious calendar in the first place. The reason is, of course, the Winter Solstice, December 21st, when the Sun appears to stop in the sky prior to beginning its journey back across the heavens. After the Solstice the days gradually get longer and the peoples of old considered this to be almost the birthday of the Sun. The peoples of the northern hemisphere were fond of having a festival in mid-winter, perhaps because they needed something to take their minds off the long, cold, dark days. In ancient Rome the feast of Saturnalia was held between December 17th and 23rd and gifts were exchanged. The Romans also held the feast of Brumalia on the Solstice day itself and considered this to be the birthday of Mithra the unconquered Sun god. The Norsemen celebrated Yule at this time, to herald the return of the Sun. It is interesting to note that Christ is often known as the Light of the World, a title that continues this theme of darkness in retreat in the face of good. The Solstice has long been associated with the idea of people giving each other presents. Apart from giving gifts at Saturnalia the Romans also exchanged presents on the feast of the Kalends, which we call New Year's Day. These customs prevailed all over the Roman Empire when Christianity was still a new religion. When Christianity spread to the northern lands they found the Norsemen worshipping Odin--who rode his chariot through the night sky at the time of the Winter Solstice, handing out gifts. Because the exchange of gifts was so linked in the pagan mind with these old festivals devout Christians were not supposed to exchange gifts at this time. However, gift-exchange never died out on the European scene and finally the Church fathers had to do something about it. They did not want to let people keep on believing that Odin or any other pagan deity had anything to do with gift-bringing so they looked around for an acceptable Christian figure to bring them instead. The person they chose was St Nicholas, the former Bishop of Myra in the 4th century AD. Not much is actually known about St Nicholas, though many legends grew up around his kind ly figure. One thing that qualified him for the role of gift-bringer was his feast day being December 6th, a date sufficiently close to the Solstice for the two to be connected in the mass mind. St Nicholas was a useful saint and could even be described as all-purpose. His responsibilities included the welfare of pawn- brokers, boatmen, parish clerks, dockers and barrel-makers among others. He was the patron saint of both Russia and Aberdeen. The best-known story about him tells of his leaving three bags of gold on a poor man's windowsill as dowries for his three daughters. One version of this tale states that the gold was thrown through the window and landed in a stocking that had been hung up to dry, which perhaps explains our custom of the Christmas stocking. ******************** A Witch's Thoughts on Halloween Most people celebrate Halloween as a children's holiday of candy and costumes. However, I will be celebrating tonight as Samhain ("Sow-wen"), the Celtic New Year, the night for remembering loved ones past and looking toward the future. For I am a Neo-pagan, a follower of the Old Religion, a Wiccan. I am a Witch. There are probably as many definitions of Wicca as there are practitioners of the Craft--one of the joys of this path is that there is no "one, true way"; intuition is as valuable as teaching. This then is my personal definition of what Wicca is to me. First, what Wicca is not is devil-worship. Wiccans don't believe in an entity of all-evil. (I personally don't believe in evil per se; all evil is simply a perversion or excess of something that is good when present in a proper balance.) Wicca is a religion based on experience of Deity as male and female. It is pantheistic--seeing all things as part of God/dess, and seeing the Earth Herself as a living organism of whom we are part. It is also a religion of immanence--seeing God/dess present in each of us and in the world around us, not "out there somewhere" but part of daily life. Wiccans celebrate eight major holidays, or sabbats--the beginning and midpoint of each season. We also celebrate the phases of the moon: some only celebrate the full moon while others celebrate full, waxing, and new moons. Each of these rituals helps keep us in touch with Nature. These celebrations are in small groups usually called circles, covens, or groves and are usually led by a Priestess, and often a Priest. Some groups share duties and avoid titles. Wicca is also a "Craft". We practice magic through chants, visualizations and spells, all to focus our will on something we want to happen. We believe that everything we do, good or ill, comes back to us tripled, which is why we don't "hex" or "curse" anyone. We also believe that many psychic talents are real and simply haven't been studied enough by science to be catalogued as such. Wiccans for the most part accept reincarnation, not as dogma to be believed, but as fact based on personal experience. Many of us remember past lives. As one who has studied science, I know that every atom of my body once was part of something else, and I am continually losing atoms that become part of others. Knowing this, it makes sense that my soul also is "recycled". Wicca is a positive philosophy. The only "law" is 'An it harm none, do as ye will": Enjoy life to its fullest, and remember to help everyone else enjoy it as well. Wiccans don't preach; Wiccans don't evangelize. Everyone has to find his/her own path, and we welcome the diversity this brings. So tonight, when you dress up as a "wicked witch", know that there are "good witches" celebrating as well. Know that I and thousands like me throughout the world are celebrating the cycles of life through the dance of the Lord and the Lady, trying to make this world we all share a little brighter through our cauldron fires in the darkness. Know we are not out to convert you; know we mean you no harm. All we ask for is understanding, tolerance, and the freedom to practice as we choose. Blessed Be, Cecylyna Brightsword High Priestess, Thalia Clan P.O. Box 681092 _ Indianapolis, IN 46268-1092 _ (317) 579-3083 The Money Tree Spell Rowan Moonstone YOu wil need: Green candle annointed w/ pine oil. Sweet basil (1tbsp of basil in r hand.) Pine incense (Pass the basil over the altar candles and the green candle and incense 3 times and sprinkle basil around the green candle. Green silk pouch White altar candles annointed w/ sandalwood oil 5 pennies, 4 old, 1 new. Salt Water orange candle annointed w/ basil oil parchment O Altar Candle O Altar Candle O Green Candle _____________ | | | Parchment | -------------- O orange candle O salt O pennies O pine incense O water On a waxing moon, set the altar in the east of yoru circle. This will need to be left up for a full waxing cycle. You will need easy access to a door. Take a new penny in your hand, Circle the altar deosil and say "Bring to me what I see By thy power, Hecate," Spin rapidly deosil and go outside and toss the new penny in the air. Wherever it lands, bury all 5 pennies, saying: "I give thee money - Hecate Return to me prosperity. I give thee five REturn by three As I will So mote it be." Return to your altar and snuff out the candles. Next week, at the same day and time, return to your altar with your talisman bag and the parchment. Light the orange candle. Visualize money flowing onto the altar. Unearth the coins and bring them to the altar. Wash them in the chalice water to purify them. Pass them through the incense smoke and the fire from the orange candle. Place each coin in the talisman pouch, old coins first. Add nine pieces of rock salt, close the mouth of the talisman pouch and face east and say: "Bring to me what I see By thy power Hecate. Altar power Must it be Earth and Air Fire and Sea Bring to me What I see By thy power Hecate." Place the bag inside your cloting and wear it every day for 7 days. Leave it on your altar every night visualizing prosperity. On the 7th day, hide it in the eastern portion of your house. There it is. It's a complicated spell, but it does work. BB Rowan Spell for contacting a friend Rowan Moonstone This spell should be used to cause someone with whom you have lost contact to contact you. It is not manipulation so much as an astral call for contact when you have no other way to reach them that you know of. You will need: White candle annointed w/ sandalwood oil Sandalwood incense photo of the person small glass of water. salt Light the white candle and the incense. Place the picture of the person on your altar. Put 2 heaping tablespoons of salt in the palm of your right hand. Let a small amount of salt trickle into the glass while making the sign of the equal armed cross of the elements. Make this cross 3 times. Say " Call me" three times as yo do this. Then set the glass on the altar and say "Get in touch with me, please." They should contact you by the time the water has evaporated from the glass. Coming of Age Ritual Notes Malakus Over the past weekend during an emotional upheaval I "Birthed" the concept for the ritual. I thought I would pass the concept on to you and see what you think. I have the ability to visualize a ritual from beginning to end, sometime with brief snatches of dialogue. It's like watching a play from the catwalks. This is how I see this ritual unfolding. The boy who is entering into Manhood will be abducted from the encampment where he is staying. The women of his Mother Grove will try to fight the men off from abducting the boy. When this skirmish is over and the boy is being taken off by the men the women will mourn the loss of the child. The boy will be stripped of his clothing and dressed in a deerhide loin cloth. He will then be blindfolded and his journey will begin. Where this ritual is being held there is approximately 5 miles of paths which the boy will journey over. He will be led by his Father who will carry a lamp to light his and his son's way. At the first prescribed stop the boy will be addressed by Herne. Herne, will speak to the boy of his wild nature, what it is like to be the hunter and the hunted. He will charge the boy with the responsibilities of becoming a man through Him. He will then tell the boy that He will meet him at the appointed place in the appointed hour. Never revealing when and where that is. Herne will withdraw into the woods as the Father and son begin to journey again. At the second stop the Father and boy will meet the Green Man. He represents the boy's earthy nature. He is the boy sexual responsibility as a carrier of sacred seed which is necessary to begin life. That he must act intelligently when it comes to the act of procreation. The Green Man as well will tell the boy that they will meet in the appointed placed at the appointed hour. The Green Man will stand in silence as the Father and boy leave. At the third stop the Father and boy will meet Loki\Rainbow Dancer. When I visualized the archetype I saw a myriad number of colours and flashed of refracted light. Loki will speak to the boy of his dreams, wishes and hope He will inform the boy that these are necessary even as a man. That he should not give them up but allow them to mature as he matures. Loki will also tell the boy that they will meet at the appointed place in the appointed hour. The Father and son will continue there journey until they reach the last stop on their journey. Here they will meet the Magus who is robed in black and you are unable to see his face. The Magus will speak to the boy of his inner true self, his highest ideals, his magical self. He symbolizes Divine Wisdom. When he is finished speaking he will also tell the boy of meeting in the appointed place in the appointed hour. All the archetype will be wearing masks that will be indicative of them. Herne with horns, Green Man with a mask made of leaves, Loki with the face of the fox, and the Magus with a black mask which entirely covers his face. All the other masks will not cover the mouth area. My Spirit Brother in Akron, OH is creating the masks and the staves for the four archetypes. After the journey has been completed he will be brought to the gateway of the ritual are Prior to the ritual itself the boy will be asked to select something that symbolizes his childhood and that he should bring it with him. When the boy is abducted those who abduct him must be sure to acquire this childhood symbol to be given to the father to take on the journey. At the gateway the father will stop the boy and inform him that he must now give up this childhood symbol in order to enter into the world of men. The boy must surrender the symbol before the rite can continue. The symbol will be left at the gateway. I didn see a traditional circle being cast, rather a ring of men hand in hand passing energy to form the circle. I keep hearing "a hand to a hand, to feed a hand" or a "brother to a brother". The circle will open to admit the father and boy The boy is still blindfold and will be place before the balefire facing the gateway through which he just entered. I see four men at various stage of the lives serving as Priests. One is just past puberty, the next has himself just become a father, the next being around 40-50 years (the age of the God at the time of his decline in power) and the last being the Grandfather. The four will each evoke one of the four achetypes that spoke to the boy during his journey. The Priest just past puberty will evoke Loki, the new father will evoke the Green Man, the 40-50 year old will evoke Herne, and Grandfather will evoke the Magus. Each will be evoked separately and when each has been evoked will enter the circle from where they have been waiting out of sight of the circle itself. Each will speak further to the boy of his mystery and present the boy with a "gift" which will enable the boy to commune with the archetype in times of trial in his life as a man. The last to speak will be Herne. Just as he is is finishing what he has to say he will be interrupted by the final archetype. This is the Great Mother. She will speak to the boy of his union with her and to truly become a man he must understand her magics as well. Herne and the Great Mother will argue (choice of words, maybe not the best) over who this boy/man belong. The Great Mother informs Herne that the boy/man belongs to Her. Herne informs Her that She was there at his conception and birth and that She will have him in death but now the boy/man belongs to Him. My Spirit Brother has a staff with a deer hoof end which I see being placed on the boy's heart while Herne claims him as his. During the claiming the boy's blindfold will be removed and the boy/man will see Herne for the first time with his hoof on his chest over his heart. After the claiming is finished the boy will be approached by the four Priests for the anointing. I have an anointing already written for this part of the rite. While the anointing is being done the four persons who are taking the roles of the archetypes will leave and return dressed as they wish. The boy will be taken to his father who will first greet the boy/man now as a fellow man and a guardian of the male mystery. The father will then take the newly made man to the North quarter where the Great Mother will speak to the newly made man bestowing Her gift to him. When the Great Mother speaks She will be heard only and not seen as if Her voice were being carried on the wind. The the newly made man will be taken to each man in turn in the circle who will give the newly made man a gift. I see the gift being wisdom something that they have learned of life and that they wish to pass on to help the newly made man's journey through life. As each man has an occupation which requires particular tools so does life require its tools. When all have granted their gift the newly made man will be asked to bestow his blessing upon a horn of ale which symbolized the cup of brotherhood of all peoples. The cup will be shared with all in the circle and will symbolized the universality of men. This is where I see the ritual ending. I see a simple feast being held where the ritual has been. More cups will be filled, stories share in the spirit of brotherhood. As the night wears on towards dawn the newly made made will be left to himself, the balefire and the night. He will return to the campsite from which he was abducted no longer as a child but as a man with all the responsibilities of a man. Lupercalia She-Wolf Lupercalia ia a Roman ritual of purification and fertility dating from such an ancient time that even the Romans of the first century B.C.E. had forgotten its origin and to which Gods it was dedicated and even the meaning of some of its symbolism. (Contrary to Z Budapest's statements, it was not known whether it was to Faunus and in fact I think it may have been sacred to the more ancient founding Goddess, Rumina, the She-Wolf of Rome.) Central to the ritual is the lustration (light flogging) with a goat skin scourge (see, Gardner didn't invent it). This was often accompanied by much rowdiness and horse-play. The purpose was the purification of the people from curses, bad luck and infertility. The ritual is performed on February 15. The name of the month comes from the februa, anything used in purifying including wool (used for cleaning), brooms, pine boughs (which make the air sweet and pure), etc. The rite began in the cave of the She-Wolf in the city of Rome where legend had it that the founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, had been suckled by the wolf before they were found by a shepherd. The sacred fig tree grew in front of the cave. Vestals brought to the site of the sacrifice the sacred cakes made from the first ears of the last years grain harvest. Two naked young men presided over the sacrifice of a dog and a goat. With the bloody knife, their foreheads were smeared with blood, then wiped clean with wool dipped in milk. The young men laughed and girded themselves in the skin of the sacrificed goat. Much feasting followed. Finally, using strips of the goat skin, the young men ran, each leading a group of priests, around the base of the hills of Rome, around the ancient sacred boundary of the old city called the pomarium. During this run, the women of the city would vie for the opportunity to be scourged by the young men as they ran by, some baring their flesh to get the best results of the fertility blessing (you can see why the Christian church tried so hard to get this ritual banned, but it was so popular that it continued for quite some time under the new regime.) Except for the intrusion of foreign cults, this was the only Roman ritual where a goat was sacrificed. Dogs were only offered to Robigus (a guardian associated with crops), the Lares Praestites (the guardians of community), and Mana Genata (ancestral guardians). Because of the cave, the fig tree, the milk, and such, I suspect the very oldest forms of this rite honored a Goddess. Unlike some of the other Roman rites like the October Horse sacrifice, there is no other Indo-European equivalent in Vedic, Scandinavian, Irish, or Indo-Iranian traditions. With modifications, the Temple of Pomona performed Lupercalias and has a great time. Stones, A Short Catalog Tandika Star BLOODSTONE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Bloodstone is a member of the Chalcedony family.It is a variety of quartz (silicon dioxide) often with some iron and aluminum. The chemistry is SiO2. It is dark, bright green spotted with red inclusions. The streak is white. This is considered a microcrystalline variety of quartz and is not found in crystal form. ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in chemical sedimentary rocks. OCCURENCE: India, Germany. NAME: This stone is also referred to as "heliotrope," which is derived from two Greek words which signify "sun-turning". It was given this name because of a notion that when immersed in water it would turn the sun red. Chalcedony is derived from Chalcedon, an ancient Greek city of Asia Minor. LEGEND and LORE: This is one of the birthstones for March. "Who in this world of ours, her eyes In March first opens, shall be wise. In days of peril, firm and brave, And wear a Bloodstone to her grave." (5) Ancient warriors often carried an amulet of bloodstone which was intended to stop bleeding when applied to a wound. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Because it is green, it can be used for "money spells". It is also considered a "lucky" stone for atheletes because it imparts courage and stamina. HEALING: Heliotrope is used today in conjunction with anything having to do with blood. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:I consider the ancient uses of bloodstone in line with what I use it for today. In addition, I consider it a "cholesterol buster", and wouldn't hesitate to apply it to any with this type of problem. Generally I would use it at the Heart Chakra. I've also used it successfully in situations where I needed "courage" to accomplish something. I will just carry a piece of it in my pocket for this purpose. NOTE: Chrysoprase, carnelian, jasper and agate are all forms of Chalcedony. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. 5. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. an interesting experiment (BLOODSTONE cont.) _______________________________________________________________________This is more about bloodstone, but I didn't want to include it in the main text. Read on, and you'll see why... A few years ago, I had a discussion with my daughter (who was about 13 at the time) about the "spiritual essence" of plants and stones. I explained to her that different people "see" this spiritual essence in various forms. Somehow, this led to a discussion of "devas", which she interpreted as "people, but without a body that we can see with mundane eyes." A few days later, I was reading a novel, reposed on the sofa in my livingroom. She was sitting on the floor by the coffee table, drawing in her sketchbook with her pastels. On the coffee table were several stones in a dish. One was an amethyst, one a bloodstone, one was some yellow/green crystal that someone had loaned to me because they wanted my "impressions" ...and there were some others that I don't remember now. I glanced over at my daughter, and she was holding one of the stones in her hands, with her eyes closed. She apparently had achieved some form of "altered state" because her little eyeballs were just wigglin' away (REM). A while later, I glanced over, and she was drawing a portrait. After she seemed finished and satisfied with what she was doing, I questioned her about it. She said she was drawing the "spirit/deva" of the stones in the dish. The one for bloodstone was an elf-like, male person. He had dark/black hair, green, slanted eyes, "Spock" eyebrows, and pointed ears. Because of the expression on his face, I asked her what she thought of him. Her comments were: "He is very fierce. I'm kind of afraid of him, because it seems like he is pretty strong and could get mad. He uses weapons...and can fight." My daughter didn't know anything about the "lore" connected with the stones. In addition, I found that "bloodstone" was very different from any of the other "stone portraits" that she did...The rest were much more "human"... BROWN (PICTURE) JASPER SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Brown Jasper, sometimes called "picture" Jasper because of the beautiful variations in coloring, is a type of Chalcedony. It is closely related to Quartz, with the chemistry of SiO2. The color variations are from trace amounts of other minerals, usually iron and aluminum. The hardness is 7. ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in chemical sedimentary rocks. OCCURENCE: Montana, Utah and Wyoming are prolific locations for Brown Jasper in the U.S. In addition, fine specimens have come from Brazil, Uruguay and Egypt. Other colors and forms of Jasper are abundant in California, Texas and Arkansas. NAME: The name Chalcedony is from Chalcedon, an ancient Greek city of Asia Minor. LEGEND and LORE: Beautiful Jasper, with light and dark brown markings was referred to as "Egyptian Marble". Various Native American tribes used Jasper as a rubbing stone and some called it "the rain bringer". MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Brown Jasper is balancing and grounding. This stone, carved into an arrowhead, is worn to attract luck. It is a good stone to use after completing a ritual to help you regain your center and become grounded. HEALING: Jasper is stabilizing. It will help to reduce insecurity, fear and guilt. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use a piece of Montana Picture Jasper, which is mostly brown and tan with a slight bit of sky or navy blue as a strong grounding stone for those who have an excess of energy at the Splenic Chakra.I've also used the stone as a basis for a "journey"...The stone looks like a scene of the Rocky Mountains. Finally, I've used Picture Jasper as a psychological tool:I will ask someone who is "looking for an answer" to gaze into the stone and describe all the symbols they see. Then I work with the client to form the "symbols" into some sort of answer. NOTES: Agate, Jasper, Flint, Sardonyx, and onyx are all forms of Chalcedony. In addition, particular colors of Chalcedony have specific names, such as Heliotrope, Bloodstone, Chrysophrase and Moss Agate. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. CARNELIAN SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION:Carnelian is the clear red to brownish red member of the Chalcedony family. It is a microcrystalline variety of Quartz(Silicone Dioxide) and may contain small amounts of iron oxides. The hardness is 7, and the streak is white. ENVIRONMENT: Chalcedony is formed in several environments, generally near the surface of the earth where temperatures and pressures are relatively low. It commonly forms in the zone of alteration of lode and massive hydrothermal replacement deposits and as bodies of chert in chemical sedimentary rocks. OCCURENCE: Fine carnelian comes from India and South America. GEMSTONE INFORMATION:Carnelian is used as an alternate birthstone for the month of May.It is normally cut into cabochons, engraved, or made into seal stones or rounded, polished, and pierced for necklaces and other items of jewelry. NAME: The name means "flesh-colored", from [caro], meaning "genitive" and [carnis], meaning "flesh". LEGEND and LORE: Carnelian has long been associated with courage and cleansing of the blood. It was beleived that the stone would improve one's outlook, making the individual cheerful and expelling fears. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Katrina Raphaell says that Carnelian can be used to "see into the past". The "Crystal Oracle" says that Carnelian referrs to the Self, and Current Conditions. It is a grounding stone, and associated with the Earth. As such, it is considered practical, sensible and balanced. Cunningham associates the stone with the element of Fire. He suggests it as a talisman against Telepathic invasion. HEALING: It is recommended for infertility or impotency. In addition it is used for purification of the blood. It has also been suggested that this stone will stop nosebleeding. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I call this the "sexy" stone...since I beleive it stimulates sexual appetites. I use it in the lower Chakras for infertility and impotency for men(I use Coral as the feminine counterpart.) I always get a good chuckle when I notice a man wearing a LARGE Cornelian belt buckle. In addition, I would use this stone for relief of pain from arthritis in men. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. ___________________________________________________________________ CORAL SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: CaCo3, or calcium carbonate in the form of calcite, is the main constituent of calcareous corals; minor constituents are MgCo3, or magnesium carbonate and proteinaceous organic substances, which act as binding agents. At 2.5 to 4, the hardness is slightly higher than that of calcite. The skeletons of corals vary in color: from bright to dark red, slightly orange-red, pink and white. ENVIRONMENT: In all cases, coral consists of the branching skeletons of animals which live in colonies planted on the seabed at depths varying from tens to hundreds of meters. They are typical of warmish to very warm seas. OCCURENCE: The most famous of these organisms is Corallium rubrum, which lives in the waters of the Mediterranean and, despite its name,provides not only red, but orange, pink, and white coral. Similar to this are Corallium elatius, C. japonicum, and C. secundum, which maily live off the coasts of Japan, China, Indochina, the Philippines, and other archipelagos of the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Coral colonies occupy large areas especially in the Pacific, but also near the coast of South Africa, in the Red Sea, and to the east of Australia. These latter colonies, however, consist of madrepore, which has little in common with the corals used as ornaments. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Most of the coral used since antiquity as an ornamental material comes from the calcareous skeletons of colonies of marine organisms of the phylum Cnidaria, order Corgonacea, genus Corallium. Corals take a good polish. They also have a certain degree of elasticity and can be heated and bent into bangles. Thin brancehes were and still are polished, pierced, and threaded, unaltered, into necklaces. Larger pieces are cut into spherical or faceted necklace beads, pear shapes for pendant jewelry, or cabochons. It is also used for carved pieces and small figurines, in both oriental and western art styles. The most highly prized varities of coral are those that are a uniform, strong bright red. NAME: The name is derived from the Latin [corallium,] related to the Greek [korallion]. LEGEND and LORE: The oldest known findings of red coral date from the Mesopotamian civilization, i.e. from about 3000 BC. For centuries, this was the coral par excellence, and at the time of Pliny the Elder it was apparently much appreciated in India, even more than in Europe.Red coral has traditionally been used as a protection from the "evil eye" and as a cure for sterility. One of the Greek names for Coral was Gorgeia, from the tradition that blood dripped from the Head of Medea, which Perseus had deposited on some branches near the sea-shore; which blood, becoming hard, was taken by the Sea Nymps, and planted in the sea. (8) MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Coral is associated with Venus, Isis and Water. It has been used as a form of protective magic for children for hundreds of years. Cunningham recommends it as a luck-attractor for living areas.Sailors use it as a protection from bad weather while at sea. Red-orange coral is one of the four element gemstones of the Pueblo Indians. It is one of the four colors used for the directions in the Hopi/Zuni Road of Life. Coral is considered a representative of the warm energy of the Sun, and the southern direction. HEALING: Coral's healing properties are mostly associated with Women, young children and the elderly. For women it is said to increase fertility and regulate menstration. For young children, it is recommended to ease teething and to prevent epilepsy. For the elderly, it is used as a cure for arthritis. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use coral at the lower Chakras for "Women's Healing." In particular, I will use it for disorders relating to female reproductive organs. I also use it magically, to represent female fertility.I have used it with some success for arthritis, but only for women. This is one of the stones that I "reserve" for female/feminine use. (I use Carnelian as the "male" counterpart.) I have not had an opportunity to try it for a young child. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "Simon & Schuster's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 7. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. 8. Some occult lore is from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. EMERALD SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION:Emerald is a type of Beryl, Beryllium aluminum silicate, frequently with some sodium, lithium and cesium.It's chemistry is Be3Al2Si6O18. Beryls range in color from Bright green (emerald), blue, greenish blue (aquamarine), yellow (golden beryl), red, pink (morganite) to white. The streak is colorless. It's hardness is 7-1/2 to 8. The crystals are Hexagonal and they are common. Fine emeralds have velvety body appearance; their value lies in their even distribution of color. Inclusions are common in emerald, but other stones of this group are usually most valuable when free of flaws. ENVIRONMENT: Beryl develops in pegmatites and certain metamorphic rocks. It occurs with quartz, microcline, and muscovite in pegmatites, and with quartz, muscovite, and almandine in schist of regional metamorphic rocks. OCCURENCE: Best emerald comes from Colombia.(NOTE: it is not necessary to spend thousands of dollars for a tiny chip of emerald to add to your healing/ magical collection. If you look around in rock shops, you may be able to come across some "less than perfect" stones that aren't faceted. I've found 4 of them, slightly larger than my fingernail and they were about $3.00 each.) NAME: The name is from the Greek [beryllos] indicating any green gemstone. LEGEND and LORE: Emerald is considered a birthstone for the month of May. "Who first beholds the light of day, In spring's sweet flowery month of May, And wears an Emerald all her life, Shall be a loved, and happy wife." (5) MAGICAL PROPERTIES: "If you wish to bring a love into your life, buy an emerald and charge it with your magical need through your visualization, perhaps while placing it near a green candle. After this ritual, wear or carry the emerald somewhere near your heart. Do this in such a way that it cannot be seen by others. When you meet a future love, you'll know it wasn't the visible jewel that attracted him or her." (3) The Greeks associated this stone with the Goddess Venus. It has come to represent, for many people, the security of love. Emerald, like allmost all of the green stones, is also advantageous for business/money ventures. HEALING: Emerald is said to aid perception and inner clarity. Because of this, they are also associated with healing diseases of the eye, and problems affecting eyesight. It was believed that emeralds could counteract poisons and cure disentary. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:I sometimes use Emeralds in a stone layout. I will use them for their psychological/spiritual values of clarity and perception. If I am using them for this purpose, I use them in the area of the Heart Chakra, in conjunction with Rose Quartz, or Rhodochrosite for balanced energy. I've also used them for prosperity consciousness.-------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. Other sources may be "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. 5. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. --- GARNET (PYROPE) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Pyrope Garnets are from a group of very closely related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Pyrope variety is Mg3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from deep red to reddish black and on rare occasions from purple and rose to pale purplish red (sometimes called [rhodolite].) The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and 7-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Pyrope occurs with olivine and hypersthene in peridotite of plutonic rocks. OCCURENCE: Pyrope Garnets occur in peridotite in Kentucky, Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, most Pyrope came from Bohemia, where it is still found today. The main sources nowadays, however, are South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: The garnet species with red or purple varieties, including Pyrope are considered gemstones. Usually bright red, Pyrope can be a much less attractive brick or dark red. It can be perfectly transparent, but this feature is less visible in dark specimens. It is either made into fairly convex cabochons, or faceted, with an oval or round mixed cut or, more rarely, a step cut. The faceted gems have good luster, rather less obvious in cabochons. The most valuable types are, of course, the transparent ones with the brightest red color. Pyrope is relatively common, although less so than almandine. Very large stones, up to several hundred carats have been found; but these are rare and are found in museums and famous collections. NAME: The name comes from the Greek [pyropos,] meaning "fiery." The name "Garnet" comes from the Latin [granatus,] meaning "seed-like". LEGEND and LORE: Pyrope Garnet has long been associated with love, passion, sensuality and sexuality. Some Asiatic tribes used red garnets as bullets for sling bows because they pierced their victims quickly, and could not be seen well in the body when they mingled with the blood. Throughout the ages, Pyrope has been used as a curative for all types of ailments dealing with blood. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Pyrope is directly linked with the Will. As such, it is a strong stone for the Magician and Shaman. It is associated with Fire and Mars, Strength and Protection. It will help the practitioner tap into extra energy for ritualistic purposes. HEALING: While all Garnets are associated with the Root Chakra, Pyrope is particularly symbolic. It is used for healing when the subject involved has "lost the will to live", since it is directly related to the desire to live and achieve in this lifetime. This stone warms and aids blood circulation, rouses sexuality and heals the reproductive system and the heart. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: If you are already a strong willed individual or have a fiery temper that you need to learn to control, I suggest that you work with the Alamandine Garnets, rather than the Pyropes. This is a good stone to use for treating depression. Very often, when I've "worked" on an individual who has suffered a heart attack, I find that the individual is rather severely depressed (which I think is a side effect of the medication) and has lost the will to continue in this lifetime. I've found that fiery red Pyrope Garnets are a great help in this situation. ADDITIONAL NOTES: The Latin name [carbunculus,] (small coal or ember), is attributed to all red transparent stones. It is more often applied to Pyropes when they are formed into cabochons than any other stone. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom, Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn. 7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane Stein. 9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. --------------------------------------------------------------- GARNET (ALMANDINE) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Almandine Garnets are from a group of very closely related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Almandine variety is Fe2/3+Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from deep red to brown and brownish black. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and 7-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Almandine occurs in diorite of plutonic rocks, and with andalusite, hornblende, and biotite in hornfels and schist of contact and regional metamorphic rocks. OCCURENCE: Well-formed crystals of Almandine have come from Wrangell, SE Alaska; from Emerald Creek, Benewah Co., Idaho; and from Michigamme, Michigan. Gemstone quality material is obtained in large quantities from Sri Lanka and India, where it is also cut; other sources are Burma, Brazil, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Australia. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Most red garnets come under the name Almandine, even when their composition is midway between that of Pyrope and Almandine and similar, in many cases, to that of Rhodolite. The reason for this is the similarity in their color and absorption spectrum characteristics. Almandine has a brilliant luster, but its transparency is frequently marred, even in very clear stones, by excessive depth of color. The cabochon cut is widely used, often being given a strongly convex shape and sometimes a concave base, in an effort to lighten the color by reducing the thickness. Rose cuts have also been used, particularly in the past. Nowdays, when the material is quite transparent, faceted cuts are used as well, and sometimes square or rectangular step cuts. Gems of several carats are not uncommon. Faceted or even barely rounded pieces of Almandine, pierced as necklace beads, were very common in the recent past, but are now considered old-fashioned. NAME: The name Almandine comes from [carbunculus alabandicus,] after the city of Alabanda in Asia Minor, where gems were traded at the time of Pliny theElder. LEGEND and LORE: All red Garnet has long been associated with love, passion, sensuality and sexuality. Garnet is considered a birthstone for those born in January: "By her in January born No gem save Garnets should be worn; They will ensure her constancy, True friendship, and fidelity." MAGICAL PROPERTIES: The darker Garnets are associated with the Will and the Source of Life Incarnate. This is who and what we are in this lifetime. This stone is worn for protective purposes, and is thought to drive off demons and phantoms. HEALING: Almandine Garnets are used to heal skin conditions associated with poor circulation. They improve vigor, strength and endurance. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Almandine Garnets are particularly effective when healing "traumas" that are carried over from a past life and deal with sexuality and heart/love problems. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom, Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn. 7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane Stein. 9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. 10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. GARNET (SPESSARTINE) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Spessartine Garnets are from a group of very closely related aluminum silicates. The Chemistry for the Spessartine variety is Mn3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from brownish red to hyacinth-red. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and 7-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Spessartine occurs with albite and muscovite in granite pegmatites and with quartz and riebeckite in blue schist or regional metamorphic rocks.. OCCURENCE: Large corroded crystals of Spessartine have come from the Rutherford No. 2 Mine, Amelia, Amelia Co., Virginia; crystals up to 1" in diameter have been found in several pegmatites in the Ramona District, San Diego Co., California; sharp, dark-red, well-formed crystals occur in cavities in rhyolite near Ely, White Pine C., Nevada; and brilliant crystals of Spessartine have been found with topaz at Ruby Mt., near Nathrop, Chaffee Co., Colorado. Gem material comes from the gem gravels of Sri Lanka and Burma. It is also found in Brazil and Madagascar. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: The gem variety of Spessartine Garnet is uncommon. It tends to be midway between spessartine and almandine in composition. The "aurora red", orange-red or orange-pink color is typical. It has good transparency and considerable luster. It is normally given a mixed, round, or oval cut. The weight does not normally exceed a few carats. Gems of about 10 carats are extremely rare and usually of an atypical, rather dark, unattactive color. NAME: Spessartine is named after an occurrence in the spessart district, Bavaria, Germany. LEGEND and LORE: In the 13th century garnets were thought to repel insect stings. A magical treatise, "The Book of Wings", dating from the thirteenth century says "The well-formed image of a lion, if engraved on a garnet, will protect and preserve honors and health, cures the wearer of all diseases, brings him honors, and guards him from all perils in traveling." MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Spessartine is normally considered to be red-orange to orange-pink. Thus it links the "will" with the "desire". It is a good stone to use when casting a spell for your "heart's desire", especially if it is of the orange-pink" variety. HEALING: The orange garnets are linked to the root and the belly chakra. They are beneficial in instances of infertility, dealing with reproductive organs. Mentally, it inspires confidence in personal creativity and self-worth. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Spessartine is not as effective as Carnelian for instances of infertility. But it DOES help the mental attitude of the individual experiencing the difficulty. It is a warming stone, and works well for increasing circulation in the lower part of the body. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom, Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn. 7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane Stein. 9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. 10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. --- GARNET (GROSSULAR) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Grossular Garnets are from a group of very closely related calcium silicates. The Chemistry for the Grossular variety is Ca3Al2Si3O12. These Garnets range in color from yellow, pink and brown through white and colorless. The hardness ranges between 6-1/2 and 7-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Grossular occurs with wollastonite, calcite, and vesuvianite in hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks. OCCURENCE: Being the commonest of all garnets, it is found in a variety of locations. Fine colorless crystals up to 1/2" across occur in Gatineau and Magantic Cos., Quebec, fine lusterous pale brown crystals up to 3" across were found near Minot, Androscoggin Co., Main, and beautiful white and pick crystals up to 4" across have been found near Xalostoc, Morelos, Mexico. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Grossular also has the typical crystal form of garnets, occuring in isolated crystals which are often complete, in the shape of a rhombic dodecahedron, sometimes combined with a trapezohedron. They vary from transparent to semiopaque. The typical color is light (gooseberry) yellowish green; but they can be a strong to bluish green, honey yellow or pinkish yellow, or even colorless. When transparent, the crystals have good luster. Like other garnets, they have no cleavage. The greenish to yellowish varieties are used as gems. Grossular is not a rare mineral. The types used as gems mainly come from the gem gravels of Sri Lanka (honey yellow variety); the the United States, Canada, Mexico, Madagascar, Kenya. The green variety of grossular garnet, discovered a few decades ago and found mainly in Kenya, near the Tsavo National Park, is also known as Tsavorite (or Tsavolite) It is a light, verdant, or dark green, similar to the color of the better green tourmalines and sometimes, it is said, even comparable to African emerald. It has good luster. These gems, which are usually given a round or pear-shaped mixed cut, or occasionally a brilliant cut, are generally small, rarely exceeding one carat and never more than a few carats. NAME: Grossular is from the New Latin [grosssularia,] "gooseberry," because some Grossular crystals are pale green like the fruit. LEGEND and LORE: I do not find anything referring specifically to yellow or green garnets in my sources. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: While deep red garnets focus on "Will" and orange-red garnets focus on "Desire", yellow garnets are focused on Personal Power and Personality. In addition they are (because of their color) associated with athletic prowess and Oriental philosophies. HEALING: Being linked to the Solar Plexus Chakra, yellow garnets are energizing. They can be used for the digestive organs, the diaphram (and the breath) and eyesight. Green garnets center their healing on the Heart Chakra. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: It is difficult to find a green stone that works well for the lower chakras and the lower half of the body. When I do total layouts for individuals with Aids, I use all green stones, whenever possible. The Green garnets work well for this. Since Garnet is the stone of the Root Chakra, the Will, and green is the color of the Heart Chakra, love, circulation, general healing, this stone works exceptionally well. I find that the yellow garnets work better for magical purposes than healing. For healing, there are several yellow stones that seem to work better for me. NOTES: Garnets are used in industry as an abrasive. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 6. Other Magical and Healing information may come from "\crystal Wisdom, Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn. 7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane Stein. 9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. 10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. ----------------------------------------------------- LAZURITE (LAPIS LAZULI) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Lazurite is a silicate of sodium calcium and aluminum, with some sulfur. It is a member of the sodalite group. It's chemistry is (Na, Ca)8(Al,Si)12O24(S,SO)4. The color ranges in shades of blue from violet blue and azure blue thru greenish-blue. Lazurite is distinguished from sodalite by its deeper color and fine grain. It is also softer and lighter in weight than lazulite. It is dull to greasy and the streak is pale blue. The hardness ranges between 5 and 5-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Crystals are rare. It is usually granular, compact, massive. It forms in association with pyrite, calcite, and diopside in hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks. The opaque, vivid blue, light blue, greenish-blue, or violet-blue stone, consisting largely of lazurite but with appreciable amounts of calcite, diopside, and pyrite, is a rock called [lapis lazuli.] The stone is usually veined or spotted. Its value depends largely upon excellence and uniformity of color and absence of pyrite, although some purchasers prefer lapis with pyrite. OCCURRENCE: Lazurite is a rare mineral in North America, but it does occur on Italian Mt. in the Sawatch Mts. of Colorado; on Ontario Peak in the San Gabriel Mts., Los Angeles Co., and in Cascade Canyon in the San Bernardino Mts., San Bernardino Co., California. The finest lapis lazuli has come from Badakshan in Afghanistan, and less valuable material has come from Russia and Chile. NAME: The name is from the Arabic [lazaward], "heaven," which was also applied to sky-blue lapis lazuli. LEGEND and LORE: Lapis Lazuli was a favorite stone of the ancient Egyptians. In the past Lazurite has been burned and ground to form the pigment "ultramarine." It was consider an aid to childbirth, and has long been associated with altered states of consciousness and trance work. Lapis is sometimes designated as a birthstone for December, although turquoise is most common. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: To quote Cunningham: "This stone is used in rituals designed to attract spiritual love. Take an untumbled piece of lapis with a sharp edge. Empower the stone and a pink candle with your need for love. Then, using the lapis lazuli, carve a heart onto the candle. Place the stone near the candleholder and burn the candle while visualizing a love coming into your life." Actually, the most important magical aspect of lapis is it's ability to strengthen psychic awareness. Cunningham says "Despite its somewhat high price, lapis lazuli is one stone every stone magician should own and utilize."(2) HEALING: This stone is used at the Ajina, the Brow Chakra. It's related gland is the pituitary. The pituitary gland is also referred to as the "master gland" because it regulates all of the others. This location is also the center for the eyes, ears, nose and brain. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I don't often use Lapis for physical healing, unless I feel that there is a "link" between what is manifested as disease, and some conflict of the "higher self". I have used it for brain disorders (tumors, inflammation, etc.) More often, I use it in layouts where the client is trying to achieve an altered state of consciousness. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurrence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. -------------------------------------------------- LEPIDOLITE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Lepidolite a potassium, lithium, aluminum fluorsilicate mica. Its chemistry is complex: K(Li,Al)3(Si,Al)4O10(F,OH)2. It is pink, lilac, yellowish, grayish white or a combination of all of these. The streak is colorless. It is one of the softer stones, with a hardness of 2-1/2 to 3. ENVIRONMENT: Lepidolite is confined to granite pegmatites, where it occurs either as fine-granular masses near the core of the pegmatite or as stubby or tabular crystals in cavities. It is commonly associated with microcline, quartz, and tourmaline. OCCURENCE: Large fine masses of lepidolite have been mined at the Stewart Pegmatite at Pala, and superb sharp crystals have been obtained from the Little Three Pegmatite near Ramona, both in San Diego Co., California. It has also been mined in substantial amounts in several New England states and in the Black Hills of South Dakota. NAME: The name comes from the Greek [lepidos], meaning 'scale', in allusion to the scaly aggregates in which the mineral commonly occurs. LEGEND and LORE: Lepidolite is a stone that could certainly be considered "new age" in the sense that it is just now coming into recognition by healers and magicians. There is no "past lore" on this stone, to the best of my knowledge. Part of this may be due to the fact, that it is native to the United States. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: "This stone soothes anger, hatred or any other negative emotion. To quiet the entire house, place lepidolite stones in a circle around a pink candle." (2) HEALING: Lepidolite is also know as the "Dream Stone". It will protect the individual from nightmares, especially those caused by stress or an upset in personal relationships. It can be used in the same types of circumstances as Kunzite, namely for manic depression or schizophrenia. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: This is one of the most soothing and relaxing stones I've ever held. It is a beauty to look at, and calms the mind enabling it to concentrate on the TRUE source of a problem...instead of running around in frantic circles accomplishing nothing. The more rubellite in the stone, the better it will help the heart and mind work together. NOTES: Lepidolite has been used as a source of lithium. The above description of the appearance of this stone may be deceiving, as I found Cunningham's to be, also. All of the specimens of this stone that I have seen so far have been grey to a pale lavendar grey with "sparkles" of the lithium mica embedded in it. The heart-shaped cabuchon that I have also has very distinctive crystals of rubellite (pink tourmaline) and veins of white running through it. I was originally looking for a MUCH brighter lavendar stone. It is unusual, also, to find specimens that are cut and polished. Usually the stone is too "crumbly" to take a good polish. However, it is equally handsome in rough form. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. ------------------------------------------------------ MALACHITE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Malachite is a basic copper carbonate. It's chemistry is Cu2CO3(OH)2. It ranges in color from emerald green thru grass green to shades of silky pale green. The streak is light green. It's hardness is 3-1/2 to 4. Crystals are rare. Most gem specimens display distinctive concentric colorbanding; (alternating dark green and light green bands.) ENVIRONMENT: Malachite is a secondary copper mineral and develops in the zone of alteration in massive, lode, and disseminated hydrothermal replacement deposits. Associated minerals are azurite, limonite, and chalcopyrite. OCCURENCE: The copper mines at Bisbee, Chochise Co., Arizona, are famous for their fine specimens of massive malachite and pseudomorphs of malachite after azurite. Mines at Morenci in Greenlee Co., and at Globe in Gila Co., Arizona, have yielded beautiful malachite specimens, of which some consist of alternating layers of green malachite and blue azurite. Fine malachite has also come from copper mines in California, Nevada, Utah, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. NAME: The name is from the Greek [moloche], "mallow," an illusion to the mineral's leaf-green color. Malachite is used as an ore of copper and as a gemstone. LEGEND and LORE: It is said that if malachite is worn, it will break into pieces to warn the wearer of danger. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Used to direct power towards magical goals. Protective, especially towards children. According to Cunningham, "Small pieces of malachite placed in each corner of a business building or a small piece placed in the cash register draws customers. Worn during business meetings or trade shows, it increases your ability to obtain good deals and sales. It is the salesperson's stone." (2) HEALING: If the malachite is of the blue-green variety, it can be associated with the Sacral Center, or Splenic Chakra (Svadisthana). Here, it's energy branches to the left, to the spleen. (It is intended in this position for those who are celebate.) In addition, if it is grass-green, it can be used at the Lumbar/Solar Plexis Center. "When the malachite is placed at the solar plexus and a piece of green jade is placed at the heart center and a double-terminated quartz crystal is placed between them, people may remember events that have been blocked for years. They may cry or scream. As these buried emotions are brought to the surface and released, a great weight is lifted and they soon feel renewed." (3) PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I am very careful about using Malachite. It has been my experience that the emotions that it releases can be very powerful, to the point of overwhelming some people. On the other hand, if the individual is ready to deal with them (in a "growth" period) it may work out just fine. You could "balance" the emotional content with a pink stone (such as rose quartz) to cut down some on the intensity. A few years ago, I broke my arm. To do so, I damaged the muscles and nerves in my wrist. I was in a lot of pain, and was searching for what I could do to help the situation. During a journey, I saw malachite, so I found a malachite heart which I held in the palm of the broken arm while meditating. I got a lot of relief from it. Now, if the wrist acts up, I use the heart, taped over the wrist area when I go to bed at night. It seems to help quite a bit. I now recommend malachite for nerve/muscle damage with some success. (4) -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. -------------------------------------------------- MOONSTONE SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Moonstone is one variation of Orthoclase. It owes its beautiful silvery to bluish sheen ('adularescence' or 'schiller') to its composition of extremely thin plates of orthoclase and albite. The thinner these plates are, the bluer is the sheen. There are also moonstones consisting mainly of albite. These are less translucent, but they can occur in a variety of colours: grey, blue, green, brown, yellow and white. There are also moonstone cat's-eyes. The chemical composition is KAlSi3O8 and the hardness is 7. The streak is white. ENVIRONMENT: The potash feldspars are important rock-forming minerals in plutonic, volcanic, and metamorphic rocks. Adularia and sanidine are found usually in volcanic rocks. OCCURENCE: The main countries of origin are Ceylon, southern India (the district near Kangayam), Tanzia and Malagasy which, together with Burma, produces some of the finest stones with a deep blue schiller. White adularia crystals up to 2.5 cm (1") across have been found in gold-bearing quartz veins at Bodie, Mono Co., California, and in the silver mines of the Silver City district, Owhyee Co., Idaho. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Moonstone is always cut into cabochons, to display the cat's-eye, or schiller. NAME: Adularia (another name for Moonstone) comes from the locality in Switzerland, the Adula Mts. LEGEND and LORE: This stone has always been revered because of its lunar attraction. It was believed that the shiller in the stone would follow the cycles of the moon. (Becoming greatest when the moon was full.) In addition, it has always been considered a "feminine, or Goddess" stone. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Meditation with moonstone calls into consciousness the three-form moon phase goddesses, Diana/Selene/Hecate, the waxing, Full and waning Moon. These are woman as goddess in her ages and contradictions, Maiden/Mother/Crone. Cunningham favors this stone for spells involving love. In addition he has a longish essay on using it for a "diet" stone. HEALING: Because of it's feminine nature, Moonstone has long been considered a "womans healing stone". It is used traditionally for healing/balancing of female organs and hormones. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: I use Moonstone at the Transpersonal Point, for connection to the Goddess and Universal Feminine Energy. This is the connection to dreams and dreaming, feminine "intuition", and "cycles". There are cycles of time, seasons, the moon, stars, etc. I also use/give this stone for those clients who are having difficulty being in tune with the feminine side of their nature. (Everyone has a masculine and a feminine side.) NOTES: In the past, this stone has also been called "Cylon Opal". -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 3. Other Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 4. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 5. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 6. Some of the healing information may come from "A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 7. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. 8. Birthstone poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. ----------------------------------------------- OBSIDIAN SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Obsidian occurs as volcanic lava flows that are thick and of limited area. Its black, glassy, lustrous, and often flow-banded appearance makes it rather easy to distinguish from the other volcanic rocks with which it is commonly associated. This mineral forms when a silica-rich magma of granitic composition flows onto the earth's surface, where it solidifies before minerals can develop and crystallize. It is, therefore, an amorphous solid or glass rather than an aggregate of minerals. The hardness of Obsidian is between 6 and 7; it will scratch window glass. Although generally black, it is more or less smoky along translucent to transparent edges; other colors are gray, reddish brown, mahogany and dark green. When it has small white "flower" designs in it, it is called Snowflake Obsidian. It is also possible to find pieces with a sheen, or chatoyance. This is often called Rainbow Obsidian. ENVIRONMENT: Obsidian is an environment for very few minerals. Lithophysae and spherulites may contain small but beautiful crystals of feldspar, tridymite, and cristobalite. OCCURENCE: Some locations of Obsidian bodies are California (Inyo, Imperial, and Modoc Cos.), Oregon (Crater Lake), Wyoming (Yellowstone Park), and Mexico (near Pachuca.) NAME: The name is dervied from the latin name for the mineral, [obsio.] LEGEND and LORE: Polished pieces of black Obsidian have been used for Scrying. Primitive peoples once valued obsidian highly, chipping and flaking it into knives, spearheads, and many other implements with razor-sharp edges resulting from the intersecting conchoidal fractures. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Obsidian is a very protective stone. It is also associated with the inner mysteries of the Goddess, symbolizing entrance to the labyrinth, the womb or the subconscious self. HEALING: Because of its protective qualities, Obsidian is a good stone for those who are soft-hearted and gentle. It will help to guard them against abuse. This stone cleanses toxins from the liver, so it is also good for people who are exposed to environmental pollutants. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: This is the "balance" stone for Clear Quartz Crystals. We jokingly refer to it around here as a "dark sucker"...meaning it will absorb all sorts of negative things. It is also a grounding stone, and I use it at the Base Chakra (below the feet) at the beginning of a layout to keep my client "grounded". In India, the women wear obsidian toe rings for the same purpose. I use Black Obsidian in conjunction with Quartz. If I'm not using Clear Quartz, I use Snowflake Obsidian. I also have a piece of Rainbow Obsidian, but it is relatively new and I haven't finished "conversing" with it, so I have no advice as to how to use it...at the moment. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. ---------------------------------------------- OPAL SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Opal is hydrous silica, often with some iron and aluminum. Its chemistry is SiO2.nH2O; amount of water varies up to 10 percent. It ranges in color from White, yellow, red, pink, brown to gray, blue and even colorless. It is most easily recognized by its rich internal play of colors (opalescence). Its hardness ranges from 5-1/2 to 6-1/2. It is vitreous and pearly. The streak is white. It is not found in crystal form, rather is is usually massive, botryoidal, reniform, stalactitic, and/or earthy. ENVIRONMENT: Opal is a low-temperature mineral and usually develops in a wide variety of rocks as cavity and fracture fillings. It requently develops as amygdules in basalt and rhyolite of volcanic rock and replaces the cells in wood and the shells of clams. OCCURENCE: Common opal is widespread and can be readily obtained at many places, but localities for precious opal are rare and seem to localized in W United States and Mexico. Magnificent examples of opalized wood can be found in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, and lively green fluorescing opal (hyalite) occurs in seams in pegmatites in New England and North Carolina and in cavities in basalt near Klamath Falls, Oregon. Beautiful precious opal, as a replacement in wood, has been obtained in Virgin Valley, Humboldt Co., Nevada. Excellent fire and precious opal occur in laval flows in N Mexico. Nevada, Australia, and Honduras are sources for black opal; Australia and Czechoslovakia for white opal; Mexico and SW United States for fire opal. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Black, dark blue, dark green opal with dark gray body color and fine play of colors is called [black opal;] opal with white or light body color and fine play of color is called [white opal;] and transparent to translucent opal with body color ranging from orange-yellow to red and a play of colors is called [fire opal.] Play of colors depends upon interference of light and is not dependent upon body color. Black opal is the most highly prized, and fire opal is the most valued of the orange and red varieties. Most opal is fashioned into cabochons, but some fire opals are faceted. NAME: The word is from the Sanskrit [upala,] meaning "precious stone." LEGEND and LORE: Opal is a birthstone for October. "October's child is born for woe, And life's vicissitudes must know; But lay an Opal on her breast, And hope will lull those foes to rest." (5) Opals have traditionally been considered "lucky" stones...but only for those born in the month of October. It has been considered bad luck to wear them if you were born in any other month. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Opal is considered to be able to confer the gift of invisibility on its wearer. To accomplish this, Cunningham says "The gem was wrapped in a fresh bay leaf and carried for this purpose." He also says, "Opals are also worn to bring out inner beauty. A beauty spell: Place a round mirror on the altar or behind it so that you can see your face within it while kneeling. Place two green candles on eithe side of the mirror. Light the candles. Empower an opal with your need for beauty -- while holding the stone, gaze into your reflection. With the scalpel of your visualization, mold and form your face (and your body) to the form you desire. Then, carry or wear the opal and dedicate yourself to improving your appearance." (2) HEALING: Opals contain all the colors of the other stones, thus, it could be used in place of any of them. (They are akin to quartz crystals, in this aspect.) Generally speaking, Opal is used more frequently for healing the spirit, rather than the physical body. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: Opals are probably my favorite stone. This may be partially due to the fact that they are my birthstone, and I have been surrounded by them all of my life. For me, they are protective and invigorating. I normally use them during Journeying, and when doing "readings" for other...anything where I am using altered states of consciousness. I find that they help me to understand the symbols of my visions in a way that makes them meaningful for others. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurance and Name are from (or paraphrased from) "The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Legends and Lore, Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 3. Some of the healing information may come from "Color and Crystals, A Journey Through the Chakras" by Joy Gardner. 4. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. 5. Birthday poem from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. ----------------------------------------------------- VESUVIANITE (IDOCRASE) SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION: Vesuvianite is composed of calcium, magnesium and aluminum silicate, often with some beryllium and fluorine. The chemistry is Ca10Mg2Al4(SiO4)5(Si2)7)2(OH)4. Specimens range from brown and green to a rare yellow or blue. The hardness is 6-1/2. ENVIRONMENT: Vesuvianite forms by igneous and metamorphic processes. It commonly is metamorphic and occurs with grossular, wollastonite, and calcite in hornfels of contact metamorphic rocks; with chromite and magnetite in serpentinite of hydrothermal metamorphic rocks; and with wollastonite, andradite, and diopside in carbonatites. OCCURENCE: Gem-quality Vesuvianite has been obtained from a pegmatite in marble near Sixteen Island Lake, Laurel, Argenteuil Co., Quebec, and beautiful micromount cyrstals of purplish-pink color occur in massive Vesuvianite at the Montral chrome pit at Black Lake, Megantic Co., Quebec. The blue variety called [cyprine] has been obtained at Franklin, Sussex Co., New Jersey. Fine crystals up to 1-1/2 inches across occur in pale-blue calcite at Scratch Gravel, near Helena, Lewis and Clark Co., Montana, and spectacular material of similar nature occurs at quarries near Riverside, California. Beautiful pale-green massive Vesuvianite ([californite]) occurs in California at Pulga, Butte Co., and near Happy Camp, Siskiyou Co., and crude yellow prismatic crystals occur with grossular at Xalostoc, Morelos, and Lake Jaco, Chihuahua, Mexico. GEMSTONE INFORMATION: Translucent gray to green or nearly colorless Vesuvianite with green streaks is called [californite], and is often sold as "California Jade." Californite is fashioned into cabochons. Principal sources are the USSR, Italy, Canada and California. NAME: The name "Vesuvianite" is from the original locality at Mt. Vesuvius, Italy. The alternate name, "idocrase," comes from the Greek [eidos,] "form", and [krasis,] "mixture," because Vesuvianite may appear to combine the crystal forms of several other minerals. LEGEND and LORE: None found. MAGICAL PROPERTIES: Dolfyn associates this stone with Passion, enthusiasm, warmth and devotion. HEALING: No specific information found, other than what Dolfyn states. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: None. I do not have a specimen of Vesuvianite. -------bibliography------- 1. Scientific, Environment, Occurence and Name are from (or paraphrased from)"The Audubon Society field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals". 2. Other scientific information may be from "Simon & Schuester's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones". 3. Precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gemstones" by E. H. Rutland. 4. Other precious and semi-precious gemstone information may come from "Gem Cutting", sec. ed., by John Sinkankas. 5. Basic Legends, Lore and Magical Properties are from "Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem & Metal Magic", by Scott Cunningham. 6. Some magical and healing information from "Crystal Wisdom, Spiritual Properties of Crystals and Gemstones" by Dolfyn. 7. More legends and lore may come from "Stone Power" by Dorothee L. Mella. 8. Healing information is from "The Women's Book of Healing", by Diane Stein. 9. Additional healing information may be from "The Occult and Curative Powers of Precious Stones" by William T. Fernie, M.D. 10. Personal Experience is from MY personal experience, journals and notebooks, by Tandika Star. AUTHOR: Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein SOURCE: Cornerstone, vol. 21, iss. 98, pp. 7-9,11-14,16-17,19,30,38 DATE: 1992 TITLE: Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Michael Warnke NOTES: Copyright 1992 by Cornerstone Communications, Inc. "I always wanted to write him a letter and say, `Mike, when were you able to have this coven of fifteen hundred people?' About the most exciting thing we used to do was play croquet." __One of Mike Warnke's college friends SELLING SATAN: The Tragic History of Michael Warnke by Jon Trott & Mike Hertenstein This is the story of well-known comedian, evangelist, and professed ex-Satanist Mike Warnke. Known as "America's Number One Christian Comedian," Mike Warnke has sold in excess of one million records. June 29, 1988, was declared "Mike Warnke Day" by the governor of Tennessee. The Satan Seller has, according to its author, sold three million copies in twenty years.[1] His 1991 Schemes of Satan quickly climbed the best-seller list. Mike Warnke's press material includes credits for appearances on "The 700 Club," "The Oprah Winfrey Show," "Larry King Live," "Focus on the Family," and ABC's "20/20." Mike has won numerous awards from the recording industry, including the 1992 Grady Nutt Humor Award. He continues to perform two hundred live shows a year. He is truly a figure of national prominence. Mike Warnke's ministry and public profile are based upon the story he tells of his previous involvement with Satanism. As written in The Satan Seller, the story goes like this: a young orphan boy raised in foster homes drifted from whatever family and friends he had to join a secret, all-powerful satanic cult. First, he descended into the hell of drug addiction. Then he ascended in the satanic ranks to the position of high priest, with fifteen hundred followers in three cities. He had unlimited wealth and power at his disposal, provided by members of Satanism's highest echelon, the Illuminati. And then he converted to Christ. A generation of Christians learned its basic concepts of Satanism and the occult from Mike Warnke's testimony in The Satan Seller. Based on his alleged satanic experiences, Warnke came to be recognized as a prominent authority on the occult, even advising law enforcement officers investigating occult crime. We believe The Satan Seller has been responsible, more than any other single volume in the Christian market, for promoting the current nationwide "Satanism scare."[2] Through the years, Cornerstone has received many calls from people who felt something was not right concerning Mike Warnke. After our lengthy investigation into his background, we found discrepancies that raise serious doubts about the trustworthiness of his testimony. We have uncovered significant evidence contradicting his alleged satanic activity. His testimony contains major conflicts from book to book and tape to book, it contains significant internal problems, and it doesn't square with known external times and events. Further, we have documentation and eyewitness testimony that contradict the claims he has made about himself. The evidence we present here includes testimony from Mike's closest friends, relatives, and daily associates __people whose names Mike disguised or omitted entirely in his "official" testimony. These people knew the real Mike Warnke, who was not a drug fiend or a recruiter for Satanism. But he was a storyteller. Michael Alfred Warnke was born November 19, 1946, to Alfred "Al" Warnke and his wife, Louise. Mike's parents lived in Evansville, Indiana, and according to their son's confirmation certificate, had Mike baptized at St. Anthony's Catholic Church.[3] When Mike was five, the Warnkes moved to Manchester, Tennessee, where Al opened Warnke's Truck Stop.[4] Located on Highway 41, north of town, the diner soon became part of the local landscape. On January 15, 1955, Louise, on her way home from town, lost control of the family's brand-new Packard and was killed. She was thirty-seven; Mike was eight years old.[5] Mike had other family, too, from his father's previous marriage. His half sister, Shirley Schrader[6] was twenty-two years older than he was. She first met Mike in 1954, when Al brought his family to California on a visit. As Shirley recalls, "Dad, Louise, and Michael came out to California in the mid-fifties. Prior to that, I wasn't writing my father. I didn't even know where he was. My dad had abandoned me when I was little. He was an alcoholic, and maybe twice in my childhood did he make any effort to communicate with my mother. So I was working and they came to my office, very unexpectedly. He says, `I'm your father,' and he came on big and strong, `Oh, my daughter, my daughter.' They spent maybe a week in California, and then went back to Tennessee." When Mike's mother was killed, Al flew Shirley to Tennessee for the funeral. During that visit, Al Warnke asked Shirley if she and her husband, Keith, would move to Manchester and help run the truck stop. "You always think, Wouldn't it be neat to know your own dad? That was probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made." Shirley, Keith, and their six-year-old son Keith, Jr., came out to Manchester in February of 1955. But Al and Shirley soon had their problems. "He had me working days, with Thursday off, and he had my husband working nights, with a different day off. Then there was the fact that my father was a drunk. We weren't there but a few days when he went off on a big binge and didn't show up again for a week. There would have been enough money to support us all. But he forgot we were supposed to be paid." Al Warnke seems to fit the description given him by his son in his books and records. But what about Mike Warnke? Shirley recalls Mike as a little boy who spent a lot of time "sitting two feet from the television. I tried to tell my dad, `Hey, the boy can't see.' And he'd say, `Don't try to tell me about my son!' And my dad would give the kid ten bucks and send him uptown. That was a lot of money for those days." Disgusted with Al and his truck stop, but feeling empathy for Mike, the Schraders returned to California. Two years later, Al Warnke was dead of heart failure.[7] Mike Warnke's story of his life, The Satan Seller, opens just after Al's funeral, with adults discussing Mike's future as he eavesdrops. As the book indicates, the eleven-year-old boy was initially placed with his two aunts, Dorothy and Edna, who lived in Sparta, Tennessee. Warnke has a segment on his Mike Warnke Alive![8] album called "Tennessee Home and Blankety-Blank," in which he describes how he raised one aunt's dander with his crude, truck stop ways. The first night I was up there this lady came out and she said, "Well, honey, how do you think you're gonna like it here?" And I said, "Well, this is a pretty nice blank-blankety-blank place. We oughta get along pretty blank-blankety-blank well as long as you feed me blank-blankety properly." Aunt Edna Swindell[9] denies any such child appeared at her Tennessee home. "He was just a typical boy. We had no problems." What about his claims about being a foulmouthed brat? "He wasn't that here." Meanwhile, Shirley Schrader was trying to get custody of young Mike. "We wanted Michael," Shirley recalls. "And we fought through the courts for Michael for months before they let him come out here." Aunt Edna notes, "He stayed with me seven months. I guess if I wanted him, I could have kept him the entire time. His half sister in California wanted him, and that's where he wanted to go." Mike Moves in with the Schraders During the summer of 1959, Mike went to live with his half sister and her family near Riverside, California. Shirley confirms Warnke's story of how his Aunt Edna sent him to California loaded down with anti-Catholic materials. Shirley Schrader took the boys to church __that is, she took her eleven-year-old son Keith with her to Catholic mass and allowed thirteen-year-old Mike to attend a nearby Protestant church. "And that was fine for as long as he wanted to do it, because we weren't going to force religion on him." In Riverside, Keith, Jr., attended a parochial school__St. Francis deSales. Mike eventually decided he wanted to go to that same parochial school. "He went for a year, until we moved up on the mountain," says Shirley. In February of 1961, the Schraders and fourteen-year-old Mike moved to Crestline, a small community planted among the pine trees atop the San Bernardino Mountains overlooking the vast San Bernardino Valley. The Schraders were well respected in Crestline. Community pillars, they ran a tight ship at home. Keith, Sr., head of the Pilot Rock Conservation Camp, was in charge of minimum security inmates assigned to fight forest fires. "We took the boys on camping trips. We rock hounded. We did things together," recalls Shirley. "We sat them down and had the sex talk. We had the talk about alcohol. We were a regular family." Keith, Jr., recalls, "Mike and I had a good time growing up together. We were real close during high school__when we weren't fighting."[10] Mike Warnke attended Rim of the World High School. His best friends through these years were Tim Smith[11] and Jeff Nesmith.[12] "We'd spend lots of time at each other's houses," says Jeff Nesmith, "go to school dances together, proms, and one summer Mike and I worked for my dad in the construction business. We weren't hellions, but we weren't angels either. We had our parties, gate crashed some dances." All of Mike's friends and family we were able to contact denied his assertion that he drifted at one point to a "rougher" crowd. In fact, most of the kids Mike hung out with were, by all reports, good, clean, Catholic boys. Tim Smith and another local boy, David Goodwin,[13] were altar boys at St. Francis Cabrini Church. "Tim and I went to morning mass every day before school," says Goodwin. "Sometimes Mike Warnke attended mass with us." Tim's sister Terri explains, "I believe Mike got interested in Catholicism from hanging out with us. He was like a piece of furniture at our house."[14] One day Mike announced to the Schraders that he, too, wanted to become a Catholic. In the spring of his senior year in high school, Warnke was confirmed in the Catholic Church. His sponsor was Tim's dad, Paul "Jerry" Smith.[15] Two months after being confirmed, Mike graduated with the rest of his class at Rim High in the class of '65. Everybody we talked to who knew Mike Warnke at "Rim" remembers him first and foremost as a chronic storyteller. His high school partner in various escapades was Jeff Nesmith. Once, says Jeff, Mike had a date but no car, and Jeff had his parents' Lincoln. "Mike talked me into dropping him and his date off at a restaurant and then picking them up after dinner. Before we picked up Mike's date, we stopped at a local uniform store and got me a chauffeur's cap. From the moment the girl got into the car, Mike spun this wild tale about me being an orphan boy and how his family had taken me in, and how I sometimes performed various services for them such as being their chauffeur. She just soaked it all in." The thing that always struck Nesmith about his pal was that Warnke would never break out of character. "We'd go into some restaurant, and Mike would pretend to be a Russian immigrant who couldn't speak English. I'd translate Mike's order into English for the waitress. Sometimes __just to get him__ I'd order something I knew he'd hate. But Mike was always enough of a pro that he'd stick with it and wouldn't say anything . . . until we got outside the restaurant and he'd yell at me." The Schraders also knew Mike as a boy with the gift of gab. "Michael is a showman," says Shirley. "He is an actor, and he always swore he would never make a living with his hands, that he would make his living with his mouth." Keith, Jr., adds: "Mike is the kind of guy that can sell somebody the Golden Gate Bridge. Or swamp land in Florida. I gotta hand it to him. I wish I was as good a salesman." In high school, storytelling had been a diversion, a way to get by. According to his friends in college, it would increasingly become a part of Mike Warnke's identity. Mike Warnke at College Here begins the critical period described in The Satan Seller, the defining moment of Mike Warnke's later testimony and ministry__his involvement with and subsequent banishment from a satanic cult. On September 13, 1965, Mike Warnke began school at San Bernardino Valley College, a two-year school.[16] Mike writes in The Satan Seller that it was after he started college that he first was introduced to drugs, sex, and finally Satanism. And, he continues, it was only after the Satanists threw him out of their coven that he joined the navy. Warnke's military records say he entered the navy on June 2, 1966.[17] Therefore, whatever happened in Mike's life regarding Satanism had to have happened between September 13, 1965, and June 2, 1966. (See sidebar "Under a Full Moon," p. 9.) Mike, in his 1991 book, Schemes of Satan, claims to have had no close friends at college and to have virtually disappeared: In my own case, being away from home at college and not having any close friends there meant that almost no one could have known what was happening to me except, of course, the members of the Satanic Brotherhood, and they were not telling![18] In reality, Mike Warnke simply did what countless other freshmen have done: he found a new circle of friends. We found that new circle, and they were not a part of the Satanic Brotherhood. None of these people are mentioned by Warnke in The Satan Seller or anywhere else. Greg Gilbert[19] was one of Mike's first and closest friends at college. Today an English professor at a southern California university, Greg reflects upon the notoriety of his old college roommate. "After Mike became a star, I assumed that since he had gotten this far with his Satan story, he'd always get away with it. I never knew what to do. Who could you tell?" Right around the time college started in 1965, Greg met Mike through a mutual friend, Dennis Pekus.[20] Greg was living with his elderly grandparents in San Bernardino and took Warnke to meet them. "When my grandparents said they were from Tennessee, Mike said, `I come from Tennessee, too,' " Greg recalls. "Before the evening was over he had us all convinced he was a long-lost relative. Next thing we knew, he'd talked his way into living with us." Greg's college girlfriend, Dawn Andrews,[21] gave us her assessment. "The first time I saw Mike Warnke was at Greg's house. He was introduced to me as Greg's cousin," says Dawn. "He told everybody he was. I remember how upset I was when The Satan Seller came out, because what Warnke said was a lie. He has a very fertile imagination." Dyana Cridelich[22] was another of Mike Warnke's college friends introduced by Greg. "After he got famous, I always wanted to write him a letter and say, Mike, remember me? The one you gave the silver cross to? When were you able to have this coven of fifteen hundred people? Don't you remember, about the most exciting thing we used to do was play croquet in Greg's backyard?' " In The Satan Seller, Mike never mentions croquet. He was too busy becoming a teenage alcoholic. I attended classes regularly at first, but I wasn't about to cut down on my drinking. As the days went by, it became harder to concentrate on what the professors were saying, but I could still talk my way out of anything, and this carried me through. I was drinking so much by now, it was starting to wreck my stomach."[23] Was Mike a heavy drinker? Not according to those who knew him. "We drank occasionally," says Greg, "but mostly we just talked about it. We weren't of age, and alcohol was hard to come by." This group of college freshmen often sat on the lawn between classes, or got together in the student union cafeteria, The Tomahawk Room. It was there that Lois Eckenrod,[24] a girl who was soon to be his fiancee, joins the story. "Mike and I met in September or October, that first semester at Valley," Lois said. "It was only a couple of months before we got engaged. Hardly a day went by that we didn't see each other." His friends remember Mike Warnke as thin, with thick glasses and short hair. He was bright, he was mainly happy __though Lois remembers he could swing easily to depression. Yet Mike says in The Satan Seller that when college started, he was a "heavyset, jovial guy" who only later lost weight due to drug use. His hair, he writes, was already collar length. Within a short time, he claims to have become a full-fledged hippie: I made a return trip to the Salvation Army and bought some black pants and freaky shirts. My hair was longer than ever, and I bleached it blond. I was really craving attention, and I got it. You know, weird people attract chicks.[25] "He looked like everybody else," says Greg. He did have one constant accessory, a silver cross. (This cross Warnke gave to Dyana, she says.) Warnke writes in The Satan Seller that he frequented a coffeehouse called Penny University, where he danced, obtained hard liquor, and got acquainted with the owner while practicing his fake English accent.