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All lands are the countries of the Wise.

Therefore, before Grand Sabbat, they test you. They ask you the question that any witch can answer.

Answer correctly, and you get your red thread.

You know what that means, of course.

I tie this knot in Old Hornie's name, they say. Aye, till he fetch thee home again.

Then they bind it around your wrist.

That's your laissez-passer to the Sabbat. Wear it, after, until you get safely home.

(If you wear it until it falls of its own accord, though, Old Hornie will grant you a boon, they say. Best ask wisely. You know his sense of humor.)

In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Delivers a Warning

The old election sign by the side of the road once read

BERNIE

2020

but, bent by the weight of the wet, heavy February snow, it now reads instead

      RNIE

2020  

Naturally, as I drive by, my witch's eye automatically reads

HORNIE

2020

Old Hornie for President? I find myself thinking. F*ck, I'd vote for Him any day of the Moon.

Yes, it's true: I first met Old Hornie in the woods when I was 16.

And no, I'm not going to tell you about it.

I suspect that many (if not most) of us have experienced something like this: the Encounter that changes everything that comes after.

You might think that more of us would talk about these Meetings. In a community like the pagan community, which lacks (for the most part) central accreditation, such narratives would serve to establish credibility.

But in my experience, people mostly don't want to talk about these things. A holy silence surrounds them. For me, that unwillingness to talk is precisely one of the hallmarks of authentic encounter.

Horns ward.

The Sign of the Horns has been a sign of power since long before it became a Heavy Metal cliché.

Because horns aren't just for beauty or display.

They're weapons. They ward because they warn. Theirs is the power of protection.

You could call the Horns a mudra. (In Witch we usually just say: hand-sign.) You could call them an invocation. (You know Who I mean.) In Anthropologist, you could call them an apotropaic: a turning away, an averting.

The Horns have been warding off the hostile, the unchancy, the ill-favored, for centuries, if not millennia.

You can mutter “Horns ward [me]” or “Horns protect [me]” if you like. It certainly won't hurt.

But only make the Sign and the Horns will do their work, seen or unseen, spoken or unspoken.

Some might call this a fire-fight-fire scenario: like warding like, the unchancy against the unchancy.

If ever you wondered who in ages of ages first invented the art of skiing, this 4000-year old petroglyph from Rødøy ("Red Island") in Norway should leave little doubt.

That wily old Guy with the Horns: father of arts and sciences, wellspring of human culture. Is it not he who brought us Fire and instructed us in its use? Is it not he who taught us to hunt, and gave us the Old Law: to take no more than is needful, and to kill both quickly and ruthfully?

The story of how he taught us to ski has been lost to time. Can we doubt, though, that it was originally a hunter's tale?

It may be that the tale of the Horned One, the Two Serpents, and the First Skis is not, after all, lost beyond all recovery.

My friend Michelle made a savvy observation the other day that, in this season of the ancestors, I'd like to pass along.

We tend to think of gods and ancestors as separate categories (at least, I do). But in the Wide World of Paganism, these are actually overlapping modalities of being.

To pagans, it's perfectly conceivable that gods should have human offspring. Unlike some, we don't maintain a wall of separation between human and divine.

Achilles, after all, was reckoned a descendant of Zeus (through Herakles). To take a somewhat less exalted example, the current incumbent of the British throne, Betty Windsor, is (believe it or don't) counted (along with her ancestors, the Anglo-Saxon kings of Wessex) among the offspring of Woden.

Call of the Horned God

Blessings be with our ancestors!

May it be so!

Mother of Witches, Lady of the Moon!

I adorn my King!