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Agostino Veneziano's enigmatic 16th-century engraving Lo Stregozzo (“The Male Witch”) has been mystifying viewers for nearly 500 years.

Four naked, muscular young men rush at a run into a wetland. (Note on the upper left the ducks that their coming has disturbed.) In their midst, an elderly woman, also naked—a witch? Hecate-Diana, the witches' goddess?—holding the witch's signature emblem, the bubbling cook-pot, rides the articulated skeleton of an large animal of indeterminate species (horse?). Beneath her mount, a thickset older man on all fours, also naked, awkwardly attempts to straddle two animated skeletons, also of indeterminate species.

There's much to unpack here, and I hope to do so in a future post. For today, though, I'd like to examine more closely the engraving's mysterious title.

Numerous copies of the etching have survived the centuries. Museums generally title it either "The Carcass" or “The Witches' Procession,” but that's not what Lo Stregozzo means.

Google-translate Lo Stregozzo and you'll get: “the sorcerer.” Well, kind of.

The word is clearly masculine singular. (Lo is the form that il, “the,” takes before Zs and certain Ss.) Stregone is the masculine form of strega, a (female) witch. Some would translate “wizard.” Me, I'd say “warlock.”

What about that ending, though? (Pronounce that double Z as ts, as in pizza.) -Ozzo in Italian is a (masculine singular) “augmentative suffix”: the opposite of a diminutive. It tells you that something is “big.” Whether or not we want to take this literally is another matter.

The same suffix occurs in maritozzo, literally “big husband,” a kind of central Italian sweet bun, and panuozzo, a stuffed Neapolitan sandwich. Draw your own conclusions.

So, the big question: who is the eponymous “big warlock” of the title?

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.

Dear Boss Warlock,

Just out of curiosity: Is there such a thing as a half-witch?

All-Witch in Albuquerque

Dear Al:

No.

Oh, the word halwich—pronounced HAL-itch—exists, and has existed for a long time (it comes from the Old Hwiccan healf-Hwicce), but it exists as a term of schoolyard invective only. Witch kids, alas, can be just as nasty as any other kind.

If you have one witch parent, you're a member of the tribe. That's Witch Law. “The Old Blood will out,” the old ones used to say, sometimes adding: “One drop is all it takes.”

Usually, of course, they would cackle as they said this.

Oh, you can opt out, of course; or you can try to pass.

(Cartoon: Boss Warlock Tries to Pass. Scene: Boss Warlock standing in convenience store, surrounded by puzzled-looking crowd. Boss Warlock: “Blessed be, my fellow cowans.”)

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,