[26] Lois says that she and Mike did go to Penny University, "quite a bit because Mike really liked folk music. But there was no room for dancing. The place was full of tables and stuff." Cornerstone also talked with John Ingro,[27] who in 1965 not only owned Penny U., but also was a district attorney (currently he is a San Bernardino judge). "You couldn't dance there. It was very small, and packed with chairs. As far as alcohol, we only served coffee at a penny a cup. That's where the place got its name." As for remembering Mike and the fake English accent? "No. Is this a joke?" Storytelling in the Tomahawk Room Storytelling developed into an art form among the Tomahawk Room crowd. One student, Gary Manbeck, is remembered as having some of the best stories. "Gary always told stories about being in the Green Beret," says Dawn. "He was very good, but I never thought any of it was true." Mike Warnke joined right in. "Gary and Mike vied for attention with stories, trying to be the life of the party," says George Eubank,[28] another of the Tomahawk crowd. "Who can one-up ya. That's a real good description of the two of them together." Warnke produced a never-ending stream of tall tales. "He claimed he had some kind of white witchcraft background," recalls Greg Gilbert. "He claimed he'd been reincarnated any number of times, that he was born in the Irish Moors in the 1570s. Along with his other stories, he claimed he'd once been a Trappist monk." In The Satan Seller, Warnke paints himself as a freshman guru, dispensing wisdom to an eager audience of disciples: Most of my friends were the pseudo-intellectual type. We liked to lie out on the lawn in the quad after classes and discuss psychology, philosophy, religion, art, and politics. Other students began coming around, and they seemed to look to me for answers to their questions. Anything I said was okay with them. And it was certainly okay with me. If they were that hung up for a leader, I was happy to oblige." [29] Greg Gilbert remembers things this way: "We sat out under the trees at school, all right. And there were times we listened to Mike tell his tall tales. But if Mike thought we believed what he was saying, or that we looked at him like some kind of guru, he was greatly mistaken. We were all part of the same bragging team." It was difficult, at times, to know whether Warnke believed his own stories or not. "I don't think it was in fun. I think he himself wanted to believe it," says Phyliss Catalano,[30] Lois's best friend. "I used to sit there and be embarrassed, because I'd think, How could somebody that young have done all these things? He'd done everything. And everything he told was with a straight face." Phyliss's mother, Mary Catalano,[31] saw Warnke on a regular basis when the gang gathered at the Catalano house. "He was a likable young man when he visited our house," she says, "but anything brought up in conversation __he'd done it. He said he'd been a Greek dancer, and he'd dance for us, round and round. He said he'd been a professional ambulance driver. And he was a monk__he'd come to the house all dressed in black. Of course, we never believed him. We just said, `Boy, is he one big liar.' " In college, as he'd done in high school, Warnke continued to costume himself for his roles. Mike particularly liked being a priest. "I remember at Halloween he dressed up like a priest and went around pretending," says Dawn. "My parents saw him __they're very Catholic__ so I heard about it." Another occasion for the priest impersonation was a double date with Lois and Phyliss and her boyfriend David Gibbet. "I'll never forget when he went dressed as a priest to Jay's Coffeehouse," says Lois. "He met us there, and came walking in wearing robes and a white collar. I about died." Yet another student, Tom Bolger,[32] recalls Warnke boasting how he'd dressed as a priest and gone panhandling in downtown San Bernardino. "He said he'd made fifty dollars." And finally, Greg recalls Mike unsuccessfully using the priest bit to get drinks. "He got the robes at a costume shop, went to Corky's Liquor Store, and tried to get Christian Brothers wine for the mass. They just laughed him out." "The Satan Seller" And the Way Things Really Were According to The Satan Seller, though, things are by now getting serious. The story is set in motion by the mysterious college-age individual named "Dean Armstrong," who Warnke alleges was a satanic high priest. Mike says Dean lured him into drug use, sexual promiscuity, witchcraft, and Satanism. We will examine these elements of the story, then compare each with what witnesses remember. For starters, Mike's associates at school affirm that none among them remotely resembled the Dean character in The Satan Seller. According to the book, Mike was encouraged by Dean to quit drinking so much and start smoking marijuana. Mike tells Dean no, but later an unnamed roommate brings up the subject again: My stomach was still hurting. I tried everything I could think of, except giving up drinking. My new roommate suggested I try . . . [grass], and not wanting to be left out, I finally went along with it. . . . . . . I really liked marijuana.[33] Regarding drug use, Greg laughs. "Drugs? No way, not at Valley, and not in 1965. Two years later there was plenty of grass around, but back in '65 we still believed Reefer Madness." Did Warnke ever talk about drugs around anybody else? "None of us were into drugs," says Dyana. "We didn't even smoke cigarettes." Yet in The Satan Seller, Warnke and his friends are allegedly full-blown into drug use early in the year: When we tried the peyote, we decided it was better and heavier than pot. We also started eating mescaline in our food in increasing quantities, and from there we went on to reds. . . . . . . Some doctors came to the campus to conduct controlled group experiments on [LSD]. My friends and I decided to volunteer for the tests.[34] Not only do Mike's friends deny controlled or uncontrolled experimentation with drugs, but according to the records, no LSD experiments took place on the campus of San Bernardino Valley College. This was underscored in our conversation with Dr. George Zaharopoulos, head of the Social Sciences Department at Valley. "I taught here during those years, and we never, ever, asked for or had any LSD experiments take place here. This is only a junior college." In ®The Satan Seller¯ Mike not only claims to have used drugs, but to have been a major-league drug trafficker: One time I took some money for a drug payoff down to El Centro, a burg in the desert of California, not far from the border town of Mexicali. A really big load was involved, and this caused quite a flap. It was the most money I had ever seen at one time __fifty thousand dollars in bundles of hundred-dollar bills.[35] On his Mike Warnke Alive! album, Mike further claims: I'd had hepatitis four times from shooting up with dirty needles. I had scabs all over my face from shooting up crystal. I was a speed freak. I weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. My skin had turned yellow. My hair was falling out. My teeth were rotting out of my head. I'd been pistol-whipped five or six times. My jaw had been broken. My nose had been almost ripped off. I had a bullet hole in my right leg. Two bullet holes in my left leg. Greg Gilbert and the others saw Mike on a daily basis, and say that it is totally impossible for Mike to have had hepatitis, facial scabs from injecting "crystal," and wounds from being shot three times. "Without us knowing it? It's a lie," Greg says. Lois's reaction to Mike's tale? "That's just make-believe," she states. "Mike never fell in with drugs. My dad was an alcoholic, and because of our family situation, I'd had to move in with the Catalanos. So I was really sensitive to things like that. Second, I was training to be a nurse, and I think I would have known if he was using drugs. I wouldn't have dated Mike if he was drugged. I didn't even allow people to drink around me." In The Satan Seller, drugs and sex were the magnet that drew Mike Warnke along. Warnke gradually found himself running errands for Dean, attending occult discussion meetings, until, finally, Dean decided his charge was ready for the real thing: a satanic ritual service. The Black Mass in an orange grove turned out to be just what anybody would expect who's seen ®Rosemary's Baby¯ or other films of this genre: black robes, a naked woman on the altar, blasphemy and incantations. "After the Invocation of Satan, I listened intently to the Offertory, where the members offered their souls to Lord Satan."[36] According to ®The Satan Seller¯, Warnke signed his name in blood to give his soul to Satan, and a few pages later took over the coven from Dean as the new High Priest. I swung the now screaming cat over the smoking caldron and then over the heart of the girl on the altar. Then, when the sword point touched the cat's belly, I thrust it in. "Now!" I suddenly shouted. . . . I drew an upside-down star on the girl's stomach, with the freshly spilled blood. From the weird utterances that now came from her mouth, I knew we were being graced by the presence of one of the denizens of hell.[37] Just before he published The Satan Seller in 1973, Warnke brought manuscript copies to his old high school friends Jeff Nesmith and Tim Smith, and asked them to sign affidavits swearing the events depicted were true. Jeff Nesmith had lost track of Warnke after high school and had little idea what he did during college or who he hung out with. On a rare visit to Mike's apartment during his college days, Mike asked Jeff to join a "coven." But Jeff laughed it off, thinking it was one of Mike's stories. In any event, when Warnke asked Jeff to sign the affidavit, he refused.[38] "My initial reaction to the book was, `Come on, Mike! This is poppycock!' " Tim Smith dropped out of college after only two months, but notes, "I had contact with Mike off and on all the way through the fall of 1965 until the summer of 1966." Tim states he never saw Warnke with long hair or in the drug-induced emaciated state he claimed to be during that period. "Sign the affidavit? I told him, `Nope. Can't do that.' " Warnke's two high school buddies saw him sporadically throughout the year, but not every day. Yet Mike brought Jeff and Tim the affidavits, but not Lois, Greg, Dawn or the others. It does not speak well for the veracity of Warnke's claims that he did not ask those who knew him on a daily basis in San Bernardino Valley College to endorse his story. The College Crowd and the Occult Interestingly, most of Mike's college friends did dabble in occult activities. "Some of them were into seance and Ouija board type stuff," says George Eubank. "But it wasn't serious, just the kind of stuff freshmen in college play with. Especially sheltered freshmen in college that are all of a sudden free from their parents, spreading their wings, so to speak." Bill Lott,[39] another college student who is now a Christian, took the experimentation more seriously. "People were messing around with stuff like reincarnation, tarot cards, Ouija boards. Mike was one of those people. But he never talked about Satanism or being a devil worshiper," Lott says. "People talked about witches and Ouija boards," says Dawn. "It was that era. None of us belonged to a coven, and none of us were witches. If we'd have thought anybody was serious, it would have scared us to death. We did table tipping once, and the table tipped and that was that. No more table tipping for me." Warnke and a few of the guys created a not-so-secret society. "We started a club called The Royal Order of the Lantern," says Greg. "We played chess, drank beer, and told tall tales. It was a group that really never took off." Adds George Eubank, "The Royal Order of the Lantern had to do with this lamp we'd stolen from somebody's driveway. Warnke wanted to get an apartment and have a group of guys. I don't think it was supposed to be secret. It was supposed to be fun and games. It flopped because nobody was willing to put the effort into it. Mike carried it as far as he could at the time. It was kind of a defunct fraternity that never got anywhere." The Royal Order of the Lantern is a far cry from ®The Satan Seller¯'s fifteen hundred followers in three cities, financed by a worldwide network of Satanists. Mike eventually did get his own apartment, and the place became a favorite hangout for the Tomahawk Room crowd __the guys in particular. Mike gave both Greg Gilbert and Bill Lott keys. The apartment "was above a garage," says Greg. "There was an exterior stairway that went up to a room with an open-beam ceiling, the gable coming to a point." In The Satan Seller, Warnke describes the exterior of his apartment in this way: a second-floor apartment approached by an outside stairway. The interior, however, was redecorated by the Satanists after Warnke became high priest: A long, low, oxblood leather couch replaced the sagging old brown horsehair one, and there were two sets of bookshelves full of books [on the occult]. . . . The biggest surprise was on the floor __two chicks sitting on a white rug . . . . . . . "We hope you like it, Mike, because we come with the apartment," said the blonde one named Lorraine.[40] The two women allegedly remained at Warnke's beck and call, rarely leaving the apartment unless it was to get groceries or drugs. "It's a fantasy," says Dennis Pekus, who knew Mike in both high school and college. Greg Gilbert says he never knew Mike Warnke to have a girlfriend in college besides Lois Eckenrod. None of the college friends who frequented the apartment ever saw occult books, an oxblood leather couch, or two love slaves. Mike says plenty of "soft pink sex"[41] is at the center of his satanic experiences. These begin with the orgies Warnke says initially drew him into the coven: Then they split off into couples. It was great, because there was a girl for every guy, not like most places I had been where there is a chronic chick shortage. Cool-looking, sexy girls, too. . . . These chicks were free-lovers. . . . "Come on over here, Mike," a blonde said.[42] Then there's the sexual recruiting Mike says he helped organize and rituals that degenerate from cat killing to the rape of an innocent virgin. (Warnke is careful to exclude himself from direct participation in the rape, though he writes that it was his idea.) In a later book, Schemes of Satan, Warnke suggests that sex was a routine part of the rituals: On more than one occasion, I regret to admit, we participated in ritual sexual abuse that even involved rape. Most of the time I was too doped up to perform sexually, but I would watch these lust rituals with great desire.[43] Such tales of perversion and criminal activity raise serious questions. If Mike led in acts of rape and other violent crimes, why (after his conversion) didn't he turn himself in and aid the police in apprehending his old satanic friends? If, on the other hand, his rape and abuse stories are not true, what does this say about the imagination of their author? Mike's college crowd completely rejects these stories of violence and sexual perversion. "Oh, my goodness, no," says Phyliss. "To talk about sex orgies and all these drug parties. He didn't do them with Lois and me, that's for sure!" "I never slept with him," says Lois. "We kissed and hugged, but I never would have had sex with him because I was a very devout Catholic, and I wanted to be a virgin till I got married. Thank God I didn't marry him." There always seemed to be a story. In college, as in the high school role-playing with Jeff Nesmith, Warnke refused to drop out of character. "He played it to the end," says Greg. "He never gave up. That was the remarkable thing about him. We'd question him about his stories and he always came up with some half-baked answer. And you couldn't disprove what he was saying __that was the common thread. It was never anything we were likely to have the real answer for or the time to check into. So he could say anything he wanted." Warnke's refusal to admit to his own storytelling made him untrustworthy in the eyes of some members of the group. "I didn't know anything about his past, so I didn't know what was true and what wasn't," says Dawn. "I didn't feel like he was sincere in anything he did. If the situation required him to be macho, he was macho. If it required him to be mean, he was mean. He just sort of blended into the situation and tried to monopolize everyone. There was nothing real about him." Mike and Lois Plan Their Marriage By Christmas of 1965, Mike and Lois were seeing each other on a daily basis. "It was pretty fast that we said we were going to get married," says Lois. "Within two or three months of school starting, he gave me a rose ring with a diamond in it. It cost $60. He had to make payments on it. I thought he really loved me. And I thought I loved him, too." In The Satan Seller, Warnke has gone through his drugs, sex, and promotion to high priest before Christmas of 1965. (Trying to fit the long list of his claims onto a real calendar is a challenge. See sidebar, p. 18) Shirley Schrader says Mike had Christmas dinner in Crestline with the family. "He didn't seem emaciated by drugs to me," she says. College records show Mike Warnke left school after the first term. "Most of us dropped out after the first semester," recalls Lois. The group continued to hang out together at Mike's apartment, the Catalanos', and elsewhere. What about the Mike in The Satan Seller who flew around the country on satanic business trips to San Francisco (where he allegedly met Anton LaVey), New York, and Salem, Massachusetts? "You're a real traveling salesman for Satan, Mike, and we want you to go to Salem and get more hip with some really serious organization."[44] "How could he fly when he didn't have two pennies?" asks Lois, who adds that Mike never went anywhere, and when he did it was with her. "If he says he was a Satanist between September of 1965 to June of 1966, he's lying. How could I not know my boyfriend was into Satanism? I don't remember there ever being a time when we didn't see or talk to each other every day." Every day? "Yes," says Lois. "We went to movies together, I went to the country club with him in the mountains, we went to the beach. We used to go to Jay's Coffee Shop in San Bernardino. That was the big thing. He introduced me to hot fudge sundaes. I spent the majority of that year with him." Lois says she and Mike used to play pool over on Highland Avenue in San Bernardino. We read her a story from Warnke's book Hitchhiking on Hope Street. In it Mike writes that he got into a gunfight with Ray, a local pimp, at the pool hall: I was drunk as a skunk when I shot at him with the .44, because I missed him by a country mile and blew off the corner of the pool table. . . . The two of us went roaring down the street, screaming and shooting. . . . . . . he . . . got off a lucky shot. It hit me in the leg and knocked me down.[45] The predictable reaction: "Oh, my goodness. You're kidding. . . ." Lois dissolves into laughter. According to The Satan Seller, Mike Warnke's reign as a satanic high priest ends, apparently sometime in the spring of 1966, when Warnke crumples under the strain of too much responsibility and too many drugs. On a "Focus on the Family" radio broadcast, he described his appearance at this time: "I had white hair. It was about down to my belt. . . . I had six-inch fingernails; I painted them black."[46] (See picture, p. 8, taken April 30, 1966.) Warnke says he was intentionally overdosed with heroin by one of his live-in love slaves and thrown, naked, on the steps of a local hospital. After a few weeks of drying out at the hospital, Warnke escaped by joining the Navy.[47] On the ®Mike Warnke Alive!¯ album, he describes his hair length the night before boot camp: "It hit me just below the pockets." He continues: The night before I went to boot camp I went to this party. . . . I smoked a bunch of dope and ate a bunch of reds and got crashed out in a corner. . . . But the girl I was with decided the thing that would really be cute is if she braided my hair. . . . She put beads with the first bunch, feathers with the next bunch, a piece of red ribbon about that long with the last bunch, braided it all together, and hung a jingle bell on the end of each braid. Lois says she was the girl who gave Mike his going-away party. When she heard this story for the first time in 1979, she was furious. "I couldn't believe it when I heard that!" she says. "I'm the one who gave him the going-away party! We never touched drugs. He never had long hair __his hair was short, short, short!" Greg and Dawn, who had just gotten married, offered Lois the use of their apartment for the party. "I bought a big cake decorated with a navy boat," Lois remembers. "It said `Ship Ahoy, Mike.' Dawn and I made food and pop, and we had a bunch of people over. It was just clean fun. I took him to the bus stop, put him on the bus to go to boot camp," Lois says. "We were supposed to get married when he finished." Mike, Sue, and Campus Crusade On June 2, 1966, Mike Warnke joined the U.S. Navy. During the time he was there, he and Lois stayed in touch by letter. According to Warnke's official story, boot camp is where he meets two Christians who are such a bold witness for Christ that the ex-Satanist converts to Christianity. According to his service records, Mike Warnke graduated from boot camp August 22, 1966.[48] His fiancee, Lois, and the Schrader family attended graduation. "I went down with a friend and gave Mike a St. Christopher medal," says Lois. There was a fifteen-day leave after camp ended. During this time Lois noticed a change in Mike. "He was different. He was carrying a Bible. I asked him about it, and he said he'd found Christ at boot camp. He was real excited about being a Christian, finding God." Within days Mike told Lois "he'd had this Christian conversion and he had to go on. That this was it. I didn't see him anymore after that." The Satan Seller, once again, tells a different story. There is, of course, no mention of Lois Eckenrod before or after boot camp. Instead, when Warnke returns home from boot camp, he begins dating Sue Studer, a fellow Rim High alumnus who was soon to become his first wife. "I turned around and was surprised to see Sue Studer, the girl who had always dated the football heroes. Sue was still as pretty as ever."[49] Warnke writes that he then told Sue of his recent conversion to Christ, and to his delight Sue replied she, too, had become a Christian. "Sue had worked on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ at the Arrowhead Springs Headquarters."[50] In The Satan Seller, Mike Warnke says that he was chased by Campus Crusaders attempting to convert him when he was the campus Satanist. However, Lois and several others do remember Mike Warnke taking some interest in religion and Campus Crusade before boot camp. "I remember him starting to get interested in religion," Lois says. "He'd go up the hill to Campus Crusade's headquarters." Just how early Mike dabbled with Christianity is unclear, but at least one witness says she saw him proclaiming faith in Christ in 1965, a whole year before The Satan Seller says he became a Christian. Charlotte Tweeten,[51] a 1964 Rim graduate who attended Valley College, told Cornerstone, "It was in the fall of 1965. I know that because by winter I had already left school. Mike Warnke came up to me while I was sitting there drinking coffee and started proselytizing me. It was the born-again thing. Mike was doing his religious thing and Sue Studer was with him." On September 7, 1966, Mike Warnke reported to Hospital Corps School in San Diego.[52] Mike gives us our choice of stories as to why he chose to become a medic. In The Satan Seller he writes he joined the Hospital Corps because "I could be of more use to God mending guys than swabbing decks."[53] On the album Hey, Doc!, he says he joined the Hospital Corps because of drugs and nurses: "Dope and women . . . for pay . . . far out!"[54] In late 1966, Warnke graduated from medic school and, after training with the marines at Camp Pendleton, went to work at the naval dispensary in San Diego.[55] Marriage records show Mike and Sue Studer were married May 13, 1967, in Crestline.[56] Soon after, the couple moved onto San Diego's Louisiana Street. While in San Diego, the Warnkes visited Scott Memorial Baptist Church, pastored by now well-known church leader and author Tim LaHaye and his wife, Beverly. In The Satan Seller, Warnke offers one version of what happened when the LaHayes visited the Warnke home. Mike says he told Tim LaHaye about the Illuminati. I had already told him I had been to an occult conference. "There were some weird guys that seemed to be the real backers of the whole thing. . . . I heard the word Illuminati."[57] "The conversation really wasn't like he put it in his book," says Dr. LaHaye.[58] "I brought up the term Illuminati first. I had been reading a book on the subject, and I tried testing him to see if he really knew anything about it. He didn't seem to have ever heard the word before." "Mike gave us a little of his testimony," says Beverly LaHaye,[59] who is now the head of Concerned Women for America. "He said a book about the leaders of the Satan church had disappeared off his shelf when he became interested in Christianity." Dr. LaHaye sums up, "His type of personality tells stories for effect, not for accuracy." Mike in Vietnam In November of 1967, the Warnkes moved back to Camp Pendleton and Oceanside. In May of 1969, Warnke was transferred from Pendleton to the Third Marine Division, Vietnam.[60] Warnke says he spent his time in Vietnam, like so many who served there, anesthetized from the experience of war by drugs.[61] The following is a list of the other things Mike Warnke says happened to him while in Vietnam: My faith was weakening fast![62] A buddy of mine was killed__a mortar shell landed directly on him, disintegrating him except for his shoes.[63] I was existing from one bottle to the next.[64] The message [a spy] was carrying was a detailed description of myself and the skipper, identifying us as prime targets for the Viet Cong. . . . . . . I shot a spy, went to my tent, cooked dinner, and ate. And something died inside of me.[65] I was the first to enter the tent [of marines who had been "fragged"__killed by their own people]. [66] Anyway, one day we were into this fire fight. . . . Everybody is shooting at each other. . . . . . . All of a sudden: zooooom, zonk, and my arm is pinned to the ground with an arrow! I look over at this other Marine Corps sergeant, who goes, "Only you, man, only you!"[67] One time I went through a village and was handing out candy bars to little kids. Just standing in the back of my Jeep. . . . When I get done, I'm putting the box back and this twelve-year-old kid goes in his house, comes back out with a gun, and shoots me.[68] Add to the list this story from Keith Schrader, Jr.: "Mike told me that he killed a man in a bar fight in the Philippines." Despite the impression such a long list may give, records show Warnke was in Vietnam for only six months. In The Satan Seller Mike says that he was wounded twice. In his second book, Hitchhiking on Hope Street, he says he was wounded five times.[69] Military records obtained by Cornerstone show that Mike Warnke, hospital corpsman, second class, service number B98 05 49, received one Purple Heart, and, along with the rest of his unit, several additional medals. The Third Marine Division he was connected to was withdrawn from Vietnam in October of 1969 and sent to Okinawa.[70] Warnke was sent back to the U.S. in the spring of 1970 and for the first time was able to see his infant son, Brendon Michael, born December 2, 1969, while Mike was overseas. In return for reenlisting for six more years, Mike was enrolled in cardiopulmonary school. The Warnke family settled in San Diego. George Wakeling,[71] who worked with young drug addicts, says he was contacted by Mike around this time. George was the founder of the Drug Prevention Center, or "the Hotline," a ministry to addicts at the Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim. Mike started spending time at the Hotline, and getting instruction from Hotline speaker Dick Handley. It was through the Hotline that Mike made his first contacts with Jesus Movement-era Christianity. Mike Meets the Jesus Movement Melodyland was one of the Southern California centers of the charismatic renewal movement then sweeping the Church. The ex-addicts and others who ran the Hotline were among the original Jesus People, part of a new youth counterculture uniquely compatible with the charismatics. Both preferred informal gatherings and a vital, experience-oriented faith. The culturally conservative Melodyland crowd thus understood when the exuberant young hippies suggested "getting high on Jesus." Both groups majored on the theme of acceptance. The mainstream church was sadly out of touch with the needs of counterculture youth and, even more sadly, unwilling by and large to reach out to them. But Pentecostal denominations such as the Assemblies of God seemed to grasp what God was doing among children of the sixties. Uncritically, without attacking the cultural preferences of the young, many charismatics and Pentecostals shamed their mainstream peers by being (in Paul's words) all things to all men. But as with nearly all revivals, there were problems with the newly revived. The mix of uncritical acceptance plus emphasis on experience was easily taken too far. It opened the door for various cults among the Jesus People; it also opened the door for those with fascinating though unprovable conversion stories. "A lot of people came to the Hotline and told their drug testimonies," says Ron Winckler,[72] a leader there. "Mike Warnke came with the added attraction of the Satanist experience, which was a big hit with the Full Gospel Businessmen and charismatics. The times were right for that sort of testimony." Hotline speaker Dick Handley and friends in Crestline had introduced Mike Warnke to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Through Handley, Warnke met Dave Balsiger, a writer who had done promo work for Melodyland and now was media director for charismatic evangelist Morris Cerullo. After starting a youth ministry in San Diego, Cerullo had come in contact with kids dabbling with the occult and decided to write a book on the subject. Balsiger was assigned the job. It was during this time he met Mike Warnke and enlisted his aid. The book was to be called ®Witchcraft Never Looked Better.¯[73] They also created a specially outfitted trailer, purchased to house "research materials" such as voodoo oil, graveyard dust, and fortune-telling spray. The vehicle, dubbed the "Witchmobile," was to be unveiled at an upcoming Morris Cerullo convention, The Seventh Deeper Life Conference.[74] Cerullo's vision, Warnke's story, and Balsiger's media talents combined to make the January 1972 meeting a smash. A twelve-page tabloid on Cerullo was inserted into the ®San Diego Evening Tribune.¯ Warnke and the Witchmobile were introduced to the media at a press conference, and at the Saturday night youth rally.[75] Christianity Today covered the event, noting that Cerullo "bore down heavily on the theme that satanic forces are loose in the nation."[76] Mike Warnke, who gave a seminar on the occult, was one of the newsmen's favorites. After the January 1972 conference, Warnke and Balsiger parted with Cerullo and decided to write a book together about Mike's Satanist experience. We asked Dave Balsiger about evidence for the story told in the book. Was he concerned about that? "Oh, yes." And what was the evidence Mike offered for The Satan Seller's fifteen-hundred-member cult; the all-powerful Illuminati, the intricate rituals complete with various knives, candles, books, and robes? "Mike took me to some of the sites." (The reader should recall that Mike's experiences had allegedly occurred six years before the book was written.) "I saw where there had been a fire started. And there were some indications of cultic writings and graffiti."[77] During the first half of 1972, Warnke had been working hard (with the help of Morris Cerullo's organization) to get out of the navy so he could go full-time into the ministry. "I helped him write letters," recalls Cerullo staffer Jean Jolly,[78] "and I got hold of [Congressman] Del Clawson's office. We got him out of the navy." On June 2, Warnke was granted an early discharge on conscientious-objector basis.[79] "As soon as he got out, Mike sent a letter to Morris Cerullo's headquarters and said we were forbidden to use his name or his material," recalls George Eckeroth,[80] who headed Jolly's department. "And Balsiger left Cerullo around the same time." Mike launched his ministry under the banner "Alpha Omega Outreach." In mid-June, Warnke went to Explo '72 in Dallas, a sort of Campus Crusade version of Woodstock attended by over eighty thousand.[81] Guideposts was running a feature on Warnke's story,[82] and his book was due in the fall.[83] "The Satan Seller" a Best-seller Logos International released The Satan Seller in early 1973.[84] At that moment, Christian publishing was in the midst of an unparalleled boom with the success of blockbusters like The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey and the Praise books by Merlin Carothers. While the party lasted, Logos was the life of the party, the industry leader in both output and income.[85] Yet, as a former Logos editor has admitted, the boom-time books were often "too quickly written."[86] That same year, Logos published Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me?,¯ the purported story of born-again rabbi Michael Esses. A later expose revealed Esses' bogus credentials and immorality.[87] Into this heady atmosphere The Satan Seller was born. The book was positively reviewed in publications ranging from Moody Monthly to The Christian Century, with nary a question as to its credibility.[88] "The only thing I remember about that book is that it sold better than we thought it would," says Logos founder Dan Malachuk. Indeed, by April 1973, The Satan Seller was a religious best-seller.[89] Other ex-Satanist testimonies followed Warnke's. John Todd's warnings about the Illuminati and a conspiracy of witches were promoted in a series of Jack Chick comic books. According to Ron Winckler, Todd visited the Hotline once with a group of underlings to check out Mike Warnke. "There was a backstage confrontation," says Ron Winckler."Todd accused Warnke of stealing his material about the Illuminati." Another alleged ex-Satanist, Hershel Smith, purchased the Witchmobile from Morris Cerullo and began his own tour. Smith's testimony, seen in the 1974 book The Devil and Mr. Smith, coauthored by Dave Hunt, was an apparent effort to one-up The Satan Seller.[90] Hershel Smith eventually dropped out of sight. Todd's story was later discredited. When a book debunking Todd was written, Mike Warnke wrote the forward. "We as Christians have to be careful of those who take the name of the Lord in vain," said Warnke. [91] In Ron Winckler's analysis, "Mike Warnke had the jump on John Todd. He understood the Full Gospel mind-set better." Now a published author, Mike Warnke found increasing demand for his story and told it in coffeehouses and churches beyond the West Coast.In August of 1973, Warnke spoke at a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania. The Jesus Movement had spawned its own music, and Warnke gravitated toward this fraternity of musicians. Tim Archer of the group The Archers, told the crowd at Jesus '73, "Mike Warnke is the Chaplain of Gospel Rock."[92] In his travels, Warnke had met Charles Duncombe, an elderly Pentecostal evangelist. "Brother D," who started in the ministry under English preacher Smith Wigglesworth, was loved and respected by all who knew him. In 1974 Mike, Sue, four-year-old Brendon, and newborn Jesse[93] all moved to Oklahoma near Duncombe's small school, Trinity Bible College. Mike would attend school while Sue tended children. Trinity Bible College was a nine-month preparation for ministry, located in a big country house outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. The thirty students were mostly new converts, many from a counterculture background and eager to learn. "Within two weeks of our conversion my wife and I were in Trinity," says John Witty,[94] who with his wife Vicki Jo had been a nightclub comedian. Fellow students Bob and Karen Siegal[95] ran a Jesus People ministry in southern Illinois and had met Brother D at a Full Gospel Businessmen's meeting. "We were the token hippies at FGBM," says Karen. "They'd bring us in there and have us give our testimonies." Student Bill Fisher, known as "Wild Bill," was a colorful local who later became Mike Warnke's traveling partner and confidant. In some ways Mike Warnke was the star pupil, since he was already doing what everybody else was just learning to do: ministering in churches around the country. "Here was a guy who was going out on the weekends and leading hundreds to Jesus," says John Witty. "He was a hero to us all." On local gigs, Trinity students would tag along, sometimes even joining Warnke on stage. "Mike liked to introduce me as a former hippie or drug addict __which I'd been, but I wasn't proud of," Karen Siegal says. "Then he started introducing me as a former prostitute, which I'd never been. I had to ask him to stop." Another new convert at Trinity, one with a sensational testimony of her own, was to see her real-life story blended with Mike Warnke's. "Part of the program at Trinity was tell your testimony," she says. "I got up and said, `My name's Carolyn Alberty and I'm third-generation Mafia. My father ran gambling houses, and my mother ran brothels. We had connections in political circles and the entertainment business.'"[96] This story caught Warnke's interest, says Carolyn. "Mike told me he knew me from some parties I had given in California." He convinced her he'd been to some, though she didn't remember him. "Then he started inquiring about my connections and ability to promote." Carolyn rattled off a list of things Warnke needed to do to further his ministry. "Mike brought me to his home, introduced me to Sue, and said, `I really think Carolyn can help us.' " Carolyn assembled his first real promotional package and called churches to make connections for speaking engagements. She says she told Mike, "Ease up on the satanic stuff and concentrate on the funny stories you've started to tell."[97] It didn't take long for the relationship to move beyond a professional level. "Mike started telling me he and Sue had different ideas about what they wanted out of life, and that he didn't love her anymore," says Carolyn. "Mike began passing notes to me in class, with stuff like `Hubba, hubba' written on them." As the year wore on, Karen Siegal realized something was up. "Carolyn and Mike started getting really hot and heavy," says Karen. "I confronted them and said, `This is not godly.' They basically told me it was none of my business." Karen took her concerns to fellow students, but they suggested she was being judgmental. Brother D was taken by Warnke's sincerity, says Karen. John Witty adds that the rest of the class was too naive to realize what was happening. "Back then, Mike and Carolyn seemed to be just what Jesus freaks would call `brothers and sisters in the Lord.' I now realize the relationship had warning signs all over it from the beginning." Karen Siegal protested one last time. "I'd repeatedly told Mike he needed to clean up his act with Carolyn," she says. "One time he came over to our house when nobody else was home. I made the mistake of confronting him again. All of a sudden, he said, `It's not Carolyn or Susie I love. It's you.' He grabbed me. It freaked me out and I pushed him away. I yelled, `Get out of here! I love my husband!' " Carolyn Alberty admits her relationship with Warnke took the inevitable turn near the end of the school year. "We'd been assigned to paraphrase the book of Isaiah. Mike rented a cabin outside Tulsa to do his work, and he offered to help me with my homework there. I thought that sounded reasonable, since I was living with the Siegals and had no privacy." After they'd worked at the cabin for awhile, Carolyn says, the two went for a drive, and Warnke stopped at a convenience store. "He asked what kind of cigarettes I used to smoke, and I said, `Pall Mall Gold. Why?' He just shut the door and kept on walking. I went, `Uh-oh.' " Warnke returned to the car, says Carolyn, with "two bottles of Annie Greensprings wine, two packs of cigarettes, and a package of peanut butter cookies." That day they began an affair that would lead to marriage two years later and divorce two years after that. "I guess from day one I was wrong," says Carolyn. Meanwhile, recalls John Witty, "Mike's testimony was just starting to break nationally. He was beginning to get calls from big churches." Among the churches calling Warnke during this time was the Golden Heights Christian Center in Brockport, New York.[98] Pastor Don Riling tried his best to disciple the young Christian musicians and speakers who came to his church. "I loved Mike Warnke as a son," he says. But soon problems cropped up. "We had a woman in the church who'd just become a Christian. She began to hang out with Mike Warnke__he seemed to have an eye for people with weaknesses," Riling says. "Later, she confessed to me she'd met him a number of times in hotels for sex when he was in the area." The Syro-Chaldean Connection During the Trinity '74-'75 school year began one of the strangest, and longest-running, chapters of the Mike Warnke story. Elijah Coady, an independent bishop in an Eastern Orthodox splinter group called the Syro-Chaldean Church, ordained Warnke a deacon.[99] Warnke had met Coady on the road, and expressed interest in the bishop's brand of independent Eastern Orthodoxy. Several Trinity students remember Bishop Coady's visit to Tulsa. A few were present when Coady ordained Warnke at a local church. "The bishop wore a strange hat, like a stack of pancakes," says Bill Fisher, who adds that Charles Duncombe expressed some concerns about Coady. "Brother D told us to be cool. He'd gotten a real check in the spirit about the guy." Another ordination was bestowed upon Warnke by Brother Duncombe on his graduation from Trinity in the spring of 1975. After graduation, Carolyn says Warnke made promises to her but would not be rushed. "He told me he was going to divorce Sue, that I should wait and be patient, that he needed to set up his escape." Soon afterwards, Warnke did a show at The Happy Church in Denver,[100] where he met Pastor Wally Hickey and his wife Marilyn. Mike and Sue Warnke decided to move to Denver with their two children, and Mike invited Bill Fisher and Carolyn to join him there. The entourage arrived in Denver in August of 1975, where Mike and Sue settled.[101] Mike had promised Fisher and Carolyn jobs with Happy Church, but the jobs didn't materialize. Mike leased a 270-acre mountain retreat called Joy Ranch in Evergreen, Colorado. "Mike would go catch the plane in Denver, and I would keep the place together up there," notes Bill Fisher.[102] The relationship between Warnke and Happy Church is unclear. Bill Fisher says Mike was "a kind of evangelist for them," not on the payroll but working under Marilyn's Life for Laymen organization. An article in the ®Denver Post¯ in October '75 identifies Warnke as "an evangelist with Life for Laymen, a Denver-based movement."[103] The Hickeys refused to talk with us, but their spokesperson said Warnke and his wife attended the church during the seventies, primarily for counseling. According to Carolyn, Warnke now began to push for a divorce from Sue. The Hickeys tried to reason with him. "Mike told them he and Sue would try to work it out," says Carolyn. "But he told me he wanted out of the marriage." Not long after, the relationship was broken between Mike Warnke and The Happy Church. In November 1975, Mike was invited to do a show at the Adam's Apple coffeehouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana.[104] Christian artists Nancy Honeytree and Phil Keaggy were recording a concert that night. The tape kept rolling during Warnke's part of the show. A proposed Keaggy/Honeytree live album didn't materialize, but the Warnke tape found a buyer in Myrrh Records, a subsidiary of Word, Inc.[105] Another Christian artist Mike had done concerts with on the road was Randy Matthews. Randy, along with Wes Yoder, was co-owner of Dharma Artists Agency, a fledgling Christian management company based in Matthews' garage in Nashville. After talking with Matthews, Warnke and Carolyn flew to Nashville, where he signed with the company.[106] "While Wes was signing Mike, he asked me to work with Dharma," says Carolyn. "Wes said he'd split my bookings down the middle, fifty-fifty. Mike said, `I can't beat that. He may get half of me, but I get half of it back.' So I became a working member of the team." During this time Brockport, NY, pastor Don Riling[107] continued to befriend Warnke. He was growing more and more concerned over what was going on in Mike and Sue's marriage. "On several occasions Mike had told me and my wife__crying and the whole bit__`Sue doesn't love me. She's kicked me out,' " Riling says. "Mike kept saying how all he wanted to be was a family man, to raise his two boys. I told him he'd have to choose between the road and his family." According to pastor Riling, Marilyn Hickey then visited the Rilings. "I asked Marilyn, `Isn't there anything we can do to persuade Sue to go back to Mike?' Marilyn about fell out of her chair. She said, `What are you talking about? Sue loves Mike. She wants to save their marriage. Mike is the one who wants to end it.' Then it was my turn to be surprised. All I'd known about the marriage problems before this was that Mike said Sue was cheating on him."[108] Riling flew to Denver in the late summer of 1976 on a desperate mission to try to save the marriage. On arriving, Riling said he found Mike had left Sue and the two children and had moved into an apartment with Carolyn. So Riling met with Sue. "She wanted to get back together with Mike. Sue said at one time she had dated another man, but she was plugged into Hickey's church and her attitude was `I just want to be with my husband.' I think Mike saw it as his chance to dump Sue." (Carolyn told us that Mike had urged both Sue and herself to go out with others when he was away on the road. Finally, Carolyn says, Sue did go out once with her to a dance hall.) After talking with Sue, Pastor Riling stayed with the Hickeys but spent most of his time with Mike and Carolyn. Riling got his information about Carolyn from Warnke: "Mike was out on the road, and he had supposedly led this gal Carolyn to Jesus. Before then, she had run these houses of ill repute. Mike told me he had to bring her home to help rehab her, and she lived right there with Sue." During the visit, Riling didn't let up. "Every opportunity I could, I pleaded with Mike to go back to Sue__for the sake of his marriage, for the sake of his ministry. Mike wouldn't hear anything about leaving Carolyn." Riling was in a restaurant with Warnke when Mike told him Sue was being served with divorce papers that very moment. (The summons is dated August 20, 1976.)[109] His mission a failure, the pastor returned to New York. Upon receiving the divorce petition, Sue Warnke called Ron Winckler and George Wakeling, along with others, and asked for prayer, saying Mike had run off with another woman. It was at this point that Dr. Walter Martin, a well-known counter-cult apologist and founder of Christian Research Institute (CRI), was asked to speak to Mike about his marriage difficulties. (Dr. Martin died in 1989.) Gretchen Passantino was Martin's senior research consultant at the time, in charge of CRI's research staff, [110] and her duties included overseeing Walter Martin's travel arrangements. "Dr. Martin had a speaking engagement near Denver and asked me to book a couple extra days so he could speak with Mike Warnke and his wife, Sue," says Gretchen. "When he got back, he took me aside. He said, `I had this real difficult meeting with Mike and Sue Warnke. I hope what I did was enough.' Realizing that Mike was determined to leave the marriage, Dr. Martin had prayed and counseled with both of them, advising Mike he needed to leave the ministry." Mike & Carolyn in Music City ®Harmony¯ magazine was ®the¯ Christian music magazine in the mid-seventies, and in September 1976, Mike Warnke was on the cover.[111] During this era, Mike relocated to what was becoming the center of the contemporary Christian music business. Jesus music began to be shaped by the powerful influence of Nashville, country music capital and home of the Gospel Music Association (GMA). The "music" part was welcomed in Music City. As for Jesus, insiders there have a saying: "Nashville has changed more Christians than Christians have changed Nashville."[112] Mike and Carolyn pulled into town with a U-Haul trailer. "Mike and I moved into an apartment together," says Carolyn. "Once we'd moved in, Mike went and bought cases of whiskey, different wines, and beer." At the time, of course, Warnke was still married to Sue. Among their Nashville Christian music friends, the only ones to protest Mike and Carolyn's living arrangements was a couple they had met on the road, Mike and Karen Johnson.[113] Though many of our readers may be unacquainted with Mike Johnson, he was a Jesus music pioneer, starting his first Christian band in 1968. According to many Jesus music historians, Johnson never received recognition equal to the dues he paid and miles he and Karen logged on the coffeehouse and church basement circuit. When Mike Warnke came to town with Carolyn, Karen Johnson wanted to know what was going on. "We said, `Hey, what about Sue?' Mike told us, `She's running around on me.' I called Sue, and she said that wasn't true. She said Mike found this other woman and he wanted to marry her. And the only way you could get a divorce in the Christian community was to say somebody had been unfaithful." Out of their concern, the Johnsons orchestrated another meeting with mutual acquaintance Don Riling. "We thought Mike Warnke was a mess and wanted him to get help," says Karen. "Don Riling was the only pastor that Warnke opened up to and submitted to in any form. He was like a father figure to Mike." Mike Johnson told the Rilings that Warnke had asked him to be best man in his wedding with Carolyn. "We pushed for a meeting," says Karen Johnson. "Wes set it up. Don Riling flew to Nashville." The meeting was held at the Dharma offices. Riling, Mike Johnson, Wes Yoder, and Mike and Carolyn were there. "You'd have never guessed that this was a meeting of Christians," says Riling. "Mike and Carolyn were swearing the whole time, and they must have gone through a whole pack of cigarettes." The meeting went on for hours in an effort to get everything out on the table with Warnke. "He moped around, saying his life was a mess," says Riling. "I tried to convince him to go back to Sue and save his ministry." At one point in the meeting, Carolyn brought up Warnke's continuing affair with the woman at Riling's church in Brockport. "Mike was still very involved with her," says Carolyn. Pastor Riling was struck by the bizarreness of the situation: "I'm sitting there listening to this woman Warnke was committing adultery with talk about how Mike was cheating on her." As the meeting bogged down, Riling took Wes Yoder aside and tried to make him understand the gravity of the situation. "Wes wouldn't deal with it," says Riling. "He knew Mike Warnke had a problem, but Wes was young and inexperienced. Wes said to Mike, `Do whatever you want to. Stay with this woman. Go back to your wife. It's okay. I'm behind you, because we have to keep the ministry going.' Mike Johnson was horrified by this," says Riling. Carolyn says she also gave Wes advice: "I thought Mike Johnson was being sanctimonious and Don Riling was a joke. Wes came to me and said, `What's going on?' I said, `Look, the guy's a joke. He's trying to get his paws on Mike, but you've got him signed and if you don't keep him it's your fault.' So it was really us against them." Wes Yoder says of those days, "I should have run Warnke out of town when he first showed up with Carolyn. I was stupid. I didn't miss it. I just didn't know what to do about it. I was sinful in allowing him to use me as a cloak of decency for what he was doing. The Lord doesn't bless in things like that."[114] Karen Johnson forgives Wes for his part in the debacle, saying, "Here he was, this young guy trying to be a part of Christian music, and he's involved with all these crazy people." Carolyn says the meeting accomplished nothing. "Nobody I ever met who was around or who was connected with Mike Warnke in any way ever had any effect on him." The day after the meeting, Mike Johnson left Dharma. His path then began to lead downward by degrees. It was also after this meeting, says Carolyn, that Mike Warnke initiated her in what he called an Indian ceremony. "We were at a motel, and he said, `I'll show you how much I love you.' He took a pocket knife and cut his wrist, and cut mine, and mixed our blood. He said, `Now we are one.' He gave himself the name Many Horses __because I was part American Indian." Bill Fisher said, "Mike told me he got the name Many Horses from an Indian medicine man." Bill Fisher told us, explaining the Indian identity as one of Warnke's many "mojos": "Mike would personify himself as various characters at times. Mike had his Indian mojo, or sometimes he'd be a Scotsman, or Jewish, or a Catholic priest, or Jeremiah Johnson, or black __he wanted to think he had black blood because Andre Crouch told him he had soul." The divorce of Mike Warnke from Sue was finalized on December 3, 1976.[115] Mike and Carolyn were married four months later.[116] Instead of Mike Johnson, Wes Yoder was best man. Downhill into the Bigtime In his books and on his records, Mike Warnke goes from Satan to Christ. In Nashville, the path led from rags to riches. Warnke had no money or credit when he came to town, says Carolyn. The bang-up combination of a hit record and the Dharma Agency soon changed that.[117] And the money started rolling in. "Lots of money," says Carolyn. "Not all of a sudden. But it wasn't uncommon for us to make five thousand dollars on the road, spend two to three thousand a day, buy whatever we wanted, go where we wanted, do whatever we wanted." The Dharma Agency prospered. During this period, they moved their offices from Randy Matthews' garage to Music Row, and later to a penthouse suite in the United Artists Towers. They hired additional booking agents.[118] Dharma's star rose with the fortunes of something that was now called contemporary Christian music. Writes Christian media observer William D. Romanowski, "The industry scaffolding began to go up as concert halls replaced coffeehouses and church fellowship halls, as record labels replaced custom recordings, and as contemporary music radio formats replaced tapes of preachers. . . . Christian entrepreneurs were building a Christian entertainment industry that paralleled its secular counterpart not just in musical styles and trends, but in marketing techniques, management, concert production, publicity, and glamorization."[119] The whole atmosphere surrounding the music changed. "We took our eyes off what had been very precious and innocent," says industry veteran, Dan Hickling, "the joy of being a Christian and going around and singing music for people that would bring them closer to God."[120] Buddy Huey, Word Records' artists and repertoire man, who had signed Warnke, was part of the big change.[121] "What we were trying to do was have better distribution to get the Word out. We ended up compromising lots. When I was with Word, the intent of the company was nothing more than trying to find those people who had a voice or a platform. And then all we could go on was what they told us." Including Warnke's satanic story? "It was just accepted," says Huey. "That's one of the things you'll find in the industry. You see something that might be salable, marketable __that's what you look at. It saddens me that I was a part of setting up things in the industry that I wish I had a chance to undo." Romanowski writes, "Evangelism was the rhetoric, business became reality." The manipulation of language, he says, transformed "money-making into ministry, easing the consciences of those few who earn healthy incomes off the music."[122] "You could see a kind of downhill slide," says Larry Black, a one-time Christian deejay who is now an actor.[123] "To see the marriages dissolve, to see them slowly begin to justify various vices." Was this behavior common knowledge in the industry? "Yeah. I think there was general knowledge. But you're caught in that old trap of not wanting to criticize a brother." We asked Buddy Huey if there was any company policy regarding Christian artists who were exhibiting non-Christian behavior. "No, there really wasn't," says Buddy Huey. "I didn't personally do cocaine, for instance, but I was present when others did cocaine. Looking back at that, I think my silence was worse than them doing the drugs." Scott Ross, who now works for CBN Television and back then was the country's foremost Christian disk jockey, recalls how kinky things had gotten. "There was a lot of immorality, drugs, and booze." Says Karen Johnson, "Mike [Johnson] tried to stay so straight, for eight years. Then everything fell apart after we'd been in Nashville for awhile. Mike looked around and realized that Warnke and his friends were making lots of money and fooling around on their wives. My husband thought, `What difference does it make?' He started drinking, smoking grass. He started hanging around with these Christian music people that didn't care if you were moral or not." Says Mike Johnson, "I was one big mess." Adds Karen, "When my Mike came home from being on the road with Warnke, he'd confess__all in the name of repentance __to all this drinking and going to discos. In the fall of 1978, the future seemed bright for Mike Warnke. His albums were "the most popular Christian comedy records ever produced anywhere, with sales reaching to nearly 200,000."[124] Doubleday Publishing was assembling a book of material from the first three albums. With dates around the world, 1979 was slated to be his biggest tour ever. Mike asked Bill Fisher to travel with him. At home, Carolyn says she and Mike had been fighting, and that several times he had hit her. Because of this, Carolyn's mother, Peggy Alberty, had moved to Nashville to be near her daughter. Enter Rose, Exit Nashville Warnke was on the road almost constantly. "We figured it out one time," says Bill Fisher. "We traveled over 280,000 air miles in about ten months that year, with three days off a month." About halfway through the whirlwind ten-month tour, Warnke performed in Hazard, Kentucky.[125] It was there, says Rose Hall, that she first met Mike Warnke.[126] Carolyn confirms this story. "While Mike and I were still married, he went to Kentucky to do a show, and that's where he met Rose." Carolyn says Mike came home very excited about something. "Then he went down to a jewelry store where we'd established credit and began buying jewelry for someone else, who I later found out was Rose." The story of Mike Warnke's romance with Rose Hall is told in her book, The Great Pretender. Rose never mentions Carolyn or the fact that Mike was married to Carolyn during his courtship with Rose. She says she met Warnke in various cities and stayed in the hotel with him__in separate rooms. "Looking back, it had never occurred to me to say, `You're a minister, an evangelist; are you married?' It never entered my mind."[127] During the time she was traveling around with Warnke, Rose says she went with him to Nashville. There, she writes, both his road manager and his agent objected to the relationship.[128] Wes Yoder says, "Rose came along before Mike and Carolyn were divorced. The whole thing with Carolyn, I couldn't deal with personally. With Rose I did. But I was still there. I was so wrong." Mike Warnke's relationship with the Johnsons went from bad to worse. As Karen Johnson tells it, "Mike called on the phone and said he wanted to come over, because he knew I was angry at him over what had happened to my Mike. I told him no, that I felt he was leading people astray, and I didn't want him associating with my husband because he was helping destroy our marriage. But later Warnke came over anyway and said, `Karen, I don't want you to dislike me. I want us to be friends.' I said, `Then change what you're doing. You're deceiving people. You're committing adultery.' He said, `I can't change.' " After Karen told Warnke to get out, "He came at me like he was going to kill me." Mike Johnson says of this episode, "I was in pretty good shape back then, and I was ready to go at it there in the living room." Warnke left, says Karen, "screaming obscenities at me." The end for Mike Warnke and wife Carolyn was, as she tells it, the stuff of melodrama. "We were fighting and he threw me into a wall and split my head open. He said, `If you go to a local hospital and tell them what your name is, I'll kill you. I don't have to do it physically. I can do it from another room or another state.' " "There was a revolver in the nightstand," Carolyn says. "I took it out and said, `If you hit me again Mike, I'm gonna kill you, because I'm tired of your beatings. I just can't take any more.' " Carolyn says she jumped into her car, started driving, and didn't stop until she reached Pensacola, Florida. Tom Carrouthers found Carolyn in a convenience store in Pensacola that summer night in 1979, dazed and bleeding. "Carolyn said she and her old man had gotten into it," says Carrouthers.[129] "She had a big gouge on the top of her head, and a wad of dried blood. I took her to the hospital. When we got there, she was like a kid and didn't want me to leave. She stayed with my sister and me for a week or so." Carolyn gave us a note she received from Mike. "Dear Carolyn," it reads, "I don't know how we ever got to this place. All I know for sure is that we are here. . . . I can't blame you for not wanting to be around me right now. Nor can I condemn your disgust at my rages and tantrums. I'm trying hard to get control. . . . I'll always be there when you need me. The scar on my wrist will never fade. . . . Peace to you. Many Horses." Carrouthers remembers Carolyn talking with Warnke on the phone during the two weeks she was there; things seemed to be improving. But when Carolyn finally returned to Nashville from Florida, she was in for a surprise. "I came home and there was a `For Sale' sign on the house. All the locks had been changed, and everything in the house was gone. In just a matter of days, I had no funds, no furniture, nothing," she says. Carolyn didn't go back to Dharma. She felt most of the people she knew in the industry had been siding with Mike, who was telling everyone the stories about her unfaithfulness. In a bizarre twist, Carolyn got a job working as an undercover narcotics operative with the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, a law enforcement organization in Nashville. Mike and Carolyn's divorce was final on November 29, 1979.[130] Mike Johnson says Warnke told him that Carolyn was rubbed out by the mob, "bludgeoned to death in a ditch." A friend from the Trinity days, Clarence Benes, heard from Warnke that Carolyn had been killed in a boating accident.[131] Don Riling says he was told by Warnke that Carolyn had drowned. From Carolyn's viewpoint, "Mike is one of the greatest con artists I've ever known in my life. And coming from my background, that says quite a bit." Mike and Karen Johnson divorced two years later, and he is no longer in Christian music. "Mike Johnson has really reaped what he has sown," says ex-wife Karen. "He has no family, no friends, no career, no money, no life. It makes me angry that Mike Warnke, on the other hand, seems to be making money, going on with life, and continuing to deceive people." Among the friends that took a different path than Warnke at the end of 1979 was Bill Fisher. "Mike and I parted when he moved to Kentucky to be with Rose," says Bill. "He was divorced, but that's not grounds for moving in with someone. Mike said, `We married each other before the Lord.' I said, `Do it before the state, too.' " Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky Mike Warnke married Rose Hall in Paintsville, Kentucky, on January 2, 1980.[132] It was his third marriage, her fourth. With the marriage came several changes: Rose was often onstage and on record with Mike;[133] Warnke left Dharma Agency and began to book his own concerts; the public focus shifted from onstage concerts to the ministry back home.[134] As Mike has said: "When you get right down to it, I'm just a glorified cheerleader. The real work of our ministry goes on back there."[135] The name of the "ministry back there" was Warnke Ministries; its nonprofit status was listed under "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky" (HOCCK). This built on Warnke's previous 1974 ordination in Tulsa by Bishop Elijah Coady while Warnke was attending Trinity Bible School. With HOCCK, Mike Warnke joined the ranks of "independent" Eastern Orthodox churchmen who founded their own autonomous denominations. During the early eighties, Warnke met James Miller, a local bishop in the American Orthodox Church. Miller told us he ordained Warnke a deacon and then a priest in early 1983. He suspended the ordination later when Warnke failed to submit regular reports. And then Mike Warnke became a bishop. This final ecclesiastical step occurred when another independent bishop, Richard Morrill, consecrated Warnke __an event we have verified by speaking to three other bishops who say they were told by the late Morrill that he had indeed made Mike Warnke a bishop.[136] Bishop Richard Morrill had officiated over Mike and Carolyn's marriage in Nashville.[137] According to Elijah Coady, Morrill was an itinerant cleric given to flamboyance and the founding of organizations, many of which seemed to exist only on paper. In 1981, Morrill incorporated in Texas under the name "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, Eastern and Apostolic."[138] One year later, Mike and Rose incorporated as "The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky."[139] HOCCK's offices were located at first in a converted garage behind the Warnkes' Versailles home.[140] As time went on, they staffed it with a series of Christian women whose opinions of the Warnke ministry were much higher when they joined than when they left. In the summer of 1983, Dorothy Green heard Rose on a Lexington Christian radio station and invited her to speak to the Danville, Kentucky, Women's Aglow.[141] Soon afterwards, "Dot" was hired to answer letters and do phone counseling. Dot's friend, Jan Ross, joined later as Rose's personal secretary. Roxanne Miller and Phyllis Swearinger eventually worked in the bookkeeping department. All four women were nonplussed by Mike's preference for High Church "chapel" services. Dot remembers an early chapel service with Mike: "He had incense, and he'd come down the aisle with his robes, swinging it in this thing." Roxanne Miller's opinion had less to do with the High Church trappings than with an event where Mike's ritual got in the way of a few friends' prayer time. "We used to go down to the park for lunch," Roxanne recalls.[142] "Dot, Jan, myself, a few others . . . and we'd just talk about what God had done in our lives. What He still was doing. Mike was usually out of town, but one day he just showed up and said, `I'm gonna do the teaching this week.' So we sang, and then Mike put on his robes. I thought he was plain ridiculous. It was like dressing up to be something you're not. It made me feel sad. He wants to be so much, and he isn't. I can still see him standing there in his robe, all velvet and dark." The Ministry and the Money Another point which perplexed the women was HOCCK's finances. Roxanne Miller had been hired to get control of the finances and says that while she was there (1985-1986) HOCCK covered various expenses for Mike and Rose. "We paid for the car, we paid for the gas, we paid for the parsonage, we paid for their clothes and their food," she says. Yet she says her job was a continual battle of the budget. Mike seemed to have no concept that money made by a nonprofit ministry is different than personal income. Once, she says, Mike Warnke responded to her efforts to curb his spending this way: "He told me, `Every bit of the money is mine. I earned it. If I wasn't out front, there would be no money.' " Jan Ross told us, "On several occasions Rose said to me that anybody who was in the position she and Mike were in deserved to have the best of everything because of who they were and what they had given up to be where they were. I thought, `What did you give up?' "[143] Phyllis Swearinger said there were problems making ends meet.[144] "I'd worked at banks before, so I was used to handling large amounts of money. But the amount that came in here every week sort of threw me. And then to find out it just wouldn't go far enough! Once Mike called me, upset because he needed some trees pruned at his home, and I wouldn't write a check for it because we didn't have enough money in the account at the moment. What struck me about this conversation is Mike told me he felt he deserved to make as large a salary as Jimmy Swaggart was making." The Warnkes' home was certainly in line with his high aspirations. Back in July of 1983 Rose's mother, Blanche Hall, had purchased a huge mansion (at one time a plantation) near Danville. "Lynnwood Farm" was leased to HOCCK for several years and later sold to Rose, who with Mike referred to it as "the parsonage."[145] Tax returns indicate HOCCK's total revenue for 1984 was over $900,000. In 1985 HOCCK grossed over $1,000,000, with over $500,000 in love offerings alone. In 1986, the total went over two million: love offerings brought in over $1,000,000; product sales (i.e., books and records) grossed over $180,000; and direct public support totaled over $450,000. The 1987 total was $2,239,927. Revenue figures for 1988 through 1990 continued at slightly over $2,000,000.[146] HOCCK tax returns show that the Warnke's personal salaries[147] steadily rose (see Table 1). ============================================== Table 1: Warnke's annual income ---------------------------------------------- MIKE ROSE 1984: $ 34,500 $ 11,500 1985: $ 95,617 $ 83,417 1986: $163,632 $155,418 1987: $177,450 $177,450 1988: $183,917 $183,917 1989: $204,383 $204,383 1990: $239,291 $230,291 ============================================== The growth of Warnke Ministries in the mid-eighties paralleled a sudden explosion of public fears about Satanism. In March of 1985, Mike Warnke appeared on an ABC "20/20" report called "The Devil Worshippers," part of a deluge of talk shows and books on contemporary Satanism. Stories of hideous satanic crimes were often woven together by self-proclaimed "experts" to demonstrate the existence of a worldwide satanic conspiracy similar to the Illuminati network outlined in The Satan Seller. Each year, goes the theory, thousands of children are being sacrificed in satanic rituals laced with sex and violence. Alleged adult survivors of satanic ritual abuse testify to the hidden cult's existence. The Satan Seller seems tame in comparison. Yet when evidence for the conspiracy is requested, true believers (including a few therapists and police officers) often refer skeptics to Warnke and his book as a final authority.[148] In the early eighties, when Mike and Rose began to speak about their Kentucky ministry to audiences on the road, they offered descriptions typically centered around their work helping victims of the occult __like "Jeffy." "Supposedly, Jeffy was this little boy who had become a vegetable because of all the satanic abuse he'd had," says Jan Ross. "The story was used to raise money to `help all the Jeffys of the world, so there wouldn't be so many Jeffys.' Mike would say, `What if your child was sent to preschool and this happened? How'd you like this to happen to your child?' " The home office would always know when Mike was telling the Jeffy story, says Dot Green. "People would write on the offering envelopes, `This is for all the children like Jeffy.' It was amazing how many envelopes would come back with Jeffy's name on it. Mike always had to count the money after a concert and call Rose to give her an idea of what was there," Dot continues. "She'd ask if he'd told the Jeffy story. If he hadn't, she'd say, `You tell the Jeffy story tomorrow night.' " Several staffers say the Warnkes' interest in the at-home ministry never made it home from the road. Says Dot, "I'd try to tell them about somebody who wrote needing help, and they didn't want to hear." Adds Jan Ross, "We didn't get that many calls, maybe four or five actual calls a day. Some people just wanted attention, but every once in a while there'd be people with real problems. Mike and Rose just didn't want to deal with them. They'd go on the road and say, `We're here to help you,' but when you called they didn't want to deal with you." For a while, Dot Green tried to ignore everything at Warnke Ministries that wasn't connected to her counseling duties. "I loved my job so much," she says. "I fooled myself into thinking it was my ministry, since Mike and Rose didn't seem to have any interest in it. But I started realizing the people I was writing to were sending in offerings. I always put a pink offering envelope in with each letter. I began marking my envelopes so I could tell which came back with my mark. The month I left, my letters brought in over $21,000. At that point, the Lord let me know I was just as guilty as they were as long as I stayed." Jan Ross was in the midst of her own struggle. The staff attended a series of Warnke shows in Cincinnati. "We did this concert; it was just a super evening. Then we walked out and went to a bar. The Warnkes were buying rounds of drinks, dancing. I kept thinking the whole time, I wonder if anybody's going to come in and recognize them." Roxanne remembers that trip. "We went to Cincinnati once. It just grossed me out. They went out and drank and carried on afterwards, Mike and the road guys. I said, `I just can't handle this.' " Dot Green and Jan Ross left Warnke Ministries at the end of 1985. Roxanne Miller was fired in February 1986 (for refusing to give Rose several signed, blank checks, she says), and Phyllis quit soon after. "It's not been something we have forgotten easily," says Jan Ross. "It's scary to think you can get involved with something like that with a pure heart, to serve God, and then find out it's run on deception, lies, and thievery." Warnke Ministries continued to expand. In October of 1986, the Warnkes purchased property in Burgin, Kentucky, which they then sold to HOCCK.[149] A newsletter announced that a long-promised "Center" was about to become a reality. Plans included rehab and medical facilities. "Phase I" was the construction of an administration building.[150] The fund-raising campaign began. "This Center is fast becoming a reality and will be a reality if ®you¯ make it one," said Mike in a ministry newsletter. "Your gifts, offerings, and prayers enable Warnke Ministries to continue its missions."[151] By April of 1987, Warnke Ministries was able to move to Burgin and into their beautiful new colonial-style brick office complex.[152] Dr. John Cooper worked for a short time in this building. In the late eighties, Warnke Ministries opened a seminar department to teach police and others the gruesome facts about Satanism and occult crime. Dr. Cooper, a former college professor and author of twenty-nine books, was hired in 1989 as director. Cooper has this to say about the Warnkes' "Center": "They were raising money for a children's center for refugees from Satanism. Phone calls would come to my office, people wanting to send kids there. I'd explain to them that there wasn't any such thing there, only a building with offices. The only parts of that building not dedicated to getting Mike speaking engagements or handling receipts were a large room set up like a Greek Orthodox Church and a library."[153] Cooper disputes the Warnkes' claim of 50,000 counseling calls and letters a month.[154] "There isn't any way in the world for that to be so," he says. "My guess would be, on a daily basis, they might get 6 calls." (Such a figure, if accurate, would translate to 120 calls per month.) "The only ministry I know of that went on there was one fellow who worked part-time answering the phone. And he'd usually just give out other ministry numbers and tell people to call them." John Cooper spent several months preparing a seminar presentation, which he premiered in May. Shortly afterwards, he was fired. He later tried suing the Warnkes, but the case died in court. A more important court case for Warnke Ministries was the 1991 divorce of Mike and Rose. According to the Warnkes' new book, ®Recovering from Divorce,¯ the serious problems in the marriage date as far back as November 1984. In the book, Rose notes an "It's over, isn't it?" talk with Mike that took place in his office in December of 1984.[155] Some comparison with Rose's previous book is enlightening. Written in mid- to late 1985, The Great Pretender reveals how Rose caught Warnke in an "affair" in 1984. "We had a situation this last year when we felt there was nothing left between us. We weren't communicating, and Satan provided a woman to fill the gap in Michael's life."[156] The conversation in the first book goes like this: He began to tell me there's nothing to this and that I'm misunderstanding it all. "Okay, okay," I growled, "I don't want to hear it. If you're not going to tell the truth, don't say anything. . . . You're throwing your ministry away, your life, the whole works. I'll guarantee you, people will not accept this. You're not going to go through another divorce and people accept it."[157] Rose says she threatened on Christmas Eve to call the woman, and Mike responded by moving out. Later, after Warnke had promised to end the relationship, Rose found out he was still calling the woman. Says Rose, "He hid all the guns. Michael's a big gun collector, and I know how to shoot. . . . I said, `I'll continue running the ministry, I'll get myself established ministry-wise, then I don't care what you do. You're not going to wreck my life. I'll establish myself. You do what you want."[158] These incidents go unmentioned in the new book. Instead, Recovering from Divorce presents a rather psychologized story of a marital mismatch, doomed from the start. While the Warnkes are evasive on the exact reasons, they make it clear their marriage was a painful experience for both of them. Court records say the couple last lived together in October of 1989.[159] Despite her earlier warnings in The Great Pretender about how people would not accept another divorce, Rose Warnke filed for divorce on September 4, 1991. A property settlement agreement drawn up by Rose's attorney and signed by both Mike and Rose was filed the same day.[160] Blanche Hall had deeded Lynnwood Farm to Rose in April of 1991. In the divorce property settlement, Rose was also awarded 327 additional acres surrounding the farm, which the couple purchased in April 1991 for $525,000 (despite the fact that they hadn't lived together there since October, 1989.)[161] Mike Warnke also agreed to pay half the mortgage for the new acreage.[162] Additionally, Rose got a condominium the Warnkes owned in Stewart, Florida (purchased in May, 1986, for $398,000), and another condominium the couple owned near Danville (purchased in July, 1989, for $231,500).[163] Further, Rose got everything in all the houses mentioned above, plus the Yamaha piano, the 1985 Cadillac, and the couple's four horses. Mike also agreed to pay Rose $8,000 per month ($96,000 per year) for the rest of her life via a wage assignment out of Mike's salary from HOCCK. Mike agreed to assume responsibility for paying various liens, pay for the education of Rose's daughters until the year 2001, divide a $15,000 IRA with Rose, and also split the debt to their accountant. Rose also got 65 percent of Warnke's ownership of his copyrights for and royalties from absolutely everything he will make from his books and recordings. Mike agreed to keep various existing life insurance policies and take out an additional $2 million life insurance policy on himself, with Rose as the beneficiary, for the next fifteen years. Finally, Mike agreed to pay Rose $20,000 to equalize the division of property. In the same property settlement, Mike Warnke was awarded whatever property was located at the condo where he was staying, his motorcycle, and visiting rights to the horses. October 2, 1991, the Warnkes' divorce was granted.[164] The local paper quoted a ministry spokesman who said nothing would change. Rose, who was identified as the music director and an administrator, would continue to do separate shows and possibly make joint appearances with Mike.[165] When it came time for Mike Warnke to announce his third divorce officially to the friends of Warnke Ministries, he used a rationale which he was sure his fellow believers would respect: He did it, he said, for the ministry. "As many of you know," wrote Warnke, "Rose and I, after seeking the Lord's guidance, and two years of intensive Christian counseling, accepted the fact that our marriage was beyond reconciliation, and the only hope of saving the Ministry we have poured our lives into, was divorce."[166] Six weeks after his divorce was finalized, on November 18, 1991, Mike Warnke married Susan Patton, an old Rim High classmate, and moved to California.[167] As of this writing, Mike and Rose are scheduled to appear together at the Christian Booksellers Association convention in late June, where they will be promoting their new book, Recovering from Divorce. According to CBA press material, the Warnkes will be available for interviews to discuss their "unique perspective on the troublesome issue of divorce." Their unique perspective: forgive and forget. In the book, Mike and his ex-wife share the pain of their relationship and parting; then the experiences are interpreted by their editor, Lloyd Hildebrand, and therapist, John Joy. There is much talk of how sad divorce is, and much assigning of blame to dysfunctional backgrounds and a codependent relationship. Although they could not be married, Mike and Rose conclude, they can now be friends. "Perhaps no one is ready for this book," writes Mike. "Could being `up front' about our failure cost it all? That's the chance I must take. Rose feels the same way. We both have come to the place where we know that the only real choice we have is to go on ®as ourselves.¯"[168] For those who would raise objections to what is, indeed, in the Christian Church a "unique" perspective, Mike Warnke fires a preemptive blast. "So I messed up. Does that change who Jesus is?"[169] Likewise, he decries "the Gospel Gestapo" who feel bound to discover and publicize the failures of those in ministry, "even if the evidence proves to be true."[170] After our research was complete, we contacted Mike in early May to set up an interview with him, to which we had invited some other Christian leaders (Ron Enroth, Don Riling, and others). Mike declined our interview and said he would only meet with us at his attorney's office in Kentucky. We considered this a matter for the Body of Christ, with no lawyers being necessary, and asked about the possibility of meeting somewhere convenient for everyone. Mike's response: that we have no further contact with him except through his attorney. This ended our communication. This concludes a long and painful survey of the life and ministry of Mike Warnke. We did not prepare it lightly, but solemnly and with counsel from many dedicated ministers. A Biblical Plan of Action We would be remiss in our duty as Christian journalists if we could not offer some concrete suggestions and reflections. Some of our readers will expect us to have followed the steps of Matthew 18:15-17, starting with a private confrontation. This passage gives Christ's instructions on what to do "if your brother sins against you," and the process stops if the brother repents privately. We have two remarks on this passage. First, Mike has already been confronted numerous times over the years by many concerned Christian friends, acquaintances, and church leaders. Mike knows what the Bible says about truthfulness, integrity, and fidelity. He is responsible to put into practice what he already knows. Second, this is not a private dispute between Mike Warnke and a magazine. A public figure is susceptible to public scrutiny and criticism. Matthew 18 is not violated when public figures are publicly rebuked. (However, other scriptures are violated if the rebukes being made are not fair, true, or applicable to the person.) Mike has sinned against the public for years, and the public is entitled to know the truth about his claims and actions. The misinformation about Mike's testimony is still in circulation, influencing how Christians view contemporary Satanism. For the sake of the Church and the watching world, it must be corrected. (A more complete discussion of the biblical grounds for Christian reporting appears in the article, "Public Trust," on page 5.) The statements made in this report are factual and verifiable. Anybody can read Mike's book, study its time line, and see that there is no way for him to have done the things he claimed in ®The Satan Seller.¯ Mike's former fiancee, his roommates, relatives, and cohorts in school emphatically contradict his claims on everything from hair length to drug use and from out-of-town trips to "love slaves" in his apartment. Mike's own friends refused to sign an affidavit that his Satanism testimony was true. If Mike has any real evidence to disprove what we've offered here, we're willing to print it. However, the evidence we have uncovered leads us to the conclusion that Mike doesn't have any. One thing is certain: the Church should not let the master storyteller get by with telling just another story: "There really ®was¯ a satanic coven; they just didn't talk to the right people. . . ." At this stage, excuses aren't sufficient. Mike needs to provide either evidence or repentance. It is not enough to make religious excuses for sin or sophisticated attempts to change the subject: "Those girls came on to me, and I was at a vulnerable point in my life. . . ." "The person who said `the Christian Church is the only army to shoot its own wounded' was totally right. . . ." "It's not up to you to judge my actions. Last time I read my Bible, Jesus was sitting on the throne, and He's not about to get off and let you take His place. . . ." This is sidestepping. It's a move to change the subject and get away from calling one's actions sin and asking for forgiveness. The issues are whether Mike has told the truth, whether he is fit for public ministry, and whether he meets the standards for biblical leadership. Like it or not, by addressing thousands of people he is assuming a pastoral role, regardless of what he calls himself. If Mike were to seek forgiveness and restoration, what could the Church expect to see as evidence of the genuineness of his repentance? The following principles should apply to any Christian leader who has manifestly fallen. Repentance. Repentance is fundamental to Christianity. It denotes a complete turnaround, heading in the opposite direction than previously. Like "to love," to repent is a verb denoting action. Nobody wants to see another Jimmy Swaggart crying crocodile tears on camera but returning to save "the ministry" three months later . . . and returning to the same sin after that. In Mike Warnke's case, true repentance would necessitate complete withdrawal from public ministry. Confession. If Mike is repentant, he should make an open admission of guilt. On the other hand, Mike Warnke has built a career of telling us about past and present sins. The Church must not allow him to emerge as a new authority on fraudulent testimonies. Restitution. True moral change involves some attempt to undo past wrongs and to provide some kind of restitution. Perhaps the best kind of restitution Mike Warnke could perform would be to take ®Satan Seller¯ and all his other products off the market. What about the rest of us? Accountability is a public as well as a personal matter. Christian publishers have an obligation to validate the books they print, whether nonfiction or historical fiction books. At the same time, it is ®our¯ responsibility as the book-buying public to ask for evidence before accepting a story. After Warnke's testimony began circulating, those few who knew the truth kept silent: they felt powerless against the immensity of the story. Where could they turn? Well, the publisher would be a place to start. We need the active participation of all members of the Body of Christ in provoking each other to righteousness and, where necessary, in providing biblical confrontation and counsel. Sometimes a twisted man can preach a straight gospel. Through the years, we've known many people who could speak truth while ignoring it in their personal lives. Scripture testifies that God may bless or anoint a sermon even while condemning the deeds of the preacher (Num. 23-24, 2 Pet. 2:15, Matt. 23:3). Yes, the love of God is truly as infinite and wondrous as Mike Warnke has been telling us for twenty years. God loves Mike Warnke as he really is __ex-Satanist, war hero, Ph.D.__or not. His choice now is no different than it has ever been: losing the whole world or losing his soul. For no one can know the love of God whose heart is closed to the truth. Perhaps he has never stopped feeling like an outsider, and even when Christianity opened its arms to him, he would not give up his storytelling. His adolescent flirtation with the occult was exaggerated into a postadolescent fantasy of having incredible amounts of money, sex, prestige, and power as a Satanist. He later achieved money, sex, prestige, and power. Sadly, it was in the name of Christ. It's not too late for Mike to change, if he wants to. The secular press may scoff, and those who consider themselves real Satanists may snicker, but the Jesus of the Bible is still the God of truth. The Lord, who makes ruined lives whole and restores purity to harlots and liars, offers each of us forgiveness and acceptance. Not on our terms, but His. To Mike, and all others, who have been tempted to sacrifice the truth for the sake of "the ministry," we can offer no better words than these of the apostle Paul: Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. (2 Cor. 4:1-2) ENDNOTES 1. Coauthor David Balsiger, in his biographical sketch, says The Satan Seller has sold only 500,000 copies. 2. So-called satanic panic has led to tragedy in many cases. For further information, see Jon Trott, "Satanic Panic," Cornerstone 20, iss. 95 (1991): 9. 3. Mike Warnke marriage licenses. Interview, Fr. Bob Nagler, St. Francis Cabrini Church, Crestline, CA. 4. Interview, Mildred Warnke Jordan; Al Warnke obituary, Manchester Times, 17 Oct. 1958. 5. Mildred Warnke Jordan; Larry Nee, Manchester Times, 16 Oct. 1991, spoke with local undertaker, who referred to his notes on Louise Cooper. 6. Interview and letter, Shirley Schrader. 7. "Final Rites for A. J. Warnke," Manchester Times, 17 Oct. 1958. 8. Mike Warnke Alive!, Mike Warnke, Myrrh Records, 1976. 9. Interview, Edna Swindell. 10. Interviews, Keith Schrader, Jr. 11. Interview, Tim Smith. 12. Interviews, Jeff Nesmith. 13. Interview, David Goodwin. 14. Interview, Terry Smith Perry. 15. Confirmation certificate (see above). 16. Charles Donovan, San Bernardino Valley College ref. librarian. 17. Warnke, Michael Alfred, USN, #B98 05 49. 18. Mike Warnke, Schemes of Satan (Tulsa, OK: Victory House, 1991), 87. 19. Interviews, Greg Gilbert. 20. Interviews, Dennis Pekus. 21. Interviews, Dawn Andrews. 22. Interview, Dyana Cridelich. 23. Mike Warnke, with Dave Balsiger and Les Jones, The Satan Seller, (Plainfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1972), 18. 24. Interviews, Lois Eckenrod. 25. Satan Seller, 19. 26. Satan Seller, 14. 27. Interview, John Ingro. 28. Interviews, George Eubank. 29. Satan Seller, 19. 30. Interview, Phyllis Catalano. 31. Interview, Mary Catalano. 32. Interview, Tom Bolger. 33. Satan Seller, 19. 34. Satan Seller, 19, 20. 35. Satan Seller, 30. 36. Satan Seller, 33. 37. Satan Seller, 100, 101. 38. In 1981, Logos went bankrupt and sold its titles to Bridge Publishing, which has since been purchased again. The new owners were unable to locate any affidavits, signed or otherwise, for The Satan Seller. 39. Interviews, Bill Lott. 40. Satan Seller, 64, 65. 41. Satan Seller, 29. 42. Satan Seller, 28. 43. Schemes of Satan, 73. 44. Satan Seller, 90, 91. 45. Mike Warnke, Hitchhiking on Hope Street (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1979), 63, 64. 46. "Focus on the Family" broadcast, 16 March 1985. 47. Satan Seller, 112-114, 116, 121. 48. Naval records show Warnke was transferred out of Recruit Training Command on 22 August 1966. This is also the date he gives on his video Do You Hear Me? as the day he became a Christian. 49. Satan Seller, 135. 