The Importance of Horror

This time of year, with Halloween approaching, there are a lot more horror films watched, more horror elements in television shows, and more horror books read than any other part of the year.  There is a marked focus in this direction, both in those pursuing watching and reading, and in those speaking against the genre.  Many of these elements spill into daily life, in costumes worn to work, parties, bars, and anywhere else people can get away with it by using the season as an excuse.

Supernatural horror the only mainstream place where the elements that are often a part of more occult and esoteric interest appear.  The very fact the genre (both in film and in literature, and also in art of many other forms) exists is interesting in itself.

The reason for the absence elsewhere is that people don't want to consider the monstrous and strange, preferring to pretend everything is safe and normal and predictable.  So it's pushed to the edges.  On the edges, we don't have to look at it.  We can pretend it's not there and go about life feeling safe.

But the presence of the supernatural horror genre in all mediums means that while it's pushed the edges, it's not pushed out completely.  People don't want to confront it in a "normal" context, but they also can't completely ignore or forget it either.  The genre persists because there is always a part of us that knows that the "normal" by itself is not the whole story, that there would be a lacking if the Other is completely gone.

So people seek out the monstrous and strange and dangerous on occasion, as a reminder not to forget, then return to their "normal" world, content that the stuff they push to the edges is still at the edges, so not hidden closer and waiting.

This is the place not just of the genre, but of the edges themselves.  Edges and boundaries define what is part and what is not, what is Self and what is Other, what is society and what is savage, what is cultivated and what is Wasteland or Wilderness.  By dividing, they define.  There is no boundary or edge if there isn't something beyond it.  There is no Self without Other.  There is no civilized without the Monster.  If what we don't like or are afraid of isn't at the edge, or across the boundary, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it means it has no place to be but here, where I am.  If there is no monster out there, the monster is here, or the monster is me.

The separation of worlds, the Edge and the Veil, is a separation of perception, not a gap or abyss between worlds.  Our world, our Dreaming, must be safe to us, so we push what isn't safe to the edge, make it Other, make it the otherworld.  And those that live in the otherworld, at the edges by our perception, push what isn't safe to them to the edge, to their Other, making it the otherworld for them, our world.  All things not safe for us, or that we don't want, is there.  All things not safe for them, or that they don't want, is here.  Two worlds mutually populating each other with their monsters, monsters who populate their world with monsters.

But those who walk between are monsters to both worlds, Other to all Selfs.  Because they can be either, so are monsters that appear as normal, no matter which world they walk.  And appearing normal in both, they also see both as normal, the accept the monstrous and strange as every day, as part of what makes up the whole.  They have no edges, no borders, no law, no limits.

Because edges imply two sides, boundaries and borders are between two things.  Laws define what can happen and cannot, or, what can happen without being pushed to the edges.  Limits define what is possible, but if you approach a limit long enough, you can't perceive where you are from where it is, and in effect reach it.  And once you realize the limit, what stops you from passing it?

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

Time Marches On: A Look at Witchcraft and the Modern World

Time marches on, time marches on.

South moves north, North moves south
A star is born, a star burns out.
the only thing that stays the same is everything
changes, everything changes.
~Time Marches On by Lawrence Tracy

The world changed a lot between the "rebirth of witchcraft" and its origins.  The world of the 50s and 60s was not the same as the classical world that gave birth to the Mystery Religions of Greece and Rome.  It wasn't the same as the world that gave birth to the Gnosticism of the Middle East.  It wasn't the same as the world that gave rise to Christian Mysticism, Islamic Sufism, or Jewish Kabbalah.  It wasn't even the same as the world that gave birth to alchemy or ceremonial magic in Europe.  It wasn't the same as the world that gave birth to the pagan revival on the 1800s.  All these things, all these worlds that had passed away, influenced the "rebirth".  There are elements of them even in traditions that predated the repeal of the Witchcraft Act.  The world changes.  But does the Craft, the Art?

The roots or magic and witchcraft are very deep, back to the beginning of time.  Has the Art remained unchanged since time began, or has it changed with the times, adapted with the changes in culture, in perspective, in knowledge, in technology?  What parts are traditional and what parts are innovation?  What parts need to be kept and held onto, which need to be kept as lore but not practice, and which parts are no longer needed?  Is witchcraft an eldritch craft that has to be done the way it was in prehistory, or is part of the modern world in the same way it was part of the ancient?

