Hekate Festival

On the 16^th of August people from all over the world will be celebrating the festival of the Greek Goddess Hekate.  It will be a full moon this year so that will make it extra special!

The 16^th is also St Roch’s Day, a saint of plagues and it said that he cured many sufferers of this horrible disease even though he himself was infected with it.  This saint who dates from as recent as the 14^th century was, like Hekate, associated with dogs.  It was said that he survived on bread which was brought to him by a loyal hound.

Hekate is a Goddess like no other.  Some describe her as a Witch Goddess who rises from the dark depths of the underworld, whilst others tell of a bright shining Goddess who holds her torches of illumination high, revealing the path through the mysteries, but only for those with the wisdom to follow her.  Some say she is the Axis Mundi, the Chaldean World Soul and that she brings soul fire and light to humanity.  Others tell of a powerful Goddess who is crowned with the coils of wild serpents and oak leaves, appearing with three heads, often with three bodies, sometimes in forms which are part-human and part-beast.  We are told that she holds sway in many worlds, bearing the keys to the thresholds between, guarding and blessing those who make suitable offerings to her, but feared by those who let injustice come upon the world.

A few years back I had the privilege to edit an anthology of essays (Hekate Keys to the Crossroads) in which individual priestesses, priests and witches told of their encounters with Hekate.  This was a monumental task, but one which was done in honour of Hekate.  I have been researching this Goddess for around eight years now and feel that I have only managed to scrape at the surface of her complexity myself at times, whilst at other times it would seem that I am only just discovering her for the first time!

Well, whatever you are getting up to on this auspicious day, a night when the Moon is full and beautiful, the rain is pouring here in Wales, stormy maybe in honour of Hekate, have fun.  I will leave you with:

Hekate Hekate Hekate

Dark Mother

You Walk with us

Like no Other,

Dark Mother

The Practical Magickal Beginnings of Wicca

The Magickal Beginnings of the Practices - an introduction to the book Wicca, Magickal Beginnings

By Sorita d’Este and David Rankine

More information available from www.avaloniabooks.co.uk

Over the last few months, many people - some of whom have not yet read our book Wicca Magickal Beginnings have written to us, or asked us in passing why we wrote it. This is a complex question and one which can probably in part at least, be answered by this extract from the introduction we wrote for the book.

All books have a moment of conception, and this book was born out of a discussion on the origins of the Wiccan Tradition as known today, with some of our students in late 2001. Whilst debating the possible starting point of this magickal tradition, we realised that all the evidence being presented was focused on the people who were the early public face of the tradition and their contemporaries. Yet this is a tradition which is also called a ‘Craft’ and which is an experiential tradition where personal experience is paramount for the understanding of the practices and beliefs. So why were we debating the origins of the tradition in terms of who said or did what?

Has Wiccan history tied itself into knots of personalities in an effort to conceal its true origins? Was there something we were missing? Why was it that whilst some people claimed that the tradition was the continuation of a very ancient Pagan religion, others stated that it was created (or compiled) in the 1950’s or 1940’s in England? Why was it that Gerald Gardner was greatly respected as the ‘Father’ of the modern movement and simultaneously viewed as a charlatan? Could it be that in an effort to cover up the ludicrous and unsubstantiated claims that the tradition originated in the Stone Age (or thereabouts) the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction and got stuck? We agree that an academically sound historical foundation will provide more credibility to a tradition and its practitioners, but did that come at a price? What was being sacrificed in order to lend credibility to the tradition? What really made Wicca, Wicca?

Having asked ourselves all these questions again and again over the years, sometimes obtaining different answers to the same questions based on changes in our perspective, we found that ultimately Wicca remained a mystery tradition at its heart. The practices and beliefs could only be fully understood through direct experience thereof and it was through this that the tradition could be best defined, not through the endless debates about lineages, initiations and personalities!

We set about systematically researching the origins of the practices and beliefs which were passed to us through our initiators and colleagues. Our preconceptions were constantly challenged as we explored the origins of the practices and beliefs from different angles in an effort to find possible solutions to the question of when and where the tradition may have originated. We separated the rituals into their component parts, then looked at each individually and even divided them up into smaller parts, before finally putting it all back together creating a colourful mosaic with our findings.

Faced with several possible interpretations based on the evidence we correlated, it became clear that although it remained possible that Gerald Gardner may have created the tradition, it was certainly not that plausible in comparison to some of the other conclusions that we reached. In fact, at this stage of our research we feel that it is most likely that Gardner was not that much of a charlatan after all, but that his accounts of initiation into an existing tradition, upon which he later expanded, were truthful. When stripped right back, without the many additions and evolutions it has undergone since the 1950’s, Gerald Gardner’s ‘Witch Cult’ appears to predate him by at least some years.