50. Satan Seller, 137. 51. Interview, Charlotte Tweeten. 52. Navy Records. 53. Satan Seller, 136. 54. Mike Warnke, Hey, Doc!, 1978, Myrrh Records; Also, Hitchhiking on Hope Street, 34. 55. Completed Hosp. Corps School 12/22/66; Reported to Field Med. Serv. School, Camp Pendleton; 1/5/67; Reported to Naval Adcom, San Diego, 2/7/67. 56. Certificate of Registry of Marriage, San Bernardino co., CA. 57. Satan Seller, 149, 150. 58. Interviews, Tim LaHaye. 59. Interview, Beverly LaHaye. 60. Transferred to Third Marine Division, Vietnam, 5/2/69. 61. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1 (1991), 4. 62. Satan Seller, 163. 63. Ibid., 165. 64. Ibid., 166. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 168. 67. Hitchhiking on Hope Street, 42, 43. 68. Ibid., 45. 69. Ibid., 42. 70. "Decorations and Awards: Good Conduct Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Vietnam Service Medal, Purple Heart, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Republic of Vietnam Meritorious Unit Citation; Warnke transferred home 3/1/70. 71. Interview, George Wakeling. 72. Interview, Ron Winckler. 73. Don Musgraves, director of Cerullo's Youth Action Center in San Diego, interview: "It was during those times that I began to have heavy contact with people coming out of the occult . . . "; Peter Brown, "Dropout Heads WitchcraftFight," San Diego Union, 15 January 1972, 1; "Evangelism Group Fights Witchcraft," San Diego Union, 22 January 1972, p. 5B; Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos Journal, May/June 1972, 39, 40. 74. Interview, Morris Cerullo; Balsiger, "Insider's Report;" Christian Life, March 1972, 12. 75. Dave Balsiger, et al., "It's Happening Now," insert, San Diego Evening Tribune, 17 January 1972. (See Roddy, below: " . . . Cerullo, surprisingly unassuming in contrast to the image created by his flashy PR people . . . ") Peter Brown, "Dropout Heads Witchcraft Fight"; John Dart, "Converted `Priest' Offers Guided Tour of Satanism," Los Angeles Times, 19 January 1972, Sec. C, Part II, 1; "Evangelism Group Fights Witchcraft"; Balsiger, "Insider's Report." 76. Lee Roddy, "Morris Cerullo Crusade: A New Anointing?" Christianity Today, 18 February 1972, 52-53. 77. Interview, Dave Balsiger. 78. Interview, Jean Jolly. 79. Navy Records, date of discharge, 2 June 1972. 80. Interview, George Eckeroth. 81. "YEAR END REPORT and APPEAL FOR ASSISTANCE," Alpha Omega Outreach, Rev. Mike Warnke, president, January, 1973. 82. Michael Warnke, "When Evil Fights Back," Guideposts, Nov. 1972, 22-26. 83. Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos Journal, July-August 1972, 54. 84. Dave Balsiger, "Charismatic Insider's Report," Logos Journal, Nov-Dec 1972, 56. 85. John P. Ferre, "Searching For the Great Commission: Evangelical Book Publishing Since the 1970s," in American Evangelicals and the Mass Media, ed. Quentin J. Schultze (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1990), 99-101. 86. David Hazard, "Decatrends in Christian Publishing," Charisma, August 1985, 140. 87. Michael Esses, Michael, Michael, Why Do You Hate Me? (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1973); Betty Esses DeBlase, Survivor of a Tarnished Ministry (Santa Ana, CA: Truth Publishers, 1983). 88. James Danne, "Demonic Spirits," Christian Century, 4 July 1973, 738; Paul Nevin, "On Selling Your Soul to the Devil," Moody Monthly, July-August 1973, 52. 89. Dave Balsiger Biographical Sketch. 90. James E. Adams, "Regards Peril of the Occult As Worse Than That of Drugs," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 29 November 1972; Hershel Smith with Dave Hunt, The Devil and Mr. Smith (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1974); James H. Brewster, "Rolling Along with the Witchmobile," Probe the Unknown magazine, March 1973, 22-25; Interview, Jean Jolly. 91. Darryl E. Hicks and Dr. David A. Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon (Harrison, AK: New Leaf Press, 1979), foreword by Doug Wead and Mike Warnke. 92. Don Cusic, "Mike Warnke: Jester in the King's Court," Contemporary Christian Music, June-July 1979, 130; Paul Baker, "Two-Fold Laughter from Mike and Rose," Contemporary Christian Music, December 1982, 14. 93. Jesse Joshua Warnke was born 4/18/74, according to Susan L. Warnke Response, Civil Action D17252, District Court, Adams County, CO. 94. Interview, John Witty. 95. Interview, Karen Siegal. 96. "Holdup Victim Named as Call Girl's Queen," Long Beach Press-Telegram, Evening Final, 8 January 1971, identifies Carolyn's mother as "kingpin of a local prostitution racket . . . " Police call incident "the latest rounds in a mob war over control of prostitution in the LB-LA area." 97. Bill Hance, "That One-Liner Religion is Good Enough for Him," The Nashville Banner, January 13, 1978, 30: "Until four years ago, he was `just one of those preachers. . . . So, I started lightening my testimony by telling jokes . . . '" 98. Bill Fisher says he flew with Warnke to Brockport while they were still in Trinity (Fall '74-Spring '75). Fisher has a photo of himself and Warnke on stage in Brockport, dated October 1975, and another photo of himself and Warnke there, dated June 1976. 99. See Dave Medina, "Former Rabbi Named Chaldean Archbishop," Logos Journal, Nov-Dec 1972, 58. 100. Carol O'Connor, "Ex-Satanist Happier with Christ," The Denver Post, 20 June 1975, 4BB. 101. Petition For Dissolution of Marriage, D-17252, confirm Warnke moved to Colorado in August 1975. 102. March 1976 is the date on a photograph of Bill Fisher at Joy Ranch. 103. Virginia Culver, "Devil-Worshippers Called Possible Cattle Mutilators," The Denver Post, 5 October, 1975, 31. 104. The back cover of Mike Warnke Alive! notes "Recorded Live at: Adam's Apple, Fort Wayne, Indiana, November 14, 1975." 105. The story of the recording of the album is told in Cusic, "Jester in the King's Court," 28; Paul Paino interview. 106. Affidavit with Respect to Financial Affairs, Civil Action D-17252, Adams County District Court, CO, 8/6/76. Warnke lists his employer as "Dharma Productions, 807 Redwood Cr, Nashville, TN." 107. Interview, Dan Riling. 108. According to Petition for Dissolution, D-17252, Mike and Sue last lived together January 1, 1976. 109. Date based on Mike Warnke's statement to Don Riling that Sue was served while Riling was in Denver. The Affidavit of Service says Sue Warnke was served Aug. 20, 1976, at 8:42 am. 110. Interviews, Gretchen Passantino. Two other CRI staffers also contributed information regarding this meeting. 111. Cover story by Peggy Hancherick, "Mike Warnke, Jester in the King's Court," Harmony, vol. 2, no. 3, 8-9. Full-page ad for "Mike Warnke Alive!", 11. 112. This saying was related to us by Frank Edmonson (aka Paul Baker), ex-DJ, writer, and popular historian of Jesus Music. Edmonson worked for Word at the time Warnke was signed, and played a key role in the signing. 113. Interview, Mike and Karen Johnson. 114. Interview, Wes Yoder. 115. Decree of Dissolution of Marriage, Civil Action D-17252, Adams County District Court, CO, 12/3/76. 116. Marriage Certificate, Davidson County, Tennessee, 4/25/77. 117. "When Mike Warnke Speaks, the World Listens!", Myrrh records ad in Contemporary Christian Music (hereafter, abbreviated CCM), Februrary 1979, 26. 118. See 21-page commemorative section celebrating Dharma Agency's 10th anniversary in the February 1982 issue of CCM. 119. William D. Romanowski, "Contemporary Christian Music: The Business of the Music Ministry," in American Evangelicals, Quentin Schultze, ed., above, 152, 155. 120. Interview, Dan Hickling. 121. Interview, Buddy Huey. 122. Romanowski, 144, 151. 123. Interview, Larry Black. 124. "When Mike Warnke Speaks, etc." 125. Itinerary in May 1979, CCM. 126. Rose Hall Warnke with Joan Hake Robie, The Great Pretender (Lancaster, Pa.: Starburst Publishers, 1985), 73-74. 127. Rose Hall Warnke, The Great Pretender, relates her romance with Mike, 73-85; quote cited on page 79. Carolyn is never mentioned, nor that Warnke was married during this time, only the note, "He, too, had been previously married." Final Decree, Sumner County Court, 11/29/79, shows Warnke filed for divorce from Carolyn on 8/27/79, summons served 8/30/79. cf. The Great Pretender, 83: "In September of 1979, Michael said, `I want to marry you.'" CCM itinerary shows Mike Warnke scheduled to play Sept. 28-29, 1979, in Canada. Rose says she went to Canada with Mike (p. 83). 128. Rose Hall Warnke, The Great Pretender, 81-82. 129. Interview, Tom Carrouthers. 130. Final Decree, Circuit Court for Sumner County, TN, 11/29/79. 131. Interview, Clarence Benes. 132. Certificate of Marriage, Johnson County, Kentucky, 1/2/80. 133. Mike and Rose Warnke, "First-Hand Rose," CCM, April 1981, 50; "Road Rap," CCM, July 1982, 51; Paul Baker, "Twofold Laughter from Mike & Rose," CCM, December 1982, 14. 134. Warnke, Great Pretender, on booking, 119, on accounting, 148. 135. Television interview with Mike Warnke, "Believer's Lifestyles," Channel 52, Orlando, Florida, 2/2/91, air-date 2/22/91. 136. Interviews, Elijah Coady; Joseph Morse; William Schillereff. 137. Marriage Certificate, Davidson County, Tennessee, 4/25/77. Marriage "was solemnized by Mar Apriam I." 138. Articles of Incorporation, The Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, Inc," dated 12/23/81. Pamphlet "This We Believe, Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, Eastern and Apostolic" is dated 1977, copyright by "His Beatitude, Mar Apriam I, Patriarch." 139. Articles of Incorporation, 11/19/82, for "The Holy Orthodox Church in Kentucky, Inc."; Certificate of Assumed Name, 11/4/83, HOCCK authorized by to do business under name "Mike Warnke & Associates."; Certificate of Assumed Name, 3/1/88, HOCCK authorized to do business under name "Warnke Ministries." "HOCCK, Inc. dba" appears on Warnke Ministries letterhead. 140. Mike Warnke, "The Root of the Problem," CCM, Februrary 2, 1981; Rose Warnke, "Little Keys Unlock Big Doors," CCM, July 1981, 54; Land Contract, 7/1/81, for 153 Elm Street, Versailles, between Warnkes and Virginia Wiglesworth, her husband James, for $180,000. 141. Interviews, Dorothy Green. 142. Interviews, Roxanne Miller. 143. Interviews, Jan Ross. 144. Interviews, Phyllis Swearinger. 145. Deed, Equitable Relocation Management Corporation and Blanche Hall, 7/29/83, for $235,000. Deed, Blanche Hall and Rose Hall, 3/1/91, for "the sum of One ($1.00) dollar, cash in hand paid, and the Grantor's love and affection for her daughter." 146. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, HOCCK, 1984-1990 Forms. 147. Ibid. 148. One well-known example: James G. Friesen, Ph.D., Uncovering the Mystery of MPD (San Bernardino, Calif.: Here's Life Publishers, 1991), uses Warnke's book in both text and footnotes to bolster far-reaching claims concerning a satanic cult conspiracy. 149. Deed, Lelia Mann Brown, et al. and Michael A. Warnke and Rosemary H. Warnke, 10/28/86, for $20,395.70. Deed, Michael Warnke and Rosemary Warnke and HOCCK, for "the sum of $1.00 and as a gift, contribution, and donation." 150. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1st Quarter, 1987, 1. 151. Ibid. 152. Warnke Ministries Newsletter, 1st Quarter, 1988, p. 2 " . . . by the time you receive this newsletter, we will be moved into the new building." 153. Interviews, Dr. John Cooper. 154. Cf. Rose Warnke, Great Pretender, 181, "At ministry headquarters we get some 50,000 letters and telephone calls each month." 155. Michael A. Warnke & Rose Hall Warnke, Recovering From Divorce, (Tulsa: Victory House, Inc.), 22-25. 156. Rose Warnke, Great Pretender, 86. 157. Ibid, 87-88. 158. Ibid, 88-90. 159. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, 9/4/91. 160. Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, Mercer Circuit Court, Kentucky (#91-CI-00274), Rose Hall Warnke vs. Michael A. Warnke, 9/4/91; Response, Entry of Appearance, and Waiver by Respondent, 9/4/91; Separation and Property Settlement Agreement, 9/4/91. 161. Lynnwood Farm, see above note. Deed, Land Owners, L.P., and Michael A. Warnke and Rose H. Warnke for new acreage, 4/19/91, for $525,000. 162. Mortgage, American Fidelity Bank & Trust, Corbin, KY, 9/10/91, Rose Hall Warnke and Michael A. Warnke for $250,000. Mortgage, State Bank & Trust Company, Harrodsburg, KY, 9/27/91, Rose Hall Warnke and Michael A. Warnke, for $31,500.50. 163. Deed, Charles W. Pistole and Michael and Rose Mary Warnke, 5/30/86, for 2001 Salifish Point, Apt. 308, Stuart, FL for $398,000. Deed, Mary & Clinton Woodard and Michael A. Warnke and Rose H. Warnke, 7/24,89, for Chimney Rock property for $231,500. 164. Final Decree of Dissolution of Marriage, Mercer Circuit Court, Kentucky (#91-CI-00274), Rose Hall Warnke vs. Michael A. Warnke, 10/2/91. 165. Amy Wolfford, "Official downplays effect of Warnke divorce on ministry," Danville Advocate-Messenger, 24 Oct. 1991, 1. 166. Undated Warnke Ministries letter (begins "Dear Ministry Family, It is again the start of a New Year, PRAISE GOD!"). 167. License and Certificate of Marriage, Santa Cruz County, CA, 18 Nov. 1991. 43. "Authors Available for Interview," Christian Booksellers Convention, Dallas, Texas, June 29--July 2, 1992, 15. 168. Warnke & Warnke, ®Recovering From Divorce,¯ 63. 169. Ibid, 164. 170. Ibid, 159. The Threefold Goddess I To understand the concept of Goddess requires more than the ability to visualize God as a woman. The Goddess concept is built around the myth and mystery of the relationship between God and Goddess, and beneath that, and part of it, Her Threefold Aspect ... Maiden, Mother and Crone. One of the oldest recognized Goddess forms is the first Greek Goddess - Gaia, the Earth Mother; the Universal Womb; Mother of All. The most ancient Goddesses were most often Earth and Mother Goddesses. The were worshipped and revered as bearers of life ... fat, healthy, pregnant and fruitful. As the Goddess concept developed, then came the Harvest Goddesses, who were also Earth Goddesses. Understand that this was a time when people did not even understand the basic mechanics of procreation. Life was very sacred and mystical indeed! Gradually, myth and mystery developed and revealed themselves, creating the legend which we honor in the modern Wiccan Craft. We recognize the Goddess as the mother of all, including her Mighty Consort, the God. To Her he is Lover and Son, and together they form the Ultimate, the Omniverse, the Dragon, the Mystery. Now that is a pretty tough concept all things considered. Especially in our society as it sounds rather incestuous. From a mundane perspective, it gets worse as the Wheel of the Year Turns, and the Oak and Holly Kings battle ... eternal rivals and sacrificial mates. In the pages that follow, we will explore the Goddess foundation concepts and try to reach an understanding of the basis of the Mystery. I don't want to get off into all the names of all the Goddesses in all the mythology in all of history. While that is certainly a noble endeavor, it is not the objective here. What I do want to do is look at the Goddess, in whole and in part, and see just who and what she is. First and foremost, the Goddess is the symbol of the Cycle of Everlasting. She is constant, ever present, ever changing, and yet always the same. She could be compared in that respect to the oceans. As a part of that, she is that from which we have come, and to which we will return. She is the Universal Mother, the Cosmic Womb. While those are largely symbolic images, as opposed to literal ones, they are important to bear in mind about any aspect of the Goddess. She never harms, she is Mother. One of the most difficult throwback mentalities to dispell in a student is the difference between "dark and light" and "bad and good". Societally, and often religiously, we are trained to see bad and dark and evil as being the same. Hence, we are also taught to hate and fear our own mortality. All too often I see practicing Wiccans, who ought to *know* better, fall back on these concepts when trying to explain or understand a concept. The Goddess is dark, she is light, she is birth, she is death, and she rejoices in all things. With death comes joy, for with death comes renewal. With life comes joy, for with life comes promise. With growth comes joy for with growth comes wisdom. Sorrow and fear are not a part of her, not the way we feel those emotions. She is incapable of sorrow without joy, she fears nothing, because fear is not real. It is a creation of the mind. Whether you see the Goddess as a Warrior Queen, or like the Good Witch of the North in the Wizard of Oz, she is the Goddess. And she has many parts and facets which defy comprehension as "One". She simply IS, and in that, can be whatever you need her to be in order to establish a relationship with her. But none of that changes what she IS. "I greet thee in the many names of the Threefold Goddess and her Mighty Consort. Athe, malkuth, ve-guburah, ve-gedulah, le-olam, Amen. Blessed Be." So here, at the Circle Door, greeted by the High Priest or Priestess we first see mentioned the Threefold Goddess. Full-sized covens have three priestesses who take the specific roles of Maiden, Mother and Crone, the High Priestess being Mother. The Threefold Goddess however is NOT three entities, she is one. Her aspects represent Enchantment, Ripeness and Wisdom. Taking first things first is usually best, so we shall start with a look at one side of the Maiden. Quoting "The Myth of the Goddess" as found in Gardenarian Wicca (Gerald B. Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft, Aquarian Press, London, 1959.): Now Aradia had never loved, but she would solve all the Mysteries, even the Mystery of Death; and so she journeyed to the Nether Lands. The Guardians of the Portals challenged her, "Strip off thy garments, lay aside thy jewels; for naught may ye bring with ye into this our land." So she laid down her garments and her jewels and was bound, as were all who enter the Realms of Death the Mighty One. Such was her beauty that Death himself knelt and kissed her feet, saying, "Blessed by thy feet that have brought thee in these ways. Abide with me, let me place my cold hand on thy heart." She replied "I love thee not. Why dost thou cause all things that I love and take delight in to fade and die?" "Lady," replied Death, "it is Age and Fate, against which I am helpless. Age causes all things to wither, but when men die at the end of time I give them rest and peace, and strength so that they may return. But thou, thou art lovely. Return not; abide with me." But she answered, "I love thee not." Then said Death, "An' thou receive not my hand on thy heart thou must receive Death's scourge." "It is Fate; better so", she said, and she knelt, and Death scourged her and she cried "I feel the pangs of love." And Death said, "Blessed be" and gave her the Fivefold Kiss, saying "Thus only may ye attain joy and knowledge." And he taught her all the Mysteries. And they loved and were one, and he taught her all the Magicks. For there are three great events in the life of Man: Love, Death and Resurrection in a new body, and Magick controls them all. For to fulfill love you must return again at the same time and place as the loved one, and you must remember and love them again. But to be reborn you must die, and be ready for a new body; and to die you must be born; and without love you may not be born. And these be all the Magicks. So there in the Gardnerian Myth of the Goddess we have her Maiden aspect, seeking, searching and opening herself to the mysteries. But it is well to remember that the Goddess herself is a mystery, and the primary gift of the Goddess is intuitive Wisdom. Beltaine (Bealtain) is the only Sabbat where the Goddess is entirely devoted to the Maiden. Here, she revels in the enchantment, in the joy of coming into fullness and mating with the God. Here, she is maiden bride and we can most easily understand that facet of the Maiden aspect. I should probably note here that some see this festival as maiden turning into mother, with the maiden being in full at Candlemas, but I do not agree with that. Youth, newness, innocence and beauty are fundamental facets of the Maiden aspect. But beneath those are seeking, and love, and love of seeking. There is more to understand of the Maiden though. Enchantment does not end with maidenhood, it is simply the beginning of the Mystery of Life, for that, above all, is what the Goddess stands for. In Circle, in the Balanced Universe, the Maiden takes her place in the East. In examining this most comfortable quarter, you learn more about the Maiden Aspect. East (Air) rules the free mind and intellect. It is the place to seek the ability to learn and to open spiritually, to open your mind and find answers. It is a masculine quarter, ruled by intellect, and analytical logic, but she brings to it an intuition which is required to use these to best advantage. "The river is flowing, flowing and growing, the river is flowing back to the sea. Mother carry me, a child I will always be. Mother carry me, back to the sea." This Circle chant, sung in joy, sung in sorrow, is a cry to the Mother Aspect for comfort and warmth, a power chant calling upon the steady power and fullness of the Mother and a plea for guidance. While the Earth Mother, and the fully aspected Goddess are placed North in the Earth quarter, the Mother aspect alone belongs in the west. Comfort and love rule here. Emotions, sorrow, joy, tears, these belong to the ripeness of the Mother. Caring and loving for all her children, watching in pain and pride as they struggle to gain their own, knowing full well she could reach out and do it for them, but being both bound and desirous to let them do it for themselves. There is a considerable difference, as you might have interpreted from the above, between the Earth Mother and the Mother Aspect of the Goddess. That is why we've started with her quarter, because it reveals the limitations of the Aspect. The Mother aspect is ripeness, the ancient bearing of fruit, child and grain. She represents emotion and sexuality. The Goddess in that aspect is most of the altar (as discussed in the Great Rite lesson.) It is interesting to note the practice in numerous ancient cultures of lovemaking or outright sex magick in cornfields to help make the corn grow. The Dark Mother should also be placed here, although culturally, I have a tendancy to think of the Dark Mother as more in keeping the Crone Aspect. It is a bit of work to see the Dark Mother in the West, to separate Dark Mother from Crone, but it is worthwile. If you have any background with the tarot I would suggest you take it in that context, it is beyond the scope of this text. Our exploration of the Goddess and her Aspects brings us now to the Crone. For me, the Crone is the most fascinating of the Aspects of the Goddess. Partly I suppose because she is the most mysterious and paradoxical. "Blessed Goddess, old and wise, open mine, thy child's, eyes. Speak to me in whispered tones that I may know the rune of Crones." With life and growth comes age and wisdom, and the Crone is this in part. She holds fire and power, which wisely used can be of great benefit, but hold great danger for the unaware. Hers are the secrets of death and of life, and the mystery beyond the mystery. Part of the pleasure in knowing the Crone aspect is that while, unlike the fully aspected Goddess, she is not also Maiden and Mother, she does retain the experiences of both those Aspects in order to be Crone. The Crone, wizened though she is, must still be able to reach into herself and recall the innocent joys and high passions of the Maiden and the love and warmth of the Mother. To be Crone and to not have forgotten, to still be able to experience Maiden and Mother is, to me, very appealing. More importantly, to be comfortable in that Aspect, where you have truth and knowledge but have left youth and physical beauty behind, and to still _feel_ youth and beauty without being desirous of them is an admirable quality. Crone is the least paralleled Aspect of the Goddess to our human society. We discard our old and wise, not understanding their value as teachers and models, and fearing their appearance as a reminder of our own mortality. Knowing Crone is a door we much each open for ourselves for to know and love her is to cast aside a great many of our cultural and societal malteachings. While the individual Aspects of Threefold Goddess are certainly valid concepts and paths to knowing Goddess, I should caution that most mythological Goddess figures are composite Goddesses. Earth Mother Goddess figures are fully aspected Goddess by definition because they represent the full cycle of the Wheel. Most other Goddess figures can be classified as having a dominant (or operative) aspect and recessive (promised, or in some cases past) aspect. Future and past should not be taken literally, mythological Goddess figures are always whatever they are eternally, they do not tend to change (ie age). Maiden Goddesses possessing their operative in the Huntress or Warrior aspects most often have a promise of Crone. Maiden Goddesses expressing their dominance in beauty and/or love usually have their recessive aspect as Mother. For example, Athena is a Maiden Goddess with Crone attributes (the combination produces many Mother-type qualities, and this results in the Crone aspected Maiden being the most complete of the Mythological Goddesses, with the exception of Earth Mother Goddesses.) Aphrodite is of course a Maiden Goddess with Mother attributes. Similarly, Dark Mother Goddess figures mostly find their promise in Crone and Light Mother figures their recessive in Maiden. Crone recessives work the same way, although sometimes it takes a bit of close examination to find the "hidden" aspect. One should note that this is not a formula, rather a tool to assist in examining and understanding Goddess figures and creating one's own personal spiritual link with Goddess. It is also a useful consideration when invoking a specific Goddess with purpose in ritual. The purpose of this course has been to open avenues of approach in discovering and developing a relationship with Goddess. For me personally, I do not "believe" in the reality of mythological Goddess figures as they were presented, but I do believe they are a valid way to establish communication with Goddess. I also believe Goddess will appear in whatever form we are most ready to accept. The real Goddess, by my belief (and this is personal, not trad) is an entity beyond my comprehension, perhaps composed of light (could 5000 sci-fi films be wrong?), most assuredly unlike anything I could ever imagine in true form. However, I do find mythological Goddess figures highly useful for ritual, and of some help in my personal relationship with Goddess. I hope you will too. Blessed Be Eileen Being A Witch in Britain Today by James Pengelly Written for the Newcastle University Conference; Encounters of Religion I am regional co-ordinator for the Pagan Federation (PF) for Humberside, North Yorkshire and the counties that form the northeast of England up to the Scottish Borders. The PF was founded in 1971 by a group of Gardnerian Witches, the object of it being to counter what was perceived as being popular misconceptions about Witchcraft. The main reason for the existence of the PF remains largely unchanged, as the last few years have seen what can only be described as an onslaught by various fundamentalist Christian organisations who have latched on to the unfortunate and sad matter of child abuse to which they have added the word "Satanic' as a means by which they can attack and defame the occult in general, and Witchcraft in particular. I will return to this matter elsewhere in this lecture, but I mention it now to illustrate the importance of our anti-defamation work. In addition, the Pagan Federation acts as a networking organisation to put people who share views on religious and spiritual matters in touch with one another, to enable them to get together, discuss and learn, and experience further. The third important aspect to our work is to increase awareness of the spiritual and cultural heritage of this country. Given that many, if not most, of our customs and traditions have their roots set deep in our Pagan past and that our countryside is rich in the physical remains of this we feel that a positive promotion of this inheritance is vital to a fuller understanding of who we are. The topic of this lecture is Being A Witch In Britain Today. Now I think that when one mentions the word, "Witch" to the average member of the public, the image that is immediately conjured up is one of a wizened old hag boiling up an extremely noxious brew in some bubbling cauldron, probably on a windswept moor somewhere. This is of course Shakespearian in its perception, but unfortunately, whatever his intentions were at the time he wrote Macbeth, William Shakespeare did Witchcraft a considerable disservice, because this image has stuck. In addition, the public is very much subject to conditioning laid down in the Middle Ages by the Church, through historical accounts of Witch trials, which were heavily biased. Consequently it is hardly surprising that the image the general public has is of nasty, evil, thoroughly bad people riding around on broomsticks at dead of night creating havoc all over the place, poisoning people right left and centre, doing unspeakable things with goats, not to mention chickens, frogs, toads, cats, and sundry other animals. All in all not very nice people! It is interesting to note that even in this day and age, many people are still very superstitious when it comes to magic, the occult, Witchcraft and so on. In addition to the historical misconceptions about Witches and Witchcraft, I would go as far as saying that people still have a deeply rooted superstitious attitude, and that while some may automatically dismiss out of hand Witches having any sort of magical power, deep down, the majority of people still harbour deep rooted fears about this sort of thing being possible. At a time when mankind has seemingly achieved so much in the field of science, when there is so little mystery left in life because everything has been rationalised and explained, and developed beyond that which our ancestors were able to comprehend, the fact that people do still harbour superstitions and worries about Witchcraft and the occult in general does not altogether surprise me. If one removes the mystery from life, one has nothing left with which to replace it, and one has to look to that which one cannot explain. The problem being that man has for countless generations been frightened by that which he cannot explain. And this is why we are now living in the scientific age, because man has purposely set out to explain that of which he is afraid. The thing being that there is very little left that man cannot explain. And one of the areas that he cannot explain is, of course, magic, Witchcraft and the occult. Let us for a moment, examine the term, "occult". Occult simply means 'that which is hidden'. The term has been used for centuries to explain the general workings of the universe. The creation of fire would have, at some point in time, been regarded as magic. Why things moved when they were subject to certain power sources such as steam would have been deemed magic before the principles were understood. Illnesses were originally considered to be occult based. You could impose an illness on a neighbour or friend if you had the magical power to do it. But of course, none of these things were actually magical in any sense. The magic lay in the fact that a lot of people didn't understand what was going on. Those who did have an understanding of what was going on were perceived as having some sort of power. The biblical phrase, "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live", is in this context quite revealing because in its original format, the word, "Witch", did not actually translate as Witch, it translated as "poisoner". And there is no doubt that the original village Witch would have in her own way been a doctor of sorts, in that she or he would have understood the uses of various herbs for good purposes and for bad purposes. And could quite probably been paid to use that knowledge to achieve the results for which she was being paid, to either kill or cure. Consequently, the village Witch, was someone to be feared, and respected. As the Christian Church took hold, the older Pagan ways were perceived as something to be got rid of. I do not think this was particularly a spiritual battle. It was a power battle. It was simply a matter of one religious-political system wishing to gain control over another. And as Christianity grew in strength, largely through fear and oppression, the old ways were presented as being evil and wicked, and not to be tolerated. This situation remained largely extant until 1951, when the last laws remaining on the English statute book against Witchcraft were repealed, and what is now commonly referred to as the British Revivalist Craft came to light. The fact that it had, in some form or another, managed to survive over countless generations was, in itself, quite a surprising thing. But we now know that what are often referred to as the Hereditary Craft and the Traditional Craft were to a certain extent passed down from generation to generation either within specific families or small, invariably farming, communities. It was this that the late Dr Gerald Gardener is thought to have discovered, and built up into what is today known as the Revivalist Craft. His work was later developed by others such as Alex Sanders who founded the Alexandrian Craft and, more recently, by Janet and Stewart Farrar. Their works are very well known, popular, and easily available, and they have created what is sometimes jokingly referred to as the Farrarian Craft; a hybrid mixture of Gardenerian, Alexandrian and their own methods of working. Being a Witch today in this country is not necessarily a hard thing, but nor is necessarily an easy thing. There is still a great deal of superstitious prejudice and nonsense held against Witches. And this is fermented, and that is the only word I can think of, to a large extent by certain areas of our national media, in particular the more lurid tabloid press, and of course Christian fundamentalist groups, who have over the last few years started to expand at a rather alarming, and for many non-Christians, a rather frightening rate. The phenomena of Christian fundamentalism is something which has largely been imported to this country from America, where it has been a populist Christian movement for many, many years. One only has to look at the news over the last few years concerning some American fundamentalist leaders to realise that basically, they are like so many of us human beings, subject to all the little foibles that human beings are generally subject to, that they are just as easily led astray as any of us can be. The rising issue of fundamentalism is, as I say, quite a frightening thing because it seeks to impose a set of standards, a set of behaviour, and a set of religious beliefs, on everyone, which no-one is permitted to question. This is one reason why we find so many people are now turning to Paganism in its broadest sense, and to Wicca in particular. (Wicca being the commonly used modern term for Witchcraft.) They turn to us because they are disillusioned with the level of dogma and the level of imposition they find within established Christian traditions, be they Church of England, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, or some of the more extreme fundamentalist sects. People seem now to be dividing into groups. There are those who are 'the led' and they search for leaders. And when they find a leader who is prepared to tell them what to do, when to do it, how to think, how not to think and so on, they latch onto that and they go on quite happy in their own way because they want to be told. On the other hand there are an increasing number of people who are prepared to listen to what others have to say but then like to go away and make their own minds up about things, and work things out for themselves. And we are finding more and more that this is what Paganism in general and Wicca in particular is providing. It is providing people with the means by which they can form deeply personal relationships with their own particular perceptions of deity. They can work with that perception. They can utilise it within a framework that is, generally speaking, of a very high moral and ethical standard. And the idea that Witches are evil, nasty, wicked people who go around sticking pins in little lumps of wax shaped into the form of a person containing lumps of fingernail and pieces of hair and other sundry bodily parts, is being increasingly recognised as grossly untrue. We have to bear in mind that a lot of the popular perceptions of the Witch are, as I have already said, largely determined by historical records. Historical records written by people in whose interest it was to defame the Witch, and to register her, or him, as an evil person, but even these are now being challenged by more and more people. So, as I've said, being a Witch in this country today is not always an easy thing. On the one hand, you can meet with extreme prejudice, on the other hand you can equally meet with extreme derision. A number of perfectly normal, sane, rational people that I know of think that the fact that I am a Witch is a huge joke. I am very used to people asking me "When can I come round to your house and take all my clothes off?." My usual response to which is "Any time you like providing I'm not having my tea at the time, or watching Coronation Street, but believe me pal, you're on your own." I personally find that this is the best way to approach this sort of thing. If you can turn the question into a joke aimed at yourself, people are happy with that and feel comfortable with that, and will go away thinking that basically you're a pretty decent sort of person with just some very strange ideas. If, on the other hand, you become intensely defensive, the opposite can be true because they will assume that you have something to hide, something which you don't wish to talk about. And we all know that faced with that sort of situation the human mind is capable of conjuring up all sorts of unpleasant images. So I stand before you today proclaiming myself to be a Witch. I do not particularly like using the term, but it is a term with which most people are familiar, so within the context of this lecture, I am happy to use it. And I stand before you here, not a wizened old crone, dressed in rags and tatters with a big wart on the end of her nose, but, I hope, a fairly presentable man in his early middle age, who has a very respectable job. I have a house, a mortgage, a small daughter, I am like many people of my generation, separated from my wife, for purely personal reasons. I am, to all intents and purposes an ordinary person. And yet I stand before you here, and tell you I am a Witch. What does this mean for me personally? Basically, like most Witches, I am a Pagan. I believe in the Old Religion. The religion that was worldwide before Christianity or Hinduism, or Islam took a hold on large areas of the world. Once upon a time, whether people like to admit it or not, the whole world was Pagan. Paganism then was vastly different from Paganism today. There are those who go round saying that they are practising pre-Christian Paganism. I would say, that while they are not necessarily deluding themselves, they are mis-leading themselves. What we are practising today is the spirit of ancient Paganism. We cannot possibly practise ancient Paganism, because if we were doing so, we would be indulging in such things as blood sacrifice, and so on and so forth, which forms no part of modern Pagan tradition. Witchcraft is a sub-system of broad Paganism. Most Witches regard it as the mystery aspect of Paganism. The mystery aspect being that one searches for the spark of the ultimate divine source, which is inherent in each one of us, in the hope that one can find it, come to terms with it, and accept it as part of ourselves. Most Pagans believe in an ultimate creative source. Christians call it God. We believe that there exists, somewhere out there in the wider universe, the source of all creation. We do not give it a name, we do not give it a form. It is, to our way of thinking, entirely neutral. It is all things in one thing. It is all things and it is nothing. It is largely beyond our reach. Some people aspire to attain union with the ultimate, very, very few people ever reach it. Consequently, most Pagans will choose to leave it alone. It is unreachable. And it is unaware of our existence, because it is neutral in form. What we do is we aspect it; we split it into the various components which form it. The ultimate split is gender, male and female. If the ultimate creative source is all things, then it must have male and female aspects. So the ultimate male aspect is 'The God', the ultimate female aspect is 'The Goddess'. Below this one can continue splitting into various other aspects as one chooses, until one gets down to a level of elementals, nature spirits, and so on and so forth. The idea being, that all natural things coming from the ultimate creative source contain a spark of that creative source, and consequently all things are inherently sacred. We reject entirely the Christian concept that man is born sinful, and has to spend the whole of his life begging forgiveness for sins real and imaginary. We believe that it is because of this attitude that mankind does a lot of the things he does. If you bring somebody up and condition them to believe that they are inherently bad, they are going to react in that way. Pagans and Witches believe that man is born inherently sacred, and it is what he himself does with his life that makes him bad or good. It is nothing to do with God, the Gods, the Goddesses or anything else. Consequently, Paganism and Witchcraft are extremely responsible forms of religious practice in that they teach that we are responsible for what we do and the effect that it has for those around us, both immediately and out in the wider world. We believe in what is commonly referred to as 'the ripple effect'. Drop a stone in a pond, and it will create ripples which will go on and on until they reach the bank and are forced to stop. If you regard the universe as a very large ocean, everytime one of us does something, we create a ripple effect. The ripples, on a universal scale, may be imperceptible, but they are there none the less. And if we regard life in that way, we need to immediately take stock of that which we do and act upon it. Now obviously it is not possible to take this sort of philosophy to an extreme, otherwise, one would literally do nothing. If one flushes the toilet one is potentially adding to sea pollution. If one turns an electric light on, one is potentially adding to air pollution. Whatever one does, somewhere along the line is likely to have a detrimental effect on someone. The Witch or Pagan will judge what he or she is doing with his or her life and will try and determine the least harmful way of living. It requires a great deal of thought, it requires a great deal of honesty and self analysis and not a small amount of self-sacrifice. it forces one to look at how one relates to oneself, and life around us, because we believe that all natural things on this world are sacred, and therefore to be treated with respect. So, what then, is our relationship with our perception of divinity? As 1 have already mentioned, we personalise aspects of the ultimate creative source. These personalisations can be drawn from one or another of the existing Pagan pantheons, such as Norse, Greek, Roman or Egyptian, or they can be done on a much more personal level where the individual will somehow personalise whatever aspect of divinity they wish to work with in that moment in time. Most Witches have the Great Goddess, and the Horned God. (The horns, incidentally have absolutely nothing to do with the concept of the devil having horns. And are usually, in this country, personified as being deer's antlers being simply symbols of power and strength.) The Great Goddess is seen as being the Mother of all things, the Horned God, her consort who is also frequently linked with the Sun as the All Father. Below that, we have the Triple Goddess, whose symbol is the Moon, the Maid, the Mother, and the Crone. And then there are any number of other personifications largely based on the individual preference of the person or group, doing whatever it is they're doing. This may seem to be an immensely complicated system, and indeed it sometimes takes a great deal of understanding. But you have to relate it to the natural seasonal cycle, or festivals, that most Pagans, whatever their traditions, will follow. The seasonal cycle basically follows the agricultural and solar cycle of the year. We have eight major festivals. The first, and possibly the most important, is Samhain, spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N, commonly known as Hallowe'en, and is thought to have been the time when the ancient Celts celebrated the new year. It was the end of one agricultural year and the beginning of the next. It was the final onset of Winter. It was, as it is commonly regarded today, also a festival of the dead. The modern concept today of ghosts and ghoulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, stemmed directly from the Celtic feast of the dead. This is not some necrophiliac intention of summoning up spirits for evil purposes, it was/is simply a time when one reflects on the memories of lost loved ones, lost friends, and hopes to gain some insight into one's own life from the lessons that we can learn from those who have gone before us. It is interesting to note that, even in its christianised form, Halloween, or All Hallows Eve is still a festival of the dead. The mid-Winter Solstice is, of course, Yule, an Anglo-Saxon word so old its meaning is now completely forgotten. It has been suggested that that it could mean 'wheel', and within a Pagan or a Wiccan context the year is often referred to as "the wheel of the year", in that it turns on, and on. Yule celebrates the re-birth of the Sun. It is indeed interesting that Christians should have taken this festival to mark the birth of Christ, when what historical evidence we have seems to suggest that Christ was actually either born in March or September. From then we move on to Imbolc, christianised as Candlemas, which represents the first stirring of Spring and the gradual return of light. We then have the Spring Equinox, which when the earth comes back fully to life, and has become largely associated with Easter. Many people today do not realise that Easter is a moveable feast because the date of Easter is set on the first Sunday after the first full Moon after the Spring Equinox. And if that isn't a Pagan concept, I really don't know what is. In fact, the very name "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon fertility Goddess "Eostre" and many of the items traditionally associated with Easter such as eggs and rabbits are directly derived from Pagan ideas and symbols. Then follows Beltane, which is interesting in that it is the only Pagan holiday which does not have a Christian counterpoint. This is probably because of its overtly sexual nature. It is interesting that children conceived at Beltane were invariably born on or around Imbolc, which is lambing time in the sheep farmers year. Ewe's milk would have been important in the past to strengthen children for the last part of Winter and to give them strength to grow through the Spring and Summer. After Beltane we have of course the Summer Solstice, mid-Summer, which represents the Sun at its height. Solstices and Equinoxes all being solar festivals. The union of Sun and Earth to produce the harvest that is to come. Lugnassadh, commonly referred to as Lammas, which literally means loaf-mass from the Anglo-Saxon, is the start of the harvest. It is the time when we prepare to cut down that which the union of the Sun and the Earth Mother has provided for us. The Autumn equinox is the harvest festival. A time to rest and relax after the harvest has been collected. And then we come back again to Samhain, or Halloween. So as you can see, we follow a very natural cycle. Rituals and ceremonies can vary immensely from group to group, or individual to individual. But each one, whenever it is done, will consist of some sort of symbolic, what I can only describe as 'drama', that reflects what we see going on in the world around us, and how we perceive the Gods and Goddesses of Paganism or Witchcraft as playing a part in that. There is a lot of talk about the use of spirit powers and so on and so forth, and many Christians perceive this as being inherently very, very dangerous. Spiritualism, as it is commonly perceived, plays very little part in Wicca. It is not something that we believe should be played around with. We will invoke on one another the spirit of a particular God or a particular Goddess dependent on what we are doing at the time. But all we are asking that particular God or Goddess to do is imbibe us with something of their power, something of their insight. It is basically an intensely psychological thing. Because, as we all know, if one stands in front of a mirror saying "every day and every way, I am getting better and better", then one is likely to grow in self-confidence. The concept is pretty much the same. So, as we can see, Witches are not horrible evil people, but generally, quite ordinary nice decent people who have chosen to try and relate more to the natural things around us than some far distant imperceptible god-form. But what of magic? Witchcraft is obviously very closely associated with the use of magic. So what is magic? Magic was once described as 'the art of causing change in conformity with will'. Put more basically, this simply means mind over matter. Causing something to happen simply by the strength of your own mind. This is perhaps a bit too far fetched for a great many people to accept, but when one considers the nature of prayer, one has a concept which is easier to understand. For most Witches, an act of magic is simply a form of prayer. You will seek the attention of a particular God or a particular Goddess, and you will ask her or him to assist you in something that you want done. Surely, this is no different from anyone going into a church or synagogue, kneeling down, and saying, "please God, help me". It is true that Witches will dress that up in some way and use items of equipment and paraphernalia which are alien to a church, mosque, or synagogue. These are primarily nothing more than psychological props, means by which the individual can focus their attention on something. Using the appropriate equipment at the appropriate time aided by appropriate colours and scents are all means by which one can focus one's mind onto a specific point. Like anything, our acts of magic do not necessarily always produce the desired result. But we choose to believe that if it does not happen, it is because it is not meant to happen, rather than we are not worthy of it happening. Many people talk of white and black magic. This is an entirely Christian concept; we do not accept the terms white or black magic. Magic is a neutral force which is used by the individual and it is what the individual does with it that makes it white or black. But most Witches, in using the powers that they have available to them will consider the implications of what they are doing, and will think very seriously about undertaking any act of magic which could prove detrimental to any-one or anything which cannot be justified morally and spiritually. If the Craft has any "laws" as such they apply to the use of magic in a more obvious way than any-where else, and there are basically two such "laws". The first is more of an ethic - "An it harm none-do what thou will". On the face of it this seems to offer carte-blanche to do what you want as long as no-one gets hurt but if regarded within the context of the "ripple effect" mentioned earlier the relevance and importance of it becomes clearer. In addition to this, most Wiccans subscribe to what is usually referred to as the "Law of Threefold Return" which basically means that the result of an act will reflect on the instigator times three. As you will possibly appreciate, this is worth serious consideration if what one is undertaking is potentially or deliberately harmful. Between the clearly "white" or "black" areas of magic however lies the "grey" area. This is hard to define as it depends largely on the conscience of the individual but whatever the shade, a Witch will never undertake any act of magic without serious consideration of all the matters and questions surrounding it. To go back to the matter of Satanic child-abuse, the suggestion that there exists some sort of organised conspiracy of Satanic based child abuse is nonsense. It is a myth created entirely by so-called Christian extremists whose intention is to ferment a modern Witchhunt in exactly the same way as the Nazis fermented action against the Jews. There is no question of that. Whilst I would not deny that there may be some sick, criminal perverts, who utilise the cover of the occult in general and Witchcraft in particular, to abuse children, these people are not Witches, they are sick and evil perverts who deserve the full weight of the law to fall upon them. To specifically identify Wicca with child abuse is criminally irresponsible as it brands a huge number of totally innocent people as potential child abusers, and given that it is an intensely emotive issue, there is a real risk of a lynch mob mentality being provoked, with all the horror that it implies. If we are to judge a whole belief system on the strength of the activities of a few perverts, one could equally point the finger at the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church, both of whom have suffered from the publicity of members of their own clergies being caught for this very crime. Recently, in this country alone, there have been several instances of Church of England and Roman Catholic clergy abusing children, and there is evidence to suggest that it is rife within the Roman Catholic church in America. I pass no judgement on the churches for that. This is down to individuals, and again, we come back to the concept of individual responsibility for one's own actions. For a Witch to abuse a child is total anathema. It is contrary to everything that we hold close to our hearts. Our children are our future. If we abuse them, we run the risk of turning them into abusers. Apart from the fact that in abusing them, we abuse that which is part of the sacred, the ultimate divine source. Children born in love and unity are sacred and to be treated as such. There is no evidence, other than in the minds of those that make the allegations, that so-called Satanic abuse exists. As to the future, and what we would like; basically all we seek is the acceptance of society to be what we are, and to practise what we choose to practise. We do not seek to impose ourselves on anybody, or anything. We wish more than anything else, to exist in harmony with members of other religions, who have the perfect right to believe what they choose to believe. All we ask is that they afford us that same right. Nobody has the right to impose their values on any other person, other than in a purely secular sociological situation where rules and regulations are necessary to avoid total anarchy. On the spiritual level, the individual has the right to choose what form of religion he or she will follow, and how he or she will perceive his/her own God. When one looks around the world today, one can see that many of the conflicts going on in places like Yugoslavia, and Northern Ireland have a religious basis. They are based on one group of people trying to impose its religious form on another. This, we feel, is entirely wrong. Since the onset of Christianity, it has been the fact that one religion has tried to impose itself on another. Millions of people have died in modern times for this very reason. And so much harm, and so much suffering, and so much pain could have been avoided if mankind only accepted that one person has no right to impose his religious will on another. We do not ask for converts. We do not actively seek converts. All we ask is that we be left alone in peace, to do that which we feel is right. We would dearly love to work in harmony with members of other religions, towards a greater good. Surely, although we walk along different paths, our ultimate aim should be the same - to achieve a world that can live in peace with itself. We believe that our way is one way to achieve that. We do not say that it is the only way, we say that it is one way. Our paths may not meet, they may certainly not cross, but they run in parallel, and if we can hold hands across the divides that exist between us, surely, the world will be a better place. We have a great deal in common. Each religion professes a love of humanity. Each religion professes a love of the world that surrounds us, and yet so few of those religions that profess those beliefs, do very much about it. We do not say, as I have already said, that ours is the only way, the one way, the true way. There is no one true way. The Arabs I think have a saying, and I may have this wrong, that there are a million ways to God, and it is for each one of us to find his or her own way. This, we feel, is a fundamental truth. We believe passionately, that the world could be a better place if half the people in it stopped trying to impose their will on the other half. We have no desire to do this. We wish to move forward with others who may or may not share our beliefs to a better world. This paper may be freely copied or re-published providing it is copied or re-published in its entirety without changes, and authorship credited to James Pengelly, Pagan Federation. James Pengelly The Pagan Federation, BM Box 7097, London WCIN 3XX. RITUAL THEORY AND TECHNIQUE Copyright Colin Low 1990 (cal@hplb.hpl.hp.com) 1. Introduction 2. Magical Consciousness 3. Limitation 4. Essential Steps 5. Maps & Correspondences 6. Conclusion 1. Introduction These notes attempt to say something useful about magical ritual. This is difficult, because ritual is invented, and any sequence of actions can be ritualised and used to symbolise anything; but then something similar can be said about words and language, and that doesn't prevent us from trying to communicate, so I will make the attempt to say something useful about ritual, and try to steer a path between the Scylla of anthropology and sweeping generalisations, and the Charybdis of cultish parochialism. My motivation for writing this is my belief that while any behaviour can be ritualised, and it is impossible to state "magical ritual consists of this" or "magical ritual consists of that", some magical rituals are better than others. This raises questions of what I mean by "goodness" or "badness", "effectiveness" or "ineffectiveness" in the context of magical work, and I intend to duck this with a pragmatic reply. A magical ritual is "good" if it achieves its intention without undesired side effects, and it is "bad" if the roof falls on your head. Underlying this definition is another belief: that magical ritual taps a raw and potentially dangerous (and certainly amoral) psychic force which has to be channelled and directed; traditional forms of magical ritual do that and are not so arbitrary as they appear to be. An outline of ceremonial magical ritual (in the basic form in which it has been handed down in Europe over the centuries) is that the magician works within a circle and uses consecrated tools and the magical names of various entities to evoke or invoke Powers. It seems to work. Or at least it works for some people some of the time. How *well* does it work? That's a fair question, and not an easy one to answer, as there is too much ego at stake in admitting that one's rituals don't always work out. My rituals don't always work - sometimes nothing appears to happen, sometimes I get unexpected side effects. The same is true of those magicians I know personally, and I suspect the same is true of most people. Even at the mundane level, if you've ever tried to recreate a "magical moment" in a relationship, you will know that it is hard to stand in the same river twice - there is an elusive and wandering spark which all too often just wanders. In summary, I like to know why some rituals work better than others, and why some, even when that elusive spark is present, go sour and call up all the wrong things - these notes contain some of my conclusions. As I have tried to lift the rug and look underneath the surface, the approach is abstract in places; I prefer to be practical rather than theoretical, but if magic is to be anything other than a superstitious handing-down of mumbo- jumbo, we need a model of what is happening, a causality of magic against which it is possible to make value judgements about what is good and bad in ritual. Traditional models of angels, spirits, gods and goddesses, ancestral spirits and so on are useful up to a point, but these are not the end of the story, and in penetrating beyond these "intermediaries" the magician is forced to confront the nature of consciousness itself and become something of a mystic. The idea that the physical universe is the end product of a "process of consciousness" is virtually a first principle of Eastern esoteric philosophy, it is at the root of the Kabbalistic doctrine of emanation and the sephiroth, and it has been adopted by many twentieth century magicians as a useful complement to whatever traditional model of magic they were weaned on - once one has accepted that it is possible to create "thought-forms" and "artificial elementals" and "telesmic images", it is a small step to admitting that the gods, goddesses, angels, and spirits of traditonal magic may have no reality outside of the consciousness which creates and sustains them. This is what I believe personally on alternate days of the week. On the remaining days I am happy to believe in the reality of gods, goddesses, archangels, elementals, ancestral spirits etc. - in common with many magicians I sit on the fence in an interesting way. There is a belief among some magicians that while gods, goddesses etc may be the creations of consciousness, on a par with money and the Bill of Rights, such things take on a life of their own and can be treated as if they were real, so while I take the view that magic is ultimately the manipulation of consciousness, you will find me out there calling on the Powers with as much gusto as anyone else. 2. Magical Consciousness The principle function of magical ritual is to cause well-defined changes in consciousness. There are other (non-magical) kinds of ritual and ceremony - social, superstitious, celebratory etc - carried out for a variety of reasons, but magical ritual can be distinguished by its emphasis on causing shifts in consciousness to states not normally attainable, with a consequence of causing effects which would be considered impossible or improbable by most people in this day and age. The realisation that the content of magical ritual is a means to an end, the end being the deliberate manipulation of consciousness, is an watershed in magical technique. Many people, particularly the non-practicing general public, believe there is something inherently magical about ritual, that it can be done, like cooking, from a recipe book; that prayers, names of powers, fancy candles, crystals, five-pointed stars and the like have an intrinsic power which works by itself, and it is only necessary to be initiated into all the details and hey presto! - you can do it. I believe this is (mostly) wrong. Symbols do have magical power, but not in the crude sense implied above; magical power comes from the conjunction of a symbol and a person who can bring that symbol to life, by directing and limiting their consciousness through the symbol, in the manner of icing through an icing gun. Magical power comes from the person (or people), not from the superficial trappings of ritual. The key to ritual is the manipulation and shifting of consciousness, and without that shift it is empty posturing. So let us concentrate on magical consciousness, and how it differs from the state of mind in which we normally carry out our business in the world. Firstly, there isn't a sudden quantum jump into an unusual state of mind called magical consciousness. All consciousness is equally magical, and what we call magical depends entirely on what we consider to be normal and take for granted. There is a continuum of consciousness spreading away from the spot where we normally hang our hat, and the potential for magic depends more on the appropriateness of our state for what we are trying to achieve than it does on peculiar trance states. When I want to boil an egg I don't spend three days fasting and praying to God; I just boil an egg. One of the characteristics of my "normal" state of consciousness is that I understand how to boil an egg, but from many alternative states of consciousness it is a magical act of the first order. So what I call magical consciousness differs from normal consciousness only in so far as it is a state less appropriate for boiling eggs, and more appropriate for doing other things. Secondly, there isn't one simple flavour of magical consciousness; the space of potential consciousness spreads out along several different axes, like moving in a space with several different dimensions, and that means the magician can enter a large number of distinct states, all of which can be considered different aspects of magical consciousness. Lastly, it is normal to shift our consciousness around in this space during our everyday lives, so there is nothing unusual in shifting consciousness to another place. This makes magical consciousness hard to define, because it isn't something so extraordinary after all. Nevertheless, there is a difference between walking across the road and walking around the world, and there are differences between what I call normal and magical consciousness, even though they are arbitrary markers in a continuum. There is a difference in magnitude, and there is a difference in the "magnitude of intent", that is, will. Magic takes us beyond the normal; it disrupts cosy certainties; it explores new territory. Like new technology, once it becomes part of everyday life it stops being "magical" and becomes "normal". We learn the "magic of normal living" at an early age and forget the magic of it; normal living affects us in ways which the magician recognises as magical, but so "normal" that it is difficult to realise what is going on. From the point of view of magical consciousness, "normal life" is seen to be a complex magical balancing act, like a man who keeps a hundred plates spinning on canes at the same time and is always on the point of losing one. Magical consciousness is not the extraordinary state: normal life is. The man on the stage is so busy spinning his plates he can spend no time doing anything else. A characteristic of magical consciousness which distinguishes it from normal consciousness is that in most magical work the magician moves outside the "normally accessible" region of consciousness. Most "normal people" will resist an attempt to shift their consciousness outside the circle of normality, and if too much pressure is applied they panic, throw- up, become ill, have hysterics, call the police or a priest or a psychiatrist, or end up permanently traumatised. Sometimes they experience a blinding but one-sided illumination and become fanatics for a one-sided point of view. Real, detectable shifts in consciousness outside the "normal circle" are to be entered into warily, and the determined ritualist treads a thin line between success, and physical and psychical illness. A neophyte in Tibet swears that he or she is prepared to risk madness, disease and death, and in my personal experience this is not melodramatic - the risks are real enough. It depends on temperament and constitution - some people wander all over the planes of consciousness with impunity, some find it extremely stressful, and some claim it never did them any harm (when they are clearly as cracked as the Portland Vase). The grosser forms of magic are hard to do because body and mind fight any attempt to move into those regions of consciousness where it is possible to transcend the "normal" and create new kinds of normality. The switch into magical consciousness is often accompanied by a feeling of "energy" or "power". Reality becomes a fluid, and the will is like a wind blowing it this way and that. Far out. There are several traditional methods for reaching abnormal states of consciousness: dance, drumming, hallucinogenic and narcotic substances, fasting and other forms of privation, sex, meditation, dreaming, and ritual, used singly and in combination. These notes deal only with ritual. Magical ritual has evolved organically out of the desire to reach normally inaccessible regions of consciousness and still continue living sanely in the world afterwards, and once that is understood, its profundity from a psychological point of view can be appreciated. 3. Limitation The concept of limitation is so important in the way magical ritual has developed that it is worth taking a look at what it means before going on to look at the basics of ritual. We are limited beings: our lives are limited to some tens of years, our bodies are limited in their physical abilities, and compared to all the different kinds of life on this planet we are clearly very specialised compared with the potential of what we could be, if we had the choice of being anything we wanted. Even as human beings we are limited, in that we are all quite distinct from oneanother, and guard that individuality and uniqueness as an inalienable right. We limit ourselves to a few skills because of the effort and talent required to acquire them, and only in exceptional cases do we find people who are expert in a large number of different skills - most people are happy if they are acknowledged as being an expert in one thing, and it is a fact that as the sum total of knowledge increases, so people (particularly those with technical skills) are forced to become more and more specialised. This idea of limitation and specialisation has found its way into magical ritual because of the magical (or mystical) perception that, although all consciousness in the universe is One, and that Oneness can be perceived directly, it has become limited. There is a process of limitation in which the One (God, if you like) becomes progressively structured and constrained until it reaches the level of thee and me. The details of this process (sometimes called "The Fall") lies well outside a set of notes on ritual technique, and being theosophical, is the sort of thing people like to have long-winded arguments about, so I am not going to say much about it. What I *will* say is that magicians and mystics the world over are relatively unanimous in insisting that the normal everyday consciousness of most human beings is a severe *limitation* on the potential of consciousness, and it is possible, through various disciplines, to extend consciousness into new regions; this harks back to the "circle of normality" I mentioned in the previous section. From a magical point of view the personality, the ego, the continuing sense of individual "me-ness", is a magical creation with highly specialised abilities, an artificial elemental or thoughtform which consumes all our magical power in exchange for the kind of limitation necessary to survive, and in order to work magic it is necessary to divert energy away from this obsession with personal identity and self-importance. Now, consider the following problem: you have been imprisoned inside a large inflated plastic bag. You have been given a sledghammer and a scalpel. Which tool will get you out faster? The answer I am looking for is the scalpel: a way of getting out of large, inflated, plastic bags is to apply as much force as possible to as sharp a point as possible. Magicians agree on this principle - the key to successful ritual work is a "single-pointed will". A mystic may try to expand consciousness in all directions simultaneously, to encompass more and more of the One, to embrace the One, perhaps even to transcend the One, but this is hard, and most people aren't up to it in practise. Rather than expand in all directions simultaneously, it is much easier to *limit* an excursion of consciousness in one direction, and the more precise and well-defined that limitation to a specific direction, the easier it is to get out of the bag. Limitation of consciousness is the trick we use to cope with the complexity of life in modern society, and as long as we are forced to live under this yoke we can make a virtue out of a necessity, and use our carefully cultivated ability to focus attention on minutiae to burst out of the bag. What limitation means in practise is that magical ritual is designed to produce specific and highly *limited* changes in consciousness, and this is done by using a specific map of consciousness, and there are symbolic correspondences within the map which can be used in the construction of a ritual - I discuss this later. The principle of limitation is a key to understanding the structure of magical ritual, and a key to successful practice. To summarise the last two sections, I would say the characteristics of a "good" ritual are: 1. Entry into magical consciousness and the release of "magical energy". 2. A limitation of consciousness to channel that energy in the correct direction, with minimal "splatter". Without the energy there is nothing to channel. Without the limitation, energy splatters in all directions and takes the path of minimal psychic resistance to earth. A magical ritual is the calculated shifting and limitation of consciousness. 4. Essential Steps There is never going to be agreement about what is essential in a ritual and what is not, any more than there will ever be agreement about what makes a good novel. That doesn't mean there is nothing worth discussing. The steps I have enumerated below are suggestions which were handed down to me, and a lot of insight (not mine) has gone into them; they conform to a Western magical tradition which has not changed in its essentials for thousands of years, and I hand them on to you in the same spirit as I received them. These are the steps: 1. Open the Circle 2. Open the Gates 3. Invocation to the Powers 4. Statement of Intention and Sacrifice 5. Main Ritual 6. Dismissal of Powers 7. Close the Gates 8. Close the Circle 4.1 Open the Circle The Circle is the place where magical work is carried out. It might literally be circle on the ground, or it could be a church, or a stone ring, or a temple, or it might be an imagined circle inscribed in the aethyr, or it could be any spot hallowed by tradition. In some cases the Circle is created specifically for one piece of work and then closed, while in other cases (e.g. a church) the building is consecrated and all the space within the building is treated as if it is an open circle for long periods of time. I don't want to deal too much in generalities, so I will deal with the common case where a circle is created specifically for one piece of work, for a period of time typically less than one day. The Circle is the first important magical limit: it creates an area within which the magical work takes place. The magician tries to control everything which takes place within the Circle (limitation), and so a circle half-a-mile across is impractical. The Circle marks the boundary between the rest of the world (going on its way as normal), and a magical space where things are most definitely not going on as normal (otherwise there wouldn't be any point in carrying out a ritual in the first place). There is a dislocation: the region inside the circle is separated from the rest of space and is free to go its own way. There are some types of magical work where it may not be sensible to have a circle (e.g. working with the natural elements in the world at large) but unless you are working with a Power already present in the environment in its normal state, it is useful to work within a circle. The Circle may be a mark on the ground, or something more intangible still; my own preference is an imagined line of blue fire drawn in the air. It is in the nature of consciousness that anything taken as real and treated as real will eventually be accepted as Real - and if you want to start a good argument, state that money doesn't exist and isn't Real. From a ritual point of view the Circle is a real boundary, and if its usefulness is to be maintained it should be treated with the same respect as an electrified fence. Pets, children and casual onlookers should be kept out of it. Whatever procedures take place within the Circle should only take place within the Circle and in no other place, and conversely, your normal life should not intrude on the Circle unless it is part of your intention that it should. Basically, if you don't want a circle, don't have one, but if you do have one, decide what it means and stick to it. There is a school of thought which believes a circle is a "container for power", and another which believes a circle "keeps out the nasties". I subscribe to both and neither of these points of view. From a symbolic point of view, the Circle marks a new "circle of normality", a circle different from my usual "circle of normality", making it possible to keep the two "regions of consciousness" distinct and separate. The magician leaves everyday life behind when the Circle is opened, and returns to it when the Circle is closed, and for the duration adopts a discipline of thought and deed which is specific to the type of magical work being undertaken; this procedure is not so different from that in many kinds of laboratory where people work with hazardous materials. The circle is both a barrier and a container. This is a kind of psychic sanitation, and in magic "sanity" and "sanitary" have more in common than spelling. Opening a Circle usually involves drawing a circle in the air or on the ground, accompanied by an invocation to guardian spirits, or the elemental powers of the four quarters, or the four watchtowers, or the archangels, or whatever. The details aren't so important as practicing it until you can do it in your sleep, and you should carry it out with the same attitude as a soldier on formal guard duty outside a public building. You are establishing a perimeter under the watchful "eyes" of whatever guardians you have requested to keep an eye on things, and a martial attitude and sense of discipline creates the right psychological mood. 4.2 Opening the Gates The Gates in question are the boundary between normal and magical consciousness. Just as opening the Circle limits the ritual in space, so opening the Gates limits the ritual in time. Not everyone opens the Gates as a separate activity; opening a Circle can be considered a de-facto opening of Gates, but there are good reasons for keeping the two activities separate. Firstly, it is convenient to be able to open a Circle without going into magical consciousness; despite what I said about not bringing normal consciousness into the Circle, rules are made to be broken, and there are times when something unpleasant and unwanted intrudes on normal consciousness, and a Circle can be used to keep it out - like pulling blankets over your head at night. Secondly, opening the Gates as a separate activity means they can be tailored to the specific type of magical consciousness you are trying to enter. Thirdly, just as bank vaults and ICBMs have two keys, so it is prudent to make the entry into magical consciousness something you are not likely to do on a whim, and the more distinct steps there are, the more conscious effort is required. Lastly - and it is an important point - I open the circle with a martial attitude, and it is useful to have a breathing space to switch out of that mood and into the mood needed for the invocation. Opening the Gates provides an opportunity to make that switch. 4.3 Invocation to the Powers The invocation to the Powers is often an occasion for some of the most laboured, leaden, pompous, grandiose and turgid prose ever written or recited. Tutorial books on magic are full of this stuff. "Oh glorious moon, wreathed in aetherial light...". You know the stuff. If you are invoking Saturn during a waxing moon you might be justified in going on like Brezhnev addressing the Praesidium of the Soviet Communist Party, but as in every other aspect of magic, the trick isn't what you do, but how you do it, and interminable invocations aren't the answer. On a practical level, reading a lengthy invocation from a sheet of paper in dim candlelight requires so much conscious effort that it is hard to "let go", so I like keep things simple and to the point, and practice until I can do an invocation without having to think about it too much, and that leaves room for the more important "consciousness changing" aspect of the invocation. An invocation is like a ticket for a train, and if you can't find the train there isn't much point in having the ticket. Opening the Gates gets you to the doorstep of magical consciousness, but it is the invocation which gets you onto the train and propels you to the right place, and that isn't something which "just happens" unless you have a natural aptitude for the aspect of consciousness you are invoking. However, it does happen; people tend to begin their magical work with those areas of consciousness where they feel most at home, so they may well have some initial success. Violent, evil people do violent and evil conjurations; loving people invoke love - most people begin their magical work with "a free ticket" to some altered state of consciousness, but in general, invoking a specific aspect of consciousness takes practice and I don't expect immediate results when I invoke something new. If interminable tracts of deathless prose work for you, then fine, but I find it hard to keep a straight face when piety and pomposity combine to produce the sort of invocations to be found in print. I name no names. I can't give a prescription for entering magical consciousness. Well devised rituals, practised often, have a way of shifting consciousness which is surprising and unexpected. I don't know why this happens; it just does. I suspect the peculiar character of ritual, the way it involves the senses and occupies mind and body simultaneously, its numinous and exotic symbolism, the intensity of preparation and execution, involve dormant parts of the mind, or at least engage the normal parts in an unusual way. Using ritual to cause shifts in consciousness is not exceptionally difficult; getting the results you want, and avoiding unexpected and undesired side-effects is harder. Ritual is not a rational procedure. The symbolism of magic is intuitive and bubbles out of a very deep well; the whole process of ritual effectively bypasses the rational mind, so expecting the outcome of a ritual to obey the dictates of reason is completely irrational. The image of a horse is appropriate: anyone can get on the back of a wild mustang, but reaching the point where horse and rider go in the same direction at the same time takes practice. The process of limitation described in these notes can't influence the natural waywardness of the animal, but at least it is a method for ensuring that the horse gets a clear message. 4.4 Statement of Intention and Sacrifice If magical ritual is not to be regarded as a form of bizarre entertainment carried out for its own sake, then there has to be a reason for doing it - healing, divination, personal development, initiation, and the like. If it is healing, then it is usually healing for one specific person, and then again, it is probably not just healing in general, but healing for some specific complaint, within some period of time. The statement of intention is the culmination of a process of limitation which begins when the Circle is opened, and to return to the analogy of the plastic bag, the statement of intention is like the blade on the scalpel - the more precise the intention, the more the energy of the ritual is concentrated to a single point. The observation that rituals work better if their energy is focussed by intention is in accord with experience in everyday life: any change involving other people, no matter how small or insignificant, tends to meet with opposition. If you want to change the brand of coffee in the coffee machine, or if you want to rearrange the furniture in the office, someone will object. If you want to drive a new road through the countryside, local people object. If you want to raise taxes, everyone objects. The more people you involve in a change, the more opposition you encounter, and in magic the same principle holds, because from a magical point of view the whole fabric of the universe is held in place by an act of collective intention involving everything from God downwards. When you perform a ritual you are setting yourself up against a collective will to keep most things the way they are, and your ritual will succeed only if certain things are true: 1. you are a being of awesome will. 2. you have allies. The universe is changing, there is always a potential for change, and if your intention coincides with an existing will to bring about that change, your ritual can act as a catalyst. 3. you limit your intention to minimise opposition; the analogy is the diamond cutter who exploits natural lines of cleavage to split a diamond. Suppose you want to bring peace to the world. This is an admirable intention, but the average person would have no more effect (with or without magic) on the peacefulness of the world than they would if they attempted to smash Mount Everest with a rubber hammer. Rather than worry about the peacefulness of the whole world, why not use your ritual to create a better relationship with your spouse, or your boss, or someone who really annoys you? And why not work on the specific issues which are the main source of friction. And try to improve things within a specified period of time. And do it in a way which respects the other person's right to continue being a pain in the arse if they so wish? This is the idea behind focussing or limiting an intention. Having said all this, there are a lot of people in the world who would appreciate some peace, and perhaps your grand intention to bring peace might catch a wave and help a few, so don't let me put you off, but as a general principle it is sensible to avoid unnecessary opposition by making the intention as precise as possible. Think about sources of opposition, and about ways of circumventing that opposition - there may be a simple way which avoids making waves, and that is when magic works best. Minimising opposition also reduces the amount of backlash you can expect - quite often the simplest path to earth for any intention is through the magician, and if there is a lot of opposition that is what happens. [The very act of invoking power creates a resonance and a natural channel through the magician.] I try to analyse the possible outcomes and consequences of my intentions. There is a popular view that "if it harms none, do what you will". I can think of many worse moral principles, and it is better than most, but it is still naive. It pretends that it is theoretically possible to live without treading on another person's toes, it leaves me to make unilateral decisions about what is or is not harmful to others, and it is so wildly unrealistic, even in the context of everyday life, that it only seems to make sense if I intend to live in seclusion in a wilderness living off naturally occuring nuts and berries (having asked the squirrels for permission). If it is used as a moral principle in magic, then it draws an artificial distinction between magical work and the "push me, push you/if it moves, shoot it, if it doesn't, cut it down" style of contemporary life. It completely emasculates free-will. I prefer to believe that just about anything I do is going to have an impact on someone or something, and there are no cute moral guidelines; there are actions and there are outcomes. The aim is not to live according to guidelines, but to understand as fully as possible the consequences of the things we do, and to decide, in the light of our understanding (which has hopefully kept pace with our power), whether we are prepared to live with the outcomes. And so to sacrifice. There is a problem here. The problem arises from the perception that in magic you don't get something for nothing, and if you want to bring about change through magic you have to pay for it in some way. So far so good. The question is: what can you give in return? There is a widespread belief that you can sacrifice a living creature, and while most magicians (self included) abhor the idea, the perpetuation of this idea is still being used as a stick to beat the magical and pagan community about the head. The issue is further complicated by the fact that if one looks at surviving shamanistic practices worldwide, or looks at the origins of most religions, ritual animal sacrifice is endemic. That doesn't make it right, and I have an unshakeable prejudice that it isn't an acceptable thing to do, but I am only too aware of my hypocrisy when I order a chicken curry, so I'm not going to stand on a soapbox and rant on about it. What I prefer to do is to examine what the notion of sacrifice means. What can one legitimately sacrifice? You can't legitimately sacrifice anything which is not yours to give, and so the answer to the question "what can I sacrifice" lies in the answer to the question "what am I, and what have I got to give?". You certainly aren't any other living being, and if you don't make the mistake of identifying yourself with your possessions you will see that the only sacrifice you can make is yourself, because that is all you have to give. Every ritual intention requires that you sacrifice some part of yourself, and if you don't make the sacrifice willingly then either the ritual will fail, or the price will be exacted anyway. I don't have a rational justification for this statement, and it certainly isn't based on "karma" or a paranoid feeling that accountants are everywhere; the belief was handed on to me as part of my magical training, and having observed the way in which "magical energy" is utilised to carry out intentions, it makes sense. Each person has a certain amount of what I will call "life energy" at their disposal - some people call it "personal power", and you can sacrifice some of that energy to power the ritual. Sacrifice does not mean turning the knife on yourself (and there are plenty of people who do that). What it means in ordinary down-to-earth terms is that you promise to do something in return for your intention, and you link the sacrifice to the intention in such a way that the sacrifice focuses energy along the direction of your intention. For example, my cat was ill and hadn't eaten for three weeks, so, as a last resort, fearing she was about to die of starvation, I carried out a ritual to restore her appetite, and as a sacrifice I ate nothing for 24 hours. I used my (real) hunger to drive the intention, and she began eating the following day. Any personal sacrifice which hurts enough engages a deep impulse to make the hurt go away, and the magician can use that impulse to bring about magical change by linking the removal of the pain to the accomplishment of the intention. And I don't mean magical masochism. We are (subject to all caveats on generalisations) creatures of habit who find comfort and security by living our lives in a particular way, and a change to that habit and routine causes some discomfort and an opposing desire to return to the original state: that desire can be used. Just as a ritual intends to change the world in some way, so a sacrifice forces us to change ourselves in some way, and that liberates magical energy. If you want to heal someone, don't just do a ritual and leave it at that; become involved in caring for them in some way, and that *active* caring can act as a channel for whatever power you have invoked. If you want to use magic to help someone out of a mess, provide them with active, material help as well; conversely, if you can't be bothered to provide material help, your ritual will be infected with that same inertia and apathy - true will, will out, and in many cases our true will is to flatter the ego and do nothing substantive. I speak from experience. From a magical perspective each one of us is a magical being with a vast potential of power, but that is denied to us by an innate, fanatical, and unbelievably deep-rooted desire to keep the world in a regular orbit serving our own needs. Self- sacrifice disturbs this equilibrium and lets out some of that energy, and that is why egoless devotion and self-sacrifice has a reputation for working miracles. 