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What is Witchcraft?

As an incense maker I get all sorts of questions from incense users and makers all around the world.  The question I’ve been asked the most over the last 2 years has been “how do you make backflow incense cones?”  The “backflow” or “down flow” incense cone is something reasonably new in the marketplace.  Unlike a traditional cone, a backflow cone not only sends a stream of smoke into the air but it also sends a stream of smoke downwards.  When used with a special burner the smoke flows downward like fog or water.  There are backflow burners that look like a pot pouring tea, a dragon breathing smoke, a castle wrapped in fog, and many others.  All of those very clever burners require the use of a special backflow incense cone.

In the nineteenth century, the nascent field of evolutionary biology produced recapitulation theory: “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” The idea was, in a manner of speaking, that the developmental story of an individual embryo replays the evolutionary history of the embryo’s species. So an embryonic mammal, for example, was thought to take the guise of a fish, an amphibian, a reptile, and a bird before beginning to look like a mammal.

This notion has since been discredited as a scientific explanation for the origin of species. But it remains powerful for me as myth because it resonates with certain of my experiences: like all myth in a Universe pervaded by uncanny and delightful resemblances of which we Pagans like to recite, “as above, so below; as within, so without; as the Universe, so the soul,” recapitulation theory can sometimes prove useful in understanding and retelling our lives’ stories.

Personally, I find that recapitulation theory helps me—in a roundabout sort of way—trace the arc of the story of my spiritual development.

Say that there actually were witches of our sort, back in the Old Days.

Say that there were.

In the Old Country, times are hard. It's as much as your life is worth to keep to the Old Ways.

All the old stories tell of the Land-to-the-West, the Land-Across-the-Waves.

So we pack up our bags and, in hope and fear, we go there.

And when we arrive, lo! there in the forest—and such a forest!—we find him already waiting: the Horned our god (and such a god!), just as we knew him before.

I was blessed this year to spend the summer solstice on the Isle of Skye, and the powerful eerie and eternal presence of the Black Cuillin mountains surrounded me every day. Known in Gaelic as An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, or the Isle of Mists, this is an Otherwordly place with a distinct feeling to it. Nowhere on earth feels like Skye. Its a place of memory, of spirits.

On the solstice I went on a pilgrimage to the famous Fairy Pools- a series of bright turquoise pools and rushing waterfalls, slicing through the land across a bright green marshy river valley. The source of the water is a vast and deep purple slit or crevasse splitting the massive hillside above from top to bottom with obvious vaginal imagery. This mountains Gaelic name can apparently can no longer be translated, but its powerful feminine presence is unmistakable. The fairy pools are said to have no specific Faery myths attached to them, but their name is well earned. Anyone visiting can feel the unique atmosphere of this beautiful place, and the bright waters, pouring endlessly from the vaginal mountain flanked on either side by immense rocky thighs together with numerous traces of ancestral barrows and possible neolithic rock carvings dotting its landscape strongly suggest this was once a sacred complex, probably honouring the goddess of the mountain. There was one barrow ( an ancient burial mound usually for a chieftain or healer traditionally used for ancestral ritual) which was clearly to be seen, its roof fallen away but its rocky internal structure- small internal 'rooms' off a small central passage- was in the perfect position, by the side of one of the waterfalls to have allowed a view of the Great Goddess and space to enact entrance to Her womb/ tomb, as the ancient priestesses of the site sat in vigil in the barrows sacred darkness, seeking rebirth and vision.      

In contrast to my blog about having a Sun garden, what about a moon one?

Moon garden

Before my old high priestess Back East would pronounce one of the Witch Words—and, believe me, she did not merely say these words, she pronounced them—there would be a little pause.

[Pause] uh-THAW-may, she would utter, in that breathy, sing-song kind of voice that people use to read poetry.

[Pause] DAY-o-sill. [Pause] SAM-ane. [Pause] BIG-us. (Bigghes is Witch for “jewelry.”)

It may seem as if I'm being cruel here, but please believe me, I'm not. Actually, I find the habit rather endearing, and down the years I've known (and know) many who do it. (There are times when I do it myself: ah, irony.) And I completely understand and appreciate what's being said behind what's being said here.

We love our paganism because it's special, perfumed with that singular redolence of the exotic.

And, indeed, that is certainly so.

Increasingly, though—especially as I get older—I find that what I love most about paganism is not so much that it's exotic or unusual. What I love best about paganism is precisely its quotidian quality: the familiarity of the everyday.