Marian Green - A Witch Alone - Thirteen Moons To Master Natural Magic

This may not sound as exciting as an initiation ceremony into a coven, but I can assure you that those who have tried both will say this personal dedication takes a lot of beating as a magical event. Like much of the old lore it is simple, and it is unique, for you are creating the pattern of it just for yourself, just for the time of its performance.

It cannot just be written in a book and repeated willy-nilly, as some people imagine magical work can be. Every single rite is an experiment and should be prepared as a one-off experience. The Old Ones do not seek sacrifices or offerings of things; they created them in the first place. We only borrow our bodies, our gardens and the things we use. They were once part of Nature and she will take them back in due time. We can only give of our own time and effort to bring about the changes in evolution that lead all of us towards the Light. This may be the first guttering candle you light, but in the end your soul may blaze like a star.

Exercises

If you have read any of the many books on modern witchcraft you will know all about actual initiation ceremonies, the oaths, and taking of a measure with a cord by the priestess, and all kinds of things of dramatic and impressive nature. On your own you will have only the Old Ones to contend with and they have no book so your experience will be individual and unique, if you are ready to follow the instructions for the dedication here. As you will have discovered, a lot of the material cannot just be written down and passed on like a cookery book.

The recipes are given but you have to work out for yourself, with inner guidance, how to complete the process. If what you come up with seems untheatrical and simple, then it is probably far closer to the old way things were done than some of the elaborate and lengthy rites in modern books. Perhaps by now you will have had sufficient personal experiences to compensate for the inevitable disappointment about the down-to-earth nature of this old knowledge. What you have seen, heard, felt, ‘imagined’ even, cannot be shared by others, for they do not walk in your shoes nor dream your dreams.

Re-read all your notes and in the days leading up to your personal dedication be very sure you are happy and confident about the step you may soon be taking. There is no hurry. Some people have known about the Otherworld and the Hidden Ways for decades and not felt ready, and then suddenly known instinctively that it was time to proceed. Judge only by your own feelings, longings, intuitions and desires and you won’t go wrong.

Begin your preparations slowly, meditating and even performing divinations to see if all is ready. Get your robe or other magical ‘garment’ ready, if you have chosen to make one. Think about your aims

and the main direction you wish your work to follow in the coming years. Are you best at divination, at healing, at spells and talismans, or are you a poet or songsmith, or rescuer of lost knowledge? Each has a special task in the traditional crafts.

Some are craft-workers, making beautiful or useful things, others create rituals, design worshipping prayers, or handle power. Some are seers or oracles, speaking with the voices of the Goddess, others are guides through the inner realms, re-learning the narratives of inner journeys, telling tales, and refining knowledge with carefully chosen words.

You will have to study this chapter and gather the things you need, building up your own poems, gestures, food for the feast, flowers for the seasonal garland. You may also wish to make a witch’s chaplet, a kind of rosary by which important things are remembered. Traditionally this is a length of ordinary rope, about four or five feet long.

At one end there is a loop with the rope turned back on itself and spliced, and then there are eight equally spaced knots, equating to the planets and the Earth. The last knot is at the end of the rope so when it is tucked through the loop, a circle is made. Each knot and loop counts as one of the Nine Festivals. This can be used as a circle on the ground, with the staff outside, or tied to the staff at the centre of a space with a stick put through the loop to mark out a circle on the ground.

Think about your connection with the Goddess, and see if your dreams suggest the name you should take, or the animal, plant or flower or other natural thing which will be your passport to the Otherworld.

Planning and performing the dedication, along with regular inner journeys, meditations and keeping your Book up to date, will take up all of the twelfth moon.

Here are some more books to read:

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (Plymbridge Distributors)

Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches’ Goddess and The Witches’ God (Hale) Dion Fortune, The Training and Work of an Initiate (Aquarian)

Evan John Jones, Witchcraft - An Old Tradition Revived (Hale)

T.C. Lethbridge, Witches (Routledge and Kegan Paul)

R.J. Stewart, The Underworld Initiation (Aquarian)

13 - Completing the Circle

The witches have never acknowledged the limitations of the sense-world, they have always lived, moved and had their being in the domain where the subtle forces, now called Extra Sensory Perception, operate The importance they place upon a linkage with this level of consciousness is expressed in the words of a present day witch ‘Once a person has had even one of these experiences of contacting forces beyond the world of form, he or she is no longer in bondage to it’

(Justine Glass Witchcraft The Sixth Sense)

All the way through this book I have been trying to show the reader that there are ways every individual, given a bit of patience, common sense and determination, can awaken ancient sleeping powers from within themselves. Simply copying out ‘rituals’ from some earlier source, insisting that the festivals have to be celebrated on a particular calendar date (which is exactly what the early Christian Church did, to bring all its adherents into line) or insisting that a fixed structure of ‘covens’ with High Priestesses and High Priests is the only way witchcraft can be approached, is not satisfactory. Certainly there are many excellent covens with wonderful rituals, powerful Priests and Priestesses and fascinating sequences of seasonal Sabbats, but it is not the only way.

There are, of course, as in every other field of human existence, frauds and tricksters, people who claim a rare heritage of magic, initiations beyond anyone’s belief, powers over all kinds of people or situations, and rip-off merchants ready to rook the unwary or untrained. One of the most important aspects of solo working is that you only have yourself to deal with, and your own fantasies or hang-ups to confront. Once you have actually made contact with the Old Ones you know that you are not alone and unsupported.

What saddens me is those people who have taken up witchcraft quite sincerely, practised its arts, celebrated full moons and festivals for years on the basis only of material taken from one or two books, or just the words of one hierarchy. Some of them have been too blinkered or even forbidden to use their own heads to think about the roots of the Craft, or the pattern of rituals. It is necessary to go beyond the written word, the published rites and seek the pure spring of ancient wisdom which in many forms has flowed throughout all lands, during our human childhood on this planet.

Learn something about the social structure before our modern times. Do you consider that large groups of people, many of whom would be members of large and extensive families, would be able to gather somewhere, waving swords and incense burners, dancing and chanting the names of the gods and goddesses of pagandom without some record of such events occurring somewhere?

Don’t you think that a pagan priesthood, which not only admitted priestesses but often held them in regard above the male priests, would have been recorded in some document somewhere in Europe in the last thousand years or so? Even the witch trials, which suggested all sorts of impossible things, never caught on to the idea of female priests! Look at the fuss that is being made these days about the ordination of women into the Church of England - when you could be hanged for unnatural practices, don’t you suppose that some bright inquisitor might have thought of accusing ladies of being pagan priestesses and worshipping a Goddess?