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In Which the Warlocks Discuss Theology

Best practice addresses present gods.

Just so.

Best to address, say, Thunder, in his presence, in the storm?

Best so.

May one, then, address Thunder in his absence? To address him while, say, the Sun shines?

One may.

How so, if addressing in presence is best?

The Sun shines, though we do not see him. At any given moment on Earth, Thunder is somewhere present, even if not here.

So it is to that Thunder somewhere present, then, that we address ourselves in absence?

In the glyptic art of ancient Northwestern Europe, each of the Old Gods and Goddesses—the gods of “Nature,” who Were before we were and Will Be after we are gone—had his or her own glyph, or symbol. (In the Old Language of the Witches, this was called a tácen or, as we would say today, a token.)

Sun, of course, has a Sun Wheel, shown above.

Moon's, of course, is the Crescent:

Fire's symbol is the Fylfot,

Thunder's, interestingly, the compound Fylfot (shown here in one of many variants),

and Earth's, of course, her sacred Delta:

But what about the Winds?

Unlike the other Old Powers, the Winds are invisible gods, with no obvious visual representation. How do you draw a picture of the Wind?

In his old age, the poet Simonides (ca. 556-468 bce) went to Sicily to live as an honored guest at the court of Dionysios of Syracuse, the richest and most powerful man in the world.

One day Dionysios said to him: Simonides, poets sing the praises of the gods, and know all their lore; they can justifiably be said to know as much about the gods as anyone. So let me ask you: What is a god?

That's a big question, said Simonides. Give me a day to think about it.

The next day Dionysios came to Simonides and said: So, Simonides, what is a god?

I need another day to think about it, Simonides replies.

The next day Dionysios comes to Simonides and says again: So, Simonides, what is a god?

Give me three more days, says Simonides.

Dionysios lifts his hands in the air. What? he says.

Simonides shakes his head. I find that the more I consider the question, he says, the more opaque it becomes.

Consider the apple tree and its ways.

Early in summer, it sets as much fruit as it can.

Later on, it drops many—even most—of those hard little unripe apples.

With what it can draw from Earth, Sun, and Thunder—the Deep Gods of the witches—the tree has only so much main—energy—at its disposal. The resources available to the tree to nurture its apples are limited. With what it has, it can produce either many small, or a few select, apples.

As I rake up fallen green fruit, I reflect. The Craft is an apple tree. Why do so many leave?

Even back in pagan days, witches were different.

They lived in cities and ran things, like government and armies.

We lived in the sticks and tried to raise enough to get us through the winter.

They worshiped Younger Gods, the ones with human faces.

We still worshiped the Old Gods, the untamed powers, the wild.

They went to temples to pray.

We went to the woods to dance.

Their priests wore white linen.

Ours—if anything at all—wore black, and probably wool.

Their gods had beautiful statues.

Ours had trees and standing stones, the woman in white clay, the man with horns.

A Qabalist was explaining to me the mysteries of the Christian Qabalá.

I can't remember whether or not she knew that I speak Hebrew.

So, here's how it works. You start off with YHVH, yod-he-vav-he, “Yahvéh,” the secret name of El, the Canaanite High God.

Into this, you insert the letter Sh, shin, one of the Three Mother Letters (whatever that means).

And voilà: YHShVH, “Yehoshuah”: Jesus.

Pretty nifty, eh?

“But that's not how you spell 'Jesus' in Hebrew,” I objected.

 the guests had one month fewer

they do not speak the language of nature

We take ancient gods and goddesses, revive them, and think that that's paganism.

But that's not paganism; it's a cartoon, a caricature, of paganism.

For an older, realer paganism, read the work of Saami poet Nils-Alsak Valkeapää (1943-2001).

Here there's a life lived so thoroughly among the old gods—the Sun our father, Earth mother of life, the Moon, the Winds, the Lake, the Mountain, the Reindeer—that there's no space between: a living relationship with a living world.

Listen to his shaman's song: