young occultists are so cute. such unnecessary formality!

C. & I sat on the grass outside the Faversham drinking perry, then baked stuffed aubergine with Hungarian paprika and watched the film Paprika which is fucking intense, yes. We also had chips with the paprika and ajvar. Upon leaving I was befriended by a very friendly, pretty, young and playful cat. I wanted to steal zer. But I didn't.

Turning round the corner onto my brick terrace, I was leapt upon by a fat yellow waxing crescent moon, low in the sky between the streetlights. I was impressed. There is a dead pigeon outside our house.

Know which way is North from where you are. Know your local landscape. Know where the planets are, and consequently where they will rise. Know where the moon is in relation to the Earth and the Sun.


Know your local history and your cultural history. Be aware of the season and what the season means for plants and animals - and why the season is happening, because it is a result of patterns through space, like the cycles of the moon.

Know where you are and what's going on. This is how not to be lost.
be aware that you actually are lost. the stars are millions of years ago. there is no up or down in space, and time and space blur together.

Visiting family home for Easter, I made an egg tree; I put a hazel twig that had been in the wood pile in a wine bottle with some water to keep it stable, and hung it with ancient decorated eggshells found in the depths of my mother's dressing table. I have been informed that the hazel twig has recently sprouted green and come back to life.

The Sales Department has referred your recent letter to this department, with request that we endeavor to help you obtain perfect service from your Aladdin.
( When an Aladdin does not give satisfactory results, it is usually a pretty sure indication that its user has overlooked some little detail in the directions. )

Until Wicca, to be thought of as a witch involved your separation from the main flow of society. Living on the borderlines, being a bit creepy; witch was an archetype for old unmarried woman who lives on the edge of the forest and knows about herbs, and she creeps us the fuck out. It's an outsider thing.

Being pushed to the edge of society gives you an odd power. It forces you to see things others don't, and it removes a lot of the constraints on your thought and action. And disconcerting people gives you a certain cachet with them; they're intrigued, if a little scared.

So part of the pull of witchcraft on me is that archetype.

I'm interested in witchcraft as that which is done at the fringes; as something which involves gender fuckery and power in the world, signs and symbols, thresholds. As something a little scary, because I think it's good to be scared. I like the edges of things; when I get to the middle of them I can't see what they're about. I like being on the edges of society, because it pushes you closer to the things on the outside, which is where stuff gets exciting.

I'm in witchcraft to push myself, to test myself. I like science, and whilst I don't believe it has answers to everything, I'm pretty sceptical about most claims about the supernatural. And whilst I'm keen on trees and astronomy and moths and so forth, and I want to Treat Nature Right, I don't see it or bits of it as deities, don't feel the need for deity in my spiritual practise, and don't exclusively focus on natural things in my spiritual practise.

I do believe in marking genuine transitio actions, in focusing the will through ritual and in using ritual and trance to gain knowledge of oneself. I'm inclined to view most accounts of supernatural experience as telling us a lot about the human mind but not much else. Every time I waver in this, I think of Derren Brown and stand firm.

love this. damn my poverty

We all agree: the year has a dark half and a light half.

(northern hemisphere:) October, November, December, January are dark.

May, June, July, August are bright.

September and March fall opposite each other and contain the equinoxes, which consist of the transition from dark to light.

Colours progress with the year. The vernal equinox is mostly white and blue, with pastel and grey; summer solstice is gold and green, autumn equinox is orange and indigo, winter solstice is black, maybe white and red too.

Spring and autumn are about crossing boundaries; if winter is dark and the subconscious and the underworld, then spring is coming out of the subconscious into consciousness and autumn is entering it again; the former is a process of rationality, the latter is not and must be guided by intuition and randomness.

Consequently, the metaphor of spring is putting forth life i.e. represented as a moving forward, while winter is dying back; so winter is down and back and summer forward and up; spring and autumn would then be the processes of moving from one to the other through the sides.

above, below
forward and aft
left and right.

above forward and right (being right handed) are the clear directions, can associate with the known, brightness, day. Behind, below and left are dark, hidden; can associate with the mysterious and unknown, the hidden or confused, the night.
This mainly applies to before and behind.

Can choose continue the associations so that before is the realm of the rational, reason and logical thought; behind, that of the emotional, particularly the subconscious.
Matches to the right side of the body controlled by the more rational half of the brain.