We did of course realise from the outset that this would be a controversial conclusion for some readers and as such we present the practice-based evidence in this volume in a way which allows for individual interpretation. We also focused on the component parts which were common to all the traditions, both esoteric and exoteric, that we have personal knowledge of. This means that whilst we touch on the subject of deity, it is important for the reader to understand that theological debate is not within the scope of the work presented here. The individual beliefs in the Goddess and God vary, in some instances significantly so, between traditions in existence today. Additionally, we have not included evidence or debate on the inclusion of many of the folk practices which are found in some Wiccan groups today, such as May pole dancing at Beltane or making Brighid crosses for Imbolc. These practices were well known throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the countless books and magazine articles published in those eras attest to. As such their inclusion might be incidental. Moreover, they are not considered relevant by all of the traditions and as such, though of extreme importance to some, are not even considered by others.

The bulk of the material presented in the book is aimed at practitioners, be that of the esoteric (ie. initiatory) or exoteric traditions of Wicca. The book does not aim to cover in detail all aspects of Wiccan history, in fact we have for the most ignored the modern developments. The material presented can be used in a variety of ways, but will benefit those who are seeking to deepen their understanding of the practices the most as knowing more about their original context can of course help deepen the symbolic understanding of their place in our ceremonies today. It is possible that practitioners of other related pagan traditions who draw their inspiration for rituals by incorporating circle casting, the invocation of the elemental guardians at the four cardinal point and drawing down the moon, might also find this book of interest.
For more information, as well as for examples of some of the reviews this book has already received, visit www.avaloniabooks.co.uk

The Veritable Key of Solomon

This seminal work is now available for pre-order from http://www.goldenhoard.co.uk

The Veritable Key of Solomon is a completely different text from that translated by SL MacGregor Mathers. The book reproduces the Keys contained in Wellcome MS 4669 and MS 4670, two previously unconsidered French manuscripts scribed for a French aristocrat in 1796, and here translated into English for the first time. They are not the earliest, but they are the most detailed,containing three separate Keys which cover a wealth of material not found in the Mathers’ edition. These Keys are The Keys of Rabbi Solomon, The Key of Solomon King of the Hebrews and The Universal Treatise of the Keys of Solomon. One of these manuscripts was the one referred to by Bulwer-Lytton in his classic nineteenth century magical novel of initiation, Zanoni, and another one contains an early version of the material later found in the Grimorium Verum. The Veritable Key of Solomon shows the influence of the Heptameron on the practices more clearly than the previous Mathers text, through such elements as magic circles, perfumes, seals and including all the planetary circles for the seasons. It is illustrated in colour, with more than twice as many talismanic pentacles as were produced in the nineteenth century text, and also is more inclusive of earlier material such as the Olympic Spirits, Planetary Intelligences and Spirits. These Keys contain the most comprehensive collection of practical planetary grimoire material ever seen in a book and greatly expand the scope of information available to students and practitioners.

The Veritable Key of Solomon also features a commentary on the provenance of the different families of Key of Solomon manuscripts, tracing their use through Renaissance Europe, and exploring the effects they had on society around them as they were copied and transmitted into ever wider circles. The Introduction includes commentary on all the families of manuscripts including the earlier Greek manuscripts, as well as a study of the other books attributed to Solomon. The appendixes include a list of the extant manuscripts (more than 120), a fact which clearly demonstrates that the Key of Solomon was the most significant magical book for several hundred years from the late sixteenth through to the nineteenth century, and this work finally restores the Key of Solomon tradition back to its place in the heart of the magical revival.

Pre-orders are now being taken for the Full Leather Deluxe Edition and the Half-Leather with Purple Board Collectors Edition of this book.  More information can be found at: http://www.goldenhoard.co.uk.  However, please note that although we are taken orders for these books now, they will not be ready to ship before the end of September/early October 2008, so do keep that in mind when placing your order.

The Shadow House of Lugh

The Shadow House of Lugh

By Ethna Carbery (1922)

DREAM-FAIR, besides dream waters, it stands alone:
A winged thought of Lugh made its corner stone:
A desire of his heart raised its walls on high,
And set its crystal windows to flaunt the sky.

Its doors of the white bronze are many and bright,
With wonderous carven pillars for his Love’s delight,
And its roof of the blue wings, the speckled red,
Is a flaming arc of beauty above her head.

