lakehare

[lakehare]

You are not the daughter of the witches they couldn't burn you are a white woman with a rock collection and wicca was invented in the 1950s

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Bioregional Quiz

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Hello, witches! Since I’m always harping on about learning your history and checking your sources, I thought I’d help folks get a head start by compiling some source material.

To that end, I’ve started a Dropbox folder with a stash of historical texts on witchcraft, magic, and related topics. Nearly everything I’ve managed to find so far is public domain (thank you Project Gutenberg), with the exception of a very thorough herbal grimoire I found online some years ago and a book of witchcraft from the 1970s that appears to be out of print.

I will be continuing in this vein with future texts that I find. Everything will be public domain or cited to the source that it came from, in PDF format. I will NOT be including PDFs of any book currently in circulation with a copyright linked to a living author or estate. The point of this folder is that everything in it should be free for sharing and open use as research materials.

Below is the initial list of titles. I tried to include as many as I could find, with a focus on some oft-cited classics. I will be adding new texts as I find them.

A Collection of Rare and Curious Tracts on Witchcraft and the Second Sight, by David Webster (1820)

A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, by Wallace Notestein (1909)

British Goblins, Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions, by Wirt Sikes (1880)

Curiosities of Superstition, by W. H. Davenport Adams (1882)

Daemonologie, by King James I/VI (1597)

Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, Edited and Selected by W. B. Yeats (1888)

Irish Witchcraft and Demonology, by St. John Drelincourt Seymour (1913)

La Sorcière, or The Witch of the Middle Ages, by Jules Michelet (1863)

Lives of the Necromancers, by William Godwin (1834)

Magic and Fetishism, by Alfred C. Haddon (1906)

Magic and Witchcraft, by Anonymous (1852)

Modern Magic, by M. Schele de Vere (1873)

Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics, by Richard Folkard (1884)

Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing, by William Walker Atkinson (1908)

The Devil in Britain and America, by John Ashton (1896)

The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot (1594, 1886 reprint)

The Extremely Large Herbal Grimoire (date unknown, internet publication)

The Golden Bough : A Study of Magic and Religion, by Sir James George Frazer (1890)

The Illustrated Key to the Tarot, by L.W. de Laurence (1918)

The Magic of the Horse-shoe, by Robert Means Lawrence (1898)

The Mysteries of All Nations, by James Grant (1880)

The Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy, by Charles John Samuel Thompson (1897)

The Superstitions of Witchcraft, by Howard Williams (1865)

The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut by John M. Taylor (1908)

The Wonders of the Invisible World, by Cotton Mather and A Farther Account of the Tryals of the New-England Witches, by Increase Mather (1693, 1862 reprint)

Witch Stories, by E. Lynn (Elizabeth Lynn) Linton (1861)

Witch, Warlock, And Magician, by W. H. Davenport Adams (1889)

Witchcraft & Second Sight in the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell (1902)

Witches’ Potions & Spells, ed. by Kathryn Paulsen (1971)

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that these texts are (with few exceptions) more than a century old, and may contain depictions, references, or language that are outdated and inappropriate. The point of including these documents is to provide access to historical texts for research and reference. Inclusion in the collection does not equal unconditional agreement with or wholesale approval of the contents.

Take everything with a grain of salt and remember to do your due diligence!

Happy Witching!   -Bree

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Hello! Sorry to bother. I've been attempting to read, like, just the first few paragraphs of the divine pymander (attempting to start learning about hermeticism) for the last two months, because every translation I can get my hands on is completely different. I'm not sure if I should try to read all of them concurrently and somehow piece together something maybe, decide to put this off until I have learned sufficient koine greek to give the original a few attempts, or if I am just approaching this whole thing completely wrong? Have any advice?

Thank you!

You're never going to go wrong with more reading. There are some excellent scholarly commentaries (published by Brill, so they're expensive) but you might want to check out Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's Western Esoteric Traditions and Theosophy for a good scholarly work on the matter.

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BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS BOOK OF KELLS

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also hiiiii i moved into my bfs house w my family and we’re still sorting boxes and i had to start a new job (twice) but im starting school for my ASN in july and im doing a lot better :) we got three new ferrets and my altar is set up and im going to get back into the swing of things once things calm down because i literally cant function with boxes everywhere 😭 its impossible to think or clear my head. but im getting there. which is something! im praying again, making offerings. i feel connected again which was something i lost. i hope everyone is doing well <3

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bede mention?? in my book about zero?

