Tonight I was communicating with some off shore Sys Admins that work in my group.  Oct 9th is an important festival in their calendar,  Dasara which commemorates the triumph of good over evil and which honors Mother Durga amongst others in their pantheon.

At the end of doing our business , I sent him the line "Jai Mata Durga" and he responded with "Jai Mata Di.

I regularly speak with these guys who are on the same team with me but who live on the other  side of the planet. They are quite interested that I understand some aspects of their faith, and honor their pantheism. Most of the other American team members know absolutely nothing about their lives and their ways.

 The following is the bulk of a posting I made on Dawn Jacksons "Traditional Witchcraft" yahoo list. It was in response to some discussion regarding the co-option and "Dumbing down" of the concept of  Traditional Witchcraft.

 In the early 1970's, at least here in America, there were three women
who publicly identified the Craft Current they followed as Traditional
in the Pagan Press/Zines of that era.

Those three were:
Gwen Thompson in Connecticut
Bonnie Sherlock In Wyoming
Kitty Lessing in Florida

Victor Andersons people, wisely chose to eschew that particular "Name
Game" and have homegrown their own Feri/Faerie brand which is to their
credit.

This can be verified by even a casual investigation of the "Green Egg"
which was the paramount journal in circulation here in the States
during that decade.

Mikes "The Cauldron" was known about but from my experience was not
commonly subscribed to.
Mike: I'd really be interested if you had any figures you could share
on how many American subscriptions you had in a typical year circa
1970 to 1990.


Anyway, in the 1970's the Craft groups who followed the paths as set
out By Gardner and Sanders never EVER used the term Traditional or
Traditionalist. They strictly adhered to the monikers of Gardnerian,
Alexandrian, or the sometimes confusing Al-Gard for those who followed
a mixed lineage.

The self identified Traditionalists made it clear that they were a
different breed of Witch from those groups which derived from Gardners
Wica and Sanders Neo-Classical Paganism and I do not recall a single
objection to the contrary. In fact the American Traditionalists were
happily singled out as "Not Like Us" by the American Gardnerians
Alexandrians and Al-Gards.

The Traditionalists were (and still are) decidedly Old Craft and
Luciferian in both Style and Lore, something that the typical 1970's
era Witches were desperately trying to deny and live down.


Gwen Thompson and Bonnie Sherlock bonded in a vivid and prolific
correspondence relationship, which led to them both sharing their
holdings fairly freely.

Kitty Lessing tended to march to the beat of her own drum, and she
disappeared from the scene well before the onset of the 1980's decade.
(If anyone out there holds a kinship to her, feel free to contact me
off list, I have a few personal letters from her which might be
valuable assets to your archives)


Bonnie Sherlock suffered from type one diabetes and while I do not
recall the exact year of her passing, I'm quite sure it was very early
in the 1980's or in the late 1970's.
I know that there were people she trained, but if they have retained a
continuing presence I am not aware of it. (I can make the same offer
in regard to personal correspondence from Bonnie, along with my
recollections of a single visit to meet her circa 1973)

Somewhere around the mid to late 1980's, after all three of these
Ladys had exited the scene or passed on, the terms "British
Tradtional" started being usurped by The Gardnerian and Alexandrian
groups that had previously shunned it as unclean due to its perceived
diabolical connections. And thus we have the current disparity in
which American Gardnerian and Alexandrian lineage Witches call
themselves "British Traditional" while their kin in the UK do no such
thing.

In recent years I have noticed, much to my dismay, that the term
"Traditional Craft" is becoming similarly co-opted

It has been suggested to me that those who have identified as
Traditionalist since the aegis of publicly acknowledged Witchcraft in
modern America ought to now abandon that term and "move on" to
"Traditional Initiatory Witchcraft" (TIW) to which I boldly reply

BULLSHIT!

My suggestion is that they really ought to roll back to their (one C)
Wica and be happy with it. I recommend abandoning their quest to
hijack every term that seems to be du jour and thus a suitable target
for adoption.

These terms are NOT orphans, they are NOT seeking a new home!


Now all this said, I am well aware that I will probably have bruised
the feelings of many Neo Pagan Wic(c)ans whom I've befriended over the
years and for that I can only say "Deal With It"

Feels free to come yell at me or otherwise discuss this issue in the FORUM

Many years ago I had a fascinating experience at the exploratorium in San Francisco. I found myself standing in front of a small cloud chamber watching a most incredible miniature light show. The Cloud Chamber is a sealed environment containing a supercooled, supersaturated water or alcohol vapour and which detects and makes visible electrically charged particles moving through it.

 Larger Image here:

Looking inside I could see the swirling real time tracks forming and trailing away in full three dimensional goodness. I was struck that if these invisible particles were penetrating the space in front of me then they were also penetrating the space inside of me. Inside my gut, inside my heart, inside my brain. There it was for the eye to see. Cosmic interplay that is older than life, older than consciousness, older than everything we can conceive of. Straight lines and Spirals combining in an orgasmic sigilic frenzy. Are their paths fated ? Is this the order in chaos? Is it an illusion, a clever trick of some power unknown to our comprehension? I don't know but I think it is some kind of clue to things we as Witches pursue. This blog entry came about via the catalyst of a posting in our forum in the "Musings on our Arte - 2008" thread.

Due to a schedule that was very densely packed with things to do, places to go and people to see combined with very limited network access I was not able to blog directly during my recent pilgrimage to the Blessed Isles. Since returning I have been navigating the accumulated work load that awaited me along with the obligatory parting gift of a nasty cold picked up in that toxic petri dish called Heathrow. However this seems like as good a time as any to write up my experiences for the blog.