Generally the forward directions are more dominant; goal is balance, equilibrium.

What else? Down and up are more complex. To go upwards is to improve oneself, to proceed towards ENLIGHTENMENT. i.e. to go towards the light - to simultaneously perfect and destroy consciousness, to sublimate the self.

Whereas to go down is to revel in the self, particularly the base instincts and pleasures, to indulge in the primitive, go into darkness.

Down is associated with the animal, physical and mortal; up with the divine, spiritual and immortal.

Left is the creative and intuitive, right the rational and reasoned. But left is also sinister -> unnatural -> not understood, dark, hidden; eventually we arrive at occult. Forward is the known and behind is the unknown, but also forward is improvement, back is regression, as with up and down but without so much moral packaging. onwards and upwards.
Obviously, forward is the future and behind the past. The past may link on to ancestors, may link on to mortality.

Oh, implicit in all this, is the idea of behind as dangerous; like dark nights, it's where your enemies creep up on you, where the ghosts hang out.

Just for kicks, let's also associate behind, below and left with
a)death
b)sleep
c)the subconscious
d)dreams

Magic is all-encompassing and the goal is to bridge the polarities comfortably; to move on the borders, around the edges, at the points of change. &To pay attention to the dark &mysterious as well as the lit.

The occult need not be removed from the physical. The world is full of wonder and mystery; just because it's tangible doesn't make it mundane. Disagree completely with magical practise as a means of denying, rejecting, overcoming the physical; my goal is unification, not transcendence. If witchcraft is about filling the mundane world with significance, it is that little link between the great roaring depths of the mind on one side, and the great roaring depths of the world on the other.

this morning it was crisp and sunny and beautiful. I was startled to see, after my stolen lecture, torrential rain as I crossed the bridge. I went to lunch about ten minutes later and it was beautiful again, if soggy. After work, it was indecisive; went to the pub which was shite and left early; horrible weather. But after five minutes of walking, beautiful sun again. I love the autumn colours and the colours in sunshine after a storm, especially when the sky is still ominous; weird pinks and oranges and steely blues invade everything, flatten it down; and there was wind.

I love October. I hope it continues to be capricious.

Henry David Thoreau summarized one perception of owls, when he wrote in 1854's Walden, "I rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and underdeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all [men] have."

someday you will die and someday everything about you will be forgotten and your body will be earth and there will be no more legacy. eternity is way, way bigger than you are.

I'd like to build a model house. It would be tall and narrow, old pale red brick with a slate roof. The front door would be high up, up a lot of steps, and it would have basement windows with red railings in front of them, and an autumn garden all overgrown and crowded with cats and trees. And lots of Virginia creeper. The hall would be long and narrow, tiled or paved, with a window at the far end. There would be a set of stairs walled on either side, with a lamp hung from the ceiling. A huge, crowded attic, with skylights so that you - were you appropriately sized - could climb over the discarded furniture and through a skylight and out onto the roof, through the chimneys, and have a miniature cigarette. The kitchen is quiet, the bathrooms luxuriant, the bedrooms locked; there's no living room but there's a drawing room and a parlour and so forth, and all furnished with a depth and a mystery and an oddity of selection, curious taxidermy and stopped clocks, curtains to get lost in. And fireplaces, such fireplaces! Mirrors into other worlds. And cellars, full of wine and diamonds. Secret passages and hidden rooms behind the bookcases. Harpsichords and bellows.

i was lying on my back in the garden watching the stars. Here is the thing.
I don't believe there is any conscious being who created humanity, and i don't believe i'm beholden to anything or anyone. I believe in morality, but that morality can only be self-imposed, and doesn't depend on the distribution of justice.

I also believe that reality, and existence, is inherently valuable; immeasurably beautiful and mysterious and complex. I believe that the worship of gods, the ritualistic practises of magic and prayer, have always at heart been an attempt to feel part of the universe, to be swept up by it; in organised religion that gets translated into human terms, dogma is created and faith is involved; i want no part in that. But it is amazing that we're here; it's stunning,and we should pay attention to it. And accept that I am part of the world, in amongst it, deeply involved and attached; and that the world is majestic, and that i am a catalyst within it, like everyone else.