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Witch Sickness in Salem Massachusetts

[This is inspired by my observations as someone born in Salem, and then validated by conversations with other witches in and around Salem who observed a "Sickness" in Salem witches.]

Salem Massachusetts, Witch City, is a town known for it's witch trials that has become a bit of a tourist trap in the recent decades. Many aspiring witches move here to open businesses, write books, and to make a name for themselves as a Salem Witch. With all these different people trying to move in and make Salem part of their craft identity, I've observed them over the years as someone born here and seen mostly negative results. Which lead to people starting to use the term "Salem Sickness" to describe the effect this city has on witches minds.

These witches moving to Salem often start our level headed with their own goals of moving here because it's history and being a place you can call yourself a witch openly. As their ego and aims grow this goes to people's heads leading to their downfall, at least within their local reputation as they become victim of Salem's Witch Sickness.

Salem as a town has always had a reputation, within history especially but also locally that has nothing to do with the witchcraft. Salem has an aura of fear to it, and known to create a feeling of being an "unlucky" or "unsafe" place for some (especially during the October season). I and other locals I talk to think this is the land's way of keeping people with bad intentions out, among other factors. In recent years this has begun to shift with the increase in witch tourism (and gentrification), but within the surrounding towns you can still hear older folks tell stories about Salem from the 90s and 2000s.

Some of those messy stories are also about drama between rising Salem occultists such as Laurie Cabot, Christian Day, Lorelei Stathopoulos, and many more. A running theme seems to be rivalry, hypocrisy, and jealously, someone is always mad about what another knows or has and ruins their own reputation in the process. Frequently this devolves into frivolous legal battles, or the individuals sense of self importance gets the best of them as these dramas become all consuming in their mind. Making them defensive, off putting, and difficult to be around.

A classic example is Laurie Cabot, the official witch of Salem. She has publishes a few books, opened a few different shops, and really brought the modern witchcraft revival to Salem (tho if anyone knows of others doing public facing witchcraft before she got here please correct me, i'd prefer to be wrong). You could find her walking the streets of Salem dressed in black, her face painted, and her body decked out in jewelry. She was the face of witchcraft here for a while, and eventually it got to her head. She started a tradition of her own, the Cabot Kent tradition. Many things she's said earlier in her career have come back to bite her in the ass, especially about not cursing and her claims about the history of witchcraft.

On Laurie's website you can find the following quotes on her "understanding witchcraft" page where she makes the following claims about devils in witchcraft,

"Demons such as Satan and Lucifer are the relatively recent fabrication of the Judeo-Christian faiths to cow their ‘believers’ into obedience and have nothing to do with us.  We were around way before the Christians or the Jews, which is why they usurped so many of our traditions, but that is another story entirely.  Our religion has no evil deities; our philosophy requires no fear tactics to function, only education and enlightenment."

This can be found to be untrue with just a little research into history. Also who is this "We" she loves to talk about, is it all witches, pagans, or her tradition of witchcraft?

She also says the following about her tradition in regards to cursing,

"We use our Magick and our science to get out of harm’s way and to help others do the same. We do not return harm or incorrect energy to those that wish it upon us, we neutralize it so it can harm none.  It is best to make the fire ‘cease to be’ than to drown it with water."

These words have come back to haunt her. She she has found herself in the local news a lot for cursing people, one example here involves a doll left on someone's lawn. I can't find the original news article but this blog mentioned an incident where cursed the Salem police (I don't support their opinions, but it's the only source of this incident I can find at the moment). I remember when this happened and hearing everyone talk about it as it did a number on the way the community saw her. At the same time other people's already difficult reputations were beginning to sour.

Christian Day was consistently finding himself in hot water when he came to Salem and opened his own stores here. Locally there was talk about him jumping from group to group, burning bridges behind him as he want. Creating lots of drama, such as this case where he and Lori Bruno ended up in court. Which was only one of such cases for him. There was also an incident where Day allegedly doxed someone, you can read the person's blog about it here. All of this local drama eventually lead to Day moving away from the city, but still managed to bring this curse of witch drama with him to New Orleans where his coven and many elders denounced him (and those that support him, such as Brian Cain) for his behavior. From what I hear things have not been great lately.

The current owner of the store Crow Haven Corner, the oldest witch shop in Salem, has also found herself in trouble with the law landing her self in the local news for a brawl during a street fair in downtown Salem. I know this incident well because I worked for Joanna Thomas (another person who came to Salem to open a witch business) in college and heard a lot about this feud, among other local dramas.

The writer and practitioner of magic Damien Echols came to Salem thinking he could find safety here as a witch, but instead found himself experience what was called a modern day witch hunt. Leading to him swiftly moving away too.

All of this isn't behind Salem either, a lot of interpersonal witch drama still happens in the city. It's just kept a little more quiet because of the way all of this was handled in the past, and the harm it did to these people's reputations. So now these store owners try to hide their transgressions and troubles betters, but the local community still sees it as a symptoms of the city's witch sickness. These owners are always having falling outs, they all gossip about each other while smiling to people's faces at events. There's rumors of theft, plagiarism, under paying and mistreatment of employees, wrongful terminations. A lot of this just doesn't reach the surface, or just hasn't yet, because their targets haven't had the money to make as much noise. Current witch store owners know the history here in the city, and the know the way it has made the minds of witches sick, so they try to be mindful of this, but very often fail.

Why is there this Witch Sickness in Salem?

I've heard a few different local theories on why Witch City carries this witch sickness. Some people think it's because there was never any real "witches" in Salem, so the land doesn't like to be known as a harbor for witches. Salem's witch history is full of misinformation and theories about what happened here, and that history isn't really the point of this post so I'm gonna quickly skim through it. Essentially Salem, as many know, was where a major witch hysteria occurred in the United States (but there were other places throughout the country also seeing a rise in accusations of witchcraft). Where 2 young girls fell suddenly ill and started acting very strange. There was so explanation for this behavior, and prayer and medicine didn't work, so the community thought it MUST be witchcraft as the victims started to report spectral visitations and painful sensations. This lead to the mass hysteria where 150-200 people were jailed, 14 women and 5 men were hung, one was tortured to dead, and 5+ died in jail. The community response to the accusations of witchcraft that were thrown around was harsh, cruel, and trauma filled.

This Massachusetts Bay Colony was primed for this as there was a strong belief in the Devil here among the English settlers, there was lingering fear of attack from the local indigenous tribes as well from the French leading to boundary and boarder disputes. Tensions were very high at this moment in Salem's history. Changes with the city cheater were also happening, causing some internal shifts to occur too. Which didn't help the rising witchcraft suspicions. Some changes were made to the legal system that allowed spectral evidence to be used in court, and this seems to be have really been the tipping point in these trials. Eventually this was undone, and people were retried and released. But the damaged had been down, to these people, and the land they lived on by bringing forth all this social strife.

As modern scholars seem to agree there were no witches in Salem, and that many factors contributed to the outburst in witch accusations such as the things i mentioned above. This page from a local museum talks more about this, i recommend exploring. Another museum also discusses the debunking of the ergot theory which i recommend too. I've seen conversion syndrome (where psychological stress manifests as psychical symptoms) suggested by a few different articles for the cause of Salem's witch hysteria, which was then fed by a need to scapegoat all their community stressors. All of this to say, Salem was never a place where witches faced injustice. So creating a whole tourist industry and witch identity out of this idea has maybe lead to the land cursing these community leaders for building a name for themselves of the backs of these innocent dead.

Another theory I have heard thrown around is the land under Salem will reject anyone who attempts to settle here and use it for their gain. As the early European settlers of Salem had no claim to this land. This area was home to the Naumkeag branch of the Massachusett tribe, and the Naumkeag were a nomadic group. So when settlers arrived they saw the empty homes the Naumkeag left and wrongfully thought the place to be abandoned and took up residence in these structures. Conditions between these groups started off predominantly peaceful, but quickly soured as the settlers spread illness and continued to take up residence in structures and spaces the Naumkeag used seasonally for fishing and gathering. Leading to increased tension, but some treaties and land deeds were signed (tho there is debate on if they were intended to be permanent or temporary. As well as if the Massachusett intended to sell the land or just allow occupancy of it. [More about these land deeds can be found here]). So all this trauma has lead to the land pushing back against anyone moving here to extract value from it.

This history of European settlers moving here to use this land for its resources and their gain on top of the community trauma that was Salem's witch hysteria seems to have effected this place in such a away that it rejects people, especially witches, moving into town to capitalize on this history. Creating a Salem Witch Sickness of the mind that ruins their reputation and sometimes more.

