Many New Things

As we move toward the Solstice threshold and its tanist symbolism, I'm working through many changes and discovering many new things. Some wonderful people have come into my life, and some have departed and taken their own roads as they must. Comings and goings can be joyous and painful as appropriate. Each carries its own knowledge and its own keys. Thus do I see in my life. But now it's time to move away from the strictly personal and back to the personal and magical.

I plan to write examinations of several bits of Lore and some understandings of them in the next few posts. Some of these include items found in my own stream's argot - things we ask or tell to other folk - and some from Robert Cochrane's writings as well, along with my understandings of them.

This is something I *must* impress upon the reader: I AM NOT a member of Clan of Tubal Cain and I DO NOT have access to its inner, private knowledge. What I post as my understandings is just that: My Understanding. Nothing else.

One item I want to examine is Cochrane's statement "A Witch is born, not made, or if a Witch must be made then blood and tears must be shed ere the Moon can be drawn." There is a great truth lurking in this little line, and not just for Traditional Witches. It marks a great difference between those who are driven and called to work the magical streams as opposed to those who want a religion to follow. It is very true that anyone can "walk through the front doors" of a religious edifice and in a relatively short time find themselves appointed Deacon, or Church Elder or whatever. But what is really gained? Certainly, it is to be hope that this person's fellows profit from service rendered, but what transformation has taken place? If any?

What Cochrane describes here is a ritual threshold crossing and confrontation, both with Spirit - "the gods (TM)" - and with the inner workings of Self. He refers to two myths, each potent in itself, to propel the magical worker forward into a state of of change, and hopefully growth. I must impress here that in this ritual he describes is NO sinecure. The only safety can come from one's own inner steadfastness and determination. Likewise, the only true danger comes from one's own fear.

Fear is the most obvious and immediately dangerous confrontation here and it can - and will - kill a magical life aborning. Fearful avoidance of inward confrontation leads to immediate stagnation and a demand that everything "always be the same" in a cosmos and a compass where "Be Still" or "Be The Same" are the only things that never happen. Often one sees this manifest is temper tantrums in magically and personally challenging situations. Magically, this failure is fatal. The would-be Witch is stillborn, the pagan quickly shows the signs.

Fear of learning is another deadly trap. This is one of the most interesting angles, considering that the Stream demands an eternal thirst for learning. "The driving thirst for knowledge is the forerunner of wisdom." Likewise the constant demands for spoon feeding and external validation; coupled with refusal to investigate the implied; the refusal to learn by inference and context, and most fatally the refusal to learn on one's own lead again to 'corpses walking about playing at "high priestess"' as my own Magistra said more than once. To "hang up" on a single word, on a name, or on a single lore point and to refuse to examine further often marks a fatal hesitation. Very often this sort of fear will manifest in codependent intrusion and control behaviors - e.g. "I don't want to be involved in that" - whatever "that" may be - intruded into a piece of work that is none of the offender's business. In this case it's time to grow up and realize the obvious: "Nobody invited you. Nobody said "you must."" But the intruder here will only repeat their tiresome refrain over and over in an infantile attempt to "validate" themselves by ruining or "controlling" the work of another. Fundamentalist avoidance becomes even more amusing: "I don't want that ____ "shit" - I mean "stuff" - you've found brought into *my* circle." Very well, I won't be there. Sooner or later the individual may realize how they've alienated someone with their behavior. I must say that Frank Herbert didn't go far enough. Fear is more than a mind killer. Fear is a soul killer.

Yet Fear cannot be expunged from the psyche altogether. It remains, like a large dog, standing in the doorways at the back of our minds. We cannot quite manage to "shoot the dog" magically. It is a part of what Freud called the Id and what a magical person calls The Beast. If we attempt to deceive it, we find that its nose is more keen than our illusion. If we attempt to flee it, the dog merely runs us down. Those who've tried these approaches - those who try to "hide in the sun" to use another expression - lead magical lives that can be best compared to a household where the family dog is completely in charge. Need an example? We have plenty of public figures who exemplify this sort of behavior. Pick someone who uses fear as a whip and you will find someone who is whipped by fear. Any religio-political ideologue or demagogue will do. Households ruled by the dog.

On the other hand, we can throw the dog a bone - or a corn cake - put it on a leash and give it a kennel. We suddenly find that the "big bad wolf" is really "our best friend" who is happy to bark at strangers on our behalf.

But back to our threshold. We've established Fear as the major obstacle to overcome. This also tells us that the confrontation will be personally fearsome. "Blood must be shed" Cochrane says. Of what blood does he speak?

Being a Witch who is not afraid of the Old Testament, I look and see the blood of Abel, shed by his brother Cain. The implications here are deep and varied and I must leave it to the reader to ferret out all of them. But here is the tangle: In the initial confrontation Abel represents that, which is subject to Fate, slave to the Titanomachy, and thus pleasing to the Nature Gods - the Elohim. (One can also see a Hebrew attempt to "validate" the transhumant, herd following, existence of their early tribes as "more pleasing to god" than the permanent, "decadent," dwellings of those who based their livelihoods first in horticulture and eventually in agriculture.) So here we see the sacrifice of the Old Priest-King by the New, presented in a most primal context. Cain represents a force born of the Titanomachy that rebels against it. He is also portrayed as giving way to rage. The Beast slays the Man. But Cain is marked and driven forth to become the Wanderer, the Ploughman becomes the Rider Upon the Four Winds. The Beast is crucified in his turn, and the higher self - the Seraphim - emerges from its prison to flow into and merge with said Beast. They become potent allies in this hybridization. The Beast's passion and instincts combine with the Archangel's otherworldly Sight and magical acumen. The Man, who really only serves as a filter and a communications interface anyway, is regrown to maintain these functions with respect to the consensual, physical world. However, the new Devil With the Mind of Fire will dispose of a great deal of the opacity of the filtering function, finding it nearly useless and that clinging to it represent a mere clinging to illusion. This, of course, would only constitute a repeat of the above paragraphs on Fear ...

So we've found our source of bloodshed, now what of tears? In the assorted myths ascribed to Lilith, we find that she is able to bring about the resurrection of slain loved ones by means of her tears. Likewise Isis, with Osiris. Grief marks a great gift of the supreme Goddesses. Why? Because Grief is the major means by which the wounded psyche is able to heal itself. The Grief process works through a psychological "cleansing of the wound" that culminates in Acceptance of the new situation - the wound closes. It will remain tender for some time, but it is closed. So now we find that the Higher Emotions of the Archangel, allied with the passions and instincts of the Beast, are able to effect Resurrection - the Survival of Death and the Overthrow of Fate. This is heady stuff indeed when we look at the magical processes contained herein.

So now we return to the seasonal attribution: The Winter Solstice represents the sacrifice - the "death" by manifesting within form - of the Spirit of the Waning Year King, who in the final examination emerges as the Omega, the Master of Four Winds. This figure, in several myths, surrenders his head. In some of these myths, the head becomes an oracular and atrotropaic gateway and talsiman. We can see the former in the stories of Bran or Brennos, of Saints Justus and Pastor, and of John the Baptist. Likewise we can see the atrotropaic function in the entombment of the Sacred Head in the White Mount (Tower Hill) in London and in Golgotha (Place of the Head) in Palestinian (regional) Traditions. Here then, the Beast must offer up his life to prepare the way for the Child of Promise to be born and for Lucet to arise from the Underworld as the Morningstar. Thus does the Magician transform, and claim the birthright implicit in the draught from the Graal.