Like a mountain through mist Lugh towers high,
The fiery-forked lightning is the glance of his eye,
His countenance is noble as the Sun-god’s face—
The proudest chieftain he of a proud De Danaan race.

He bides there in peace now, his wars are all done—
He gave his hand to Balor when the death gate was won,
And for the strife-scarred heroes who wander in the shade,
His door lieth open, and the rich feast is laid.

He hath no vexing memory of blood in slanting rain,
Of green spears in hedges on a battle plain;
But through the haunted quiet his Love’s silver words
Blow round him swift as wing-beats of enchanted birds.

A grey haunted wind is blowing in the hall,
And stirring through the shadowy spears upon the wall,
The drinking-horn goes round from shadowy lip to lip—
And about the golden methers shadowy fingers slip.

The Star of Beauty, she who queens it there;
Diademed, and wondrous long, her yellows hair.
Her eyes are twin-moons in a rose-sweet face,
And the fragrance of her presence fills all the place.

He plays for her pleasure on his harp’s gold wire
The laughter-tune that leaps along in trills of fire;
She hears the dancing feet of Sidhe where a white moon gleams,
And all her world is joy in the House of Dreams.

He plays for her soothing the Slumber-song:
Fine and faint as any dream it glides along:
She sleeps until the magic of his kiss shall rouse;
And all her world is quiet in the Shadow-house.

His days glide to night, and his nights glide to day:
With circling of the amber mead, and feasting gay;
In the yellow of her hair his dreams lie curled,
And her arms make the rim of his rainbow world.

Defining the Key of Solomon

(Reposted here from David Rankine’s Amazon Author Blog )

Defining the Key of Solomon - by David Rankine

In recent times I have become aware that there is a lot of confusion about the Key of Solomon. I have had numerous enquiries from people asking the same questions again and again, so I decided to clarify matters and attempt to dispel the fog of confusion that seems to surround the Key of Solomon.

The Key of Solomon is not a single book or manuscript. Although many people assume it is because they see the Mathers edition, this is simply not the case. Mathers cherry-picked sections from seven different manuscripts of the Key of Solomon, five of which were in French, one in Latin and one in Italian. This edition has been reprinted many times, but no other manuscript has ever been published as a book (although electronic versions of several Key of Solomon manuscripts are available on Joseph Peterson’s excellent website www.esotericarchives.com).

The Veritable Key of Solomon contains two complete Key of Solomon manuscripts, translated from their original French into English. Stephen and I chose these two particular manuscripts because of the breadth of material they contained and also the sheer quantity of glorious colour images of the pentacles, which is far greater than found in the earlier Mathers edition.

To date we have located 122 different Key of Solomon manuscripts, of which nearly half are in French, followed in number of manuscripts by Latin, Italian, German and English. There are also a few bilingual manuscripts which combine Latin with another language such as Dutch or Italian, or combine English and Italian, and even one Czech manuscript.

The search was not helped by the tendency for libraries to label any work which mentions Solomon as being a Key of Solomon! This mislabelling has led to several works remaining effectively hidden for some years, though we have now made them more publicly available again, such as the material in our first book The Practical Angel Magic of Dr John Dee’s Enochian Tables.

Additionally people often seem to confuse the Lemegeton, sometimes known as the Lesser Key of Solomon, with the Key of Solomon. Some people refer to the Key of Solomon as the Greater Key of Solomon, repeating the term used by L.W. de Laurence for the title of his pirated edition of Mathers work in 1916. The Lemegeton, which contains the five books of the Goetia, Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel and Ars Notoria, is a completely different text to the Key of Solomon, and should NOT in any way be considered the same book or a derivative thereof.

The Key of Solomon: A vast tradition

With the massive interest in the forthcoming Veritable Key of Solomon by Stephen Skinner and David Rankine, I thought I would duplicate the following blog entry David wrote for his Amazon Blog here on our wordpress blog.   There seems to also be a great deal of confusion about the different editions which will be available - there is a note of clarification on this available at: http://goldenhoard.co.uk/2/?page_id=15

———–

The Solomonic Tradition - Bigger than we all thought!

