II. the Toad Bone Treatise

8/8/2019 II. the Toad Bone Treatise

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THE TOAD BONE TREATISE

Or

Liber Hydrargyrum

Steps Towards an Occult Natural Science and theAdvanced Practice of Sorcery

By Robin ArtissonCopyright 2008

The Toad's Bone moves against the streamAs surely as waking moves against the dream;

So solid and so fluid go the nights and daysAnd the flesh of men and women,

And the mind and heart that straysFrom the path called 'straight and narrow'-

Onto the crooked road, that path's hidden marrow.The binding Weird calls them to the game.

No teacher has been so wise, nor cunningAs the yellow moon arising and the river running;

No teacher as swift as the darting hareOr as wise as the toad in darkness,

Or as strong as the nut-brown mare.There is no temple as sacred as the vast dark Land;

No craft as ancient as the wordsmith's art,Whose spells of old so few now understand.


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Introduction:The Sorcerer of Old, The Sorcerer of Late

The Sorcerer of old came to the shores of a pond or the side of a stinking

bog; they may have cast some offering into the water, or captured somecreature for use in some spell-working. They may have been gathering someherb or taking some water or mud for some magical use. At first, these menand women were following along with time-honored methods of influencing

the arising of events; perhaps they were shown the way to make theircharms and potions by another.

Later, when a powerful church made it possible to be executed for attemptingto tame supernatural powers towards willed ends, they may have been

attempting charms and spells based on what some "cunning" or wise persontold them, or because "it was known" that these operations sometimes

yielded results. A very few were doing it because they were guided to do it by

mysterious benefactors- beings that appeared to them in dream or vision, butthese few were in the most danger of death for "trafficking with devils or

fairies."

The average "witching" person of medieval Christian and post-christian timesdidn't think of their activities in terms of operating through a diabolical pact;

they simply held onto an alternative belief that the power or powers thatexist could be constrained or respond in certain ways, in answer to certainactions on the parts of human beings. There was no moral dimension here;

the magic was neither good nor evil. The "evil" of it, in the later eyes ofmother church, was that it gave people an alternative source of hope orcomfort to turn to, which didn't include the walls of a church building.

It served the political authorities too well to have all eyes and hearts fixed ona central institution of hope and comfort; it was worth the ultimate social

betrayal- that of murdering people in the society who simply held differingviews on petty matters- to hold the vast majority of people together,

cementing control in this manner.

Some say that perhaps, in those times gone by, the survival of the manydepended on everyone fixing their belief on common religious rites and

doctrines; a stable society made cooperation possible towards the ends offeeding everyone, assuring some hint of law and order, and even moving innational group motions, such as joining in armies that saw the boundaries of

a state kept safe. Some say that the Christian world's ability to launchcrusading armies in a more or less cohesive manner was what preventedEurope from falling wholesale to Muslim armies- Muslims who were quiteorganized and driven by a common principle of conquest and conversion.

There is some truth to all these things.

But within these threads of stability, which bound nearly all people andshaped the destiny of many, a necessary magic dwells unseen. The wild,


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unguessable, and strange activities of occult experience- in all its manyforms- provides a hidden vitality to order. There is no possibility of order

without something fresh and unpredictable being at its heart; it is the factthat anything can seemingly happen that makes it possible for something inparticular to happen. The strange immensities of the Unseen World provide

the needful and hidden "backdrop" for this world's houses and streets, rivers

and forests. The world of order needs its fertile field of origin-chaos.

The same is true for the order of the mental world. Those who lived in a worldof God and angels, of priests and sinners, and of saints and demons knew

that something mystical existed beyond the beliefs they were clinging to - astrange and fearful world of mystery, of things man could not understand,and perhaps for the better. The cracks in the perfect image created by the

church were showing- God the all-good still allowed evil to terrorize the livesof good people; God the all-provider still let famine stalk and kill countlesspeople. "Faith" was enough for the first few nights of breathless fear and

restless sleep, but it became insufficient for thoughtful people. The officialexplanations and apologetics for these problems- each of them a desperate

finger in the cracks of the dogma- didn't satisfy any thinking person, and theystill do not. Only those who were comfortable with the strange and the

unknown had any peace. And those people were mystics and sorcerers.

Whatever benefit the "order" of orthodoxy may have created for ourancestors historically, it was never a benefit that included destroying or

driving away the mystical and the so-called supernatural. Such a thing is notpossible. The failure of the history of Europe was that it failed to include

within it an acceptance of the needful nature of witchcraft, sorcery,mysticism, and the secret wildness at the heart of things. It had turned

against its own vitality by failing so.

Those of us today who are trapped by the stale and boring rules ofmathematics and materialistic sciences also feel it- there's something vitaland exciting about life; it isn't all numbers, formulae, angles, curves, and

straight lines. If we truly believed the world was so explicable and tiring, we'dall be deep in depression; the soul in us knows greater things, even if we

can't put names to them. It knows the wild spaces, the unseen things and wefeel the internal report of these potencies though often dimly. It is enough to

attract us time and again to the mysteries of the unknown.

