The Coolest Thing I've Seen This Week: The Dwale

Some years ago I crafted a fake Lovecraftian Grimoire called the Dwale of Avagddu, writing the content and creating a big fake-evil book. The book was made easily enough, by composing the pages, having the book hot-glue-strip bound at a neighborhood print-shop, aging the pages and then pasting all into a case ripped from a full-size sketch-book and sculpted with paper clay. My kinda pointless fun...

I'm very pleased that the Manager over at the Propnomicon blog (who I recently added to my blog roll over on the right hand side of your screen) likes the item enough to post the photos I sent.

Thanks!

Kindling A Fire of Blessing

In the 'altar work' of modern spellcasters, one of the simplest sorts of spell to cast is called 'setting a light'. This will be functionally familiar to most Pagans (and most Catholics, for that matter) as the lighting of a candle or small lamp for a specific intention, on one's own behalf or that of another. Healing for a distant friend, prosperity, return of lost items are just some of the things commonly worked for by this simple means.
In the process of writing 'cleanup' for the Nine Moons, I put together this simple candle-blessing charm, meant to accompany the setting of a light for a specific purpose.

A Charm for Kindling a Blessing Candle
• Prepare a spot for the candle to rest. If possible that spot should be on or near your Shrine, and be arranged with a sigil or photo or other expression of the intent of the candle.
• Hallow the Fire and Water on the Shrine, perhaps with the usual simple charm:
The Fire, the Well, the Sacred Tree
Flow and Flame and Grow in me
In Land, Sea and Sky, Below and on High,
Let the Water be blessed and the Fire be hallowed.
• Make an offering to all the beings of your Shrine, perhaps saying:
Gods and Dead and Mighty Sidhe
Allies all, upon my Shrine
Offering I make to ye
And ask now that your aid be mine
Now state your intention in clear and direct words, speaking to the spirits and the Shrine as persons, telling them the intention for which the flame is kindled. If you wish you might intone a proper conjuring word, draw a sigil over the candle, etc.
• With the candle ready upon your Shrine, find your peace and your power, and balance the Two Powers in yourself.
• Hold your left hand cupped before you and drip a few drops of water from the Well into your palm. Draw the Underworld Power strongly into that hand.
• Take up the candle and place it in the left hand, setting it in the drops of water.
• Draw the Sky Power into your right hand, and take a light from the Fire. Kindle the candle, saying:
Out of the Deep I draw a light
Fire on Water brightly shine.
I claim my will, by magic’s might
And set this flame upon my Shrine
Set the candle in place, and say:
Hear my voice as I do call
As this boon I ask of ye
Bless and aid me, spirits all
And as I will, so let it be!
• Contemplate the candle in its place for time, and then conclude with a short final charm:
The blessings of the Holy Ones be on me and mine
My blessings on all beings, with peace on thee and thine
The Fire, the Well, the Sacred Tree
Flow and Flame and Grow in me
Thus do I remember the work of the Wise.

Caesar’s Druids Review

Caesar’s Druids; Story of an Ancient Priesthood
Miranda Aldhouse-Green2010, Yale University Press

I’ve read rather a lot of books about the ancient Druids over the years, and it’s delightful to see this excellent new piece. The first edition hardback is handsomely produced, with dozens of illustrations of artifacts. The 267 page text is supported by 30 pages of notes and 20 of bibliography, plus a useful index. While Green’s style remains personable and occasionally humorous, this is in every way a scholastic treatment of the subject and not a popularization.

“Caesar’s Druids” is a survey of what we know about the ancient Gallo-British category, the Druids. It begins with the classical authors’ discussion of the Druids, laying out the ‘noble savage’ and ‘merely savage’ schools of comment. However the author is an archeologist, and she concentrates heavily on the archeology of the questions of who the Druids were, and what they did.

The book begins with Pliny, and sets the tone for how the subject will be approached. The famous description of Druids in white robes cutting mistletoe after sacrificing a bull is deconstructed in detail. Using the best current archeology of Gaul and Britain, she looks at bull sacrifice practices, sickles, and lunar symbolism in Celtic artifacts. She also brings cross-cultural comparisons into play. Throughout the book she is willing to seek to understand what a Druid might have been doing by examining what other tribal, polytheistic peoples have done, or do today. So she finds a perfectly apt quote concerning white robes among an African cattle-culture quite acceptable as support for the idea of Druids in white robes. She is careful to use such things only as suggestive hints, however, and she refrains from trying to tell us ‘what the Druids really did’ at all times through the book.

