Overcoming Poverty Programing: uber long post…sorry.

Photo 59

The Power of Self Healing

I had a profound healing experience yesterday that I thought to share with you. In all my years as a healer, I never  did any work on myself that was so surprising and transformational. I discovered the core of my money issues and the healing process shook my foundations in a way I never would have believed. Since we all have these issues, I thought this little post might provide some helpful insights.

Backstory

Just to set this up, i came back to the States exactly three years ago after nine years living in London. I had a Tarot reading stall in Camden Lock Market. Before that, I had had a thriving healing practice in Seattle, and made enough money to allow me to travel and live a very nice lifestyle with a lot of freedom and few worries — plus I helped a lot people. In London, I was reduced to eventually having to put in four days a week in hyper stressful environment, reading Tarot cards for a relative pittance. After a while I got so busy that I began to experience serious burnout and everything in my life fell apart. It has taken me these three years to recover my health and balance.

I have an arsenal of healing techniques that have evolved over the years. Among them is a method that actually changes DNA patterning so that you can unload  past conditioning and replace it with something you want – so you can move forward instead of being stuck.

Money has been a serious issue for me since my return. For one, during the last year I was in London,  I was not able to make very much money so when I came back to Seattle, my savings was used up re-locating and I had to get a J.O.B. I was only able to work part-time because I needed to heal.
Result: barely making it. Then the economy went bust. Combined with my inability to work for tyrants,  here I am on unemployment just squeaking along below the poverty level.

I have begun to see clients again. And after twenty-five years of experience, I feel I am entitled to charge premium prices.  I have arrange things so that I see  fewer clients who pay more  for the sake of my health. I do not want that burn-out again. I am still undercharging and struggling with the issue of translating value into money.

Revelation

A really nice lady was referred to me  for a Clairvoyant Reading by a client I have had for years. The reading went so well, that it also over time, and I charged her for the extra half hour. This was great for me because I am determined to feel deserving to be paid what I am worth. But, after she left, I felt guilty.

This feeling of guilt was so strong, I had to sit down and deal with the fact that I felt  guilty about being paid — even when I have provided excellent value to the client. The first thought in my head was that if i were a man I wouldn’t even think twice about it and would have charged more in the first place. I remember being told long ago that, whereas female’s in the helping professions are expected to have sliding scale  payment options, males rarely do, if ever. I was feeling very tired of how us women seem to  have been programed to lose all the time. So often, women put themselves “on sale” as Suzi Ormond says — and its wrong.

I struggled with this curse for an hour or so and realized I need to do something about it, because I am so sick of this mindset. Since I have been on the internet,  in the last six months, I have become aware that there are huge numbers of people in this country who think nothing of dropping $20,000 on a  weekend seminar — who cry poverty while they money out of their ears. It is a real eye-opener.

19th13

Poverty Consciousness Sucks

I grew up in a poor working class French Canadian family in Massachusetts. My father never made more than $20,000 a year in his entire life working in the office of a factory. My mother worked part-time in a department store. There were three of us kids. My mother still thinks $20,000 a year is fantastic money. Cripes, I made way more than that as a part time healer and psychic — even working part-time in the theater! And it wasn’t enough just for me to live on! To make it even more deeply programed, all of my friends have to struggle financially. They are mostly women, and a couple of guys, who despite their brains and talents barely make ends meet.

There is nothing like getting over 50 to make it plain that if you continue on that path, Bag-Ladyville is your destiny when you live in the Land of the Free.
And nobody will care.

So, I decided to use one of my DNA techniques to do away, once and for all, with this stupid Poverty Consciousness. And it is stupid. Its a total waste to live like that. I decided I had to stop putting myself on sale. I am not a bargain basement.

SO

After my usual hectic week, I sat down last night and did this Energetic Re-Patterning of the DNA technique on myself. In this method, you decide if the problem is in your organs — in the Chinese  Five- Elements system, or your Chakras. Then you connect with your Higher Self and  begin to pick numbers from a list. I have found that even though I have the lists in front of me, I can make myself not see them — I am good at unplugging my recognition of the ones I know by heart.

I started with  the Chinese Five- Elements, and this is what I came up with — it was so dead on it was scary!

Question: Why Do I feel guilty Accepting Money in Exchange for My Work?

Earth Element:
Organ: Stomach —  deficient energy
Reason: Over-sympathetic  — Need to Nurture Others

Primary Pattern: Not feeling I have the right to give support and ask for it back. I do not believe my needs are equal to those of others.

(Well, that hit home like a ton of bricks on so many levels. But it was only descriptive and I needed more, so I decided to check into my chakras as well.)

Energy was stuck in my Second Chakra and my Third Eye.

2nd Chakra : Lack of Pleasure
I must sacrifice pleasure to survive
Primary Pattern: Lack of ability to nurture myself

(Another bingo! This one is so me these days, and with a Venus ruled horoscope not normal or conducive to anything good. I could become bitter but I won’t :) )

3rd Eye: Vision in denial
Not having the ability to imagine something that has never been before
Primary pattern: Loss of imagination and ability to dream.
(Who me? Things are worse than I thought.)

chakra-man.104164727

The Universal Fear was — no surprise:
Lack of Self Worth in the eyes of others. Hahaaha!

My Karmic pattern had to do with Astrology in relation to earth changes,
My kidnapping someone in a past life (these are often metaphors)
and Birth tTauma having to do with my mother’s  memories of deaths in the family.

That last one set my mind in  a spin. I am the first born. My mother was 20 years old when she had me. When she was quite small her little 3 year old  brother had an appendicitis attack and died. She had been left alone with him while my flashy grandparents were out partying and they refused to come home when she called them. so she was left alone to watch her  little brother die. Their extraordinarily colorful family crumbled after that. I won’t go on…

In my DNA due to past life carry-over:
Pain
Slave
Beggar
(Well that speaks for itself!)

My Womb Pattern: To survive I must fit in
(I’m the last person to do that aren’t I? If I survival depends on fitting in I’m doubly screwed!)

waif_girl

Points of Pain

What really hit me was the idea that I must sacrifice pleasure to survive. That brought up masses of pain. I’m an artist  ruled by Venus –  I live for beauty and sensual pleasure — or I used to. It also hit me how I was throwing myself away. I can’t afford to do that. I enjoy living indoors in the lap of luxury. i would like to stay in 5 star hotels when I travel. I hate being poor. Though, true child of the 60’s, I used to mix that up with being free!

So, taking that as a point of pain, I began to meditate.
Here is where it all comes clear.

If  you come from a poor background, and have poor friends, or are women depending on a man for survival — something my generation was shamed into letting go of by feminism — this may  resonate with you.

In meditation, my mind went back over the family history as I had heard and experienced it growing up. It was depressive and gray,  black and white. Images of Victorian London ( or in my case France or Ireland)  with cobbled streets out of Charles Dickens came up in which I appeared to myself as a poor thing, an insubstantial waif in the street, and then I turned into a hardened woman, old beyond her years, scrubbing the steps in front of my house in the slum. I kept hearing myself saying “scrabbling, scrabbling, endless scrabbling.” That phrase summed it all up. It kept repeating, so I used it as a fuel to  move energy.

(This image relates a lot to mother and her side of the family as well, and is one of the reasons for the forced glamor of my grandparents who sought to escape their poor backgrounds by acting the fashionable party people. Of course their attempts to have pleasure, and escape survival mode, backfired horribly. That is the power of conditioning!)

Meanwhile my body from chest to waist and the back of the neck was a solid block of pain. This was where I was holding this DNA pattern of “endless scrabbling.”   It was so intense I worried I wouldn’t  be able to move it.

In the method I use, you examine  the images and feelings held in this energy. You must also forgive whoever instilled it in you, and  at the same time feel the pain of what it has done to your life. I had to forgive the whole family tree. That wasn’t too difficult. Many of them had suffered more than me. I had also had a rather amazing life without much money, so the effect of this poverty training wasn’t that bad — until now. The cost of living in this country has become  ridiculously high since 2002 and it is slated to go up again.

And it is hard to get older with nothing in the bank, and no support system. Money has become a  necessity now.

So I let the images arise of gray and miserable and hardened form in my mind. I knelt “scrabbling” on the cobbles with a wire brush cleaning the city dirt off the front doorstep. Finally,  I was able to pull away from the images.  As I detached emotionally,  I stopped  judging the goodness or badness of the situation and this neutralized the fear. Then I  let the whole thing sit, there as nothing but a ball of energy.

My whole being shook and shattered like nothing I ever experienced before. Years of pain broke away and I felt myself opening up and expanding — making room for more. It is hard to convey intense power of this in words, but if you can imagine how a genii who has been stuck in a bottle for centuries feels when some one finally lets him out. He can expand to his full size! he can breathe! That would be worth three wishes, wouldn’t it? My aura got bigger and the patterns dropped off like shattered glass. Then I drew the energy into my heart, with forgiveness, and  and healing of the wounds took place.

So much for an issue I had not thought of as being important. All the pains in my body that one might associate with age are gone. Lack of money, poverty programing, turned out to be  deeper, and more profound an issue than I ever imagined.

But  poverty was normal!  Not just for me and my family, but for my friends  and associates as well. How often do we question “normal”?

The second step in this DNA process is to replace that old program with a new positive one. I wanted to feel free to be rewarded with money equal to the value I give in my services. And that clients are happy to pay me, and I am more than happy to receive money in exchange –  according to the just Law of Reciprocity.

Considering I have changed so many peoples lives, that could be quite a lot.

This was even more mind blowing. Normally manifestation techniques are relatively quick, but this shook me to foundations.  The kundalini rose like  wildfire and started moving through everything and blowing out patterns and DNAs, expanding my energy yet again, and showing me visions of book deals and money pouring down from the heavens in the form of gold coins until I was buried in a mountain of cash.
I sealed it and thanked it.

Today I will do part 2 of this process which is an emotional clean up.

But I wanted to post this to inspire you all to look at your money issues in a new light — as being symptomatic of deeper problems that if left unchecked could magnetize some dire straits to you. Especially you women — stop putting yourselves in the bargain basement sale. Take a page out of the men’s’ book. We should not have to just give and give and give and get nothing back. In the end you could be left with nothing at all.

So maybe just reading about my programing — different than yours of course — might get you thinking about why you have money problems, if you do, and how you might benefit from tackling them head on.

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Shamanic Illness as Initiation

Photo 64

Diary of Drawings

This is a drawing I made in the mid 1980’s.

During the two and half years that Saturn transited my Eighth House of love and death, I went a little mad you might say.

It wasn’t insanity or anything, it was because of psychic attack.

I had been in a deep relationship with a man who was separated from his wife. If there is such a thing as a Soul Mate, we were it. We openly talked about ourselves that way. I had a vision of him shortly before we met. During my daily meditation practice, I saw him falling out of the sun towards me. When we met, it was an instant attraction. Numerologist Tania Gabrielle would probably look at my 44-8 birth numbers and call it Fate.