Some people sense it and know to move away, but others try to stay and persist with mixed results. Others who open shops, I see this particularly with those born here or the surrounding areas, know that silence seems to the best policy here in Salem to avoid these types of situations. Practicing in the quiet corners of the city, or sticking to yourself leads to some of the longest lasting establishments with the most untarnished records. As Salem's Witch Sickness seems to target the boisterous and hungry.

[lakehare]

Simplify, Simplify: Witchcraft and Consumerism, Part One

The commodification of witchcraft has left the field at large with a lot of issues-- cultural appropriation and exploitation of various persons in the sourcing of crystals and other materia are some of the most notable. It would be a fool's effort to try and sum up all the problems with the industry in one post, so for now, I'll just talk about the one that drives me up the wall the most-- the oversimplification and watering down of various concepts in witchcraft.

Now, I'm coming at this from a folkloric/traditional witchcraft perspective, so what I say may not apply to your personal methodology. As it is with any tirade, YMMV; take what's useful, leave the rest.

Long post under the cut :)

People who write witchcraft books for mass consumption (so, not like Three Hands Press, I'm talking about your standard Barnes and Noble book) are very invested in making their writing accessible to as many people as possible. Often, that means cutting out materials that may put people off of reading-- the inclusion of the devil, for example. But in the process, the pendulum swings completely in the other direction, and the book becomes less about a personal practice and more about misrepresenting historical fact.

Saying that the devil is not a part of your practice is all well and good.

Saying that the devil was never a part of anybody's practice, through the entirety of history, is both an oversimplification and inaccurate. For many people in the past (and many today), it's an important part of their craft.

Another example of this is the oft-used device of the "correspondence list." Humans like to categorize things and put them in boxes. This, of course, falls apart when you realize that plants, like all other things, are complicated. Even with a clean system of planetary categorization, one planet could fall under multiple categories-- dandelions, for instance, being both Solar and Saturnian in appearance, growing habits and occult usage. And this is all assuming that the people who came up with that method of categorization were correct in a testable way! People make up correspondences out of whole cloth all the time (see also: the wild discrepancy between medieval crystal uses and post-New Age crystal uses).

But nobody wants to read a wall of text about any of that, so all dandelion ends up getting is a little box in a spreadsheet that reads "purification, protection, wishes."

Or how about this? I've seen at least a few books (and blogs, for that matter) that say that the "consorting with spirits" part of witchcraft is optional. And that may be true if one happens to be doing Chaos Magic or a similar mode of practice. But if one tries to apply that to folkloric witchcraft, that just turns into a dead end. Spirits and spirit work are pretty integral to that facet of witchcraft. The author does not bother, in most cases, to make the distinction, and often puts multiple styles of witchcraft and/or magic usage into a single umbrella category.

All of these examples stem from the same root issue-- the author wanting to simplify a complex concept, or sanitize it, or otherwise make it suitable for mass consumption. But in the process, the information that they're trying to convey becomes so bowdlerized that its occult functionality is drastically reduced. Now, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to care about accessibility for your readers, nor am I saying every witchcraft book needs to be super academic and hard to read. What I am saying is that simplified material becomes limiting when you want to start exploring the concepts presented in greater complexity or use them as jumping-off points to do your own research.

Watered down information doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help them build their own practice, it doesn't help them research, and it definitely doesn't help them when they actually want to go do some magic. What is required, instead, is to read with a critical eye, recognize when something requires a more in-depth exploration, and not to take what one reads in any book at face value.

[lakehare]

So, You Wanna Study Irish Mythology?

One of the questions I get hit with a lot is “If I’m getting into Irish Mythology, what sources do you recommend?” It’s a sad, sad truth about the field that a lot of really valuable info is kept locked away in books and journals that the lay person wouldn’t know about (and then we wonder why information about the field is so bad.) So, I decided to compile a list of sources that I’ve personally used and found helpful in my time. It’s not a complete bibliography because, frankly, that would take up a TREMENDOUS amount of space and you’d be scrolling forever to find what you wanted, and I don’t AGREE with every single thing they say, and it’s by no means exhaustive (keep in mind: scholars from all over the field use mythological texts to study things as diverse as law, geography, tribal names, material culture, etc. and here I’m mainly focusing on sources that are JUST mythological-focused) but they’re a good starting point to forming your own opinions. The journal articles are, tragically, generally kept confined to academia, but….perhaps….if you were to ask around, someone might be able to provide you with a copy. As a whole, Celticists tend to be quite generous when it comes to sharing articles. 

List subject to change, check back as time goes on to see if I’ve added anything. Also, as always, feel free to either drop me an ask or a pm if you’re curious about digging further into a given text/figure. I can’t act as a consultant on a religious question; I’m a very firm atheist with all the spirituality of a dull spoon, except with the existence of ghosts. My interest in the Tuatha Dé is purely scholarly; all that I can say is what I know about these topics from the perspective of the medieval sources, but I can definitely do my best on that one front, and I won’t reject anyone who has a different interest in the Tuatha Dé from contacting me. 

This list only deals with the Mythological Cycle, not the other strands of the literary tradition that is generally if not uncontroversially referred to as “Irish Mythology”. For Fenian Cycle traditions, a similar bibliography has been compiled by Dr. Natasha Sumner of Harvard, here. 

Editions/Translations of Texts (many of these are available at UCC’s CELT archive or on Irish Sagas Online): 

Tochmarc Étaíne, Osborn Bergin and Richard Best 

Cath Maige Tuired, Elizabeth Gray (If you can and you’re serious about the field, I highly recommend getting the actual Irish Text Society Edition, which includes a wonderful index of every time a given figure shows up in other sources. An absolute must for a mythographer.) 

Lebor Gabála Érenn, J.R.S Macalister, 5 vols. (The entirety of this is available on archive.org. Personally…while the rest of it is obviously important and worthy of study, if you’re interested in just the mythological stuff, I recommend Volume IV, which includes both the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé. Unless you really, really want to read five volumes of medieval Irish pseudohistory, the last volume of which was finished posthumously.) i ii iii iv v

The Metrical Dinshenchas, Edward Gwynn. (5 vols.) (These are difficult, with many scholars outright ignoring them except when absolutely necessary. These are in a later form of Irish, which means that, while some of the contents in them could very well be Pre-Christian in nature, they very much do reflect a later medieval world. Some of them are just as much about contemporary politics as they are about mythology, and many of them also bring in content from the Ulster Cycle and the Fenian Cycle. My personal favorites to look up are Tailtiu, Carn Hui Néit, Duirgen, and Carmun, though there are MANY others.) i ii iii iv v

“The First Battle of Moytura”, John Fraser (Note: It’s a VERY late text, with the question of the Fir Bolg/Tuatha Dé battle and how far the tradition really goes back being one that’s very important to keep in mind. It’s a personal favorite of mine. But it’s very late.)

Baile in Scáil, Kevin Murray (Thurneyson also did an older edition that’s more readily accessible, hence why I linked it here, but Murray is the most recent and up to date.) 

“How the Dagda got his magic staff”, Osborn Bergin 

Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann, Richard Duffy (This is an Early Modern Irish text, so it was written down comparatively late. That doesn’t mean that there’s NO mythological content here, it’s a personal favorite of mine, but it means that it very much reflects the cultural context of around….the 15th-17th century or thereabouts. It’s very chaotic, very violent, and the heroic figures are….not….heroic.) 

Scél Tuáin Meic Chairill, John Carey

Echtra Nerai, it’s available in a fairly recent translation by John Carey in Celtic Heroic Age (pub. 2003) , listed below, though Kuno Meyer also did an edition/translation for it that I’ve linked to here. 

Books: 

Proinsias Mac Cana, Celtic Mythology (Personally, I’d recommend this one first - It’s designed for someone who isn’t a specialist and, while a lot of what he’s saying has been disputed back and forth, it’s still a handy primer and will get you into the myths.)

John Koch and John Carey, The Celtic Heroic Age (Once you have an idea of what you’re looking at, I recommend this one, since it’s a sourcebook. A TON of material from across the Celtic world, featuring classical sources, medieval Irish sources, and Welsh, all of it in one place.) 

Mark Williams, Ireland’s Immortals (I personally recommend you read this one after you read CHA, giving you a bit of context for what Williams is saying here.)

O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology (note: A lot of what he says here is no longer considered recent in the field, but his knowledge of his own sources is, frankly, without any other peer. Use with a grain of salt)

John Carey, The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature

Kim McCone, Pagan Past, Christian Present

Koch, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia

Articles: 

John Carey, “Myth and Mythography in ‘Cath Magh Tuired’”

John Carey, “Donn, Amairgen, Ith and the Prehistory of Irish Pseudohistory”

Proinsias Mac Cana, “Aspects of the theme of King and Goddess in Irish Literature” 

Máire Herbert, “Goddess and king: the sacred marriage in early Ireland.”