The book assumes that the classical authors were describing what they knew of a culture and religious system that actually existed. A few pages are spent dismissing the argument that Druids are a classical literary construct, and then that idea is considered finished. Caesar is considered a reliable witness (as he is throughout the scholastic world, now) though he may quote/plagiarize older sources. Still, Caesar was on the ground among Druids, and wrote about it. Green uses classical description as her starting point as she combs the archeological record for traces of the Celts’ religious professionals.

One thing that will please Pagans is Green’s total acceptance of the Druids as religious professionals – that is, as a priesthood. From the title on through, Druids are described as priests, physicians, bards and possibly engineers, the archeology nicely supporting classical descriptions of the multi-skilled intellectual class. Green looks for material evidence of religious activity – sacrificial practices (animal and human – the book assumes that Druid human sacrifice did occur), temples and sanctuaries, Druidic tools and regalia, actual depictions of Druids and their tombs. She finds some remarkable stuff, including possible divination tools unknown to moderns.

The author is also interested in situating the Druids as the magico-religious practitioners of a traditional people. She examines the idea of ‘shamanism’ among them and while reaching no conclusions finds interesting parallels that may illuminate some archeological finds. She looks at calendar-keeping and festivals. Her discussions of the power of sacred groves, and of musicians and singers as religious specialists are excellent. She neither accepts nor scoffs at the cultural descriptions of sacred things, often reporting spirit or spiritual events without comment.

The book rounds out with a fine chapter on Druidic afterlife teachings, and an interesting look at what Druidic survival and resistance might have been like under Roman rule. There is also a good chapter on the question of women Druids, and finally a short and rather whimsical history of British Druid revivals. While the author treats these a little lightly, she does not disparage modern Paganism, and in fact takes its (our) side against those who would dismiss it (us) as merely silly.

This excellent survey should be on the shelf of any student of Druidry who wants to keep up with recent archeology. It may also just kick up some new ideas. Three cool things I learned:
1: “Crane Bags” may be legit.
2: Druids may actually have used rattles for trance (if not drums…)
3: Wands are just as important as I thought they were.
Thanks, Miranda, for the teaching and the inspiration.

Druid's Discipline

Here's an abridgement of one of the final articles for the Nine Moons book. I'm within about 6,000 words of officially done! I'm working to have the whole thing done by the calends of January.
This article is aimed at students who have just completed the big 'Convocation Rite' at the end of month 8 and are starting on the final month, in which they begin to establish what their ongoing practice will look like.

Doing the Work – The Discipline of a Druid.
The culminating ritual of the Nine Moons system is a Convocation Rite in which the allies and skills that have been learned are brought together in one formal ritual. By the time the student has completed this work, if they have done this work diligently they will have experienced things outside of the experience of most mortals. They will have come a little closer to the world of spirits, learned a little more about inner power and opened the psyche to new insights. This remarkable journey is, of course, only the first chapter in a great spiritual adventure.

The Druid's Skill-set
This system is intended to provide a solid introductory foundation in magical and spiritual skills:
• Sacrifice and Ritual. The Druid is able to readily perform full rites of offering and blessing, both from scripts and ex tempore. The rites in the system have been solitary, and the next step is being able to perform magical sacrifices with and for small groups or clients.
• Divination and Seership. The Druid has a basic knowledge of a divinatory symbol-system and has practiced for herself and for others. Some work with scrying and the pendulum has at least been attempted.
• Vision & Spirit-Travel. The Druid has established a Threshold home environment, and has journeyed into mythic environments, and been in the presence of the spirits.
• Spellbinding. The Druid has performed successful acts of practical magic, and is prepared for further experiment.
• Alliance With the Spirits. The Druid has made clear and specific alliances with an Ancestral Teacher ad a Familiar among the Nobles, and has cultivated his relationship with the Gods.

The Path Ahead
These basic skills provide opportunity for further work and growth in several directions. With these skills in hand, custom suggests that you might choose to offer your services to the community. Divination , helping other Pagans manifest their goals in life through practical magic, house-blessings, uncrossings and Opening of Roads, rites to help the folk attune to their local Landspirits or their Ancestors, rites for healing, or prosperity, all are traditional community applications of magical skills.
There are paths of mysticism open to you as well. Your developing relationship with the Allies can bring new understandings of your own nature. Work with the Cosmos Meditation patterns can deepen your awareness of yourself, your place and work in the worlds and your connection with the divine. You can choose a path of meditation, theurgic ritual and vision that will bring high and deep spiritual experiences.
So do what spiritual work you find to do, even when 'life' gets in the way. One of the most reliable ways to maintain your practice is to take up a specific outline of practice – an Order of Discipline, if you like.