But the estranged  wife wasn’t having any of it.  When she found out he was seeing me, she decided wanted him back and went on the warpath with me.

There was a point at which she got really aggressive and started to play games. I was a pretty otherworldly and therefore naive in the way that otherworldly, ungrounded people are. I had nothing against her anyway — this guy and I were Soul Mates. What was I supposed to do?

When the fallout started, I was kicked out of the apartment by my room mate. I moved into a house closer to where my boyfriend lived and spent most of my time at his place. She started coming around. Next thing I knew, I fell into such a deep depression that my personality actually changed. I even looked weird to myself surrounded in this horrible dark vortex.

I always drew pictures and started doing that for hours at a time instead of studying — I was in University then. I mostly drew images of this guy and me in boats and in towers. I began a series of myself with antlers on my head. The drawing at the top is one of the survivors.

Its me looking into a mirror and seeing  antlers on my head.  Before that, my boyfriend had told me I looked like a deer. Maybe it was auto-suggestion, but I do have a Capricorn Moon and associate this self image with that.

Dreamtime

selkie_2

At one point I became very ill and had to go to the hospital with anemia. I was a vegetarian, but also very depleted in other ways.

I became obsessive compulsive, especially with the drawings. I just didn’t stop. Drawing is a wonderful thing, but I felt like I had a motor in my head — maybe I had become autistic or something. It was just weird.

I had been a regular meditator since I was seventeen, and with this boyfriend, had gotten into Tibetan Buddhism and had been initiated into a few saints whose names I can’t remember any more. One was a purification saint. I have always been a great visualizer, and had built up images of these saints in my mind that were very powerful. I was really good at meditation.

So imagine how it felt when I couldn’t do it any more. All I saw was a swirling black energy that made me sea sick. I even went back to Massachusetts to visit my family and it was still just as bad. I was always nauseous and a light- headed, and very confused.

My dreams were  violent. I was always being chopped up into pieces. My body parts were scattered all over the place. I had a series of these  dreams and I drew pictures of those and burned them because I was afraid I might be murdered or something.

Then one night, I dreamed my body parts were scattered over the snow and it was very bloody. Some Inuits came up the slope and wrapped all my body parts in a seal skin. Then they put me inside a sweat house — I can still remember lying on a bench near a wonderful steamy rock pile. I stayed there for a long time.

When I was healed, I dreamed all the time that I swam under the sea with the seals. I was a kind of mermaid.  I drew the seal under the boat that my boyfriend and I were on all the time in my drawings. I let the seal guide me through my emotional turmoil and show me what I needed to know.

Psychic Attack

612789_SadAngel

Our relationship suffered because my boyfriend  just wouldn’t deal with what was going on. He was too weak, and they had a six year old daughter that he felt guilty about.

I began to isolate. I was not a fighter. I still hate to fight, but have learned since that sometimes I have to stand up for myself. But I do hate conflict.

One day I was in my room and took a break from drawing. I wanted to meditate. I remember so clearly sitting in front of my altar and seeing the black vortex spinning all around me. I also saw all these spirits, very flat with triangular heads — a bit dog-like and cartoonish. There were hundreds of then all over the room. I felt sick as one of them stood behind and was tying something around my neck. Seeing them, I said to myself, “I am going to push them away with my light.”

I focused really hard on the light inside of me and sent it out until it was all around me. I continued to expand, obliterating all those little dog things, intending to fill the entire room.  Suddenly there was a kind of explosion, and it was as if the sun had come into the room!  Golden light was streaming everywhere and in the midst of the light were these eyes, black rimmed and compassionate, and face like Christ, though I am not if it was He or some older God. The golden light kept pulsating all around me, erasing all of the spirits, filling the room and healing me.

Deer Lady

It was after that I began to draw the deer lady pictures.

My relationship bit the dust. She was a lawyer and he didn’t stand a chance. Exhausted  ( and I haven’t even told you the half of it) I bowed out and concentrated on school.

This was the 80’s. Lots of books and courses were being given on the West Coast especially. I was also living near some of the most powerful Indian Tribes in North America. Powerful for magic that is. Gradually I learned about Shamanism and was told by one of the Salish Elders here that I had had a Shamanic sickness. All the dismemberment dreams were about taking me apart so I would be put back together in a certain way. The Seal medicine was help me to flow in the sea of the emotions — I also say the unconscious.  The Inuits are at the North Pole where me spirit came into the earth’s atmosphere before birth. They  still have a very strong Shamanic culture.

I see the Capricorn Moon at work as well. The fish-goat who climbs to the top of the mountain and dives deep into the ocean, is very much like the selkie seal lady and the deer lady I became. The Indian gave me a name: Whiteswan, a spirit  bird who transits sea and sky. I also believe that the psychic attack forced me  to strengthen my power, strengthen my light, because that was all it took to make the attack stop and fill me with a vision of golden light and the presence of God.

Two years later I was drafted into the healing profession and have been doing that ever since. Though the seal medicine healed me, it is the deer that I feel is the most like me and images of people with horns and antlers cast a kind of spell over me. I suppose I am more sure-footed that way.

Chesca Potter

Chesca Potter

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Video: Celtic Gods and Goddesses

Author and occultist, Sorita D’Este,  posted this on Facebook and I just had to put it on the blog! It is really gorgeous with vocals by Loreena McKennitt and some very cool storytelling. Its also a nice follow up for the Ogham post.
Thanks Sorita! And enjoy!

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Irish / Celtic Gods and Goddesses (Part 1) – The Ever Living Ones The Celtic pantheon is known from a variety of sources, these include written Celtic mythology, ancient places of worship, statu…
Irish / Celtic Gods and Goddesses (Part 1) – The Ever Living Ones

The Celtic pantheon is known from a variety of sources, these include written Celtic mythology, ancient places of worship, statues, engravings, cult objects, and place or personal names.

It should be understood that there are two main types of Celtic deities: general and local. General deities were known by Celts throughout large regions, and are the gods and goddesses they invoked for protection, healing, luck, honour, and many other needs. The local deities were the spirits of a particular feature of the landscape (such as particular mountains, trees, or rivers) and thus was generally only known by the locals in the surrounding areas.
Category: Education

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Ogham & Faery Divination

Ogham and The Book of Ballymote

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I am writing a book on the Irish Ogham. I have been working with the Trees and the strange alphabet based on them, and reputed to be one of the only things to have come to us from the Druids,  since the mid 1980’s. I wrote a poem way back then called Witches Wheel, using the Trees on the Wheel of the Year. This poem was instantly snapped up by the editors of Seattle poetry mag Bellowing Ark, launching my brief, but eventful, poetry career.

I was going through some journals and things and found that old Bellowing Ark with this poem in it. It inspired me to put a book together using this poem based on the order of trees in association with the months that felt right to me back then, and still do now. It is not the standard Celtic Tree Calender, or Celtic Astrology we have had marketed to us for the last 20 years. It is based on the thirteen month lunar calender of the Celts — equally speculative, but more appropriate. I back up my ideas in the book and will make it available through this blog.

At the time I wrote Witches Wheel, I was heavily under the influence of Robert Graves’ White Goddess.  I wrote a few others under that influence, including Song to the Gundestrup Cauldron lurking somewhere in the Archives of this blog. Recently as I was doing research to refresh my memory a bit,  I was poking around in an online version of the Book of Ballymote. There I found this list — a nice bit of wonderfully poetic Tree Lore.

Click below for that poem:

Intimations of Ancestry: Song to the Gundastrup Cauldron

The Book of Ballymote was written by a scribe and named for the parish of Ballymote, County Sligo, in 1390 or 1391.

I don’t know really know much about it except that it is full of Ogham, like this page here: all these arrangements of little lines symbolize particular trees, and everything they are each associated with.

RIA image detail (2)

For more details on the Book of Ballymote, there is a fabulous website:

www.equinox-project.com.

Ogham Scales from the Book of Ballymote, by Dr. Barry Fell.

Faery Divination?

I think it was from R.J. Stewart that I first heard where the Faery Tunes of Ireland, like Pretty Girl Milking a Cow, and the Faery Tunes of O’Carolan, came from.  In my other brief career as folk musician, I knew that some tunes were  known as Faery Tunes, but I did not know that they came up from under the ground.

Call me what you will, but when I was in Ireland, I took a tour on a bus out to the Burrin. As we rode along, I could have sworn I heard music coming from under the ground. Had I known how to write music, I could prove it!

The Faery Tradition is a path of imagination and poetry. In the same way that Turlough O’Carolan captured Faery music as it rose up from the Underworld, I believe that one can get messages from Faery through the trees, the patterns the branches against the sky, and the flight of birds across the sky seen through the trees. Some of these messages may be oracular. A Faery Seer sees signs everywhere, and  with a certain poetic sensibility is able to interpret them.

apple-trees

These meanings are mostly about the actual uses of the trees- as types of firewood, cattle fodder, what can be made from them, what insects or animals might hide in them- or are simple descriptions of the trees. While some of the meanings are quite intriguing, I don’t believe that these lists are specifically related to divination or magic- although they could have been part of a larger system that was.

List One:

From The Scholar’s Primer:

Word Oghams of Morann Mac Main

Parentheses are mine. My meditations have been quick. They will bear deeper work, especially when you are familiar with the trees and can, in a sense, go into them. Be the tree and at the same time, the observer of the tree and you will find the juncture for divination.

At the end of this post, i gave a nice little divination technique.


B – beith, birch – faded trunk and fair hair
,   ( this is how Birch looks)

L- luis, rowan – delight of eye, blaze or flame
, ( the berries of the rowan are flame red)

F- fearn, alder – shield of warrior-bands,   (the bleeding alder was used for shields)

S- saille, willow – hue of the lifeless
,   ( willow is the threshold of the Otherworld, death)

N- nion, ash – checking of peace (a sign of peace)   ( upholds the earth)

H – huath, hawthorn – pack of wolves
   ( the Faery Tree, dangerous to touch)

D – duir, oak – highest of bushes     ( large)

T – tinne, holly – “Another thing, the meaning of 
that today” ( holly is the Winter King who must replace the Oak of Summer)

C – coll, hazel – fairest of trees
  ( poetry and wisdom)

Q -  quert, apple – shelter of a hind, a fold, lunatic ( romantic, sexual love. Lovers run mad in many Celtic tales)

M – muin, vine – strongest of effort ( you cannot break it)

G – gort, ivy – sweeter than grasses, cornfield   ( spreads everywhere like grass, but is sweeter)

NG – ngetal, broom – a physician’s strength    ( luck)

ST – straif, blackthorn – strongest of red (dye color)
  ( Also, a tree of suffering — blood)

R – ruis, elder – intensest of blushes, from shame   ( witches tree)

A – ailm, silver fir – loudest of groanings, death rattle
    ( the ghost rising up out of the earth, birth coming from death)

O – onn, furze – helper of horses, chariot wheels       ( feeds horses)

U – ura, heather – in cold dwellings, mold of earth
    ( grows close and all over the ground)

E – eadha, aspen – distinguished wood for the trembling tree  ( good fire)

I -  idho, yew – oldest of woods  ( immortality)

EA – ebad, aspen (or white poplar)- most buoyant of wood  (graceful, flexible)

OI – oir, spindle tree- most venerable of structures   ( house building wood)

UI -  uillean, gooseberry- sweetest of wood
       ( berries)

IO – ipin, honeysuckle (or woodbine)- juicy wood
     ( wine)

AE – emancoll, witchhazel- expression of weariness   ( end of wisdom)

auroramoon_curtis_big

List Two:

These meanings show another aspect of each tree.