4.5 The Main Ritual After invoking the Powers and having stated the intention and sacrifice, there would seem to be nothing more to do, but most people like to prolong the contact with the Powers and carry out some kind of symbolic ritual for a period of time varying from minutes to days. Ritual as I have described it so far may seem like a cut-and-dried exercise, but it isn't; it is more of an art than a science, and once the Circle and Gates are opened, and the Powers are "in attendance", whatever science there is in ritual gives way to art. Magicians operate in a world where ordinary things have complex symbolic meanings or correspondences, and they use a selection of consecrated implements or "power objects" in their work. The magician can use this palette of symbols within a ritual to paint of picture which signifies an intention in a non-verbal, non-rational way, and it is this ability to communicate an intention through every sense of the body, through every level of the mind, which gives ritual its power. I can't say any more about this because it is personal and unique to every magician, and each one develops a style which works best for them. 4.6 Dismissal of Powers Once the ritual is complete the Powers are thanked and dismissed. This begins the withdrawal of consciousness back to its pre-ritual state. 4.7 Close Gates/Close Circle The final steps are closing the Gates (thus sealing off the altered state of consciousness) and closing the Circle (thus returning to the everyday world). The Circle should not be closed if there is any suspicion that the withdrawal from the altered state has not been completed fully. I like to carry out a sanity check between closing the Gates and closing the Circle. It sometimes happens that although the magician goes through the steps of closing down, the attention is not engaged, and the magician remains in the altered state. This is not a good idea. The energy of that state will continue to manifest in every intention in everyday life, and all sorts of unplanned things will start to happen. A related problem is that every magician will find sooner or later an altered state which compensates for some of their perceived inadequacies (in the way that many people like to get drunk at parties), and they will not want to let go of it because it makes them feel good, so they come out of the ritual in an altered state without realising they have failed to close down correctly. This is called obsession, and it is one of the interesting difficulties of magical work. Closing down correctly is important if you don't want to end up like a badly cracked pot. If you don't feel happy that the Powers have been completely dismissed and the Gates closed correctly, go back and repeat the steps again. 5. Maps & Correspondences If consciousness is imagined as a space we can move around in, then it is a space of several dimensions. An indespensible tool for any magician is a method for describing this space and its dimensions, a method to specify the "the coordinates of consciousness", like giving a map reference. The magician uses such a descriptive method to say "this is where I want to get to", and you can imagine a ritual as a vehicle which transports him or her to the destination and back again. A descriptive method of this type is one of the most obvious and characteristic features of a particular magical technique, because states of consciousness are usually described using a dense mesh of symbolism and metaphor, and if a magical tradition has been around for any length of time it becomes identified by the details of this symbolism. Given the tendency for maps to be confused with territory, there is a tendency for symbolism to take on a life of its own and become completely detached from authentic magical technique. People confuse magical symbolism with magic; its use as a coordinate system is lost, vast tomes of drivel are written, and every manner of absurdity follows. I am a Kabbalist by training and use a map of consciousness called "The Tree of Life". This map has been coloured in using a thousand years of symbolism, and the result is called "the Correspondences", and it is a system which allows me to navigate around the dimensions of consciousness with some precision. There are many other maps, some well worn by history, some not, and my choice is a matter of personal preference. It works for me because of the kind of person I am, but it is only a map and I wouldn't pretend that there was anything intrinsically special about it. Many magicians operate within a religious framework. The Christian Mass is a magical ritual par excellence, and there are several other magical rituals associated with Christianity. Some magicians work within a pantheon - Graeco-Roman, Egyptian, Scandinavian, Aztec or whatever. Some (e.g. Crowley) invent their own religion. A characteristic of all these systems is that they provide a complex mesh of symbol and metaphor, a map for the magician to work within. For any pantheon it is usually straightforward (with some bending, stretching and hitting with a hammer) to identify a personification for the following aspects of consciousness: heaviness, old-age, stagnation, limitation, inertia creativity, inspiration, vision, leadership violence, force, destructiveness harmony, integrity, balance, wholeness love, hate, passion, sensual beauty, aesthetics, emotional power, nurture reason, abstraction, communication, conceptualisation, logic imagination, instinct, the unconscious practicality, pragmatism, stolidity, materialism And once we have gods and goddesses (or saints) to personify these qualities, a weave of metaphors and associations elaborates the picture; the Moon is instinct, fire is both destructive and energetic, death is a sythe, air and mercury are "the same", and so on. The meaning of a symbol is personal - white means "death" to some and "purity" to others. What matters is that the magician should have a clear map, and with it the ability to invoke different aspects of consciousness by using the symbolism of gods, goddesses, archangels, demons or whatever. It does not matter whether the magician believes in the literal reality of the territory or not, as long as he or she treats the map with respect and does not muddy the water by dabbling with too many different maps. There are two principal ways in which maps become muddled, and as the main theme of these notes is the precise use of limitation in conjuction with magical consciousness, I think it is worth mentioning what I see as potential pitfalls. The first pitfall is mixing systems; the second is working with other people. There is a tendency nowadays to muddle different systems of correspondences together, to add Egyptian gods to a Kabbalistic ritual, to say that Tanith is really the same as Artemis, or that Cybele and Astarte and Demeter are "just" different names for the Mother Goddess, to find parallels between Thor and Mars, between Kali and Hecate, between the Virgin Mary and Isis, until, like different colours of paint mixed together, everything ends up in shades of muddy brown. This unifying force is everywhere as people find universal themes and try to make links between groups and systems. It is (in my opinion) a bad idea to mix systems together in a spirit of ecumenical fervour. Correspondences are like intentions: the sharper and more clearly defined they are, the better they work. Despite a few similarities, the Virgin Mary is nothing like Isis, and Demeter has very little in common with Astarte. Syncretism usually takes place slowly over the centuries, so that for most people there is no distinction between the classical Greek and Roman pantheons and Mercury is a synonym for Hermes, but to do it in real-time in your own head is a recipe for muddle-headedness. Symbols can be diffused when people work together in a group. It is a mistake to believe that "power" is raised in direct proportion to the number of people taking part in a ritual. Unless people have been trained together and have similar "maps", then the ritual will have a different effect on each person, and although more power may be raised, it will be unfocussed and will probably earth itself through unexpected channels. When people begin working together there will be a period of time when their work together will probably be less effective than any one of them working alone, but after a time their "maps" begin to converge and things start to improve dramatically. There is nothing magical about this - it is a phenomenon of teams of people in general. I don't like "spectator rituals" for this reason; you are either in it or your are out, and if you are out, you are out the door. Does it matter what map, what system of correspendences a person uses? Is there a "best" set? This is an impossible question to answer. What can be said is that working within any magical framework incurs a cost. The more effective a magical system is at limiting, engaging and mobilising the creative power of consciousness, the more effective it is at ensnaring consciousness within its own assumptions and limitations. If a person works within a belief system where the ultimate nature of God is pure, unbounded love, joy and bliss, then that closes off other possibilities. Without sitting in judgement of any set of beliefs, I would say that the best belief system and the best system of correspondences is one which allows consciousness to roam over the greatest range of possibilities, and permits it the free-will to choose its own limitations. And that is a belief in itself. 6. Conclusion The gist of these notes is that ritual is a technique for focussing magical power through the deliberate use of limitation. Limitation comes from the belief system of the magician, and the set of correspondences used to create symbolism within the ritual. Further limitation comes from the structure of the ritual itself, and ultimately from the statement of intention. With practise these elements add up to a single-mindedness which can shift consciousness out of its normal orbit. Shamanism (Internet) Overview-Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Summary: This FAQ contains a general overview on shamanism. It should be read by anyone interested in understanding the what is meant by shamanism and what differentiates shamanism form other forms of ecstatic experience Keywords: shaman, anthropology, ethnography, consciousness, spirit, oobe Organization: La Casa del Paese Lontano Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 02:37:55 GMT Lines: 227 Archive-name: shamanism/overview Last-modified: 8 March 1994 Version: 1.1 NOTE: The following general overview of shamanism is not intended to be the last word or the definitive work on this subject. Rather it is, as its title implies, intended to provide the participant or reader with a set of guidelines that will familiarize them with the general use of the terms shamanism, shaman and shamanic in the trends, study and practice of historic, traditional and contemporary shamanic experience. The word 'shaman comes to English from the Tungus language via Russian. Among the Tungus of Siberia it is both a noun and a verb. While the Tungus have no word for shamanism, it has come into usage by anthropologists, historians of religion and others in contemporary society to designate the experience and the practices of the shaman. Its usage has grown to include similar experiences and practices in cultures outside of the original Siberian cultures from which the term shaman originated. Thus shamanism is not the name of a religion or group of religions. Particular attention should be paid to the use of qualifying words such as "may" or "usually". They indicate examples or tendencies and are not, in any way, intended to represent rigid standards Please send comments to deane@netcom.com (Dean Edwards). Shamanism-General Overview-Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) (c November, 1993 by Dean Edwards) This FAQ shall be posted monthly and is maintained by Dean Edwards (deane@netcom.com). It is intended for the private non-commercial use of Usenet users. It may not be sold without the permission of the author. Table of Contents: 1. Terms used in this FAQ 2. What is shamanism? 3. What is Shamanic Ecstasy? 4. Becoming a shaman 5. The role of trauma in the development of a shaman 6. The relationship between shamanic traditions and culture 7. The role of Shamanic Ecstasy 8. The origin of the term "shamanism" 9. Roles of the shaman 10. Reasons for this FAQ 1. Why were the terms used in this FAQ selected and do they have special meanings. There is an extensive literature about shamanism that has been compiled since the late Eighteenth Century. Like any field of study and religious practice, shamanism has developed a specialized vocabulary. Please note that some of the words used in the material that follows are drawn from scholars who have a solid background in shamanic studies and may have meanings that are specific and less general than is often the case in popular usage. Consulting a good dictionary should clear up any points of confusion. 2. What is Shamanism? Shamanism is classified by anthropologists as an archaic magico-religious phenomenon in which the shaman is the great master of ecstasy. Shamanism itself, was defined by the late Mircea Eliade as a technique of ecstasy. A shaman may exhibit a particular magical specialty (such as control over fire, wind or magical flight). When a specialization is present the most common is as a healer. The distinguishing characteristic of shamanism is its focus on an ecstatic trance state in which the soul of the shaman is believed to leave the body and ascend to the sky (heavens) or descend into the earth (underworld). The shaman makes use of spirit helpers, which he or she communicates with, all the while retaining control over his or her own consciousness. (Examples of possession occur, but are the exception, rather than the rule.) It is also important to note that while most shamans in traditional societies are men, either women or men may and have become shamans. 3. What is Shamanic Ecstasy and how does it compare with other forms of ecstasy? From the Greek 'ekstasis', ecstasy literally means to be placed outside, or to be placed.This is a state of exaltation in which a person stands outside of or transcends his or herself. Ecstasy may range from the seizure of the body by a spirit or the seizure of a person by the divine, from the magical transformation or flight of consciousness to psychiatric remedies of distress. Three types of Ecstasy are specified in the literature on the subject: 1. Shamanic Ecstasy 2. Prophetic Ecstasy 3. Mystical Ecstasy Shamanic ecstasy is provoked by the ascension of the soul of the shaman into the heavens or its descent into the underworld. These states of ecstatic exaltation are usually achieved after great and strenuous training and initiation, often under distressing circumstances. The resulting contact by the shaman with the higher or lower regions and their inhabitants, and also with nature spirits enables him or her to accomplish such tasks as accompanying the soul of a deceased into its proper place in the next world, affect the well-being of the sick and to convey the story of their inner travels upon their return to the mundane awareness. The utterances of the shaman are in contrast with those of prophetic and mystical ecstasy. The prophet literally speaks for God, while the mystic reports an overwhelming divine presence. In mysticism, the direct knowledge or experience of the divine ultimate reality, which is perceptible in two ways, emotional and intuitive. While these three varieties of ecstatic experience are useful for the purposes of analysis and discussion, it is not unusual for more than one form of ecstasy to be present in an individual's experience. However, it can be argued that, generally speaking, there are three perceptive levels of ecstasy. 1) The physiological response, in which the mind becomes absorbed in and focused on a dominant idea, the attention is withdrawn and the nervous system itself is in part cut off from physical sensory input. The body exhibits reflex inertia, involuntary nervous responses, frenzy. 2) Emotional perception of ecstasy refers to overwhelming feelings of awe, anxiety, joy, sadness, fear, astonishment, passion, etc. 3) Intuitive perception communicates a direct experience and understanding of the transpersonal experience of expanded states of awareness or consciousness. While the physiological response is always present, the emotional response may or may not be significant when intuition is the principal means of ecstatic perception. Some have argued that beyond the intuitive state there is a fourth condition in which the holistic perception exceeds mental and emotional limitations and understanding. The ecstatic experience of the shaman goes beyond a feeling or perception of the sacred, the demonic or of natural spirits. It involves the shaman directly and actively in transcendent realities or lower realms of being. 4. How does one become a shaman? Some have wondered if the experience of shamanic ecstasy or flight makes a person a shaman. Generally speaking, most would say no. A shaman is more than someone with an experience. First, he or she is a trained initiate. Usually years of trenculturalization and under a mentor precede becoming a functioning shaman. Second, a shaman is not just an initiate who has received inner and outer training, but is a master of shamanic journeying and techniques (shamanic ecstasy). This is not a casual acquaintance with such abilities, there is some degree of mastery of them. Finally, a shaman is a link or bridge between this world and the next. This is a sacred trust and a service to the community. Sometimes a community that a shaman serves in is rather small. In other instances it may be an entire nation. A lot of that depends on social and cultural factors. One becomes a shaman by one of three methods: a) Hereditary transmission; b) Spontaneous selection or "call" or "election"; c) personal choice and quest. (This latter method is less frequent and traditionally such a shaman is considered less powerful than one selected by one of the two preceding methods.) The shaman is not recognized as legitimate without having undergone two types of training: 1) Ecstatic (dreams, trances, etc.) 2) Traditional ("shamanic techniques, names and functions of spirits,mythology and genealogy of the clan, secret language, etc.) The two-fold course of instruction, given by the spirits and the old master shamans is equivalent to an initiation." (Mircea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion, v. 13 , p. 202; Mcmillian, N.Y., 1987.) It is also possible for the entire process to take place in the dream state or in ecstaticexperience. Thus, there is more to becoming a shaman than a single experience. It requires training, perseverance and service. 5. What is the role of personal trauma or crisis in the selection or development of a shaman? A common experience of the call to shamanism is a psychic or spiritual crisis, which often accompanies a physical or even a medical crisis, and is cured by the shaman him or herself. This is a common occurrence for all three types of shamanic candidates described above. The shaman is often marked by eccentric behavior such as periods of melancholy, solitude, visions, singing in his or her sleep, etc. The inability of the traditional remedies to cure the condition of the shamanic candidate and the eventual self cure by the new shaman is a significant episode in development of the shaman. The underlying significant aspect of this experience, when it is present,is the ability of the shaman to manage and resolve periods of distress. 6. Does the presence of an active shamanic tradition necessarily mean that the society itself should be deemed "shamanic"? No, not at all. The presence of shamanism in a nation or a community does not mean that shamanism is central to the spiritual or religious life of the community or region. Shamanism often exists alongside and even in cooperation with the religious or healing practices of the community. 7. What is meant by shamanic ecstasy and what role does it actually play in shamanism? The ecstatic technique of shamanism does not involve itself in the broad range of ecstasy reported in the history of religion. It is specifically focused on the transpersonal movement of the consciousness of the shaman into higher or lower realms of consciousness and existence. Another aspect of shamanism is that compared to other spiritual traditions, it is a path that the individual walks alone. While much of the focus of shamanic studies has been on the shamanic complexes of north and central Asia, shamanism is a universal phenomenon, not confined to any particular region or culture. 8. What is the origin of the word "shaman"? Shaman comes from the language of the Tungus of North-Central Asia. It came into use in English via Russian. 9. What are the usual roles of a shaman? In contemporary, historical or traditional shamanic practice the shaman may at times fill the role of priest, magician, metaphysician or healer. Personal experience is the prime determinant of the status of a shaman. Knowledge of other realms of being and consciousness and the cosmology of those regions is the basis of the shamanic perspective and power. With this knowledge, the shaman is able to serve as a bridge between the mundane and the higher and lower states The shaman lives at the edge of reality as most people would recognize it and most commonly at the edge of society itself. Few indeed have the stamina to adventure into these realms and endure the outer hardships and personal crises that have been reported by or observed of many shamans. 10. Why was this FAQ written? This FAQ was originally written to support a new Usenet newsgroup, 'soc.religion.shamanism'. The purpose of this newsgroup is to provide a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas, views and information about historic,traditional, tribal and contemporary shamanism. This FAQ is intended to provide a useful general overview of what 'shamanism' actually means and what it is in practice. SPRING EQUINOX RITUAL By Marian Starwatcher Clothing : The priestess who will invoke Athena (1) can wear any robe that feels right to her, but she will carry the sword. The priestess invoking Demeter (2) should wear a green robe, but cover it with her cloak to begin with. The priestess invoking Kore (3) should wear a spring robe, covered with a dark cloak. Before the ritual, place a large number of candles about the temple. Leave them unlit. One tiny candle should be placed on the altar. The matches should be put where they can be got at easily! Burn Black Forest Incense ... a fair amount of it. Keep the door of your temple CLOSED. Have ready some lavender oil to burn later in the ritual. Have the participants each bring a candle. When the participants enter, have them stand in the centre of the temple. It will be dark. Shut the door. Priestess 1 goes to the east quarter, 2 to the south, 3 to the west. Call the quarters theatrically. All : Kore is in the underworld. Priestess 1 : Blow, gentle breezes from the depths of the earth, Bring us to her in safety. All : Kore is in the underworld. Priestess 2 : Come, tiny flame, shine in the depths of the earth, Guide us to her in safety. All : Kore is in the underworld. Priestess 3 : Come, still dark waters in the depths of the earth, Bring us to her in safety. All : Kore is in the underworld. Cold stone under our feet in the depths of the earth, Bring us to her in safety. P2 silently raises the circle. The participants seat themselves. P3 : It is dark. So dark. P2 : It is cold. So cold. P1 : Where is the Grain Mother? P3 : Where is Demeter? P2 : She has turned her face from the earth. P1 : How can this be? All : Mother Demeter, speak to us! Mother Demeter, speak to us! Mother Demeter, speak to us! P2 : invokes Demeter. Demeter : My daughter, where is my daughter? Where is she for whom I made the sun shine? Where is she for whom I made the grain grow? Kore, Kore, Kore! P1 invokes Athena. Athena : She has gone below, Mother Demeter. All : Kore is in the underworld. Kore is in the underworld. Kore is in the underworld. Demeter : Then I will cover my face And let the earth die. Kore, Kore, Kore! Athena : Mother, the people of the earth need you. We are cold. We are hungry. We must have light. Demeter : Kore, Kore, Kore! Demeter turns her back. Athena turns to the participants. Athena : Then we must go below to her And beseech her to return. The earth must not die. Athena moves to the altar and lights the tiny candle. P3 : Our steps falter. All : It is dark, dark. P3 : Our sight falters. All : It is dark, dark. P3 : Our hearts falter. All : It is dark, dark. Athena : Courage, for I am with you. Even in the darkness I am with you. Even in the coldness I am with you. And see - we approach Kore on her throne! Athena directs the participants' attention to the west. All : Kore, speak to us! Kore, speak to us! Kore, speak to us! P3 invokes Kore/Persephone. Kore : I have gone below. Why do you now come to me? Athena : Kore, why are you here In the dark and the cold? Kore : Don't you know that all people Even gods Must go into the dark And look within? Athena : Kore, your Mother weeps for you. Will you come home to us? Kore : Don't you know that all children Even gods Must leave their Mothers And grow into adulthood? Athena : Kore, the earth is dying. Will you come home to us? Kore : The earth must not die. I will beseech my mother To bring life to the earth again. Kore picks up the tiny candle and 'leads' the participants out. Kore : We walk through the darkness of the underworld. Our steps are sure. We do not fear the darkness of the underworld, For it is also the darkness within ourselves. We wind our way through the caverns. And now we feel the breath of the wind on our faces. We emerge from the underworld to the earth. The wind is cold. The earth is dark. Athena : Mother Demeter, we have returned. Demeter : Kore, Kore, Kore! Kore : Mother, I am here. Demeter : Kore, you have returned! Stay with me and run in the fields as you did before. Play in the gardens of the earth as you did before. Kore : Mother, I cannot stay. Demeter : Then I will cover my face and grieve, And the earth will die. Athena : The earth must not die. Kore : I will stay with you For half of the year. But I must go below For the other half. Mother, look at me. Demeter turns. Demeter : But what is this? Kore, you have changed. Kore : I went below to change, Mother. To grow. Call me now Persephone, For I have been to the underworld. I have been within. I must return to grow And to help others grow. Your world is the grain, Mother. My world is the hearts of all people Even gods. Athena : It is just, Mother Demeter. She must return below, But for now she will stay with you. Demeter : My daughter, you have grown wise. I accept what you must do. I will grieve when you go from me, And the earth will become cold and dark. But when you return, The earth will live again. See! Athena, Demeter and Kore light all the candles. Persephone throws off her cloak to reveal a spring robe. Demeter throws off her cloak to reveal a green robe. Athena : Persephone has returned! The light has returned! The warmth has returned! Let us praise Mother Demeter For she has brought the earth to life again. Let us praise Persephone For she has returned from the underworld And will be there to guide us When we must go within. All Chant : She has returned The earth lives again! We feel the warmth returning The sun shines again! We see the grain growing The garden grows again! Persephone, Demeter Persephone, Demeter Persephone, Demeter The earth lives again! Repeat, then repeat last line to build cone of power until Demeter judges the cone ready. Send out the power to bring life to the earth again. Farewell the Goddesses. All sit down, forming a sitting circle. P1 : Long, long ago, there was no winter. Summer ruled the Earth as Mother Demeter Watched lovingly over her daughter Kore. P2 : All people knew her and loved her As the Grain Mother. There was no hunger And no one was ever cold. P1 : Kore ran in the fields of the earth Safe under her mother's loving eye. And for a long, long time She knew no other world. P3 : But all things change, and so did Kore. She felt something within her, An urge to know more, To grow. P2 : And so she approached the cave That led to the Underworld. She descended into the darkness. Her steps were faltering, For she could not see, And she was afraid. Yet she knew she must go on. P1 : When she came to the Underworld, Kore found a mirror. She looked within, and saw herself. Yet not the child she knew, She saw a young woman Who looked at her with knowledge in her eyes. P3 : Then she looked again, And saw an old woman, With a lined face and silver hair, Who looked at her with knowledge in her eyes. P1 : And the old woman said, "Kore, you must change. All things must change. You must look within And know yourself truly, And grow." P2 : So Kore looked within, And embraced the old woman And the young woman. And she was filled with knowledge. And the knowledge changed her. P1 : On the earth, Demeter searched for Kore. She looked under every rock, She dived into every sea, She spoke to the flame, She rode on the winds. At last Athena came to her and said, "Your daughter has gone into the Underworld." P3 : Demeter wailed, and wept for Kore. She put aside her green robes And veiled herself in mourning. And the earth grew dark with her grief, And the earth grew barren with her grief, And the people cried out in fear. All the gods and people begged Demeter But she would not cease her weeping. P2 : At last Athena went to the cave, And descended to the Underworld. And there she spoke with Kore, And begged her to return. P1 : Kore was reluctant to go, But love of her mother And love of the earth Persuaded her to return. And so she went with Athena Back to the earth. P2 : Demeter was overjoyed to see her daughter. They embraced, and kissed. P3 : But then Kore told her mother How she had changed. And she said, "I must return, For I have been within. I am Queen of the Underworld." P1 : Demeter begged her daughter to stay. Kore, relenting, agreed; P2 : That six months of every year She would stay with her mother. And the earth would be fruitful. And six months of every year She would return to the Underworld, And the earth would be barren Until she returned. P1 : And this is why we have winter. For Demeter veils her face When Kore, called Persephone, Returns to the Underworld each year. P3 : And the mystery is this : That the Underworld is within you, And you must descend to it If you are to grow. You must look into the mirror And see yourself as you truly are. P1 : But now is the time to rejoice! Persephone is returned, The earth is becoming warm again, And the grain is growing again. P2 : Let us share Demeter's joy In her daughter's return. Let us feast on her bounty. Share cakes and water/cider. Those who feel moved to may speak of their feelings in the darkness, and experiences of their own in the Underworld. P3 opens the circle. All : Persephone has returned! P3 : Blow, winds of the East, Bring warmth to our bodies again. All : Persephone has returned! P3 : Shine, sun in the North, Bring warmth to our hearts again. All : Persephone has returned! P3 : Come, waters of the Western sea, Bring warmth to our souls again. All : Persephone has returned! P3 : Grow, all plants of the Earth, Bring warmth to our spirits again. The circle is open, but ever unbroken. Merry meet, And merry part, And merry meet again. Blessed be. All : Blessed be. P3 : This rite is ended. Note: The directions are all Southrn Hemisphere ... heh. B*B* Marian* Modern Female Rite Of Passage Lady Shyra, 1994 Note: East - Air; South - Fire, West - Water, North - Earth EARLY PREPERATIONS Candles for the ritual will be made that day. Celebrant will make two white candles. Candles will be herbal and scented, and enscribed appropriately. Celebrant and mother will also bring something that symbolically (to them) symbolizes the rite of passage. Ritual baths will be taken prior to ceremony, with Celebrant's bath being drawn for her. Salt, herbs and scents appropriate to the occasion will be added to the bath, and it will be blessed prior to use. Mother will help Celebrant to the bath, where she will light a candle and incense, give words of love and comfort and instruction to the Celebrant, and then withdraw to assist in Circle Preparation. CIRCLE PREPARATION Circle area will be cleansed and Circle constructed and consecrated in the usual manner. Altar will sit just West of Center of Circle to symbolize both the emotional aspects of the ritual, as well as the death/ rebirth aspects. Added to altar arrangement will be the Celebrant's two white candles. Also on the altar will be a mirror sitting behind and between the two white candles. Symbolic gifts will be placed beside the altar -- the mother's to the North symbolizing steadfastness, grounding, caution, and wisdom of the elder. The Celebrant's will be to the South of the altar, symboling the fire, passion and impetuosity of youth. INVOCATIONS Guardian of the East Hail to thee, Ancient ones of Air! Blow soft around us this night That the restrictions and pains of childhood Will be but memories in the mind of the adult. Guardian of the South Hail to thee, Ancient ones of Fire! Lend to us this night your passion and strength Envelope us in your warmth, That the fires of youth may be tempered within thee. Guardian of the West Hail to thee, Ancient ones of Water! Wash over us with thy loving embrace That the sorrows of days long past Can give way to new understanding. Guardians of the North Hail to thee, Ancient ones of Earth! Stand firm with us in our purpose this night, That from the youth shall grow the adult Full of purpose and wisdom. Invocation to the Lady Blessed Lady of a Thousand Names, You who art Maiden, Mother and Crone. Grant that this night the bindings of childhood will be broken And the bond between mother and daughter be strengthened. For the two, as so reflected throughout all creation, Are but images of thee in thy divine Trinity. Blessed Be. In honor of thee do I pour this toast, and drink this wine. Invocation to the Lord Great Lord, Ancient one of the fields and Consort to our Lady, We ask that thou wouldst give a measure of your love and protection to she who will soon join the battles of this life. Fill her with the knowledge of thee as sancutary And grant that peace may follow her always. In honor of thee do I pour this toast, and drink this wine. Chalice is then passed to each of the coveners to share in the toast. Drawing Down the Moon Priestess/Mother stands facing the moon with hands upraised and palms turned upwards, cupwise. Drinking in the Lady's essence, she says, Come to me and fill me with thy light Enter me, shine in me your fullness That I may use your power for my good, And for the good of All. When appropriate, she blesses all within the Circle, and the rite that is about to be performed. Then, nodding to the Father of the Celebrant, says: Bring forth your daughter, that she might, this night, cross the threshold of adulthood. Father brings the Celebrant to the Eastern Gate. Mthr: Is this the daughter I bore so many years before? Nay, it cannot be, for she was but a child when last I held her. Dtr: Mother, I am your child. Now grown and ready to throw away the things of childhood. Years it has been since my moonflow began and I became a woman. Now it is time that this is recog nized. Mthr: Very well, lead the child into the center of the Circle. There to have her sit in silence. Father leads Celebrant to the center of the Circle, while mother re-closes the Circle. She then joins her daughter in the Circle's center, saying: Mthr: You sit now in the Center of the Circle; that which is known as the Cauldron of Hecate; the point of transformation; the mother's womb, where beginnings end and endings re-begin. I have heard your words, and weep for them; Tears of both joy and sorrow. It was my body that cried out in pain and joy as you were born. It was my mind that went in circles to provide for us. It was my heart that broke when that which you wanted I could not give you. But always did you have my love... and always shall you carry that love with you. Behold in me the Three-Fold Goddess She who is One in Three - Maid, Mother, and Crone One in Three, as she is in you and all women, And as you and they are in her. Look upon her and know her, That you, too, may be whole. So I ask thee truly, art thou ready to face the woman within thee? To see within thee the light and dark, and fear no more the dark? To accept that which you are, and strive for that which you can become? To leave behind the things of childhood, But to continue to love and nurture the child which lives in all adults? {Celebrant has answered accordingly to each of the questions, at which time the Mother now exhorts the Celebrant to stand and face the altar.} Mthr: Daughter, I ask you now to look deep within the mirror. See yourself reflected there. Look into your eyes and know yourself. Repeat after me:"I come to commune with my Soul." Dtr: I come to commune with my Soul. Mthr: Look into the reflection of your eyes, and name one thing about yourself that you love. {Celebrant and Mother will continue this, alternating between what the Celebrant thinks is both good and bad within her... } After the last question, the Mother then says: Mthr: Daughter, within thee is both light and dark. Know always your shadow side. If something is there which offends thee horrible, give it up. For others to love you as an adult, you must love yourself first. And loving yourself means giving up any self- hatred you've carried over from young years. Now is the time to cut these things from thy life. They are the bonds of childhood which have held you limited. Free yourself from them, and know that thy spirit flies free. Now look again into the mirror. Look at yourself with love. See the Goddess shining within thee. She is strong; no man has dominion over her. She knows herself and loves herself. She will give herself to those who are worthy of her affections, and turn from those who try to debase her. Let the Goddess within thee shine through thee, that the nobility and strength of woman is clear for all to see. Now, come with me. Mother embraces daughter and leads her to each of the four quarters. After each challenge, the Celebrant must answer as she sees fit, and asks the Guardian's Blessing. The Covener at each gate will then bless the Celebrant, and offer a gift for adulthood, such as strength, courage, etc... or a physical gift pertinent to the rite and Gate. Covener at Eastern Gate: Hold! I am the wild wind and fury of the storm! That which buffets thee without shelter. How will you survive? Covener at Southern Gate Hold! I am fire and passion That which will consume thee with lust. How will you survive? Covener at Western Gate Hold! I am floods and weeping and gnashing of teeth. I am lonliness and frustration. How will thee survive? Covener at Northern Gate Hold! I am chaos and turmoil Plans gone wrong and dreams that die. How will thee survive? Mother faces daughter (Priestess mode ON here)... I am the Lady, thy Mother... I shall be with thee no matter how far thou shalt roam. And when lonliness besets thee, Thou needs only gaze upon the moon, To see my face and my love reflected there to you. Father approaches daugher and turns her to face him... I am he who is father to thee now. I shall stand behind and beside thee always. And when lonliness besets thee, Thou needs only to step out into sunlight To feel my warmth and love within thee. Mother takes daughter by hand and returns to the altar. Daughter picks up her gift of childhood and presents it to the mother, saying ... This I do give you as a symbol of childhood now behind me. Hold it and cherish it as you remember me. Mother picks up her gift of adulthood and presents it the Celebrant, saying... This I do give you as a symbol of your adulthood, and my recognition of it. Hold it and cherish it as you remember me. Draw a pentegram above the celebrant, with an affirmation at each of the five points: Point one: In the name of Inanna, Queen of Heaven Point two: In the name of Athena, warrior Goddess, but also of Peace Point three: In the name of Astarte, warrior Goddess, and protector of young females Point four: In the name of Diana, she of the bow and arrow, Goddess of Light Point five: Do I bless thee, and call thee "Woman". May their strenth and independence, their love and virtue, be thine all the days of thy life. I recognize the child no more, but she the child who lives in all of us. Mother stands with a space between her and her daughter and presents the new adult to the coven. Feasting (and in our case, a birthday celebration) follow. Quarter Guardians are thanked, and blessings are asked of the Lord and Lady upon the group, as well as the Celebrant. Blessed Be * Lady Shyra * MUHAMMAD From a Baha'i book by 'Abdu'l-Baha: Americans and Europeans have heard a number of stories about the Prophet which they have thought to be true, although the narrators were either ignorant or antagonistic: most of them were clergy; others were ignorant Muslims who repeated unfounded traditions about Muhammad which they ignorantly believed to be to His praise. Thus some benighted Muslims made His polygamy the pivot of their praises and held it to be a wonder, regarding it as a miracle; and European historians, for the most part, rely on the tales of these ignorant people. For example, a foolish man said to a clergyman that the true proof of greatness is bravery and the shedding of blood, and that in one day on the field of battle a follower of Muhammad had cut off the heads of one hundred men! This misled the clergyman to infer that killing is considered the way to prove one's faith to Muhammad, while this is merely imaginary. The military expeditions of Muhammad, on the contrary, were always defensive actions: a proof of this is that during thirteen years, in Mecca, He and His followers endured the most violent persecutions. At this period they were the target for the arrows of hatred: some of His companions were killed and their property confiscated; others fled to foreign lands. Muhammad Himself, after the most extreme persecutions by the Qurayshites, who finally resolved to kill Him, fled to Medina in the middle of the night. Yet even then His enemies did not cease their persecutions, but pursued Him to Medina, and His disciples even to Abyssinia. These Arab tribes were in the lowest depths of savagery and barbarism, and in comparison with them the savages of Africa and wild Indians of America were as advanced as a Plato. The savages of America do not bury their children alive as these Arabs did their daughters, glorying in it as being an honorable thing to do. [The Banu-Tamim, one of the most barbarous Arab tribes, practiced this odious custom.] Thus many of the men would threaten their wives, saying, "If a daughter is born to you, I will kill you." Even down to the present time the Arabs dread having daughters. Further, a man was permitted to take a thousand women, and most husbands had more than ten wives in their household. When these tribes made war, the one which was victorious would take the women and children of the vanquished tribe captive and treat them as slaves. When a man who had ten wives died, the sons of these women rushed at each other's mothers; and if one of the sons threw his mantle over the head of his father's wife and cried out, "This woman is my lawful property," at once the unfortunate woman became his prisoner and slave. he could do whatever he wished with her. He could kill her, imprison her in a well, or beat, curse and torture her until death released her. According to the Arab habits and customs, he was her master. It is evident that malignity, jealousy, hatred and enmity must have existed between the wives and children of a household, and it is, therefore, needless to enlarge upon the subject. Again, consider what was the condition and life of these oppressed women! Moreover, the means by which these Arab tribes lived consisted in pillage and robbery, so that they were perpetually engaged in fighting and war, killing one another, plundering and devastating each other's property, and capturing women and children, whom they would sell to strangers. How often it happened that the daughters and sons of a prince, who spent their day in comfort and luxury, found themselves, when night fell, reduced to shame, poverty and captivity. Yesterday they were princes, today they are captives; yesterday they were great ladies, today they are slaves. Muhammad received the Divine Revelation among these tribes, and after enduring thirteen years of persecution from them, He fled. [To Medina.] But this people did not cease to oppress; they united to exterminate Him and all His followers. It was under such circumstances that Muhammad was forced to take up arms. This is the truth: we are not bigoted and do not wish to defend Him, but we are just, and we say what is just. Look at it with justice. If Christ Himself had been placed in such circumstances among such tyrannical and barbarous tribes, and if for thirteen years He with His disciples had endured all these trials with patience, culminating in flight from His native land -- if in spite of this these lawless tribes continued to pursue Him, to slaughter the men, to pillage their property, and to capture their women and children -- what would have been Christ's conduct with regard to them? If this oppression had fallen only upon Himself, He would have forgiven them, and such an act of forgiveness would have been most praiseworthy; but if He had seen that these cruel and bloodthirsty murderers wished to kill, to pillage and to injure all these oppressed ones, and to take captive the women and children, it is certain that He would have protected them and would have resisted the tyrants. What objection, then, can be taken to Muhammad's action? Is it this, that He did not, with His followers, and their women and children, submit to these savage tribes? To free these tribes from their bloodthirstiness was the greatest kindness, and to coerce and restrain them was a true mercy. They were like a man holding in his hand a cup of poison, which, when about to drink, a friend breaks and thus saves him. If Christ had been placed in similar circumstances, it is certain that with a conquering power He would have delivered the men, women and children from the claws of these bloodthirsty wolves. Muhammad never fought against the Christians; on the contrary, He treated them kindly and gave them perfect freedom. A community of Christian people lived at Najran and were under His care and protection. Muhammad said, "if anyone infringes their rights, I Myself will be his enemy, and in the presence of God I will bring a charge against him." In the edicts which He promulgated it is clearly stated that the lives, properties and honor of the Christians and Jews are under the protection of God; and that if a Muhammadan married a Christian woman, the husband must not prevent her from going to church, nor oblige her to veil herself; and that if she died, he must place her remains in the care of the Christian clergy. Should the Christians desire to build a church, Islam ought to help them. In case of war between Islam and her enemies, the Christians should be exempted from the obligation of fighting, unless they desired of their own free will to do so in defense of Islam, because they were under its protection. But as a compensation for this immunity, they should pay yearly a small sum of money. In short, there are seven detailed edicts on these subjects, some copies of which are still extant at Jerusalem. This is an established fact and not dependent on my affirmation. The edict of the second Caliph [Of 'Umar] still exists in the custody of the orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, and of this there is no doubt. [Cf. Jurji Zaydan's _Umayyads and Abbasids_, trans. D. S. Margoliouth.] Nevertheless, after a certain time, and through the transgression of both the Muhammadans and the Christians, hatred and enmity arose between them. Beyond this fact, all the narrations of the Muslims, Christians and others are simply fabrications, which have their origin in fanaticism, or ignorance, or emanate from intense hostility. For example, the Muslims say that Muhammad cleft the moon, and that it fell on the mountain of Mecca: they think that the moon is a small body which Muhammad divided into two parts and threw one part on this mountain, and the other part on another mountain. Such stories are pure fanaticism. Also the traditions which the clergy quote, and the incidents with which they find fault, are all exaggerated, if not entirely without foundation. Briefly, Muhammad appeared in the desert of Hijaz in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a desolate, sterile wilderness, sandy and uninhabited. Some parts, like Mecca and Medina, are extremely hot; the people are nomads with the manners and customs of the dwellers in the desert, and are entirely destitute of education and science. Muhammad Himself was illiterate, and the Qur'an was originally written upon the bladebones of sheep, or on palm leaves. These details indicate the condition of the people to whom Muhammad was sent. The first question which He put to them was, "Why do you not accept the Pentateuch and the Gospel, and why do you not believe in Christ and in Moses?" This saying presented difficulties to them and they argued, "Our forefathers did not believe in the Pentateuch and the Gospel; tell us, why was this?" He answered, "They were misled; you ought to reject those who do not believe in the Pentateuch and the Gospel, even though they are your fathers and your ancestors." In such a country, and amidst such barbarous tribes, an illiterate Man produced a book in which, in a perfect and eloquent style, He explained the divine attributes and perfections, the prophethood of the Messengers of God, the divine laws, and some scientific facts. Thus, you know that before the observations of modern times - - that is to say, during the first centuries and down to the fifteenth century of the Christian era -- all the mathematicians of the world agreed that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun moved. The famous astronomer who was the protagonist of the new theory discovered the movement of the earth and the immobility of the sun. [Copernicus.] Until his time all the astronomers and philosophers of the world followed the Ptolemaic system, and whoever said anything against it was considered ignorant. Though Pythagoras, and Plato during the latter part of his life, adopted the theory that the annual movement of the sun around the zodiac does not proceed from the sun, but rather from the movement of the earth around the sun, this theory had been entirely forgotten, and the Ptolemaic system was accepted by all the mathematicians. But there are some verses revealed in the Qur'an contrary to the theory of the Ptolemaic system. One of them is "The sun moves in a fixed place," which shows the fixity of the sun, and its movement around an axis. [Qur'an 36:37] Again, in another verse, "and each star moves in its own heaven." [Qur'an 36:38] Thus is explained the movement of the sun, of the moon, of the earth, and of other bodies. When the Qur'an appeared, all the mathematicians ridiculed these statements and attributed the theory to ignorance. Even the doctors of Islam, when they saw that these verses were contrary to the accepted Ptolemaic system, were obliged to explain them away. It was not until after the fifteenth century of the Christian era, nearly nine hundred years after Muhammad, that a famous astronomer made new observations and important discoveries by the aid of the telescope, which he had invented. [Galileo] The rotation of the earth, the fixity of the sun, and also its movement around an axis, were discovered. It became evident that the verses of the Qur'an agreed with existing facts, and that the Ptolemaic system was imaginary. In short, many Oriental peoples have been reared for thirteen centuries under the shadow of the religion of Muhammad. During the Middle Ages, while Europe was in the lowest depths of barbarism, the Arab peoples were superior to the other nations of the earth in learning, in the arts, mathematics, civilization, government and other sciences. The Enlightener and Educator of these Arab tribes, and the Founder of the civilization and perfections of humanity among these different races, was an illiterate Man, Muhammad. Was this illustrious Man a thorough Educator or not? A just judgment is necessary. 'Abdu'l-Baha _Some Answered Questions_, pages 18-24 (c) 1930, 1954, 1964, 1981 by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States All Rights Reserved For electronic reproduction only! Do not reproduce in any other way without permission from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. Copies intended for electronic reproduction such as within files available for download on Bulletin Board Systems must contain the copyright information and this paragraph and must not be altered in any way. File name: SAQ-018.TXT * Origin: Camphor Fountain*(510)547-5741*Oakland,California (93:5050/9) On the Sovereignty of Muhammad, from the Writings of Baha'u'llah Behold how the sovereignty of Muhammad, the Messenger of God, is today apparent and manifest amongst the people. You are well aware of what befell His Faith in the early days of His Dispensation. What woeful sufferings did the hand of the infidel and erring, the divines of that age and their associates, inflict upon that spiritual Essence, that most pure and holy Being! How abundant the thorns and briars which they have strewn over His path! It is evident that that wretched generation, in their wicked and satanic fancy, regarded every injury to that immortal Being as a means to the attainment of an abiding felicity; inasmuch as the recognized divines of that age, such as Abdu'llah-i-Ubayy, Abu'Amir, the hermit, Ka'b-ibn-i-Ashraf, and Nadr-ibn-i-Harith, all treated Him as an impostor, and pronounced Him a lunatic and a calumniator. Such sore accusations they brought against Him that in recounting them God forbiddeth the ink to flow, Our pen to move, or the page to bear them. These malicious imputations provoked the people to arise and torment Him. And how fierce that torment, if the divines of the age be its chief instigators, if they denounce Him to their followers, cast Him out from their midst, and declare Him a miscreant! Hath not the same befallen this Servant, and been witnessed by all? For this reason did Muhammad cry out: "No Prophet of God hath suffered such harm as I have suffered." And in the Qur'an are recorded all the calumnies and reproaches uttered against Him, as well as all the afflictions which He suffered. Refer ye thereunto, that haply ye may be informed of that which hath befallen His Revelation. So grievous was His plight, that for a time all ceased to hold intercourse with Him and His companions. Whoever associated with Him fell a victim to the relentless cruelty of His enemies.... Consider, how great is the change today! Behold, how many are the Sovereigns who bow the knee before His name! How numerous the nations and kingdoms who have sought the shelter of His shadow, who bear allegiance to His Faith, and pride themselves therein! From the pulpit-top there ascendeth today the words of praise which, in utter lowliness, glorify His blessed name; and from the heights of minarets there resoundeth the call that summoneth the concourse of His people to adore Him. Even those Kings of the earth who have refused to embrace His Faith and to put off the garment of unbelief, none-the-less confess and acknowledge the greatness and overpowering majesty of that Day Star of loving-kindness. Such is His earthly sovereignty, the evidences of which thou dost on every side behold. This sovereignty must needs be revealed and established either in the lifetime of every Manifestation of God or after His ascension unto His true habitation in the realms above.... It is evident that the changes brought about in every Dispensation constitute the dark clouds that intervene between the eye of man's understanding and the Divine Luminary which shineth forth from the day spring of the Divine Essence. Consider how men for generations have been blindly imitating their fathers, and have been trained according to such ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith. Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation hath been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith--principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to regard as infidel, profligate and wicked,--they would of a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth. Such things are as "clouds" that veil the eyes of those whose inner being hath not tasted the Salsabil of detachment, nor drunk from the Kawthar of the knowledge of God. Such men, when acquainted with those circumstances, become so veiled that, without the least question, they pronounce the Manifestation of God as infidel, and sentence Him to death. You must have heard of such things taking place all down the ages, and are now observing them in these days. It behoveth us, therefore, to make the utmost endeavor, that, by God's invisible assistance, these dark veils, these clouds of Heaven-sent trials, may not hinder us from beholding the beauty of His shining Countenance, and that we may recognize Him only by His own Self. _Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah_, pages 24-27 --- Renegade v12-25 Exp * Origin: Camphor Fountain*(510)547-5741*Oakland,California (93:5050/9) New Age Ministry By: Steve Kalinowski The New Age concept, in an overview, is basically a shifting of perspectives, or a changing paradigm, with focus and emphasis on individual personal spirituality and its effect/consequences on society. Since that in itself is such an individually eclectic approach to philosophy, it is difficult to pin down a definition that will be accepted by a concensus. Thus, there are many different working definitions of New Age, I'm sure you've heard a few different ones yourself. Some are valid to a certain extent; while others are truly misguided.. it depends on the depth of understanding and credibility of who you ask.. The mechanism that determines the New Age, in a strictly time-line oriented sense.., comes from Astrology. Astrologers have long tracked a cycle called "The Procession of the Equinoxes." Each year the beginning of Spring is noted as the `point of Equinox,' the moment that the azimuth of the Sun goes from south to north declination-- or is crossing at zero degrees declination, when the day and night are equal in length. (aequinoctium =<= ~aequus,~ equal + ~nox,~ night) If the measurement of celestial longitude of the Equinox is marked against the backdrop of the zodiac; it will be noticed that the markings creep slowly backwards from year to year at a random rate, (the present rate is at about 6 seconds of celestial arc per year, or one full degree in seventy-five years...) not very fast, but enough so that in every 2,250 years or so (approx) depending of the average rate, the marking of the Equinox point actually changes zodiac signs. Astrologers call the duration within one particular zodiac sign an `Age.' We have been in the Age of Pisces for a little over 2,000 years; and the transition into the Age of Aquarius is starting, hence expressions like `the Dawn of Aquarius.' A noteworthy historical point about the changing of Ages; although there are always periods of overlap, with no real line of demarcation, each Age has a distinctive flavor or tone of philosophy, and images of common useage that mirror the images connected to the sign naming the Age. From a religious perspective, Christianity has come to be the flag-bearer of the Piscean Age, complete with all Piscean attitudes and characteristics... Judiasm was the flag-bearer of the Aries Age, as was Hinduism the flag-bearer of the Taurus Age. Interestingly, the Bhraman's Sacred Cow (Taurus image) became the Golden Calf that was cast down by the Judiac nomads and shepherds (Aries image) to promote the One-God concept (also an Aries image). Likewise, the Sacrificial Lamb (Aries image) was offered and became the Kyrstos/Christ/Savior (Piscean image) to promote the Universal-God concept.. the imagery of the `Fisherman of Men' is also strongly Piscean. So, it is expected that the Aquarian Age will also have its own tone and flavor in this regard... perhaps the image of the Aquarian Water-bearer will empty his Urn that contains all the fish that were caught by the Fisherman of Pisces. The attitude of Aquarius is `individuality in a harmonious society of like-minded individuals.... or else, anarchy, rebellion and revolution to obtain acceptance of individuality' ...ie., Ecumenism and apostacy gives way to tolerance, respect, even protection of spiritual diversity. A motto might be: `Spiritual Brotherhood; by Concensus of Conscious Awareness, or Enlightened Anarchy, take your pick.' A view of Diety in the Aquarian Age might be `A Multifarious Multi-dimensional Manifestation of the One' -- no longer cultural, no longer personified, but integrated into all of humanity at once... ie., finally taking the Christ off of the Cross (the image of actually sacrificing the sacrifice) and placing him in the very essence of all beings. For the record, I am an ordained minister of the International Metaphysical Ministry... which is to say-- a New Age Minister! As is the case of any ministry, my prime focus is to increase the awareness of the Diety's [whatever name you may choose] Presence in mankind. The metaphysical approach in this quest actually compliments other religious teaching systems by supplementing them with the premise that each of us is directly connected to the God/dess-Source , and can become consciously aware of that connection through meditation. This approach encourages one to personally experience God/dess-Source, rather than merely accept God/dess-Source on the testimony of someone else. In the course of my studies, I have traveled on many roads. Along the way, I considered well that each one was to be but a link in the chain, never placed total commitment to any one link, but only in the strength of the full length of chain. As the chain grows longer with each new link acquired, it approaches a binding of the Universe. Religion... in a prayer, a spell, a divination, or invocation... regardless of the name used, religion defined is to bind oneself, or to be bound, to a way of life. First, to define metaphysical science. We have incorporated many varied topics into this general heading, including, but not limited to meditation, yoga, esp, astral projection, psychic perception, runes, channeling, astrology, tarot, I-ching, Jungian psychology, aura-psionic manipulation, alchemy, feng shui, creative visualization, high magick, and comparative religions. The metaphysical practitioner uses at least one of these art forms, most likely many more than one, in their work. A minister in metaphysical science is studied in _most_ of these art forms, not to any expertise level, but to a qualifying level to be more than just conversant -- informed and able to understand each form and teach the general concepts and principles to others. The minister, once qualified, then, is able to pursue their own particular study in whatever field they choose for a speciality -- my speciality is astrology and psionics . This is not unlike the medical profession, in that all of the basic skills are learned during the general degree; and then a speciality skill is pursued for the final practice. The common thread in all metaphysical science practices is that we value every human being as being fully connected to, or a manifestation of the Universal/Divine/God/dess-Source; that each practitioner is experiencing that connection in their life-work, and is encouraging others to experience their own connection in their life, thus leading to developing their own life-work goals.. The organization of the International Metaphysical Ministry is an academic organization, not designed to create a new religion, but to provide an acedemic `clearing house' for information and professional contacts for all those in the diverse fields of study under the metaphysical umbrella. The organization provides accrediting credentials for academic work, and continuing education in yearly convention seminars. In personal practice, the ordained minister is charged to provide _only_one_precept/tenet_ to the client/student -- ie., the connection to the God/dess-Source is found within each living entity, therefore each person is capable of becoming conscious of that connection, and living in accordance with that connection. The implication is that each person has a Divine purpose, as well as an individual purpose. Most times these two purposes seem to be in conflict. Metaphysical ministry contends that they are meant to coincide, to exist together in harmony, to complement each other; and from that view attempts to resolve any apparent conflict of dualistic purpose through education, meditation, and prayer treatments. Education is as straight forward as it sounds. The practitioner has their personal area of expertise, as well as the general working knowledge of most `spiritual paths,' and teaches that to all those who seek. The more studied the practitioner, the more areas of `spiritual path' they are able to work with to educate their students. Here, the minister acts as a spiritual guide until the client/student is able to access the `inner guidance' that enables them to take over for themselves. Meditation is the backbone of the philosophy, all other metaphysical art forms are in some way connected to this. The practitioner personally meditates to daily renew, validate and experience their own connection to the God/dess-Source; and teaches client/students to do the same through a series of methods for exercising meditation skills. This is the ritual level of the ministry. Prayer treatment is the basic healing tool of the ministry of metaphysical science. A prayer treatment is a conscious focus and release of psychic energy (psionics) from the minister to the client/student for the purpose of healing the spiritual self. Once healing begins on the psychic level, healing on all other levels soon follows. This is the conjure/magick level of the ministry. In my personal practice, the use of astrology to create personalized prayer treatments combined with psionics (aura visualization and field energy administration) is my specialty and the subject of my masters thesis. This technique is now being studied by all other ministers in the organization who are interested in astrology and psionics. I intend to further develop the technique in the doctorate work. LightWorking: The term ~LightWork~ is meant to imply the `Nurturing and mid-Wifery of the dawning Aquarius Age' -- working to bring it to full Light. I use the term LightWorking to describe the personal commitment of an individual to the opening of the world to the concepts of the New Age... not all LightWorkers are metaphysical ministers, on the contrary. There are LightWorker representatives in all walks of life, all areas of human endeavor, and they focus the concepts of the New Age through their own particular perspective. Notice that so many novel, movie and television writers, even the commercial ads, are working with New Age themes, as are musicians and artists of all kinds. Science scholars and philosophers, too, have their representatives. Much of the work on `Quantum Physics' is developed through the New Age perspectives, as is the growing acceptance of alternative health care methods in the general community. The underlying essence of such concepts as `Political Correctness,' of the environmental `Green,' `EcoSafe,' and `EarthWatch' movements, are all still other examples of New Age focus areas. In fact, the mass networking of human thought (this electronic media) is a very fine example of the Aquarian New Age. New understandings in psychology and sociology, concepts of ESP and intuitive creativity, of channeling and automatic writing, of spirit guides, all have taken old existing concepts and restructured them within the framework of the New Age views. All these areas of new thought have LightWorker representatives working right along side of traditionalists, and diligently participating in guiding the progress and development of their fields toward the New Age view.. Well Neal, guess that should be a short summary ... aren't you glad you asked? Be Well... And so it is! Rev Steve @)>--`-,--`--- The Temple of Set, Is it Satanic? By: Lilith Aquino I can't answer this in 25 words or less, so bear with me! If you consider Satanism to be anti-Christian Devil worship, the answer is no. The Temple of Set practices a completely non-Christianized, positive "high Satanism". To understand what we mean by this, a bit of history of the Temple is needed: While the TOS as an organization was formally incorporated and recognized by both state and federal governments in 1975 CE, its magical and philosophical roots are prehistoric, originating in mankind's first apprehension that there is "something different" about the human race - a sense of SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS - that places humanity apart from all other known forms of life. Ancient religions - of which those of Egypt are generally acknowledged the eldest - either exalted or feared this self-consciousness. Those which exalted it took the position that the human psyche is capable of opposition to and domination of the forces of nature. The psyche-worshipping, reasoning religions - or schools of initiatory philosophy - attained levels of abstract knowledge that made them mysterious to the masses. In a few socities, such as Egypt and Greece, such groups were respected and admired. More often, however, their exclusive elitism and "supernatural" activities made them objects of resentment and persecution. While all philosophical schools embraced the psychecentric consciousness to some degree, there were a very few which made it avowedly and explicitly the focus of their attention. The divine personifications ("gods") of such schools have come down to us as symbols of what most Western religions, worshippers of non-consciousness, consider the supreme "evil": the Prince of Darkness in his many forms. Of these the most ancient is Set, whose Priesthood can be traced to predynastic times. Originally a circumpolar/stellar deity portrayed as a cyclical counterpart to the Solar Horus, Set was later recast as an evil principle by the cults of Osiris and Isis. When the Hebrews emigrated from Egypt during the XIX Dynasty, they took with them a caricature of Set: "Satan" (from the hieroglyphic _Set-Hen_, one of the god's formal titles). Originally a sort of "prosecuting angel for YHVH", the Hebrew Satan was changed by Christianity into a personification of everything God was not - and since God was "good", Satan was necessarily "bad". Alluring or mysterious deities from religions competing with early Christianity - such as the hellenic/Roman Mysteries and Persian Mithraic faith - were also "bad". Non-Christian gods generally were redefined as Christian "demons" and given a place in the Christian Hell (another name stolen and perverted from Norse mythology). Christian propaganda nonwithstanding, the present day "Satan" is wholly their invention. Which brings us to the present time: The Satanic religion proposes to raise the individual to personal godhood, free from enslavement to any other "God" (or gods). However this is a question not just of power, but also of ethics, morality, and psychological maturity. The parameters of philosophy and metaphysics extend far beyond the conceptual and symbolic limits of the Judaic/Chrisitian tradition. The Temple of Set explores the "human equation" and the metaphysical and psychological roots of the great Satanic/psyche-centered philosophies of history. The appeal of occultism is much the same as that of conventional religion: Logical positivism and scientific materialism, though they have made great strides towards explaining the "how" of existence, have failed entirely to explain the why. Conventional religions, with their colorful mythologies analyzed in terms of the underlying philosophical principles, represent simply the primitive longing of man to feel "at one" with the Universal harmony he perceives about him. The Black Magician rejects both the desirability of union with the Universe and any self-deceptive actions designed to create such an illusion. He/she has considered the existence of the individual psyche - the "core you" of your conscious intelligence - and has taken satisfaction from its existence as something unlike anything else. The Black Magician desires this psyche to live, to experience, to continue. He/she does not wish to die - or to lose consciousness and identity in a larger, Universal consciousness (assuming that such exists). He/she wants to BE. This decision in favor of individual existence is the first premise of the Temple of Set. The second premise of the Temple is that the psychecentric consciousness can evolve towards its own divinity through deliberate exercise of the intelligence and Will, a process of BECOMING or COMING INTO BEING (XEPER), whose roots may be found in the dialectic method expounded by Plato and the conscious exaltation of the Will proposed by Nietzsche. The "worship" of Set is thus the "worship" of individualism. In the Church of Satan this was taken to mean indulgence in all (legal) desires of the body and ego. Since many such desires are impulsive and destructive, the COS found itself in an awkward position, which accelerated its eventual crisis and demise in 1975. The Temple of Set determined to preserve the principle of individualism, but to add to it the evolutionary "higher self" aspirations of Aleister Crowley's pre-OTO philosophy of Thelema. Glorification of the ego is not enough; it is the COMPLETE psyche, the entire Self or soul, which must be recognized, appreciated, and actualized. Dogma, - to include fixed ideology in any form - is repugnant to Setians. We strive rather towards an atmosphere of "best possible premises", which are always subject to constructive, intelligent examination and criticism. Foolish, pretentious, or destructive egotism under the guise of exploration is neither respected nor endured. Regretfully there still exist some individuals whose idea of "Satanism" is largely a simple-minded synthesis of Christian propaganda and Hollywood horror movies. The Temple of Set enjoys the colorful legacy of the Black Arts, and we use many forms of historical Satanic imagery for our artistic stimulation and pleasure. But we have not found that any interest or activity which an enlightened, mature intellect would regard as undignified, sadistic, criminal, or depraved is desirable, much less essential to our work. The Temple of Set is an evolutinary product of human experience. Such experience includes the magical and philosophical work of many occult individuals which have preceded us. In examining the secret and suppressed corners of history for valuable and useful material, the Temple insists upon ehtical presentation and use of such discoveries. All Setians are expected to display a high measure of maturity and common sense in this area. We reject absolutely wanton cruelty and harm to others, and are particularly adamant about this with regard to animals. The Temple of Set evaluates conventional religions as erroneous in principle, and feels no need to concern itself with their activities unless they intrude upon our affairs. Any further questions or comments are welcome. Descent Into Confusion by Robert Hughes One of the celebrated "mysteries" of revivalist Wicca is the 'ritual play' known as the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess. In my Gardnerian Book of Shadows, dating from the sixties, the Legend is to be enacted separately at "a meeting for preparation for Third Degree". Only third degree witches may attend this meeting with the initiate who is to take second degree. The Legend is enacted in front of the initiate by four of the third degree witches. Two take the role of Narrator and Guardian of the Portal (of the underworld), while the High Priest and High Priestess or Maiden take the roles of God and Goddess. The term Guardian of the Portal may have been borrowed from the rituals of the Golden Dawn. In this enactment, the ruler of the underworld and Lord of Death is the Horned One. The Legend begins with the statement: '...Our Lady, the Goddess, would solve all mysteries - even the mystery of death. And so she journeyed to the Netherworld where the Guardian of the Portal challenged her.' The Guardian orders her to strip off her garments and jewels and she is bound with cords and brought into the presence of the Lord of Death. The God is so overcome by her beauty that he falls and kisses her feet and begs her to stay with him in the underworld. The Goddess replies that she does not love him, and she asks why he causes all the things she loves and delights in to fade and die. The God replies that the cause is 'age and fate' and he says he is helpless to stop it, although he can give the dead 'rest and peace and strength, so that they may return.' A second time he asks the Goddess to stay with him. When she again says she does not love him, Death replies she must suffer a scourging at his hands. Following this scourging, and the five fold kiss, the Goddess says: 'I know the pain of love'. It is then that the God 'taught her all the mysteries'. He also gives her a special necklace which is 'a symbol of the Circle of Rebirth'. In return, our Lady teaches him the 'sacred mystery of the cauldron'. The Legend ends with an affirmation of the reality of reincarnation among the Hidden Children of the Goddess and 'the mystery of magick which is placed between the worlds'. The initiate is then invited to ask questions about the meaning of the Legend. Even anyone with only a slight knowledge of understanding of mythology will recognise the contradictions and confusions which exist within the structure and symbolism of the Legend. The first point of controversy is when, where, and by whom, this ritual originated. Some (unconfirmed) sources claim it is of 19th century origin. It is said to be a product of the famous "Cambridge" coven of academics who revived the classical Mysteries in the early 1800s. More reliable evidence exists to prove that Gerald Gardner sent a draft of the Legend to Aleister Crowley for correction in the 1940s. Kelly (Crafting the Art of Magic, Llewellyn, 1991) claims that the Legend does not appear in the pre-1949 second degree initiation in the famous (infamous?) Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical and says: "The content of this document probably dates to 1953 or earlier..." (p.128). Gardner quotes from the Legend in his book, Witchcraft Today as if he had received it from the New Forest coven. In fact he describes it as 'the central part of one of their rituals. It is a sort of primitive spiritualism.'. He goes on to compare its importance in the Craft to the Christian myth of the crucifixion and resurrection. (1970, pp 44-46). Gardner goes on to say the Legend 'upon which its members base their action is the central idea of the cult.' He compares it with the story of Istar (sic) descending into hell and the myth of the Hindu god Siva (Shiva) as Lord of Death and destruction. Gardner then says he believes the Legend may be of Celtic origin. To support this fanciful statement, he says that: 'In Celtic legends the Lords of the Underworld did prepare you for death and many living people are said to have entered their regions, formed alliances with them, and returned safely, but it needed great courage; only a hero or a demi-god dared to risk it.' (p.46). One presumes that here Gardner is making an allusion to the realm of Faerie and the widespread folk belief that faeries were the spirits of the dead. This is classic Gardner at his most confusing and, perhaps, deliberately misleading and mischievous. The version of the Legend as presented by Gardner is both patriarchal and mythologically inaccurate. It seems to be based on a hybrid combination of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, and the Middle Eastern myth of Inanna-Ishtar. Gardner does not mention the Demeter-Persephone myth in his speculations, instead sidetracking the reader into the realms of Celtic myth, although he does devote a chapter of his book to the Greek Mysteries - basically as a means of justifying the practice of scourging. In the Middle Eastern myth, Inanna is the Goddess of the Moon and Venus. She was probably, 'one of the three great goddesses of the Bronze Age' (Baring & Cashford, 1991). Inanna was known by the title Queen of Heaven and Earth and her myth is an archetypal form of the eternal story of the mourning widow/mother goddess and the saviour god, who is her son/lover, dies, descends to the underworld and is reborn. This myth is found in most Mediterranean cultures and in northern Europe, and it formed the 'pagan' basis for the new religion of Christianity. The Demeter-Persephone myth is a post-patriarchal variant on this ancient legend with the daughter (Persephone) being kidnapped and held prisoner by Pluto, the Lord of Death and the ruler of Hades. In recent years some feminist mythographers have re-written this classic story and produced alternative versions without any patriarchal overtones (see Spretnak, 1978). Gardner was correct to refer to visits to the underworld by heroes and demi-gods (sic). However, in the majority of the extant legends and myths, such as the descent of Arthur to Annwn to capture the Cauldron of the Goddess, and Baldur's ritual death and descent into the realm of Hel, it is a male mortal or god who is involved in the descent and is "reborn". It is the Goddess, in her 'dark aspect, who rules over the realm of the dead, controls the power of fate and grants the hero/god the supreme initiation of transformation and rebirth. In the Gardnerian Legend of the Descent we are led to believe that the Goddess, who is represented in The Charge as an all-powerful deity offering her worshippers 'upon death, peace unutterable, rest and the ecstasy of the Goddess', and is described by Gardner himself as 'the Great Mother, the giver of life' (1970, p.45), visits the underworld knowing nothing about the mysteries of life and death. She allegedly knows nothing about the natural process that makes 'all the things that I love, and take delight in, fade and die' until she is taught these mysteries by the God. In fact in response to her question the God replies 'tis age and fate'. Significantly these are both concepts associated with the Dark Goddess of the Underworld, who has no role in Gardner's version of the Craft. It is not difficult to see the Legend of the Descent of the Goddess in terms of 'a theologising of the scourging' (Kelly, 1991), which was such an important aspect of the rituals in Gardner's time. Taking this argument a step forward, as Kelly does (1991, pp 28-29), it could appear that the content of the Legend was based on Gardner's sexual fantasies and his personal concept of the Goddess. He imagined the Goddess as 'a sweet, lovely woman', while in the more traditional branches of the Craft she is a darker deity ruling fate, death and the underworld as well as sexuality. This alternative archetypal image of the witch goddess has largely been ignored by revivalist Wicca. It will continue to do so while Gardner's confused and mythologically incorrect Legend of the Descent of the Goddess remains the 'central idea' of the modern Craft. References and further reading: Witchcraft Today G B Gardner (Arrow paperback edition 1970) The Witches' Way J & S Farrar (Robert Hale 1984) Crafting the Art of Magic: Book I A Kelly (Llewellyn 1991) Lost Goddesses of Early Greece C Spretnak (Moon Books 1978) The Myth of the Goddess Baring & Cashford (Penguin 1991) The Mysteries of Eleusis G D'Alviella (Aquarian Press 1981) The Derivation of the word Witch by Doreen Valiente Strangely enough, the derivation of the word witch is a subject on which scarcely any two authorities can be found to agree. The most frequent explanation is that it is akin to the word wise, and that witchcraft therefore means The Craft of the Wise. It is widely believed that Gerald Gardner originated this derivation. However, this is incorrect, as it appears in Hugh Ross Williamson's book, The Arrow and the Sword, first published in 1947, before any of Gerald Gardner's books on witchcraft. But is this the right derivation? Not according to Professor Jeffrey Russell, who gives an appendix on this subject in his book A History of Witchcraft (Thames & Hudson, London, 1980). Professor Russell rejects any connection with the Old English word witan, meaning to know, as he also does with the Old English wican, to bend. In his opinion, the real origin comes from the Indo-European word weik, which has a general connection with religion and magic. From this very ancient root-word came in turn, among other things, a word wikk, meaning magic and sorcery, and this eventually produced the Old English wicca, a male witch, wicce, a female witch, and the verb wiccian, to bewitch or work witchcraft. It will be seen from the above that "Wicca" does not mean "witchcraft" and never did, in spite of its widespread modern use. So how did this usage originate? In his biography, Gerald Gardner: Witch, it describes his initiation in "Old Dorothy's" house, and says, 'It was half way through when the word Wica was first mentioned: "and I then knew that that which I had thought burnt out hundreds of years ago still survived."' It will be seen that at this time Gerald didn't even know how to spell the word. Its correct spelling is as above. Nor, unfortunately, does this account state in what context the word was used. It might have been that Old Dorothy's coven was simply proclaiming Gerald a male witch, in which case this would have been an accurate use of the word. So where did Gerald get the idea that "Wicca" meant witchcraft? I would like to advance a theory of my own. I must emphasise that this is just a theory, and I may be wrong. But I believe that this idea originated from his reading of a book which I know that he possessed, namely An Encyclopaedia of Occultism by Lewis Spence. This very valuable work of reference first appeared in 1920, according to the mention of it in the bibliography at the end of Gerald's book, Witchcraft Today. It has recently been re-issued by Bracken Books under the title of The Encyclopaedia of the Occult. The entry referring to witchcraft begins: "Witchcraft: (from Saxon Wicca, a contraction of witega, a prophet or sorcerer)." This could have been read and misunderstood to mean that "Wicca" meant witchcraft, and this misconception has been carried on through the ranks of modern witches ever since. It has to be said, of course, that the word Wicca has its uses to define the present-day revival, especially in the USA, where a number of associations using this word have gained legal recognition as religious bodies. Personally, however, I prefer the term The Old Religion, which is the English equivalent of the Italian term used by the followers of Aradia, namely La Vecchia Religione. (See Charles Godfrey Leland's book, Aradia: or the Gospel of the Witches, first published in 1899.) (Incidentally, there is a legend in witchcraft circles to the effect that the reason why the original edition of this book is so rare is that old Gerald bought up all the copies he could find and destroyed them. Whether there is any truth in this or not, I cannot say.) In spite of Professor Russell's opinion, as quoted above, there is an older derivation of the word witch that may perhaps be worthy of consideration. This may be found in A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by the Rev. Walter W Skeat (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1901). This book discusses the above-mentioned derivations from wicca, wicce, etc., and then in turn connects these old words with the Norwegian vikja, which means firstly 'to turn aside' and secondly 'to conjure away'. Thus, speculates the Rev. Skeat, the word witch possibly meant 'averter'. He also mentions that the Anglo-Saxon word witega, a prophet or seer, comes from the Anglo-Saxon witan, to observe, which he says is 'cognate with witan, to know.'