Doing the Work
• Keeping the High Days: Each High Day offers the chance to attune your spirit to a particular complex of Gods, spirits and stories. The skills of ritual and trance-vision are central to work of this sort.
• Daily Work: You should keep simple daily work as regularly as you are able. This should include 15 minutes of devotion, purification and meditation, and making simple offerings to the spirits.
• Retreat Days: Twice per month, if possible, you should keep a retreat day of the sort you've kept during this training. While three or four retreats is a fine, intense pace for a specific period, maintanance can be done on much less. The best choice is to work a retreat on each full moon, leaving the entire waxing phase for whatever additional work is desired. The outline of a retreat can continue as you have done:
• Morning Practice: a detailed contemplation meditation, such as the Nineteen Working.
• Non-Gods Cult Work: Formal offerings to the Dead and the Nobles, more detailed than the daily offerings.
• Divination: This should be a real 'reading' for oneself, not just a ritual omen.
• Evening Work: At least monthly some version of the Sorcerer's Sacrifice should be worked, renewing your relationship with your Allies, beneath the Da Fein. This rite will include a detailed divination.
A second retreat evening each month is advised. New Moon might be spent in trance, vision and journeying, working from the Inner Grove. Sixth nights provide opportunity for spellwork and practical sorcery. You have the opportunity to please yourself, pursuing those works that interest you.

A Personal Magic
While this training system has provided scripts, ritual outlines and key symbols, these can only be the beginning of the discovery of power. Every magician that really does the work develops a personal magic.
In a Neopagan system like Druidry we have full authority to create our own work, based on what we learn from teaching and tradition. We bring our core symbols, and our own connections to the spirits, and we study and learn and apply new ideas to established practices. New rites and practices, or evolutions from older ones, can come from the smallest such seeds.
The other vital source of new ideas and personal adjustments will come directly from the spirits. The spirits can be consulted to reveal memories of the Old Ways, which will come to you as vision or inspiration. From these you can build new ways, suited for modern work.

Your spiritual path is in your own hands. Your Nine Moons training has given you a firm
start with the basic skills of arcane spiritual arts. A lifetime of spiritual exploration

Pagan Thanks

It’s Thanksgiving, and my times have changed a little concerning this holiday. For 30 years, I spent the day itself at a big dinner party with my chosen family, the Chameleon Club. We’re the conspiracy behind the Starwood festival, and one of the original pagan organizing teams in the NE Ohio area. Like all families and affinity groups, life moves on, and as young boomers we’re not that young any more. So last year we chose, for the first time, to skip a communal dinner on Thursday and move the whole shebang to the Friday after. I went to dinner with the bio family, and that was a very good thing for me, because last T-day was our last with my mom. Sometimes things work out.

So I’m in a more reflective mood about Thanksgiving this year as well, and I suppose I’ll go on a bit about what there is to be thankful for. Here at Into the Mound, I’ll try to stay on-topic…

• I’m thankful for my birth, as a North American in this era. I have had access to information, resources and freedoms unavailable in much of the world in the past or today.

• I’m thankful for the decline of Christian authority in the west, which has allowed spiritual adventurers and heretics to experiment somewhat publically, to write and teach.

• I am thankful for the Founders of the USA, who made it impossible for the government to tell me I can’t worship the Old Gods in parks, rental halls or my own backyard.

• I am thankful for my teachers, whether the writers of books or those who have taught me personally. If I’ve grown my own Path, I’ve done it from seeds they helped me plant.

• I’m thankful to Isaac Bonewits especially, for his vision and effort in founding the system I’m working in, and the trust and confidence he showed in my work.

• I’m thankful for the work of Pagan and occult organizers, publishers across the world, who are remaking the Old Ways for new days.

I could go on, but I think I’d become redundant, and if I get specific I'll never be done. I am supremely thankful for my partner, who is my spiritual coworker, my lover and my best friend. And I am thankful for the love and co-work of my friends, as we make our lives together.

So, I know this is corny stuff, but ‘tis the season, and nothing is harmed by it.
May we all be blessed on this American holiday for all of us.