Word Oghams of Mac ind Oic:

b, beith, birch – most silvery of skin ( bark of the birch)

l, luis, rowan – friend of cattle  ( I think cattle shelter under rowan)

f, fearn, alder – guarding of milk   ( The Fery King who guards women — shields were made of alder)

s, saille, willow – activity of bees ( the buzzing of bees signal proximity of the Faery Queen. Willow is her tree)

n, nion, ash – fight of women    ( the Three Norns live under Yggdrasil, the World Tree and spin the Web of Wyrd)

h, huath, hawthorn – blanching of face ( fear the Faeries –  supernatural beings, harbingers of death)

d, duir, oak – carpenter’s work
  ( wood for building houses, Door)

t, tinne, holly – fires of coal     ( holly fires, berries turn  white, green, red, and then black)

c, coll, hazel – friend of cracking  ( hazel nuts being shelled)

q, quert, apple – force of the man
  ( sexual potency inspired by beauty)

m, muin, vine – condition of slaughter, a man’s back
  (captivity,  lashes)

g, gort, ivy – (med nercc, meaning “abundance of mead.”)

ng, ngetal, broom – (this list skips this letter..)

st, straif, blackthorn – increasing of secrets   ( anything hidden under the blackthorn is safely guarded)

r, ruis, elder – redness of faces, sap of the rose
   ( Enchantress’s tree)

a, ailm, silver fir – beginning of an answer, child’s cry ( birth)

o, onn, furze – smoothest of work

u, ura, heather – growing of plants, the soil
  ( holds the soil as groundcover)

e, eadha, aspen – synonym for a friend

d
i, idho, yew – most withered of wood, or a sword  (old and yet strong)
ea, ebad, aspen (or white poplar)- corrective of a sick man

oi, oir, spindle tree- (this list skips this letter)

ui, uillean, gooseberry- wonderful of taste

e
io, ipin, woodbine (or honeysuckle)- great equal length

ae, emancoll, witchhazel- (this list skips this one)

Ogham Staves for Divination

staves_huatheduir

I am not sure if Ogham staves are authentic, or if they a new thing based on the I-ching. They are cool though.

For modern people,  who don’t spend a lot of time with nature watching the trees, Ogham staves can be a replacement for this observation of the patterns of trees. Having the forest reduced and encapsulated  into a set of tools,  saves you having to learn the names, growing conditions and seasons of each and every tree.

I would tend to visit a tree — say a yew in the park close to my house — and work ask it to help understand the forces of death and rebirth, and immortality.  Or I would  find a willow if I wanted to increase my psychic powers.

I call Observing the  Ogham Faery Divination at its purest. Casting the Ogham staves can work in much the same way if you learn the qualities of the trees,  their life cycles and where they fit in the chain of life. Then, when the staves are thrown, you merge with the spirits of the trees and gather the messages from the images that come to mind. The spirits you commune with are Faery beings who impart to each tree is numinous, eerie, poetic attributes, making the staves into doorways to the Otherworld where the answers lie.

wheel

I have used Ogham divination in this way for other people. You could try it too.

1. Have the person bring you a leaf. or several if they need them. As they gather them, they should be thinking the whole time about their question or concern, and thank the trees for the leaves.

2. Go out with your client and find a tree that the leaf belongs to. For instance, if they brought you an Oak leaf, find an Oak tree.

3, Sit under the tree, lean on its trunk, and go into communion with the spirit of the tree — its Faery self.

4. If you like Geomancy, this would be great to use it, but only  if you need a tool besides Clairvoyance. But if you meditate deeply enough, you should be able to receive direct impressions — messages from the tree, the wind in the branches, the life all around it. What falls on your head?

5. What animals come along? Imagination is the key to Faery divination.

6.  You can also make a board like the diagram above and throw stones on it and see where they land if you need more detail. This is good if you have to  stay inside, or want a bit more information on an issue and require more trees.

Have fun!

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Babalon Diaries # 13 The Gospel of Babalon

Occultist and director, Alison Rockbrand as Babalon

Metamorphic Ritual Theatre Production of Parzifal on Glastonbury Tor, 2005

Alison Rockbrand as Babalon
Alison Rockbrand

Alison Rockbrand is an Occultist who uses Experimental Theatre as a vehicle to create Magic. She gets Babalon Diary #13 — of Transformation

Alison has had a fascinating career. Before moving to London she was Artistic Director of what sounded to me like a kind of Surrealist burlesque theatre of madness in Toronto, Canada. She  studied the sacred Kathkali dance in India as  a basis for a production of MacBeth. One of my favorite stories of Alison’s is the one about a production of MacBeth she directed  with a cast of 6 year olds.

There is another odd link-up with what I have discovered to be the real through-line of my life. It was the bright aspect of the Holy Grail that led me to Britain in the mid 1990’s. Once there, the Black Grail took me down into the depths and then  came Babalon — the Red Grail.  This production of Parzifal, classic story of Grail Quest, connected Alison and I together as Babalon, before I even met her later that same year, 2005.

Alison discovered the Babalon Diaries quite early on and wrote me about them. I asked her if she would like to contribute, and she offered me this very interesting piece. The Biblical language is very much in line with the writing style of Aleister Crowley, original invoker of Babalon.

The Gospel of Babalon

according to Ilaktra Drugvant

translated by Alison Rockbrand

Whore of Babalon>Behold, to those who would appease with transference the beasts and offer worshipful sacrifice to us, >the words within are not dictated: we understand the rites to be of utmost personal pleasure and self >dedication. Essence we have not, blood is to be drunk and contained within, without the merest >influence of disdain. We are those whose sacrifice is the unanswerable, the lie and the abomination >placed upon the land in which our houses are raised, destroyed, and raised again.

<
>Avail us, Mother of these Aberrations of the birth which gives way to the lie, the untold and the >fanciful: for we are not the dismal followers of the path of righteousness but rather of the wayward >way, of the unsanctified ritual and the ungrateful fulfillment. We know and can remember the word >of untruth that you spoke to us in the dry lands and then again in the rain, while you fed us and >satiated us with fine intoxicants and the flesh. Of the flesh, the blood and the death of beauty you >have taught us: this and more we know and we will speak. Become do we the eye, the one that sees, >and then who understands the dance of intoxication that she has presented to us. She has said that >the dance is to become the music and the music is not a different dancer than she. She has said this >in the rain while moving on the body of a man, while eating cake and wine, while sitting with us in her gardens filled with the rose. We have known that the shift of her time is the shift of the instrument of sound, and with this knowledge we also dance, move upon the body of a man and sit in our gardens filled with the rose and other fragrance. We have ourselves opened the void of pleasure and felt the continuum of the beast and the mother of lies as they gaze in each others eyes to behold the death of beauty and the awakening of the immortal flesh. The oscillation of the living body while engaged with the dying essence is the meaning and reason for the discovery of music: she who orders order out of the silent void of the all that is, is the one who dies and in death has taken on life, and yet also a dream of life. We who know can, as we will it, become unto a song that has played and will reside always in the great arena of the planets. Yet for us this means more than it does to a song or to a whisper, for to us the intoxicated dance is the first glimpse of the flesh’s continuity. For we do not understand the immortal gods to be without the body but within and have consecrated our bodies as though they were the sacred talismans of the later gods we are to become. Death to beauty and to the essence of desire that beauty resides within, for we are the abominations, the dark desire and the unrepentant savages of your kingdoms. For we are not subject to that we would be not, and all we are, none will be subject to those save that will become like us.

<
Beyond the enigma is the land of the lovely and the virtuous yet these are the ones who design to destroy our gospels of mystery. She who is called the mystery and the fulfillment of the endless riddle had spoken with the tongue of the serpent, and has said  the truth is the lie once become undone.  Speak then of the lie first and the truth after, for once born the truth is used by those who would have essence and live from it. From the lie we might gain the everlasting mystery of change and the chaos of the void. We are those whose answers change as the flesh dissolves into the godflesh and lasts as long as mystery lasts.  We then are the ones who know that all is immortality and all is continuance once the hours as darkened kings of truth have fallen at our feet and granted us the soulless life. When the enigma becomes fulfilled into itself the hours of day and night are to come into one, into one hour and this is the hour of our mothers great pleasure, her orgasm and her lie told. We are also there with her and when the riddle is open, when the unknown and the twilight are engaged in copulations we are the receivers of their fluids. We drink of the mystery and of the hourly kings and we are become wise in what we yet have not known. Our knowledge is thus what we can see with our eyes that traverse time and the limitation of answers. Our art is not of limitation, it is not done to look us back in the eye and tell us what we are: to us this is the abomination of art. Our art is what is continuous, what is dying and yet what is given to you to live beyond yourself.  We are the ones who look back at you, we are the art and we have not been created but have become what we are out of mystery and the formidable enigma.  She whose knowledge is the knowledge of all, since all is changeable, has told us this. She is the untruth come into truth and to be used in the form of the dream, the fantasy, the desire.  She who uses truth to divide the lies into dreams has told us this  My continuity is the continuity of the landscapes found in dreams. Will you dream and find that the daylight has lied to you with it’s insidious hourly truths? You must dream your way to the land of the gods and there remain, lost in the lie of your concoction. We are the dreamers and the ones who bring temptations unto all who would have them. She was the first who brought temptation to us and to others who have faltered in their fantasy. For those who accomplish and manifest their fantasy are those fit for the immortal pleasure, but those who cannot and who falter and live instead according to the laws of men will die like men, and live again not.