We arrived In London on the morning of the 28^th (Greenwich Time) and picked up our rental vehicle ready to head out and encounter the wonders of the landscape on our way to Wales. The two main items on the agenda were the White Horse of Uffington and the Roman remains in Bath. We would be lead on our quest by the tutelary spirit of the rented Satellite Navigator “Tom Tom”, which was a strange name considering the voice which came forth was decidedly female. Being a devotee of my Magellan unit back home, I quickly found that Tom Tom did not respond readily to the invocations and spells I was already familiar with. It was necessary to delve into the 93 page Grimoire (User Manual) that purported to reveal arcane secrets for the proper prayers and mudras required to get “Tom Tom” to communicate in a comely form. Fortunately the 93 pages were actually only three real pages of instructions printed in 31 different languages. Unfortunately the three real pages of instructions weren't very much help at all. So we lumbered on and managed to elicit directions to Uffington itself, but we were on our own as to how best to get to the horse. This is where experience with being “fairy led” comes in handy, and we managed through a serious of totally coincidental moves to find a car park designed to the bustling traffic of visitors thankfully to find we were the only ones. I guess Friday Morning isn't exactly peak traffic time at the White Horse. It quickly became obvious that the vantage point from the car park was designed to discourage walking out the the chalk figure itself and I allowed my mind to range a bit and became convinced that we should consider driving up the road some more and see what that offered.

Two weeks from today I will be winging my way across the Atlantic for a long overdue UK visit. The first week of the trip will be spent in Wales and then down in the south western countryside. This will be  my first visit to the Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle and then we will wind our way back to London stopping in Glastonbury and Cerne Abbas. The dollar is in the tank but a Witch has got to do what a Witch is gonna do. It has been over twelve years since my last "Somerset Fix" and I'm ready to soak up some of the magickal mist that can only be found in Avalon. I also need to replenish my supply of sacred well water.

My excuse for not posting a blog entry in weeks isthat I've been super busy with planning and preparation not to mention trying to get the load of my "Day Job" managed so that I can relax while I'm away. It's no vacation if you have to work three times as hard for a month after you return!

I'll have a laptop with me and hope to be able to post pictures along the way.

Eastward - HO!!!!

 In recent weeks I have been busy converting some old taped Music to MP3 format. The prime project that I have been working with is a tape I made of my friend Gwydion Pendderwens performance at the Pan Pagan festival of 1980.

The first tape I was trying to convert was apparently a copy I had made of the original and when I found that actual original tape I was surprised to find that it also contained a tape of Gwydion and some unknown associates performing a short piece that seems to have been lost to the record of Gwydions work. That piece is titled "The Rite Of Summer" and was published in booklet form sometime around that summer of 1980. I know I have the booklet (Autographed no less!) somwhere in my paper archives and I will definitly be looking to dig it up soon. But meanwhile I ripped the performace from Cassette to MP3 and it is now up in the MP3 player.

(You must be registered and logged in to access the MP3 player)

The sound quality of the original was very poor, this performance was done outside at a camping ground only a stones throw from a major highway and considering the state of technology at the time it is amazing that it came out as good as it did.

I had to run the MP3 through some severe filtering to suppress the ambient noise - and I'm not a professional sound engineer - so it's the best I could do. But this is a historical audio document that has now surfaced for the first time in over 25 years. I hope you enjoy it.

In 1972 Robin Williamson released "Myrrh", his first solo effort after the demise of "The Incredible String band".

One track stands out as a complete departure from anything you have ever heard before or since. Many ballads tell us tales of the Fairys and Fairy abduction, but for the most part they tell their story from the perspective of the Humans involved and it is the Fairys who purloin Human victims. 'The Dancing of the Lord of Weir' turns that script on it's head and tells us the tale of how a local Noble, The Lord of Weir, steals a Fairy Princess away to his castle keep and how her Fay Kin rescue her from bondage.

 Follow the link back to our Forum where I have posted a copy of this fascinating  song and it's Lyrics. You won't be sorry you did. This is a very different kind of Fairy tale.

It's that big Gray button that says "MP3 Player" over on the right hand side. Go ahead - click it!

 Whats that? You don't see it ? Well - You have to be registered!

 Detailed playlist info is in the Forum.

Needless to say - I highly recommend that  you all chase these artists down and beg them to sell you their wares. I did!

The Crooked Path is mandated by the Science of Chaos.

There is no such thing as a straight line, it is a fantasy which prevails amongst the men of clay in order to prevent them from following the path of light.

Whenever you THINK you are on an "Olde Straight Track" you have forgotten that the Triad of Fate Time and Circumstance conspire to masquerade in a way that prevents you from observing that you exist on a shifting platform thus creating an illusion of stability beneath the ever shifting reality only understood by those with access to the mystic realm.

The point of realization where this paradox collapses the state vector of your consensus reality creates a sacred well that taps into the stream of consciousness running beneath the terrestrial surface, otherwise known as the underworld.

If you dare sup from that which wells up then thrice blessed are thou and from thenceforth shall thy blood become infused with the character of all those who have gone before within the current. Thou shall be called to the Grand Sabbat, and there shall thou dance in ecstasy until thy soul be satiated with the Serpent fire.

Be thou Wise, Fare forth upon the path when the entrance is presented to you. It may not come to you a second time, fail not.

Discuss this transmission in our Forum