Gregory Toner, “Macha and the invention of myth” 

Elizabeth A. Gray, “Cath Maige Tuired: myth and structure“

Thomas Charles-Edwards, “Tochmarc Étaíne: a literal interpretation”

Tómas O’Cathasaigh, “Cath Maige Tuired as Exemplary Myth” 

Joseph Nagy, “Close encounters of the traditional kind in medieval Irish literature” 

Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála. Part I: the growth of the text” 

Mark Scowcroft, “Leabhar Gabhála. Part II: the growth of the tradition”  

Joseph Nagy, “‘Talking myth’ in medieval Irish literature.”

John Carey, “The Location of the Otherworld in Irish Tradition” 

Máire Bhreathnach, “The sovereignty goddess as goddess of death?“

John Carey, “Notes on the Irish war-goddess.” 

Veronica Philipps, “Exile and authority in Lebor gabála Érenn” 

Kevin Murray, “Sources of Irish mythology. The significance of the dinnṡenchas” 

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“As the undisputed masters of healing herbs (according to the Greeks), the Thracians were no strangers to the shamanic techniques of ecstasy well known among other cultures of the steppe. Working from the texts of Posidonius, Strabo reported that the Mysians, a Thracian group from north-western Anatolia, possessed members of their society called both θεοσεβεις (“those who fear god”) and καπνοβαται (“those who walk in smoke”) who practiced strict vegetarianism and consumed nothing but honey and dairy products. This reference to the “walkers in smoke” may allude to the ecstasy achieved by mass cannabis consumption as reported by Herodotus among the Scythians. […] One Orphic bone inscription from Olbia dated to the 5th century BC reads “for Dion(ysos) and Psyche,” revealing the importance of a transcendent soul in connection with the Greek god of intoxication in Thracian territory. Another of these bone inscriptions containing the words “Βιος Θανατος Βιος” and marked with little “Z” pictograms (which might represent little orphic serpents) reveals the widespread and consistent nature of Dionysian symbolism reaching as far north as modern Ukraine. In the shamanic mystery initiations as practiced by the Orphic cults, near-death experiences and the use of dangerous doses of hallucinogenic plants went hand in hand. Whereas the Divine Bridegroom Sabazios (Dionysus) was primarily the god who presided over ecstasy and entheogenic intoxication, the Thracians held him in equally high regard as a dying-and-rising saviour god and a master over the souls of the deceased. Long before the introduction of alcohol, shaman exploited the ecstatic and oracular properties of hallucinogenic mushrooms (Amanita muscaria and various types of coprophilic Psilocybin-containing mushrooms); opium (Papaver somniferum); “jimsonweed,” “horsemad,” or “thornapple” (Datura stramonium); mandrake root (Mandragora officinarum); cannabis; deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna); and henbane (Hyoscyamus niger). The experience of death and the ecstatic evacuation of the soul from the body appears commonly in the Thracian funeral iconography on which is depicted the Tree of Life. To be in a state of ekstasis – that is, to stand outside the body – was to experience death itself.”

— Dead Kings and Saviour Gods – Euhemerizing Shamanism in Thracian Religion by Dan Attrell (Source.)

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Hellenism is the pinnacle of ‘Paganism’—the force that built empires, carved laws into stone, and sculpted marble into eternity. It was never just worship; it was dominion—of reason, war, and divine excellence. A faith of builders, warriors, and rulers—men who did not submit to fate but seized power through their will.

No other Indo-European tradition rivals Hellenism in written legacy, philosophy, or civilisational might. From Homer to Plato, from Alexander to Rome, its chain remains unbroken—not myth, but divine order made manifest. Hellenism was never a religion of submission, but of mastery—over self, nature, and fate. The Gods were not distant but forces to be understood, engaged, and embodied. Hellenic philosophers did not worship blindly; they dissected, contemplated, and elevated the divine to its highest form—the Olympian flame burned in the mind as much as in the temple.

For Europa’s ancestral Gods to reign again, Hellenism must lead. The Norse, Celts, and Slavs have their place, but without Hellenism as the Grand Architect, Europa’s sacred traditions remain scattered, passive, without a throne. This is not about competing factions—it is about reclaiming dominion.