<
Accord we with strength, for as She has told us that the strong are the companions of the beast. Those who tend to the beast, feed him and ride him must have strength enough also to equal him. The beast who to you is the chaos, the barterer of men and killer of the righteous, is to us the model of our ethic. For he who is animalistic and strong enough to kill at his pleasure, kills not only the citizen, but also the slave. He sees not what he kills, save that its flesh is his desire. He will kill us as well as you if we also cannot combat with him. He kills and eats what flesh he will need to satiate himself, and in this he gives himself pleasure. He thinks not that he should do what men do, since he is not of men. He knows not guilt nor compassion, he knows not song, not dance and not beauty. He cannot be trapped therefore, by the hourly kings because no king can keep him, nor combat him save those who have his strength, his trust, or both. For to us the beast is what we watch and what we emulate in our worldly ethics, and in this he has become our partner and our mate. When we love the beast, when we mate with him and include him in our intoxications, we are then become like unto him. When we drink of his essence and devour his blood as though it were our own, we are to gain his stature, strength, and virility. And this eating of blood and drinking of essential fluid of the beast, is done between us as well, that we may not be stopped ethically by species. For to eat of the intercourse of man and to devour his blood is to us the practice of the eye seeing life turned inside out. In the flesh exposed and the blood gushing out we can see the essence of life also gushing away and we know that life is meant to be lived as though death were near and the flesh transformable. We have seen this and She has told us to do these things Keep the beast and love him, for he is your partner whose blood you will see turning life around and around. Look at him, and love the flesh as it lives, and as it dies and as it transforms. We with her have this as our idea of what is to be thought of as beauty: it is the living flesh and the promise of its death and transformation into enigma. The beast then is our emblem of the strength with which we will accomplish our immortality. He is our vehicle of pleasure and in his blood we find knowledge of the paths of entropy. Mate we then with the great beast, who kills all for pleasure, and turn we the flesh inside out to watch life change from death to godflesh, for the Mother has taught us this.

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Lust do we after our divinities for these have been seen by us, and we have knowledge of our selves as the gods that inhabit heaven.  We are these, and these are us, as we do end all division and all totality. For to us the greatest union is that of unities. The unity, the total one, is divided from all that is not composite with him. The whole one, the non one, the empty or complete one, are all formations of the unit. He is the isolate one, who needs of no other one. He is either complete or he is empty of all that does not divide him. He stands like a god alone, and his power is of one who creates his paradise according to his complete desire. To us he is to be united with another unity, and to thus become and encompass the unitary power of one who both is and is not something complete. Yet by this he becomes more complete, and his power vast. For who can trap him now, who has gained the power to act the paradox? She has said: I have come to bring about the union of unities! Be not satisfied to live in your desire alone, for to have a desire beyond your own, to have your lover’s desire, is to become at once your lover and yourself. This is the knowledge of the power of love and power of the paradox. These are inseparable, for to love beyond yourself, you must love as yourself. Thus if you love beyond and through, yourself and the other, you are come to share two minds, and two divinities. To this we accord much power and much pleasure, for in this our pleasures inform each other and we are come to greater knowledge through this act. We unite the unities beyond ourselves, when we reach for the image of our godselves in the heaven of our creating. Here we will create together this paradise with our selves both in time and without, with our lovers and without, with the Mother and without until we have the art so that it cannot be made out of our limitation any longer. The art is to be made now our of our continuing knowledge and the knowledge of our lovers, so that we cannot limit our selves but fly freely into the immortal heaven when we are making our transformation into gods with flesh. By uniting with unities, our paths come to be vast and varied, so that in all the days of our flesh, we will never cease to learn and to know and to be pleasured.  For this knowledge once gained, though it increases, dies not, but lives as we do.

<
On to the rules of men do we tread and desire to break. For upon us these laws are given, though we do not receive.  The men who we watch and who we designate as the hourly kings or followers of kings, are men of the direst poverty and ignorance. These are the makers of truths that destroy the dreams of all living beings. For dreams to kings are dangerous things. The dream once dreamed has within it the power to manifest. The dream will undaunted seek its reality and its realization. It will traverse the land of day and the land of night and will pass right before the eyes of men as it seeks its continuity.  And the kings will observe the dreams in the form of lies and will know that they are dangerous. He will know that if enough dreams are allowed to manifest his own dream will be weakened and struggle for actualization. The king’s dream will always be too weak and the longer he spends on slaughtering the dreams of his followers the weaker his dream will become. His laws are written to stop the dreaming at its origin, to end the reckless thinking and knowing of his subjects. Since dreams and lies are created in the darkness and silence of experience, he disfavors the dark and he calls it by the name of Evil. But to us and to the Mother, evil is all that creates individuality. The first lie was the first thought by the first man who had his private desire. The dream is an intricate lie which proves by its artfulness the quality of our identity. Dream what dreams you will, followers of the lie. The laws of men are not for us, and crush them you must, if they design to crush your sleep. For it is these men who have labeled me the abomination and who have spoken of me as of a savage beast. Trust not their words of truth, for there in you will meet your demise. The Babalon has spoken to us thus.

<
The hourly kings call us by the names of savages and beasts, and yet we will proclaim that we are so, and therefore not to be made part of their kingdoms. They have hunted us like beasts, and come into our society to murder and defame us, for no other reason than to remain in ignorance of what great pleasure, and what knowledge and what power we offer.  For they are lost, in worlds vastly inaccessible to us, and believe that power is already theirs. Yet they are deluded by aspects of truth held onto and become belief, and will not relinquish their small amounts of hourly power for greater pleasure in the unfolding of the lie. These men’s laws and traditions we cannot abide by, since to us the law is limitation on our power and tradition a limitation on our knowledge. For though we might seem to abide by the hourly truths when we are seen by the eyes of kings and followers of kings, in these truths we hold no belief but continue to dream and know and seek pleasure in the secret ways of the Babalon.  For she is the mother of the lie and the dreamer of the inbetween.  She is the first temptation and the last which does not end. She is all continuity and all ipseity, for all is become to Babalon, all may behold Babalon, all may become Babalon.

<
Naught will we do and naught will be save that which gives us what we seek. We are not the ones who will not allow pleasure to be awoken and taken. Not will Babalon say, nor will we say that the way is straight or narrow, for it is not. Nor is it the way up, nor the way down, but it is the way across, sideways and through. Not to us, must one give oblations, not to Babalon, not to any god. Worship not the gods, but learn from them. Not to end up in the void of pleasure, the absence of pain, for this is not our teaching either. For our teaching is naught but what is found in the inside of the Babalon, in the bleeding Babalon, whose death cries when we kill her and devour her are the cries of one reaching greater power. Naught is she but who has taught us to make love to her, and to watch her blood as it fills the great void of pleasure the planet over and becomes human pain. Be not afraid then to drink of her pain, the blood of Hers that we have spilt in love and duty to her, but drink full of pain all the way to her flesh and come upon her great bloody and devoured body lying over the void of pleasure. Not the path this is, not any path, but the immediate way. Not the pleasure of the Babalon, but the pain of the Babalon makes this your  infinite elixir. For we are not the ones who live eternally by one flesh, but by the creation of the flesh, and by the turning of it inside out to we live eternal.  Not from pleasure or from pain take the only gnosis, but always the unities will unite themselves upon you, and in the immortal flesh you will continue to create and destroy. For in this cycle is your eternity, and to become it never  die without being reborn.

Behold!
Always she cries out,
Babalon! My self!
Away from me turn
Lies within my mouth
On my naked body lies
Nobody.

alterofbabalon

For amazing photographs of Parzifal, with some of the same cast as Babalon, click this link:

http://www.crossroads.wild.net.au/parzival.htm
I wish I had been there! It looks fabulous. The role of Parzifal  was  played  by the many talented
Oreyelle Defenstrate Bascule who also, no doubt, directed the piece.

black20rosedx9

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Winterspells Witchcraft Takes Over the World!

Correction! they were here before me. I still its pretty funny!

I must have been receiving  messages form Pomerania!

I may have become a woman of influence!

It looks like one of those puppies took my course in the Nine Secrets of the Faery Witches.

Go forth Oh students of Faery Witchcraft!

This entire fleet of Pomeranians shall soon be flying through the sky on

tiny broomsticks to carry out our magic spells.

I can see it now!  A whole coven of Pomeranian Witches.

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Love to Our Ancestors on Samhain: The Revealers

Samhain is a time to honor our ancestors.

Time to lay out a feast and invite them to dine, to share their presence with us while the veil is thin.

So, in respect for those who came before, I have made a small Ancestral Gallery of Witches. Give them a smile, tip your hat, light a candle and say thank you for blazing the trail and holding open the gates of Elfhame.  It took a lot of courage, in those old days, to walk between the worlds. My original plan was to give space to thirteen of our forebears in one blog post, but i realized, not everyone would know them, so I shall make a series of posts with three in each — a good magical number. It is amazing to discover these great teachers and mentors all over again and to remember how they kept magic alive for all of us, sometimes at great personal risk.

These three gentlemen were controversial figures even for witches. I was not that aware of Alex Sanders until I lived in England. When a told a friend of my discovery, he  responded with, “Oh, wasn’t he just a television witch?” I had no idea. about that. I just thought he and Maxine were fascinating people. Robert Cochran’s style of witchcraft drew me very strongly. I later found how troubled he was.  The American witch, Leo Martello, was an activist, very outspoken especially about animal cruelty and Gay rights.

Alex Sanders (Orrell Alexander Carter)

Born: June 6, 1926/ Entered Faery: March 30, 1988

The flamboyant Witch King, Alex Sanders, was reputed to have been initiated into witchcraft by his Welsh grandmother, Grandma Bibby, as a child. He had accidentally come upon her sitting stark naked in the middle of a circular cloth upon which curious objects were placed. The image of the classic witch, she swore the terrified Alex to secrecy, cutting him with a knife to mark as “one of us now.” Later on, she initiated him in the “old way”, launching his career as a witch.

The, perhaps apocryphal, biography of Alex Sanders, King of the Witches, by June Johns, 1969, ends with a very interesting interview. This section may put to rest some of the disturbing ritual imagery in films of Alexandrian witches found on youtube. The Questioner is June Johns:

Q: What is the difference between black witchcraft and white?

A: White is used for the good of the penitent and must not harm even his enemies. Black involves harm being done to either the petitioner or his enemies, or the sexual seduction of women.

Q: But doesn’t the use of the fith-fath ( doll) harm enemies?

A: No, it is only a means of silencing or restraining someone.  Suppose we  are asked to restrain a meddlesome mother-in-law. We fashion a doll in wax or plasticine, fasten its lips  together with a safety pin, bind its limbs together and have the High Priestess breathe life into it as we recite the correct incantations. No harm is wished her, beyond the impulse to keep her mouth shut.

Robert Cochran   (Roy Bowen)

Born: Jan. 26, 1931/ Entered Faery: July 3, 1066

I have always thought the Cat’s Cradle was witchy game. Here are the words of Robert Cochran, founder of the Clan of Tubal Cain, a mystical branch of witchcraft begun just after the 1951 repeal of the witchcraft laws in England.

On Cords

by Roy Bowen

Pentagram (3) March 1965

“Cat’s cradle” as a game is interesting enough but as a form of witchery it becomes an interesting indication of the complex nature of the Craft. Each of the fingers on the hands of a witch has a defined meaning and purpose. It would be reasonable to assume that, to the knowing eye, the crosses and planes formed by the strings would tell much of a particular ritual.”

I found a couple of fascinating websites about Robert Cochran and the Clan of Tubal Cain in case you are interested. He had a very deep mind, and his letters are full of profound interpretations of poetry and symbolism.

Check out: http://www.cyberwitch.com/bowers/ and http://www.clanoftubalcain.co.uk/

Robert Cochran was born Roy Bowers in a down at heels area of London. He claimed that members of his family had been practitioners of an ancient pagan Witch-cult since at least the 17th century, and that two of them had been executed for it. He  also claimed his great-grandfather was “the last Grand Master of the Staffordshire witches”, who cursed his grandparents for abandoning the Craft and converting to Methodism. His father had practiced witchcraft, but kept it a secret, and forbade his wife to tell his son, Roy. Despite her oath, his mother did in fact tell him. On finding this out, he immediately embraced his heritage.

“I come from the country of the oak, ash and thorn… I describe myself as a ‘pellar’. The People are formed in clans or families and describe themselves by the local name of the Deity. I am a member of the People of Goda – the Clan of Tubal Cain. We were known locally as ‘witches’, ‘the Good People’, Green gowns (females only), ‘Horsemen’ and finally Wizards.”

Robert Cochran worked as a blacksmith at a foundry, and later on a barge transporting coal along Britain’s network of canals. He would later remark that he saw traces of paganism in the folklore and folk art of both of these professions.

The Clan of Tubal Cain, 1951-1966

Around the time that the British 1735 Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951, and it became legal to practice witchcraft in the United Kingdom, Cochrane, who was in his early twenties, founded a coven, and named it the “Clan of Tubal Cain” after the Biblical figure Tubal Cain, the first blacksmith. Blacksmiths have long been associated with wizardry because theyw ork with the four elements and bend iron to their will.  Cochrane initiated his wife Jane and several others into the craft, and they then joined the coven. Among these was Evan John Jones, who would later become an author upon the subject of pagan witchcraft.

Cochrane ingested belladonna and Librium on Midsummer eve 1966, and died nine days later in hospital without recovering consciousness. He left a suicide note expressing his intent to kill himself “while of sound mind”.


Dr. Leo Louis Martello

Born: July 26, 1931/ Entered Faery: June 29. 2000

“In the Craft, there is no hard dogma. Hard drugs are forbidden. Mindless morons can’t be a compliment to our Mother Goddess. Sex is sacred, not something to be exhibited at a peep show. Power is something personal, not to be used over others, which is contrary to Craft ethics. Those who think the Old Religion will make them masters over others are slaves to their own self-delusions. A happy person is always a powerful person and is hated by those who aren’t. A happy person is in many ways selfish; in the Craft we must protect our best interests and ensure that the power that comes from joy remains constant, knowing that none of us are immune from the vicissitudes of life, but that our Old Religion will help us handle adversity. The Craft has survived for thousands of years. After everything else has come and gone, it will remain. And one day, in the coming Age of Aquarius, there will once again be magnificent temples to the Goddess”. from: Witchcraft: The Old Religion, 1973.

A fellow native of Massachusetts, Dr. Leo Louis Martello was  certified hypnotist,  graphologist, and author. During the 1960’s, he was involved in the early spread of Contemporary Witchcraft in America.  Colorful and sometimes controversial, he worked tirelessly in the areas of Civil Rights, Animal Rights, and Gay and Lesbian Rights issues.  He is  famed for his manifesto seeking retribution for the torture and execution of Witches during the Witch hysteria of the 15th – 17th centuries in Europe, going so far as to filing suits of $500 million against the Roman Catholic Church and $100 million against Salem, Massachusetts.

His father was an immigrant Sicilian who owned a small farm, The stress of poverty during the Great Depression., tore his family apart and Leo was sent to a Catholic boarding school. Despite the hardships of his life, before the age of twenty-five Leo had achieved many things. A natural psychic, he studied palmistry and tarot with a Gypsy woman, learned hypnotism and graphology.  By the time he was sixteen, he was making radio appearances, giving handwriting analyses and selling articles to magazines, at the same time continuing his education at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Like Alex Sanders, he also had a powerful grandmother whom he was said to resemble.  Still in Sicily,  Maria Concetta was a well-known Strega Maga (a female Witch) and a High Priestess of a secret coven called ‘Goddess of the Sikels’.  After the sudden death of a local Mafiosi by heart attack, it was rumored that she had caused his death after he had threatened to kill her husband for not paying protection money.

Eventually, Leo’s father told him that his cousins from the old country wished to meet  him.  They had been watching him for years, waiting until he was ready to be brought back into the Old Religion.  On the 26th of September 1951, Leo was initiated into his cousin’s secret Sicilian coven, and thus he became a Stregone Mago (a male Witch).  The initiation involved a “bloodletting Oath”; he was never to reveal the secrets of the coven, its members, or any of their secret teachings.

In 1964, Leo sought the permission from his Sicilian coven to go public as a Witch.  With their consent, he contacted other friends and associates leading to his initiation into Gardnerian, Alexandrian and Traditionalist traditions.  He published his first book,  Weird Ways of Witchcraft in 1969.

images

That ends my list of 13 witches for Samhain.

I’m sorry to have missed any, I know there are a few more who have passed beyond the veil.

When I describe them a being in Faery I really mean it. Consider what it means for a Faery Witch who can contact any of these Ancestors. I believe they are there to help us on our path in all their different ways — and not just via their many books and articles. So, if you have a Samhain Feast perhaps invite them to share with you by name. And if you do, let me know what happens.

Just click the COMMENTS tab at the top of the blog and you will have lots of room to express yourself and share with all of us.

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Babalon Diaries # 12: & Love to a Great Ancestress on Samhain

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Thanks to multi-talented musician,  Brian Butler, we have a brilliant biography of Marjorie Cameron and her role in the obscure Curtis Harrington  film, The Wormwood Star.

After seeing a clip from this film, I was on a mission to find it. and stumbled on this article. I really would love to see the whole thing. It is highly poetic and very beautiful. Marjorie Cameron’s presence was  compelling, deep, and wise.

I asked Brian if I could re-print it, and he seemed to say it was OK, so Brian, thank you!

This article adds so much to the Babalon Diaries and to our knowledge of Marjorie Cameron’s influence on Witchcraft.

Enjoy a fabulous story about an amazing woman.

He has a great website at www.brianbutler.prg

CAMERON: THE WORMWOOD STAR

BRIAN BUTLER

We are Stars and herald alien laws outside the Solar Wheel

invading natural systems of the earth.[1]

The late 1940’s was an interesting time to be in Southern California. World War II had just ended and for the first time atomic weapons had been detonated in warfare. Science and technology were advancing at an alarming pace. Science fiction had become popular, and space travel seemed a possibility. There were UFO sightings; tales of Black Magick and strange new religious cults were formed. For some reason, Los Angeles became the hub for such activity. There, through a chance encounter with an old navy acquaintance, 23-year-old Marjorie Cameron was led to the home of the famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory rocket scientist and master occultist Jack Parsons in Pasadena. This house, also known as the Parsonage, had become a meeting place and boarding house for cutting edge scientists, occultists, cult leaders and science fiction authors. At the time Cameron arrived, Parsons and then science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard were well into one of the most important occult operations of the 20th century — “The Babalon Working.” Through their invocations, they had set the stage for the arrival of Cameron to assist them as an elemental spirit incarnated in the form of a redhead with green eyes. This meeting was to forever alter the destiny of Marjorie Cameron and set her on a lifelong quest to manifest the Babalon[2] current upon Earth. While much has been documented from her years with Jack Parsons, until now very little has been known publicly about Cameron’s life before or after this five-year period.

Mockery is the punishment of the Gods. What fiendish laughter…[3]

Marjorie Elizabeth Cameron –later known as Cameron – was born on April 23, 1922 in Belle Plain, Iowa, the eldest of four children. Her father, Hill Leslie Cameron, was a Scot from Illinois who worked with the railroad. Her mother, Carrie V. Ridenour, of German and Dutch decent, was a native of Iowa. The night of Cameron’s birth was surrounded by chaos; there was a terrible thunderstorm and her father got drunk and attempted suicide because he thought his wife was dying. Her grandmother, a staunch churchwoman, believed Cameron to be a child of the devil because of her fiery red hair.

As a child, Cameron began to have strange and powerful visions that were so vivid, she could not be sure if they were real or imaginary. One night from her bedroom, she saw a ghostly procession of four white horses float by her window. Later she could recall these dreams in detail and was able to capture this in her artwork and poetry. In a letter to magician and Aleister Crowley associate Jane Wolfe, she mentions finding “a hole to hell” in her grandfather’s backyard:

“I remember always a tree on my grandfather’s property from which hung an old, old swing where my mother had played as a little girl. Near this spot I recall a well which I always believed was the hole to hell. – also the blue Bachelor Button flower grew near this spot. Herein I find again a new concept of the 4 elements and the name of god – the tree, the well, the swing (water’s life) and the flower –which is seed.” [4]

Bachelor's Button III

Never quite accepted in her small hometown, Cameron spent most of her childhood alone. In kindergarten, she was placed in a special school for children with above-average abilities and it became apparent that she was very different from other children. In a town dominated by the railroad, Cameron would often venture to the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks.” She was always attracted to the darker side of things and found a kinship with other individualists and loners.

As a teenager, Cameron made a hideout in the attic of her parents’ home and there she began to develop her psychic abilities. She soon established contact with spirits that would tell her detailed accounts of what had occurred at the house in the past. Like a true witch, she collected black cats and would go for late night prowls alone dressed only in a nightgown.

When she was seventeen, the Great Depression was underway and Cameron moved with her family to Davenport, Iowa, a considerably larger town than Belle Plain. Again she had trouble adjusting. After the suicide of a close friend, Cameron attempted to take her own life several times, each time through an overdose of sleeping pills. Though unsuccessful, she found that these near brushes with death had further enhanced her psychic abilities, giving her a glimpse into the realm of the dead.

Mine eyes are terrible and strange but thou knowest me [5]

In 1943, in the midst of World War II, the 21-year-old Cameron joined the Navy -turning down several college scholarships. She was sent along with 3,000 other women to boot camp in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Soon she was soon selected for a high-level job in Washington, DC, where she applied her artistic skills by drawing maps for the war efforts. She was then sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff were she once met Churchill. She had a drafting table at the head of their conference room. Later, according to the principles of talismanic magic[6] she felt that many men died in the South Pacific as a result of her drawings. She always felt a karmic connection to these men and believed that the later tragic events in her life were the result of her participation in their deaths.