. We have seen that Lewis Spence regarded witega as the origin of wicca. So who is right? In spite of all claims, it seems to me that it remains a matter of opinion. One thing we do know is that the word came to Britain with the Saxons, who at the time of their arrival on these shores were pagans. I believe that to them, the word witch (or whichever of its forerunners they used), did not necessarily have any derogatory meaning. A witch was a seer, a knower, an averter of evil. The word only took on a negative meaning with the coming of Christianity, which taught that all the gods of the heathen were devils. So anyone who clung o the old ways and the Old Religion was a devil worshipper. And annually, around Halloween, we still see the same old charges being made in the same old spirit of bigotry. Isn't it sad that these good folk haven't learnt anything since the Dark Ages? Wicca vs. Paganism? By: David Piper Firstly, Paganism is a collective term for many different faiths and Wicca is one specific Pagan faith; however, specifics of Wicca IMHO: Duotheistic monism *or* duotheistic monotheism (the One transcending the Two while the Two still have independent self-existence) The Lady is the Mother of all Life and Giver of Rebirth: Her Womb is also the Tomb - "that which enters the Cauldron living, dies but that which is placed in it dead, comes forth living" The Lord is the Father of all life, Son and Lover of the Goddess: He is born of Her, returns His Seed unto Her, returns to Her in death, and is reborn of Her All initiated members are of the Priesthood: as Priest(ess) unto the self, if not to a group The essential equality of all members, together with the respect for those of more experience and learning: Elders, HP, and HPS Wiccans practice a somewhat "formal" liturgy - if only in terms of a regular "opening" and "closing" ritual, within which freedom and spontaneity can be expressed as the Spirit moves them A common resemblance of working methods and practice, within a broad but nevertheless limited range of acceptable variation The concept of "Drawing Down" - that the Deities can and do manifest Themselves "unto visible appearance" to Their worshippers A reverence for sexuality as both natural and good, and as sacrament of the creative Union of the Lady and the Lord The Great Rite - as the "Sacred Marriage," in which Goddess and God, human and Divine, are brought to Unity, or Unity perceived Respect for the "Gifts of the Goddess" (to borrow a Farrarian term), as the true means by which humans can come to directly know, and experience, the Divine - reason and logic fail; emotions and intuition and the "psychic" are the channels of contact, and experiential "Knowledge" The concept of "Naked in Her Sight" as expressive of freedom, and of obedience to Her, and of equality with Brothers and Sisters; whether by literal, "skyclad" ritual nudity, or by symbolic, "Naught is hidden from Your Sight" ritual robes ******************************************************************** Now, some of the ideas mentioned beg for more definition and further discussion, but there's my offering for now... B*B David 2401 BC THE PAPYRUS OF ANI (THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD) Translated by E.A. Wallis Budge HYMN TO OSIRIS "Homage to thee, Osiris, Lord of eternity, King of the Gods, whose names are manifold, whose forms are holy, thou being of hidden form in the temples, whose Ka is holy. Thou art the governor of Tattu (Busiris), and also the mighty one in Sekhem (Letopolis). Thou art the Lord to whom praises are ascribed in the nome of Ati, thou art the Prince of divine food in Anu. Thou art the Lord who is commemorated in Maati, the Hidden Soul, the Lord of Qerrt (Elephantine), the Ruler supreme in White Wall (Memphis). Thou art the Soul of Ra, his own body, and hast thy place of rest in Henensu (Herakleopolis). Thou art the beneficent one, and art praised in Nart. Thou makest thy soul to be raised up. Thou art the Lord of the Great House in Khemenu (Hermopolis). Thou art the mighty one of victories in Shas-hetep, the Lord of eternity, the Governor of Abydos. The path of his throne is in Ta-tcheser (a part of Abydos). Thy name is established in the mouths of men. Thou art the substance of Two Lands (Egypt). Thou art Tem, the feeder of Kau (Doubles), the Governor of the Companies of the gods. Thou art the beneficent Spirit among the spirits. The god of the Celestial Ocean (Nu) draweth from thee his waters. Thou sendest forth the north wind at eventide, and breath from thy nostrils to the satisfaction of thy heart. Thy heart reneweth its youth, thou producest the.... The stars in the celestial heights are obedient unto thee, and the great doors of the sky open themselves before thee. Thou art he to whom praises are ascribed in the southern heaven, and thanks are given for thee in the northern heaven. The imperishable stars are under thy supervision, and the stars which never set are thy thrones. Offerings appear before thee at the decree of Keb. The Companies of the Gods praise thee, and the gods of the Tuat (Other World) smell the earth in paying homage to thee. The uttermost parts of the earth bow before thee, and the limits of the skies entreat thee with supplications when they see thee. The holy ones are overcome before thee, and all Egypt offereth thanksgiving unto thee when it meeteth Thy Majesty. Thou art a shining Spirit-Body, the governor of Spirit-Bodies; permanent is thy rank, established is thy rule. Thou art the well-doing Sekhem (Power) of the Company of the Gods, gracious is thy face, and beloved by him that seeth it. Thy fear is set in all the lands by reason of thy perfect love, and they cry out to thy name making it the first of names, and all people make offerings to thee. Thou art the lord who art commemorated in heaven and upon earth. Many are the cries which are made to thee at the Uak festival, and with one heart and voice Egypt raiseth cries of joy to thee. "Thou art the Great Chief, the first among thy brethren, the Prince of the Company of the Gods, the stablisher of Right and Truth throughout the World, the Son who was set on the great throne of his father Keb. Thou art the beloved of thy mother Nut, the mighty one of valour, who overthrew the Sebau-fiend. Thou didst stand up and smite thine enemy, and set thy fear in thine adversary. Thou dost bring the boundaries of the mountains. Thy heart is fixed, thy legs are set firm. Thou art the heir of Keb and of the sovereignty of the Two Lands (Egypt). He (Keb) hath seen his splendours, he hath decreed for him the guidance of the world by thy hand as long as times endure. Thou hast made this earth with thy hand, and the waters, and the winds, and the vegetation, and all the cattle, and all the feathered fowl, and all the fish, and all the creeping things, and all the wild animals therof. The desert is the lawful possession of the son of Nut. The Two Lands (Egypt) are content to crown thee upon the throne of thy father, like Ra. "Thou rollest up into the horizon, thou hast set light over the darkness, thou sendest forth air from thy plumes, and thou floodest the Two Lands like the Disk at daybreak. Thy crown penetrateth the height of heaven, thou art the companion of the stars, and the guide of every god. Thou art beneficent in decree and speech, the favoured one of the Great Company of the Gods, and the beloved of the Little Company of the Gods. His sister [Isis] hath protected him, and hath repulsed the fiends, and turned aside calamities (of evil). She uttered the spell with the magical power of her mouth. Her tongue was perfect, and it never halted at a word. Beneficent in command and word was Isis, the woman of magical spells, the advocate of her brother. She sought him untiringly, she wandered round and round about this earth in sorrow, and she alighted not without finding him. She made light with her feathers, she created air with her wings, and she uttered the death wail for her brother. She raised up the inactive members of whose heart was still, she drew from him his essence, she made an heir, she reared the child in loneliness, and the place where he was not known, and he grew in strength and stature, and his hand was mighty in the House of Keb. The Company of the Gods rejoiced, rejoiced, at the coming of Horus, the son of Osiris, whose heart was firm, the triumphant, the son of Isis, the heir of Osiris." REFERENCES Following is a list of frequently-mentioned geographical locations, and their commonly-known names: Abtu Abydos Abu Elephantine Anu Heliopolis Bast Bubastis Hensu Herakleopolis Het-ka-Ptah Memphis Khemenu Hermopolis Per-Menu Panopolis Qerrt Elephantine Sau Sais Sekhem Letopolis Suat Asyut Tetu Busiris Two Lands Upper and Lower Egypt Unu Hermopolis HYMN TO RA THE SUN GOD A HYMN OF PRAISE TO RA WHEN HE RISETH IN THE EASTERN PART OF HEAVEN: Behold, the Osiris Ani, the scribe of the holy offerings of all the gods, saith: Homage to thee, O thou who hast come as Khepera, Khepera the creator of the gods, Thou art seated on thy throne, thou risest up in the sky, illumining thy mother [Nut], thou art seated on thy throne as the king of the gods. [Thy] mother Nut stretcheth out her hands, and performeth an act of homage to thee. The domain of Manu receiveth thee with satisfaction. The goddess Maat embraceth thee at the two seasons of the day. May Ra give glory, and power, and thruth-speaking, and the appearance as a living soul so that he may gaze upon Heru-khuti, to the KA of the Osiris the Scribe Ani, who speaketh truth before Osiris, and who saith: Hail, O all ye gods of the House of the Soul, who weigh heaven and earth in a balance, and who give celestial food [to the dead]. Hail, Tatun, [who art] One, thou creator of mortals [and] of the Companies of the Gods of the South and of the North, of the West and of the East, ascribe ye praise to Ra, the lord of heaven, the KING, Life, Strength, and Health, the maker of the gods. Give ye thanks unto him in his beneficent form which is enthroned in the Atett Boat; beings celestial praise thee, beings terrestial praise thee. Thoth and the goddess Maat mark out thy course for thee day by day and every day. Thine enemy the Serpent hath been given over to the fire. The Serpent-fiend Sebau hath fallen headlong, his forelegs are bound in chains, and his hind legs hath Ra carried away from him. The Sons of Revolt shall never more rise up. The House of the Aged One keepeth festival, and the voices of those who make merry are in the Great Place. The gods rejoice when they see Ra crowned upon his throne, and when his beams flood the world with light. The majesty of this holy god setteth out on his journey, and he goeth onwards until he reacheth the land of Manu; the earth becometh light at his birth each day; he proceedeth until he reacheth the place where he was yesterday. O be thou at peace with me. Let me gaze upon thy beauties. Let me journey above the earth. Let me smite the Ass. Let me slit asunder the Serpent-fiend Sebau. Let me destroy Aepep at the moment of his greatest power. Let me behold the Abtu Fish at his season, and the Ant Fish with the Ant Boat as it piloteth it in its lake. Let me behold Horus when he is in charge of the rudder [of the Boat of Ra], with Thoth and the goddess Maat on each side of him. Let me lay hold of the tow-rope of the Sektet Boat, and the rope at the stern of the Matett Boat. Let Ra grant to me a view of the Disk (the Sun), and a sight of Ah (the Moon) unfailingly each day. Let my Ba-soul come forth to walk about hither and thither and whithersoever it pleaseth. Let my name be called out, let it be found inscribed on the tablet which recordeth the names of those who are to receive offerings. Let meals from the sepulchral offerings be given to me in the presence [of Osiris], as to those who are in the following of Horus. Let there be prepared for me a seat in the Boat of the Sun on the day wheron the god saileth. Let me be received in the presence of Osiris in the Land of Truth-speaking- the Ka of Osiris Ani. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nekht, Brit. Mus. No. 10471, Sheet 21) NEKHT, THE CAPTAIN OF SOLDIERS, THE ROYAL SCRIBE, SINGETH A HYMN OF PRAISE TO RA, and saith:- Homage to thee, O thou glorious Being, thou who art dowered [with all sovereignty]. O Tem-Heru-Khuti (Tem-Harmakhis), when thou risest in the horizon of heaven a cry of joy goeth forth to thee from all people. O thou beautiful Being, thou dost renew thyself in thy season in the form of the Disk, within thy mother Hathor. Therefore in every place every heart swelleth with joy at thy rising for ever. The regions of the South and the North come to thee with homage, and send forth acclamations at thy rising on the horizon of heaven, and thou illuminest the Two Lands with rays of turquoise-[coloured] light. O Ra, who art Heru-Khuti, the divine man-child, the heir of eternity, self-begotten and self-born, king of the earth, prince of the Tuat (the Other World), governor of Aukert, thou didst come from the Water-god, thou didst spring from the Sky-god Nu, who doth cherish thee and order thy members. O thou god of life, thou lord of love, all men live when thou shinest; thou art crowned king of the gods. The goddess Nut embraceth thee, and the goddess Mut enfoldeth thee at all seasons. Those who are in thy following sing unto thee with joy, and they bow down their foreheads to the earth when they meet thee, the lord of heaven, the lord of the earth, the King of Truth, the lord of eternity, the prince of everlastingness, thou sovereign of all the gods, thou god of life, thou creator of eternity, thou maker of heaven wherin thou art firmly stablished. The Company of the Gods rejoice at thy rising, the earth is glad when it beholdeth thy rays; the people who have been long dead come forth with cries of joy to behold thy beauties every day. Thou goest forth each day over heaven and earth, and thou art made strong each day be thy mother Nut. Thou passest over the heights of heaven, thy heart swelleth with joy; and the Lake of Testes (the Great Oasis) is content thereat. The Serpent-fiend hath fallen, his arms are hewn off, the Knife hath severed his joints. Ra liveth by Maat (Law), the beautiful! The Sektet Boat advanceth and cometh into port. The South and the North, and the West and East, turn to praise thee. O thou First, Great God (PAUTA), who didst come into being of thine own accord, Isis and Nephthys salute thee, they sing unto thee songs of joy at thy rising in the boat, they stretch out their hands unto thee. The Souls of the East follow thee, and the Souls of the West praise thee. Thou art the Ruler of all the gods. Thou in thy shrine hast joy, for the Serpent-fiend Nak hath been judged by the fire, and thy heart shall rejoice for ever. Thy mother Nut is esteemed by thy father Nu. HYMN TO OSIRIS UN-NEFER A Hymn of Praise to Osiris Un-Nefer, the great god who dwelleth in Abtu, the king of eternity, the lord of everlastingness, who traverseth millions of years in his existence. Thou art the eldest son of the womb of Nut. Thou was begotten by Keb, the Erpat. Thou art the lord of the Urrt Crown. Thou art he whose White Crown is lofty. Thou art the King (Ati) of gods [and] men. Thou hast gained possession of the sceptre of rule, and the whip, and the rank and dignity of thy divine fathers. Thy heart is expanded with joy, O thou who art in the kingdom of the dead. Thy son Horus is firmly placed on thy throne. Thou hast ascended thy throne as the Lord of Tetu, and as the Heq who dwelleth in Abydos. Thou makest the Two Lands to flourish through Truth-speaking, in the presence of him who is the Lord to the Uttermost Limit. Thou drawest on that which hath not yet come into being in thy name of "Ta-her-sta-nef." Thou governest the Two Lands by Maat in thy name of "Seker." Thy power is wide-spread, thou art he of whom the fear is great in thy name of "Usar" (or "Asar"). Thy existence endureth for an infinite number of double henti periods in thy name of "Un-Nefer." Homage to thee, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and Prince of Princes. Thou hast ruled the Two Lands from the womb of the goddess Nut. Thou hast governed the Lands of Akert. Thy members are of silver-gold, thy head is of lapis-lazuli, and the crown of thy head is of turquoise. Thou art An of millions of years. Thy body is all pervading, O Beautiful Face in Ta-tchesert. Grant thou to me glory in heaven, and power upon earth, and truth-speaking in the Divine Underworld, and [the power to] sail down the river to Tetu in the form of a living Ba-soul, and [the power to] sail up the river to Abydos in the form of a Benu bird, and [the power to] pass in through and to pass out from, without obstruction, the doors of the lords of the Tuat. Let there be given unto me bread-cakes in the House of Refreshing, and sepulchral offerings of cakes and ale, and propitiatory offerings in Anu, and a permanent homestead in Sekhet-Aaru, with wheat and barley therein- to the Double of the Osiris, the scribe Ani. THE CHAPTERS OF COMING FORTH BY DAY HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF COMING FORTH BY DAY, AND THE SONGS OF PRAISING AND GLORIFYING WHICH ARE TO BE RECITED FOR "COMING FORTH" AND FOR ENTERING INTO KHERT-NETER, AND THE SPELLS WHICH ARE TO BE SAID IN BEAUTIFUL AMENTET. THEY SHALL BE RECITED ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL, ENTERING IN AFTER COMING FORTH. The Osiris Ani, the Osiris the scribe Ani saith:- Homage to thee, O Bull of Amentet, Thoth the king of eternity is with me. I am the great god by the side of the divine boat, I have fought for thee, I am one of those gods, those divine chiefs, who proved the truth-speaking of Osiris before his enemies on the day of the weighing of words. I am thy kinsman Osiris. I am [one of] those gods who were the children of the goddess Nut, who hacked in pieces the enemies of Osiris, and who bound in fetters the legion of Sebau devils on his behalf. I am thy kinsman Horus, I have fought on thy behalf, I have come to thee for thy name's sake. I am Thoth who proved the truth of the words of Osiris before his enemies on the day of the weighing of words in the great House of the Prince, who dwelleth in Anu. I am Teti, the son of Teti. My mother conceived me in Tetu, and gave birth to me in Tetu. I am with the mourners [and with] the women who tear out their hair and make lament for Osiris in Taui-Rekhti, proving true the words of Osiris before his enemies. Ra commanded Thoth to prove true the words of Osiris before his enemies; what was commanded [for Osiris], let that be done for me by Thoth. I am with Horus on the day of dressing Teshtesh. I open the hidden water-springs for the ablutions of Urt-ab. I unbolt the door of the Shetait Shrine in Ra-stau. I am with Horus as the protector of the left shoulder of Osiris, the dweller in Sekhem. I enter in among and I come forth from the Flame-gods on the day of the destruction of the Sebau fiends in Sekhem. I am with Horus on the day[s] of the festivals of Osiris, at the making of offerings and oblations, namely, on the festival which is celebrated on the sixth day of the month, and on the day of the Tenat festival in Anu. I am the UAB priest (libationer) in Tetu, Rera, the dweller in Per-Asar. I exalt him that is upon the high place of the country. I look upon the hidden things (the mysteries) in Ra-stau. I recite the words of the liturgy of the festival of the Soul-god in Tetu. I am the SEM priest, and [perform] his duties. I am the UR-KHERP-HEM priest on the day of placing the Henu Boat of Seker upon its divine sledge. I have taken in my hand the digging tool on the day of digging up the earth in Hensu. Hail, O ye who make perfect souls to enter into the House of Osiris, make ye the well-instructed soul of the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is true, to enter in and to be with you in the House of Osiris. Let him hear even as ye hear; let him have sight even as ye have sight; let him stand up even as ye stand up; let him take his seat even as ye take your seats. Hail, O ye who give cakes and ale to perfect souls in the House of Osiris, give ye cakes and ale twice each day (in the morning and in the evening) to the soul of the Osiris Ani, whose word is true before the gods, the Lords of Abydos, and whose word is true with you. Hail, O ye who open up the way, who act as guides to the roads [in the Other World] to perfect souls in the House of Osiris, open ye up for him the way, and act ye as guides to the roads to the soul of the Osiris, the scribe, the registrary of all the offerings made to the gods, Ani, [whose word is true] with you. May he enter the House of Osiris with boldness, and may he come forth therefrom in peace. May there be no opposition made to him, and may he not be sent back [therefrom]. May he enter in under favour [of Osiris], and may he come forth gratified [at the acceptance of] his true words. May his commands be performed in the House of Osiris, may his words travel with you, may he be glorious as ye are. May he be not found to be light in the Balance, may the Balance dispose of his case. (In the Turin Papyrus, ed. Lepsius, this Chapter ends with the following.) Permit thou not me to be judged according to the mouths of the multitude. May my soul lift itself up before [Osiris], having been found to have been pure when on earth. May I come into thy presence, O Lord of the gods; may I arrive at the Nome of Maati (Truth); may I rise up on my seat like a god endowed with life; may I give forth light like the Company of the Gods who dwell in heaven; may I become like one of you; may I lift up my footsteps in the town of Kher-Aha; may I look upon the Sektet Boat of the god, Saah, the holy one, as it passeth across the sky; may I not be repulsed; may I look upon the Lords of the Tuat, or, according to another reading, the Company of the Gods; may I smell the savour of the divine food of the Company of the Gods; may I sit down with them; may my name be proclaimed for offerings by the KHER-HEB priest at the sacrificial table; may I hear the petitions which are made when offerings are presented; may I draw nigh unto the Neshem Boat; and may neither my Heart-soul nor its lord be repulsed. Homage to thee, O Chief of Amentet, thou god Osiris, who dwellest in the town of Nifu-ur. Grant thou that I may arrive in peace in Amentet. May the Lords of Ta-Tchesert receive me, and may they say unto me: "Hail, hail; welcome, welcome!" May they make ready for me a seat by the side of the President of the Chiefs; may the Nursing-goddesses receive me at the seasons, and may I come forth into the presence of Un-Nefer true of word. May I be a Follower of Horus in Ra-stau, and of Osiris in Tetu; and may I perform all the transformations which my heart may desire to make in every place wherein my Double (KA) wisheth to be. - RUBRIC: If this text be known [by the deceased] upon earth or if he causeth it to be done in writing upon [his] coffin, then will he be able to come forth on any day he pleaseth, and to enter into his habitation unrepulsed. Cakes and ale and joints of meat from those which are on the altar of Ra shall be given unto him, and his homestead shall be among the fields of the Field of Reeds(Sekhet-Aaru), and wheat and barley shall be given unto him therein, and he shall flourish there even as he flourished upon earth. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nekhtu-Amen, ed. Naville, I, 5) THE CHAPTER OF MAKING THE SAHU TO ENTER THE TUAT ON THE DAY OF THE FUNERAL, WHEN THE FOLLOWING WORDS ARE TO BE SAID: Homage to thee, O thou who dwellest in the Holy Hill (Set-Tchesert) of Amentet! the Osiris, the royal scribe, Nekhtu-Amen, whose word is true, knoweth thee, he knoweth thy name. Deliver thou him from the worms which are in Ra-stau, which live upon the bodies of men and women, and feed upon their blood, for Osiris, the favoured servant of the god of his city, the royal scribe Nekhtu-Amen, knoweth you, and he knoweth your names. Let the order for his protection be the first command of Osiris, the Lord to the Uttermost Limit, who keepeth his body hidden. May he give him release from the Terrible One who dwelleth at the bend of the River of Amentet, and may he decree the acts that will make him to rise up. Let him pass on to him whose throne is placed within the darkness, who giveth light in Ra-stau. O thou Lord of Light, come thou and swallow up the worms which are in Amentet. Let the Great God who dwelleth in Tetu, and who is himself unseen, hear his prayers, and let those who cause afflictions hold him in fear as he cometh forth with the sentence of their doom to the Divine Block. I the Osiris, the royal scribe, Nekhtu-Amen, come, bearing the decree of Neb-er-tcher, and I am the Horus who taketh possession of his throne for him. His father, the lord of all those who are in the Boat of his Father Horus, hath ascribed praise unto him. He cometh bearing tidings....... let him see the town of Anu. Their chief shall stand on the earth before him, the scribes shall magnify him at the doors of their assemblies, and thy shall swathe im with swathings in Anu. He hath led heaven captive, and he hath seized the earth in his grasp. Neither the heavens nor the earth can be taken away from him, for, behold, he is Ra, the firstborn of the gods. His mother shall nurse him, and shall give him her breast on the horizon. - RUBRIC: The words of this Chapter shall be said after [the deceased] is laid to rest in Amentet; by means of them the region Tenn-t shall be contented with her lord. And the Osiris, the royal scribe, Nekhtu-Amen, whose word is truth, shall come forth, and he shall embark in the Boat of Ra, and [his] body upon its bier shall be counted up, and he shall be established in the Tuat. GIVING A MOUTH TO ANI THE CHAPTER OF GIVING A MOUTH TO THE OSIRIS ANI, THE SCRIBE, AND TELLER OF THE OFFERINGS WHICH ARE MADE TO ALL THE GODS, WHOSE WORD IS TRUE, WHO SAITH:- I rise up out of the Egg in the Hidden Land. May my mouth be given unto me that I may speak therewith in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of the Tuat. Let not my hand and my arm be repulsed in the presence of the Chiefs (Tchatchau) of any god. I am Osiris, the Lord of Ra-stau. May I, the Osiris, the scribe Ani, whose word is true, have my portion with him who is on the top of the Steps (Osiris). According to the desire of my heart I have come forth from the Island of Nesersert, and I have extinguished the fire. APPENDIX [The following passage is taken from the Saite Recension] - [THE CHAPTER OF GIVING A MOUTH TO THE OSIRIS, THE SCRIBE ANI, WHO SAITH]:- Homage to thee, O thou lord of brightness, Governor of the Temple, Prince of the night and of the thick darkness. I have come unto thee. I am shining, I am pure. My hands are about thee, thou hast thy lot with thy ancestors. Give thou unto me my mouth that I may speak with it. I guide my heart at its season of flame and of night. - RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known by the Osiris the scribe Ani, upon earth, [or if it be done] in writing upon [his] coffin, he shall come forth by day in every form which he pleaseth, and he shall enter into [his] abode, and shall not be repulsed. And cakes, and ale, and joints of meat [from those which are on] the altar of Osiris shall be given unto him; and he shall enter in peace into Sekhet-Aaru, conformably to the decree of the Dweller in Busiris. Wheat and barley (dhura) shall be given unto him therein, and he shall flourish there just as he did upon earth; and he shall do whatsoever it pleaseth him to do, even as do the Company of the Gods who are in the Tuat, regularly and continually, for millions of times. {GIVING A MOUTH TO ANI|APPENDIX (From the Paprys of Nebseni, Sheet 3) THE CHAPTER OF COMING FORTH BY DAY AND OF OPENING UP A WAY THROUGH THE AMEHET: Behold, the scribe Nebseni, whose word is truth, saith:- Homage to you, O ye Lords of Kau, ye who are without sin, and who live for the endless and infinite aeons of time which make up eternity. I have opened up a way for myself to you. I have become a spirit in my forms, I have gotten the mastery over my words of magical power, and I am adjudged a spirit; therefore deliver ye me from the Crocodile [which liveth in] this Country of Truth. Grant ye to me my mouth that I may speak therewith, and cause ye that sepulchral offerings shall be made unto me in your presence, for I know you, and I know your names, and I know also the name of the mighty god before whose face ye set your celestial food. His name is "Tekem." [When] he openeth up his path on the eastern horizon of heaven, [when] he alighteth towards the western horizon of heaven, may he carry me along with him, and may I be safe and sound. Let not the Mesqet make an end of me, let not the Fiend (Sebau) gain the mastery over me, let me not be driven away from the doors of the Other World, let not you doors be shut in my face, for my cakes are in the city of Pe, and my ale is in the city of Tep. And there, in the celestial mansions of heaven which my divine father Tem hath stablished, let my hands lay hold upon the wheat and the barley, which shall be given unto me therein in abundant measure, and may the son of my own body make ready for me my food therein. And grant ye unto me when I am there sepulchral meals, and incense, and unguents, and all the pure and beautiful things whereon the god liveth, in every deed for ever, in all the transformations which it pleaseth me [to perform], and grant unto me the power to float down and to sail up the stream in the Field of Reeds (Sekhet-Aaru), [and may I reach Sekhet-hetepet (the Field of Offerings)]. I am the twin Lion-gods (Shu and Tefnut). WEIGHING OF THE HEART OF ANI TEXTS RELATING TO THE WEIGHING OF THE HEART OF ANI - THE NAMES OF THE GODS OF THE GREAT COMPANY:- 1. Ra Harmakhis, the Great God in his boat. 2. Temu. 3. Shu. 4. Tefnut. 5. Keb. 6. Nut, the Lady of Heaven. 7. Isis. 8. Nephthys. 9. Horus, the Great God. 10. Hathor, Lady of Amentet. 11. Hu. 12. Sa. THE PRAYER OF ANI:- My heart, my mother; my heart, my mother! My heart whereby I came into being! May nought stand up to oppose me at [my] judgment, may there be no opposition to me in the presence of the Chiefs (Tchatchau); may there be no parting of thee from me in the presence of him that keepeth the Balance! Thou art my KA, which dwelleth in my body; the god Khnemu who knitteth together and happiness whither we go. May the Sheniu officials, who make the conditions of the lives of men, not cause my name to stink, and may no lies be spoken against me in the presence of the God. [Let it be satisfactory unto us, and let the Listener god be favourable unto us, and let there be joy of heart (to us) at the weighing of words. Let not that which is false be uttered against me before the Great God, the Lord of Amentet. Verily, how great shalt thou be when thou risest in triumph.] THE SPEECH OF THOTH:- Thoth, the judge of right and truth of the Great Company of the Gods who are in the presence of Osiris, saith: Hear ye this judgment. The heart of Osiris hath in very truth been weighed, and his Heart-soul hath borne testimony on his behalf; his heart hath been found right by the trial in the Great Balance. There hath not been found any wickedness in him; he hath not wasted the offerings which have been made in the temples; he hath not committed any evil act; and he hath not set his mouth in motion with words of evil whilst he was upon earth. SPEECH OF THE DWELLER IN THE EMBALMMENT CHAMBER (ANUBIS):- Pay good heed, O righteous Judge to the Balance to support [the testimony] thereof. Variant: Pay good heed to the weighing in the Balance of the heart of the Osiris, the singing-woman of Amen, Anhai, whose word is truth, and place thou her heart in the seat of truth in the presence of the Great God. THE SPEECH OF THE GODS:- The Great Company of the Gods say to Thoth who dwelleth in Khemenu: That which cometh forth from thy mouth shall be declared true. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is true, is holy and righteous. He hath not committed any sin, and he hath done no evil against us. The devourer Am-mit shall not be permitted to prevail over him. Meat offerings and admittance into the presence of the god Osiris shall be granted unto him, together with an abiding habitation in the Field of Offerings (Sekhet-hetepet), as unto the Followers of Horus. THE SPEECH OF HORUS TO OSIRIS IN INTRODUCING ANI TO HIM:- Horus, the son of Isis, saith: I have come to thee, O Un-Nefer, and I have brought unto thee the Osiris Ani. His heart is righteous, and it hath come forth from the Balance; it hath not sinned against any god or any goddess. Thoth hath weighed it according to the decree pronounced unto him by the Company of the Gods, and it is most true and righteous. Grant thou that cakes and ale may be given unto him, and let him appear in the presence of the god Osiris, and let him be like unto the Followers of Horus for ever and ever. THE SPEECH OF ANI:- And the Osiris Ani saith: Behold, I am in thy presence, O Lord of Amentet. There is no sin in my body. I have not spoken that which is not true knowingly, nor have I done anything with a false heart. Grant thou that I may be like unto those favoured ones who are in thy following, and that I may be an Osiris greatly favoured of the beautiful god, and beloved of the Lord of the Two Lands, I who am a veritable royal scribe who loveth thee, Ani, whose word is true before the god Osiris. DESCRIPTION OF THE BEAST AM-MIT:- Her forepart is like that of a crocodile, the middle of her body is like that of a lion, her hind quarters are like those of a hippopotamus. PRAISES AND GLORIFYINGS HERE BEGIN THE PRAISES AND GLORIFYINGS OF COMING OUT FROM AND OF GOING INTO THE GLORIOUS KHERT-NETER, WHICH IS IN THE BEAUTIFUL AMENTET, OF COMING FORTH BY DAY IN ALL THE FORMS OF EXISTENCE WHICH IT MAY PLEASE THE DECEASED TO TAKE, OF PLAYING AT DRAUGHTS, OF SITTING IN THE SEH HALL, AND OF APPEARING AS A LIVING SOUL: The Osiris the scribe Ani saith after he hath arrived in his haven of rest- now it is good for [a man] to recite [this work whilst he is] upon earth, for then all the words of Tem come to pass- "I am the god Tem in rising. I am the Only One. I came into existence in Nu. I am Ra who rose in the beginning, the ruler of this [creation]." Who is this? "It is Ra, when at the beginning he rose in the city of Hensu, crowned like a king for his coronation. The Pillars of the god Shu were not as yet created, when he was upon the steps of him that dwelleth in Khemenu. "I am the Great God who created himself, even Nu, who made his names to become the Company of the Gods as gods." Who is this? "It is Ra, the creator of the names of his limbs, which came into being in the form of the gods who are in the train of Ra. "I am he who cannot be repulsed among the gods." Who is this? "It is Temu, the dweller in his disk, but others say that it is Ra when he riseth in the eastern horizon of the sky. "I am Yesterday, I know To-day." Who is this? "Yesterday is Osiris, and To-day is Ra, when he shall destroy the enemies of Neb-er-tcher (the lord to the uttermost limit), and when he shall establish as prince and ruler his son Horus. "Others, however, say that To-day is Ra, on the day when we commemorate the festival of the meeting of the dead Osiris with his father Ra, and when the battle of the gods was fought, in which Osiris, the Lord of Amentet, was the leader." What is this? "It is Amentet, [that is to say] the creation ofthe souls of the gods when Osiris was leader in Set-Amentet. "Others, however, say that it is the Amentet which Ra hath given unto me; when any god cometh he must rise up and fight for it. "I know the god who dwelleth therein." Who is this? "It is Osiris. Others, however, say that his name is Ra, and that the god who dwelleth in Amentet is the phallus of Ra, wherewith he had union with himself. "I am the Benu bird which is in Anu. I am the keeper of the volume of the book (the Tablet of Destiny) of the things which have been made, and of the things which shall be made." Who is this? "It is Osiris. "Others, however, say that it is the dead body of Osiris, and yet others say that it is the excrement of Osiris. The things which have been made, and the things which shall be made [refer to] the dead body of Osiris. Others again say that the things which have been made are Eternity, and the things which shall be made are Everlastingness, and that Eternity is the Day, and Everlastingness the Night. "I am the god Menu in his coming forth; may his two plumes be set on my head for me." Who is this? "Menu is Horis, the Advocate of his father [Osiris], and his coming forth means his birth. The two plumes on his head are Isis and Nephthys, when these goddesses go forth and set themselves thereon, and when they act as his protectors, and when they provide that which his head lacketh. "Others, however, say that the two plumes are the two exceedingly large uraei which are upon the head of their father Tem, and there are yet others who say that the two plumes which are upon the head of Menu are his two eyes. "The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is true, the registrar of all the offerings which are made to the gods, riseth up and cometh into his city." What is this [city]? "It is the horizon of his father Tem. "I have made an end of my shortcomings, and I have put away my faults." What is this? "It is the cutting of the navel string of the body of the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is true before all the gods, and all his faults are driven out. What is this ? "It is the purification [of Osiris] on the day of his birth. "I am purified in my great double nest which is in Hensu on the day of the offerings of the followers of the Great God who dwelleth therein." What is the "great double nest"? "The name of one nest is 'Millions of years,' and 'Great Green [Sea]' is the name of the other, that is to say 'Lake of Natron' and 'Lake of Salt.' "Others, however, say the name of the one is 'Guide of Millions of Years,' and that 'Great Green Lake' is name of the other. Yet others say that 'Begetter of Millions of Years' is the name of one, and 'Great Green Lake' is the name of the other. Now, as concerning the Great God who dwelleth therein, it is Ra himself. "I pass over the way, I know the head of the Island of Maati." What is this? "It is Ra-stau, that is to say, it is the gate to the South of Nerutef, and it is the Northern Gate of the Domain (Tomb of the god). "Now, as concerning the Island of Maati, it is Abtu. "Others, however, say that it is the way by which Father Tem travelleth when he goeth forth to Sekhet-Aaru, [the place] which produceth the food and sustenance of the gods who are [in] their shrines. "Now the Gate Tchesert is the Gate of the Pillars of Shu, that is to say, the Northern Gate of the Tuat. "Others, however, say that the Gate of Tchesert is the two leaves of the door through which the god Tem passeth when he goeth forth to the eastern horizon of the sky. "O ye gods who are in the presence [of Osiris], grant to me your arms, for I am the god who shall come into being among you." Who are these gods? "They are the drops of blood which came forth from the phallus of Ra when he went forth to perform his own mutilitation. These drops of blood sprang into being under the forms of the gods Hu and Sa, who are in the bodyguard of Ra, and who accompany the god Tem daily and every day. "I, Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, have filled for thee the utchat (the Eye of Ra, or of Horus), when it had suffered extinction on the day of the combat of the Two Fighters (Horus and Set)." What was this combat? It was the combat which took place on the day when Horus fought with Set, during which Set threw filth in the face of Horus, and Horus crushed the genitals of Set. The filling of the utchat Thoth performed with his own fingers. "I remove the thunder-cloud from the sky when there is a storm with thunder and lightning therein." What is this? "This storm was the raging of Ra at the thunder-cloud which [Set] sent forth against the Right Eye of Ra (the Sun). Thoth removed the thunder-cloud from the Eye of Ra, and brought back the Eye living, healthy, sound, and with no defect in it to its owner. "Others, however, say that the thunder-cloud is caused by sickness in the Eye of Ra, which weepeth for its companion Eye (the Moon); at this time Thoth cleanseth the Right Eye of Ra. "I behold Ra who was born yesterday from the thighs of the goddess Mehurt; his strength is my strength, and my strength is his strength." Who is this? "Mehurt is the great Celestial Water, but others say that Mehurt is the image of the Eye of Ra at dawn at his birth daily. "[Others, however, say that] Mehurt is the utchat of Ra. "Now Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, is a very great one among the gods who are in the following of Horus; they say that he is the prince who loveth his lord." Who are the gods who are in the train of Horus? "[They are] Kesta, Hapi, Taumutef, and Qebhsenuf. "Homage to you, O ye lords of right and truth, ye sovereign princes (Tchatcha) who [stand] round about Osiris, who do away utterly sins and offences, and who are in the following of the goddess Hetepsekhus, grant ye that I may come unto you. Destroy ye all the faults which are within me, even as ye did for the Seven Spirits who are among the followers of their lord Sepa. Anpu (Anubis) appointed to them their places on the day [when he said unto them], "Come ye hither." Who are the "lords of right and truth"? "The lords of right and truth are Thoth and Astes, the Lord of Amentet. "The Tchatcha round about Osiris are Kesta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Qebhsenuf, and they are also round about the Constellation of the Thigh (the Great Bear), in the northern sky. "Those who do away utterly sins and offences, and who are in the following of the goddess Hetepsekhus, are the god Sebek and his associates who dwell in the water. "The goddess Hetepsekhus is the Eye of Ra. "Others, however, say that it is the flame which accompanieth Osiris to burn up the souls of his enemies. "As concerning all the faults which are in Osiris, the registrar of the offerings which are made unto all the gods, Ani, whose word is truth, [these are all the offences which he hath committed against the Lords of Eternity] since he came forth from his mother's womb. "As concerning the Seven Spirits who are Kesta, Hapi, Tuamutef, Qebhsenuf, Maa-atef, Kheribeqef and Heru-khenti-en-ariti, these did Anubis appoint to be protectors of the dead body of Osiris. "Others, however, say that he set them round about the holy place of Osiris. "Others say that the Seven Spirits [which were appointed by Anubis] were Netcheh-netcheh, Aatqetqet, Nertanef-besef-khenti-hehf, Aq-her-ami-unnut-f, Tesher-ariti-ami-Het-anes, Ubes-her-per-em-khetkhet, and Maaem-kerh-annef-em-hru. "The chief of the Tchatcha (sovereign princes) who is in Naarutef is Horus, the Advocate of his father. "As concerning the day wherein [Anubis said to the Seven Spirits], 'Come ye hither,' [the allusion here] is to the words 'Come ye hither,' which Ra spake unto Osiris." Verily may these same words be said unto me in Amentet. "I am the Divine Soul which dwelleth in the Divine Twin-gods." Who is this Divine Soul? "It is Osiris. [When] he goeth into Tetu, and findeth there the Soul of Ra, the one god embraceth the other, and two Divine Souls spring into being within the Divine Twin-gods." APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nebseni, Brit. Mus. No. 9900, Sheet 14, ll. 16ff.) "As concerning the Divine Twin-gods they are Heru-netch-her-tefef and Heru-khent-en-Ariti (Horus the Advocate of his father [Osiris], and Horus the sightless). "Others say that the double Divine Soul which dwelleth in the Divine Twin-gods is the Soul of Ra and the Soul of Osiris, and yet others say that it is the Soul which dwelleth in Shu, and the Sould which dwelleth in Tefnut, and that these two Souls form the double Divine Soul which dwelleth in Tetu. "I am the Cat which fought near the Persea Tree in Anu on the night when the foes of Neb-er-tcher were destroyed." Who is this Cat? "This male Cat is Ra himself, and he was called 'Mau' because of the speech of the god Sa, who said concerning him: 'He is like (mau) unto that which he hath made'; therefore, did the name of Ra become 'Mau.' "Others, however, say that the male Cat is the god Shu, who made over the possessions of Keb to Osiris. "As concerning the fight which took place near the Persea Tree in Anu [these words have reference to the slaughter] of the children of rebellion, when righteous retribution was meted out to them for [the evil] which they had done. "As concerning the 'night of the battle,' [these words refer to] the invasion of the eastern portion of the heaven by the children of rebellion, whereupon a great battle arose in heaven and in all the earth. "O thou who art in thine egg (Ra,) who showest from thy Disk, who risest on thy horizon, and dost shine with golden beams in the height of heaven, like unto whom there is none among the gods, who sailest above the Pillars of Shu, who sendest forth blasts of fire from thy mouth, [who illuminest the Two Lands with thy splendour, deliver] thou Nebseni, the lord of fealty [to Osiris], from the god whose form is hidden, and whose eyebrows are like unto the two arms of the Balance on the night when the sentences of doom are promulgated." Who is this invisible god? "It is An-a-f (he who bringeth his arm.). "As concerning 'the night when the sentences of doom are promulgated,' it is the night of the burning of the damned, and of the overthrow of the wicked at the Block, and of the slaughter of souls." Who is this [slaughterer of souls]? "It is Shesmu, the headsman of Osiris. "[Concerning the invisible god] some say that he is Aapep when he riseth up with a head bearing upon it [the feather of] Maat (Truth). But others say that he is Horus when he riseth up with two heads, whereon one beareth [the feather of] Maat, and the other [the symbol of] wickedness. He bestoweth wickedness on him that worketh wickedness, and right and truth upon him that followeth righteousness and truth. "Others say that he is Heru-ur (the Old Horus), who dwelleth in Sekhem; others say that he is Thoth; others say that he is Nefer-Tem; and others say that he is Sept who doth bring to nought the acts of the foes of Nebertcher. "Deliver thou the scribe Nebseni, whose word is truth, from the Watchers, who carry murderous knives, who possess cruel fingers, and who would slay those who are in the following of Osiris." May these Watchers never gain the mastery over me, and may I never fall under their knives! Who are these Watchers? "They are Anubis and Horus, [the latter being] in the form of Horus the sightless. Others, however, say that they are the Tchatcha (sovereign princes of Osiris), who bring to nought the operations of their knives; and others say that they are the chiefs of the Sheniu chamber. "May their knives never gain the mastery over me. May I never fall under the knives wherewith they inflict cruel tortures. For I know their names, and I know the being, Matchet, who is among them in the House of Osiris. He shooteth forth rays of light from his eye, being himself invisible, and he goeth round about heaven robed in the flames which come from his mouth, commanding Hapi, but remaining invisible himself. May I be strong on earth before Ra, may I arrive safely in the presence of Osiris. O ye who preside over your altars, let not your offerings to me be wanting, for I am one of those who follow after Nebertcher, according to the writings of Khepera. Let me fly like a hawk, let me cackle like a goose, let me lay always like the serpent-goddess Neheb-ka." Who are those who preside over their altars? "Those who preside over their altars are the similitude of the Eye of Ra, and the similitude of the Eye of Horus. "O Ra-Tem, thou Lord of the Great House [in Anu], thou Sovereign (life, strentgh, health [be to thee]) of all the gods, deliver thou the scribe Nebseni, whose word is truth, from the god whose face is like unto that of a greyhound, whose brows are like those of a man, who feedeth upon the dead, who watcheth at the Bend of the Lake of Fire, who devoureth the bodies of the dead, and swalloweth hearts, and who voideth filth, but who himself remaineth unseen." Who is this greyhound-faced god? "His name is 'Everlasting Devourer,' and he liveth in the Domain [of Fire] (the Lake of Unt). "As concerning the Domain of Fire, it is that Aat which is in Naarutef, and is near the Sheniu chamber. The sinner who walketh over this place falleth down among the knives [of the Watchers]. "Others, however, say that the name of this god is 'Mates,' and that he keepeth watch over the door of Amentet; others say that his name is 'Beba,' and that he keepeth watch over the Bend [of the stream] of Amentet, and yet others say that his name is 'Herisepef.' "Hail, Lord of Terror, Chief of the Lands of the South and North, thou Lord of the Desert, who dost keep prepared the block of slaughter, and who dost feed on the intestines [of men]!" Who is this Lord of Terror? "It is the Keeper of the Bend [of the stream] of Amentet." Who is this Keeper? "It is the Heart of Osiris, which is the devourer of all slaughtered things. "The Urrt Crown hath been given unto him, with gladness of heart, as Lord of Hensu." Who is this? "He to whom the Urrt Crown hath been given with gladness of heart as Lord of Hensu is Osiris. He was bidden to rule among the gods on the day of the union of earth [with earth] in the presence of Nebertcher." Who is this? "He who was bidden to rule among the gods is the son of Isis (Horus), who was appointed to rule in the room of his father Osiris. "As concerning [the words] 'day of the union of earth with earth,' they have reference to the union of earth with earth in the coffin of Osiris, the Soul that liveth in Hensu, the giver of meat and drink, the destroyer of wrong, and the guide to the everlasting paths." Who is this? "It is Ra himself." "[Deliver thou the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth] from the great god who carrrieth away souls, who eateth hearts, who feedeth upon offal, who keepeth watch in the darkness, who dwelleth in the Seker Boat; those who live in sin fear him." Who is this? "It is Suti, but others say that it is Smamur, the soul of Keb. "Hail, Khepera in thy boat, the two Companies of the Gods are in thy body. Deliver thou the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, from the Watchers who pass sentences of doom, who have been appointed by the god Nebertcher to protect him, and to fasten the fetters on his foes, and who slaughter in the torture chambers; there is no escape from their fingers. May they never stab me with their knives, may I never fall helpless into their chambers of torture. I have never done the things which the gods hate. I am he who is pure in the Mesqet chamber. And saffron cakes have been brought unto him in Tannt." Who is this? "It is Khepera in his boat; it is Ra himself. "As concerning the Watchers who pass sentences of doom, they are the Apes Isis and Nephthys. "As concerning the things which the gods hate, they are acts of deceit and lying. He who passeth through the place of purification within the Mesqet chamber is Anpu (Anubis), who is hard by the coffer which containeth the inward parts of Osiris. He to whom saffron cakes have been brought in Tannt is Osiris. "Others, however, say that the saffron cakes in Tannt represent heaven and earth, and others say that they represent Shu, the strengthener of the Two Lands in Hensu; and others say that they represent the Eye of Horus, and that Tannt is the burial-place of Osiris. "Tem hath builded thy house, and the double Lion-god hath laid the foundations of thy habitation. Lo! medicaments have been brought. Horus purifieth Set and Set strengtheneth, and Set purifieth and Horus strengtheneth. "The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth before Osiris, hath come into this land, and he hath taken possession thereof with his two feet. He is Tem, and he is in the city. "Turn thou back, O Rehu, whose mouth shineth, whose head moveth, turn thou back before his strength." Another reading is, 'Turn thou back from him who keepeth watch, and is himself unseen.' Let the Osiris Ani be safely guarded. He is Isis, and he is found with her hair spread over him; it is shaken out over his brow. He was conceived by Isis, and engendered by Nephthys, and they have cut away from him the things which should be cut from him. "Fear followeth after thee, terror is about thine arms. Thou hast been embraced for millions of years by arms; mortals go round about thee. Thou smitest down the mediators of thy foes, and thou seizest the arms of the power of darkness. Thy two sisters (Isis and Nephthys) are given to thee for thy delight. Thou hast created that which is in Kher-aha, and that which is Anu. Every god feareth thee, for thou art exceedingly great and terrible; thou [avengest] every god on the man who curseth him, and thou shootest arrows at him. Thou livest according to thy will. Thou art Uatchet, the Lady of Flame, evil befalleth those who set themselves up against thee." What is this? "'Hidden in form, given of Menhu,' is the name of the "tomb. 'He who seeth what is on his hand' is the name of Qerau, or, as others say, it is the name of the Block. "Now, he whose mouth shineth and whose head moveth is the phallus of Osiris, but others say it is [the phallus] of Ra. 'Thou spreadest thy hair, and I shake it out over his brow" is said concerning Isis, who hideth in her hair, and draweth it round about her. "Uatchet, the Lady of Flames, is the Eye of Ra." THE SEVEN ARITS The First Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Sekhet-her-asht-aru. The name of the Watcher is Smetti. The name of the Herald is Hakheru. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh unto the First Arit: "I am the mighty one who createth his own light. I have come unto thee, O Osiris, and, purified from that which defileth thee, I adore thee. Lead on. Name not the name of Ra-stau to me. Homage to thee, O Osiris, in thy might and in thy strength in Ra-stau. Rise up and conquer, O Osiris, in Abtu. Thou goest round about heaven, thou sailest in the presence of Ra, thou lookest upon all the beings who have knowledge. Hail, Ra, thou who goest round about in the sky, I say, O Osiris in truth, that I am the Sahu (Spirit-body) of the god, and I beseech thee not to let me be driven away, nor to be cast upon the wall of blazing fire. Let the way be opened in Ra-stau, let the pain of the Osiris be relieved, embrace that which the Balance hath weighed, let a path be made for the Osiris in the Great Valley, and let the Osiris have light to guide him on his way." The Second Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Unhat. The name of the Watcher is Seqt-her. The name of the Herald is Ust. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "He sitteth to carry out his heart's desire, and he weigheth words as the Second of Thoth. The strength which protecteth Thoth humbleth the hidden Maati gods, who feed upon Maat during the years of their lives. I offer up my offerings [to him] at the moment when he maketh his way. I advance, and I enter on the path. O grant thou that I may continue to advance, and that I may attain to the sight of Ra, and of those who offer up [their] offerings." The Third Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Unem-hauatu-ent-pehui. The name of the Watcher is Seres-her. The name of the Herald is Aa. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "I am he who is hidden in the great deep. I am the Judge of the Rehui, I have come and I have done away the offensive thing which was upon Osiris. I tie firmly the place on which he standeth, coming forth from the Urt. I have stablished things in Abtu, I have opened up a way through Ra-stau, and I have relieved the pain which was in Osiris. I have balanced the place whereon he standeth, and I have made a path for him; he shineth brilliantly in Ra-stau." The Fourth Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Khesef-her-asht-kheru. The name of the Watcher is Seres-tepu. The name of the Herald is Khesef-at. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "I am the Bull, the son of the ancestress of Osiris. O grant ye that his father, the Lord of his god-like companions, may bear witness on his behalf. I have weighed the guilty in judgment. I have brought unto his nostrils the life which is ever lasting. I am the son of Osiris, I have accomplished the journey, I have advanced in Khert-Neter." The Fifth Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Ankhf-em-fent. The name of the Watcher is Shabu. The name of the Herald is Teb-her-kha-kheft. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "I have brought unto thee the jawbone in Ra-stau. I have brought unto thee thy backbone in Anu. I have gathered together his manifold members therein. I have driven back Aapep for thee. I have spit upon the wounds [in his body]. I have made myself a path among you. I am the Aged One among the gods. I have made offerings to Osiris. I have defended him with the word of truth. I have gathered together his bones, and have collected all his members." The Sixth Arit. The name of the Doorkeeper is Atek-tau-kehaq-kheru. The name of the Watcher is An-her. The name of the Herald is Ates-her-[ari]-she. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "I have come daily, I have come daily. I have made myself a way. I have advanced over that which was created by Anpu (Anubis). I am the Lord of the Urrt Crown. I am the possessor [of the knowledge of] the words of magical power, I am the Avenger according to law, I have avenged [the injury to] his Eye. I have defended Osiris. I have accomplished my journey. The Osiris Ani advanceth with you with the word which is truth." The Seventh Arit: The name of the Doorkeeper is Sekhmet-em-tsu-sen. The name of the Watcher is Aa-maa-kheru. The name of the Herald is Khesef-khemi. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, shall say [when he cometh to this Arit]: "I have come unto thee, O Osiris, being purified from foul emissions. Thou goest round about heaven, thou seest Ra, thou seest the beings who have knowledge. [Hail], thou, ONE! Behold, thou art in the Sektet Boat which traverseth the heavens. I speak what I will to his Sahu (Spirit-body). He is strong, and cometh into being even [as] he spake. Thou meetest him face to face. Prepare thou for me all the ways which are good [and which lead] to thee." RUBRIC: If [these] words be recited by the spirit when he shall come to the Seven Arits, and as he entereth the doors, he shall neither be turned back nor repulsed before Osiris, and he shall be made to have his being among the blessed spirits, and to have dominion among the ancestral followers of Osiris. If these things be done for any spirit he shall have his being in that place like a lord of eternity in one body with Osiris, and at no place shall any being contend against him. THE PYLONS OF THE HOUSE OF OSIRIS The following shall be said when one cometh to the FIRST PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Lady of tremblings, high-walled, the sovereign lady, the lady of destruction, who uttereth the words which drive back the destroyers, who delivereth from destruction him that cometh." The name of her Doorkeeper is Neruit. The following shall be said when one cometh to the SECOND PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Lady of heaven, Mistress of the Two Lands, devourer by fire, Lady of mortals, who art infinitely greater than any human being." The name of her Doorkeeper is Mes-Ptah. The following shall be said when one cometh to the THIRD PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Lady of the Altar, the mighty lady to whom offerings are made, greatly beloved one of every god sailing up the river to Abydos." The name of her Doorkeeper is Sebqa. The following shall be said when one cometh to the FOURTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Prevailer with knives, Mistress of the Two Lands, destroyer of the enemies of the Still-Heart (Osiris), who decreeth the release of those who suffer through evil hap." The name of her Doorkeeper is Nekau. The following shall be said when one cometh to the FIFTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Flame, Lady of fire, absorbing the entreaties which are made to her, who permitteth not to approach her the rebel." The name of her Doorkeeper is Henti-Reqiu. The following shall be said when one cometh to the SIXTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Lady of light, who roareth mightily, whose breadth cannot be comprehended. Her like hath not been found since the beginning. There are serpents over which are unknown. They were brought forth before the Still-Heart." The name of her Doorkeeper is Semati. The following shall be said when one cometh to the SEVENTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Garment which envelopeth the helpless one, which weepeth for and loveth that which it covereth." The name of her Doorkeeper is Saktif. The following shall be said when one cometh to the EIGHTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Blazing fire, unquenchable, with far-reaching tongues of flame, irresistible slaughterer, which one may not pass through fear of its deadly attack." The name of her Doorkeeper is Khutchetef. The following shall be said when one cometh to the NINTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Chieftainess, lady of strength, who giveth quiet of heart to the offspring of her lord. Her girth is three hundred and fifty khet, and she is clothed with green feldspar of the South. She bindeth up the divine form and clotheth the helpless one. Devourer, lady of all men." The name of her Doorkeeper is Arisutchesef. The following shall be said when one cometh to the TENTH PYLON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith: "Goddess of the loud voice, who maketh her suppliants to mourn, the awful one who terrifieth, who herself remaineth unterrified within." The name of her Doorkeeper is Sekhenur. Nu, the steward of the keeper of the seal, saith when he cometh to the ELEVENTH PYLON of Osiris: "I have made my way, I know you, and I know thy name, and I know the name of her who is within thee: She who slayeth always, consumer of the fiends by fire, mistress of every pylon, the lady who is acclaimed on the day of darkness" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. The Osiris Nu, the steward of the keeper of the seal, saith when he cometh to the TWELFTH PYLON of Osiris: "I have made my way, I know you, and I know thy name, and I know the name of her who is within thee: Invoker of thy Two Lands, destroyer of those who come to thee by fire, lady of spirits, obeyer of the word of thy Lord" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. The Osiris Nu, the steward of the keeper of the seal, saith when he cometh to the THIRTEENTH PYLON of Osiris: "I have made my way, I know you and I know thy name, and I know the name of her who is within thee: Osiris foldeth his arms about her, and maketh Hapi (the Nile-god), to emit splendour out of his hidden places" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. The Osiris Nu, the steward of the keeper of the seal, saith when he cometh to the FOURTEENTH PYLON of Osiris: "I have made my way, I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the name of her who is within thee. Lady of might, who trampleth on the Red Demons, who keepeth the festival of Haaker on the day of the hearing of faults" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. THE FIFTEENTH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Fiend, red of hair and eyes, who appeareth by night, and doth fetter the fiend in his lair. Let her hands be given to the Still-Heart in his hour, let her advance and go forward" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. THE SIXTEENTH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Terrible one, lady of the rain-storm, destroyer of the souls of men, devourer of the bodies of men, orderer, producer, and maker of slaughter" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. THE SEVENTEENTH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Hewer-in-pieces in blood, Ahibit, lady of hair" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. THE EIGHTEENTH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Fire-lover, pure one, lover of slaughterings, cutter off of heads, devoted one, lady of the Great House, slaughterer of fiends at eventide" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathing of the helpless one. THE NINETEENTH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Light-giver for life, blazing all the day, lady of strength [and of] the writings of the god Thoth himself" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathings of the White House. THE TWENTIETH PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Dweller in the cavern of her lord, her name is Clother, hider of her creations, conqueror of hearts, swallower [of them]" is thy name. She inspecteth the swathings of the White House. THE TWENTY-FIRST PYLON. The Osiris Heru-em-khebit, whose word is truth, shall say when he cometh to this pylon: "Knife which cutteth when [its name] is uttered, slayer of those who approach thy flame" is thy name. She possesseth hidden plans. APPENDIX (From the Turin Papryus, ed. Lepsius, Bl. 64, the text referring to the twenty-first Pylon.) THE OSIRIS AUFANKH, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, SAITH: Hail, saith Horus, O Twenty-first pylon of the Still-Heart! I have made the way. I know thee. I know thy name. I know the name of the goddess who guardeth thee. "Sword that smiteth at the utterance of its own name, stinking face, overthrower of him that approacheth her flame" is thy name. Thou keepest the hidden things of the avenger of the god, thou guardest them. Amam is his name. He maketh the ash trees (cedars) not to grow, and the shenu trees (acacias) not to blossom, and preventeth copper from being found in the mountain. The Tchatcha (Chiefs) of this Pylon are Seven Gods. Tchen, or Anthch (At), is the name of the one at the door. Hetepmes is the name of another there. Messep is the name of another there. Utchara is the name of another there. Beq is the name of another there. Anp (Anubis) is the name of another there. I have made the way. I am Menu-Heru, the avenger of his father, the heir of his father Un-Nefer. I have come. I have given [offerings] to my father Osiris. I have overthrown all his enemies. I have come daily with the word of truth, the lord of fealty, in the house of my father Tem, the Lord of Anu, I, the Osiris Auf-ankh, whose word is truth in the southern heaven. I have done what is right for him that made the right, I have celebrated the Haker festival to the lord thereof. I have acted as the leader of the festivals. I have given cakes to the Lords of the Altar. I have been the leader of the propitiatory offerings, cakes, ale, oxen, geese, to my father Osiris Un-Nefer. I am the protector of the Ba-soul, I have made the Benu bird to appear [by my] words. I have come daily into the house of the god to make offerings of incense. I have come with the shenti tunic. I have set the Neshem Boat afloat on the water. I have made the word of Osiris Khenti Amenti to be truth before his enemies. I have carried away in a boat all his enemies to the slaughter-house of the East, and they shall never escape from the wardship of the god Keb who dwelleth therein. I have made the Kefaiu gods of Ra to stand up, I have made his word to be truth. I have come as a scribe. I have explained [the writings]. I have made the god to have power over his legs. I have come into the house of him that is upon his mountain (Anubis). I have seen the Chief of the Seh hall. I have entered into Ra-stau. I have made myself invisible. I have found for myself the boundary. I have approached Nerutef. I have clothed the naked. I have sailed up the river to Abydos. I have performed the ceremonies of Hu and Sa. I have entered the house of Astes. I have made supplication to the Khati gods and to Sekhmet in the temple of Net (Neith), or the Aged Ones. I have entered Ra-stau. I have made myself invisible. I have found the frontier. I have approached Nerutef. I have clothed the naked. I have sailed up the river to Abydos. I have performed the ceremonies of Hu and Sa. I have received. I have risen like a king crowned. I fill my seat on the throne in the place of my father, the God Who was at the beginning. I have praised the Meskhen of Ta-tchesert. My mouth is full of Maat (Truth). I have overwhelmed the Akhekhau serpents. I have come into the Great House with [my] body in a flourishing condition. I have caused myself to travel in the Boat of Hai. The myrrh unguent of..... is in the hair of men (Rekhit). I have entered into the House of Astes. I have approached with worship the two Khati gods and Sekhmet, who are in the temple of the Aged One [in Anu]. [And the god Osiris saith:] "Thou hast come, thou shalt be a favoured one in Tetu, O Osiris Auf-ankh, whose word is truth, the son of the lady Shert-en-Menu, whose word is truth." THE PRIESTS ANMUTEF AND SAMEREF THE SPEECH OF THE PRIEST ANMUTEF. I have come unto you, O ye great Tchatcha Chiefs who dwell in heaven, and upon earth, and in Khert-Neter, and I have brought unto you the Osiris Ani. He hath not committed any act which is an abomination before all the gods. Grant ye that he may live with you every day. The Osiris the scribe Ani adoreth Osiris, Lord of Rasta, and the Great Company of the Gods who live in Khert-Neter. He saith: "Homage to thee, Khenti Amenti, Un-Nefer, who dwellest in Abtu. I come to thee. My heart holdeth Truth. There is no sin in my body. I have not told a lie wittingly, I have not acted in a double manner. Grant thou to me cakes, let me appear in the presence, at the altar of the Lords of Truth, let me go in and come forth from Khert-Neter [at will], let not my Heart-soul be driven away [from me]; and grant me a sight of the Disk and the beholding of the Moon for ever and ever. THE SPEECH OF THE PRIEST SAMEREF. I have come unto you, O ye Tchatcha Chiefs who dwell in Rasta, and I have brought unto you the Osiris Ani, grant ye unto him cakes, and water, and air, and a homestead in Sekhet-hetep as to the followers of Horus. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, adoreth Osiris, the Lord of everlastingness, and the Tchatcha Chiefs, the Lords of Rasta. He saith: "Homage to thee, O King of Khert-Neter, thou Governor of Akert! I have come unto thee. I know thy plans, I am equipped with the forms which thou takest in the Tuat. Give thou to me a place in Khert-Neter, near the Lords of Truth. May my homestead be lasting in Sekhet-hetep, may I receive cakes in thy presence." THE JUDGES IN ANU Hail, Thoth, who madest to be true the word of Osiris against his enemies, make thou the word of the scribe Nebseni to be true against his enemies, even as thou didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, in the presence of the Tchatcha Chiefs who are with Ra and Osiris in Anu, on the night of the "things of the night," and the night of battle, and of the fettering of the Sebau fiends, and the day of the destruction of the enemies of Neb-er-tcher. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs in Anu are Tem, Shu, Tefnut, [Osiris and Thoth]. Now the "fettering of the Sebau fiends" signifieth the destruction of the Smaiu fiends of Set, when he wrought iniquity a second time. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris Ani to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Tetu, on the night of setting up the Tet in Tetu. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Tetu are Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Horus the avenger of his father. Now the "setting up of the Tet in Tetu" signifieth [the raising up of] the shoulder of Horus, the Governor of Sekhem. They are round about Osiris in the band [and] the bandages. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris Ani to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Sekhem, on the night of the "things of the night" in Sekhem. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Sekhem are Heru-khenti-en-ariti and Thoth who is with the Tchatcha Chiefs of Nerutef. Now the night of the "things of the night festival" signifieth the dawn on the sarcophagus of Osiris. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris the scribe Ani to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in the double town Pe-Tep, on the night of setting up the "Senti" of Horus, and of establishing him in the inheritance of the possessions of his father Osiris. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Pe-Tep are Horus, Isis, Kesta (Mesta) and Hapi. Now the "setting up of the 'Senti' of Horus" hath reference to the words which Set spake to his followers, saying "Set up the Senti." Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris the scribe Ani to be true, in peace, against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in the Lands of the Rekhti (Taiu-Rekhti), in the night when Isis lay down, and kept watch to make lamentation for her brother Osiris. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Taiu-Rekhti are Isis, Horus, Kesta (Mesta) [Anpu and Thoth]. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris true against his enemies, make thou the word of Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Abtu, on the night of the god Haker, when the dead are separated, and the spirits are judged, and when the procession taketh place in Teni. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Abtu are Osiris, Isis, and Up-uat. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris, the scribe and assessor of the sacred offerings which are made to all the gods, Ani, to be true against his enemies, with the Tchatcha Chiefs who examine the dead on the night of making the inspection of those who are to be annihilated. Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are present at the examination of the dead are Thoth, Osiris, Anpu and Asten (read Astes). Now the inspection (or, counting) of those who are to be annihilated signifieth the shutting up of things from the souls of the sons of revolt. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris the scribe Ani to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are present at the digging up of the earth [and mixing it] with their blood, and of making the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies. As concerning the Tchatcha Chiefs who are present at the digging up of the earth in Tetu: When the Smaiu fiends of Set came [there], having transformed themselves into animals, these Tchatcha Chiefs slew them in the presence of the gods who were there, and they took their blood, and carried it to them. These things were permitted at the examination [of the wicked] by those [gods] who dwelt in Tetu. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris to be true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris [the scribe] Ani to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Nerutef on the night of the "Hidden of Forms." Now the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Nerutef are Ra, Osiris, Shu and Bebi. Now, the night of the "Hidden of Forms" referreth to the placing on the sarcophagus [of Osiris] the arm, the heel, and the thigh of Osiris Un-Nefer. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris, whose word is truth, to be true against his enemies, with the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Rasta, on the night when Anpu lay with his arms on the things by Osiris, and when the word of Horus was make to be true against his enemies. The great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Rasta are Horus, Osiris, and Isis. The heart of Osiris is happy, the heart of Horus is glad, and the two halves of Egypt (Aterti) are well satisfied thereat. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word of Osiris true against his enemies, make thou the word of the Osiris the scribe Ani, the assessor of the holy offerings made to all the gods, to be true against his enemies, with the Ten great Tchatcha Chiefs who are with Ra, and with Osiris, and with every god, and with every goddess, in the presence of the god Nebertcher. He hath destroyed his enemies, and he hath destroyed every evil thing which appertained to him. RUBRIC: If this Chapter be recited for, or over, the deceased, he shall come forth by day, purified after death, according to the desire of his heart. Now if this Chapter be recited over him, he shall progress over the earth, and he shall escape from every fire, and none of the evil things which appertain to him shall ever be round about him; never, a million times over, shall this be. OPENING THE MOUTH THE CHAPTER OF OPENING THE MOUTH OF THE OSIRIS ANI. To be said:- The god Ptah shall open my mouth, and the god of my town shall unfasten the swathings, the swathings which are over my mouth. Thereupon shall come Thoth, who is equipped with words of power in great abundance, and shall untie the fetters, even the fetters of the god Set which are over my mouth. And the god Tem shall cast them back at those who would fetter me with them, and cast them at him. Then shall the god Shu open my mouth, and make an opening into my mouth with the same iron implement wherewith he opened the mouth of the gods. I am the goddess Sekhmet, and I take my seat upon the place by the side of Amt-ur the great wind of heaven. I am the great Star-goddess Saah, who dwelleth among the Souls of Anu. Now as concerning every spell, and every word which shall be spoken against me, every god of the Divine Company shall set himself in opposition thereto. BRINGING_SPELLS_TO_ANI THE CHAPTER OF BRINGING WORDS OF POWER TO THE OSIRIS ANI, who saith:- I am Tem-Khepera who produced himself on the thighs of his divine mother. Those who dwell in Nu have been made wolves, and those who are among the Tchatcha Chiefs have become hyenas. Behold, I will gather together to myself this charm from the person with whom it is [and from the place] wherein it is [and it shall come to me] quicker than a greyhound, and swifter that light. Hail, thou who bringest the Ferry-Boat of Ra, thou holdest thy course firmly and directly in the north wind as thou sailest up the river towards the Island of Fire which is in Khert-Neter. Behold, thou shalt gather together to thee this charm from wheresoever it may be, and from whomsoever it may be with [and it shall come to me] quicker than a greyhound, and swifter than light. It (the charm) made the transformations of Mut; it fashioned the gods [or] kept them silent; by it Mut gave the warmth [of life] to the gods. Behold, these words of power are mine, and they shall come unto me from wheresoever they may be, or with whomsoever they may be, quicker than greyhounds and swifter than light, or, according to another reading, "swifter than shadows." APPENDIX THE CHAPTER WHICH MAKETH A MAN TO REMEMBER HIS NAME IN KHERT-NETER. [The deceased] saith:- Let my name be given to me in the Great House (Per-ur), and let me remember my name in the House of Fire (Per Neser), on the night wherein the years are counted up, and the number of the months is told. I am dwelling with the Divine One, I take my seat on the eastern side of the sky. If any god cometh after me, I shall be able to declare his name forthwith. GIVING A HEART THE CHAPTER OF GIVING A HEART TO THE OSIRIS ANI IN KHERT-NETER. He saith:- Let my heart be with me in the House of Hearts. Let my heart-case be with me in the House of heart-cases. Let my heart be with me, and let it rest in [me or] I shall not eat the cakes of Osiris in the eastern side of the Lake of Flowers, nor have a boat wherein to float down the river, nor a boat to sail up the river to thee, nor be able to embark in a boat with thee. Let my mouth be to me that I may speak therewith. Let my legs be to me that I may walk therewith. Let my arms be to me that I may overthrow the foe therewith. Let the two doors of the sky be opened to me. May Keb, the Erpat of the gods, open his jaws to me. May he open my two eyes which are blinded by swathings. May he make me to lift up my legs in walking which are tied together. May Anpu make my thighs to become vigorous. May the goddess Sekhmet raise me, and lift me up. Let me ascend into heaven, let that which I command be performed in Het-ka-Ptah. I know how to use my heart. I am master of my heart-case. I am master of my hands and arms. I am master of my legs. I have the power to do that which my KA desireth to do. My Heart-soul shall not be kept a prisoner in my body at the gates of Amentet when I would go in in peace and come forth in peace. NOT LETTING THE HEART ANI BE TAKEN THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART OF THE OSIRIS, THE ASSESSOR OF THE DIVINE OFFERINGS OF ALL THE GODS, ANI, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH BEFORE OSIRIS, BE DRIVEN BACK FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. He saith:- My heart of my mother. My heart of my mother. My heart-case of my transformations. Let not any one stand up to bear testimony against me. Let no one drive me away from the Tchatcha Chiefs. Let no one make thee to fall away from me in the presence of the Keeper of the Balance. Thou art my KA, the dweller in my body, the god Khnemu who makest sound my members. Mayest thou appear in the place of happiness whither we go. Let not make my name to stink Shenit Chiefs, who make men to be stable. [Let it be satisfactory unto us, and let the listening be satisfactory unto us, and let there be joy of heart to us at the weighing of words. Let not lies be told against me before the Great God, the Lord of Amentet. Verily, how great shalt thou be when thou risest up in triumph!] RUBRIC I: These words are to be said over a scarab of green stone encircled with a band of refined copper, and [having] a ring of silver; which shall be placed on the neck of the Khu (the deceased), etc. RUBRIC II (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 21): If this Chapter be known [by the deceased] he shall be declared a speaker of the truth both upon earth and in Khert-Neter, and he shall be able to perform every act which a living human being can perform. Now it is a great protection which hath been given by the god. This Chapter was found in the city of Khemenu upon the slab of ba, which was inlaid with [letters of] genuine lapis-lazuli, and was under the feet of [the statue] of the god, during the reign of His Majesty, the King of the South and North, Menkaura (Mycerinus), true of word, by Prince Herutataf, who found it during a journey which he made to inspect the temples. One Nekht was with him who was diligent in making him to understand it, and he brought it to the king as a wonderful object when he perceived that it was a thing of great mystery, [the like of] which had never [before] been seen or looked upon. This Chapter shall be recited by a man who is ceremonially clean and pure, who hath not eaten the flesh of animals, or fish, and who hath not had intercourse with women. And behold, thou shalt make a scarab of green stone, with a rim [plated] with gold, which shall be placed above the heart of a man, and it shall perform for him the "opening of the mouth." And thou shalt anoint it with myrrh unguent, and thou shalt recite over it the following words of magical power. [Here follows the text of the Chapter of Not Letting the Heart of Ani Be Taken from Him.] NOT LETTING THE HEART SOUL BE CARRIED AWAY THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART-SOUL OF A MAN BE SNATCHED AWAY FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris the scribe Ani saith:--I, even I, am he who cometh forth from the Celestial Water (Akeb). He (Akeb) produced abundance for me, and hath the mastery there in the form of the River. (This is a portion of a longer Chapter which is included in the Appendix.) APPENDIX (The following is from the Papyrus of Nefer-uben-f, Naville, op. cit., I, Bl. 72.) THE CHAPTER OF DRINKING WATER IN KHERT-NETER. The am khent priest, Nefer-uben-f, whose word is truth, saith:- I, even I, am he who cometh forth from the god Keb. The water-flood is given to him, he hath become the master thereof in the form of Hapi. I, the am khent Nefer-uben-f, open the doors of heaven. Thoth hath opened to me the doors of Qebh (the Celestial Waters). Lo, Hepi Hepi, the two sons of the Sky, mighty in splendour, grant ye that I may be master over the water, even as Set had dominion over his evil power on the day of the storming of the Two Lands. I pass by the Great Ones, arm to shoulder, even as they pass that Great God, the Spirit who is equipped, whose name is unknown. I have passed by the Aged One of the shoulder. I am Nefer-uben-f, whose word is truth. Hath opened to me the Celestial Water Osiris. Hath opened to me the Celestial Water Thoth-Hapi, the Lord of the horizon, in his name of "Thoth, cleaver of the earth." I am master of the water, as Set is master of his weapon. I sail over the sky, I am Ra, I am Ru. I am Sma. I have eaten the Thigh, I have seized the bone and flesh. I go round about the Lake of Sekhet-Ar. Hath been given to me eternity without limit. Behold, I am the heir of eternity, to whom hath been given everlastingness. (The following two Chapters are from the Papyrus of Nu, Sheets 7 and 12) THE CHAPTER OF DRINKING WATER AND OF NOT BEING BURNT UP BY FIRE [IN KHERT-NETER]. Nu saith:- Hail, Bull of Amentet! I am brought unto thee. I am the paddle of Ra wherewith he transported the Aged Gods. Let me neither be burnt up nor destroyed by fire. I am Beb, the firstborn son of Osiris, to whom every god maketh an offering in the temple of his Eye in Anu. I am the divine Heir, the Mighty One, the Great One, the Resting One. I have made my name to flourish. Deliverer, thou livest in me [every day]. THE CHAPTER OF NOT BEING BOILED IN FIRE. Nu saith:- I am the paddle which is equipped, wherewith Ra transported the Aged Gods, which raised up the emissions of Osiris from the Lake of blazing fire, and he was not burned. I sit down like the Light-god, and like Khnemu, the Governor of lions. Come, cut away the fetters from him that passeth by the side of this path, and let me come forth therefrom. GIVING AIR THE CHAPTER OF GIVING AIR IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- I am the Egg which dwelt in the Great Cackler. I keep ward over that great place which Keb hath proclaimed upon earth. I live; it liveth. I grow up, I live, I snuff the air. I am Utcha-aab. I go round about his egg [to protect it]. I have thwarted the moment of Set. Hail, Sweet one of the Two Lands! Hail, dweller in the tchefa food! Hail, dweller in the lapis-lazuli! Watch ye over him that is in his cradle, the Babe when he cometh forth to you. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 12) THE CHAPTER OF GIVING AIR TO NU IN KHERT-NETER. He saith:- Hail, thou God Temu, grant thou unto me the sweet breath which dwelleth in thy nostrils! I am the Egg which is in Kenken-ur (the Great Cackler), and I watch and guard that mighty thing which hath come into being, wherewith the god Keb hath opened the earth. I live; it liveth; I grow, I live, I snuff the air. I am the god Utcha-aabet, and I go about his egg. I shine at the moment of the mighty of strength, Suti. Hail, thou who makest sweet the time of the Two Lands! Hail, dweller among the celestial food. Hail, dweller among the beings of blue (lapis-lazuli), watch ye to protect him that is in his nest, the Child who cometh forth to you. THE CHAPTER OF GIVING AIR IN KHERT-NETER. Nu saith:- I am the jackal of jackals. I am Shu. I draw air from the presence of the Light-god, from the uttermost limits of heaven, from the uttermost limits of earth, from the uttermost limits of the pinion of Nebeh bird. May air be given unto this young divine Babe. [My mouth is open, I see with my eyes.] THE CHAPTER OF SNUFFING THE AIR WITH WATER IN KHERT-NETER. Hail, Tem. Grant thou unto me the sweet breath which dwelleth in thy nostrils. I am he who embraceth that great throne which is in the city of Unu. I keep watch over the Egg of Kenken-ur (the Great Cackler). I grow and flourish as it groweth and flourisheth. I live as it liveth. I snuff the air as it snuffeth the air. NOT LETTING THE HEART BE SNATCHED AWAY THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART OF A MAN BE SNATCHED AWAY FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Get thee back, O messenger of every god! Art thou come to [snatch away] my heart-case which liveth? My heart-case which liveth shall not be given unto thee. [As] I advance, the gods hearken unto my propitiation [prayer] and they fall down on their faces [whilst] they are on their own land. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu) THE CHAPTER OF NOT ALLOWING THE HEART.... TO BE CARRIED AWAY DEAD IN KHERT-NETER. [Nu, whose word is truth, saith]:- My heart is with me, and it shall never come to pass that it be carried away. I am the Lord of Hearts, the slayer of the heart-case. I live in truth, I have my being therein. I am Horus, the Dweller in Hearts, [I am] in the Dweller in the body. I have life by my word, my heart hath being. My heart-case shall not be snatched away from me, it shall not be wounded, it shall not be put in restraint if wounds are inflicted upon me. [If] one take possession of it I shall have my being in the body of my father Keb and in the body of my mother Nut. I have not done that which is held in abomination by the gods. I shall not suffer defeat [for] my word is truth. NOT LETTING THE HEART CASE BE TAKEN THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART-CASE OF A MAN BE TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, ye who steal and crush heart-cases [and who make the heart of a man to go through its transformations according to his deeds: let not what he hath done harm him before you]. Homage to you, O ye Lords of Eternity, ye masters of everlastingness, take ye not this heart of Osiris Ani into your fingers, and this heart-case, and cause ye not things of evil to spring up against it, because this heart belongeth to the Osiris Ani, and this heart-case belongeth to him of the great names (Thoth), the mighty one, whose words are his members. He sendeth his heart to rule his body, and his heart is renewed before the gods. The heart of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is to him; he hath gained the mastery over it. He hath not said what he hath done. He hath obtained power over his own members. His heart obeyeth him, he is the lord thereof, it is in his body, and it shall never fall away therefrom. I command thee to be obedient unto me in Khert-Neter. I, the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace; whose word is truth in the Beautiful Amentet, by the Domain of Eternity. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 5) THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART OF NU, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, BE CARRIED AWAY FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. He saith:- Hail, thou Lion-god! I am Unb (the Blossom). That which is held in abomination to me is the block of slaughter of the god. Let not this my heart-case be carried away from me by the Fighting Gods in Anu. Hail, thou who dost wind bandages round Osiris, and who hast seen Set. Hail, thou who returnest after smiting and destroying him before the mighty ones! This my heart weepeth over itself before Osiris; it hath made supplication for me. I have given unto him and I have dedicated unto him the thoughts of the heart in the House of the god (Usekh-her), have brought unto him sand at the entry to Khemenu. Let not this my heart-case be carried away from me. I make you to ascend his throne, to fetter heart-cases for him in Sekhet-hetep, [to live] years of strength away from things of all kinds which are abominations to him, to carry off food from among the things which are thine, and which are in thy grasp through thy strength. And this my heart-case is devoted to the decrees of the god Tem, who guideth me through the caverns of Suti, but let not this my heart, which hath performed its desire before the Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Khert-Neter, be given to him. When they find the leg and the swathings they bury them. THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEART OF NU, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, BE DRIVEN AWAY FROM HIM IN KHERT-NETER. He saith:- My heart of my mother. My heart of my mother. My heart-case of my existence upon the earth. Let no one stand up against me when I bear testimony in the presence of the Lords of Things. Let it not be said against me and of that which I have done "He hath committed acts which are opposed to what is right and true," and let not charges be brought up against me in the presence of the Great God, the Lord of Amentet. Homage to thee, O my heart (ab). Homage to thee, O my heart-case. Homage to you, O my reins. Homage to you, O ye gods, who are masters of [your] beards, and who are holy by reason of your sceptres. Speak ye for me words of good import to Ra, and make ye me to have favour in the sight of Nehebkau. BREATHING THE AIR THE CHAPTER OF BREATHING THE AIR AND OF HAVING POWER OVER WATER IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Open to me! Who art thou? Whither goest thou? What is thy name? I am one of you. Who are these with you? The two Merti goddesses (Isis and Nephthys). Thou separatest head from head when [he] entereth the divine Mesqen chamber. He causeth me to set out for the temple of the gods Kem-heru. "Assembler of souls" is the name of my ferry-boat. "Those who make the hair to bristle" is the name of the oars. "Sert" ("Goad") is the name of the hold. "Steering straight in the middle" is the name of the rudder; likewise, [the boat] is a type of my being borne onward in the lake. Let there be given unto me vessels of milk, and cakes, and loaves of bread, and cups of drink, and flesh, in the Temple of Anpu. RUBRIC: If the deceased knoweth this Chapter, he shall go into, after coming forth from Khert-Neter of [the Beautiful Amentet]. SNUFFING THE AIR IN KHERT NETER THE CHAPTER OF SNUFFING THE AIR, AND OF HAVING POWER OVER THE WATER IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, thou Sycamore tree of the goddess Nut! Give me of the [water and of the] air which is in thee. I embrace that throne which is in Unu, and I keep guard over the Egg of Nekek-ur. It flourisheth, and I flourish; it liveth, and I live; it snuffeth the air, and I snuff the air, I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in [peace]. NOT DYING A SECOND TIME THE CHAPTER OF NOT DYING A SECOND TIME IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- My hiding place is opened, my hiding place is opened. The Spirits fall headlong in the darkness, but the Eye of Horus hath made me holy, and Upuati hath nursed me. I will hide myself among you, O ye stars which are imperishable. My brow is like the brow of Ra. My face is open. My heart-case is upon its throne, I know how to utter words. In very truth I am Ra himself. I am not a man of no account. I am not a man to whom violence can be done. Thy father liveth for thee, O son of Nut. I am thy son, O great one, I have seen the hidden things which are thine. I am crowned upon my throne like the king of the gods. I shall not die a second time in Khert-Neter. NOT ROTTING IN KHERT NETER THE CHAPTER OF NOT ROTTING IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- O thou who art motionless, O thou who art motionless, O thou whose members are motionless, like unto those of Osiris. Thy members shall not be motionless, they shall not rot, they shall not crumble away, they shall not fall into decay. My members shall be made [permanent] for me as if I were Osiris. RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known by the deceased he shall never see corruption in Khert-Neter. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 18) THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE BODY PERISH. The Osiris Nu saith:- Homage to thee, O my divine father Osiris! I come to embalm thee. Do thou embalm these my members, for I would not perish and come to an end [but would be] even like unto my divine father Khepera, the divine type of him that never saw corruption. Come then, strengthen my breath, O Lord of the winds, who dost magnify these divine beings who are like unto thyself. Stablish me, stablish me, and fashion me strongly, O Lord of the funeral chest. Grant thou that I may enter into the land of everlastingness, according to that which was done for thee, along with thy father Tem, whose body never saw corruption, and who himself never saw corruption. I have never done that which thou hatest, nay, I have acclaimed thee among those who love thy KA. Let not my body become worms, but deliver thou me as thou didst deliver thyself. I pray thee, let me not fall into rottenness, as thou lettest every god, and every goddess, and every animal, and every reptile, see corruption, when the soul hath gone out of them, after their death. And when the soul hath departed, a man seeth corruption, and the bones of his body crumble away and become stinking things, and the members decay one after the other, the bones crumble into a helpless mass, and the flesh turneth into foetid liquid. Thus man becometh a brother unto the decay which cometh upon him, and he turneth into a myriad of worms, and he becometh nothing but worms, and an end is made of him, and perisheth in the sight of the god of day (Shu), even as do every god, and every goddess, and every bird, and every fish, and every creeping worm, and every reptile, and every beast, and every thing whatsoever. Let [all the Spirits fall] on their bellies [when] they recognize me, and behold, the fear of me shall terrify them; and thus also let it be with every being that hath died, whether it be animal, or bird, or fish, or worm, or reptile. Let life [rise out of] death. Let not the decay caused by any reptile make an end [of me], and let not [enemies] come against me in their various forms. Give thou me not over to the Slaughterer in this execution-chamber, who killeth the members, and maketh them rot, being [himself] invisible, and who destroyeth the bodies of the dead, and liveth by carnage. Let me live, and perform his order; I will do what is commanded by him. Give me not over to his fingers, let him not overcome me, for I am under thy command, O Lord of the Gods. Homage to thee, O my divine father Osiris, thou livest with thy members. Thou didst not decay, thou didst not become worms, thou didst not wither, thou didst not rot, thou didst not putrefy, thou didst not turn into worms. I am the god Khepera, and my members shall have being everlastingly. I shall not decay, I shall not rot, I shall not putrefy, I shall not turn into worms, and I shall not see corruption before the eye of the god Shu. I shall have my being, I shall have by being; I shall live, I shall live; I shall flourish, I shall flourish, I shall flourish, I shall wake up in peace, I shall not putrefy, my intestines shall not perish, I shall not suffer injury. My eye shall not decay. The form of my face shall not disappear. My ear shall not become deaf. My head shall not be separated from my neck. My tongue shall not be removed. My hair shall not be cut off. My eyebrows shall not be shaved away, and no evil defect shall assail me. My body shall be stablished. It shall neither become a ruin, nor be destroyed on this earth. NOT_PERISHING THE CHAPTER OF NOT PERISHING AND OF BEING ALIVE IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail ye children of the god Shu. The Tuat hath gained the mastery over his diadem. Among the Hamemet Spirits may I arise, even as did arise Osiris. NOT GOING TO THE BLOCK OF THE GOD THE CHAPTER OF NOT GOING IN TO THE BLOCK OF THE GOD. The Osiris Ani saith:- My head was fastened on my body in heaven, O Guardian of the Earth, by Ra. [This] was granted [to me] on the day of my being stablished, when I rose up out of a state of weakness upon [my] two feet. On the day of cutting off the hair Set and the Company of the Gods fastened my head to my neck, and it became as firm as it was originally. Let nothing happen to shake it off again! Make ye me safe from the murderer of my father. I have tied together the Two Earths. Nut hath fastened together the vertebrae of my neck, and [I] behold them as they were originally, and they are seen in the order wherein they were when as yet Maat was not seen, and when the gods were not born in visible forms. I am Penti. I am the heir of the great gods, I the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth. NOT BEING TRANSPORTED TO THE EAST THE CHAPTER OF NOT BEING TRANSPORTED TO THE EAST IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, Phallus of Ra, which advanceth and beateth down opposition. Things which have been without motion for millions of years have come into life through Baba. I am stronger thereby than the strong, and I have more power thereby than the mighty. Now, let me not be carried away in a boat, or be seized violently and taken to the East, to have the festivals of Sebau Devils celebrated on me. Let not deadly wounds be inflicted upon me, and let me not be gored by horns. Thou shalt neither fall [nor] eat fish made by Tebun. Now, no evil thing of any kind whatsoever shall be done unto me by the Sebau Devils. [I shall not be gored by] horns. Therefore the Phallus of Ra, [which is] the head of Osiris, shall not be swallowed up. Behold, I shall come into me fields and I shall cut the grain. The gods shall provide me with food. Thou shalt not then be gored, Ra-Khepera. There shall not be then pus in the Eye of Tem, and it shall not be destroyed. Violence shall not be done unto me, and I shall not be carried away in [my] boat to the East to have the festivals of the Sebau Devils celebrated on me in evil fashion. Cruel gashes with knives shall not be inflicted upon me, and I shall not be carried away in [my] boat to the East. I the Osiris, the assessor of the holy offerings of all the gods, Ani, whose word is truth, happily, the lord of fealty [to Osiris]. NOT LETTING THE HEAD BE CUT OFF THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE HEAD OF A MAN BE CUT OFF FROM HIS BODY IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- I am a Great One, the son of a Great One. [I am] Fire, the son of Fire, to whom was given his head after it had been cut off. The head of Osiris was not removed from his body, and the head of Osiris Ani shall not be removed from his body. I have knitted myself together, I have made myself whole and complete. I shall renew my youth. I am Osiris Himself, the Lord of Eternity. UNITING THE SOUL TO ITS BODY THE CHAPTER OF MAKING THE SOUL TO BE JOINED TO ITS BODY IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, thou god Aniu! Hail, thou god Pehreri, who dwellest in thy hall, the Great God. Grant thou that my soul may come to me from any place wherein it may be. Even if it would tarry, let my soul be brought unto me from any place wherein it may be. Thou findest the Eye of Horus standing by thee like unto those beings who resemble Osiris, who never lie down in death. Let not the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, lie down dead among those who lie in Anu, the land wherein [souls] are joined to their bodies in thousands. Let me have possession of my Ba-soul and of my Spirit-soul, and let my word be truth with it (the Ba-soul) in every place wherein it may be. Observe then, O ye guardians of Heaven, my soul [wherever it may be]. Even if it would tarry, cause thou my Ba-soul to see my body. Thou shalt find the Eye of Horus standing by thee like [the Watchers]. Hail, ye gods who tow along the boat of the Lord of Millions of Years, who bring it over the sky of the Tuat, who make it to journey over Nent, who make Ba-souls to enter into their Spirit-bodies, whose hands hold the steering poles and guide it straight, who grasp tightly your paddles, destroy ye the Enemy; thus shall the Boat rejoice, and the Great God shall travel on his way in peace. Moreover, grant ye that the Ba-soul of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth before the gods, may come forth with your navel cords in the eastern part of the sky, and that it may follow Ra to the place where he was yesterday, and may set in peace, in peace in Amentet. May it gaze upon its earthly body, may it take up its abode and its Spirit-body, may it neither perish nor be destroyed for ever and for ever. RUBRIC: These words shall be said over a model of the Ba-soul made of gold, and inlaid with precious stones, which shall be placed on the breast of the Osiris. NOT LETTING THE SOUL BE HELD CAPTIVE THE CHAPTER OF NOT LETTING THE SOUL OF A MAN BE HELD CAPTIVE IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, thou who art exalted! Hail, thou who art adored! Hail, Mighty One of Souls, thou divine Soul who inspirest great dread, who dost set the fear of thyself in the gods, who are enthroned upon thy mighty seat. Make thou a path for the Spirit-soul and the Ba-soul of the Osiris Ani. I am equipped with [words of power]. I am a Spirit-soul equipped with [words of power]. I have made my way to the place where are Ra and Hathor. RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known by the deceased he shall be able to transform himself into a Spirit-soul who shall be equipped with [his soul and his shadow] in Khert-Neter, and he shall not be shut up inside any door in Amentet, when he is coming forth upon the Earth, or when he is going back into [Khert-Neter.] OPENING THE TOMB TO THE BA SOUL THE CHAPTER OF OPENING THE TOMB TO THE BA-SOUL AND THE SHADOW, AND OF COMING FORTH BY DAY, AND OF HAVING MASTERY OVER THE TWO LEGS. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- The place which is closed is opened, the place which is shut (or sealed) is sealed. That which lieth down in the closed place is opened by the Ba-soul which is in it. By the Eye of Horus I am delivered. Ornaments are stablished on the brow of Ra. My stride is made long. I lift up my two thighs [in walking]. I have journeyed over a long road. My limbs are in a flourishing condition. I am Horus, the Avenger of his Father, and I bring the Urrt Crown [and set it on] its standard. The road of souls is opened. My twin soul seeth the Great God in the Boat of Ra, on the day of souls. My soul is in the front thereof with the counter of the years. Come, the Eye of Horus hath delivered for me my soul, my ornaments are stablished on the brow of Ra. Light is on the faces of those who are in the members of Osiris. Ye shall not hold captive my soul. Ye shall not keep in durance my shadow. The way is open to my soul and to my shadow. It seeth the Great God in the shrine on the day of counting souls. It repeateth the words of Osiris. Those whose seats are invisible, who fetter the members of Osiris, who fetter Heart-souls and Spirit-souls, who set a seal upon the dead, and who would do evil to me, shall do no evil to me. Haste on the way to me. Thy heart is with thee. My Heart-soul and my Spirit-soul are equipped; they guide thee. I sit down at the head of the great ones who are chiefs of their abodes. The wardens of the members of Osiris shall not hold thee captive, though they keep ward over souls, and set a seal on the shadow which is dead. Heaven shall not shut thee in. RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known by the deceased he shall come forth by day, and his soul shall not be kept captive. APPENDIX (From the Papryus of Nebseni, Sheet 6) That which was shut hath been opened [that is] the dead. That which was shut fast hath been opened by the command of the Eye of Horus, which hath delivered me. Established are the beauties on the forehead of Ra. My steps are long. My legs are lifted up. I have performed the journey, my members are mighty and are sound. I am Horus, the Avenger of his Father. I am he who bringeth along his father, and his mother, by means of his staff. The way shall be opened to him that hath power over his feet, and he shall see the Great God in the Boat of Ra, when souls are counted therein at the bows, and when the years also are counted up. Grant that the Eye of Horus, which maketh the adornments of splendour to be firm on the forehead of Ra, may deliver my soul for me, and let darkness cover your faces, O ye who would imprison Osiris. O keep not captive my soul. O keep not ward over my shadow, but let a way be opened for my soul and my shadow, and let them see the Great God in the shrine on the day of the counting of souls, and let them hold converse with Osiris, whose habitations are hidden, and those who guard the members of Osiris, and who keep ward over the Spirit-souls, and who hold captive the shadows of the dead, and who would work evil against me, so that they shall [not] work evil against me. A way shall be for KA with thee, and thy soul shall be prepared by those who keep ward over the members of Osiris, and who hold captive the shadows of the dead. Heaven shall not keep thee fast, the earth shall not hold thee captive. Thou shalt not live with the beings who slay, but thou shalt be master of thy legs, and thou shalt advance to thy body straightway in the earth, [and to] those who belong to the shrine of Osiris and guard his members. LIFTING UP THE FEET AND APPEARING ON THE EARTH THE CHAPTER OF LIFTING UP THE FEET, AND OF COMING FORTH ON THE EARTH. The Osiris Ani saith:- Perform thy work, O Seker, perform thy work, O Seker, O thou who dwellest in thy circle, and who dwellest in my feet in Khert-Neter. I am he who sendeth forth light over the Thigh of heaven. I come forth in heaven. I sit down by the Light-god (Khu). O I am helpless. O I am helpless. I would walk. I am helpless. I am helpless in the regions of those who plunder in Khert-Neter, I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace. MAKING A WAY THROUGH AMENTET BY DAY THE CHAPTER OF FORCING A WAY INTO AMENTET [AND OF COMING FORTH] BY DAY. The Osiris Ani saith:- The town of Unu is opened. My head is sealed up, Thoth. Perfect is the Eye of Horus. I have delivered the Eye of Horus which shineth with splendours on the brow of Ra, the Father of the gods, [I am] that self-same Osiris, [the dweller in] Amentet. Osiris knoweth his day, and he knoweth that he shall live through his period of life; I shall have by being with him. I am the Moon-god Aah, the dweller among the gods. I shall not come to an end. Stand up therefore, O Horus, for thou art counted among the gods. APPENDIX (Naville, op. cit., I, Bl. X) THE CHAPTER OF FORCING A WAY INTO THE TUAT. The Am Khent priest Nefer-uben-f, whose word is truth, saith:- Hail, Soul, thou mighty one of terror. Behold, I have come unto thee. I see thee. I have forced a way through the Tuat. I see my father Osiris. I drive away the darkness. I love him. I have come. I see my father Osiris. He hath counted the heart of Set. I have made offerings for my father Osiris. I have opened all the ways in heaven and on earth. I love him. I have come. I have become a Spirit-body and a Spirit-soul, who is equipped. Hail, every god and every Spirit-soul, I have made the ways. I am Thoth.... ANOTHER CHAPTER OF THE TUAT AND OF COMING FORTH BY DAY. Open is the land of Unu. Shut is the head of Thoth. Perfect is the Eye of Horus. I have delivered the Eye of Horus, the shining one, the ornament of the Eye of Ra, the Father of the Gods. I am that same Osiris who dwelleth in Amentet. Osiris knoweth his day, which cometh to an end. I am Set, the Father of the Gods. I shall never come to an end. COMING_FORTH_BY_DAY_&_LIVING_AFTER_DEATH THE CHAPTER OF COMING FORTH BY DAY AND OF LIVING AFTER DEATH. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, thou One, who shinest from the moon. Hail, thou One, who shinest from the moon. Grant that this Osiris Ani may come forth among thy multitudes who are at the portal. Let him be with the Light-God. Let the Tuat be opened to him. Behold, the Osiris Ani shall come forth by day to perform everything which he wisheth upon the earth among those who are living [thereon]. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 13) Hail, thou god Tem, who comest forth from the Great Deep, who shinest gloriously under the form of the twin Lion-gods, send forth with might thy words unto those who are in thy presence, and let the Osiris Nu enter into their assembly. He hath performed the decree which hath been spoken to the mariners at eventide, and the Osiris Nu, whose word is truth, shall live after his death, even as doth Ra every day. Behold, most certainly Ra was born yesterday, and the Osiris Nu was born yesterday. And every god shall rejoice in the life of the Osiris Nu, even as they rejoice in the life of Ptah, when he appeareth from the Great House of the Aged One which is in Anu. COMING FORTH AFTER PASSING THROUGH THE AAMHET THE CHAPTER OF COMING FORTH BY DAY AFTER FORCING AN ENTRANCE THROUGH THE AAMHET. The Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, Soul, thou mighty one of terror! Verily, I am here. I have come. I behold thee. I have passed through the Tuat. I have seen Father Osiris. I have scattered the gloom of night. I am his beloved one. I have come, I have seen my Father Osiris. I have stabbed the heart of Suti. I have made offerings to my Father Osiris. I have opened every way in heaven and on the earth. I am the son who loveth his Fathers (sic) Osiris. I am a Spirit-body. I am a Spirit-soul. I am equipped. Hail, every god and every Spirit-soul. I have made the way [to Osiris]. I the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth. MAKING MAN TO RETURN TO LOOK UPON HIS HOUSE THE CHAPTER OF MAKING A MAN TO RETURN TO LOOK UPON HIS HOUSE ON EARTH. The Osiris Ani saith:- I am the Lion-god who cometh forth with long strides. I have shot arrows, and I have wounded my prey. I have shot arrows, and I have wounded my prey. I am the Eye of Horus, I traverse the Eye of Horus at this season. I have arrived at the domains. Grant that the Osiris Ani may come in peace. MAN COMING FORTH BY DAY AGAINST HIS ENEMIES ANOTHER CHAPTER OF THE COMING FORTH OF A MAN BY DAY AGAINST HIS ENEMIES IN KHERT-NETER. [The Osiris Ani saith:-] I have divided the heavens. I have cleft the horizon. I have traversed the earth [following in] his footsteps. I have conquered the mighty Spirit-souls because I am equipped for millions of years with words of power. I eat with my mouth. I evacuate with my body. Behold, I am the God of the Tuat! Let these things be given unto me, the Osiris Ani, in perpetuity withou fail or diminution. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 21) THE CHAPTER OF COMING FORTH AGAINST ENEMIES IN KHERT-NETER. The Osiris Nu saith:- Hail, Am-a-f (Eater of his arm), I have passed over the road. I am Ra. I have come forth from the horizon against my enemies. I have not permitted him to escape from me. I have stretched out my hand like that of the Lord of the Urrt Crown. I have lifted up my feet even as the Uraei-goddesses lift themselves up. I have not permitted the enemy [to be saved] from me. As for mine enemy, he hath been given to me, and he shall not be delivered from me. I stand up like Horus. I sit down like Ptah. I am strong like Thoth. I am mighty like Tem. I walk with my legs. I speak with my mouth. I chase my enemy. He hath been given unto me, and he shall not be delivered from me. HYMN TO RA WHEN HE RISETH AND SETTETH A HYMN OF PRAISE TO RA WHEN HE RISETH UPON THE HORIZON, AND WHEN HE SETTETH IN THE LAND OF LIFE. Osiris the scribe Ani saith:- Homage to thee, O Ra, when thou risest as Tem-Heru-Khuti. Thou art to be adored. Thy beauties are before mine eyes, [thy] radiance is upon my body. Thou goest forth to thy setting in the Sektet Boat with [fair] winds, and thy heart is glad; the heart of the Matet Boat rejoiceth. Thou stridest over the heavens in peace, and all thy foes are cast down; the stars which never rest sing hymns of praise unto thee, and the stars which are imperishable glorify thee as thou sinkest to rest in the horizon of Manu, O thou who art beautiful at morn and at eve, O thou lord who livest, and art established, O my Lord! Homage to thee, O thou who art Ra when thou risest, and who art Tem when thou settest in beauty. Thou risest and thou shinest on the back of thy mother [Nut], O thou who art crowned the king of the gods! Nut welcometh thee, and payeth homage unto thee, and Maat, the everlasting and never-changing goddess, embraceth thee at noon and at eve. Thou stridest over the heavens, being glad at heart, and the Lake of Testes is content. The Sebau-fiend hath fallen to the ground, his fore-legs and his hind-legs have been hacked off him, and the knife hath severed the joints of his back. Ra hath a fair wind, and the Sektet Boat setteth out on its journey, and saileth on until it cometh into port. The gods of the South, the gods of the North, the gods of the West, and the gods of the East praise thee, O thou Divine Substance, from whom all living things came into being. Thou didst send forth the word when the earth was submerged with silence, O thou Only One, who didst dwell in heaven before ever the earth and the mountains came into being. Hail, thou Runner, Lord, Only One, thou maker of the things that are, thou hast fashioned the tongue of the Company of the Gods, thou hast produced whatsoever cometh forth from the waters, thou springest up out of them above the submerged land of the Lake of Horus. Let me breathe the air which cometh forth from thy nostrils, and the north wind which cometh forth from thy mother Nut. Make thou my Spirit-soul to be glorious, O Osiris, make thou my Heart-soul to be divine. Thou art worshipped as thou settest, O Lord of the gods, thou art exalted by reason of thy wondrous works. Shine thou with the rays of light upon my body day by day, upon me, Osiris the scribe, the assessor of the divine offerings of all the gods, the overseer of the granary of the Lords of Abydos, the real royal scribe who loveth thee, Ani, whose word is truth, in peace. Praise be unto thee, O Osiris, the Lord of Eternity, Un-Nefer, Heru-Khuti (Harmakhis), whose forms are manifold, whose attributes are majestic [Praise be unto thee], O thou who art Ptah-Seker-Tem in Anu, thou Lord of the hidden shrine, thou Creator of the House of the KA of Ptah (Het-ka-Ptah) and of the gods [therein], thou Guide of the Tuat, who art glorified when thou settest in Nu (the Sky). Isis embraceth thee in peace, and she driveth away the fiends from the entrances of thy paths. Thou turnest thy face towards Amentet, and thou makest the earth to shine as with refined copper. Those who have lain down in death rise up to see thee, they breathe the air, and they look upon thy face when the disk riseth on the horizon. Their hearts are at peace since they behold thee, o thou who art Eternity and Everlastingness. THE SOLAR LITANY Homage to you, O ye gods of the Dekans in Anu, and to you, O ye Hememet-spirits in Kher Aha, and to thee, O Unti, who art the most glorious of all the gods who are hidden in Anu, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O An in Antes, Heru-khuti, who dost with long strides march across the heavens, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O Everlasting Soul, thou Soul who dwellest in Tetu, Un-Nefer, the son of Nut, who art the Lord of Akert, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have done aught with deceit. Homage to thee in thy dominion over Tetu, upon whose brow the Urrt Crown is established, thou One who createst the strength to protect thyself, and who dwellest in peace, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O Lord of the Acacia Tree, whose Seker Boat is set upon its sledge, who turnest back the Fiend, the Evildoer, and dost cause the Eye of Ra (utchat) to rest upon its seat, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O thou who art mighty in thine hour, thou great and mighty Prince who dost dwell in Anrutef, thou Lord of Eternity and Creator of the Everlastingness, thou Lord of Hensu, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O thou who restest upon Truth, thou Lord of Abtu, whose limbs form the substance of Ta-tchesert, unto whom fraud and deceit are abominations, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O thou who dwellest in thy boat, who dost bring Hapi (the Nile) forth from his cavern, whose body is the light, and who dwellest in Nekhen, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. Homage to thee, O thou Creator of the gods, thou King of the South and North, Osiris, whose word is truth, who rulest the world by thy gracious goodness, thou Lord of the Atebui, O grant thou unto me a path whereover I may pass in peace, for I am just and true; I have not spoken falsehood wittingly, nor have I done aught with deceit. APPENDIX (From the Saite Recension, ed. Lepsius, Bl. V) Homage to thee, O thou who comest as Tem, who didst come into being to create the Company of the Gods. Homage to thee, O thou who comest as the Soul of Souls, the Holy One in Amentet. Homage to thee, O President of the Gods, who illuminest the Tuat with thy beauties. Homage to thee, O thou who comest as the Light-god, who travellest in thy Disk. Homage to thee, O thou greatest of all gods, who are crowned King in heaven, Governor in the Tuat. Homage to thee, O thou who makest a way through the Tuat, who dost lead the way through all doors. Homage to thee, O thou who art among the gods, who dost weigh words in Khert-Neter. Homage to thee, O thou who dwellest in thy secret places, who dost fashion the Tuat with thy might. Homage to thee, O great one, O mighty one, thine enemies have fallen in places where they were smitten. Homage to thee, O thou who hast hacked the Sebau-fiends in pieces, and hast annihilated Aapep. Grant thou the sweet breeze of the north wind to the Osiris Auf-ankh, whose word is truth. HYMN TO RA WHEN HE RISETH AND TO THOSE IN HIS TRAIN A HYMN OF PRAISE TO RA WHEN HE RISETH IN THE EASTERN PART OF HEAVEN. Those who are in his following rejoice, and the Osiris, the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Hail, thou Disk, thou lord of rays, who risest on the horizon day by day. Shine thou with thy beams of light upon the face of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, for he singeth hymns of praise to thee at dawn, and he maketh thee to sit at eventide [with words of adoration]. May the soul of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, come forth with thee into heaven! May he set out with thee in the Matet Boat [in the morning], may he come into port in the Sektet Boat [in the evening], and may he cleave his path among the stars of heaven which never rest. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, being at peace [with his god], maketh adoration to his Lord, the Lord of Eternity, and saith:- Homage to thee, O Heru-khuti, who art the god Khepera, the self-created. When thou risest on the horizon and sheddest thy beams of light upon the Lands of the South and of the North, thou art beautiful, yea beautiful, and all the gods rejoice when they behold thee, the king of heaven. The goddess, the Lady of the Hour, is stablished upon thy head, her Uraei of the South and of the North are upon thy brow, and she taketh up her place before thee. The god Thoth is stablished in the bows of thy boat to destroy utterly all thy foes. Those who dwell in the Tuat come forth to meet thee, and they bow to the earth in homage as they come towards thee, to look upon thy beautiful Form. And I, Ani, have come into thy presence, so that I may be with thee, and may behold thy Disk every day. Let me not be kept captive [by the tomb], and let me not be turned back [on my way]. Let the members of my body be made new again when I contemplate thy beauties, even as are the members of all thy favoured ones, because I am one of those who worshipped thee upon earth. Let me arrive in the Land of Eternity, let me enter into the Land of Everlastingness. This, O my Lord, behold thou shalt ordain for me. AND MOREOVER, THE OSIRIS ANI, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, IN PEACE, THE TRUTH-SPEAKER, SAITH:- Homage to thee, O thou who risest on thy horizon in the form of Ra, who restest upon Law, [which can neither be changed nor altered]. Thou passest over the sky, and every face, watcheth thee and thy course, for thou thyself art hidden from their gaze. Thou dost show thyself [to them] at dawn and at eventide each day. The Sektet Boat, wherein Thy Majesty dwelleth, setteth forth on its journey with vigour. Thy beams [fall] upon all faces, thy light with its manifold colours is incomprehensible [to man], and thy brilliant rays cannot be reported. The Lands of the Gods see thee, they could write [concerning thee]; the Deserts of Punt could count thee. Thy creation is hidden. It is one by the opening of thy mouth. Thy form is the head of Nu. May he (Ani) advance, even as thou dost advance, without cessation, even as Thy Majesty [ceaseth not to advance] even for a moment. With great strides thou dost in one little moment pass over limitless distances which would need millions and hundreds of thousands of years [for a man to pass over; this] thou doest, and then thou sinkest to rest. Thou bringest to an end the hours of the night, even as thou stridest over them. Thou bringest them to an end by thine own ordinance, and dawn cometh on the earth. Thou settest thyself before thy handiwork in the form of Ra, and thou rollest up on the horizon....... Thou sendest forth light when thy form raiseth itself up, thou ordainest the increase of thy splendours. Thou mouldest thy limbs as thou advancest, thou bringest them forth, thou who wast never brought forth, in the form of Ra, who rolleth up into the height of heaven. Grant thou that I may reach the heaven of eternity, and the region where thy favoured ones dwell. May I unite with those holy and perfect Spirit-souls of Khert-Neter. May I come forth with them to behold thy beauties as thou rollest on at eventide, as thou journeyest to thy mother Nut (the Night-sky), and dost place thyself at the right hand (in the West). My two hands are raised to thee in praise and thanksgiving when thou settest in life. Behold, thou art the Creator of Eternity, who art adored when thou settest in Nu. I have set thee in my heart, without wavering, O thou who art more divine than the gods. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Praise and thanksgiving be unto thee, O thou who rollest on like unto gold, thou Illuminer of the Two Lands on the day of thy birth. Thy mother brought thee forth on her hand, and thou didst light up with splendour the circle which is travelled over by the Disk. O Great Light who rollest across Nu, thou dost raise up the generations of men from the deep source of thy waters, and dost make to keep festivals all districts and cities, and all habitations. Thou protectest [them] with thy beauties. Thy KA riseth up with the celestial food hu and tchefau. O thou mightily victorious one, thou Power of Powers, who makest strong thy throne against the sinful ones, whose risings on thy throne in the Sektet Boat are mighty, whose strength is widespread in the Atett Boat, make thou the Osiris Ani to be glorious by virtue of his word, which is truth, in Khert-Neter. Grant thou that he may be in Amentet free from evil, and let [his] offences be [set] behind thee. Grant thou that he may [live there] a devoted slave of the Spirit-souls. Let him mingle among the Heart-souls who live in Ta-tchesert (the Holy Land). Let him travel about in the Sekhet-Aaru (the Elysian Fields), conformably to [thy] decree with joy of heart- him the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. [And the god maketh answer]:--Thou shalt come forth into heaven, thou shalt sail over the sky, and thou shalt hold loving intercourse with the Star-gods. Praises shall be made to thee in the Boat. Thy name shall be proclaimed in the Atett Boat. Thou shalt look upon Ra within his shrine. Thou shalt make the Disk to set [with prayer] every day. Thou shalt see the Ant Fish in his transformations in the depths of the waters of turquoise. Thou shalt see the Abtu Fish in his time. It shall be that the Evil One shall fall when he deviseth a plan to destroy thee, and the joints of his neck and back shall be hacked asunder. Ra saileth with a fair wind, and the Sektet Boat progresseth and cometh into port. The mariners of Ra rejoice, and the heart of the Lady of the Hour is glad, for the enemy of her Lord hath been cast to the ground. Thou shalt behold Horus standing on the pilot's place in the Boat, and Thoth and Maat shall stand one on each side of him. All the gods shall rejoice when they behold Ra coming in peace to make the hearts of the Spirit-souls to live, and the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, the assessor of the holy offerings of the Lords of Thebes, shall be with them! THE CHAPTER OF THE NEW MOON THE FOLLOWING IS TO BE RECITED ON THE DAY OF THE MONTH (NEW MOON DAY). The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, whose word is truth, saith:- Ra ascendeth his throne on his horizon, and the Company of his Gods follow in his train. The God cometh forth from his hidden place, [and] tchefau food falleth from the eastern horizon of heaven at the word of Nut. They (the gods) rejoice over the paths of Ra, the Great Ancestor [as] he journeyeth round about. Therefore art thou exalted, O Ra, the dweller in thy Shrine. Thou swallowest the winds, thou drawest into thyself the north wind, thou eatest up the flesh of thy seat on the day when thou breathest truth. Thou dividest [it among] the gods who are [thy] followers. [Thy] Boat saileth on travelling among the Great Gods at thy word. Thou countest thy bones, thou gatherest together thy members, thou settest thy face towards Beautiful Amentet, and thou comest there, being made new every day. Behold, thou art that Image of Gold, thou hast the unitings of the disks of the sky, thou hast quakings, thou goest round about, and art made new each day. Hail! There is rejoicing in the horizon! The gods who dwell in the sky descend the ropes [of thy Boat] when they see the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, they ascribe praise unto him as unto Ra. The Osiris Ani is a Great Chief. [He] seeketh the Urrt Crown. His provisions are apportioned to him- the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. [His] fate is strong from the exalted body of the Aamu gods, who are in the presence of Ra. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is strong on the earth and in Khert-Neter. O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, wake up, and be strong like unto Ra every day. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall not tarry, he shall not remain motionless in this land for ever. Right well shall he see with his two eyes, right well shall he hear with his two ears, the things which are true, the things which are true. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is in Anu, the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is as Ra, and he is exalted by reason of [his] oars among the Followers of Nu. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, cannot tell what he hath seen [or] narrate [what he hath heard] in the House of the God of Mysteries. Hail! Let there be shouts of acclamation of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, the divine body of Ra in the Boat of Nu, who beareth propitiatory offerings for the KA of the god of that which he loveth. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, whose word is truth, is like Horus, the mighty one of transformations. RUBRIC: This Chapter is to be recited over a boat seven cubits long, made of green stone of the Tchatchau. Make a heaven of stars, and purify it and cleanse it with natron and incense. Make then a figure of Ra upon a tablet of new stone in paint, and set it in the bows of the boat. Then make a figure of the deceased whom thou wilt make perfect, [and place it] in the boat. Make it to sail in the Boat of Ra, and Ra himself shall look upon it. Do not these things in the presence of any one except thyself, or thy father, or thy son. Then let them keep guard over their faces, and they shall see the deceased in Khert-Neter in the form of a messenger of Ra. HYMN TO RA FOR THE DAY OF THE NEW MOON A HYMN TO RA [WHICH IS TO BE SUNG] ON THE DAY OF THE MONTH (THE DAY OF THE NEW MOON) [WHEN] THE BOAT OF RA SAILETH. [The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:-] Homage to thee, O thou who dwellest in thy Boat. Thou rollest on, thou rollest on, thou sendest forth light, thou sendest forth light. Thou decreest rejoicing for [every] man for millions of years unto those who love him. Thou givest [thy] face to the Hememet spirits, thou god Khepera who dwellest in thy Boat. Thou hast overthrown the Fiend Aapep. O ye Sons of Keb, overthrow ye the enemies of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, and the fiends of destruction who would destroy the Boat of Ra. Horus hath cut off your heads in heaven. Ye who were in the forms of geese, your navel strings are on the earth. The animals are set upon the earth..... in the form of fish. Every male fiend and every female fiend shall be destroyed by the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. Whether the fiends descend from out of heaven, or whether they come forth from the earth, or whether they advance on the waters, or whether they come from among the Star-gods, Thoth, [the son of Aner], coming forth from Anerti shall hack them to pieces. And the Osiris Ani shall make them silent and dumb. And behold ye, this god, the mighty one of slaughters, the terror of whom is most great, shall wash himself clean in your blood, and he shall bathe in your gore, and ye shall be destroyed by the Osiris Ani in the Boat of his Lord Ra-Horus. The heart of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, shall live. His mother Isis giveth birth to him, and Nephthys nurseth him, just as Isis gave birth to Horus, and Nephthys nursed him. [He] shall repulse the Smait fiends of Suti. They shall see the Urrt Crown stablished upon his head, and they shall fall down upon their faces [and worship him]. Behold, O ye Spirit-souls, and men, and gods, and ye dead, when ye see the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in the form of Horus, and the favoured one of the Urrt Crown, fall ye down upon your faces. The word of the Osiris Ani is truth before his enemies in heaven above, and on earth beneath, and before the Tchatchau Chiefs of every god and of every goddess. RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a large hawk standing upright with the White Crown upon his head, [and over figures of] Tem, Shu, Tefnut, Keb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, [Suti] and Nephthys. And they shall be painted in colour upon a new tablet, which shall be placed in a boat, together with a figure of the deceased. Anoint them with heken oil, and offer unto them burning incense, and geese, and joints of meat roasted. It is an act of praise to Ra as he journeyeth in his boat, and it will make a man to have his being with Ra, and to travel with him wheresoever he goeth, and it will most certainly cause the enemies of Ra to be slain. And the Chapter of travelling shall be recited on the sixth day of the festival. APPENDIX (From the Turin Papyrus) ANOTHER CHAPTER WHICH IS TO BE RECITED WHEN THE MOON RENEWETH ITSELF ON THE DAY OF THE MONTH [WHEREON IT DOETH THIS]. Osiris unfettereth the storm-cloud in the body of heaven, and is unfettered himself; Horus is made strong happily each day. He whose transformations are many hath had offerings made unto him at the moment, and he hath made an end of the storm which is in the face of the Osiris, Auf-ankh, whose word is truth. Verily, he cometh, and he is Ra in journeying, and he is the four celestial gods in the heavens above. The Osiris Auf-ankh, whose word is truth, cometh forth in his day, and he embarketh among the tackle of the boat. RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known by the deceased he shall become a perfect Spirit-soul in Khert-Neter, and he shall not die a second time, and he shall eat his food side by side with Osiris. If this Chapter be known by the deceased upon earth, he shall become like unto Thoth, and he shall be adored by those who live. He shall not fall headlong at the moment of the intensity of the royal flame of the goddess Bast, and the Great Prince shall make him to advance happily. ADVANCING TO THE TCJATCHAU CHIEFS OF OSIRIS THE CHAPTER OF ADVANCING TO THE TCHATCHAU CHIEFS OF OSIRIS. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I have built a house for my Ba-soul in the sanctuary in Tetu. I sow seed in the town of Pe (Buto). I have ploughed the fields with my labourers. My palm tree [standeth upright and is] like Menu upon it. I abominate abominable things. I will not eat the things which are abominations unto me. What I abominate is filth: I will not eat it. I shall not be destroyed by the offerings of propitiation and the sepulchral meals. I will not approach filth [to touch it] with my hands, I will not tread upon it with my sandals. For my bread shall be made of the white barley, and my ale shall be made from the red grain of the god Hapi (the Nile-god), which the Sektet Boat and the Atett Boat shall bring [unto me], and I will eat my food under the leaves of the trees whose beautiful arms I myself do know. O what splendour shall the White Crown make for me which shall be lifted up on me by the Uraei-goddesses! O Doorkeeper of Sehetep-taui, bring thou to me that wherewith the cakes of propitiation are made. Grant thou to me that I may lift up the earth. May the Spirit-souls open to me [their] arms, and let the Company of the Gods hold their peace whilst the Hememet spirits hold converse with the Osiris Ani. May the hearts of the gods lead him in his exalted state into heaven among the gods who appear in visible forms. If any god, or any goddess, attack the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, when he setteth out, the Ancestor of the year who liveth upon hearts [Osiris] shall eat him when he cometh forth from Abydos, and the Ancestors of Ra shall reckon with him, and the Ancestors of Light shall reckon with him. [He is] a god of splendour [arrayed in] the apparel of heaven, and he is among the Great Gods. Now the subsistence of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is among the cakes and the ale which are made for your mouths. I enter in by the Disk, I come forth by the god Ahui. I shall hold converse with the Followers of the Gods. I shall hold converse with the Disk. I shall hold converse with the Hememet-spirits. He shall set the terror of me in the thick darkness, in the inside of the goddess Mehurt, by the side of his forehead. Behold, I shall be with Osiris, and my perfection shall be his perfection among the Great Gods. I shall speak unto him with the words of men, I shall listen, and he shall repeat to me the words of the gods. I, the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, have come equipped. Thou makest to approach [thee] those who love thee. I am a Spirit-soul who is better equipped than any [other] Spirit-soul. CHANGING INTO A SWALLOW THE CHAPTER OF MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO A SWALLOW. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am a swallow, [I am] a swallow. [I am] that Scorpion, the daughter of Ra. Hail, O ye gods whose odour is sweet. Hail, O ye gods whose odour is sweet. Hail, Flame, who comest forth from the horizon. Hail, thou who art in the city. I have brought the Warder of his corner there. Give me thy two hands, and let me pass my time in the Island of Flame. I have advanced with a message, I have come having the report thereof [to make]. Open to me. How shall I tell that which I have seen there? I am like Horus, the governor of the Boat, when the throne of his father was given unto him, and when Set, that son of Nut, was [lying] under the fetters which he had made for Osiris. He who is in Sekhem hath inspected me. I stretch out my arms over Osiris. I have advanced for the examination, I have come to speak there. Let me pass on and deliver my message. I am he who goeth in, [I am] judged, [I] come forth magnified at the Gate of Nebertcher. I am purified at the Great Uart. I have done away my wickednesses. I have put away utterly my offences. I have put away utterly all the taints of evil which appertained to me [upon the earth]. I have purified myself, I have made myself to be like a god. Hail, O ye Doorkeepers, I have completed my journey. I am like unto you. I have come forth by day. I have advanced on my legs. I have gained the master over [my] footsteps. [Hail, ye] Spirit-souls! I, even I, do know the hidden roads and the Gates of Sekhet Aaru. I live there. Verily, I, even I, have come, I have overthrown my enemies upon the earth, although my body lieth a mummy in the tomb. APPENDIX RUBRIC: (Naville, op. cit., II, Bl. 202) If this Chapter be known by the deceased, he shall enter in after he hath come forth by day. RUBRIC: (Saite Recension) If this Chapter be known by the deceased, he shall come forth by day from Khert-Neter, and he shall go [again] after he hath come forth. If this Chapter be not known [by the deceased], he shall not go in again after he hath come forth [and he] shall not know [how] to come forth by day. CHANGING INTO A HAWK OF GOLD [THE CHAPTER] OF MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO A HAWK OF GOLD. The Osiris Ani saith:- I have risen up out of the seshett chamber, like the golden hawk which cometh forth from his egg. I fly, I alight like a hawk with a back of seven cubits, and the wings of which are like unto the mother-of-emerald of the South. I have come forth from the Sektet Boat, and my heart hath been brought unto me from the mountain of the East. I have alighted on the Atet Boat, and there have been brought unto me those who dwelt in their substance, and they bowed in homage before me. I have risen, I have gathered myself together like a beautiful golden hawk, with the head of the Benu, and Ra hath entered in [to hear my speech]. I have taken my seat among the great gods, [the children of] Nut. I have settled myself, the Sekhet-hetepet (the Field of Offerings) is before me. I eat therein, I become a Spirit-soul therein, I am supplied with food in abundance therein, as much as I desire. The Grain-god (Nepra) hath given unto me food for my throat, and I am master over myself and over the attributes of my head. CHANGING INTO A DIVINE HAWK [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO A DIVINE HAWK. Osiris Ani saith:- Hail, thou Great God, come thou to Tetu. Make thou ready for me the ways, and let me go round [to visit] my thrones. I have laboured. I have made myself perfect. O grant thou that I may be held in fear. Create thou awe of me. Let the gods of the Tuat be afraid of me, and let them fight for me in their halls. Permit not thou to come nigh unto me him that would attack me, or would injure me in the House of Darkness. Cover over the helpless one, hide him. Let do likewise the gods who hearken unto the word [of truth], the Khepriu gods who are in the following of Osiris. Hold ye your peace then, O ye gods, whilst the God holdeth speech with me, he who listeneth to the truth. I speak unto him my words. Osiris, grant thou that that which cometh forth from thy mouth may circulate to me. Let me see thine own Form. Let thy Souls envelop me. Grant thou that I may come forth, and that I may be master of my legs, and let me live there like Nebertcher upon his throne. Let the gods of the Tuat hold me in fear, and let them fight for me in their halls. Grant thou that I may move forward with him and with the Ariu gods, and let me be firmly stablished on my pedestal like the Lord of Life. Let me be in the company of Isis, the goddess, and let [the gods] keep me safe from him that would do an injury unto me. Let none come to see the helpless one. May I advance, and may I come to the Henti boundaries of the sky. Let me address words to Keb, and let me make supplicaion to the god Hu with Nebertcher. Let the gods of the Tuat be afraid of me, and let them fight for me in their halls. Let them see that thou hast provided me with food for the festival. I am one of those Spirit-souls who dwell in the Light-god. I have made my form in his Form, when he cometh to Tetu. I am a Spirit-body among his Spirit-bodies; he shall speak unto thee the things [which concern] me. Would that he would cause me to be held in fear! Would that he would create [in them] awe of me! Let the gods of the Tuat be afraid of me, and let them fight for me [in their halls]. I, even I, am a Spirit-soul, a dweller in the Light-god, whose form hath been created in divine flesh. I am one of those Spirit-souls who dwell in the Light-god, who were created by Tem himself, and who exist in the blossoms of his Eye. He hath made to exist, he hath made glorious, and he hath magnified their faces during their existence with him. Behold, he is Alone in Nu. They acclaim him when he cometh forth from the horizon, and the gods and the Spirit-souls who have come into being with him ascribe fear unto him. I am one of the worms which have been created by the Eye of the Lord One. And behold, when as yet Isis had not given birth to Horus, I was flourishing, and I had waxed old, and had become pre-eminent among the Spirit-souls who had come into being with him. I rose up like a divine hawk, and Horus endowed me with a Spirit-body with his soul, so that [I] might take possession of the property of Osiris in the Tuat. He shall say to the twin Lion-gods for me, the Chief of the House of the Nemes Crown, the Dweller in his cavern: Get thee back to the heights of heaven, for behold, inasmuch as thou art a Spirit-body with the creations of Horus, the Nemes Crown shall not be to thee: [but] thou shalt have speech even to the uttermost limits of the heavens. I, the warder, took possession of the property of Horus [which belonged] to Osiris in the Tuat, and Horus repeated to me what his father Osiris had said unto him in the years [past], on the days of his burial. Give thou to me the Nemes Crown, say the twin Lion-gods for me. Advance thou, come along the road of heaven, and look upon those who dwell in the uttermost limits of the horizon. The gods of the Tuat shall hold thee in fear, and they shall fight for thee in their halls. The god Auhet belongeth to them. All the gods who guard the shrine of the Lord One are smitten with terror at [my] words. Hail, saith the god who is exalted upon his coffer to me! He hath bound on the Nemes Crown, [by] the decree of the twin Lion-gods. The god Aahet hath made a way for me. I am exalted [on the coffer], the twin Lion-gods have bound the Nemes Crown on me and my two locks of hair are given unto me. He hath stablished for me my heart by his own flesh, and by his great, two-fold strength, and I shall not fall headlong before Shu. I am Hetep, the Lord of the two Uraei-goddesses who are to be adored. I know the Light-god, his winds are in my body. The Bull which striketh terror [into souls] shall not repulse me. I come daily into the House of the twin Lion-gods. I come forth therefrom into the House of Isis. I look upon the holy things which are hidden. I see the being who is therein. I speak to the great ones of Shu, they repulse him that is wrathful in his hour. I am Horus who dwelleth in his divine Light. I am master of his crown. I am master of his radiance. I advance towards the Henti boundaries of heaven. Horus is upon his seat. Horus is upon his thrones. My face is like that of a divine hawk. I am one who is equipped [like] his lord. I shall come forth to Tetu. I shall see Osiris. I shall live in his actual presence.... Nut. They shall see me. I shall see the gods [and] the Eye of Horus burning with fire before my eyes. They shall reach out their hands to me. I shall stand up. I shall be master of him that would subject me to restraint. They shall open the holy paths to me, they shall see my form, they shall listen to my words. [Homage] to you, O ye gods of the Tuat, whose faces are turned back, whose powers advance, conduct ye me to the Star-gods which never rest. Prepare ye for me the holy ways to the Hemat house, and to your god, the Soul, who is the mighty one of terror. Horus hath commanded me to lift up your faces; do ye look upon me. I have risen up like a divine hawk. Horus hath made me to be a Spirit-body by means of his Soul, and to take possession of the things of Osiris in the Tuat. Make ye for me a path. I have travelled and I have arrived at those who are chiefs of their caverns, and who are guardians of the House of Osiris. I speak unto them his mighty deeds. I made them to know concerning his victories. He is ready [to butt with his] two horns at Set. They know him who hath taken possession of the god Hu, and who hath taken possession of the Powers of Tem. Travel thou on thy way safely, cry out the gods of the Tuat to me. O ye who make your names pre-eminent, who are chiefs in your shrines, and who are guardians of the House of Osiris, grant, I pray you, that I may come to you. I have bound up and I have gathered together your Powers. I have directed the Powers of the ways, the wardens of the horizon, and of the Hemat House of heaven. I have stablished their fortresses for Osiris. I have prepared the ways for him. I have performed the things which [he] hath commanded. I come forth to Tetu. I see Osiris. I speak to him concerning the matter of his Great Son, whom he loveth, and concerning [the smiting of] the heart of Set. I look upon the lord who was helpless. How shall I make them to know the plans of the gods, and that which Horus did without the knowledge of his father Osiris? Hail, Lord, thou Soul, most awful and terrible, behold me. I have come, I make thee to be exalted! I have forced a way though the Tuat. I have opened the roads which appertain to heaven, and those which appertain to the earth, and no one hath opposed me therein. I have exalted thy face, O Lord of Eternity. APPENDIX (In the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 14, the Chapter ends with the following.) Exalted art thou on thy throne, O Osiris! Thou hast heard fair things, O Osiris! Thy strength is vigorous, O Osiris! Thy head is fastened on thy body, O Osiris! Thy neck is made firm, O Osiris! Thy heart is glad, [O Osiris!]. Thy speech is made effective, O Osiris! Thy princes rejoice Thou art established the Bull in Amentet. Thy son Horus hath ascended thy trrone, and all life is with him. Millions of years minister unto him, and millions of years hold him in fear. The Company of the Gods are his servants, and they fold him in fear. The god Tem, the Governor, the only One among the gods, hath spoken, and his word passeth not away. Horus is both the divine food and the sacrifice. He made haste to gather together [the members of] of his father. Horus is his deliverer. Horus is his deliverer. Horus hath sprung from the essence of his divine father and from his decay. He hath become the Governor of Egypt. The gods shall work for him, and they shall toil for him for million of years. He shall make millions of years to live through his Eye, the only one of its lord, Nebertcher.] (From the Turin Papyrus, Bl. XXX) Exalted is thy throne, O Osiris. Thou hearest well, O Osiris. Thy strength flourisheth, O Osiris. I have fastened thy head [on thy] body for thee. I have stablished thy throat, the throne of the joy of thy heart. Thy words are stable. Thy shenit princes are glad. Thou art stablished as the Bull of Amentet. Thy son Horus hath ascended thy throne. All life is with him. Millions of years work for him. The Company of the Gods fear him. Tem, the One Power of the Gods, hath spoken, and what he hath said is not changed, Hetu Aabi. Horus hath stood up. I have gone about collecting his father. Horus hath delivered his father. Horus hath delivered [his mother]. My mother is Horus. My brother is Horus. My uncle is Horus. I have come. Horus followeth his father.... there the dirt of his head. The gods shall serve him. Millions of years...... in his Eye, the Only One of its Lord, Neb-er-tcher. CHANGING INTO THE PRINCE OF TCHATCHAU CHIEFS THE CHAPTER OF BEING TRANSFORMED INTO THE PRINCE OF THE TCHATCHAU CHIEFS. The Osiris Nu, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the god Tem, the maker of the sky, the creator of the things which are, who cometh forth from the earth, who made the seed of man to come into being, the Lord of things, who fashioned the gods, the Great God, who created himself, the Lord of Life, who made to flourish the Two Companies of the Gods. Homage to you, O ye divine Lords of things, ye holy beings, whose seats are veiled! Homage to you, O ye Lords of Eternity, whose forms are concealed, whose sanctuaries are mysteries, whose places of abode are not known! Homage to you, O ye gods, who dwell in the Tenait (Circle of Light)! Homage to you, O ye gods of the Circle of the country of the Cataracts! Homage to you, O ye gods who dwell in Amentet! Homage to you, O ye gods who dwell within Nut! Grant ye to me that I may come before you, I am pure, I am like a god. I am endowed with a Spirit-soul. I am strong. I am endowed with a Heart-soul. I bring unto you incense, and spice, and natron. I have done away with the chidings of your mouths. I have come, I have done away the evil which was in your hearts, and I have removed the offences which appertained to you [against me]. I bring to you deeds of well-doing, and I present before you truth. I know you. I know your names. I know your forms which are not known. I come into being among you. My coming is like unto that god who eateth men, and who feedeth upon the gods. I am strong before you even like that god who is exalted upon his pedestal, unto whom the gods come with rejoicing, and the goddesses make supplication when they see me. I have come unto you. I have ascended my throne like your Two Daughters. I have taken my seat in the horizon. I receive my offerings of propitiation upon my altars. I drink my fill of seth wine every evening. I come to those who are making rejoicings, and the gods who live in the horizon ascribe unto me praises, as the divine Spirit-body, the Lord of mortals. I am exalted like that holy god who dwelleth in the Great House. The gods rejoice greatly when they see my beautiful appearances from the body of the goddess Nut, and when the goddess Nut bringeth me forth. CHANGING INTO THE SERPENT SATA [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE SERPENT SATA. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the serpent Sata whose years are infinite. I lie down dead. I am born daily. I am the serpent Sa-en-ta, the dweller in the uttermost parts of the earth. I lie down in death. I am born, I become new, I renew my youth every day. CHANGING INTO THE CROCODILE GOD [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE CROCODILE-GOD. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the Crocodile-god (Sebak) who dwelleth amid his terrors. I am the Crocodile-god and I seize [my prey] like a ravening beast. I am the great Fish which is in Kamui. I am the Lord to whom bowings and prostrations are made in Sekhem. And the Osiris Ani is the lord to whom bowings and prostrations are made in Sekhem. (From the Papyrus of Nebseni) Behold, I am the dweller in his terrors, I am the crocodile, his firstborn. I bring (prey) from a distance. I am the Fish of Horus, the Great One in Kamui. I am the lord of bowings in Sekhem. CHANGING INTO PTAH THE CHAPTER OF MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO PTAH. The Osiris Ani [whose word is truth, saith]:- I eat bread. I drink ale. I gird up my garments. I fly like a hawk. I cackle like the Smen goose. I alight upon that place hard by the Sepulchre on the festival of the Great God. That which is abominable, that which is abominable I will not eat. [An abominable thing] is filth, I will not eat thereof. That which is an abomination unto my KA shall not enter my body. I will live upon that whereon live the gods and the Spirit-souls. I shall live, and I shall be master of their cakes. I am master of them, and I shall eat them under the trees of the dweller in the House of Hathor, my Lady. I will make an offering. My cakes are in Tetu, my offerings are in Anu. I gird about myself the robe which is woven for me by the goddess Tait. I shall stand up and sit down in whatsoever place it pleaseth me to do so. My head is like unto that of Ra. I am gathered together like Tem. Here offer the four cakes of Ra, and the offerings of the earth. I shall come forth. My tongue is like that of Ptah, and my throat is like unto that of Hathor, and I remember the words of Tem, of my father, with my mouth. He forced the woman, the wife of Keb, breaking the heads near him; therefore was the fear of him there. [His] praises are repeated with vigour. I am decreed to be the Heir, the lord of the earth of Keb. I have union with women. Keb hath refreshed me, and he hath caused me to ascend his throne. Those who dwell in Anu bow their heads to me. I am [their] Bull, I am stronger than [the Lord] of the hour. I unite with women. I am master for millions of years. TURNING INTO THE SOUL OF TEM [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE SOUL OF TEM. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I shall not enter into the place of destruction, I shall not perish, I shall not know [decay]. I am Ra, who came forth from Nu, the Soul of the God who created his own members. What I abominate is sin; I will not look thereon. I cry not out against truth, nay, I live therein. I am the god Hu, the imperishable god, in my name of "Soul." I have created myself with Nu, in the name of "Khepera." I exist in them like Ra. I am the Lord of Light. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu) That which is an abomination unto me is death; let me not go into the chamber of torture which is in the Tuat. I am the delight of the Khu of Osiris. I make to be content the heart[s] of those who dwell among the divine things which are beloved [by me]. They cause the fear of me [to abound], they create the awe of me to be in those divine beings who dwell in their own circles. Behold, I am exalted on my own standard, and upon my throne, and upon my seat which is assigned [to me]. I am the god Nu, and those who commit sin shall not destroy me. I am the firstborn of the primeval god, and my soul is the Souls of the Eternal Gods, and my body is Everlastingness. My created form is [that of] the god Eternity, the Lord of Years, and the Prince of Everlastingness. I am the Creator of the Darkness, who maketh his seat in the uttermost limits of the heavens, [which] I love. I arrive at their boundaries. I advance upon my two legs. I direct my resting place. I sail over the sky. I fetter and destroy the hidden serpents which are about my footsteps [in going to] the Lord of the Two Arms. My soul is the Souls of the Eternal Gods, and my body is Everlastingness. I am the exalted one, the Lord of the Land of Tebu. I am the Child in the city: "Young man in the country" is my name. "Imperishable one" is my name. I am the Soul Creator of Nu. I make my habitation in Khert-Neter. My nest is invisible, my egg is not broken. I have done away the evil which is in me. I shall see my Father, the Lord of the Evening. His body dwelleth in Anu. I am made to be the Light-god, a dweller in the Light-god, over the Western Domain of the Hebt bird. CHANGING INTO THE BENU BIRD [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE BENU BIRD. The Osiris, the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I flew up out of primeval matter. I came into being like the god Khepera. I germinated like the plants. I am concealed like the tortoise [in his shell]. I am the seed of every god. I am Yesterday of the Four [Quarters of the Earth, and] the Seven Uraei, who came into being in the Eastern land. [I am] the Great One (Horus) who illumineth the Hememet spirits with the light of his body. [I am] that god in respect of Set. [I am] Thoth who [stood] between them (Horus and Set) as the judge on behalf of the Governor of Sekhem and the Souls of Anu. [He was like] a stream between them. I have come. I rise up on my throne. I am endowed with Khu. I am mighty. I am endowed with godhood among the gods. I am Khensu, [the lord] of every kind of strength. RUBRIC: [If] this Chapter [be known by the deceased], he shall come forth pure by day after his death, and he shall perform every transformation which his soul desireth to make. He shall be among the Followers of Un-Nefer, and he shall satisfy himself with the food of Osiris, and with sepulchral meals. He shall see the Disk [of the Sun], he shall be in good case upon earth before Ra, and his word shall be truth in the sight of Osiris, and no evil thing whatsoever shall have dominion over him for ever and ever. CHANGING INTO A HERON [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO A HERON. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the master of beasts brought for sacrifice, [and] of the knives which are [held] at their heads [and] their beards; those who dwell in their emerald [fields], the Aged Gods, and the Spirit-souls, are ready at the moment for the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace. He maketh slaughter on the earth, and I make slaughter on the earth. I am strong. I follow the heights unto heaven. I have made myself pure. I walk with long strides to my city. I have become an owner of land there. I advance to Sepu...... is given to me in Unu. I have set the gods upon their roads. I have made splendid the houses and towns of those who are in their shrines. I know the stream of Nut. I know Tatun. I know Teshert. I have brought along their horns. I know Heka. I have hearkened to this words. I am the Red Bull-calf which is marked with markings. The gods shall say when they hear [of me]: Uncover your faces. His coming is to me. There is light which ye know not. Times and seasons are in my body. I do not speak [lies] in the place of truth, daily. The truth is hidden on the eyebrows. [By] night [I] sail up the river to keep the feast of him that is dead, to embrace the Aged God, and to guard the earth, I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. APPENDIX (From the Saite Recension) RUBRIC: If this Chapter be known [by the deceased], he will live like a perfect Spirit-soul in Khert-Neter; no evil thing whatsoever shall overthrow him. CHANGING INTO A LOTUS [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE LOTUS. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the holy lotus that cometh forth from the light which belongeth to the nostrils of Ra, and which belongeth to the head of Hathor. I have made my way, and I seek after him, that is to say, Horus. I am the pure lotus that cometh forth from the field [of Ra]. APPENDIX (Naville, op. cit., I, Bl. XCIII) Chapter of making the transformation into a lotus. The Osiris, the lady of of the house, Aui, whose word is truth, in peace, saith:- Hail, thou Lotus, thou type of the god Nefer-Temu! I am the man who knoweth your names. I know your names among the gods, the lords of Khert-Neter. I am one among you. Grant ye that I may see the gods who are the Guides of the Tuat. Grant ye to me a seat in Khert-Neter, near the Lords of Amentet. Assign to me a habitation in the land of Tchesert. Receive ye me in the presence of the Lords of Eternity. Let my soul come forth in whatsoever place it pleaseth. Let it not be rejected in the presence of the Great Company of the Gods. TURNING INTO THE GOD WHO LIGHTENETH DARKNESS [THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE GOD WHO LIGHTENETH THE DARKNESS. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the girdle of the garment of the god Nu, which giveth light, and shineth, and belongeth to his breast, the illuminer of the darkness, the uniter of the two Rehti deities, the dweller in my body, through the great spell of the words of my mouth. I rise up, but he who was coming after me hath fallen. He who was with him in the Valley of Abtu hath fallen. I rest. I remember him. The god Hu hath taken possession of me in my town. I found him there. I have carried away the darkness by my strength, I have filled the Eye [of Ra] when it was helpless, and when it came not on the festival of the fifteenth day. I have weighed Sut in the celestial houses against the Aged One who was with him. I have equipped Thoth in the House of the Moon-god, when the fifteenth day of the festival come not. I have taken possession of the Urrt Crown. Truth is in my body; turquoise and crystal are its months. My homestead is there among the lapis-lazuli, among the furrows thereof. I am Hem-Nu, the lightener of the darkness. I have come to lighten the darkness; it is light. I have lightened the darkness. I have overthrown the ashmiu-fiends. I have sung hymns to those who dwell in the darkness. I have made to stand up the weeping ones, whose faces were covered over; they were in a helpless state of misery. Look ye then upon me. I am Hem-Nu. I will not let you hear concerning it. [I have fought. I am Hem-Nu. I have lightened the darkness. I have come. I have made an end to the darkness which hath become light indeed.] NOT DYING A SECOND TIME THE CHAPTER OF NOT DYING A SECOND TIME. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Hail, Thoth! What is it that hath happened to the children of Nut? They have waged war, they have upheld strife, they have done evil, they have created the fiends, they have made slaughter, they have caused trouble; in truth, in all their doings the strong have worked against the weak. Grant, O might of Thoth, that that which the god Tem hath decreed [may be done!] And thou regardest not evil, nor art thou provoked to anger when they bring their years to confusion, and throng in and push in to disturb their months. For in all that they have done unto thee they have worked iniquity in secret. I am they writing-palette, O Thoth, and I have brought unto thee thine ink-jar. I am not of those who work iniquity in their secret places; let not evil happen unto me. The Osiris, the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Hail, Temu! What manner of land is this unto which I have come? It hath not water, it hath not air; it is depth unfathomable, it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly therein. In it a man cannot live in quietness of heart; nor may the longings of love be satisfied therein. But let the state of the Spirit-souls be given unto me instead of water and air, and the satisfying of the longings of love, and let quietness of heart be given unto me instead of cakes and ale. The god Tem hath decreed that I shall see thy face, and that I shall not suffer from the things which pain thee. May every god transmit unto thee his throne for millions of years. Thy throne hath descended unto thy son Horus, and the god Tem hath decreed that thy course shall be among the holy princes. In truth he shall rule from thy throne, and he shall be heir to the throne of the Dweller in the fiery Lake [Neserser]. In truth it hath been decreed that in me he shall see his likeness, and that my face shall look upon the face of the Lord Tem. How long then have I to live? It is decreed that thou shalt live for millions of years, a life of millions of years. Let it be granted to me to pass on to the holy princes, for indeed, I have done away all the evil which I committed, from the time when this earth came into being from Nu, when it sprang from the watery abyss even as it was in the days of old. I am Fate and Osiris, I have made my transformations into the likeness of divers serpents. Man knoweth not, and the gods cannot behold the two-fold beauty which I have made for Osiris, the greatest of the gods. I have given unto him the region of the dead. And, verily, his son Horus is seated upon the throne of the Dweller in the fiery Lake [of Neserser], as his heir. I have made him to have his throne in the Boat of Millions of Years. Horus is stablished upon his throne [among his] kinsmen, and he hath all that is with him. Verily, the Soul of Set, which is greater than all the gods, hath departed. Let it be granted to me to bind his soul in fetter in the Boat of the God, when I please, and let him hold the Body of the God in fear. O my father Osiris, thou hast done for me that which thy father Ra did for thee. Let me abide upon the earth permanently. Let me keep possession of my throne. Let my heir be strong. Let my tomb, and my friends who are upon the earth, flourish. Let my enemies be given over to destruction, and to the shackles of the goddess Serq. I am thy son. Ra is my father. On me likewise thou hast conferred life, strength, and health. Horus is established upon his tomb. Grant thou that the days of my life may come unto worship and honour. APPENDIX (From the Leyden Papyrus of Ra) RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a figure of Horus, made of lapis-lazuli, which shall be placed on the neck of the deceased. It is a protection upon earth, and it will secure for the deceased the affection of men, gods, and the Spirit-souls which are perfect. Moreover it acteth as a spell in Khert-Neter, but it must be recited by thee on behalf of the Osiris Ra, regularly and continually millions of times. ENTERING THE HALL OF MAAT [THE CHAPTER OF] ENTERING INTO THE HALL OF MAATI TO PRAISE OSIRIS KHENTI-AMENTI. The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I have come unto thee. I have drawn nigh to behold thy beauties (thy beneficient goodness). My hands are [extended] in adoration of thy name of "Maat." I have come. I have drawn nigh unto [the place where] the cedar-tree existeth not, where the acacia tree doth not put forth shoots, and where the ground produceth neither grass nor herbs. Now I have entered into the habitation which is hidden, and I hold converse with Set. My protector advanced to me, covered was his face.... on the hidden things. He entered into the house of Osiris, he saw the hidden things which were therein. The Tchatchau Chiefs of the Pylons were in the form of Spirits. The god Anpu spake unto those about him with the words of a man who cometh from Ta-mera, saying, "He knoweth our roads and our towns. I am reconciled unto him. When I smell his odour it is even as the odour of one of you." And I say unto him: I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, whose word is truth, have come. I have drawn nigh to behold the Great Gods. I would live upon the propitiatory offerings [made] to their Doubles. I would live on the borders [of the territory of] the Soul, the Lord of Tetu. He shall make me to come forth in the form of a Benu bird, and to hold converse [with him.] I have been in the stream [to purify myself]. I have made offerings of incense. I betook myself to the Acacia Tree of the [divine] Children. I lived in Abu in the House of the goddess Satet. I made to sink in the water the boat of the enemies. I sailed over the lake [in the temple] in the Neshmet Boat. I have looked upon the Sahu of Kamur. I have been in Tetu. I have held my peace. I have made the god to be master of his legs. I have been in the House of Teptuf. I have seen him, that is the Governor of the Hall of the God. I have entered into the House of Osiris and I have removed the head-coverings of him that is therein. I have entered into Rasta, and I have seen the Hidden One who is therein. I was hidden, but I found the boundary. I journeyed to Nerutef, and he who was therein covered me with a garment. I have myrrh of women, together with the shenu powder of living folk. Verily he (Osiris) told me the things which concerned himself. I said: Let thy weighing of me be even as we desire. And the Majesty of Anpu shall say unto me, "Knowest thou the name of this door, and canst thou tell it?" And the Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, in peace, whose word is truth, shall say, "Khersek-Shu" is the name of this door. And the Majesty of the god Anpu shall say unto me, "Knowest thou the name of the upper leaf, and the name of the lower leaf?" [And the Osiris the scribe Ani] shall say: "Neb-Maat-heri-retiu-f" is the name of the upper leaf and "Neb-pehti-thesu-menment" [is the name of the lower leaf. And the Majesty of the god Anpu shall say], "Pass on, for thou hast knowledge, O Osiris the scribe, the assessor of the holy offerings of all the gods of Thebes Ani, whose word is truth, the lord of loyal service [to Osiris]." APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu, Brit. Mus. No. 10477, Sheet 22) [THE FOLLOWING] WORDS SHALL BE SAID BY THE STEWARD OF THE KEEPER OF THE SEAL, NU, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, WHEN HE COMETH FORTH TO THE HALL OF MAATI, SO THAT HE MAY BE SEPARATED FROM EVERY SIN WHICH HE HATH COMMITTED, AND MAY BEHOLD THE FACES OF THE GODS. The Osiris Nu, whose word is truth, saith: Homage to thee, O great God, Lord of Maati! I have come unto thee, O my Lord, and I have brought myself hither that I may behold thy beauties. I know thee, I know thy name, I know the names of the Forty-two Gods who live with thee in this Hall of Maati, who live by keeping ward over sinners, and who feed upon their blood on the day when the consciences of men are reckoned up in the presence of the god Un-Nefer. In truth thy name is "Rehti-Merti-Nebti-Maati." In truth I have come unto thee, I have brought Maati (Truth) to thee. I have done away sin for thee. I have not committed sins against men. I have not opposed my family and kinsfolk. I have not acted fraudulently in the Seat of Truth. I have not known men who were of no account. I have not wrought evil. I have not made it to be the first [consideration daily that unnecessary] work should be done for me. I have not brought forward my name for dignities. I have not [attempted] to direct servants [I have not belittled God]. I have not defrauded the humble man of his property. I have not done what the gods abominate. I have not vilified a slave to his master. I have not inflicted pain. I have not caused anyone to go hungry. I have not made any man to weep. I have not committed murder. I have not given the order for murder to be committed. I have not caused calamities to befall men and women. I have not plundered the offerings in the temples. I have not defrauded the gods of their cake-offerings. I have not carried off the fenkhu cakes [offered to] the Spirits. I have not committed fornication. I have not masturbated [in the sanctuaries of the god of my city]. I have not diminished from the bushel. I have not filched [land from my neighbour's estate and] added it to my own acre. I have not encroached upon the fields [of others]. I have not added to the weights of the scales. I have not depressed the pointer of the balance. I have not carried away the milk from the mouths of children. I have not driven the cattle away from their pastures. I have not snared the geese in the goose-pens of the gods. I have not caught fish with bait made of the bodies of the same kind of fish. I have not stopped water when it should flow. I have not made a cutting in a canal of running water. I have not extinguished a fire when it should burn. I have not violated the times [of offering] the chosen meat offerings. I have not driven away the cattle on the estates of the gods. I have not turned back the god at his appearances. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure. My pure offerings are the pure offerings of that great Benu which dwelleth in Hensu. For behold, I am the nose of Neb-nefu (the lord of the air), who giveth sustenance unto all mankind, on the day of the filling of the Utchat in Anu, in the second month of the season Pert, on the last of the month, [in the presence of the Lord of this earth]. I have seen the filling of the Utchat in Anu, therefore let not calamity befall me in this land, or in this Hall of Maati, because I know the names of the gods who are therein, [and who are the followers of the Great God]. THE NEGATIVE CONFESSION Hail, Usekh-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin. Hail, Hept-khet, who comest forth from Kher-aha, I have not committed robbery with violence. Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from Khemenu, I have not stolen. Hail, Am-khaibit, who comest forth from Qernet, I have not slain men and women. Hail, Neha-her, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not stolen grain. Hail, Ruruti, who comest forth from heaven, I have not purloined offerings. Hail, Arfi-em-khet, who comest forth from Suat, I have not stolen the property of God. Hail, Neba, who comest and goest, I have not uttered lies. Hail, Set-qesu, who comest forth from Hensu, I have not carried away food. Hail, Utu-nesert, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have not uttered curses. Hail, Qerrti, who comest forth from Amentet, I have not committed adultery, I have not lain with men. Hail, Her-f-ha-f, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have made none to weep. Hail, Basti, who comest forth from Bast, I have not eaten the heart. Hail, Ta-retiu, who comest forth from the night, I have not attacked any man. Hail, Unem-snef, who comest forth from the execution chamber, I am not a man of deceit. Hail, Unem-besek, who comest forth from Mabit, I have not stolen cultivated land. Hail, Neb-Maat, who comest forth from Maati, I have not been an eavesdropper. Hail, Tenemiu, who comest forth from Bast, I have not slandered [no man]. Hail, Sertiu, who comest forth from Anu, I have not been angry without just cause. Hail, Tutu, who comest forth from Ati (the Busirite Nome), I have not debauched the wife of any man. Hail, Uamenti, who comest forth from the Khebt chamber, I have not debauched the wife of [any] man. Hail, Maa-antuf, who comest forth from Per-Menu, I have not polluted myself. Hail, Her-uru, who comest forth from Nehatu, I have terrorized none. Hail, Khemiu, who comest forth from Kaui, I have not transgressed [the law]. Hail, Shet-kheru, who comest forth from Urit, I have not been wroth. Hail, Nekhenu, who comest forth from Heqat, I have not shut my ears to the words of truth. Hail, Kenemti, who comest forth from Kenmet, I have not blasphemed. Hail, An-hetep-f, who comest forth from Sau, I am not a man of violence. Hail, Sera-kheru, who comest forth from Unaset, I have not been a stirrer up of strife. Hail, Neb-heru, who comest forth from Netchfet, I have not acted with undue haste. Hail, Sekhriu, who comest forth from Uten, I have not pried into matters. Hail, Neb-abui, who comest forth from Sauti, I have not multiplied my words in speaking. Hail, Nefer-Tem, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have wronged none, I have done no evil. Hail, Tem-Sepu, who comest forth from Tetu, I have not worked witchcraft against the king. Hail, Ari-em-ab-f, who comest forth from Tebu, I have never stopped [the flow of] water. Hail, Ahi, who comest forth from Nu, I have never raised my voice. Hail, Uatch-rekhit, who comest forth from Sau, I have not cursed God. Hail, Neheb-ka, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not acted with arrogance. Hail, Neheb-nefert, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not stolen the bread of the gods. Hail, Tcheser-tep, who comest forth from the shrine, I have not carried away the khenfu cakes from the Spirits of the dead. Hail, An-af, who comest forth from Maati, I have not snatched away the bread of the child, nor treated with contempt the god of my city. Hail, Hetch-abhu, who comest forth from Ta-she (the Fayyum), I have not slain the cattle belonging to the god. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nebseni) Hail, Usekh-nemmt, who comest forth from Anu, I have not committed sin. Hail, Hept-Shet, who comest forth from Kher-aha, I have not robbed with violence. Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from Khemenu, I have done no violence. Hail, Am-khaibitu, who comest forth from Qerrt, I have not stolen. Hail, Neha-hau, who comest forth from Rasta, I have not slain men. Hail, Ruruti, who comest forth from heaven, I have not made light the bushel. Hail, Arti-f-em-tes, who comest forth from Sekhem, I have not acted deceitfully. Hail, Neba, who comest and goest, I have not stolen the property of the god. Hail, Set-qesu, who comest forth from Hensu, I have not told lies. Hail, Uatch-nesert, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have not carried away food. Hail, Qerti, who comest forth from Amenti, I have not uttered evil words. Hail, Hetch-abhu, who comest from Ta-she, I have attacked no man. Hail, Unem-snef, who comest forth from the execution chamber, I have not salin a bull which was the property of the god. Hail, Unem-besku, who comest [forth from the Mabet chamber], I have not acted deceitfully. Hail, Neb-maat, who comest forth from Maati, I have not pillaged the lands which have been ploughed. Hail, Thenemi, who comest forth from Bast, I have never pried into matters [to make mischief]. Hail, Aati, who comest forth from Anu, I have not set my mouth in motion. Hail, Tutuf, who comest from from A, I have not been wroth except with reason. Hail, Uamemti, who comest forth from the execution chamber, I have not debauched the wife of a man. Hail, Maa-anuf, who comest forth from Per-Menu, I ahve not polluted myself. Hail, Heri-uru, who comest forth from [Nehatu], I have terrorized no man. Hail, Khemi, who comest forth from Ahaui, I have not made attacks. Hail, Shet-kheru, who comest forth from Uri, I have not been a man of anger. Hail, Nekhem, who comest forth from Heq-at, I have not turned a deaf ear to the words of truth. Hail, Ser-Kheru, who comest forth from Unes, I have not stirred up strife. Hail, Basti, who comest forth from Shetait, I have made none to weep. Hail, Her-f-ha-f, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not committed acts of sexual impurity, or lain with men. Hail, Ta-ret, who comest forth from Akhkhu, I have not eaten my heart. Hail, Kenmti, who comest forth from Kenmet, I have cursed no man. Hail, An-hetep-f, who comest forth from Sau, I have not acted in a violent or oppressive manner. Hail, Neb-heru, who comest forth from Tchefet, I have not acted [or judged] hastily. Hail, Serekhi, who comest forth from Unth, I have not.... my hair, I have not harmed the god. Hail, Neb-abui, who comest forth from Sauti, I have not multiplied my speech overmuch. Hail, Nefer-Tem, who comest forth from Het-ka-Ptah, I have not acted with deciet, I have not worked wickedness. Hail, Tem-Sep, who comest forth from Tetu, I have not done things to effect the cursing of [the king]. Hail, Ari-em-ab-f, who comest forth from Tebti, I have not stopped the flow of water. Hail, Ahi-mu, who comest forth from Nu, I have not raised my voice. Hail, Utu-rekhit, who comest forth from thy house, I have not curse God. Hail, Neheb-Nefert, who comest forth from the Lake of Nefer, I have not acted with insufferable insolence. Hail, Neheb-kau, who comest forth from [thy] city, I have not sought to make myself unduly distinguished. Hail, Tcheser-tep, who comest forth from thy cavern, I have not increased my wealth except through such things are [justly] my own possessions. Hail, An-a-f, who comest forth from Auker, I have not scorned [or treated with contempt] the god of my town. ADDRESS TO THE GODS OF THE TUAT (From the Papyrus of Nu, Brit. Mus. No. 10477, Sheet 24) THE FOLLOWING ARE THE WORDS WHICH THE HEART OF TRUTH THAT IS SINLESS SHALL SAY WHEN HE COMETH WITH THE WORD OF TRUTH INTO THE HALL OF MAATI; THEY SHALL BE SAID WHEN HE COMETH TO THE GODS WHO DWELL IN THE TUAT; AND THEY ARE THE WORDS WHICH ARE [TO BE SAID] AFTER [HE COMETH FORTH FROM] THE HALL OF MAATI. Nu, the steward of the keeper of the seal, whose word is truth, saith:- Homage to you, O ye gods who dwell in your Hall of Maati! I know you, I know your names. Let me not fall under your knives of slaughter, and bring ye not forward my wickedness to this god in whose following ye are. Let not evil hap come upon me through you. Speak ye the truth concerning me in the presence of Neb-er-tcher, for I have done what is right and just in Ta-Mera. I have not cursed the god, and my evil hap did not come upon him that was king in his day. Homage to you, O ye who dwell in your Hall of Maati, who have nothing false in your bodies, who live upon Truth, who feed yourselves upon Truth in the presence of Horus who dwelleth in his Disk, deliver ye me from Beba, who feedeth upon the livers of the great ones on the day of the Great Judgment. Grant ye that I may come before you, for I have not committed sin, I have done no act of deceit, I have done no evil thing, and I have not borne [false] witness; therefore let nothing [evil] be done to me. I have lived upon truth, I have fed upon truth, I have performed the ordinances of men, and the things which gratify the gods. I have propitiated the god by doing his will, I have given bread to the hungry man, and water to him that was athirst, and apparel to the naked man, and a ferry-boat to him that had no boat. I have made propitiatory offerings and given cakes to the gods, and the "things which appear at the word" to the Spirits. Deliver then ye me, protect then ye me, and make ye no report against me in the presence [of the Great God]. I am pure in respect of my mouth, and I am clean in respect of my hands, therefore let it be said unto me by those who shall behold me: "Come in peace, Come in peace." For I have heard that great word which the Sahu spake to the CAT, in the House of Hapt-ra. I have borne witness to Her-f-ha-f, and he hath given a decision [concerning me]. I have seen the things over which the Persea tree which is in Rasta, spreadeth its branches. I have made petitions to the gods, [and I] know the things [which appertain to] their bodies. I have come, travelling a long road, to bear righteous testimony, and to set the Balance upon its supports within Aukert. Hail, thou who art exalted high upon thy standard, thou Lord of the Atef Crown, who dost make thy name to be "Lord of the Winds," deliver thou me from thy divine Envoys who punish and afflict according to [thy] decrees, and who make calamities to arise, and whose faces are without coverings, for I have done what is right and true for the Lord of Truth. I am pure. My breast is purified by libations, and my hinder parts are made clean with the things which make clean, and my inner parts have been dipped in the Lake of Truth. There is no single member of mine which lacketh truth. I have washed myself clean in the Lake of the South. I have rested myself in the City of the North, which is in Sekhet Sanhemu (the Field of the Grasshoppers), where the mariners of Ra wash themselves clean at the second hour of the night, and at the third hour of the day. The hearts of the gods are gratified when they have passed over it, whether it be by night or whether it be by day, and they say unto me, "Let thyself advance." They say unto me, "Who art thou?" And they say unto me, "What is thy name?" [And I reply], "Sept-kheri-nehait-ammi-beq-f" is my name. Then they say unto me, "Advance straightway on the city which is to the North of the Olive Tree. What dost thou see there?" The Leg and the Thigh. What dost thou say unto them? Let me see rejoicings in these lands of the Fenkhu. What do they give unto thee? A flame of fire and a sceptre-amulet [made] of crystal. What dost thou do with them? I bury them on the furrow of M'naat, as things for the night. What dost thou find on the furrow of Maat? A sceptre of flint, the name of which is "Giver of winds." What now didst thou do with the flame of fire and the sceptre-amulet [made] of crystal, after thou didst bury them? I said a spell over them, and I dug them up. I quenched the flame of fire and I broke the sceptre-amulet, and I made a lake of water. [Then shall the Two and forty gods say unto me]: "Come now, pass in over the threshold of this door of the Hall of Maati, for thou hast knowledge of us." "We will not allow thee to enter in over us," say the bars of this door, "unless thou tellest us our names." [And I reply], "Tekh-bu-maa" is your name. The right lintel of this door saith: "I will not allow thee to pass over me unless thou tellest me my name." [And I reply], "Henku-en-fat-maat" is thy name. The left lintel of this door saith: "I will not allow thee to pass over me unless thou tellest me my name." [And I reply], "Henku-en-arp" is thy name. The ground of this door saith: "I will not allow thee to pass over me unless thou tellest me my name." [And I reply], "Aua-en-Keb" is thy name. And the bolt of this door saith: "I will not open the door to thee unless thou tellest me my name." [And I reply], "Saah-en-mut-f" is thy name. The socket of the fastening of this door saith: "I will not open unto thee unless thou tellest my name." [And I reply], "The Living Eye of Sebek, the Lord of Bakhau," is thy name. The Doorkeeper of this door saith: "I will not open to thee, and I will not let thee enter by me unless thou tellest my name." [And I reply], "Elbow of the god Shu who placeth himself to protect Osiris" is thy name. The posts of this door say: "We will not let thee pass in by us unless thou tellest our name." [And I reply], "Children of the uraei-goddesses" is your name. The Doorkeeper of this door saith: "I will not open to thee, and I will not let thee enter in by me unless thou tellest my name. [And I reply], "Ox of Keb" is thy name. [And they reply], "Thou knowest us, pass in therefore by us." The ground of this Hall of Maati saith: "I will not let thee tread upon me [unless thou tellest me my name], for I am silent. I am holy because I know the names of two feet wherewith thou wouldst walk upon me. Declare, then, them to me." [And I reply], "Besu-Ahu" is the name of my right foot, and "Unpet-ent-Het-Heru" is the name of my left foot. [The ground replieth]: "Thou knowest us, enter in therefore over us." The Doorkeeper of this Hall of Maati saith: "I will not announce thee unless thou tellest my name." [And I reply], "Discerner of hearts, searcher of bellies" is thy name. [The Doorkeeper saith]: "Thou shalt be announced." [He saith]: "Who is the god who dwelleth in his hour? Speak it" [And I reply], "Au-taui." [He saith]: "Explain who he is." [And I reply], "Au-taui" is Thoth. "Come now," saith Thoth, "for what purpose hast thou come?" [And I reply]: "I have come, and have journeyed hither that my name may be announced [to the god]." [Thoth saith]: "In what condition art thou?" [And I reply], "I, even I, am purified from evil defects, and I am wholly free from the curses of those who live in their days, and I am not one of their number." [Thoth saith]: "Therefore shall [thy name] be announced to the god." [Thoth saith]: "Tell me, who is he whose heaven is of fire, whose walls are living serpents, and whose ground is a stream of water? Who is he?" [And I reply], "He is Osiris." [Thoth saith]: "Advance now, [thy name] shall be announced to him. Thy cakes shall come from the Utchat (Eye of Horus or Ra), thy ale shall come from the Utchat, and the offerings which shall appear to thee at the word upon earth [shall proceed] from the Utchat." This is what Osiris hath decreed for the steward of the overseer of the seal, Nu, whose word is truth. RUBRIC: THE MAKING OF THE REPRESENTATION OF WHAT SHALL HAPPEN IN THIS HALL OF MAATI. This Chapter shall be said by the deceased when he is cleansed and purified, and is arrayed in linen apparel, and is shod with sandals of white leather, and his eyes are painted with antimony, and his body is anointed with unguent made of myrrh. And he shall present as offerings oxen, and feathered fowl, and incense, and cakes and ale, and garden herbs. And behold, thou shalt draw a representation of this in colour upon a new tile moulded from earth upon which neither a pig nor any other animal hath trodden. And if this book be done [in writing, the deceased] shall flourish, and his children shall flourish, and [his name] shall never fall into oblivion, and he shall be as one who filleth the heart of the king and of his princes. And bread, and cakes, and sweetmeats, and wine, and pieces of flesh shall be given unto him [from among those which are] upon the altar of the Great God. And he shall not be driven back from any door in Amentet, and he shall be led along with the kings of the South and the kings of the North, and he shall be among the bodyguard of Osiris, continually and regularly for ever. [And he shall come forth in every form he pleaseth as a living soul for ever, and ever, and ever.] DEIFICATION OF THE MEMBERS THE CHAPTER OF THE DEIFICATION OF THE MEMBERS The hair of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the hair of Nu. The face of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the face of Ra. The eyes of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the eyes of Hathor. The ears of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the ears of Up-uatu. The lips of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the lips of Anpu. The teeth of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the teeth of Serqet. The cheeks of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the cheeks of Isis. The arms of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the arms of Ba-neb-Tetu. The neck of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the neck of Uatchit. The throat of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the throat of Mert. The breast of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the breast of the Lady of Sais. The backbone of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the backbone of Set. The trunk of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the trunk of the Lords of Kher-aha. The flesh of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the flesh of Aa-shefit. The belly of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the belly of Sekhmet. The buttocks of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the buttocks of the Eye of Horus. The phallus of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, is the phallus of Osiris. The thighs of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the thighs of Nut. The feet of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the feet of Ptah. The fingers of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the fingers of Saah. The toes of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, are the toes of the Living Uraei. APPENDIX (From the Pyramid of Pepi I, ll. 565ff.) The head of this Meri-Ra is the head of Horus; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The skull of this Pepi is the Dekan star of the god; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The brow of this Meri-Ra is the brow of..... and Nu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The face of this Pepi is the face of Up-uatu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The eyes of this Meri-Ra are the eyes of the Great Lady, the first of the Souls of Anu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The nose of this Pepi is the nose of Thoth; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The mouth of this Meri-Ra is the mouth of Khens-ur; he cometh forth therefore, and ascendeth therefore, and ascendeth therefore into heaven. The tongue of this Pepi is the tongue of Maaa (Truth) in the Maat Boat; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The teeth of this Pepi are the teeth of the Souls of [Anu]; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The lips of this Meri-Ra are the lips of........; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The chin of this Pepi is the chin of Nest-khent-Sekhem (the throne of the First Lady of Sekhem); he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The thes bone of this Pepi is the thes bone of the Bull Sma; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The soulders of this Pepi are the shoulders of Set; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [The...... of this Pepi].........; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [The......of this Pepi] ........of Baabu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The breast of this Meri-Ra is the breast of Bast; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The belly of this Meri-Ra is the belly of Nut; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [The........of this Pepi] ........; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [The........of this Pepi] .......of the two Companies of the gods; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The two thighs of this Pepi are the two thighs of Heqet; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The buttocks of this Meri-Ra are like the Semktet Boat and the Mantchet Boat; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The phallus of this Pepi is the phallus of the Hep Bull; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The legs of this Meri-Ra are the legs of Net (Neith) and Serqet; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The knees of this Meri-Ra are the knees of the twin Souls who are at the head of the Sekhet-Tcher; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The soles of this Meri-Ra are like the Maati Boat; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. The toes of this Pepi are the toes of the Souls of Anu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Now this Pepi is a god, the son of a god; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. This Pepi is the son of Ra, who loveth him; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Ra hath sent forth Meri-Ra; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Ra hath begotten [this] Pepi; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Ra hath given birth to Pepi; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. This spell therefore is in the body of Meri-Ra; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. This Meri-Ra is the Power, the Great Power, among the Great Council of Chiefs in Anu; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. He worketh the boat; Pepi cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [Pepi is] Horus, the nursling, the child; Meri-Ra cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Pepi hath not had union with Nut, she hath not given her hands to him; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Keb hath not removed the obstacles in his path; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. No god hath smitten the steps of this Meri-Ra; he come forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. [Though] Pepi is not censed is not mourned, hath not washed himself in the vessel, hath not smelt the haunch, hath not carried the meat-offering, hath not ploughed the earth, hath not dedicated an offering, he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Behold, it is not this Pepi who hath said these things to you, O ye gods, it is Heka who hath said these things to you, O ye gods, and this Meri-Ra is the support which is under Heka; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Every god smiteth the feet of Pepi; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. He plougheth the earth, he dedicateth an offering, he bringeth the vessel of [blood], he smelleth the haunch, and he bringeth the meat offering; he cometh forth therefore and ascendeth into heaven. Every god graspeth the hand of Meri-Ra in heaven, He conducteth him to the House of Horus in the sky. The word of his Double is truth before Keb. THE CHAPTER OF REPULSING SLAUGHTER IN HENSU (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 6) THE CHAPTER OF DRIVING BACK THE SLAUGHTERS WHICH ARE PERFORMED IN HENSU. The Osiris Nu, whose word is truth, saith:- O thou land of the Sceptre! O thou White Crown of the divine form! O thou rest of the ferry-boat! I am the Child. (Repeat four times). Hail, Abu-ur! Thou sayest daily: "The slaughter-block is made ready as thou knowest, and thou hast come to destruction." I am Ra, who stablisheth those who praise him. I am the Knot of the god in the Aser tree, the twice beautiful one, who is more splendid to-day than yesterday. (Repeat four times). I am Ra, who stablisheth those who praise him. I am the Knot of the god within the Aser tree, and my appearance is the appearance [of Ra] on this day. My hair is the hair of Nu. My face is the face of the Disk. My eyes are the eyes of Hathor. My ears are the ears of Up-uat. My nose is the nose of Khenti-Khabas. My lips are the lips of Anpu. My teeth are the teeth of Serqet. My cheeks are the cheeks of the goddess Isis. My hands are the hands of Ba-neb-Tet. My forearms are the forearms of Neith, the Lady of Sais. My backbone is the backbone of Suti. My phallus is the phallus of Beba. My reins are the reins of the Lords of Kher-aha. My chest is the chest of Aa-shefit. My belly and back are the belly and back of Sekhmet. My buttocks are the buttocks of the Eye of Horus. My hips and legs are the hips and legs of Nut. My feet are the feet of Ptah. [My fingers] and my toes are the [fingers and] toes of the Living gods. There is no member of my body which is not the member of a god. Thoth protecteth my body altogether, and I am Ra day by day. I shall not be dragged back by my arms, and none shall lay violent hold upon my hands. And shall do me hurt neither men, nor gods, nor the Spirit-souls, nor the dead, nor any man, nor any pat-spirit, nor any rekhit-spirit, nor any hememet-spirit. I am he who cometh forth advancing, whose name is unknown. I am Yesterday. "Seer of Millions of Years" is my name. I pass along, I pass along the paths of the divine celestial judges. I am the Lord of Eternity: I decree and I judge like Khepera. I am the Lord of the Urrt Crown. I am he who dwelleth in the Utchat and in the Egg, and it is granted unto me to live therein. I am he who dwelleth in the Utchat when it closeth, and I exist by the strength thereof. I come forth and I shine; I enter in and I come to life. I am in the Utchat, my seat is upon my throne, and I sit in the tent chamber before it. I am Horus. [I] traverse millions of years. I have decreed [the stablishing] of my throne, and I am the ruler thereof; and in very truth my mouth keepeth an even balance both in speech and in silence. In very truth my forms are inverted. I am Un-Nefer, from one period even unto another, and what I have is within me. I am the only One, who proceedeth from an only One, who goeth round about in his course. I am he who dwelleth in the Utchat. No evil thing of any shape or kind shall spring up against me, and no baleful object, and no harmful thing, and no disastrous thing shall happen unto me. I open the door in heaven. I rule my throne. I open the way for the births which take place on this day. I am the child who traverseth the road of Yesterday. I am To-day for untold nations and peoples. I am he who protecteth you for millions of years. Whether ye be denizens of heaven, or of the earth, or of the South, or of the North, or of the East, or of the West, the fear of me is in your bodies. I am he whose being hath been wrought in his eye. I shall not die again. My moment is in your bodies, but my forms are in my place of habitation. I am "He who cannot be known." The Red Fiends have their faces directed against me. I am the unveiled one. The period when the heavens were created for me and were enlarged the bounds of earth, and multiplied the progeny thereof, cannot be found out. They shall fail and not be united again. By reason of the speech which I address to you, my name setteth itself apart from all things evil which are in the mouths of men. I am he who riseth and shineth, a wall which cometh out of a wall, an only One who proceedeth from an only One. There is never a day that passeth without the things which appertain unto him being therein; passing, passing, passing, passing. Verily I say unto thee, I am the Plant which cometh forth from Nu, and my mother is Nut. Hail, my creator, I am he who hath no power to walk, the Great Knot who dwelleth in Yesterday. The might of my strength is within my hand, I am not known [by thee], but I am he who knoweth thee. I cannot be held in the hand, but I am he who can hold thee in his hand. Hail, O Egg! Hail, O Egg! I am Horus who liveth for millions of years, whose flame shineth upon you, and bringeth your hearts unto me. I am master of my throne. I advance at this season. I have opened a path. I have delivered myself from all evil things. I am the golden dog-headed ape, three palms and two fingers [high], which hath neither arms nor legs, and which dwelleth in Het-ka-Ptah. I go forth as goeth forth the dog-headed ape who dwelleth in Het-ka-Ptah. RUBRIC: Behold the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, arrayed in fine linen, and shod with sandals of white [leather], and anointed with the very finest myrrh unguent. There are offered unto him a fine bull, and incense, and ra geese, and flowers, and ale, and cakes, and garden herbs. And behold, thou shalt draw a representation of a table of offerings on a clean tile with pure colours, and thou shalt bury it in a field whereon no swine hath trodden. And if a copy of this book be written upon it, he shall rise [again], and his children's children shall flourish and prosper, like unto Ra, without cessation. He shall be in high favour with the king, and with the shenit nobles of his court, and there shall be given unto him cakes and cups of drink, and portions of flesh, upon the altar-table of the Great God. He shall not thrust aside at any door in Amentet; he shall travel in the train of the Kings of the South and the Kings of the North, and he shall abide with the followers of Osiris near Un-Nefer, for ever, and for ever, and for ever. Vignette (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheet 24) The steward of the overseer of the seal, Nu, whose word is truth, begotten of the steward of the overseer of the seal, Amen-hetep, whose word is truth, saith:- Hail, ye Four Apes who sit in the bows of the Boat of Ra, who convey truth to Nebertcher, who sit in judgment on the oppressed man and on [his] oppressor, who make the gods to be contented by means of the flame of your mouths, who offer holy offerings to the gods, and sepulchral meals to the Spirit-souls, who live upon truth, and who feed upon truth of heart, who are without deceit and fraud, and to whom wickedness is an abomination, do ye away with my evil deeds, and put ye away my sins [which deserved stripes upon earth, and destroy ye every evil thing which appertaineth to me], and let there be no obstacle whatsoever on my part towards you. O grant ye that I may make my way through the Amehet, let me enter into Rasta, let me pass through the hidden pylons of Ament. O grant that there may be given unto me shens cakes, and ale, and persen cakes, even as to the living Spirit-souls, and grant that I may enter into and come forth from Rasta. [The Four Apes make answer, saying]: Come thou, for we have done away with thy wickedness, and we have put away thy sin, along with thy sins upon earth which deserved stripes, and we have destroyed every evil thing which appertained to thee upon earth. Enter, therefore, unto Rasta, and pass through the hidden pylons of Amentet, and there shall be given unto thee shens cakes, and ale, and persen cakes, and thou shalt come forth and shalt enter in at thy desire, even as do those who are favoured [of the God], and thou shalt be called [to partake of offerings] each day in the horizon. THE TET OF GOLD THE CHAPTER OF A TET OF GOLD. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Thou risest up for thyself, O Still-heart! Thou shinest for thyself, O Still-heart! Place thou thyself on thy base, I come, I bring unto thee a Tet of gold, thou shalt rejoice therein. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nebseni and the Papyrus of Nu) Rise up thou, O Osiris, thou hast thy backbaone, O Still-heart, thou hast thy neck vertebrae and thy back, O Still-heart! Place thou thyself on thy base. I put water beneath thee, and I bring unto thee a Tet of god that thou mayest rejoice therein. RUBRIC (From the Papyrus of Nu): [This Chapter] shall be recited over a Tet of gold set in a stand made of sycamore wood which hath been steeped in a tincture of ankhamu flowers, and it shall be placed on the neck of the deceased on the day of the funeral. If this amulet be placed on his neck he shall become a perfect Khu in Khert-Neter, and at the festivals of the New Year he shall be like unto the Followers of Osiris continually and for ever. RUBRIC (From the Turin Papyrus): [This Chapter] shall be said over a Tet of gold fashioned out of the trunk of a sycamore tree, and it shall be placed on the neck of the deceased. Then shall he enter in through the doors of the Tuat. His words whall be silenced. He shall place himself on the ground on New Year's Day among the Followers of Osiris. If this Chapter be known by the deceased he shall live like a perfect Khu in Khert-Neter. He shall not be sent back from the doors of Amentet. There shall be given to him the shens cake, and a cup of wine, and the persen cake, and slices of meat on the altars of Ra, or as some read, Osiris Un-Nefer. And his word shall be truth before his enemies in Khert-Neter continually, and for ever and for ever. THE TET OF RED STONE THE CHAPTER OF A TET OF CARNELIAN. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- The blood of Isis, the spells of Isis, the magical powers of Isis, shall make this great one strong, and shall be an amulet of protection [against him] that would do to him the things which he abominateth. APPENDIX RUBRIC (From the Papyrus of Nu): [This Chapter] shall be said over a Tet of carnelian, which hath been washed in a tincture of ankhamu flowers, and is fashioned out of the trunk of a sycamore tree. It shall be placed on the neck of the deceased on the day of the funeral. If this be done for him the magical powers of Isis will protect his members. Horus, the son of Isis, shall rejoice when he seeth him. [No] road shall be blocked to him. His hand shall be to heaven, his hand shall be to earth, for ever. Do not let anyone see him. Verily.... RUBRIC (From the Saite Recension): [This Chapter] shall be said over a Tet of carnelian, anointed with a tincture of ankhamu flowers, made from the trunk of a sycamore tree. It shall be placed on the neck of the Khu. If this book be done for him, the magical spells of Isis shall protect him, and Horus the son of Isis shall rejoice [when] he seeth him. No road shall be blocked to him. His hand shall be to heaven, his hand shall be to earth....... If this book be known by him he shall be in the following of Osiris Un-Nefer, and his word shall be truth in Khert-Neter. The doors in Khert-Neter shall be opened to him. Wheat and barley shall be given to him in Sekhet-Aanru. His name shall be like [the names of] the gods who are there, the Followers of Horus who reap. HEART OF SEHERT STONE THE CHAPTER OF A HEART OF SEHERT STONE. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the Benu bird, the Heart-soul of Ra, the guide of the gods to the Tuat. Their Heart-souls come forth upon earth to do what their KAU wish to do, and the Heart-soul of the Osiris Ani shall come forth to do what his Ka wisheth to do. THE HEAD REST THE CHAPTER OF THE HEAD-REST, which is to be placed under the head of the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. Awake out of thy sufferings, O thou who liest prostrate! Awake thou! Thy head is in the horizon. I lift thee up, O thou whose word is truth. Ptah hath overthrown thine enemies for thee. Thine enemies have fallen, and they shall never more exist, O Osiris. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nebseni, Sheet 21) THE CHAPTER OF THE HEAD-REST [OR PILLOW]. Awake out of thy sufferings, O thou who liest prostrate. They (the gods) keep watch over thy head in the horizon. Thou art lifted up, thy word is truth in respect of the things which have been done by thee. Ptah hath cast down headlong thine enemies. This work was ordered to be done for thee. Thou art Horus, the son of Hathor, Nesert, Nesertet, who giveth back the head after it hath been cut off. Thy head shall not be carried away from thee, after [it hath been cut off]; thy head shall be carried away from thee, never, never! THE TEXTS IN THE FUNERAL CHAMBER SPEECH OF ISIS. Isis saith:- I have come to be a protector unto thee. I waft unto thee air for thy nostrils, and the north wind which cometh forth from the god Tem unto thy nose. I have made whole for thee thy windpipe. I make thee to live like a god. Thine enemies have fallen under thy feet. I have made thy word to be true before Nut, and thou art mighty before the gods. SPEECH OF NEPHTHYS. Nephthys saith unto the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth:- I go round about thee to protect thee, O brother Osiris. I have come to be a protector unto thee. [My strength shall be near thee, my strength shall be near thee, for ever. Ra hath heard thy cry, and the gods have made thy word to be truth. Thou art raised up. Thy word is truth in respect of what hath been done unto thee. Ptah hath overthrown thy foes, and thou art Horus, the son of Hathor.] SPEECH OF THE TET. I have come quickly, and I have driven back the footsteps of th god whose face is hidden. I have illumined his sanctuary. I stand near the god Tet on the day of repelling disaster. I watch to protect thee, O Osiris. SPEECH OF KESTA (Mesta). I am Kesta, thy son, O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. I come to protect thee. I will make thy house to flourish, permanently, even as Ptah hath commanded me, and as Ra himself hath commanded. SPEECH OF HAPI. I am Hapi, thy son, O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. I come to protect thee. I bind together thy head and the members of thy body. I smite down for thee thine enemies under thee. I give unto thee thy head for ever and for ever, O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, whose word is truth in peace. SPEECH OF TUAMUTEF. Tuamutef saith:- I am thy son Horus, who loveth thee. I come to avenge thee, O my father Osiris, upon him that did evil unto thee. I have set him under thy feet for ever and for ever, permanently, permanently, O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, whose word is truth. SPEECH OF QEBHSENUF. Qebsenuf saith:- I am thy son, O Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. I come to protect thee. I have collected thy bones and I have gathered together thy members. [I have brought thy heart, and I have placed it upon its throne within thy body. I make thy house to flourish after thee, O thou who livest for ever.] SPEECH OF THE FLAME. I protect thee with this flame. I drive him [the foe] away from the valley of the tomb. I cast the sand about [thy feet]. I embrace the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace. SPEECH OF THE FLAME. I come to hew in pieces. I have not been hewn in pieces, and I will not permit thee to be hewn in pieces. I come to do violence [to thy foe], but I will not permit violence to be done unto thee. I protect thee. A SOUL SAITH:- The Osiris Ani, whose is truth, praiseth Ra when he rolleth up into the sky in the eastern horizon of heaven. A SOUL SAITH:- The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace in Khert-Neter, praiseth Ra when he setteth in the western horizon of heaven, [and saith], "I am a perfect soul." SPEECH OF ANI. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am a perfect soul dwelling in the divine egg of the Abtu Fish. I am the Great Cat which dwelleth in the Seat of Truth, wherein the god Shu riseth. SPEECH OF THE USHABTI FIGURE [THE CHAPTER OF NOT DOING WORK IN KHERT-NETER]. Illumine the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth. Hail, Shabti Figure! If the Osiris Ani be decreed to do any of the work which is to be done in Khert-Neter, let everything which standeth in the way be removed from him- whether it be to plough the fields, or to fill the channels with water, or to carry sand from [the East to the West]. The Shabti Figure replieth: I will do it, verily I am here [when] thou callest. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu and the Papyrus of Nebseni) The Speech of Anpu: Anubis the dweller in the mummy chamber, Governor of the Divine House, layeth his hands upon the lord of life, the scribe, the draughtsman of Ptah, Nebseni, the lord of fealty, begotten of the scribe and mason Thena, born of the lady of the house Mut-rest, whose word is truth, and devoting himself to him as his guardian, saith:- Homage to thee, thou happy one, lord! Thou seest the Utchat. Ptah-Seker hath bound thee up. Anpu hath exalted thee. Shu hath raised thee up, O Beautiful Face, thou governor of eternity. Thou hast thine eye, O scribe Nebseni, lord of fealty, and it is beautiful. Thy right eye is like the Sektet Boat, thy left eye is like the Atet Boat. Thine eyebrows are fair to see in the presence of the Company of the Gods. Thy brow is under the protection of Anpu, and thy head and face, O beautiful one, are before the holy Hawk. Thy fingers have been stablished by thy scribe's craft in the presence of the Lord of Khemenu, Thoth, who hath bestowed upon thee the knowledge of the speech of the holy books. Thy beard is beautiful in the sight of Ptah-Seker, and thou, O scribe Nebseni, thou lord of fealty, art beautiful before the Great Company of the Gods. The Great God looketh upon thee, and he leadeth thee along the path of happiness. Sepulchral meals are bestowed upon thee, and he overthroweth for thee thine enemies, setting them under thy feet in the presence of the Great Company of the Gods who dwell in the House of the Great Aged One which is in Anu. SEKHET HETEPET [HERE] BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF SEKHET-HETEPET, AND THE CHAPTERS OF COMING FORTH BY DAY, OF ENTERING INTO AND COMING FORTH FROM KHERT-NETER, OF ARRIVING IN SEKHET-AANRU, AND OF LIVING IN PEACE IN THE GREAT CITY, THE LADY OF WINDS. [The Osiris the scribe Ani, whose word is truth, saith:-] Let me be master there. Let me be a khu there. Let me plough there. Let me reap there. Let me eat there. Let me drink there. [Let me beget there]. Let me do there all the things which one doeth upon earth. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Horus vanquished Set when [he] looked at the building of Sekhet-Hetepet. [He] spread air over the Divine Soul in its Egg, in its day. He delivered the interior of the body of Horus [from the Akeru Gods]. I have crowned him in the House of Shu. His house is the stars. Behold, I take up my place in its nomes. He hath guided the hearts of the Company of the Firstborn Gods. He hath reconciled the Two Fighters (Horus and Set), the guardians of life. He hath done what is fair, bringing an offering. He hath reconciled the Two Fighters with him that belongeth to them. He hath cut off the hairy scalp of the Two Fighters. He hath destroyed the revolts of [their] children. I have done away all the evil which attacked their souls. I am master in [Sekhet-Hetepet]. I know it. I have sailed over its lakes that I might arrive at the cities thereof. I have made strong my mouth. The Spirit-souls are ready [to fight], but they shall not gain the mastery over me. I am equipped in thy Fields, O god Hetep. What thou wishest thou shalt do, [saith this god]. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nebseni, Sheet 17) HERE BEGIN THE CHAPTERS OF SEKHET-HETEPET, AND THE CHAPTERS OF COMING FORTH BY DAY; OF GOING INTO AND OF COMING FORTH FROM KHERT-NETER; OF ARRIVAL IN SEKHET-AARU; OF LIVING IN SEKHET-HETEPET, THE MIGHTY CITY, THE LADY OF WINDS; OF HAVING POWER THEREIN; OF BECOMING A SPIRIT-SOUL THERE; OF PLOUGHING THERE; OF REAPING THERE; OF EATING THERE; OF DRINKING THERE; OF MAKING LOVE THERE; AND OF DOING EVERYTHING THERE EVEN AS A MAN DOETH UPON EARTH. NEBSENI, THE SCRIBE AND DRAUGHTSMAN OF PTAH, SAITH:- Set vanguished Horus, who was looking at the building in Sekhet-Hetepet. I set free Horus from Set. Set opened the paths of the Two Eyes (the Sun and Moon) in the sky. Set ejected water with air upon the soul of his Eye, which dwelt in the town of Mert; he delivered the interior of the body of Horus from the hands of the Akeru Gods. Behold me! I paddle this great boat over the Lake of the god Hetep; I seized upon it in the mansion of Shu. The mansion of his stars reneweth youth, reneweth youth. I paddle over the Lakes thereof so that I may arrive at the towns thereof. I sail up to the town of the god Hetep.... Behold, I am at peace with his times, and with his guidance, and with his will, and with the Company of the Gods, who are his firstborn. He maketh the Two Fighters (Horus and Set) to be at peace [with each other], and to keep ward over the living whom he hath created in fair form, and he bringeth peace; he maketh the Two Fighters to be at peace with those who watch over them. He cutteth off the hair from their divine fighters, he driveth away storm from the children. He guardeth from attack the Spirits. I have gained power therein. I know it. I have sailed over its Lakes so that I might arrive at its towns. My mouth is strong. I am equipped against the Spirits. They shall not gain the mastery over me. I am rewarded [with] these thy Fields, O god Hetep. What thou wishest that do thou, O lord of the winds. I shall be a spirit therein. I shall eat therein. I shall drink therein. I shall plough therein. I shall reap the grain therein. I shall be strong therein. I shall make love therein. My words shall be strong therein. I shall not be in subjection therein. I shall be a man of might therein. Thou hast made strong the mouth and throat. Hetep Qettbu is its name. [It is] stablished upon the pillars of Shu, and is linked with the pleasant things of Ra. He is the divider of years, the hidden of mouth; silent is his mouth, hidden is what he uttereth, he fulfilleth eternity, he taketh possession of everlastingness of existence as Hetep, Neb-Hetep. Horus maketh himself strong like unto a hawk which is one thousand cubits in length, and two thousand cubits in life. He that equipments with him, he journeyeth on, he cometh to the place where his heart would be, among the Lakes which are in its towns. He begetteth in the birth-chamber of the god of the town, he is satisfied with the food of the god of the town; he doeth what ought to be done there, in the Field of Smas-er-Khet..... everything of the birth-chamber of the god of the town. Now [when he] setteth in the [land of] life like crystal he performeth everything therein, [which things are] like unto the things done in the Lake Neserser, wherein there is none that rejoiceth, and wherein are evil things of all kinds. The god Hetep goeth in and cometh out, and marcheth hither and thither in the Field of Smas-er-Khet, the Lady of the birth-chamber of the god of the town. [Let me] live with the god Hetep, clothed, and not despoiled by the Lords of the North, and may the Lord of things bring food unto me. May he make me to go forward. May I come forth. May he bring to me my Power there, may I receive it, and may I be rewarded by the god Hetep. May I be master of the great and mighty word in my body in this my place. Make me to remember it. Let me [not] forget it. Let me go forward, let me plough. I am at peace with the god of the town. I know the water, the towns, the nomes, and the lakes which are in Sekhet-Hetepet. I live therein. I am strong therein. I shine therein. I eat therein. I..... therein. I reap the harvest therein. I plough therein. I beget children therein. I am at peace therein with the god Hetep. Behold I sow seed therein. I sail about on the lakes thereof, and I arrive at its towns, O god Hetep. Behold my mouth is equipped, it possesseth horns . Give unto me the abundance of the KAU (Doubles) and Spirit-souls. He who counteth me is Shu. I know him not. I come to its towns. I sail over its lakes. I walk about in Sekhet-Hetepet. Behold, it is Ra who is in heaven. Behold, it is Hetep [who is] its double offering of peace. I have advanced to its territory. I have put on my apparel. I have come forth. I have given what it was upon me to give. I have made glad in [my] heart. I have conquered. I am strong. I have given directions to Hetep. [Hail], Unen-em-hetep, I have come to thee. My soul followeth me. The god Hu is on my hands. [Hail], Nebt-taui, in whom I remember and forget, I have become alive. I have attacked none, let none attack me. I have given, give thou to me gladness. Make thou me to be at peace, bind thou up my veins, let [me] receive air. [Hail], Unen-em-hetep, the Lord of Winds. I have come there. I have opened my head. Ra sleepeth. I watch not, [for] the goddess Hetemet is at the door of heaven by night. Obstacles have been put before, but I have collected his emissions. I am in my city. O Nut-urt (Great City), I have come into thee. I have counted up my abundant stores. I advance on my way to Uakh. I am the Bull which is tied with a rope of lapis-lazuli, the lord of the Field of the Bull, the lord of the words of the god, the goddess Septet (Sothis) at her hours. O Uakh, I have come into thee. I have eaten my food. I am master of choice pieces of the flesh of oxen and of feathered fowl, and the birds of Shu have been given unto me. I follow the gods, and I come [after the Doubles]. O Tcheft, I have come into thee. I array myself in apparel, and I gird about myself the sat garment of Ra. Behold the Court of the sky, and the followers of Ra who dwell in heaven. O Un-em-hetep, the lord of the Two Lands, I have come into thee. I have plunged into the Lakes of Tchesert; behold, impurity of every kind hath removed from me. The divine Great One flourisheth therein. Behold, I have found [him]. I have netted geese, and have fed full upon the finest of them. O Qenqentet, I have come into thee. I have seen the Osiris [my father]. I have saluted my mother. I have begotten children. I have snared the serpents, and I am delivered. I know the name of the god who is with the goddess Tchesert, and who hath straight hair, and is equipped with horns [ready to gore]. He reapeth, and I both plough and reap. O Hetemet, I have entered into thee. I have approached the lapis-lazuli. I have followed the winds of the Company of the Gods. The Great God hath given my head unto me. He who hath bound my head on my body for me is the Mighty One, with eyes of lapis-lazuli, namely, Ari-en-ab-f ("He doeth as he pleaseth"). O Usert, I have come into thee, to the house wherein food is brought unto me. O Smam, I have come into thee. My heart watcheth, my head is equipped with the White Crown. I act as the guide of the celestial beings. I make to flourish terrestrial beings. There is joy of heart for the Bull, and for the celestial beings, and for the Company of the Gods. I am the god, the Bull, the Lord of the gods, who maketh his way over the turquoise. O wheat and barley of the nome of the god, I have come into thee. I have come forward. I have lifted [you] up, following the best offerings of the Company of the Gods. I have moored my boat to the tying-up post in the lakes of the celestial beings. I have pulled up the typing-up post. I have recited words, and I have ascribed praises unto the gods who dwell in Sekhet-Hetepet. PROVIDING THE DECEASED WITH MEAT MILK ETC. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- Homage to thee, O Ra, the Lord of Truth, the Only One, the Lord of Eternity and Maker of Everlastingness. I have come before thee, O my Lord Ra. I would make to flourish the Seven Cows and their Bull. O ye who give cakes and ale to the Spirit-souls, grant ye that my soul may be with you. Let him be born on your thighs. Let him be like unto one of you for ever and for ever. Let the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, have glorious power in the Beautiful Amentet. The Names of the Seven Holy Cows and their Bull: 1. Het-Kau Nebtertcher. 2. Akertkhentetasts. 3. Khebitetsahneter. 4. Urmertusteshertshenti. 5. Khnemtemankhanuit. 6. Sekhmetrensemabats. 7. Shenatpetuthestneter. Bull: Kathaihemt. ADDRESSES TO THE FOUR RUDDERS OF HEAVEN Hail, thou Beautiful Power, thou Beautiful Rudder of the Northern Heaven. Hail, thou who circlest, Guide of the Two Lands, Beautiful Rudder of the Western Heaven. Hail, Splendour, Dweller in the temple of the Ashemu gods, Beautiful Rudder of the Eastern Heaven. Hail, Dweller in the temple of the Red gods, Beautiful Rudder of the Southern Heaven. ADDRESSES TO THE FOUR COMAPNIES OF THE GODS Hail, ye gods who are above the earth, ye Guides of the Tuat. Hail, ye Mother-goddesses, who are above the earth in Khert-Neter, in the House of Osiris. Hail, ye gods who guide Ta-tchesert, who are above the earth and are guides of the Tuat. Hail, ye Followers of Ra, who follow in the train of Osiris. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Nu) RUBRIC: [These words] shall be said when Ra appeareth over [figures] of these gods written in colour upon a tablet, and thou shalt place offerings of tchefau food before them, cakes, ale, flesh, geese, and incense. They shall cause the deceased to enjoy the "offerings which come forth at the word [of command]" before Ra; and they shall give the deceased an abundance of food in Khert-Neter, and shall deliver him from every evil thing whatsoever. And thou shalt not recite this Book of Un-Nefer in the presence of anyone except thine own self. If this be done for the deceased Ra shall be a rudder for him, and shall be to him a strong protecting power, and he shall destroy all his enemies for him in Khert-Neter, and in heaven, and upon earth, and in every place whereinsoever he may enter, and he shall enjoy celestial food regularly and continually for ever. (From the Saite Recension) THE BOOK OF MAKING PERFECT THE KHU in the heart of Ra, of making him to have the mastery before Tem, of magnifying him before Osiris, of making him mighty before Khent-Amentet, and of setting awe of him before the Company of the Gods. It shall be recited on the day of the New Moon, on the sixth day festival, on the fifteenth day festival, on the festival of Uak, on the festival of Thoth, on the Birthday of Osiris, on the festival of Menu, on the night of Heker, [during] the Mysteries of the Tuat, during the celebration of the Mysteries in Akertet, at the smiting of the emissions, at the passage of the Funerary Valley, [and] the Mysteries...... [The recital thereof] will make the heart of the Khu to flourish and will make long his strides, and will make him to advance, and will make his face bright, and will make it to penetrate to the God. Let no man witness [the recital] except the king and the Kherheb priest, but the servant who cometh to minister outside shall not see it. Of the Khu for whom this Book shall be recited, his soul shall come forth by day with the living, he shall have power among the gods, and it will make him irresisitible for ever and ever. These gods shall go round about him, and shall acknowledge him. He shall be one of them. [This Book] shall make him to know how he came into being in the beginning. This Book is indeed a veritable mystery. Let no stranger anywhere have knowledge of it. Do not speak about it to any man. Do not repeat it. Let no [other] eye see it. Let no [other] ear hear it. Let no one see it except [thyself] and him who taught [it to thee]. Let not the multitude [know of it] except thyself and the beloved friend of thy heart. Thou shalt do this book in the seh chamber on a cloth painted with the stars in colour all over it. It is indeed a mystery. The dwellers in the swamps of the Delta nad everywhere there shall not know it. It shall provided the Khu with celestial food upon in Khert-Neter. It shall supply his Heart-soul with food upon earth. It shall make him to live for ever. No [evil] thing shall have the master over him. THE ADDRESSES OF THE FOUR RUDDERS Hail, Power of Heaven, Opener of the Disk, thou Beautiful Rudder of the Northern Heaven. Hail, Ra, Guide of the Two Lands, thou Beautiful Rudder of the Western Heaven. Hail, Khu, Dweller in the House of the Akhemu gods, thou Beautiful Rudder of the Eastern Heaven. Hail, Governor, Dweller in the House of the Tesheru Gods, thou Beautiful Rudder of the Southern Heaven. Grant ye cakes, and ale and tchefau food to the Osiris Auf-ankh, whose word is truth. Hail, Father of the Gods! Hail, Mother of the Gods in Khert-Neter! Deliver ye the Osiris from every evil thing, from every evil obstruction, from every dire attack of an enemy, and from that deadly snarer with knife-like words, and from men, and gods, and Spirit-souls, and the damned, on this day, on this night, on this present festival of the fifteenth day, and in this year, and from the things of evil thereof. HYMN TO OSIRIS KHENTI-AMENTI UN-NEFER The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, praiseth Osiris Khenti-Amenti Un-Nefer, and saith:- Hail, my Lord, who dost hasten through eternity, whose existence is for ever, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Sovereign, God of the Gods, who live in their shrines,.... gods.... men. Make thou for me a seat with those who are in Khert-Neter, who adore the forms of thy KA, and who traverse millions of millions of years....... May no delay arise for thee in Ta-mera. Let them come to thee, all of them, great as well as small. May this god give the power to enterin and to come forth from Khert-Neter, without repulse, at any door of the Tuat, to the KA of the Osiris Ani. APPENDIX (From the Papyrus of Sutimes) SUTIMES, THE LIBATIONER AND PRESIDENT OF THE ALTAR CHAMBER OF THE APTS, DIRECTOR OF THE SCRIBES OF AMEN, WHOSE WORD IS TRUTH, PRAISETH OSIRIS, AND DOETH HOMAGE TO THE LORD OF ETERNITY, AND SATISFIETH THE WILL OF THE GOD, AND SPEAKETH TRUTH, THE LORD OF WHICH IS UNKNOWN, AND SAITH:- Homage to thee, O thou Holy God, thou mighty and beneficent being, thou Prince of Eternity, who dwellest in thy abode in the Sektet Boat, whose risings are manifold in the Atet Boat, unto whom praises are rendered in heaven and upon earth. Peoples and nations exalt thee, and the awe of thy terror is in the hearts of men, and Spirt-souls, and the dead. Thy soul dwelleth in Tetu, and the awe of thee is in Hensu. Thou settest the visible emblems of thyself in Anu, and the majesty of thy transformations in the holy place. I have come unto thee. Truth is in my heart, and in my breast there is neither craft nor guile. Grant thou that I may have my being among the living, and that I may sail up and down the river among those who are in thy following. PRAISE TO HATHOR LADY OF AMENTET THE CHAPTER OF THE PRAISE OF HATHOR, LADY OF AMENTET Hathor, Lady of Amentet, the Dweller in the Great Land, the Lady of Ta-Tchesert, the Eye of Ra, the Dweller in his breast, the Beautiful Face in the Boat of Millions of Years, the Seat of Peace of the doer of truth, Dweller in the Boat of the favoured ones..... APPENDIX THE CHAPTER OF THE FOUR TORCHES (From the Papyrus of Nu, Sheets 26 and 27) THE CHAPTER OF THE FOUR LIGHTED LAMPS WHICH ARE MADE FOR THE SPIRIT-SOUL. Behold, thou shalt make four rectangular troughs of clay wherein thou shalt scatter incense, and thou shalt fill them with the milk of a white cow, and by means of these thou shalt extinguish the lamps. The Osiris Nu, the steward of the overseer of the seal, whose word is truth, saith:- The fire cometh to thy KA, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti! The fire cometh to thy KA, O Osiris Nu, whose word is truth. The ordering of the night cometh after the day. [The fire cometh to thy KA, O Osiris, Governor of those who are in Amenti], and the two sisters of Ra come likewise. Behold it (the fire) riseth in Abtu, and it cometh; I cause it to come, the Eye of Horus. It is set in order upon thy brow, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti; it is set in thy shrine and riseth on thy brow; it is set on thy brow, O Osiris Nu, it is set on thy brow. The Eye of Horus protecteth thee, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti, and it keepeth thee in safety; it casteth down headlong all thine enemies for thee, and all thine enemies have fallen down headlong before thee. O Osiris Nu, the Eye of Horus protecteth thee, it keepeth thee in safety, and it casteth down headlong all thine enemies. Thine enemies have fallen down headlong before thy KA, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti. The Eye of Ra protecteth thee, it keepeth thee in safety, and it hath cast down headlong all thine enemies. Thine enemies have fallen down headlong before thy KA, O Osiris Nu, whose word is truth. The Eye of Horus protecteth thee, it keepeth thee in safety, it hath cast down headlong for thee all thine enemies, and thine enemies have fallen down headlong before thee. The Eye of Horus cometh. It is sound and well, it sendeth forth light even as doth Ra in the horizon. It covereth the powers of Suti with darkness, it mastereth him, and it bringeth its flame against him by its own command. The Eye of Horus is sound and well, thou eatest the flesh thereof, thy body possesseth it. Thou acclaimest it. The Four Fires enter into thy KA, O Osiris Khenti-Amenti, the Four Fires enter into thy KA, O Osiris Nu, the steward of the overseer of the seal, whose word is truth. Hail, ye sons of Horus, Kesta, Hapi, Tuamutef, and Qebhsenuf, ye have given your protection to your divine Father Osiris Khenti-Amenti, give ye your protection to the Osiris Nu, whose word is truth. Now therefore, inasmuch as ye have destroyed the Opponent of Osiris Khenti-Amenti, who liveth with the gods, having smitten Suti with his right hand and arm when dawn came upon the earth, and Horus hath become master [of Suti], and hath avenged his divine Father himself; and inasmuch as your divine Father hath been made to flourish through the union of the KA of Osiris Khenti-Amenti, whch ye effected, and the Eye of Horus hath avenged him, and hath protected him, and hath cast down headlong for him all his enemies, and all his enemies have fallen down before him, even so do ye destroy the Opponent of the Osiris Nu, the steward of the overseer of the seal, whose word is truth. Let him live with the gods, let him smite his enemy, let him destroy him, when light dawneth on the earth. Let Horus be master and avenge the Osiris Nu, and let the Osiris Nu flourish through his union with his KA which ye have effected. O Osiris Nu, the Eye of Horus hath avenged thee. It hath cast down headlong all thine enemies for thee, and all thine enemies have been cast down headlong before thee. Hail, Osiris Khenti-Amenti, grant thou light and fire to the perfect Heart-soul which is in Hensu. And [O ye Sons of Horus], grant ye power unto the living heart-soul of the Osiris Nu by means of his fire. Let him not be repulsed, and let him not be driven back at the doors of Amentet! Let his offerings of bread and of linen garments be brought unto him among the lords of funeral oblations. O offer ye praises, as unto a god to the Osiris Nu, the destroyer of his Opponent in his form of Truth, and in his attributes of a god of truth. RUBRIC: [This Chapter] shall be recited over four torches of atma cloth, which hath been anointed with the finest Thehennu unguent, and the torches shall be placed in the hands of four men who shall have the names of the pillars of Horus written upon their shoulders, and they shall burn the torches in the beautiful light of Ra, and this shall confer power and might upon the Spirit-soul of the deceased among the stars which never set. If this Chapter be recited for him he shall never, never perish, and he shall become a living soul for ever. These torches shall make the Spirit-soul to flourish like Osiris Khenti-Amenti, regularly and continually for ever. It is a struggle. Thou shalt not perform this ceremony before any human being except thine own self, or thy father, or thy son, because it is an exceedingly great mystery of the Amentet, and it is a type of the hidden things of the Tuat. When this ceremony hath been performed for the deceased, the gods, and the Spirit-souls, and the dead shall see him in the form of Khenti-Amenti, and he shall have power and dominion like this god. If thou shalt undertake to perform for the deceased that which is ordered in this "Chapter of the four blazing torches," each day, thou shalt cause the form of the deceased to come forth from every hall [in the Tuat], and from the Seven Halls of Osiris. And he shall live in the form of the God. He shall have power and dominion corresponding to those of the gods and the Spirit-souls for ever and ever. He shall enter in through the secret pylons and shall not be turned back in the presence of Osiris. And it shall come to pass, provided that the following things be done for him, that he shall enter in and come forth. He shall not be turned back. No boundary shall be set to his goings, and the sentence of the doom shall not be passed upon him on the Day of the Weighing of Words before Osiris- never, never. And thou shalt perform whatsoever [is written in] this book on behalf of the deceased, who shall thereby become perfect and pure. And thou shalt "open his mouth" with the instrument of iron. And thou shalt write down these things in accordance with the instructions which are found in the books of Prince Herutataf, who discovered them in a secret coffer (now they were in the handwriting of the god [Thoth] himself and had been deposited in the Temple of the goddess Unnut, the Lady of Unu) during a journey which he was making in order to inspect the temples, and the temple-estates, and the sanctuaries of the gods. And thou shalt perform these ceremonies secretly in the Tuat-chamber of the tomb, for they are mysteries of the Tuat, and they are symbolic of the things which are done in Khert-Neter. And thou shalt say: I have come, I have advanced hastily. I cast light upon his (the deceased's) footsteps. I am hidden, but I cast light upon his hidden place. I stand up close to the Tet. I stand up close to the Tet of Ra, I turn back the slaughter. I am protecting thee, O Osiris. RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a Tet of crystal, which shall be set upon a brick made of crude mud, whereupon this Chapter hath been inscribed. Thou shalt make a cavity in the west wall [of the tomb], and having turned the front of the Tet towards the east, thou shalt wall up the cavity with mud which hath been mixed with extract of cedar. This Tet shall drive away the enemies of Osiris who would set themselves at the east wall [of the tomb]. And thou shalt say: I have driven back thy foes. I keep watch over thee. He that is upon his mountain (Anpu) keepeth watch over thee ready for the moment when thy foes shall attack thee, and he shall repulse them for thee. I will drive back the Crocodile at the moment when it attacketh thee, and I will protect thee, O Osiris Nu. RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a figure of Anpu made of crude mud mixed with incense. And the figure shall be set upon a brick made of crude mud, whereupon this Chapter hath been inscribed. Thou shalt make a cavity in the east wall, and having turned the face of the figure of Anpu towards the west wall [therein] thou shalt wall up the cavity. This figure shall repulse the enemies of Osiris, who would set themselves at the south wall. And thou shalt say; I am the belt of sand round about the hidden coffer. I turn back the force of the blazing fire of the funerary mountain. I traverse the roads, and I protect the Osiris Nu, the steward of the overseer of the seal, whose word is truth. RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a brick made of crude mud whereon a copy of this Chapter hath been inscribed. And thou shalt place a reed in the middle thereof, and thou shalt smear it with pitch, and set light thereto. Then thou shalt make a cavity in the south wall, and, having turned the front of the brick towards the north, thou shalt wall the brick up inside it. [It shall repulse the enemies of the Osiris Nu] who would assemble at the north wall. And thou shalt say: O thou who comest to set fire [to the tomb or mummy], I will not let thee do it. O thou who comest to cast fire [herein], I will not let thee do it. I will burn thee, and I will cast fire upon thee. I protect the Osiris Nu, the steward of the overseer of the seal, whose word is truth. RUBRIC: This Chapter shall be recited over a brick of crude mud, whereon a copy of this Chapter hath been inscribed. [And thou shalt set upon it] a figure of the deceased made of palm wood, seven fingers in height. And thou shalt perform on it the ceremony of "Opening the Mouth." Then thou shalt make a cavity in the north wall, and having [placed the brick and the figure inside it], and turned the face of the figure towards the south, thou shalt wall up the cavity. [It shall repulse the enemies of the Osiris Nu], who would assemble at the south wall. And behold, these things shall be done by a man who is washed clean, and is ceremonially pure, and who hath eaten neither meat nor fish, and who hath not [recently] had intercourse with women. And behold, thou shalt make offerings of cakes and ale to these gods, and shalt burn incense on their fires. Every Spirit-soul for whom these things shall be done shall become like a holy god in Khert-Neter, and he shall not be turned back at any gate in Amentet, and he shall be in the following of Osiris, whithersoever he goeth, regularly and continually. The Raven Kindred Ritual Book By Lewis Stead and The Raven Kindreds, Northern & Southern Hearths The Raven Kindred Ritual Book is Copyright(c)1991,1992,1993 by Lewis Stead, All Rights Reserved. Copies of this book are available from the Raven Kindred; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175 at a cost of $5/booklet or may be downloaded free of charge from the Moonrise BBS at (301) 593-9609 or obtained by sending e-mail to lstead@access.digex.net. Non-commercial free of charge electronic distribution of this document is permitted provided that the document remains whole and contains the above copyright statement. Introduction Less than a thousand years ago the elders of Iceland made a fateful decision. Under political pressure from Christian Europe and faced with the need for trade, the Allthing or national assembly declared Iceland to be an officially Christian country. Within a few centuries the last remnants of Nordic Paganism, which once stretched through all of Northern Europe were thought dead. However, Iceland was a tolerant country and the myths, stories, and legends of Pagan times were left unburnt to kindle the fires of belief in later generations. In 1972 Iceland once again recognized Nordic Paganism as a legitimate and legal religion. Iceland and Sweden were the last two bastions of the Pagan religion originally practiced by the people of the various Germanic tribes. Today Nordic Paganism also known as Odinism, Heathenism, Northern Tradition, or Asatru (an Old-Norse term meaning _loyalty to the Gods_) is practiced in virtually all the countries where it originally flourished as well as America and Australia. It is one of a body of religions calling themselves Neo-Paganism which include Druidism, the revival of ancient Celtic Paganism, and Wicca or Witchcraft. However Asatru remains largely unknown even within the community of Neo-Pagan believers. This book is intended as a basic manual to the beliefs and practices of the Raven Kindred of Asatru. We do not pretend to be experts and won_t act as if we were. Rather we are simply believers in the Old Gods seeking to share our practice and research with others who are true to the Aesir. Our aim is to present a simple guide which will allow easy understanding of the principles behind Asatru and to give hints for further study and exploration. While we attempt to be historically accurate to our religion's roots, it_s important to note that there are many things that we simply don_t know or which aren_t written in stone. While we occasionally need to flesh out our systems where we don_t have direct evidence of our ancestors ways, we are not likely to simply make up things. It is very important to us to stay as true to the ways of the old Pagans as is possible. In those places where the various myths, legends, and folklore are not clear we have tried to indicate this. We do not present our way as the _true_ Asatru, but we do feel that all Asatru should be solidly connected to its roots in ancient Norse practice. Where we do not know the certain answer to a quesation, there is room for exploration, but not for simply making something up out of whole cloth. While inspiration from the Gods is an important part of our movement, this is not make believe and any additions to the historical system should be made with respect to our ancient roots. The most important thing for modern people to remember about Asatru is that it is a religion. It is not a system of magick or spirituality or _New Age Practice_ which can be grafted onto something else or onto which other _systems_ can be grafted wholesale. Asatru is a word derived from _As_ a God of the Aesir family and _tru_ meaning troth. To be Asatru is to be bound by loyalty and troth to the Old Gods of the North. While we may believe in the deities of other religions and peoples, and even respect them, these are not our Gods. While we may take part in rituals dedicated to other Gods at ecumenical Pagan festivals or gatherings which encompass many other religions, we must not forget that Asatru is our religion and our primary concern. One simply does not collect membership in Asatru (or any other religion) as if one were collecting stamps. Our Gods are real and worthy of our respect. Today many people _practice_ a number of different religions feeling that this is the best way to avoid intolerance, we have a completely different view of the world. Asatru is not a universal religion. We do not see ourselves as a path for everyone. We are true polytheists and see the world as encompassing many religions which worship many Gods. While we do not deny the beliefs of others, we also do not confuse them with our own. The idea that _it is all one_ is anathema to the true Heathen. To claim that Odin is the same God as Zeus is madness. Would one claim that green and red are the same merely because they are both colors? If one disagrees with this perspective or finds it limiting so be it. Our belief is also that Asatru is not a path for everyone and it is better to find ones own way rather than bend the religions of others to fit ourselves. In accordance with this non-universalist conception, as much as we have been able to, we have not adopted the practices of other Pagan religions or magickal systems. Those familiar with Wicca will note that most modern Neo-Pagan systems are derived from it. This is not the case with Asatru. Our religion began with reconstruction based on written sources dating from the Pagan period. This has been followed by 20 years of innovation and practice within the Heathen community. While we make no pretensions that this has resulted in a system that is identical with that of our spiritual ancestors, it is at least a system that is our own. In saying this I would reiterate that we do not put down any religion for it_s beliefs. We merely ask for the integrity of our own. We are not rejecting other systems because they are wrong or because we think ill of them, we are rather choosing Asatru because of our love and devotion to it. The Rituals of Asatru The Blot The Blot is the most common ritual within Asatru. In its simplest form a blot is making a sacrifice to the Gods. In the old days this was done by feasting on an animal consecrated to the Gods and then slaughtered. As we are no longer farmers and our needs are simpler today, the most common blot is an offering of mead or other alcoholic beverage to the deities. Many modern folk will be suspicious of a ritual such as this. Rituals which are deemed sacrifices, such as the blot, have been falsely interpreted by post-Pagan sources in order to denigrate the ritual or trivialize them. The most common myth about ritual sacrifice is that one is buying off a deity e.g. one throws a virgin into the Volcano so it won_t erupt. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Asatru it is believed that we are not only the worshippers of the Gods but that we are physically related to them. The Eddas tell of a God, Rig, who went to various farmsteads and fathered the human race so we are physically kin to the Gods. On a more esoteric level, humankind is gifted with _ond_ or the gift of ecstasy. Ond is a force that is of the Gods. It is everything that makes humans different from the other creatures of the world. As creatures with this gift, we are immediately connected to the Gods, we are part of their tribe, their kin. Thus we are not simply buying off the Gods by offering them something that they want, but we are sharing with the Gods something that we all take joy in. Sharing and gift giving was an important part of most ancient cultures and had magical significance. Giving a gift was a sign of friendship, kinship, and connection. By sharing a blot with the Gods we reaffirm our connection to them and thus reawaken their powers within us and their watchfulness over our world. A blot can be a simple affair where a horn of mead is consecrated to the Gods and then poured as a libation, or it can be a part of a larger ritual. A good comparison is the Catholic Mass which may be part of a regular service or special event such as a wedding or funeral, or it may be done as a purely magical-religious practice without any sermon, hymns, or other trappings. The blot consists of three parts, the hallowing or consecrating of the offering, the sharing of the offering, and the libation. Each of these is equally important. The only tools required are mead, beer or juice, a horn or chalice, a sprig of evergreen used to sprinkle the mead, and a ceremonial bowl known as a Hlautbowl into which the initial libation will be made. The blot begins with the consecration of the offering. The Gothi (Priest) or Gythia (Priestess) officiating at the blot invokes the God or Goddess being honored. This is usually accomplished by a spoken declaration with ones arms being held above ones head in a Y shape, in imitation of the rune elhaz. This posture is used for most invocations and prayers throughout Asatru. After the spoken invocation an appropriate rune or other symbol of the God or Goddess may be drawn in the air with the finger or with the staff. Once the God is invoked, the Gothi takes up the horn. His assistant pours mead from the bottle into the horn. The Gothi then traces the hammer sign (an upside down T) over the horn as a blessing and holds it above his head offering it to the Gods. He then speaks a request that the God or Goddess bless the offering and accept it as a sacrifice. At the least one will feel the presence of the deity; at best one will be able to feel in some inner way the God taking of the mead and drinking it. The mead is now not only blessed with divine power but has passed the lips of the God or Goddess. The Gothi then takes a drink of the horn and it is passed around the gathered folk. Although it sounds like a very simple thing, it can be a very powerful experience. At this point the mead is no longer simply a drink but is imbued with the blessing and power of the God or Goddess being honored. When one drinks, one is taking that power into oneself. This is the essence of the rune Gebo. After the horn has made the rounds once, the Gothi again drinks from the horn and then empties the remainder into the hlautbowl. The Gothi then takes up the evergreen sprig and his assistant the Hlautbowl and the Gothi sprinkles the mead around the circle or temple or onto the altar. If there are a great number of the folk gathered, one may wish to drop the drinking and merely sprinkle the various folk with the mead as a way of sharing it. In a small group one might merely drink as the blessing. When this is done the Hlautbowl is taken by the Gothi and poured out onto the ground. This is done as an offering not only to the God invoked at the blot, but it is also traditional to remember the Earth Mother at this time, since it is being poured onto her ground. Many invocations mention the God, Goddess, or spirit being sacrificed to, and then Mother Earth, as in the Sigrdrifa Prayer _Hail to the Gods and to the Goddesses as well; Hail Earth that gives to all men._ (Sigrdrifumal 3) With this action, the blot is ended. Obviously this is a very sparse ritual and if performed alone could be completed in only a few minutes. This is as it should be, for blots are often poured not because it is a time of gathering or festivity for the folk, but because the blot must be poured in honor or petition of a God or Goddess on their holiday or some other important occasion. For example, a father tending his sick child might pour a blot to Eir the Goddess of healing. Obviously he doesn_t have time to waste on the _trappings_ of ritual. The intent is to make an offering to the Goddess as quickly as possible. At some times a full celebration might not be made of a holiday because of a persons hectic schedule, but at the least a blot should be made to mark the occasion. However, in most cases a blot will at least be accompanied by a statement of intent at the beginning and some sort of conclusion at the end. It might also be interspersed with or done at the conclusion of ritual theater or magic. The Sumbel One of the most common celebrations noted in tales of our ancestors is the Sumbel or ritual drinking celebration. This was a more mundane and social sort of ritual than the blot, but of no less importance. When Beowulf came to Hrothgar, the first thing they did was to drink at a ritual sumbel. This was a way of establishing Beowulf_s identity and what his intent was, and doing so in a sacred and traditional manner. At the sumbel toasts are drunk to the Gods, as well as to a persons ancestors or personal heroes. Rather than a toast, a person might also offer a brag or some story, song, or poem that has significance. The importance is that at the end of the toast, story, or whatever, the person offering it drinks from the horn, and in doing so _drinks in_ what he spoke. The sumbel is also an important time for the folk to get to know each other in a more intimate way than most people are willing to share. Modern society is at two extremes. At one end are the emotionless beings who have been robbed of their soul by modern industrial secular culture. On the other side are those pathetic _sensitive New-Age guys_ who spend their lives consciously attempting to stir their emotions and who force an unnatural level of intimacy between themselves and others. There are some levels of emotional intimacy which are not meant to be openly shared with strangers. Doing so reduces their meaning to the mundane. At sumbel, barriers can be lowered in a place which is sacred to the Gods and the Folk. Thoughts can be shared among companions and friends without embarrassment or forced intimacy. One format for the sumbel with a history in tradition is to drink three rounds. The first is dedicated to the Gods, the second to great heroes of the folk such as historical figures or heroes from the sagas, and the third to personal ancestors, heroes, or friends which have passed from this world. Another theme for a sumbel is past, present, and future. This type of sumbel is more of a magical ritual than one of celebration. The idea is to make toasts which bring up some aspect of your past, and present situation, and a third toast or brag which represents your wishes for the future. One might make a toast to the first Asatru ritual one attended as the past, a second to the companions and kindred then gathered, and for his third toast might state that he intends to be initiated as a Gothi in the coming year. The purpose would be to link the coming event of his initiation with the two already accomplished events of pledging Asatru and finding a kindred _ two other important rites of passage. In this case initiation as a Gothi then becomes something which is linked to a chain of events that have already occurred, rather than an isolated action which might occur. Thus magically, this moves the person towards his initiation. A third and everpopular type of sumbel is a free-for-all where stories are told, toasts are made, and bragging is done until all the gathered Odinists are under the table. Perhaps this is not quite so esoteric or purposeful as the previous ideas, but it_s certainly in keeping with the examples of our Gods and ancestors! Joy is better than guilt! These are only ideas. The sumbel is a very open ended type of thing and the framework is very simple to adapt. One thing important to note about any Asatru ritual is that ours is a holistic religion. We do not limit our Gods or spirituality to a certain time and place. While the sacrament of the blot is usually poured as part of a ceremony, the feast afterwards, singing of sacred songs, reciting of poetry, Morris Dancing, etc are all part of our religion. A truly traditional celebration might begin with a rather informal greeting of the dawn, involve May Dancing and _mystery plays,_ then move on to a more structured Blot, and finally to a feast capped by a sumbel. On the other side of things, there_s no reason why at a family feast one might not simply pour a bottle of beer or mead as an offering without the other trappings of a blot. Profession Profession is one of the most important ceremonies in Asatru. To Profess one_s belief in and kinship to the Gods should be an important turning point in ones life and the beginning of a new understanding of the self. Profession is, however, a very simple and rather short ceremony. In our kindred we usually profess people after beginning the ritual, but before we offer the formal blot. Profession is not an occult or initiatory ceremony. It is nothing less than it_s name: one professes (declares, affirms) his wish to become one of the Asafolk. This oath is usually taken by the Kindred-Gothi on the oath ring or some other Holy object as follows: The Gothi stands in front of the altar and says _Will [insert name here] please come forward._ After he or she does so _Are you here of your own free will? Is it your intention to solemnly swear allegiance and kinship to the Gods of Asgard, the Aesir and Vanir?_ If the answer to both these questions is in the affirmative the Gothi takes up the oath ring and holds it out to the person professing and says _Repeat after me. I swear to ever uphold the Raven Banner of Asgard, to follow the way of the North, to always act with honor and bravery, and to be ever true to the Aesir and Vanir and to Asatru. By the Gods I so swear. By my honor I so swear. On this Holy Ring I do swear. Hail the Gods._ The kindred then replies _Hail the Gods!_ and the Gothi finishes _Then be welcome to the service of Asgard and the Folk of the Asatru._ There may be other celebrations connected to a Profession, just as other religions hold Bar Mitzvah or Confirmation parties. When someone joins our kindred, we hold a Sumbel of nine rounds, each dedicated to one of the values of Asatru (see below) and toast those values to the new kinsman. The Holidays The ancient Norse knew four major holidays the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes which we call Summer and Winter Finding, and the two solstices which we call Midsummer and Yule. However, there were many other minor festivals and modern Asatru have added even more. A calendar of our kindred_s rituals is provided in an appendix and I also encourage anyone to find as many as one is willing to meet for. We meet monthly, but some groups meet 8 times a year and also celebrate the cross-quarter days of May Day/Walpurgis, Halloween/Samhain, February eve or The Charming of the Plow, and Lammastide or Freyfaxi, Most of our rituals also honor only one or a few Gods or Goddesses at any one time. However, there is no reason why the entire pantheon should not be offered prayers and thanks at any occasion. This would be particularly appropriate at the major holidays. Unlike most other groups in the Neo-Pagan movement, we do not necessarily honor Gods in male/female pairs. The boy/girl notion is one taken from the Pagan fertility religion of Wicca and isn_t necessarily appropriate to our Gods, who often represent things other than fertility. So while a Spring ritual held in honor of Freya and Frey as fertility deities might wish to honor them together, there is no reason to include Frigg in a ritual dedicated to Odin as the God of War. Yule Yule is the most important holiday of the year. Everyone is familiar with the shortness of the deep winter days, but in the Scandinavian countries this is of even greater importance. At the Yuletide there is almost no sunlight at all, and the climate would have people bound in their homes waiting for the return of Spring. Yule is a long festival, traditionally held to be 12 days or more. After Yule the days began to get longer and the festival represented the breaking of the heart of winter and the beginning of the new year. Yule was the holiday of either Thor or Frey, although there is no reason not to honor both Gods in modern practice. Frey is the God of fertility and farming and was honored at Yule in the hopes that his time would soon return. Thor was the sworn enemy of the Frost Giants and Jotunn who ruled the winter months, and as such was honored as the God who_s actions fought off these creatures and brought back the spring. Sunna, the Goddess of the Sun, should also be honored at Yule, although she is held at more important during the summer months when she is at her strongest. The most important symbols of Yule are still with us today. Most of the supposedly secular customs of Christmas are actually Pagan in origin. Evergreen trees and holly which remained green throughout the long nights and cold were a promise that spring would once again return to the land. These symbols may also have been a connection to the nature spirits who have sway over the return of the warm days. The modern conception of Santa Claus as an elf, for whom offerings of milk and cookies are left, is probably a modern continuation of leaving offerings for the Alvar and other nature spirits. The idea of children staying up all night in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Santa Claus may be a remnant of people staying awake to mark the long night and remind the sun to return. (In the latter case it_s considered an adequate substitution to leave a candle going all night to light the way for the returning sun.) Yule is a weeks long festival, not just a single holiday. The Yule season begins on the solstice, which is the Mother Night of Yule, and ends with Twelfth Night on January sixth. As a point of interest, January seventh is St. Distaff_s day, which Nigel Pennic has suggested may have been a day sacred to Frigg, whose symbol is the distaff. While one might expect a rather dour theme to a holiday held in the darkness and cold, Yule is a time of feasting and gladness. In various places different Gods were held to be the most important at Yule. Thor was honored because it is he who fights and kills the Jotunn, who surely are the ones responsible for the loss of warmth in the world. Yule was when Thor broke the back of winter and allowed the warmth to slowly return to the world. Frey was also honored because it was he who married Gerd and warmed her heart, returning fertility to the world. There are simply so many different Yule customs, both ancient and modern, that one has almost limitless possibilities even when staying within Scandanavian and Germanic customs. In modern practice one might honor Sunna on the Mother Night, then hold a blot a few days later to Thor, a feast for New Years day which is shared with the house and land spirits, and then finish on Twelfth Night with a ritual to Frey, whose time is then officially beginning. Summer Finding Summer Finding is also known to many groups as Ostara, the holiday sacred to the Goddess for whom the modern Easter is named. She is a fertility Goddess and her symbols are the hare and the egg. She was an important Goddess of spring to the ancient Saxons, but we know little else of her other than this. Some have suggested that Ostara is merely an alternate name for Frigg or Freya, but neither of these Goddesses seem to have quite the same fertility function as Ostara does. Frigg seems too high class to be associated with such an earthy festival and Freya_s form of fertility is more based on eroticism than reproduction. The obvious folk tradition at this time of year involves eggs. These were colored as they are today, but then they were buried, or more appropriately, planted in the earth. Some have suggested that the act was purely magical, the fertility of the eggs would then be transferred from the animal realm to the plant realm and would increase the prosperity of the harvest. It_s also possible that they were left as an offering to the alvar and the spirits of the plants. In any case a blot should be prepared to the Goddess of Spring, however one wishes to honor her, and also to the spirits of the land. Midsummer Day The summer solstice was second only to Yule in importance to the ancient Northmen. Some groups mark this day as sacred to Balder, but we disagree with this. While Balder can be seen as a dying and resurrected Sun God, in the mythology we are most familiar with, he does not return to life until Ragnarok and it seems like _bad karma_ to symbolically kill the sun when you know he doesn_t come back until the end of the world. Instead, we mark this day as sacred to the Goddess Sunna, who is literally the sun. One idea for midsummer is to remain awake all night and mark the shortest night of the year, then at sunrise to perform a _Greeting of Sunna_ and a blot to her. Another midsummer custom is the rolling of a flaming wagon wheel down a hill to mark the turning of the wheel of the year. If fire would otherwise be a hazard, one could parade a wheel covered with candles for similar effect. It is also a time for general merriment and in the Scandinavian countries many of what we know as the traditional May Day rituals such as May Poles and Morris Dances were instead celebrated at Midsummer. Winter Finding I have not come across a great deal of traditional lore about the Autumn Equinox which we know as Winter Finding. It seems to have been overshadowed to some extent by the Winter Nights which we celebrate at the equinox rather than at the more traditional time of mid-November. If one wishes not to do this, the Winter Finding would be a festival of harvest. One should hold a Blot to whichever Gods of fertility seem most appropriate and then hold a large feast, concerntrating on vegetables that are currently in season. Winter Nights The Winter Nights are the traditional festival honoring the Disir or family spirits. It is a time to remember your family, the dead, and your ancestors. (For more information on the Disir see the chapter _Elves and other Spirits._) A Freyablot may be performed at this time as Freya is known as the Vanadis (i.e. the Dis of the Vanir) or the Great Dis, and she seems to be the Goddess of the Disir themselves. This is probably connected to Freya_s position as recipient of half the battle-slain. One might also simply want to honor the Disir as a whole, or attempt to summon and pour offering to your own family_s Dis. A sumbel which toasts ones ancestors and passed on friends would also be in order. If a feast is held, it should be quiet and respectful of the character of the season. Another idea is a silent _mum feast,_ a custom which is found the world over. The various Halloween customs such as dressing in costume or celebrating this time as a time where the worlds of the living and the dead connect are more Celtic in origin than Nordic and probably should not be part of an Asatru celebration. The Gods of Asgard The Old Norse reckoned that there were three races of Gods: the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Jotunn. The Aesir are those beings most often referred to in the ancient literature simply as _the Gods._ They are the Gods of society, representing things such as Kingship, Craft, etc. The Vanir are more closely connected to the earth and represent the fecundity of the land and the natural forces which help mankind. Once there was a great war between the Aesir and the Vanir, but this was eventually settled and Frey, Freya, and Njord came to live with the Aesir to seal the peace. The Jotunn are a third race of Gods and at constant war with the Aesir, but there is and never will be peace in this battle. The Jotunn are never called Gods, but rather referred to as giants. They represent the natural forces of chaos and destruction as the Aesir represent forces of order and society. Just as fire and ice mix to form the world, this creative interaction of chaos and order maintains the balance of the world. In the end the two sides will meet in the great battle of Ragnarok and the world will be destroyed, only to be reborn. The Norse Gods were not held to be all powerful or immortal. Their youth was maintained very precariously by the magickal apples of the Goddess Idunna. More importantly at the end of the world a good number of the Gods will die in battle. The Northern view of the world was a practical one with little assurance for the future and little perfection and the Gods are no exception. The Gods in the Temple: Odin, Thor, and Frey The three most important Gods were held to be Odin, Thor, and Frey. These were the deities whose statutes stood at the altar of the temple at Upsalla. They are considered the most important because of what they represent. Mythologer Georges Dumezil has linked these three deities with the three classes of Indo-European culture: the Kings, the Warriors, and the Farmers. Although the fit is not an exact one, it is probably true that these three deities most concretely symbolized the various aspects of life and culture and most people would have found a God who represented their life-experience in one of these three deities. Odin is the Allfather, remembered today best as a God of war and of the berserk rage of the Vikings. However, he has other aspects which are just as strong or stronger. In the Eddas, he is the King of the Gods, but this is a position which most of the Germanic peoples attributed to Tyr. It_s likely that Odin only became King during the Viking Age. Being the Allfather, his original position of leadership was probably familial rather than legislative. Most importantly he is a God of transcendent wisdom and in relation to that a God of magick. He is the God of the Runes, the magical alphabet which holds the mysteries of the universe within it. In most of the non-Viking countries, Odin_s warrior aspect was played down. In England, where he is known as Woden, he is a gray cloaked wanderer (the inspiration for Tolkien_s Gandalf) who travels the country, usually alone, surveying his land. Here again we see him in the position of a father figure, a warder of the land but not necessarily a King. Odin is also a God of the dead. Half of the slain in battles go to him to prepare for the Ragnarok. (The remaining half go to Freya.) He also has associations with the dead as a practitioner of Seidhr, a form of shamanic magick which he learned from Freya and used on various occasions to travel to Hel and seek the knowledge of those who have passed from this world. It_s difficult to classify Odin simply because he was such a popular God during the last stages of Norse Paganism and thus absorbed many traits of other Gods. Thor is probably the best known of the Norse Gods. He is a simple God, the patron of farmers and other folk who are _wise, but not too wise_ as the Eddas advise us to be. Thor is best known for wandering the world in search of adventure; usually found in the form of giants or other monsters to kill. He possesses tremendous strength and the hammer Mjolnir, which was made for him by the Dwarfs. Mjolnir is considered to be the Gods greatest treasure because it is sure protection from the forces of chaos. Using Mjolnir, Thor is a warrior figure, but he is less a professional warrior than a common man called upon to defend his land. He loves battle not for itself as do the berserkers of Odin, nor does he have a strong code of honor such as that of Tyr_in fact he chronically breaks with honor and kills giants whether they have the protection of _hospitality_ or not. Thor is associated with thunder, and is also the God of rain and storms, but it_s important to note that he is not the God of destructive storms. Thor is nature as a benefit to man. The Jotunn are held to be the source of the destruction found in nature. Thor was the God of _everyman._ He was simple in purpose, strong, and free. He was most beloved of the freemen farmers who populated the Germanic lands. Frey is a God of peace and fertility. If Thor is the God of the farmer, then Frey is the God of the crops themselves. His symbol is the priapus and his blessings were sought at planting and other important agricultural festivals. The word _frey_ means _Lord_ and it_s unsure if this is the Gods name or his title. He is also known as Ing. We do not known a great deal more about Frey as few myths have survived which give us any insight into his character. As much as he is a God of fertility, he is also a God of peace and Ing was said to have brought a Golden Age of peace and prosperity to old Denmark. Horses are held to be sacred to Frey, probably because of fertility connections. Goddesses In general we know much less about how our ancestors worshipped the Goddesses than the Gods. Later Norse culture was very bound up with the vikings and it is likely that the Goddesses were deemphasized at this point. More importantly, virtually all the mythology we have today was recorded during the Christian period and Christian culture had little respect for women, least of all independent and strong women like those of Nordic society. Freya is the most important of the Goddesses or at least that Goddess about which we known the most. She was the sister of Frey and along with him was sent to live with the Aesir in order to seal a peace agreement. Freya is a Goddess with two distinct sides to her. First, she is the Goddess of love and beauty and second a Goddess of war who shares the battle-slain with Odin. Unlike our modern culture, the ancients saw no contradiction in this. She was also a sorceress who practiced the shamanic magick known as Seidhr, which she taught to Odin. Freya is the Goddess most often invoked by independent women. While she is a Goddess of beauty, she is not dependent on men as is the stereotype of so many love Goddesses, but is strong and fiercely independent. She is also known as the Great Dis and probably has connections to the family spirits known as the Disir. In many ways she is like Odin in that she is a Goddess of many functions which are not always obviously related. In modern Asatru, many groups have replaced Frey with Freya to stand with Odin and Thor on the altar. Frigg is a most misunderstood Goddess. She is the wife of Odin and many people are too willing to let her be known simply as that. However, the old Norse had a much different idea of the place of women and of marriage in general. While marriages