If Hellenism rises, all rise. The path forward is not division, but unity under the aegis of Hellenism—the only force with the vision, strength, and wisdom to restore what was lost.

[lakehare]

Hestia ❤️‍🔥

(She and Hades have fire hair)

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I’ve been listening to “Blood Moon” by Saint Sister a lot this season and it inspired this piece of a spooky Minoan Artemis dancing in the woods. 

[lakehare]

New brainfood! I updated my Thimsternisse-website with 19th century Dutch folklore about witchcraf

Witchcraft and magic in Northwest Europe | thimsternisse

[lakehare]

I’m sorry but I think the idea of racism, transphobia, and bigotry and such not ‘belonging’ in pagan communities is such horse shit. I know that sounds off, but hear me out - because you may feel that way and hold those values, you may denounce fascists, but like… I know first hand my experience with progressive and leftist pagan and spiritual spaces have been anything but devoid of bigotry and microaggression, if not outright aggression, and I am not the only one. Spiritual and religious spaces in 2023 will claim to be progressive and leftist in one breath and with the same one say you are too sensitive.

They sleep in the middle - they follow political trend. I have rarely met a pagan or spiritual person who truly knows themself or their politics enough to not enact some sort of bigoted violence against me or my kin, whether out of ignorance or malice, and then be unwilling to learn better and insist upon your guilt because you dared point it out - no matter the manner you did it in. Firm or gentle - you are being aggressive. And I know I am not the only one with this experience. So saying “fascism / bigotry has no place” is great and all, but a bit of an empty statement, and I only wish to see MORE come from it. Perhaps a denounciation of the falsity of all of this, of the liberalism, an encouragement of self reflection and how you treat others. It’s why I gave up on a large scale, and fight the big fights quietly - I can change no one who doesn’t want to, and I don’t need to, nor is it my job nor my business. I don’t actually want or need people looking at me for guidance, as some authority figure. I don’t need people looking at me as the new herder for their political slogan to parrot without actually making meaningful change within themselves, the slogan this time being “fascism/bigotry has no space in pagan spaces”.

I don’t need centrist/liberal, puritanical, democrat neo-spiritualists parading and masquerading as the most progressive leftists on the market to help me boot fascism out when they are unwilling to stop sleeping in the same bed as them or attempt to change their own ways, or do anything helpful towards the communities they’re in or even towards their IRL communities.

(Disclaimer inb4 bad faith - sure, some pagans and neospiritualists get this and do try. But they are not who I’m talking about here).

Calling out fascists changes nothing about how people act. Changes nothing about transmisogynistic, racist, sexist microaggressions (which is what actually reminded me of my position on this topic - given that it’s NOT the first time I’ve said this before, that just saying uwu there’s no place for bigotry in MY paganism) if you want a good example of what I’m speaking of, the best connection I can give you, this post by my mutual can inform you of performativity in regards to community acts against transmisogyny while snubbing trans women (and doing nothing of value for them) & maybe give a little insight into what I mean.

It does not stop people from lugging their own religious and spiritual baggage into the space and spewing it around to all who will hear, and those are really the things that I think should be focused on, not public smack downs in order to laugh and giggle with your buddies about such a serious thing. Clowning privately is one thing, I think clowning to thousands in order to get praise for your wit and cunning is quite another.

You can only change your actions and show others how to act by how you act in these spaces - and of course, I do not know others nearly as well as I know myself. But I, as a younger person, did the whole righteous crusade against bigoted people, in order to feel like I was doing something significant. And YES. Fascism needs to be pushed out of pagan spaces! I agree, allowing them to get a foothold in any country in any manner but especially a wide scale is NOT acceptable.

But the way it seems virtue signaling to me, the way it seems to push yourself into a space of authority, and rankles me, as someone who realized the exact issues with what I was doing. It is quite an ego boost when people listen to what you have to say and get to defend your moral and ethical stances, yes? And I was on an even smaller scale than some of these (now) BNPs.

I’m not saying people have to do their good deeds quietly, that’s Christian bullshit. But the manner of which I see a lot of (now) Big Name Pagans do this ruffles my feathers in an unnerving way. I can’t quite articulate exactly the way this is unnerving and unnecessary and how there are other ways and middle grounds (at the moment - I took an anxiety pill last night and I’m surprised at my coherency here) that don’t involve the grand standing, but if the lines are read between in good faith I have hope that my point comes across clear.