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To the Men of the Tribe

Go to the edge of your favorite clearing in the woods.

There, strip off everything that you weren't born with: clothing, jewelry, devices.

Step as you are into the midst of the clearing.

Dear Boss Warlock,

I'm cooking up my first batch of flying ointment, but I'm having a really difficult time finding the human fat that I need for the recipe.

I'm not into human sacrifice, and I'm afraid I just don't have the stamina for grave robbing these days.

Not to mention: how do I reconcile this with 'An it harm none'?

Stymied in Sturgis

Dear Sty,

Grave robbing? Human sacrifice? Seriously, Sty, how 1980s.

(Oh, we were earnest in those days.)

So, you're embarking on your sixth decade. Allow me to tender a friendly rede.

Don't let yourself dry up.

You've reached the age at which a truly disconcerting number of men begin to let themselves shrivel. Some are even glad it's over, happy to be free of—as they see it—the tyranny of need.

Not us.

We're warlocks, unholy priesthood to Him o' the Horns. Like god, like priest. As we serve him, so he serves us. That's the kind of god he is.

Keep those juices flowing, brother. If she's not interested, well...you know what to do, and how to do it.

Yes, it may take a little more love than it used to. Persevere. Make it part of the regimen.

Think of it as a religious obligation. Think of it as an honoring of the god within. Think of it as libation. As you give to him, so he will give to you. But you give as a man gives, and he gives as a god.

I swear to you, it will keep you youthful. This is his promise to us.

Some Thoughts on the Use of Urine in Magic

In the dream, the ritual is about to begin. Four of us are standing at the circle's respective quarters, ready to begin our quarter-calls.

Instead of summoning, stirring, and waving a knife at, though, the first quarter-caller cocks a leg up, like a dog leaving a scent mark.

Yes! I think gleefully, hoping that my friend at the next quarter will do the same. He does, as do I in turn.

Later, waking, I ponder this curious dream, and the vehemence of my gleeful response. In part, I think, it comes from the fact that at heart I'm a trickster, son of a trickster, and—given the opportunity—will almost always play any given situation for the laugh. In the dream, the leg-cocking was transgressive, clearly not to plan, and I've long been one for play, rather than solemnity, in ritual.

Deeper than this, though, lurks an underlying sense of the primal, which the best ritual always manages to evoke. Nothing is older in magic than scent-marking, nothing.

We've been doing it since before we were human.

To draw a cheap and wholly unfair dichotomy, wizard magic is head-magic, warlock magic body-magic. To cite only one hoary piece of warlockry, when you buy (or build) a new house, the first thing that you do is to go around and pee on all five corners of the house.

(If you know what I mean by “all five corners,” you know how to think like a witch.)

If you want to become a werewolf, first you go to the woods and strip off. Then you piss in a circle around yourself.

Bet they never taught you that in Wicca 101.

I've never tried this myself, but I see the point. To shift your shape, you've got to reach down into the primal. The skin-strong—what the ancestors called the hide-stark—need to be able to live in their pure animal selves.

Besides, I doubt that most wizards would have the bladder capacity.

A Lost Verse of Genesis

5B  But some among

the sons of the gods

(or “God”: bnei ha-elohím)

looked also upon

the sons of man

(or “men”: bnei ha-adám)

and found them fair,

and took them

unto themselves,

and knew them;

to these, to such

as received them,

did they impart

An aspiring young warlock named Gwydion

would sleep through the ante meridian,

but then spend his hours

weaving garlands of flowers,

In Which You, Dear Reader, Will Likely Learn More About Our Intrepid Blogger Than You Ever Really Wanted to Know

Contains frank discussion of body hair.

Among men of my family, our lack of body hair is something of a standing joke.

One morning, I'd let the pot of tea steep too long.

“That'll put hair on your chest,” said my father, taking his first sip.

“You mean I'll actually have sixteen?” I quipped.

“Quit bragging,” he quipped back.

For most of my adult life, I've tended to keep my body hair clipped pretty close. For a while—maybe still—being “smooth” was a gay “thing.”

But after some deep discussion with the warlocks about men's inner lives, and manhood generally, I began to wonder what this said about the ambivalence of my relationship with my own male body. I realized that it had been years since I'd actually seen my body with its full compliment of what the epic poets of old Eriu called “the manly hair.” So I set out to remedy that.

Call it prairie restoration.

Six fields, the lower four now given back to the wild. In time, they find their own cherished length, and stay there.

Humans are animals; our gods are animal gods. Hair is our inheritance.

In the frozen pit of a dark, cold winter, I dream one night of gazing down on my own naked body. Where pubic hair was, a thick clutch of crisp green leaves now springs.

I wake filled with a bright sense of vernal joy.