None of us really believe we'll only live 50 or 60 or 90 years; we all lookforward, in some way, to finding out, somehow, what mystery awaits in thebeyond- even if we lack the courage or inclination to claim some grandiose

religion or explanation for it all.

People have relied on the strange and unseen spaces of experience- andthose who open the door to them- since the dawn of time. The vocation of the

strange and the occult will never pass away, because it is a natural part ofany order. Sorcerers are not just people trained or learned in what othershave said about the occult; they are people born and bound to a special

fascination with the unknown and the mystical. They can no more change


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their nature than a raindrop could choose not to be wet.

The Weird's Ancient Magic

The great field of infinite possibilities is there; it always was and always will

be. It is the "great presence" that we feel when we are close to the wild,natural things of the world. It is the basis for the "Unseen World"- the

dreamscape of the soul. It is the Weird, it is the natural home of many ordersof sentient being. It is our natural home, too- and these bodies of experientialorder and solid, stable flesh that we entertain with our bound awareness andour trapped cups of memory are the side-products of the Weird's great and

universal magic.

I do not say "side product" as though the Weird merely dumped us out to theside or made us without a serious thought; all products of the oldest magic-

Nature's magic- are fulfilling the Weird's great and secret need forexpression, its hunger for the completion of experience. Making experience

possible in new ways- in infinite ways- is necessary first; countless bodies,countless fateful courses of power, and countless situations of all

complexities seemingly "arise" of the Weird. We can call it a "universe" if welike, but I perceive it as a storm of magical power, a maelstrom of light and

glamour, the ultimate demonstration of sorcery.

After that, through the many perceptual cycles and eons of the long Day ofLife, sentient beings arise to (at some point) become fully aware of the greatcompleteness of things through their own minds and hearts. This is the final

step in the magic; then, the world is truly complete. The Weird permeates thewhole, as a whole, which of course it always was and is.

But how strange that beings should need to become aware of it! Do theychange it, somehow? No. Do they change themselves? In one way, yes, in

another, no. Is this "other" change needful to the Weird? In one way yes, inanother, no. The possibility always exists for this change and the awareness

of it on the parts of the sons and daughters of mortal men.

It is this strange possibility reserved for us that makes us "men", and not"beasts", though the beast is never far from us because it is a natural and

eternal part of this flesh and soul. There is simply something else in us,woven by the Weird- that "finest point of the soul"- the possibility of spirit's

undying fire bursting into its own conflagration, the outpouring of realawareness and self-illuminating radiance that changes everything and

nothing at the same time.

It reveals the truth about things, but it does not thereby create those truths;it shows that true "union with the divine"- or "union with all that is" is

(paradoxically) not a matter of total self-obliterating fusion, nora matter oftotal egoistic separation. It is eternal and lasting dynamic relationship andinteraction with both the groundof being- itself not to be considered somestatic thing, but a perpetual unfolding and living process- and all forms that


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derive their own existence from the ground of being and from countless otherco-creating and sustaining sources. It is joyful, perpetual dependency and co-

creativity with everything. A small hint of just this state is found in theordinary human experience of love.

The Crooked Path

The crooked road of human life- that is, the turning road, spiraling inward tosome secret place of transformation- also spirals outward at the same time.Don't try to visualize this or wrap a logical mind around it; the act of going

"inward" is simultaneously the act of going "outward", though only the trulywise grasp this. This is what it means to dwell in a wholeness of things, whichwe certainly do. The crooked path is haunted- other beings dwell on it; somehinder travelers, some help them. Some guard the way, others merely watch

it. Some wander about on the road, others seem to be going somewhere,intently. Some sit as still as stones, seemingly quite asleep.

There is no place you can go where you will not be on the path, and noperson, animal, or other being you can meet that will not fulfill one of theseseven roles. You too shall occupy these roles at times, and after you havemade it to the secret place at the center, you will emerge, changed, but

continue to occupy some of those roles, though perhaps for different reasons.

It doesn't end. That road has no end, for even reaching the secret center- andafter a harrowing and a mystery- one may well discover more openness andpossibility of time, place, and being. We won't know until we arrive, thoughmystically awakened beings from all times in the vast history of our world

have reported hints to us of the lay of that secret land.

What is before you is the Toad Bone Treatise- a guide down the path, acollection of short works by yours truly that cast light on some dusty corners

and hidden clearings of the Witching art. It is a study of the the reconditesciences and other arts now excoriated as "marginal knowledge" and

"superstition". It represents my attempt to consider the logical ramificationsof our belief in Fate and the all-pervading power of the Weird and create

steps towards an occult "natural science", but it is also a grimoire of somepower- containing many of the inner keys of the Witching way. Some of those

keys have been given before, in other places; some never before now.Seizing this toad bone can grant many wishes- including control over the

beast that is one's unrestrained self and the strangely dazed and wanderingmind with its many dark dreams and fantasies.

Studying the world from new perspectives- hopefully more whole and truthfulones- must make sorcery stronger, for none exist who can claim power in

sorcery without grasping something of the truth about the way things are inthis world, both the world that is known and the hidden world.