by David Rankine

During the research I have been conducting with Stephen Skinner for the Veritable Key of Solomon, one point that has stood out is the number of different manuscripts called the Key of Solomon which we have tracked down.  Ignoring mis-labelled manuscripts, we have been able to locate more than 120 Keys of Solomon, a truly astonishing number when compared to the small numbers of all the other grimoires in circulation (almost always less than 10).  The obvious conclusion is that the Key of Solomon clearly deserves its reputation as the most significant grimoire, and that its signficance and influence were probably far greater than is generally credited.  The latter observation is substantiated by many of the connections we have found and include in the contextual material in the book, which set the provenance for the tradition and give information about key individuals connected with the Key of Solomon manuscripts in a similar manner to that we have used in the earlier books in the Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic series like  The Keys to the Gateway of Magic: Summoning the Solomonic Archangels and Demon Princes and   The Goetia of Dr Rudd: The Angels & Demons of Liber Malorum Spirituum Seu Goetia Lemegeton Clavicula Salomanis with a study of the techniques of evocation … context of (Sourceworks of Ceremonial Magic).  Such material implies a far greater level of communication across national boundaries and social classes than might otherwise be credited.  Truly the magician is a citizen of the world seeking its betterment!

Powerful Horns

Just another week before pre-orders open on this absolutely unique work exploring the different manifestations of the Horned God. For more information see:

Avalonia Books

It was a very exciting project to be involved with, so many amazing stories of direct modern day experiences of the Horned God, as well as numerous scholarly articles on different horned deities from around the world.   Sorita contributed three articles to this work: The Witch God Cernunnos; The Potter from the Nile (Egyptian Khnum) and Triplicity of Horns from the Greek Magical Papyri (The Horned Goddesses in the PMG - Hekate/Selene and Artemis).  David wrote an excellent essay ‘Pan the Hidden All’ all about the goat-footed woodland god of ancient Greece.

Horns of Power

The horns of power emerge from the forest,
separating from the branches as the stag bellows his challenge
eyes drawn inwards you follow the spiral
into the centre of the ram’s horn
leaping over the horns of the bull below
you glimpse the horns of the crescent moon above
and all the while the lonely goat
plays mournful tunes which echo down the wind
seeing and hearing the mysteries revealed
you feel the ecstatic pain
as horns of power burst from your brow

 

This piece was inspired by Horns of Power, and it seemed appropriate to put it out there now the book is finished and gone to print.  A sort of shedding of the poetic antler, as it were!  With 25 contributors, the book draws together an amazing range of experiences and research to offer a diverse combination of material on a variety of horned gods, there really is something for everybody (even people who don’t like the horned gods will find horned goddesses, unicorns and horned serpents waiting for them).

Whilst I enjoyed reading through all the essays we received, if I had to pick favourites I would say the excellent piece by Kim Huggens on the Slavic god Veles is fascinating, Frater Nechesh’s piece on horned serpents is a thought provoking piece of comparative study and Zagreus’ account of his quest for the bull horned gods contained a heartfelt honesty in his devotion which shines out from the page.

Ruach ha-Qadosh - the Spirit of Holiness

One of the key principles of the Qabalah, often ignored yet running through the Tree of Life like the flow of balanced wisdom down the Middle Pillar as the almond wand of manifestation, is Ruach haQadosh. The Qabalist Hai Gaon (939-1038 CE) said:

“Human souls are also bound to higher levels, and therefore, when a perfect individual becomes involved in meditation upon wisdom, it is possible for him to predict future events.”

In this concise statement a whole host of ideas are expressed. The higher parts of the human soul, the envelopments which surround us, are only realised through balance and growth. This process of growth involves the strengthening of the different levels of being, and meditation is a key part of this process. The inner silence that opens us to wisdom draws us into the greater whole. Through this unification of the whole, the union of the parts of the soul which unite us through the worlds, we can gain insight into the flow of events and foresee the possibilities of what may come to pass - this is Ruach haQadosh. The level of foresight is reflected in the purity in our lives.

The Ruach haQadosh and a number of other important related concepts such as the development of the subtle body through the use of the Hebrew alphabet are themes I will be covering in the workshop I am running on 4th October 2008 at Atlantis Bookshop in London. This workshop will require a basic level of knowledge of Qabalah, and for more details see Avalonia Events for more details.

“Mother” - anyone know who wrote this poem?

Can anyone ‘out there’ tell me or give me clues as to the origins of the following rhyme, I have been unable to find it with google, but that might because I am working from a hand scribbled note I made a long time ago.  It went something like:

They say man has might,

He governs the land and sea,

He wields a mighty sceptre,

Over lesser powers than me.

But a greater power and stronger,

God from his throne hath hurled,

For the hand that rocks the cradle,

Is the hand that rules the world.

I would be very grateful to anyone with clues that I can follow up!  I can’t even remember when / where I scribbled it down and am working on a special something for a special someone and would obviously like to credit the author if I include this!