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Registrations are coming in for this year's Midwest Grand Sabbat.

(The firelight on the trees. The Stag That Walks On Two Legs, come down from the altar. The frenzied dancing. The love-making in the shadows.)

Yesterday one arrived that had actually been signed in blood.

In the dream, it was the morning of this year's upcoming Grand Sabbat.

As I'm making preparations, Tall Rob comes up to me: beautiful Rob, wet-dream of the Western World, looking just as good as he did when I last saw him 10 years ago.

“Here, I wanted you to have this,” he says in his husky voice, pushing a handful of wadded bills into my hand. “Looking forward.” He smiles and moves off.

I look at the money for a moment, then push it uncounted into my pocket.

Rob has been dead for 10 years.

At the Midwest Grand Sabbat this summer, four people will be taking their oaths and receiving their Marks, and in this way joining the Tribe of Witches.

Since the Middle Ages, this thedish (tribal) initiation has traditionally begun with three questions, given here in their contemporary formulations:

Do you reject Yahweh, and all his lies, and all his empty promises?

Do you renounce the waters of baptism?

Do you give yourself body and soul, whole and all, to the Horns and the Wandering Moon, and take the Craft to be your home?

It's always a powerful moment, the more so by the very nature of the questions involved.

Here's the clincher: Only one of these questions has a right answer.

Going to sabbat, expect the tylers.

They'll stop you on your way through the woods. You'll know them by the leaves in their hats, and the gleam of their blades.

They'll ask you the question that any witch can answer.

Then, when you've answered rightly, they'll give you your token, and send you on.

Fear not, you'll know the answer. If you're of Ours, you'll know.

And if you're not of Ours, then?

Well, now.

There's a phenomenon of pagan ritual that I've noticed again and again down through the years.

I'll call it the “dark light.”

The pagan calendar (day begins at sundown) and pagan schedules (most of us work day jobs) being what they are, we do a lot of our ritual at night. This means that we do much of our ritual by firelight.

Bonfires, candlelight, torchlight. Which is it to say that, by the usual electric-lit 21^st century standards, there isn't very much light.

And yet consistently, again and again, as I think back to any given ritual, I find myself remembering more light than could possibly have been there.

But it's not just a matter of memory. In ritual, colors are brighter. Bodies, faces, things seem to glow as if from within, transfigured.

I think of the Grand Sabbat. Cross-legged up there on his altar, the Horned glows, I swear it. I swear it. He's lambent: the light comes from Him.

Our chant begins low and slow, but soon we are shouting, frenzied.

Horned One! Horned One! Horned One!

From the woods, a horn rings out. Another joins it, nearing, and another.

We call, He comes.

In the moving torchlight, He shines. Borne high, He stands astride, arms raised. His horns reach up to heaven.

At a run, His bearers cross the final slope and enter our midst, bringing Him in. He steps, precisely, from palanquin to altar. The drums fall silent.

In the sudden stillness, He scans our fire-lit faces. Between His antlers, constellations revolve.

The Sabbat is the true paradise...where there is more joy than I can express. Those who go there find the time too short because of the pleasure and happiness they enjoy and, having once been there, they will long with a raging desire [un désire enragé] to go and be there again.

(Jeanne Dibason, 1630)

The Old Blood calls.

The Sabbat: the ecstatic adoration of the incarnate Horned God, the witch's True Paradise.

For nearly 25 years, the Midwest Tribe of Witches has gathered regularly—at the requisite irregular intervals—in immemorial Grand Sabbat.

Plans for Grand Sabbat 2018 are already under way.