I would say both.  Without the tradition, you're afloat on the ocean with no compass, no sextant, no chronometer, no map.  But if the Art doesn't evolve, it is static, and static is dead, like a pond with no outlet, rotting and stinking.  Witchcraft is all about change, and even the tradition needs to change.  I think the Art should have tradition and lore as its foundation, but modern things can be built on that foundation.  If any of that makes sense.

If there is one word that I would use to describe magic, to describe witchcraft, it's Change.  The Craft changes the practitioner, and it changes the world.  Sometimes the intention is one, sometimes the other, but it always does both.  How can something that's static cause Change?  Do volcanoes erupt do to static forces or dynamic?  What has ever been changed in the world by doing nothing?  Of course, there's a time to act and a time to do nothing, and you have to decide which it is.  But Change comes from Action.  This is, after all, the World of Action.  Action is, obviously, active.  Active is dynamic.  Change comes out of the dynamic.  If the Art becomes static, unbending, unchanging, it can't create Change.  Without Change, is it still magic?  Is it still witchcraft?  Is it still an Art or a Craft?

Whether a landscape is done with water colours and a paint brush on a canvas or using a computer, it takes the same eye, uses many of the same techniques, and uses the same symbols.  Most of the people I know that create that type of thing on the computer don't go in and change each pixel until a pattern emerges.  They either use styluses on a tablet or the mouse to do brush strokes.  And the brushes don't work that much different than a physical brush.  It's still painting.  It won't look the same, since it uses different tools, a different medium, true.  But water colour doesn't look like acrylic, nor does it look like spray painted graffiti murals on a wall or air brushed paintings on the side of a motor cycle tank.  But they are all painting, and they all use the same techniques, the same lessons, the same symbols, the same traditions.

I would see the tradition in the Art as the training the art student receives to learn the techniques and to get an eye for what is needed in the painting.  Some students train in art one-on-one with a mentor, others in a classroom setting with other art students.  Some art teachers and professors only train one-on-one, others in groups.  But there comes a point where to move from  being an art student to being a real artist that the student must make what they learned their own and apply it apart from the teacher.  And after that point, they must learn from the world around them and other sources, to integrate, to adapt.  Michael Angelo's art isn't the same art that is created and sells today.  But the same principles are still taught and still used, just applied in new ways, with new subjects, with new tools, and on new media.

There are a lot of examples from the 50s-70s of people teaching the Art through letters.  There are people who teach it through emails today.  There are people who use phone calls (adding the aural, the way things are said) or video chat (which adds the body language, which I can't read anyway) to pass on oral tradition.  I have experienced imparting of knowledge in a non-verbal way while on the telephone, and have heard of curses laid on people using pictures on the Internet.  I talked to someone who was involved in a powerful magical working on a conference call.  Modern technology can be used in the Art without it no longer being what it was.  There's things you can't do over technological pathways, but there's much you can.

On a list once, I asked if a certain book would be available on the Kindle.  Someone else on the list responded saying that you shouldn't buy books about magic in electronic form, because books have a soul so you need a physical format.  My response was:

I'm sorry, but I have to say you're wrong.  Unless magic or rituals are performed over the book when it's published, a book about magic is no more powerful than a book about fantasy.  The words have the same power no matter what medium they are in.  Maybe I could agree if you said that books that are hand written have more power than ones in electronic media, but then they would over printed media as well.  Anything that's mass produced can't have any inherent power over that of the words and diagrams, no matter what the medium.  I'm sure people thought the same kind of things when books were first published on the printing press instead of hand copied.  I have a number of books about magic on my Kindle and I've got as much out of them as I have from the printed books I have.  There are some books that I'd prefer to have in paper form, just because I like books, but there are others that I'd prefer to be able to carry with me, so I can read or refer to them when I need to, not just when I have access to my library.  I can't carry more than one or two books with me, but I can carry my Kindle and have a library full of books right there with me.  I can perform magic just as easily by referring to my Kindle as referring to a paper book.  It's your Intent and Will and Faith that works magic, not the book you read it from.