Later, she worked at the photo science lab on the Potomac, also called “The Hollywood Navy.” There she met many Hollywood celebrities such as Gene Kelly. After learning that her brother, a tail gunner in the Air Force, had been shot down and injured, Cameron walked out on her job and returned to Belle Plain to see him. Eventually, Cameron was declared AWOL and was court martialed. She spent the final six months of the war confined to the base.

819643993_m

THE BIRTH OF BABALON

After her release from the Navy, Cameron moved in with her family, which had moved to Pasadena, California. In January of 1946, while waiting at the unemployment office, she saw an old acquaintance from the photo science lab in the Navy. This man, whose identity remains unknown, was living at the Parsonage and told her of a “mad scientist” that she had to meet.  Inviting her to breakfast, he took her to a house at 1003 South Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena, and there she met Jack Parsons for the first time. As she walked in, Parsons was standing in the hallway speaking on the phone dressed only in a black silk robe. They met only briefly but immediately felt a deep connection. Also living there was Jack’s magical scribe, L. Ron Hubbard. After this encounter, Hubbard and Parsons commanded the man to “go find her or we’ll kill you!” On January 19, 1946, at the climax of a magical operation that was begun by Jack and L. Ron Hubbard two weeks previously “to obtain the assistance of an elemental mate,” Cameron returned and in that moment her destiny was changed.

Cameron immediately became romantically involved with Jack and moved into the house with him.[7] Unknowingly, she had become Parsons’ sex magick partner in a ritual designed to incarnate the force of Babalon. Although Cameron was initially uninterested in Aleister Crowley or magick, Jack proceeded to instruct Cameron in the occult arts and told her of her destiny in the world. According to Jack, she was to become the vehicle for the Goddess or force called Babalon to manifest on earth. Years later, Cameron came to believe that she was in fact Babalon incarnate.

In March of 1946, Cameron witnessed a flying saucer over the Orange Grove house. She claimed that it was the “war engine”[8] that was predicted in Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law and the “sign” that Jack was waiting for.

“ The flying saucers – the miracle! – our war machine! I saw the first one in the spring of 1946 at 1003. – Oh – my god. This is the sign (drawing of an inverted triangle within a circle) Flying Saucers – imagine!” [9]

Had she reported it publicly, this would have been known as one of the first UFO sightings in America and would have preceded, by one year, Kenneth Arnold’s infamous sighting on June 24, 1947 – the sighting which propelled the “modern UFO era.”

As the magical current become more intense at the Parsonage, things began to disintegrate. Hubbard had absconded with Jack’s former girlfriend and most of his fortune. In August, Jack resigned from Crowley’s occult order[10] in favor of his own system – “The Witchcraft.”[11] As a result, the occult lodge at the Parsonage was disbanded and guests became fewer and less frequent. Cameron soon found herself spending a lot of time alone painting in the downstairs drawing room. She convinced Jack to get her a German Shepard to keep her company. As yet unfamiliar with the nature of the magical operations going on, Cameron felt that the house was haunted, and Jack would often return to find her and the dogs freezing outside of the house, terrified to return. It is interesting to note that later, in a letter to Cameron, Jack stated that the performance of Aleister Crowley’s “Bornless One” ritual was known to cause “permanent haunting” wherever it was recited:

“I will send you the ritual of the Bornless One…It is a very ancient, potent & dangerous ritual, often used by bold magicians in the Guardian Angel Working. It is useful as a preliminary in almost any sort of work, causing a tremendous concentration of force. It is, however, liable to produce dangerous side phenomena and sometimes permanent haunting in an area where it is repeated, & is for this reason often avoided.”[12]

Finally, after numerous adverse psychic phenomena at the Parsonage, Cameron and Jack consulted the Ouji board and got the message “To Marjorie–Clean Ron’s room and get out!” They immediately did so and moved to Manhattan Beach, California.

ouija2

THE RED WITCH

In late 1947, Jack sent Cameron to England to meet Aleister Crowley. Although Crowley was skeptical about Jack’s recent experiences with Hubbard and Cameron, Jack believed that if Crowley met Cameron in person his opinion would change. Using her Navy connections, Cameron first sailed to Paris and decided to stay there for a while. She became a regular at a local pub in Paris, and there she was known as the “Red Witch” because of her unusual appearance. On the day she walked into the pub to announce that she was off to London for the weekend to meet Aleister Crowley, the locals informed her that he had just died.[13]

Cameron was heartbroken that she missed the opportunity to meet the Master Therion, and following the advice of a friend in Paris, joined a convent in Lugano, Switzerland. After three weeks at the convent, she had a life changing experience – she bathed, let her hair down on her face, got on her haunches and howled into the mirror like a wild animal. It was in this moment that she realized she was in fact the Scarlet Woman and had no place in a convent. She contacted Jack, who sent her funds to return to America. Cameron remained with Jack for the next year. Jack by this time was experiencing the darker effects of the Babalon Working. From Parsons’ The Book of Antichrist:

“Now it came to pass even as BABALON told me, for after receiving Her Book I fell away from Magick, and put away Her Book and all pertaining thereto. And I was stripped of my fortune (the sum of about $50,000) and my house, and all I Possessed.

Then for a period of two years I worked in the world, recouping my fortune somewhat. But that was also taken from me, and my reputation, and my good name in my worldly work, that was in science.”

In 1948, Cameron separated from Jack and went to study art in Mexico on the GI Bill. She did not see Jack for almost two years, and they corresponded solely by mail. However, it was during this period that she received the most serious instruction in practical magick from him. These letters still exist and are available on the Internet.

While in Mexico, Cameron quickly fell in with the famous artist colony in San Miguel—a group that included the painter David Siqueiros and the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington. Cameron felt a deep connection to Mexico and later said that San Miguel replaced in her heart her childhood home. She had met a kindred spirit in Carrington. She also met Renate Druks and Paul Matheson who would later co-star with her in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.” She had a brief romance with a bullfighter named Armando, but when he fell ill and died, Cameron was accused of witchcraft and run out of town.

cameron-work-12-high

We dance a geometry of wizardry and wind the threads about our prey…[14]

Cameron returned to America around 1950 and lived with Jack once again as his wife in Manhattan Beach. Jack was then working for Hughes Aircraft and negotiating a deal with Israel to create an explosives plant as well as providing research for “rockets and other armaments.”[15] In September 1950, plainclothes men raided the Parsons’ home and confiscated Jack’s papers. Jack was accused of removing confidential documents from Hughes and was fired. An FBI investigation began, one that would last for over a year. An informant assessed the Parsons as follows:

“…the PARSONS are an odd and unusual pair in that they do not live by the commonly accepted code of married life and are both very fascinated by anything unusual or morbid such as voodooism, cults, homosexuality, and religious practices that are “different.” Subject seems very much in love with his wife but she is not at all affectionate and does not appear to return his affection, [deleted] She is the dominating personality of the two and controls the activities and thinking of subject to very considerable degree. It is the opinion [name withheld] if subject were to have been in any way willfully involved in any activities of an espionage nature, it would probably have been on the instigation of his wife.”15[

Although Parsons was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, on January 17, 1952, he lost his security clearance. This seriously reduced his chances for employment, so Cameron and Jack began to make plans to leave the country. They were first headed for Mexico and from there to either Spain or Israel. Jack ultimately wanted to form a magical school in Israel. Jack and Cameron moved to a carriage house on Orange Grove -a few houses down from the Parsonage.[16]

On June 17, 1952, the evening before they planned to leave for Mexico, Jack was killed in an explosion when he dropped a vial of mercury fulmate in his private laboratory. Cameron was down the street fueling the car when she heard the blast. Jack’s death was ruled an accident by authorities but Cameron always believed that Howard Hughes was somehow behind it.

P9004A_r_sm

We traveled Stellar webs to darker Worlds within the Lunar mirrors of Suicide.[17]

After Jack’s death, Cameron moved into friend Renate Druks’s Malibu home for six months. Druks could not withstand the heavy vibe that was Cameron and relates strange tales of Black Magic and astral attacks. Shortly after ejecting Cameron from her household, Druks claims to have been woken by a strange astral figure floating over her bed. Described as a sort of alien creature that appeared as a bright neon-colored brain with a tail that resembled a spinal column, it increased in size as it came at her and then suddenly disappeared. Overcome with terror, she consulted with their mutual friend, Jane Wolfe. Wolfe stated ‘That was Cameron -–how naughty of her!” and instructed Druks in the banishing ritual of the pentagram to protect herself.

Exiled from Druks’s home and still deeply affected by Jack’s death, Cameron withdrew into complete isolation in the desert of Beaumont, California. There she lived in a house in an abandoned canyon that had no water or power.

During this period Cameron found a new magical teacher in Jane Wolfe and their correspondence remains as a sort of magical diary. Cameron began to see her life increasingly from a magical point of view, analyzing her experiences in terms of a life-long magical ritual or initiation. This was also her darkest period, she writes to Jane:

“I am approaching the darkest hour of the abysmal night furthest from the sun. This is the fateful hour in which I drink the cup of poison to its dregs –- eat the tainted apple -– feel the sting of the terrible dart in the core of me. Know the fang of the deadly serpent in my heart. And thereafter I shall plunge down into the abysmal horror of madness and death –- or I shall walk upon the dawn -– golden with the golden kiss upon me. This hour is far beyond the return. The turning back point was Sunset of year. My farewells were made long ago. No –- this is the hour when I approach the terrible rendezvous when all my gods shall declare themselves – when I shall call upon the secret name – open the final door.”[18]

Cameron realized that she must face this ordeal alone:

“If you have tried to contact me you have no doubt found the going hazardous – I seem to be pyramiding a mountain of fear that is closing all doors to me  — now Renee’s[19] –.

It amounts to this – in the case of each they reach a barrier of fear over which they cannot pass to follow me. And since I can show no pity – since to do so is to pity myself – I am rapidly eliminating my companions on the journey to completion. I had not expected this – as you know– the only comfort left me– is the knowledge that I have the courage to do that which no one else seems to have.  This is indeed the luxury of Kings – but I had tried to bring joy and not fear into the hearts of others. What happens from now on – I do not know. I can only remind myself constantly in this period of aloneness and dryness that which I have known from the beginning.”[20]

It is in these letters to Jane that Cameron fully divulges her feelings and candidly describes her own rituals. Most interesting is a magical working which she began shortly after Jack’s death in 1952. This ritual included some of the same people who later appeared in Kenneth Anger’s film of an occult ritual Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. According to Cameron, this working was to bear fruit in the summer of 1953. By this operation, some say that Cameron intended to create a “magical child” or “wormwood star” sired by Jack from beyond the grave.