for love were certainly known, marriage was also a business and social arrangement and there were important duties for a wife. These were symbolized by a set of keys which hung at the belt of all _goodwives._ This symbolized that the home was under the control of the woman of the house, who was equal to her husband. Today we think these duties as very minor, but a thousand years ago they were far from trivial. Up until this century most of Europe lived in extended families. A house, especially a hall of a warrior, was not merely a small building with a nuclear family, but an entire settlement with outbuildings, servants, slaves, and an entire clan. The wife of the house was in charge of stores and trading with other clans. It was she that saw to the upkeep of the farm, the balancing of the books, and even to the farming itself if her husband was away trading or making war. It was as much a job of managing a business as it was being a _wife._ For these reasons Frigg is still very important and can easily be invoked beyond the home. She would, for example, be a natural patron for someone who owned a business. Frigg also shares a lot of characteristics with her husband. She is the only other God who is allowed to sit in Odin_s seat from which can be seen all that goes on in the nine worlds. It is said that she knows the future, but remains silent, which is entirely in keeping with the way women of the time exercised their power: namely indirectly. While in a better world this might not be necessary, it is still an important tool for women who must exist in a world where men are sometimes threatened by them. While Freya is a Goddess who acts independent of _traditional_ roles, Frigg is a Goddess who works within those roles, but still maintains her power and independence. Other Gods There are of course many other Gods and Goddesses. Some of these have important places in the myths, while some others are mentioned only once along with their function. Loki The most perplexing God of Asgard is Loki. He was probably originally a fire God, but he is best known as the troublemaker of Asgard. In various minor scrapes Loki arranges to get the Gods into trouble, usually by giving away their treasures and then arranging to return them. This is very much in the traditional role of a trickster, who keeps things interesting by causing trouble. However, it_s sometimes difficult to see Loki merely as a trickster because his actions are sometimes simply too evil to be ignored. Balder was the most beautiful and beloved of the Gods and a pledge was extracted from all the things in the world that they would not harm him. The sole exception to this was the mistletoe which was deemed too tiny to be a threat. Amused by his invulnerability, the Gods took turns throwing objects at Balder, which of course had no effect on him. Loki took the blind God Hod and put a spring of mistletoe in his hands and guided him to throw it. The dart pierced Balder_s breast and he died. Later a deal was arranged wherein Balder would be allowed to return to life if all the creatures of the world would weep for him. Only one refused, an ogress who said she cared not a whit for Balder when he was alive and thought him just as well off dead. The ogress is believed to have been Loki in disguise. For these actions Loki was chained beneath the earth and it was arranged that venom would drip upon him in punishment that would last until the end of the world. With the death of Balder, Loki goes beyond the level of trickster and becomes a truly evil figure. It is known that when Ragnarok comes, Loki will lead the legions of chaos against the Aesir and bring about the end of the world. Indeed Loki_s actions certainly do seem harsh, but they are entirely in keeping with the Norse way of looking at things. One of the functions of a trickster God is to keep things going. The trickster causes trouble so that people may evolve, for nothing brings about ingenuity like need. The Norse did not believe anything was eternal. The Gods were mortal and only maintained their youth through the magick of Idunna_s apples. In the end they would die in the battle of Ragnarok which would destroy the world. Balder_s invulnerability was not natural. As the Edda says _Cattle die, and men die, and you too shall die..._ It was deemed much more wise and valiant by the Norse to live up to one_s fate than to try to avoid it. Likewise to return from the dead would be equally wrong. It_s against nature for something to be impervious to harm or for the dead to return to life. Loki was merely acting as the agent of nature to return things to their normal and correct course. It was not an act of evil, but an intervention to stop an evil against the natural order. Likewise Ragnarok must come. It is in the nature of the world to be destroyed and then be reborn. Loki is merely acting as an agent of fate: exactly the function which a trickster is supposed to perform. On the other hand, as far as we know Loki was not worshipped, at least not in the same way as the other Gods were. Recognition of his action and his place in the universe is essential, but Gods of this type are seldom welcome. It is _fashionable_ today to laugh at trickster Gods and see them as a sort of jester figure, but we must not forget that their nature is much darker than this even when it does serve a purpose. Change is important, but nothing changes the world faster and more thoroughly than war. Tyr While seldom reckoned today among the most popular of the Gods, Tyr is extremely important. He is the God of battle, of justice, and (secondary to Odin) of Kingship. The most important myth concerning Tyr shows both his bravery and honor. He gave his hand as surety to the Fenris Wolf that no trickery was involved in the Gods binding of him. When the fetter in fact did bind the wolf, Tyr lost his hand. The honor and reliance on ones word is often overlooked in this myth in favor of an interpretation of self sacrifice. However, throughout the myths various deals are made and the Aesir easily get out of them. It_s likely that Tyr could have escaped his fate as well, but one_s word is one_s word and thus Tyr lost his hand. Tyr was held to be the God of the Thing or assembly. While the ancient Norse were not truly democratic and in fact held slaves, within the noble class all were reckoned to be roughly equal. The Thing was a place where the landholders would meet for trade and to iron out disputes among them, in the hope of avoiding feuds. Tyr was originally the chieftain of the Aesir and the God of Kingship, but he has been gradually supplanted by Odin, especially during the Viking Age. It is likely this was because of Tyr_s strong sense of honor and justice. For raiding and pillaging, Odin, the God of the berserker rage, was a much better patron than Tyr, the God of honorable battle. This is an important thing to note about Northern religion: it is extremely adaptable. There are not hard and fast rules about who is what and while the nature of the Gods cannot be changed they are more than happy to have the aspects most important to their worshippers emphasized. Just as a person uses different skills and _becomes a different person_ when they move or change jobs, so the Gods too have adapted to new climates and needs. Baldr While we only know the myth of Balder_s death, it is clear that he was a God of some importance. Unfortunately, modern writers, coming from a Christian background, have tried to turn Balder into a Christ figure. Balder was a God of beauty and goodness, but his name also translates as _warrior._ It is a mistake to turn him into a _Norse Jesus._ The mere fact that he died and will return after Ragnarok is not enough for this equation. Another interpretation of Balder is that of the dying and resurrected God of the Sun. This also seems a mistake, as Balder does not return from the land of death. It makes a poor symbol to honor Balder on solar holidays, lest the sun not return! The remaining major interpretation of Balder is as a God of mystic initiation. While this fits to some extent, we unfortunately no longer know. The equation with Christ has wiped out a great deal of lore about Balder and we are left to rediscover his place in our modern practice. Minor Gods Of the other important Gods, Heimdall is the guardian of Asgard. He, as Rig, is also one of the Gods who fathered mankind. Njord is the God of sailing and sailors. Unless one travels on the sea, he is probably of little importance to you, but if one does sail, he is your natural patron. If Njord is the God of sailing and of man_s use of the sea, then Aegir is the God of the sea itself. He is married to Ran who takes drowned sailors to her home after their death. Aegir is considered to be the greatest of brewers, and our kindred honors him in a special holiday due to the importance of mead in our modern religion. Bragi is a much overlooked God who is the patron of taletellers and bards. Other Gods more or less overlooked in the myths include Forseti, who renders the best judgments, Ull, a God of hunting who is the male counter to Skadi, Vithar, the son of Thor who is as strong as his father, Vali, Odin_s son who will avenge his fathers death at Ragnarok, and Hod, the blind God who was led to slay Balder. While we might say that certain Gods are more important than others, this is in many ways not accurate. We would be better served to say that some are more popular. The Norse concept of the relationship between men and Gods was one of friendship. A man would honor all the Gods as worthy and existent, but would usually find one as his special patron. It is not surprising, considering this, that Thor is the most popular of Gods. If the average person was searching for a God very much like himself, Thor would be the obvious choice. Likewise, a God such as Njord would have been extremely important to sailors and fishermen, but would have been almost completely unimportant as a patron to inlanders. The less well known Gods are just as powerful as their more well known contemporaries, they merely have power over a less well known aspect of life. There are also many Goddesses other than Frigg and Freya, but we know very little of them. Eir was said to be the greatest of healers, and is for this reason very important. There is no healer God as the ancients held that medicine was a craft for women and not for men, but modern male healers should certainly invoke her. While Skadi has a very small part in the myths, many modern Asafolk find her a compelling figure. She is the snow-shoe Goddess, who travels in the isolated mountains hunting with her bow. She is married to Njord, but they are separated as Njord can_t abide the mountains, and Skadi can_t sleep in Njord_s hall where she is kept awake by the pounding of the sea. She is an excellent role model for women who work alone and who are independently minded. Oaths are sworn to the Goddess Var, but little else is known of her. Lofn might some day be of importance to you, she is known to bring together lovers who are kept apart by circumstance. I have merely touched upon the Gods here. It is important for everyone who would practice the religion of the North to get to know the myths and the Gods. An appendix is included which outlines various sources for more information. Elves & Other Spirits The world of ancient Paganism was hardly limited to the worship of the Gods. There are various other beings who were honored, and _Elf worship_ was often the hardest part of Paganism for Christians to destroy. It was easy enough to substitute one God for another, but it was quite another to tell the common people that the elves which brought fertility to the land were not real! In the various folktales and sagas we find very little which would lead us to a concrete system of what spirit was responsible for exactly what. We are sure of the place of the Valkyries, who were responsible for bringing the slain to Valhalla, and also for choosing who in battle would die. They seem, judging by their actions, to be supernatural beings of some type. However, Valkyries appear in various places as very human figures and their exact nature is difficult to determine. Sigrdrifa was a Valkyrie who was cursed by Odin because she refused to bring victory in battle to those whom he had chosen. Her punishment was to be married to a mortal, and the implication is clear that this would end her days as a Valkyrie. It_s equally clear that she has great knowledge of the runes as she tutors Sigurd after he awakens her. In most respects she seems to be a normal human woman, although a very wise and independent one with great powers. Elsewhere, Voland and his brothers are said to have found three Valkyries sunning themselves without their swan-coats. When the brothers steal their feather-coats and hide them, the Valkyries again appear as otherwise normal women. This does not seem entirely in keeping with a supernatural origin, and it_s possible that some kind of magickal order of Priestesses has become confused over time with the supernatural beings we know as Valkyries. The swan-coat seems very similar in description to Freya_s falcon-coat and the entire issue may be something related to the practice of seidhr. As far as we know, the Valkyrie were not worshipped as such, but were considered more the messengers of Odin. They also serve the mead at Valhalla, and because of this whoever pours the mead into the Horn at Blot or Sumbel is today known as _the Valkyrie._ The other spirits whose place seems fairly clear are the Disir. These are spirits who are intimately linked with a family. There is also some indication that they are linked with the land, but this would be in keeping with the old ways. We forget sometimes that many landowners in Europe have been living in the same place since before this continent was discovered. The land becomes an intimate part of the family and its identity, so it is natural that family spirits would also oversee the family land. Disir inevitably are seen as women who appear at times of great trouble or change. They are somehow linked to the family bloodline, and seem most closely linked to the clanchief. There is one scene in one saga where a spirit, apparently a Dis, is passed on from one person to another who are not blood relations. However, these two friends are closer than brothers, so while the link is apparently not genetic, it is definitely familial. We know the family Disir were honored with blots at the Winter Nights and that they have great power to aid their family. As far as their origin, it_s possible that they are ancestral in origin. They may be ancestors whose power was so great that they were able to continue to see to their clan. Or it_s possible that the Disir are the collective spirit of the family ancestors. Freya is called the great Dis and there may be some linkage here to her position as a seidhrwoman. We know from the sagas that Seidhr was involved with talking to various spirits (including the dead) and its possible that this is the source of Freya_s name. It is also possible that she performed much the same function as a Dis to her tribe the Vanir. Closely linked to the idea of the Disir is the Fylgia. These spirits are attached to an individual person in much the same way that the Disir are associated with a family. Fylgia usually appear either as animals or as beautiful women. They correspond to the _fetch,_ _totem,_ or _power-animal_ in other cultures. Most of the time the fylgia remains hidden and absent, it is only with truly great or powerful persons that the fylgia becomes known. They may have something to do with Seidhr as well, because many sagas offer evidence of spirit travel in the shape of animals. This corresponds exactly to notions of shamanism found in other cultures. The remaining spirits include Alvar or elves, Dokkalvar or dark elves or Dwarfs, kobolds, and landvaettir. While some have defined one being as doing one thing and another serving a different function, I_m not inclined to draw very sharp distinctions between these various creatures. They all seem _elfish_ in origin, and there seems to me to be no pattern of associating one name with a specific function. We know that various landvaettir or land spirits were honored with blots. We also know that Frey is the lord of Alfheim, one of the nine worlds where the alvar are said to live. Of all the remaining spirits, the dwarfs are the most consistent in description. We know that the dwarfs are cunning and misanthropic in character and incredible smiths, capable of creating magickal objects so valuable they are considered the greatest treasures of Asgard. Thor_s hammer Mjolnir, Freya_s necklace Brisingamen, and Sif_s golden hair are all creations of the dwarfs. They live beneath the earth and have little to do with mankind or the Gods unless one seeks them out. What place they had in the religion we no longer know. It would seem wise to invoke them as spirits of the forge, but I can think of little other reason to disturb them. Elves are the most difficult magickal race to pin down. Mythological sources tell us that the Alvar or light elves live in Alfheim where Frey is their Lord. However, we also have the enduring belief in folklore of the elves as faery-folk: beings associated with the natural world. These two conceptions of elves might still be linked, however, as Alfheim is known to be a place of incredible natural beauty, and Frey, their leader, is an agricultural deity. To further confuse this issue, Norse folklore has a strong belief in the Landvaettir, or land spirits who may fit into either or both of these categories. I_m inclined to lump them all together as similar beings that we simply don_t know enough about to tell apart. What is important is that Asatru, like all Pagan religions, honors the natural world and the earth very deeply. Whether one calls the spirits of the land as the elves, the faeries, or the landvaettir, or uses all of these terms interchangably, respect is all important. Asatru is known for being one of the most politically _conservative_ of the modern Pagan religions, but you_ll find few of us who aren_t staunch environmentalists. One of the most important spirits to honor is the house-spirit. Folklore is also filled with stories of various spirits variously called faeries, elves, kobolds, brownies, tom-tin, etc who inhabit a house and see to its proper conduct. In the usual form of the tale, they offer to perform some housekeeping functions, but eventually turn on the owners of the house when they are insulted by overpayment. We don_t have any concrete evidence for how our ancestors honored these beings, but this is not surprising because such a thing would not be a public observance and it_s unlikely it would be recorded in the sagas or Eddas. Folklore indicates that such beings should be honored with a simple bowl of milk or perhaps beer, but no more. In general folklore does not paint the various elves and spirits as particularly benevolent figures. With the exception of house spirits, who as spirits of a manmade object are bound to us on some level, they seem most interested in staying out of the dealings of mankind. There are numerous stories of people who spy upon elf women and force them to become their brides. Inevitably the women are unhappy and eventually escape, leaving their husbands devastated. There are also numerous stories of spirits who haunt the woods and who will drag wayward travelers into rivers to drown or to some other untimely death. When people do have dealings with the elves these beings seem to operate on an entirely different set of expectations than we do. Most of us would be gratified by the gift of a _bonus_ from our employer, yet time and time again in folklore this is the easiest way to anger a house spirit. We know that elves were honored with blots, but it_s just as possible that these ceremonies were made in propitiation to them rather than in kinship as are our blots made with the Gods. We suggest caution in dealing with beings with a set of values so foreign from our own. They should be approached in the same way one would approach a person from a country whose ways are very different. In general, we_re also very reticent to make decisions about classifying the various _other peoples._ It would be very easy to draw lines and place certain spirits into little boxes which label their function, but that seems overly mechanical and of little utility. Elves and other _wights_ are not human, and it might be too much to try to classify them in other than subjective terms. It_s probably best to simply make your intent clear, experiment, and use the terms which work for you, remembering only to be true to the sources. Demi-Gods There are a whole classification of Gods which are not truly part of the Aesir, Vanir, or even the Jotunn. Wayland the Smith is the best example of this that we can offer. Wayland, called Volund in the Norse version, is the greatest of smiths, but it_s clear in the mythology that he was more or less a human man. The myth tells of how he lost his wife and was enslaved by a human King. While his powers allow him to outwit and take vengeance on the king, it_s clear throughout that he_s not on the level of a Thor or an Odin. What one does about these demi-Gods or local Gods is a good question. I see nothing wrong with pouring a blot in their honor and dealing with them as you would any other God or Goddess. On the other hand, they are not part of the Aesir and I think it might be disrespectful to honor them with the Aesir or as part of a ceremony dedicated to the Aesir as they seem of a different nature. Ancestor Worship: Honoring ones ancestors was one of the most sacred duties of the Norsemen. One of the most important parts of greeting new people was the exchanging of personal lineages at sumbel. The worship of the Disir is closely linked to ancestor worship. However, it is difficult for modern day Pagans to seriously engage in ancestor worship. We are for the most part without a strong connection to our heritage, and even if we feel motivated we would probably need to skip at least a thousand years back to find ancestors who would not have been appalled by our Heathen beliefs. One substitution for ancestor worship in the modern Asatru movement has been the veneration of heros from the Sagas and legends of our people. The manner of how we honor ancestors is also somewhat troubling. I reserve the blot ritual to Gods and other powers, and I_m not sure if it_s appropriate to pour a blot to an ancestor, no matter how important he was. It_s touchy when you are honoring someone that you knew was a mortal. I think the most important part of ancestor worship is remembering, and the sumbel seems the most important part of that. While we discuss ancestry, I must mention that some modern Asatru groups, in part because of holdovers from 19th century cultural movements, have placed a great deal of emphasis on ancestry in terms of race. Many have held that Asatru was a religion for whites or Northern Europeans only. In my not particularly humble opinion, this is pure idiocy. The basic argument for this is that people of other cultures do not share the same background and values. This is certainly true, but the key word in my opinion is culture, and all Americans by definition share a culture. Also, while I admit I would think it doubtful that people from outside of our own cultural heritage would be attracted greatly to Asatru, if they are it is for a reason and they should be welcomed and not shunned. It proves the worth of our religion and way of life that it is so strong that one would leave his own cultural path behind to take up ours. As far as culture is concerned, the ancestry of the ancient North is alive and well in modern America. A thousand years ago settlers sailed to Iceland to avoid the growing influence of powerful kings and centralized government. This centralization of power was one of the things which Roman Christianity brought with it. Two hundred years ago we in America rebelled against our king for much the same reasons. Our culture is much more profoundly influenced by the Vikings than most would care to admit. Our law is based on English common law, which in turn has roots in Norman and Saxon law. (Both the Saxons and Normans were descended from Germanic tribes.) Our culture is based on many of the same ideas which the Northmen held dear: the importance of the individual and the belief that individual rights outweighed collective rights. Thus, it is my assertion that we are all descended, at least in part, spiritually from the ancient Norse. The Jotunn The Jotunn or giants are the sworn enemies of the Gods. While the Aesir represent order and the Vanir represent the supportive powers of nature, the Jotunn represent chaos and the power of nature to destroy man and act independent of humankind. In the end, it is the Jotunn who will fight the Gods at Ragnarok and bring about the destruction of the world. In essence despite being called Giants or Ogres, the Jotunn are Gods just as much as the Aesir or Vanir. In many cases they correspond very closely to the Fomoire in Celtic mythology. Most simply put, the Jotunn are the Gods of all those things which man has no control over. The Vanir are the Gods of the growing crops, the Jotunn are the Gods of the river which floods and washes away those crops or the tornado which destroys your entire farm. This is why they are frightening and this is why we hold them to be evil. The Jotunn are not worshipped in modern Asatru, but there is some evidence that sacrifices were made to them in olden times. In this case, sacrifices were probably made _to them_ rather than shared _with them_ as was the case with the Vanir and Aesir. It would be inappropriate to embrace them as friends and brothers in the way we embrace our Gods. One doesn_t embrace the hurricane or the wildfire; it is insanity to do so. However, we must also remember that fact that we see their actions as bad, they are not inherently evil. The storm destroys the crops, but it also brings cleansing and renewal. We humans are only one species on this planet and in the end we are both expendable and irrelevant to nature. This is the manner in which the Jotunn act, and it is not surprising that we see this as evil. However, one must also take into account the premonitions of Ragnarok recorded in the eddas. If the Jotunn are merely amoral, why are they the sworn enemy of the Aesir and why will they bring about the end of the world? It_s possible that Jotunn was more of a catch-all term for dangerous Gods rather than a reference to a specific family. (It is the case in many languages that there is one word for people that speak the language, usually translating as _people,_ and another term for those persons of other cultures and tribes.) The dangerous forces of nature are _Jotunn_ because we cannot control them, but there are other forces, principally those of chaos, that are considered _Jotunn_ as well. There is abundant evidence for this in the Eddas. Various Jotunn are seen to marry into the Aesir without a great deal of trouble from the Gods, but at other times the mere sight of one throws Thor into a rage. The obvious conclusion is that they are more than one specific race of deities. The destructive powers of nature were tolerated to some extent, and often married into the Aesir bringing them more under control. However, other _outlander_ Gods were completely destructive to the Aesir (and thus mankind) and the Gods only thought for them was death. The Religious Structure of Asatru The ancients, for the most part, did not have an organized system of Temples or churches in the way that our society does today. Religion was a very personal affair, mostly between the Gods and their worshippers. If there was a formalized temple or perhaps a grove that was dedicated to the Gods and tended as a temple it was most likely built by a wealthy landowner and dedicated to his or her patron God. Such a person would then, usually, become the Gothi (Priest) or Gythia (Priestess) of the temple. Such temples were generally maintained by the family after the builders death, the title being more or less inherited by whomever was lord over the land. Today most Asatru groups are similarly unstructured. This has been a problem because there is little in the way of religious education other than in books such as this one and personal research. While this sort of learning is fine, there are always some things left out and I_m sure that mine will be no exception. There are a few groups who are attempting to initiate training programs and present sets of standards for people who would declare themselves to be Gothi or Gythia, but these groups have unfortunately been somewhat inflexible and dogmatic, seeming more interested in creating hierarchies than with service to the Folk or Gods. Gothi is a honorary title only. It does not mark any administrative power or rank within Asatru. One would probably not call oneself Gothi unless one had some experience of deity and had led many rituals, but as it entails power over no one and it is up to no one to comment on ones qualifications or abilities. Similarly there is no need for someone to be a Gothi or to have access to one in order to practice our faith. While the more experienced might get more things _right_ in the ritual, this is purely subjective and if your heart is true to the Gods this is enough. Most persons who were given the title Gothi in the old days were dedicated to a single God. The title most often formed their last name: Thorolf Thorsgothi for example. This dedication to a God or Goddess was usually part of one_s family heritage and was passed down to your children. While there is no compelling reason why one cannot act as Priest to the entire community of Gods and Goddesses, it is most common for one to be dedicated to a single deity. A kindred may have persons who are each dedicated to a different deity, or it may orient itself towards a single deity as did families in the Sagas. The most basic unit of Asatru religious worship is the hearth or homestead. This is nothing more than it sounds like: a household of Asafolk who worship the old Gods and Goddesses. Several individuals or hearths may group themselves into a _kindred,_ which is a term that has many meanings to many different groups. Some kindreds have many members and function like mainstream churches, others are more familylike and attempt to hold to their privacy. The place of a kindred is more or less analogous to a clan or small tribal group. A kindred is made up of people you are familiar with and with whom you meet in person and in it_s best sense it_s an organic grouping, however it_s not the same sort of bonding that one would find in a single family or even in an extremely close knit group of friends. In a true Pagan society, the kindred would be found on the level of a farmstead or small village. The ritual blots are most commonly done on the level of the kindred, or in meetings where more than one kindred comes together. The rituals of a Hearth might be less formalized and more _homey_ in atmosphere. The blot ritual is based on a religious observance that was part of the official public aspect of ancient Asatru, and its likely that there were many other private rituals that would not necessarily be appropriate for a kindred to take part in together. For example, a kindred might not honor the individual family Dis or the house-spirits unless all members of the kindred lived together or were tied by blood as well as companionship. Most persons will want to join or found a kindred in their area, however, before one runs out and begins to solicit people, you should think about what you are doing. The very name of our groupings, _kindred,_ implies a great deal more than does membership in a church. Today we are accustomed to religious institutions that are more or less anonymous and sterile. A kindred should not be this way. While we must be open to all, we need not act as if we were a public facility with no more intimacy than a department store. It is best to start small and gather people as they come to you. Once you are established, get involved in the local Pagan community if you are not already. Attend a few events of the local Leif Erikson society or the Sons of Norway. Open one of your blots to the public and take note of people who are attracted to Asatru. A kindred is something which should form organically and cannot be pushed. On the other hand, Asatru is not a secret religion or one open only to _initiates_ as many Neo-Pagan faiths are. We must be open to outsiders who are truly interested. I am just cautioning against throwing people into a kindred because they are available or it is the only group around or they are too polite to say no. A roommate of mine related to me a conversation he had with another person at an Asatru gathering. The person remarked that _this is all very nice, but when do you think Joe will get tired of this stuff._ My roommate being a seriously committed Heathen straightened him out. The person in question was just a friend of Joe_s who went to Pagan events because of Joe_s interest. He assumed that the rest of the group was _humoring Joe_ just as he was. The moral of this story is that if people are not interested, there_s nothing you can do about it. We_re not the Christians who want anybody and everybody to join our faith, and we should pay just as much attention to dissuading the dabblers and the kooks as we do to attracting those who truly do have the love of the Old Gods in their hearts. As to what makes one a Gothi, the requirements would vary from group to group. Some might have written criteria, while others might leave it up to the persons heart. Certainly a Gothi is one who has a long term relationship with the Gods and Goddesses. One does not, for example, simply read this book and then proclaim oneself Gothi! (I am writing this book and don_t consider myself to be a Gothi.) A competent Gothi should have studied the Eddas and Sagas and know the history of our religion. He or she should also know a bit about the runes, and the other mysteries of our tradition. One should also note that this is a public office and the Gothi of old had responsibilities as leaders of the community. Most importantly one must be sincerely dedicated. There_s no push to move to a _higher_ level of the Priesthood as there are in religions or magickal orders with _degree systems_ and if you do not feel compelled to take on the responsibilities of being a Gothi or Gythia, there is no need for you to and much to say that you should not. The Values of Asatru One of the basic functions of a religion is to offer a set of values on which mankind is to base it's actions. This, sadly, is one area where Paganism has often failed. The cult of anti-values has held sway, taking moral relativism to extremes perhaps even farther from common sense than fundamentalist moral legalism, even to the point where I have heard rape, murder, and genocide defended on the basis of "cultural differences." However, values remain important. All one needs to do is look at the morning paper to see the results of a society that has in many ways embraced the cult of anti-values. Thievery, murder, and plunder exist in our cities to extents which would have appalled our ancestors_no matter how many times they went a' Viking. While this is hardly what the Pagans who have embraced the cult of anti-values had in mind, it is to my belief a natural outgrowth of the same basic philosophical concept. The chaos in our country is the dark shadow of the modern rejection of moral legalism. What should have been an evolution from a legalistic moral/religious culture to one of flexible honor based values and self-responsibility has instead become a morass of chaos and immorality. The lesson we should all learn is that while there is no definitive list of sins; right and wrong still exist. As usual Asatru offers a sensible solution. Our faith deals not in legalisms and rules nor in unchecked chaos and relativism. We instead acknowledge the existence of right and wrong, good and evil, but we deal with actions according to basic philosophical concepts that are applied by the keen intellect of Odin, the simple common sense of Thor, and the solid honor of Tyr_the gifts of the Gods to us. Asatru posits that the basic place of moral judgment is within the human heart and mind. We as human beings with the gift of intelligence are sensible and responsible enough to determine right from wrong and act accordingly. The Gods teach us through the examples of their lives, as chronicled in the Eddas, and through various pieces such as the Havamal which directly offer us advice. In the modern history of our faith, various Asatru organizations have outlined simple sets of values which they hold up as simple guidelines on how to live ones life. The Odinic Rite (the major Asatru group in England) has one of the most cohesive and sensible of all those we've seen and this set has been adopted by the Raven Kindred as an "official" statement of our beliefs. We do this not only as a moral guide for our members, but also to say to the world what it is that we stand for_our good name in the community being important to us. Finally, this list is used when someone formally joins the Raven Kindred and we hold a sumble and toast the 9 virtues to the new member in the hope that they will apply them to their life. The Odinic Rite lists the 9 Noble Virtues as Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance, and Perseverance. It would be hard to get much argument on any of these values from anyone. They simply and briefly encapsulate the broad wisdom of our Gods and ancestors. Courage In virtually every statement of values applied to Asatru, Courage is listed first. As Stephen McNallen has said, courage and bravery are perhaps the values which the Vikings are best known for. However, despite our history, few of us face such turmoil as a literal battle for ones life. In fact, I believe it might be easier to manifest courage in such a situation than to do so in the many smaller day to day occurrences in which courage is called for. The most common of these occurrences for modern Pagans, is the courage to acknowledge and live ones beliefs. It is also, sadly, the one that we most often fail at. While we may often be full of the type of courage that would lead us to face a shield wall, many of us quake at the thought of the topic of religion coming up at the office or a friend asking what church we attend. We won't offer easy answers, but we ask this: if you toast the courage of your ancestors to fight and die for what they believed in, can you trade away your religious identity for a higher salary or social acceptance? In an essay on values there is also the question of moral courage. The way of Tyr is difficult_to lose ones hand for ones beliefs_but, Tyr thought the price worth paying. In a million ways modern society challenges our values, not just as Asatruar who are estranged from mainstream religious practice, but for religious people in an increasingly not just secular, but anti-religious culture. Values are also not in favor in modern society. Breaking or getting around the rules is encouraged to get ahead. Living honorably is simply too inconvenient. I think most people, Asatru or otherwise, find this repugnant, but the only way to change it is to have the courage to refuse to take part in it. Truth The second virtue, that of Truth, is the one that most led our kindred to embrace the Odinic Rite's statement of values as our own. Early in our discussions, we decided that no matter what values we chose to hold out as our own, truth must be among them. It is a word that holds so much in its definition, and includes such a wide variety of moral and philosophical beliefs that we were all drawn to it as a simple statement of what we stood for. At least one of the reasons we wanted to adopt it was the simple issue of honesty. As Bill Dwinnels said at a recent sumbel while toasting truth and honesty: if you don't want people to know about something, don't do it. Truth, in the sense of honesty, is essential to personal honor and also to any system or morality that is not based on rigid legalism. If one is to uphold an honor code, one must be brutally honest with oneself and with others. Truth is also the Truth that comes with a capital T_the kind of Truth that one talks about in terms of religion or morality. It's common to talk of different peoples having different "truths," but it's equally important to remember that while we acknowledge that each person or people has their own belief as to what Truth is or where to find it, there finally is a single Truth. This is not the Truth as we believe it, but ultimate Truth. While we may respect other people's _truths_ and seek our own, we must never forget our search for The Truth. Like the Holy Grail of Christian legend, it may never be ours to reach, but when we cease to search we perish. Honor Honor is the basis for the entire Asatru moral rationale. If anything comes out in the Eddas and Sagas it is that without honor we are nothing. We remember two types of peoples from ancient times: those whose honor was so clean that they shine as examples to us and those who were so without honor that their names are cursed a thousand years after they lived. Good Asatruar should always strive to be among the former. However, honor is not mere reputation. Honor is an internal force whose outward manifestation is reputation. Internal honor is the sacred moral compass that each Asatruar and God should hold dear. It is the inner dwelling at peace which comes from living in accordance with ones beliefs and with ones knowledge of the Truth of what one is doing. It is something deeply personal and heartfelt, almost akin to an emotion. It's a _knowing_ that what one is doing is right and decent and correct. In many ways while the most important of all the virtues it is also the most ephemeral in terms of description. It is all the other virtues rolled together and then still more. The best way I have found to describe honor is that if you are truly living with honor, you will have no regrets about what you have done with your life. Fidelity Fidelity is a word that is far too often defined by it's narrow use in terms of marital fidelity. By the dictionary it simply means being faithful to someone or something. In marriage this means being true to ones vows and partner, and this has been narrowly defined as limiting ones sexual experience to ones spouse. While I have found this to be great practical advice, many treat fidelity as if there were no other ways in which one could be faithful or unfaithful. For we Asatruar fidelity is most important in terms of our faith and troth to the Gods. We must remain true to the Aesir and Vanir and to our kinsmen. Like marriage, Profession (the rite in which one enters the Asatru faith, similar to Christian confirmation or Wiccan initiation) is a sacred bond between two parties; in this case an Asatruar and the Gods. In order for such a relationship to work, both must be honest and faithful to each other. Asatru, although currently being reborn, is at its roots a folk religion and we also uphold the value of fidelity to the ways of our ancestors. This is why historical research is so important to the Asatru-folk: it is the rediscovering of our ancient ways and our readoption of them. Discipline In any discussion of the values of Asatru, discipline is best described as self-discipline. It is the exercise of personal will that upholds honor and the other virtues and translates impulse into action. If one is to be able to reject moral legalism for a system of internal honor, one must be willing to exercise the self-discipline necessary to make it work. Going back to my earlier criticism of society, if one rejects legalism, one must be willing to control ones own actions. Without self-discipline, we have the mess we currently see in our culture. Looking at discipline in terms of fidelity, we see a close connection. Many Pagans go from faith to faith, system to system, path to path. Asatruar are much less likely to do this. The discipline of keeping faith with our Gods and the ways of our ancestors is part of our modern practice. In this way, we limit ourselves in some ways, but we gain much more in others. Hospitality Hospitality is simply one of the strongest core values at the heart of virtually every ancient human civilization. In a community/folk religion such as our own, it is the virtue that upholds our social fabric. In ancient times it was essential that when a traveler went into the world he could find some sort of shelter and welcome for the night. In modern times it is just as essential that a traveler find friendship and safety. In our modern Asatru community, we need to treat each other with respect and act together for the good of our community as a whole. This functions most solidly on the level of the kindred or hearth where nonfamilial members become extremely close and look out for each other. It can mean hospitality in the old sense of taking in people, which we've done, but in modern times it's more likely to mean loaning someone a car or a bit of money when they need it (that's need, not want). Part of hospitality is treating other people with respect and dignity. Many of our Gods are known to wander the world and stop in at people's houses, testing their hospitality and generosity. The virtue of hospitality means seeing people as if they were all individuals with self-respect and importance. Or perhaps from time to time, they are literally the Gods in human form. This has profound implications for social action in our religion. Our response to societal problems such as poverty (that's poverty folks, not laziness) is in many ways our modern reaction to this ancient virtue. In terms of our modern community as a whole, I see hospitality in terms of frontier "barn raisings" where a whole community would come together and pool their resources. This doesn't mean we have to forget differences, but we must put them aside for those who are of our Folk, and work for our common good. Industriousness Modern Asatruar must be industrious in their actions. We need to work hard if we are going to achieve our goals. There is so much for us to do. We've set ourselves the task of restoring Asatru to it's former place as a mainstream faith and by doing so reinvigorating our society and culture. We can't do this by sitting on our virtues, we need to make them an active part of our behavior. Industry also refers to simple hard work in our daily vocations, done with care and pride. Here's a few concrete examples. If you are reading this and don't have a kindred, why not? Stop reading now. Go and place ads in the appropriate local stores, get your name on the Ring of Troth, Wyrd Network, or Asatru Alliance networking lists, and with other Pagan groups. Put on a workshop. Ok, now you're back to reading and you don't agree with what I'm saying here? Well, be industrious! Write your own articles and arguments. Write a letter to the editor and suggest this material be banned_better that than passivity. Get the blood moving and go out and do it. That's how it gets done. The Gods do not favor the lazy. The same holds true for our non-religious lives. As Asatruar we should offer a good example as industrious people who add to whatever we're involved in rather than take from it. We should be the ones the business we work in can't do without and the ones who always seem to be able to get things done. When people think of Asatru, they should think of people who are competent and who offer something to the world. This doesn_t just apply to vocational work, but to the entire way we live our lives. It is just as much a mentality. The Vikings were vital people. They lived each day to its fullest and didn_t wring their hands in doubt or hesitation. We should put the same attitude forward in all that we do whether it is our usual vocation, devotion to the Gods, or leisure time. Self Reliance Industry brings us directly to the virtue of Self-Reliance, which is important both in practical and traditional terms. Going back to the general notion of this article, we are dealing with a form of morality that is largely self-imposed and thus requires self-reliance. We rely on ourselves to administer our own morality. Traditionally, our folkways have always honored the ability of a man or woman to make their own way in the world and not to lean on others for their physical needs. This is one of the ways in which several virtues reinforce and support each other. Hospitality cannot function if people are not responsible enough to exercise discipline and take care of themselves. It's for those that strive and fail or need assistance that hospitality is intended, not for the idle who simply won't take care of themselves. In terms of our relationships with the Gods, self-reliance is also very important. If we wish the Gods to offer us their blessings and gifts, we must make ourselves worthy of them_and the Gods are most pleased with someone who stands on their own two feet. This is one of the reasons for the Asatru _rule_ that we do not kneel to the Gods during our ceremonies. By standing we acknowledge our relationship as striving and fulfilled people looking for comradeship and a relationship, rather than acting as scraelings looking for a handout from on high. It takes very little for a God to attract a follower, if worship simply means getting on the gravy train. We, as Asatruar, are people who can make our own way in the world, but who choose to seek a relationship with the Gods. In mundane terms being self-reliant is a simple way to allow ourselves the ability to live as we wish to. In simple economic terms, if one has enough money in the bank one doesn't need to worry as much about being fired due to religious discrimination. We can look a bigot in the face and tell him just where he can put it. It's also nice to have something in the bank to lay down as a retainer on a good lawyer so we can take appropriate action. On the other side of this is self-reliance in the sense of Henry David Thoreau, who advocated a simple lifestyle that freed one from the temptations of materialism. Again, here we are able to live as we wish with those things that are truly important. Religious people from all faiths have found that adjusting ones material desires to match one's ability to meet them leaves one open for a closer relationship with deity and a more fulfilling life. While our ancestors were great collectors of gold goodies, they didn_t lust for possessions in and of themselves, but for what they stood for and could do for them. In fact, the greatest thing that could be said of a Lord was that he was a good _Ring Giver._ Being self-reliant also means taking responsibility for ones life. It's not just about refusing a welfare check or not lobbying for a tax exemption, but also refusing to blame ones failures on religious intolerance, the patriarchy, or an unfair system. The system may, in fact, be unfair, but it's our own responsibility to deal with it. In societal terms, we have become much too dependent on other people for our own good. As individuals we look to the government or to others to solve our problems and as a society we borrow billions from our descendants to pay for today's excesses. Most problems in this world could be solved if people just paid their own way as they went. Perseverance The final virtue is Perseverance which I think most appropriate because it is the one that we most need to keep in mind in our living of the other values. Our religion teaches us that the world is an imperfect place, and nothing comes easy. We need to continue to seek after that which we desire. In this imperfect world there are no free lunches or easy accomplishments_especially in the subjects we have set before ourselves. If we truly wish to build an Asatru community that people will hold up as an example of what committed people can do, then we must persevere through the hardships that building our religion is going to entail. We must be willing to continue on when we are pushed back. If one loses a job for ones religion, the answer is not to go back and hide, but to continue until one finds a vocation where one can more forward and live as an Asatruar should. Finally we must persevere when we simply fail. If one's kindred falls apart because of internal strife, one should go back and start over. Pick up the pieces and continue on. If nobody had done this after the disintegration of the Asatru Free Assembly, this would probably never have been written. We must be willing to continue in the hard work of making our religion strong_not just when it is convenient and easy to do so, but when it gets hard, inconvenient, or just plain boring. To accomplish without striving is to do little, but to persevere and finally accomplish a hard fought goal brings great honor. Appendices: Essays, Raven Kindred Information, Sample Rituals & Networking Information Hailing the Sun: A Sample Blot to honor Sunna at the Summer Solstice This ritual would be ideally performed at sunrise on the day of the summer Solstice. If possible the folk should gather while it is still dark or even better, remain awake throughout the night in vigil. A secondary time would be at noon on the Solstice. This ritual should not be performed at night. At any point in this ritual, within the realm of logic and dramatic flow, the parts marked as Gothi and Gythia may be shared among the folk. In addition, the parts are not necessarily sex specific, but the terminology is used as a convenience. Set Up: An altar should be placed in the center and the folk should form a circle around it, leaving space in the center for the _action_ to take place. For this ritual you will need some sort of mead or beer, a horn or chalice, an offering bowl, a hammer for consecrations, and a wheel of some sort, preferably a wagon wheel to symbolize the turning of the wheel of the year. Any reasonable tools may be substituted. The Wheel is placed on the ground near the altar or on the altar with candles around the rim (unlit). Consecration of space The Gothi goes to the center of the folk and forms the invocational position of the elhaz rune, both hands in the air at a rough 45_ angle. Gothi: We gather here to honor our sacred lady Sunna, who on this Solstice Morning, reaches her height of power. All hail Sunna! All: Hail Sunna! The Gythia takes the hammer and walks to each of the four corners and consecrates the space. Gythia: Hammer, hallow and hold this holy stead, that it will be a fitting place for our worship of our sacred lady Sunna! Hammar, Helga ve thetta ok hindra alla illska! Gythia returns hammer to altar and faces the altar. Gythia: I consecrate and hallow this altar to the work of our sacred lady Sunna! Here on this Solstice morning may the might of the Gods be brought to our holy stead. May the warm light of Sunna heat our hearts and hold our spirits. Gothi: Our holy lady watches and waits for the blot in her honor. Hail Sunna! All: Hail Sunna! (At this point it would be most appropriate for a song or reading to be performed. It should obviously be about Sunna or the sun or something appropriate to the day.) Invocation Gythia: Our lady Sunna is the light of knowledge, the warmth of love, and the heat of our passion. Let us spend a moment in silence, contemplating those things which she brings us. Leave a few moments for silent prayers and meditation. Gothi: Holy Sunna. Lady of the Sun. Light of the heavens. Ever pursued and ever free. We gather to greet and welcome you and offer you gifts on this day. We offer to you our prayers and love, our devotion and strength, our kinship and honor. All face the sun and form the elhaz posture. All: Hail to thee Sunna, light of Har newly risen. She whose holy light shone upon our ancestors of old and she who_s light will shine upon our children. We give you hail and welcome. Fill our hearts on this Solstice morning with your warm rays that your fires may burn in our hearts throughout the year. Hail Sunna! A few moments of silence are appropriate here. Blot Gothi: Now it is time to offer sacrifice to our holy lady. Gythia takes horn and Gothi fills it with mead. Gythia holds horn above her head, in the direction of the sun. Gythia: Here is our sacrifice, the essence of our love and spirit. We offer it to you as a token of our kinship and our love. As you drink of it, may your power fill this holy hlaut and feed our spirits. Gythia drinks from the horn and it is then passed around the folk, each taking a drink, with the horn returning to the Gythia. Gythia: Hail to thee Sunna! Gythia pours remainder of horn into the offering bowl. Gythia and Gothi take the bowl and evergreen sprig and walk around the folk, sprinkling the mead to the four corners and on the folk. Finally they return to the center and sprinkle the wheel. Gothi: Hail the sacred wheel of the sun. Now it is the longest day of the year and the sun is triumphant, but all changes and the wheel turns. Gythia lights candles on the wheel and members of the folk take it up and parade it around the grounds. A song or chant would be appropriate at this time. _The sun burns, the wheel turns!_ for example. Once the procession is done (this decision should be based on the subjective feelings of those involved and not planned out) the wheel should be returned to the altar. Gothi & Gythia assume the invocation position Gothi: Sacred Lady Sunna, Summer Sun now strongest. We thank you for your blessings of warmth and light. May you reign long. All: Hail Sunna! Hail Sunna! Hail Sunna! Libation Gothi takes up the hlaut bowl. Gothi: Now our rite is ended and the sacrifice is made. The wheel turns. To Sunna, to the Gods, to the Goddesses, and to Earth, mother of us all, we offer this holy mead, from the Gods to the Earth To us. From ourselves to the Earth to the Gods. Hail! Gothi pours contents of the hlaut bowl on the ground, possibly in the center of the wheel. If this ritual is done indoors, the libation should be poured outside afterwards. We usually trek outside immediately even if the ritual is an apartment. The physical action of pouring the libation is an important psychological trigger to both Gods and men that the ritual is over. What Is The Raven Kindred? The Raven Kindred is a non-incorporated religious organization dedicated to the worship and veneration of the ancient Nordic Gods and Goddesses and to the religion of Asatru. We are centered around the Worcester county area of Massachusetts and Southern Maryland/suburban D.C. areas, but have members in Western Massachusetts, the Boston area, and Connecticut. We welcome members from other areas, including contacts through correspondence. The focus of the Raven Kindred is specifically the religion of Asatru. While we honor our Pagan relations in the Wiccan community, we are following a much different tradition. Our rituals are the blot or offering and the sumble. Also while we are primarily involved as a kindred in exoteric forms of worship, we have members who are interested in seidhr, rune magic, and other esoteric pursuits within the Nordic Tradition. We practice a fairly conservative version of Asatru trying to keep close to our roots in the Asatru Free Assembly and Asatru Alliance including a tribalist sense of who we are as a Folk. However, we are also much more progressive in our social beliefs and politics and we welcome all persons regardless of ethnic origin, sexual preference, or political view. We hope to be a link between the Old and the New, holding to our dear values of Faith, Folk, and Family while discarding the prejudices that have held our religion back. Our goals for the future are quite far-reaching. We support the movement to bring Asatru out of the shadows and to spread the Troth of the Gods to all who are their natural children. More immediately we intend to network with existing Asatru organizations, both local and national, while also setting up other chapters of the Raven Kindred and doing some networking on our own behalf. Attendence at Raven Kindred rituals is essentially open, although we reserve the right to eject anyone who is disruptive as well as the right to hold observances that are open only to Professed Asatru or to Kindred Members. Full membership is available only to those who have Professed Asatru and place their membership in the Raven Kindred above other religious commitments. Decisions about the Raven Kindred are made by a majority vote by Full Members. Currently the Raven Kindred holds a Blot on the first Saturday of each month in Sturbridge Massachusetts and Wheaton Maryland. We also gather at other seasonally appropriate times for Blots and other activities. For more information on the Raven Kindred, Asatru, or our services please contact us at the following addresses: Raven Kindred Maryland/DC; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton MD 20902 Raven Kindred Massachusetts; P.O. Box 1137; Sturbridge MA 01566 Electronic mail may be sent via the internet to lstead@access.digex.net Raven Kindred Ritual Outline The Raven Kindred has developed a slightly different form of the Blot ritual which we use. This has come to pass because of a desire for more personal involvement as well as a smaller group of people than would be appropriate for a major blot. The major change, outside of a few cosmetic differences, is that we have added a _mini sumbel_ to the blot ritual in place of the sprinkling in which we offer three rounds of toasts: the first dedicated to the God or Goddess being honored and the remaining two to anything the participants deem appropriate which is not inimical to the purpose of the blot. (i.e. don_t toast the Jotnar during a ritual to Thor.) Setting the mood: Chant to Odin, Vili, Ve To begin each ritual we offer a three round chant of _Odin, Vili, Ve._ This serves two purposes. First we are linking ourselves to the Gods of creation and thus to the connections between Midgard and the Gods. Second and perhaps more appropriately it allows people to get themselves mentally prepared for the service. Hammer Rite We offer an invocation to Fire and Ice which are the central elements of the creation of the world. We ask that the place we are meeting be blessed and Holy for the coming of the Gods. Statement of purpose We far too often ignore this, but it_s a good idea to have the Gothi or Gythia who is presiding greet the participants and state something general about the purpose of the ritual. It need not be complicated _We gather together today to celebrate the Winter Nights as our ancestors did. To honor our ancestors, the Disir, and Freya the Great Dis and to renew our bonds as a family [kindred]._ General Prayer At this point one of our members usually offers up a prayer to the Aesir and Vanir collectively to thank them for their bounty since the last time we met and to ask their blessings upon the kindred and its members. Personal invocations We reserve a time between the opening of the ritual and the blot ceremony for people to offer any prayers or other invocations they feel necessary. This is the time when we Profess new members of Asatru. Other activities done at this time have included a kindred member thanking Saga, the Goddess of wisdom, for her recent graduation from college. Invoke deity of occasion At this point we make a point to specifically invoke and honor the deity that we are bloting. We attempt to list as many names and or functions of the God as possible and this serves a dual purpose in reminding the attendees of who the God is and why we are honoring Him. This is, however, separate from the offering. Meditation At this point we like to remind ourselves why we are here and what the Gods mean to us. We sit and someone either offers a spoken meditation or more often reads a story from the mythology. While most of us enjoy the poetic edda, we usually use a modern prose version of the myth as it is easier to follow. Offer/sanctify mead The Gothi takes up the horn and his assistant (often called _The Valkyrie_ by Asafolk) fills it with mead. The Gothi then steps to the altar and holds the horn aloft and asks the God to partake of it and charge it with his power. Toast to the deity of occasion This is when we begin to deviate substantially from the standard Asatru blot ritual. Beginning with the Gothi the horn is raised and a toast drunk to the God. The horn is then passed around to the Folk and a personal toast repeated. The only rule here is that the round is dedicated to the God invoked. Many times the toasts are personal thanksgiving or requests for aid or wisdom. At the end of the round the remains of the horn (and there should be some) are poured into the blotbowl. Remaining toasts We then take two more rounds to toast whatever Gods, ancestors, and beings each person wishes. There is not necessarily any continuity from one person to the next. Brags or oaths are also appropriate at this time. Professions, other major oaths, and major works of thanksgiving or praise are usually done before the blot. The second and third toasts are usually reserved for small things. Thank deity Finally we always remember to thank the deity and ask for his continued blessings on the Folk present. Oath Ring ceremony Our kindred has a ceremony that affirms our dedication to each other, to the kindred, and to the Gods. Each full Professed and accepted Kindred member comes forward and takes hold of the oath ring. (We are blessed in having a 6_ diameter brass oath ring made for us by a kindred member.) One person then recites a rede concerning itself with the symbol of a ring and something which connects us to the Gods, the Earth, and to each other. I should repeat, only kindred Members participate in this. If you haven_t sworn on the oath ring, you don_t take part in the ceremony. We have enlarged this at public events to all Professed persons, but change the rede to remove references to the kindred. Pour libation Finally we leave the Hof and pour a libation on the physical earth, adjourning outside to do so if we are indoors. The blot hitting the ground signals that the ritual is truly over. When we are working indoors in a living room or other non-dedicated space I always make sure I am the first to return and extinguish candles, turn on electric lights, etc. This provides a good hint to people_s minds that the ritual is, in fact, over. If we had a dedicated space, the procession outside to pour the blot would also empty the Hof and we would adjourn to the feast rather than returning to the temple. Raven Kindred Calendar The Raven Kindred meets on the first weekend of each month and for the four major Norse holidays: Summer and Winter Finding (Spring & Fall Equinox), Summer Solstice, and Yule. Traditional festivals which have been moved to fit our monthly schedule have their traditional date in parenthesis. Festivals marked with a _*_ are particular to the Raven Kindred. There are other holidays which our kindred does not meet to celebrate, but which are recognized by Asatru and celebrated on an individual or family basis. Snowmoon/January 1st weekend _ Frig_s Distaff _ Celebration of Frigga and the home (Trad.1/2) Horning/February 1st weekend _ Disting _ Celebration of Freya and the Disir (Trad. 2/14 ) Lenting/March 1st weekend _ Founding of the World. Celebration of Odin, Vili, and Ve* 3/21 _ Summer Finding - Celebration of the Goddess Ostara. Also a celebration of the Raven Kindred_s founding, Spring Equinox 1991. Ostara/April 1st weekend _ Alfarblot. Sacrifice to the elves and nature spirits (traditionally celebrated as part of Disting) Merry-Moon/May 1st weekend _ May Day/Walpurgis. Celebration of spring which we dedicate to Njord and Nerthus. (Trad. 5/1) Fallow/June 1st weekend _ Festival of Mead dedicated to Aegir and also to Bygvir and Beyla* 3/21 Summer Solstice _ Dedicated to Sunna, Goddess of the Sun Haymoon/July 1st weekend _ Blot in honor of Baldr* Harvest/August 1st weekend _ Freyfaxi, first harvest and celebration of Frey and his horse (Trad. 8/1) Shedding/September 1st weekend _ Discovery of the Runes, celebration of Odin as the God of Wisdom (Odinic Rite holiday celebrated 8/25) 9/21 Winter Finding _ Disirblot (Disirblot traditionally 10/13-10/15) Hunting/October 1st weekend _ Tyrblot, celebration of Justice and Honor. (Supreme Court session begins 1st Monday in October)* Fogmoon/November 1st weekend _ Einjerhar, celebration of war-dead and Ragnarok Dedicated to Odin and Freya (Trad. 11/11 _ Armistice Day) Wolfmoon/December 1st weekend _ Winterblot, dedicated to Skadi and/or Ullr* 12/21 _ Yule, multiday festival dedicated to Thor et al (Traditionally a festival lasting from the Mother Night 12/21 to New Years Day) The Bylaws of The Raven Kindred of Asatru I. Purpose The Raven Kindred of Asatru is an unincorporated non-profit religious association dedicated to the worship of the Old Norse and Germanic Gods and the practice of the ancestral religion of Asatru. II. Membership A. Associate Membership in the Raven Kindred is open to all practitioners of Asatru. No benefits are implied or guaranteed by Associate Membership. B. Full Membership (aka Voting Membership) is obtained by a majority vote of the current full members then present. Each member may vote yes, no, or to table the motion for 3 months. Candidates for Full Membership shall have fulfilled the following qualifications before being considered: 1) The candidate must have pledged troth to the Aesir and Vanir. 2) The candidate must be willing to place priority on his loyalties to Asatru and the Raven Kindred over other spiritual commitments. 3) The Candidate must be willing to swear an oath of membership to the Raven Kindred. C. Membership of any type will not be denied on the basis of race, sex, or sexual preference. D. Full or Associate Membership may be revoked by a vote of two thirds of the Full Members then present. E. Membership in the Raven Kindred of Asatru, either Associate or Full, may be resigned by serving verbal notice at any function of the Kindred or by written notice. III Governance A. Governance shall be by majority vote. Each Full Member shall have one vote. Only Full Members shall vote, but any interested parties shall be given reasonable access to address the Kindred. Full Members may hold proxy for other Full Members. B. Such officers as needed shall be appointed for whatever terms and functions the Kindred deems necessary. C. Meetings, during which the Kindred may conduct business, may be scheduled by the Kindred as needed, but the Kindred shall meet not less than once every six months. Any time that 50% of the Kindred_s Full Members are met together, either physically or through other interactive means, a meeting may be declared for the purpose of conducting business. IV Alliances Subject to the restrictions in section V, the Raven Kindred of Asatru shall seek out alliances with other groups of similar nature and purpose for the betterment of our faith as a whole. V Independence The Raven Kindred of Asatru shall not sign any treaty or affiliate with any group that would deny its independence as an entity or control its internal affairs. In any alliances, affiliations, or treaties, these By-Laws shall have precedence over any other instruments signed by the Kindred. VI. Amendments These by-laws may be amended by a vote of 2/3 of all Full Members. Any proposed amendments must be circulated to all Full Members in writing 30 days before such amendments may be voted on. Sources and Resources for Asatru Please note: This resource list is provided as is and is intended to be comprehensive. The Raven Kindred doesn_t necessarily endorse any of the following organizations, publications, etc. Organizations: The Ring of Troth P.O. Box 25637; Tempe, AZ 85285-5637 The Ring of Troth was founded by Edred Thorsson. He resigned in Spring of 2242 (Runic Reckoning _ 1992 C.E.) and has been replaced by Prudence Priest, most well known as the editor of Yggdrasil. The Ring is governed by an appointed High Rede of 9 persons who guide the national affairs of the Ring. They offer a number of programs include an Elder training program for prospective clergy, The Rune Ring for study of the magical properties of the Runes from within a Germanic Pagan context, and recognition for local Kindreds. The Ring of Troth requires that _its members affiliate for cultural and religious reasons rather than for racial and political reasons. The use of the Ring of Troth as a platform for any type of political or racial propoganda will not be tolerated_ The Troth provides a quarterly magazine and a networking list. There are also regional gatherings put on by individual Kindreds. Work is currently underway on a book of rituals. Dues are $24 and include a subscription to Idunna. If one does not wish to join, Friends of the Troth may receive Idunna for $24 as well. The Asatru Alliance of Independent Kindreds P.O. Box 961; Payson AZ 85547 The Alliance is the linear descendent of the Asatru Free Assembly. They are a democratically run national confederation of independent kindreds who meet once a year in an Allthing to conduct business. It is essentially conservative and libertarian. _The Alliance is based upon the ancient model of tribal democracy known as the Thing, and member kindreds support a code of laws we feel necessary to preserve and protect Asatru from those who would dilute, subvert, or in any way harm our religion. Membership in the Alliance is encouraged for those who actively promote and believe in the Aesir and Vanir and our collective Heathen Heritage. Anyone interested in joining the Alliance should contact the kindred of choice for acceptance. There is no membership in the Alliance except through a kindred. Applicants must subscribe to the membership requirements of the kindred of choice and uphold the bylaws of the Asatru Alliance._ This group has recently adopted a declaration stating that Asatru is an ethnic religion, so membership now seems to be limited on the basis of race. The Odinic Rite BM Edda; London, WCN 3XX The Odinic Rite BM Runic: London WCN 3XX These two organizations are each claiming to be the _true_ Odinic Rite. The BM Runic address is the older one, but the BM Edda address seems to be producing more publications. I_d suggest writing to both and figuring it out on your own. The Odinic Rite is an organization for the revival of Odinism in England. If one sends a few postal reply coupons I believe each will send you information. Both publish magazines. Eagles Reaches P.O. Box 382; Deer Park TX 77536-0382 Eagles Reaches is now doing national organizing and correspondence connections. The Raven Kindred 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton MD 20902 The Raven Kindred offers correspondence connections, regional coordination, booklets and pamphlets. They also operate the Wyrd Network, a correspondence network for Wiccans to discuss the compability with and conversion to Asatru. Magazines: Vor Tru _ $12/year. The Journal of the Asatru Alliance (see above address). Concentrates on community issues within the Alliance, news of kindreds, letters, etc. Sometimes contains racist material. Idunna _ $24/year. The journal of the Ring of Troth. Idunna concentrates on fairly heavy academic subjects, runelore, translations etc within a religious framework. Mountain Thunder _ $18/year, 1630 30th St #266; Boulder CO 80301. Glossy covered and well put together. Usually excellent articles on relgious issues of Heathenry, scholarly stuff, reviews, and opinion. Has devoted a lot of commentary to the Asatru community and where it_s going. Uncle Thorr_s Newsletter _ $12/year, P.O. Box 080437; Staten Island NY 10308-0005. Simple newsletter with ranting and raving from Uncle Thorr and company, news from NY, and articles on lifestyle, runes, and other topics. Ask & Embla _ $12/year; P.O. Box 271; Carrollton OH 44615. Small amateur production with commentary on Asatru and nothern lore. Raven_s Cry _ Write for rates & sample; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton MD 20902. Small iregular kindred newsletter Wyrd Network Newsletter _ Write for rates & sample; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton MD 20902. Newsletter/letter exchange for Wiccans interested in Asatru. The Runestone _ $10/year; P.O. Box 445; Nevada City CA 95959. Published by Stephen McNallen & Maddy Hutter, this is the reincarnation of the AFA_s seminal journal on Asatru. Interesting commentary, interested in heroic viking past. On Wings of Eagles _$25/year; Eagles Reaches; P.O. Box 382; Deer Park, TX 77536-0382 Odinism Today _ £8.50 (overseas) BM Edda; London; WC1N 3XX; England/United Kingdom. A nice little quarterly with articles on mythology, reviews, etc. ORBriefing _ $20 (overseas) BM Runic; London; WC1N 3XX; England/UK. A small newsletter of happenings and opinion. Kindreds: American Church of Teutonic Life; 107 Court St, Suite 131; Watertown NY 13601 Arizona Kindred; P.O. Box 961; Payson AZ 85547 (Asatru Alliance) Asatru Fellowship; P.O. Box 271; Carrollton OH 44615 Asatru Fellowship; 858 W Armitage Ste. 139; Chicago, IL 60614 Barnstokker Hearth; P.O. Box 1972; Seattle WA 98111-1972 Bond of the Grae Wolf; 119 Waipapa Rd; Hataitai; Wellington 3, New Zealand Crow_s Nest Kindred; P.O. Box 3392; Galveston, TX 77552 Eagle Kindred; P.O. Box 1942; McCall, ID 83638 Eagles Reaches; P.O. Box 382; Deer Park TX 77536 (Ring of Troth) Freya_s Folk; 537 Jones St #165; San Francisco, CA 94102 Gering Hall; 720 Huntington St; Watertown, NY 13601 Hammer Oak Kindred; 2626 35th Ave; Oakland, CA 94619 Hammerstead Kindred; P.O. Box 22379; Lexington, KY 40522-2379 Helga Ve Kindred; P.O Box 531; Bouse, AZ 85325 Heritage and Tradition; CP 244, Succ. P.A.T.; Montreal Quevec, H1B 5K3 Canada Hlidhskjalf Kindred; 1513 Thurlow St; Orleans, Ontario K4A-1D8; Canada Hrafnaheimr; 7162 Melrose Ave; Los Angeles, CA 90046 Irmunsul Hearth; P.O. Box 18812; Auston, TX 78760 (Ring of Troth) Midgard Kindred; P.O. Box 4071; Toledo, OH 43609 Mountain Moot; P.O. Box 328; Elizabeth CO 80107 Nerthus Heart; 27 Gap Rd; Black Hawk CO 80422 Niumd Baqra Kindred; P.O. Box 4371; Sunland, CA 91041 North Carolina Kindred; Rt 3 Box 113; Laqwndale, NC 28090 Northern California Kindred; P.O. Box 445; Nevada City CA 95959 N. Ancestral Runic Fellowship; P.O. Box 199045; Indianapolis, IN 46219 Norvegr Kindred; 219 Lewis St; Wash Court House OH 43160 Ocean Kindred; P.O. Box 09007; Staten Island, NY 10309 Raven Kindred North; P.O. Box 1137; Sturbridge MA 01566 Raven Kindred South; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton, MD 20902 Saehrimner Kindred; 1861 County Rd 1114; Cullman, AL 35055 Skelland Kindred; P.O. Box 7608; Clearwater FL 34618 Thorr_s Hammer Kindred; 9461 Bella Vista Rd; Apple Valley CA 92308 Torwald Kindred; 1630 30th St #266; Boulder CO 80301 Ullsbekk Kindred; P.O. Box 1156; Denver, CO 80201 Vinland Kindred; P.O. Box 15431 PSS; Stamford CT 06901 (Asatru Alliance) Vlissinger Hearth; 3016 154th St; Flushing, NY 11354 Wotan Kindred; 8117 NE 32nd St; Vancouver, WA 948662 Wulfing Kindred; P.O. Box 18237; Chicago IL 60618 (Asatru Alliance) Yggdrasil Kindred; 1709 West Midvale Village Dr; Tucson AZ 85476 Recommended Books: The Poetic Edda, Lee Hollander translation (basic mythology in an excellently translated poetic version.) The Prose Edda, Jean Young translation (basic mythology) The Norse Myths, Kevin Crossley Holland (basic mythology in modern language and retelling, excellent for readings or meditation) A Book of Troth by Edred Thorsson (Not my favorite author and not a book without many imperfections, but the only mass market book of the basic rituals of Asatru) Teutonic Religion by Kveldulfr Gundarsson (basic text on modern Germanic Paganism. I also recommend his book on runes Teutonic Magic.) The Raven Kindred Ritual Book (basic text on Asatru ritual and beliefs, $5 from the Raven Kindred South, checks made out to Lewis Stead, available for free download from online services or the Moonrise BBS at (301)_5939609 or by e-mail from lstead@access.digex.net The AFA Rituals, three volumes available from World Tree Books ($18 from World Tree) The original ritual volumes from the Asatru Free Assembly. Introduction to Ritual and Invocation Tape ($7 from World Tree Books) A basic cassette tape that goes through a ritual step by step, the other side is a variety of invocations and prayers. The last two are from World Tree Publications; P.O. Box 961; Payson AZ 85547 (checks payable to the O.F. of Arizona). World Tree is a service of the Asatru Alliance and carries a number of tapes and booklets as well as Thor_s Hammers and statuary. Computer Network Resources: There is a Runes & Asatru conference on the Pagan/Occult Distribution System (PODSnet). This network has nodes around the world and BBSes drop in and out of the network. The following are long term stable boards: The Mountain Oracle, Colorado: 719-380-7886, Baphonet, New York: 718-499-0513, Mysteria, California: 818-353-8891, Sacred Grove, Washington State: 206-634-1980, Moonrise, Maryland/DC: 301-593-9609, Pandora_s Box, Ottawa Canada: 613-829-1209, PODS, Sydney Australia: 61-2-833-1848, PODS Melbourne Australia: 61-3-796-2180 The Troth Line is an internet mailing list for Asatru and The Ring of Troth. For subscription information send an E-Mail message to mimir@u.washington.edu. The list itself is at troth-l@seanews.akita.com. The internet is accessable through America Online, CompuServe, Delphi, and tens of thousands of other locations. Please send additions and corrections to Lewis Stead; 11160 Veirs Mill Rd L15-175; Wheaton MD 20902 or through e-mail to lstead@access.digex.net. Bulb Planting Earth Chant By: Eileen breath of the stone is strange to me i know it lives as i can't see force of the earth is strong and free sustenance and beauty be born of the stars and sprang from the ground Mother, Goddess all around Wheel must turn as the seasons show what lies dead shall surely grow RITUAL FOR WOMEN RECLAIMING THE GOD The session begins with everyone telling how the figure of the God had been "spoiled" for them -- ie, by patriarchal and/or sexually repressive religions, by the destructive aspects of male energy (war, domination), etc. The altar is decorated with symbols of the God -- ours had antlers, a crystal phallus, grain & grapes, a plastic goat from a Celebrato Doppelbock beer bottle, an abstract figure of Baron Samedi (a T shape made of dowels and dressed in a black frock coat with a top hat, a red scarf, and a cane), a couple of statues of Chinese sages or bodhisattvas. I. Quarters: E - Myrddin, S - Weyland, W - Taliesin, N - Freyr (sorry this is so sketchy; I just improvised them on the spot. Check out their respective mythologies for ideas on how to invoke them) II. Guided Meditation GROUND AND CENTER. SINK INTO THE EARTH. ALL AROUND YOU, THE BREATHING OF SISTERS BECOMES THE BREATHING OF THE WORLDS' WINDS. THE HEAT OF OTHER BODIES BECOMES THE FIRE OF ALL LIFE. THE RUSH OF BLOOD IN YOUR EARS BECOMES THE MURMURING OF THE SEA. THE FLOOR BECOMES A RICH, LOAMY FIELD, FRESH PLOUGHED. FEEL THE SOIL. RUB IT BETWEEN YOUR FINGERS. SEE IT AND SMELL IT. IT IS DARK, ALMOST BLACK. IT SMELLS OF COMPOST,SOMEHOW SMOKY. IT IS SMOOTH, CRUMBLY, FREE OF ROCKS, FIRM TO SUPPORT ROOTS BUT LOOSE TO LET THEM SPREAD. THIS IS MOTHER. LIE DOWN UPON HER BODY AND EMBRACE HER; FEEL HER WARMTH, WARMTH FROM THE SUN, SEEPING INTO YOU, COMFORTING YOU. RISE UP. AT YOUR SIDE, HANGING FROM YOUR SHOULDER, IS A BAG. WHEN YOU REACH INTO IT, YOUR HAND COMES OUT FULL OF SEEDS. WALK BACK AND FORTH IN THE FIELD, SCATTERING THE SEEDS. FEEL THE SOIL GIVE UNDER YOUR FEET. FEEL THE SUN OVERHEAD; IT IS HOT, AND YOU ARE GETTING TIRED. KEEP ON, RHYTHMICALLY REACHING INTO THE BAG AND CASTING THE SEEDS ABROAD. YOUR SWEAT RUNS OFF YOU INTO THE FURROWS, SOAKING INTO THE SOIL. NOW THE WHOLE FIELD IS PLANTED. NOW YOU CAN SIT AT THE FIELD'S EDGE AND REST. YOU ARE TIRED. YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU COULD REST FOR DAYS. YOU SIT EASY, BALANCED, ROOTED LIKE A STONE. YOU ARE A STONE. YOU ARE THE GUARDIAN STONE OF THIS FIELD. YOU WATCH, AS DAYS PASS. SLOWLY, SLOWLY, THE SUN ROLLS OVERHEAD, CLOUDS FILL THE SKY AND EMPTY OVER THE FIELD WITH THUNDER AND LIGHTNING. SLOWLY, SLOWLY, THE FIELD TURNS FROM BROWN TO GREEN, AS THE FIRST SPROUTS FORCE THEIR WAY FROM THE SOIL. DAYS PASS. WEEKS PASS. THE SPROUTS LOOK FIRST LIKE GRASS, THEN STALKS APPEAR AND GROW EVER LONGER. AT THE TOP OF EACH STALK, SWELLINGS BECOME NEW SEEDS. THE CLUSTERS OF SEEDS GROW, BLANKETED IN THEIR CHAFF, THE HEADS OF GRAIN GROW BRUSHY, BEARDED. THE GRAIN TURNS GOLD FROM GREEN; THE HEADS BOW DOWN UNDER THE WEIGHT OF THEIR SEED. AND NOW YOU SEE PEOPLE COMING INTO THE FIELD, WOMEN WITH SICKLES IN THEIR HANDS. THEY ARE SINGING A DIRGE, A MOURNING SONG. THEY COME INTO THE FIELD AND CUT THE STALKS, KILLING THE PLANTS! YOU ARE A STONE, BUT YOU FEEL YOUR HEART BREAK WITH GRIEF FOR THIS KILLING. SOON, ONLY STUBBLE IS LEFT; THE WOMEN HAVE TAKEN THE GRAIN AWAY. BEFORE LONG, MORE WOMEN COME, AND SET FIRE TO THE STUBBLE. YOU FEEL THE HEAT OF IT WARMING YOUR STONE BODY. YOU FEEL CRACKS OPEN INSIDE YOU. SOON, THE FIRE BURNS OUT, AND THE FIELD IS LEFT BLACK AS IT BEGAN. THE WOMEN RETURN WITH SEEDS, PLANTING AS BEFORE. THE WEATHER TURNS COLD, AND YOUR STONE-SELF CRACKS APART; PIECES OF YOU FALL ONTO THE FIELD. YOUR AWARENESS IS IN THE FIELD NOW, IN THE SEEDS. SLEEPING IN THE EARTH, UNDER THE SNOW. WITH SPRING, YOU FEEL THE EARTH WARMING, AND YOU KNOW WITHOUT KNOWING HOW THAT THE SUN IS ABOVE YOU. YOU PUSH UPWARD, TOWARD THE UNSEEN SUN. YOU SEND DOWN A TAP ROOT TO HELP PUSH YOU UP AND TO FEED YOU, AND IN THE OTHER DIRECTION YOU SEND A SHOOT WITH TWO LEAF BUDS. BEFORE LONG, YOU BURST OUT INTO THE SUNLIGHT. ALL AROUND YOU ARE OTHER PLANTS. AS THE DAYS PASS, YOU GROW WITH THEM. WHEN THE THUNDERSTORMS COME, YOU FEEL THAT THIS RAIN IS RICHER, AND YOU FEEL BLESSED. SEEDS DRINK RAIN AND EAT SUNLIGHT AND GROW HEAVY UPON YOU. YOU CANNOT HOLD THEM UP; THEY PULL YOU DOWN. YOU ARE OPPRESSED, AND AT A STANDSTILL. YOU SENSE MOVEMENT IN THE FIELD, AND THEN THERE IS A SHARP PAIN! YOU ARE CUT OFF FROM YOUR ROOT! YOUR POWER TO TRANSFORM SUNLIGHT SLIPS AWAY FROM YOU LIKE BLOOD! YOU ARE DYING! YOU ARE TAKEN AWAY FROM YOUR MOTHER FIELD AND THROWN ON A HARD FLOOR. YOU ARE BEATEN, BROKEN APART, SCATTERED. YOU ARE DEAD. BUT SOME AWARENESS REMAINS WITH YOU. YOU FEEL THE PIECES OF YOURSELF GATHERED UP IN HUMAN HANDS, AND THEN SCATTERED AGAIN, THIS TIME ON SOFTNESS. IT IS MOTHER! THEY HAVE RETURNED YOU TO MOTHER! AND NOW YOU ARE MORE THAN YOU WERE BEFORE; BEFORE YOU WERE A SINGLE PLANT -- NOW YOU ARE A DOZEN PLANTS. THE CYCLE IS REPEATED, ALL OF YOUR SELVES ARE KILLED AND THROWN ABOUT, AND NOW YOU ARE HUNDREDS OF SELVES! YOU DIE, YOU ARE TORN APART, YOU ARE REGATHERED, AND REBORN. YOUR HUNDREDS OF SELVES SPEAK IN THIS VOICE: EVEN THIS AM I, AND I AM GOD. COME BACK TO YOUR ONE SELF NOW, YOUR ONE HUMAN SELF. YOU ARE SITTING BESIDE THE FIELD, WHERE YOU SAT DOWN, WITH THE EMPTY SEED BAG AT YOUR SIDE. YOU LEAVE IT THERE, YOU RISE UP, AND TURN AWAY FROM THE FIELD, TO THE WOODS AT THE BACK OF THE FIELD. YOU FEEL LEAF MOULD AND TWIGS UNDERFOOT. ALL AROUND YOU YOU SEE LIFE SPRINGING UP OUT OF DEATH. WHERE TREES HAVE FALLEN, NEW PLANTS ARE GROWING UP THROUGH THE ROTTING TRUNKS. WHERE ANIMALS HAVE DIED, THEIR BODIES HAVE DECAYED TO PROVIDE FOOD FOR THE PLANTS ALL AROUND. ALL AROUND YOU, LIFE IS LIVING OFF OF DEATH; THIS IS THE NATURE OF LIFE, ITS HORROR AND ITS WONDER. YOU HEAR A NOISE NEARBY AND TURN TO LOOK; THERE IS A MAGNIFICENT STAG JUST ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A BUSH; YOU BLINK, AND IT IS GONE. WAS IT ONLY BRANCHES? EVERYWHERE AROUND YOU, GREEN THINGS ARE FULL OF THE FIRE OF LIFE, AS ARE YOU. YOU FEEL LIFE THRILLING THROUGH YOU, LIKE ELECTRICITY. SOMETHING ELSE IS EXCITING YOU -- WHAT IS IT? YOU CANNOT QUITE TELL. IS IT A SCENT, A SOUND, A SENSE? SOMETHING, THERE ON THE EDGE OF YOUR HEARING, SOMETHING YOU CAN ALMOST TOUCH, A FAINT SCENT YOU HALF-REMEMBER. WHAT IS IT? YOU ARE AROUSED AND DETERMINED TO TRACK DOWN THE SOURCE. EVERYWHERE YOU TURN, YOU SEE GLIMPSES, HALF-SEEN, OF SOMETHING. SOMETHING FLITTING THROUGH THE TREES. IS IT A DEER? A WILD BOAR? A FERAL GOAT? A BEAR? ON THE BUSHES YOU FIND TUFTS OF HAIR. BEFORE YOU YOU SEE TRACKS -- CLOVEN HOOVED, TOED, CLAWED. WHAT ARE YOU FOLLOWING? DO YOU DARE GO ON? ALL AROUND YOU IS THE PULSING OF ELEMENTAL FORCES: THE FIRE OF LIFE, THE WIND OF BREATH, THE WATER OF BLOOD, THE EARTH, THE EARTH, THE EARTH, POWERFUL AND DARK AND UNKNOWABLE. ABOVE YOU, THE SKY DARKENS, THE WIND RISES. YOU HEAR THUNDER AND THE BAYING OF HOUNDS, CRYING FOR BLOOD AND DEATH. YOU TREMBLE WITH FEAR AND EXCITEMENT; WHITE HOUNDS WITH RED EARS BURST OUT OF THE BUSHES, SURROUNDING YOU. THEY GROWL -- BUT THEY ARE WAGGING THEIR TAILS. ARE YOU THEIR PREY, OR THEIR MASTER? YOU FEEL ANTLERS ON YOUR OWN BROW; ARE YOU THE STAG THEY HUNT, OR THE HUNTER WHO CARES FOR THEM? NOW THERE ARE PEOPLE WITH THE DOGS, AND YOU FEEL THE LOVE OF THE PEOPLE, THE RESPECT. YOUR DEATH WILL FEED THEM, GIVE THEM THEIR NEEDS, AND THEY ARE GIVING YOU THEIR LOVE. YOU KNOW THEIR HUNGER, AND YOU FEEL GREAT COMPASSION FOR THEM. YOU LIE DOWN AND LEAVE YOUR BODY TO THEM; THEY SING WITH JOY AS YOUR SELF FLIES UP OVERHEAD, OUTWARD, SPREADING, INTO THE TREES AND PLANTS AND ANIMALS AND EVERYTHING. YOU ARE SUDDENLY OVERWHELMED BY THE FEELING THAT YOU ARE BEING CAUGHT UP IN THE COSMOS; YOU ARE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING; YOU ARE NOT YOURSELF; YOU HAVE NO SELF; YOU FEEL A SUDDEN, UNREASONING TERROR; YOU ARE STILL; YOU ARE ALL. SLOWLY, SOMETHING BREAKS INTO YOUR FEAR. YOU HEAR A SWEET, LOW, BREATHY PIPING. THE PIPING CALMS YOU, AND YOU KNOW NOW IN YOUR HEART THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS A PART OF EVERYTHING AND EVERYTHING IS WITHIN YOU. YOU ARE STILL; YOU ARE ALL; YOU ARE LIFE AND DEATH AND REBIRTH; WITHIN YOUR OWN HUMAN BODY IS THE MICROCOSM OF ALL THAT IS. THE GREEKS NAME THIS ALL "PAN". YOU STAND BACK IN THE WOOD, HEARING THE MUSIC, SMELLING THE SMELLS OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS, FEELING THAT PULSE OF POWER FILLING YOU, INFORMING YOU, EMPOWERING YOU. YOU ARE ECSTATIC! YOU TAKE TO YOUR TOES AND DANCE WITH JOY! AROUND YOU, ANIMALS COME OUT OF THE FOREST TO DANCE WITH YOU, REJOICING IN LIFE! YOU SEE THE LIGHT OF THE SUN FILTERING DOWN THROUGH LEAVES, AND THE LIGHT SEEMS TO TAKE A SHAPE. WHAT IS THAT SHAPE? WHO DO YOU SEE? THE GOD STANDS, SMILING, WELCOMING, BEFORE YOU. WHO IS HE? HE IS ALL THINGS TO ALL PEOPLE; WHAT IS HE TO YOU? HIS EYES ARE SAD AND WARY AS A DEER'S. HOW WILL YOU DEAL WITH HIM? HE REACHES OUT TO YOU; YOU HAVE BEEN AS HE, YOU HAVE DIED AND RISEN, YOU HAVE BEEN THE LIFE OF WILDNESS, YOU KNOW THAT HE HAS BEEN WITHIN YOU AS YOU; WILL YOU WELCOME HIM BACK AS HE, THE GOD? YOU DO TOUCH HIM, AND WELCOME HIM. HE THROWS BACK HIS HEAD TO LAUGH FOR JOY! AND NOW YOU DANCE TOGETHER, AS ONE, FOR YOU ARE ONE. SIT UP. FEEL YOUR BODY! TOUCH YOUR BODY AND FEEL YOUR FLESH, FEEL THE HEAT OF LIFE UNDER YOUR FLESH. BREATHE AND FEEL THE WIND WITHIN YOU. MOVE, AND FEEL THE JOY OF THE DANCE! RISE UP, AND DANCE THIS INVOCATION! HE IS THE STORM THAT SCOURS THE LAND HE IS THE GUIDE OF HIDDEN WAYS HE IS THE HOLLY AND THE OAK HE IS THE HUNTER AND THE PREY HE IS THE LORD OF STAG AND BEAR HE IS THE SLAYER AND THE SLAIN HE IS THE BLADE OF SACRIFICE HE IS THE BLOOD THAT HEALS ALL PAIN HE IS THE WORD THAT MADE THE WORLDS HE IS THE SONG IN EVERY THROAT HE IS THE IVY AND THE GRAPE HE IS THE LORD OF RAM AND GOAT HE IS THE HEAT IN LIMB AND LOIN HE IS THE RAPTURE AND THE FRIGHT HE IS THE FIRST LORD OF THE DANCE HE IS THE FLAME UPON THE HEIGHT HE IS THE SOWER AND THE SEED HE IS THE STONE BESIDE THE TRACK HE IS THE BEARDED HEADS OF GRAIN HE IS THE LEAF AND BRANCH AND BARK HE IS THE LORD OF HORSE AND BOAR HE IS THE BLACKTHORN ON THE MOUND HE IS THE PULSE OF WOODLAND'S HEART HE IS THE HOME AND HOLY GROUND HE IS THE SALMON IN THE POOL HE IS THE WINNER OF THE MEAD HE IS THE HAZEL AND THE ASH HE IS THE SECRET IN THE REED HE IS THE SPEAKER OF THE RUNE HE IS THE CORACLE ON SEA HE IS THE SWALLOWED AND REBORN HE IS THE RIDER OF THE TREE When all have danced to satiation, bring the dancing to a close, then say: LOOK AROUND AND SEE THE ALL IN YOUR SISTERS! REACH OUT AND EMBRACE THE GOD YOU SEE THERE! Feel the presence of the God What/how do you feel now?