Curmudgeonly Crankiness...

Look, it’s surely not my place to tell other folks what to believe. If people want to hold to six-day creation, the value of chastity before marriage or other unlikely notions, it really isn’t any of my business. Still there are a few ideas in the Pagan and magical scene that really piss me off when self-proclaimed teachers assert them, not just because they are plainly mistaken, but because they do, in my opinion, damage to the ability of students to get the most out of the work. Of course the main reason it pisses me off is that my own opinions differ sharply. So, since I have my little soapbox, I’ll get up on it.

1: Religion, Magic and Spirituality.
As far as I can tell, the opposition to the concept of ‘religion’ among magical people is based on nothing more than personal emotional anger toward specific religious organizations, and perhaps toward one or two streams of specific religious doctrines. We hear that ‘religion’ involves rote and empty ritual, ossified doctrine and dogma, money-greedy materialism and power hungry hierarchy. This leads some folks – folks who are busy meditating, working with spirits, doing rituals and having opinions about the nature of things (i.e. doctrines) – to say that they don’t do ‘religion’.

I have come to make an important distinction between ‘religion’, ‘a religion’ and ‘a religious organization’. ‘Religion’ is a scholastic category that assumes some degree of commonality between human styles of relating to the spiritual or metaphysical. Many sweeping statements are made about ‘religion’ (by me, occasionally) but it's very difficult to make generalizations of religions. It is so difficult to find commonalities, even of the things people object to. For instance, Hinduism generally does not mandate ‘belief in’ specific doctrines or models of metaphysics – hundreds of different models are contained within it. Modern evangelical Christianity has little or no ritual of any kind, unlike traditional styles of religion. Many tribe-based religions, such as Judaism or Zoroastrianism, actively reject converts, and do not proclaim that their way is for everyone.

‘A religion’ is a specific body of practice and doctrine intended to produce specific spiritual effects. If one has a unique and totally personalized spiritual practice, it might be more apt to call it ‘spiritual practice’. In fact we could restate and say that ‘a religion’ is a specific set of spiritual practices, especially those shared among a group.

A ‘religious organization’ is created and managed to practice and promote a religion. It is a body of humans trying to run an organization, and is subject to the same problems as any arts or sports organization. Asshole behaviors never fail to occur occasionally, even among the wise. Centuries of power and privilege can lead to corruption.

Most of the complaints people have about ‘religion’ seem to actually be about ‘religious organizations’. For instance, the Roman Catholic Church isn’t a religion – it’s a religious organization. It has financial officers and secretaries and owns a bunch of stuff that it manages. There are plenty of Catholics who aren’t Roman – Catholic Christianity is ‘a religion’ in the way Hinduism is – an umbrella term that includes several specific religious traditions and a number of organizations. ADF isn’t ‘a religion’ – we’re an organization created to build and promote Pagan Druidry, or whatever we might call it this week.

So when a magician or witch takes up any orderly work of relating with the spirits, of doing regular meditation and trance, of group celebratory or worship ritual, she is doing some religion. Perhaps it might be possible for some folks to kind of duff at it, taking a little here and there as they please, and have that be sufficient for their spiritual support. But I think many Pagans are in it for the doing of it, and end up looking for a more focused spiritual practice – that is, a religion. So face it, if you’re in a coven or worship group, or even if you just work alone at your home shrine, you’re doing religion. You may not create a religious organization for it, though some level of organization is inevitable if a group continues, but what you’re doing is religion in every sense.

A religion involves a body of skills that a person must work with. From simply knowing the prayers, small rites and symbolism of the path, to study of its texts and sources, to higher-order skills such as bigger or public ritual, meditation and trance, etc, religions require effort and attention on the part of their folk. That’s because they are training systems, meant to allow the individual to develop their own spirituality.

The result of keeping a spiritual discipline is ‘spirituality’ in my opinion. Now, there are many kinds of spiritual discipline, and the kind of arty and formal ritual I like won’t be everyone’s cuppa. That’s why there are many ways, but all involve at least a certain amount of focused work - even ‘not-doing’ is a method.

If ones keeps at a religion, and does it well, one will develop a personal spirituality. In every faith, even the most dogmatic, those who succeed in developing a personal spirituality will have their little touches, the things that make the path their own. In Pagan religions these can swing pretty wide, as folks alternate through periods of discipline and periods of expression.