 Technology can be used as a tool in the Craft.  I was just reading an entry in Francesca De Grandis's Outlaw Bunny blog today about social media and oral tradition.  She makes a point about how even though the written word is powerful, oral tradition, spoken word, is more so, but that they each have their place.  On her Third Road site, one of the things she talks about is how she has embraced using technology to share oral tradition, even presenting her Steller Rose teleseminars to her local students.  She is using technology to do things that "traditionally" were done without it.

Technology is a major part of our world, as it always has been.  Even during the Middle Ages, major advanced in technology changed the world.  As practitioners of the Art, we have a choice.  We can either avoid technology and do things, all things, the way they used to be done, and live a static life, or we can find ways to integrate the technology and the changes in the world and move forward, in a dynamic life.  Because the Art isn't just a job we do for eight hours and then forget about it.  It's an integral part of your lives.

It's like my dream of Romulus and Remus.  The founders of Rome in a modern parking lot.  Me the priestess and our leader, sitting on a modern couch.  There was magic, there was tradition, there were the Old Ways, but mixed with it was the modern.  It doesn't have to conform to society, in fact it shouldn't, but it does need to adapt to the changes in society, and utilize what tools society can provide.  For it isn't the same world it was in the 50s and 60s in Britain.  The Art, the Craft, witchcraft, needs to adapt and Change if it's going to be of any use in the modern world.  But if it's not true to the Foundation, to the tradition, it is no longer the Art, but just a fad.

When Joe Wilson's son Chad asked Joe, in 1972, which was right, fundamental Christianity or 1734, Joe answered, "What they all have in common must be close to the truth."

This is the case with the Old Ways and modern society as well.  We need to see the magic, see the Divine, see the Art, in the modern, for it's there.  We must see the modern with the eyes of tradition, mix the Sight and technology.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss

UPDATE: I found the section from Franscesca and reworded that paragraph.  It was actually on her Third Road website, rather than her Outlaw Bunny one.

In Response to Rethinking the Watchtowers...

This and the previous post were replies to an email on a list, though I've removed the parts that are relevant only to the message I was replying to.  I liked how I said what I said and figured I'd share it with anyone who wants to read it.


This is in regards the the article Rethinking the Watchtowers by Mike Nichols.  It is from a Wicca perspective.  The email discussion about it was in a Feri context.  The original site is no longer up, but it can be read here:

http://witchnest.blogspot.com/2009/07/rethinking-watchtowers-or-13-reasons.html

Some of what he says I agree with and some I don't.  I like Air in the North, but I like Fire and Earth differently than his arrangement.  When I've called on the Feri Guardians, I've used the associations V gives, but they aren't the arrangement I'm most comfortable with.  I prefer the arrangement that is "traditional" in the traditions that draw from Robert Cochrane's letters and practices, like 1734 and the Clan of Tubal Cain.  The explanation below is mostly my own understanding, based on what I've read, what I've experienced, conversations with others, and my own musings, nothing official.  So this isn't all my original thoughts, nor is it all what I was taught from a specific authoritative source.  I'll explain why I put "traditional" in quotes, at the end.

http://www.1734-witchcraft.org/gillsthree.html

The associations I'm talking about are drawn from RC's Basic Structure of the Craft, which is essentially a creation myth, but sets up a mythos used in rituals and rites.  It describes Night having seven sons who created seven worlds.  Four of these are the Wind Gods, which are the Four Winds from the four directions.  Tettens is in the North, the North Wind, and is Woden, amongst other things.  He is described as Air.  In the East is Lucet, the King of Light, who is Fire.  These two are the Divine Twins, "Lucet and Tettens are the Twins, the Children of Night and the Serpent, brothers and some say one and the same person. Fire and Air, growth and decay. One looks forward, the other backward. One creates, the other destroys, Castor and Pollox."  In the South is Carenos, who is fertility, Earth.  In the West is Node, Sleep and Wisdom, the God of the Sea, Water.

So Air is in the North, and is the colour black.  This is the cold North Wind, which brought all the winter storms to the British Isles.  For North is also Winter and Midnight, which matches what was said in the article, for Winter is dark, and the further north you go, the darker and the longer the nights, until there is only night, only Midnight.  Hence the colour black.