200px-Babalon-star.tif

“This is the star which was calculated for me to give it birth. Jane– Jane– This is the star by which I shall behold him and in that union shall he be born– he whose name shall be wonder. His magnificence cannot be foretold and this is my star the Wormwood Star which will be born this summer Solstice of the year 1953.”[21]

Cameron goes on to explain the technical details of the operation based on the seven pointed star of BABALON:

“The points of the star are seven but it produces eight. It consists of the quadrupled union of four pairs of opposites. The eighth of this is not apparent until the four unions are completed. Now when each union is made the word of god must be uttered. Do you know this word? I asked for this word of Jack in March of 1949. It was given to me with no account of the cost. I carried it with me in great secrecy, not ever daring to dream of the miracle it concealed. This word I will only give to you in great secrecy.[22] With the right combination – which is my star [Star of Babalon drawn here] this great word creates — and since there is death in all birth there are four opposites destroyed – but their destruction is absorption and here again another face of the four square miracle!”[23]

She further elaborates on the formula of the operation:

“This opposite must always be the sublime whole of the opposite of the invoked. Such as in this invocation the opposites all destroyed will be pure aspects. Here is the meaning of debauchery as sacrament – the sublime follows between the six and eight of the Tarot.[24] This is the sacrament. The exquisite edge of growth and decay and this is absorbed like the fruit, the wine of the season on the dying cycle of the year. This destruction or absorption will be done each time to the union of the 8 opposites occur.”2[this footnote seems to have been lost]

She then describes the function of the unknowing participants or “elementals” in this strange working:

“Each male in this invocation is an Elemental god and these five gods will be the five fathers of the god. Each is a perfect revelation of the four represented in the Universe card of the Tarot- the Dance of the Star and the Snake. The holy 22. The kether, the Crown, the god. These four are represented as the Bull, the Lion, the Hawk and man sublime angelic – man revealed as god. I plan to write these into four commentaries – or songs – for each of the Elemental gods in a miraculous revelation. When the star is completed and the god born, these elemental gods will be known to their voices and the whole damned union will be complete and magnificent.” 25

Cameron states that she is pregnant but not with a human child:

“The pregnancy, as you understand — was not the actual growth of a human child — but the spiritual child of a psychic union – and in the case of Cupid and Psyche – this child — was a female — called Pleasure — or the birth of Babylon — which is a symbolical — but most real birth of the age of the Goddess of Pleasure — being the union of the mind and body.”[25]

After her extraordinary experiences in the desert, Cameron moved back in with her parents in Pasadena and was considered catatonic for a time. Still in isolation and confusion, she painted a series of works that she called “the parchments.” These pieces received a lot of attention, including an offer from a psychiatrist to publish them with a commentary (which she refused). She believed that through these works of art, she literally “painted herself out” of her situation. Renewed, she emerged as a “real force” in the artistic and occult communities.

scarlet2

Death has been thy lover. Is there else to fear?[26]

In December of 1953, Cameron walked into another situation that was to alter both her destiny and that of those around her. This time it was the home of the eccentric and warlock, Samson Debreir, on Barton Avenue in Hollywood, California. Underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger had begun casting for his occult film, “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” and the stage was once again set for the Scarlet Woman. The famous erotic writer Anais Nin was to the star until Cameron appeared, upstaging her by the mere power of her presence. The rivalry between the two became a driving force behind the film.

When Anger met Cameron, she introduced herself as “the Scarlet Woman.” And Anger replied “That’s obvious… I have been waiting to meet you for a thousand years.”  By this time, she had developed a very powerful countenance, and it was this that struck Anger. He vividly recalls, “[She had] Flaming Scot red hair…real emerald green eyes that could also turn into sea mist grey according to her mood…and suddenly Anais Nin shrunk…in front of the majesty that is Cameron because Cameron wiped her out.” Cameron had a profound effect on Kenneth Anger and was a sort of mentor to him. Soon, they were living together. Anger relates many strange stories of UFOs, levitation and astral visions, and he still considers Cameron one of the most important women of his life. 

The film, in which Cameron plays herself “The Scarlet Woman,” was well received among both magical initiates and the art world. Cameron believed that this film was proof to the world that she had manifested the force of Babalon on earth.

Up the swirling scarf of smoke rise our invocations.[27]

By the late 1950’s, Cameron was living in Malibu and hanging out with a crowd of Beat artists that included the likes of Dennis Hopper, Wallace Berman, Bruce Conner and assemblage artist George Herms. In 1957, Wallace Berman’s show at the Ferus Gallery was closed by the vice squad for pornography after he displayed one of Cameron’s drawings. This drawing depicted a woman, possibly Cameron, being taken from behind by an alien creature.

That same year, experimental filmmaker and her Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome co-star Curtis Harrington directed a film that featured Cameron and her artwork called The Wormwood Star.  The film opens with titles drawn by Paul Matheson over an extreme close-up of the Seal of Solomon. “Concerning the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel as revealed to: Cameron.”  Introduced through a series of composed still frames, rather surreal in juxtaposition and symbolic props, Cameron is then shown seated, looking into a mirror as if in a trance. After a few minutes of this rather abstract portraiture, the film then shifts to a study of Cameron’s paintings that illustrate a desert procession of angels.  In the background Cameron recites a solemn invocation to her Holy Guardian Angel:

“Dark Star, I seek you in all the endless rooms of the universe

I have entered the maze of chaos and searched the promise of no end and no fulfillment

But I have seen your helmeted head flashing gold from the bloody triumphs and sunsets of the world

I have heard your voice singing lovely songs of desire in the world womb

I remember the artistry of fingers that held the rose in wonder

Your musical flute sounding the hymn of love seeking since the birth in the crashing star nebulae

Singing limbs of muscle and star-foam pursued and pursuing

Radiant Warrior, how long?

Beloved God, how long?

How long, how long?”[28]

Cameron later burned all of the paintings seen in The Wormwood Star while living with her second husband Sherif Kimmil, who was said to be the inspiration for the R. P. McMurphy character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and was by all accounts insane. Kimmel and Cameron had been up for several days on speed and formed what Cameron called a “suicide club.” Kimmel went to the bathroom and slit his wrists.[29] In turn, Cameron symbolically committed suicide by throwing her paintings in the fire. According to Kenneth Anger, Cameron’s paintings were in reality magical talismans and had to be destroyed lest they turn and destroy the creator. He states, “She was doing art for the sake of magick and her soul. She never sold her paintings.”

In this hour I decide between nothingness and creation…[30]

By 1960, Cameron had transcended her darker period and emerged as an individual. She began to have a greater understanding of her life’s pattern. From her diary entry of October 22, 1960, she writes:

“I sense the approaching end to my years of exile. Some inner knowing prepares me for the return to the world in my just position. In the years of exile I compounded a state of mind that philosophically remains balanced regarding the continuity of my present state of existence or to finally win for myself a gracious and rewarding end to life. Ultimatums are impossible for one who has witnessed the broad sweep of existence. Yet I am tempted to sum up the experience for I fear already I have lost the vast majority of my impressions. I have lived frugally but I have squandered dreams and visions as only the spend thrift does – sowing wide golden plains.”

In 1961, Cameron appeared in the film Nite Tide. Directed by Curtis Harrington, this film also featured Dennis Hopper’s first staring role. Cameron played a mysterious figure that is seen prowling the beach in Santa Monica. In the film she has a strange, compelling presence.  On October 3, 1964, the Cinema Theatre in Los Angeles presented “The Transcendental Art of Cameron,” which featured slide projections of her paintings while she read from her journals.

747591624_32f4729bb8

By the late 1960’s Cameron moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. A short experimental film from this period (1969) by John Chamberlain entitled “Thumbsuck” still exists. It shows Cameron as a striking figure with long red hair and piercing eyes. She is applying makeup to her face in a sort of Kabuki style while her daughter Krystal and two other children are seen playing in the background. Cameron ignores them while staring into the mirror, smoking a joint.

And the Hag with lizard eyes embraces shadows…[31]

As Cameron grew older, she took on the image of an old witch or crone with long, straight white hair. She lived in a small house on North Genesee in West Hollywood and could often be seen practicing Tai Chi in Bronson Park. Her last art show “The Pearl of Reprisal” was held at the Barnsdall Art Park on April 8, 1989. Here she exhibited a haunted series of pen and ink drawings titled “Pluto Transiting the Twelfth House.” “Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome” and “The Wormwood Star” were shown. Cameron also gave a reading of her poems by candlelight. The same year Cameron edited Freedom is a Two Edged Sword –a compilation of the writings of Jack Parsons published by New Falcon.

Cameron died of cancer on July 23, 1995. A magical rite was performed at her bedside at the VA hospital. A wake was held at the Beyond Baroque bookstore in Los Angeles where her poetry was read by friends and her paintings were exhibited, including the “Black Angel” painting of Jack Parsons as an angel with a sword.

20080509PHOWWW00153


[1] Cameron magical diary September 1962.

[2] Babalon is the companion of the Beast 666 in Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic pantheon. Crowley first wrote extensively about this in Vision and the Voice which documents his experiences with the Enochian system of magic and his own initiation. After the magician crosses the “abyss” that separates the spiritual world from the rational or mental world, he is greeted by the goddess Babalon, the great mother who resides in Binah on the Qabalistic tree of life, which is the spiritual  home of those who have achieved the grade of Magister Templi.

[3]Cameron magical diary June 21, 1964.

[4] Cameron letter to Jane Wolfe December 26, 1952.

[5] Cameron from the film The Wormwood Star 1957.

[6] Cameron considered all of her drawings to be magical talismans that had very real effects on the world.

[7] On October 19, 1946 Cameron and Jack were married.

[8] Liber Al Chap. III v7: I will give you a war-engine.

[9] Letter from Cameron to Jane Wolfe Jan. 22, 1953.

[10] Despite numerous attempts this order has yet to be revived by a competent group of magicians in America.

[11] See Jack Parsons, Freedom is a Two Edged Sword (New Falcon)

[12] Letter from Jack Parsons to Cameron Jan. 10, 1950.

[13] Aleister Crowley died on December 1, 1947.

[14] Cameron magical diary January 21, 1962.

[15] FBI file on Jack Parsons.

[16] Although the Parsonage was destroyed, Cameron believed the house to be eternal on the astral plane like Crowley’s Boleskine in Scotland.

[17] From the book “The Black Pilgrimage” by Cameron 1964. Privately published.

[18] Letter to Jane Wolfe, dated December 6, 1952, 6:00am.

[19] Renate Druks.

[20] Cameron letter to Jane Wolfe April 7, 1953.

[21] Camron letter to Jane Wolfe Dec. 26, 1952.

[22] This word not here revealed. The present writer has however obtained it.

[23] Cameron letter to Jane Wolfe Dec. 26, 1952.