That means we should stop bashing ‘religion’ as a category. Asserting that one is ‘more evolved’, or ‘not of the herd’ because one has replaced ‘religion’ with ‘spirituality’ is just a misunderstanding, in my opinion. It’s not a matter of ‘evolution’ (whatever that means in that context), but rather of the growth that happens when you practice a skill. If you’ve reached a mature personal spirituality, don’t look down on those who still enjoy the traditional work, or on beginners, or even on the imperfect organizations that exist to help other people find their way.

2: The Nature of Magic.
I’ve ranted about this, so I’ll keep it short. Magic (or magick, if you still must…) is something you do. It isn’t some quasi-substance or spirit that instills everything, it isn’t another word for the Life in Everything. At least, never in the history of the art has it been used that way, until some fantasy-soaked modern kids started doing it. Now it’s appearing in otherwise-not-awful pop magick books. Damn it!

Magic is a body of human skills, that allow us to work with spiritual powers under our own wills. It’s a category of human art like science, or woodworking, and it has its methods and customs, its tips and tricks. Magic isn’t something you ‘attune to’ – magic is something you do. Even in the above sentence, the ‘attunement to’ would be the magic part – so what is there to… never mind.
I can hardly think of a more misleading teaching than to refer to magic as some current in the world, rather than as a skill you use. It seems likely to lead students more toward lala-whatever-feels-nice country than to the actual effort that magic requires. I guess I just dislike completely redefining terms to suit some romantic notion.

OK, told ya it was cranky stuff…

Tantric Thelema

Review: Tantric Thelema

& The Invocation of Ra-Hoor-Khuit in the manner of the Buddhist Mahayoga Tantras. Sam Webster 2010, Concrescent Press I must quote (or paraphrase) Jason Miller. He is known to say that just as European culture has spent the last 1,000 years developing, say, orchestral and symphonic music, so the cultures of Tibet and India have spent that time developing method and instruction for spiritual practices. Indic magico-religious practice (whether Hindu or Buddhist) has a level of clarity, of detailed vocabulary to describe precise states, of tricks and work-arounds to help ritualists get the results that they seek. By applying those to western deity forms we can recover a great deal of what was lost in the west with the end of theurgy and Pagan religion.

Sam Webster is an old co-conspirator in occult and Pagan organizing and philosophy, and I’m very pleased to say that he has done a fine job of presenting a very useful spiritual technology. Tantric Thelema is an application of Vajrayana Buddhist esoteric methods to the myth and symbol of Aleister Crowley’s magical religion of Thelema. By doing so he offers western magicians and theurgists the best step-by-step guide to the invocation of the presence of a deity I can remember seeing in print.

The small book is arranged as a manual, in the form of a teaching. It is delivered in the author’s voice speaking to his beloved wife, Tara, who was lost to illness some years ago. The gentle, reverent voice thus produced gives the whole teaching an easy, pleasant feel.

The manual is utterly practical. With only a few pages of introduction it moves immediately into the first section of the detailed spiritual practice (sadhana) that it teaches. In this section we find the most overt orthodox Buddhism. Classical Buddhist ideas such as ‘taking refuge and dedicating merit’ are taught in a fairly straight-forward Vajrayana way, using symbols and verses from the Book of the Law. The author does a fine job of reconciling Buddhist ideas with Pagan ones. Some are very nicely suited to Druidic work, such as the invocation of the Lineage of Teachers. While I hesitate to fiddle with a well-made device, these preliminary exercises could be replaced with whatever preliminaries one’s own system preferred, without harming the later techniques.

The meat of the teaching concerns what is called Deity Yoga. Combining incantation with visualization and offerings it will all feel quite familiar to experienced invokers. What is less familiar is to see the method laid out in such clear, step-by-step detail. Two forms of invocation are described. “Generation In Front” invokes the deity as though into an image before you, to receive worship in an I-Thou formula. “Arising As” formulates the deity in the person of the invoker, allowing the invoker to act as the deity in some ways, for instance in granting initiations and empowerments. It is through the latter formula that further Thelemic Tantra becomes possible, as a couple arises together as god and goddess.

Yr Hmbl writer knows very little about Vajrayana, but I was never at sea with Webster’s descriptions of ideas or methods. I know rather more about Thelema, and it is a pleasure to see it expounded so gracefully, and without gothery. I know, I think, rather a lot about the mechanics of invocation, and I still learned quite a bit from this small tantra. Anyone interested in restoring the juice to western theurgy could benefit from Tantric Thelema.