Fire is in the East, and is the colour red.  The sun, which is Fire, and the masculine principle in the world (though the sun is pulled by a female in Norse belief and the moon my a male; there's a lot of secrets in that), rises in the East (as does the moon, but that isn't important), and many ancient cultures believed his home was in the East.  Cochrane equated the Masculine Mysteries with the sun and Feminine Mysteries with the moon, which are East and West.  Lucet, the King of Light, brings the sun, which brings light.  Life was said to come from the East and from the sun.  Fire is red of course.

Earth is in the South, and is the colour white.  Earth is feritility, as Carenos is fertility.  The further south you go in Britain, the more fertile, in general.  Wessux is definitely more fertile than the Scottish Highlands.  The soil in the southern part of Britain are chalk, which is white of course.  The use of chalk in the Craft is very important.  Also, white is light, and noon is the brightest part of the day.  I'll get to that in a bit.

Water is in the West, and the colour is grey.  The moon, as we mentioned, is Water and feminine.  The moon sets in the West (as the does the sun, but that isn't important), and many ancient cultures believed she had her home there.  The house of the moon, the Gates of the West, are the Gates of Death, the way to the Underworld.  The dead were said to travel across the great western sea, the Atlantic Ocean, when they died, traveling with the moon.  Water is in the West not because you couldn't see land from the West coast of Britain or could from the East coast, but because it was "known" that past Ireland, there was only water and the land of the dead, which was under water.  Grey is for twilight, between day and night.  I;ll get to that in a second.

North, East, South, and West are not just Air, Fire, Earth, and Water.  In fact the four elements are one of the least important associations with the Wind Gods and directions, just as the Feri Guardians are so much more than elemental forces.  1734 doesn't work in a Circle in the way Wicca and Ceremonial Magic does.  1734 works a compass (notice, "works a" not "works in a").  The compass isn't related to protection or controlling anything like circles in Ceremonial Magic.  What does a compass do?  It points the way.  But compass comes from a different meaning, to surround.  The four directions surround, so became called the compass, and the device that points was named for it.  Thorn likes to use the phrase for God Herself, and also for Witch, "the centre which is the circumference of all."  This is the compass.  When you stand in the middle, you are Witch, you are the centre, but you are also the world, the circumference.  But, anyway, I digress.  The compass places in in time and space, orientates you.  The directions are also times and dates.  North is Midnight, and Winter Solstice.  East is Sunrise, Dawn, and Spring Equinox.  South is Noon and Summer Solstice.  West is Sunset, Dusk, Twilight, and Autumn Equinox.  And of course, there isn't only four directions.  Northeast is Candlemas, Imbolc, and the point between Midnight and Dawn.  Southeast is Roodmas, Beltane, and mid-morning.  Southwest is Lughnassadh and mid-afternoon.  And Northwest is Samhane and mid-evening.  And you can put other points on the compass.  But the compass doesn't stand still.  It can be rotated.  It spins.  Like a castle spinning without moving.  Time and space move.  They aren't static.  Where are you and when are you when you're in the compass?  That is a very good question.

Which brings me to my last point.  I say it's the "traditional" arrangement, because it doesn't stand still.  You can place any direction, any element, any hour, any date at North and it changes everything.  Regardless which order you use or which placement, experiment.  North determines the feel of the compass.  Each element has specific associations.  Maybe why I like Air in the North is because I have always had an affinity to Air and Wind.  I worshiped a wind goddess when I was younger and would call up a strong wind at will.  And Air is inspiration and intellect, and I tend to live in my intellect much of the time, as you can probably tell from these two posts.  In a dream back in February, I was made a priestess and they painted yellow tribal patterns on my skin and white clothes.  Yellow is ofter associated with Air and Intellect.  But I digress again.  What to place at North depends on the work you are doing.  Some workings work well with Air at North and Earth at North is just wrong for that working.  But others Earth is best.  So the best thing is to think throw the correspondences and associations, experiment, and get a feel for it.  Magic and witchcraft are Art.  The intellectual thoughts, the techniques, the traditions, the teachings, all the knowledge in the world, can help you plan and give you ideas, but practice and a feel for it are ultimately what matters.  Listen to Fetch and Godself, don't depend only on Talker, like I tend to.

FFF,
~Muninn's Kiss