[24] Atu VII of the TARO is the Chariot. The formula contained in this card is one key to understanding this working.

[25] Cameron letter to Jane Wolfe August 23, 1953.

[26] Cameron magical diary March 11, 1962

[27] Cameron magical diary September 1962.

[28] Cameron from the film The Wormwood Star 1957.

[29] While writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey worked as a janitor in the psychiatric ward of the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California (often under the influence of LSD). It is possible that it was there that he encountered Kimmel, who was committed to the VA Hospital for several months as a result of this suicide attempt.

[30] Cameron letter to Jane Wolfe January 22, 1953.

[31] Cameron magical diary June 21, 1964

Brian Butler

Brian Butler

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Love to Our Ancestors on Samhain : Stepping Out of the Shadows

Alexandrian Ritual

Samhain is a time to honor our ancestors.

Time to lay out a feast and invite them to dine, to share their presence with us while the veil is thin.

So, in respect for those who came before, I have made a small Ancestral Gallery of Witches. Give them a smile, tip your hat, light a candle and say thank you for blazing the trail and holding open the gates of Elfhame.  It took a lot of courage, in those old days, to walk between the worlds. My original plan was to give space to thirteen of our forebears in one blog post, but i realized, not everyone would know them, so I shall make a series of posts with three in each — a good magical number. It is amazing to discover these great teachers and mentors all over again and to remember how they kept magic alive for all of us, sometimes at great personal risk.

The three following Witches carried the movement forward each in their different ways.

Stewart Farrar, the journalist, wrote many books that dispelled the negative perception of Witchcraft and made it approachable, almost acceptable.

Sybil Leek — well she was the first Witch I ever knew of. She was a public personality in the 1960’s in America and her book Sybil Leek’s Love Signs or something to that effect was all over the place. I almost didn’t include due to the cheesiness of my her 1960’s PR, but I have discovered in my research, a very interesting person.

Doreen Valiente was the poetess who increased the deep glamor of the Craft with evocative imagery and emotional power. She did not approve of the attention seekers, yet still found herself in the spotlight.

Charm Against an Egg-boat

You must break the shell to bits, for fear

The witches should make it a boat, my dear:

For over the sea, away from home,

Far by night the witches roam.

Anonymous..

.

Stewartfarrar

Stewart Farrar:   Born: June 28, 1916 / Entered Faery: Feb 7, 2000

Stewart Farrar was an unlikely witch.

Farrar was one of the first British officers to enter Auschwitz, an experience that  greatly influenced his personal and political beliefs. It led him to explore philosophies such as Marxism, and at the time he met Alex and Maxine Sanders, he was an agnostic with only a marginal interest in witchcraft.

Farrar was a natural and prolific writer. Back in England after the war, he began a career as a journalist and also wrote detective fiction. It was when he was sent to cover a screening of The Legend of the Witches that he met Alex and Maxine. Though he wasn’t sure of Wicca, she was fascinated by them. The result was one of the most important books on witchcraft, What Witches Do and Farrar’s initiation into the Sanders’ coven. The term Alexandrian Tradition was coined by Stewart Farrar.

While working magic with the Sanders, Farrar met Janet Owen who was to become hos seventh wife. They came to prominence as Alexandrian Witches writing many important books together. The most well know is A Witches Bible.

Witches are practical people;
philosophy to them is not just an intellectual exercise -
they have to put it into practice in their everyday lives,
and in their working,
if philosophy is to have any meaning.

From: A Witches’ Bible, by Janet and Stewart Farrar, published by Phoenix Publishing (1984).



Sybil Leek:   Born: Feb. 22,1917 / Entered Faery: Nov. 26, 1982

All human beings have magic in them. The secret is to know how to use this magic, and astrology is a vital tool for doing just that…

~ Sybil Leek, 1972.

Sybil Leek had an utterly amazing life. Like a character in a romantic novel, she was born into a wealthy Staffordshire family that was fascinated by the magic and the occult, beginning in the 16th century with her ancestor, Molly Leigh. Her father taught her about nature and the power of herbs, talked to her about deep metaphysical subjects on long walks over the hills.  Her grandmother taught her Astrology, psychic arts, and divination. They entertained great thinkers like H.G.Wells, and even Aleister Crowley who encouraged her to become a poet.

She married a concert pianist  at 16 and was widowed at 18. To recover from her grief, her grandmother sent to her to coven in France to be their High Priestess. When she returned to England she lived in the New Forest, the place that Gerald Gardner claimed to have been schooled in Witchcraft. Bored by the place, she ran off with the Gypsies!

Chased out England, she moved to America where she became a regular on talk shows and wrote sixty books on Witchcraft, Magic and Astrology, as well as stories about her extraordinary life.  While in L.A. she met  Israel Regardie with whom she studied Qabbalah and practiced Golden dawn rituals. She is credited with being the one of the  first environmentalist Witches.

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Sybil Leek was an excellent Astologer and this is an amusing quote from one of her many books:


Sometimes astronomers and scientists make dogmatic statements in print that “they have never discovered any truth in the claims of astrology.” What they probably mean is that they have not taken the trouble to study it other than simply reading a three-line version of Sun-sign astrology in their local newspaper. Such dogmatic statements should really open up a whole forum in which the scientist should truthfully answer the question “Have you ever studied astrology?” I can only presume that fear is the basis of all such statements. Why do people become illogical and emotional when they speak of astrology? Are they afraid we may all regress into a primitive state in which their work may not be justified or appreciated? Are they afraid that astrology may be opening doors to new scientific discoveries and new dimensions of reality and may upset their status quo? Of course, anything written in a controversial vein about astrology generally hits the headlines, but it is the idea of controversy, not the validity of an argument, that really makes news…



Doreen Edith Dominy Valiente:

Born: Jan. 4, 1922/ Entered Faery: Sept. 1, 1999

I find this photo above most mysterious. I think its the intensity of her face that does it.

She is the poet of the Craft. Her version of the Charge of the Goddess has come down to us as the primary invocation

to the Queen of Heaven, the Great Goddess in all her forms.

I have posted the Charge of the Goddess here: Wicca: The Charge of the Goddess

You will have to scroll down below the Bluebeard’s Castle stuff to find it.

Doreen Valiente was High Priestess in Gerald Gardner’s  Bricket Wood  coven. While he loved the limelight, she felt the Craft should maintain its age-old  secrecy.  I find it interesting that the Priestesses of two major covens of this period,  Doreen, Maxine Sanders, were very reluctant to go public with their Path, while connected to men who wanted gloried in the attention. Perhaps that is because the history of the Witch Craze suggests that those who ere put to death were predominantly women, or maybe that women enjoy  the  hidden, more subtle, magical  powers  of moonlight.

This wonderful poem by Doreen says it all.

The Witches’ Creed


Hear Now the words of the witches,

The secrets we hid in the night,

When dark was our destiny’s pathway,

That now we bring forth into light.


Mysterious water and fire,

The earth and the wide-ranging air,

By hidden quintessence we know them,

And will and keep silent and dare.


The birth and rebirth of all nature,

The passing of winter and spring,

We share with the life universal,

Rejoice in the magical ring.


Four times in the year the Great Sabbat 
Returns,

and the witches are seen

At Lammas and Candlemas dancing,

On May Eve and old Hallowe’en.


When day-time and night-time are equal,

When sun is at greatest and least,

The four Lesser Sabbats are summoned,

And Witches gather in feast.


Thirteen silver moons in a year are,

Thirteen is the coven’s array.

Thiteen times at Esbat make merry,

For each golden year and a day.


The power that was passed down the age,

Each time between woman and man,

Each century unto the other,

Ere time and the ages began.


When drawn is the magical circle,

By sword or athame of power,

Its compass between two worlds lies,

In land of the shades for that hour.


This world has no right then to know it,

And world of beyond will tell naught.

The oldest of Gods are invoked there,

The Great Work of magic is wrought.


For the two are mystical pillars,

That stand at the gate of the shrine,

And two are the powers of nature,

The forms and the forces divine.


The dark and the light in succession,

The opposites each unto each,

Shown forth as a God and a Goddess:

Of this our ancestors teach.


By night he’s the wild wind’s rider,

The Horn’d One, the Lord of the Shades.

By day he’s the King of the Woodland,

The dweller in green forest glades.


She is youthful or old as she pleases,

She sails the torn clouds in her barque,

The bright silver lady of midnight,

The crone who weaves spells in the dark.


The master and mistress of magic,

Thet dwell in the deeps of the mind,

Immortal and ever-renewing,

With power to free or to bind.


So drink the good wine to the Old Gods,

And Dance and make love in their praise,

Till Elphame’s fair land shall receive us

In peace at the end of our days.


And Do What You Will be the challenge,

So be it Love that harms none,

For this is the only commandment.

By Magic of old, be it done!

Doreen Valiente

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Witch Museum: Boscastle, Cornwal

Museum of Witches, Boscastle, Cornwall

Cornwall is the last stronghold of the Witches….

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This very interesting video was made in the 1960’s about the Witch Museum in Boscastle, Cornwall, bought by Gerald Gardener in 1952 — the year after the repeal of the witchcraft ban!

This video is very atmospheric, dramatically  sensationalizing the dark side the Magic that has such a hold over people who fear it. I include it here as a reminder of what anyone coming out as a Witch in England was up against at that time. These kind of media portrayals continue, but it was much worse in the 1960’s.

It is also  a nice bit of Halloween spookiness…

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I pirated a little clip from wikipedia about Gerald Gardener’s involvement with the Museum of Witchcraft.

The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft, 1951-1963

Gardner at the wishing well outside the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft at the Witches’ Mill on the Isle of Man.

In 1951, Gardner travelled to the Isle of Man, where, in the town of Castletown, he became employed by Cecil Williamson at the Museum of Magic and Witchcraft as the director and “resident witch”. On 29 July 1951 The Sunday Pictorial published an article about the museum named “Calling All Covens!”, in which Gardner declared:

Of course I’m a witch. And I get great fun out of it.[46]

Williamson and Gardner later fell out, when Gardner accused Williamson of focusing on sensationalist aspects of witchcraft in his museum exhibits, and Williamson said of Gardner that he was a “vain, self-centered man, tight with his money, and more interested in outlets for his nudist and voyeuristic activities, than in learning anything about authentic witchcraft”.

In 1952, Gardner bought the museum from Williamson, and started running it using his own private collection for the exhibits, including items such as the signed OTO charter issued by Crowley. Williamson meanwhile began his own museum, named the Museum of Witchcraft, across the channel in England.

Youtube channel where I found this video. He has lots of cool stuff!

Black & White footage of the Museum Of Witchcraft in Boscastle in the late 1960`s whislt it was under the ownershop of Cecil Williamson. Still open today and owned and run by a wonderful chap named Graham King – This is a place not to be missed!

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