You must decide if the poetry in your soul becomes clearer when you read


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and engage such things as this treatise, for if it does, then power is there andyou can use that power to affect the world and your life in the oddest and

deepest of ways. If it does not, then these words will be like dust to you. Onething is for certain, without poetry, without secret things that fill us with the

fire of awakened imagination, we are all dust and will never be anything but.

Before the Beginning; After the End

The Oldest Things in the world are aware of you, even now. Call them Gods ifyou like; call them Weirds, call them spirits; call them anything. They've

watched you come and go every day of your life- you along with everything-and you were there with them before you were born, when nothing existedbut ghosts and strange combinations of color, when nothing was there but

vast dark spaces of timeless dwelling and strange companies of beings thatwere beyond your conception. Nothing was there before you became a blood-

mote in the womb and swam into this odd yet needful world except thestrange possibilities of all things, the undying Weird-space and your fateful

perceptions of it. Nothing was there except the tug at your emotional centerto find, seek, discover, to be in a new way.

Nothing was there before your birth except the sprawling world of those whohave established themselves in the unseen through a dozen secret

entrances. Some will reign there, in courts of dazzling splendor, until thebreaking of the world. Some will fall from their castles and odd dwellings, to

be drawn into deeper shadow than any darkness you've ever known. Perhapsyou were there once. Others will wander in twilight, following unknown

courses. Others will sleep. Some will gather around the blood of the world, allthe light and passion, and seek ingress. Some will be driven to shift theirshape into all manner of creatures and nightmares; some will think of thishuman world in as mythical of terms as we often think of theirs. Some will

never know a thing about our world.

The Weird has woven it all- all possibilities of time, place, and experience,and we are wandering in a mental space with borders that cannot be found.Powers are shrieking through here, through all things, and through us. Wehave sought the quiet. We have sought the flesh and found the world ofalternating light and darkness. We have largely mercifully forgotten the

strange chaos, but we feel its extraordinary presence, creeping back up on usat times. What happens in the depths also happens "here"- for they are not

so different places- and we cannot guess it out. Sometimes it kills. Sometimesit brings to life. Sometimes it takes and sometimes it gives. We can be

terrified of it or try to cast ourselves into the bonds of love with it, but at theend of this mortal road, we must face it. It is never what we imagined, as well

as all that we imagined.

We are bound, with all the things of the world, and all the things of heavenand hell, to this life and her many experiences. Darkness and Light are not

our choices. They are powers who will take their share regardless of who we


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are or what we do. Wisdom is our only choice, and the power that comes withit- which we should seek for the use of life.

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The Sorcerous Pharmacopeia:Curiosities and Short Essays Regarding The Hidden

Ways

I. Light of Day, Light of Night

The sun is the light of day; the moon is the light of night. When oneexamines the bodies of the sun and moon, it is simple to see that one has abody of fire, and the other a body of earth. Fire radiates light naturally; earthis still and dark. The naturally luminous body of the sun spreads golden lighton the earth in each day, and after night, its light reaches the earth-body ofthe moon and illuminates it.

Thus, by reflection, the undying light of the world-fire (the sun) is always with

us. In the darkness of night, it is the earth-body of the moon that receives thelight and mediates it to us. The moon is a mediator of a greater, moreconstant light. There is a mystery here, in the concept of reflection. The sun'sdirect, immediate light gives rise to life and abundance: plants need it tothrive as much as humans or beasts; the cold powers are driven away underthe glaring eye of the day-star; life is made safer. Things become moreapparent, as darkness is absent in the light. Seeing with clarity and seeingoutwardly are the domains of the sun and its light.

But the character of that very same light is changed when it must bereflected first- what the moon gives to us is the same light, but fully changedby the moon's participation. The light of the moon is cooler and not as bright;

it is no longer golden, but pale white- it is no longer a light of gold but a lightof bone-white and silver. When the moon is rising, the light is building in it,and it is only yellow or orange. When the moon has risen, it is brilliant white.

The sun's light in day builds power in the eye and body; it urges one toactivity. The moon's reflected light, however, calms and cools.

And the same light that once called people to outward-seeing clarity in theday now calls people to inward seeing, under the spell of the moon-mediator.

It is curious indeed why this should be, but many lessons can be learned fromit. In the dance of the light of day and the light of night, the Weird shows thatanything received indirectly is seemingly changed quite radically. When

another being must mediate something to us- knowledge, for instance- wemust trust that what we receive is only a dim, pale reflection of what thatperson received. I may go further to say that what we receive is reversed, ina true sense- just as the moon reverses the sun's call to activity and outwardseeing into a seductive call to calmness and inward seeing. The sun's light isfor the eyes of the head, but the moon's light is for the eyes of the soul.

What does this tell us about the mystery of reflection? That reflecting things


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reverses their powers and virtues. It is not merely a matter of "things"becoming more tainted and diffuse the further they get from their source.

They also change in character, mysteriously. You have looked at yourself in amirror many times- but what are you seeing there? You as you appear, or "asyou are"? Or perhaps, in the mirror, what you are seeing is a reversal of whatyou are, but after years of assuming that what appears is a perfect report of

what is, you can no longer consider the deceptive nature of mediation. Themirror's spell can reveal the true face of essence to those who are no longerfooled by the glamour.

The Weird- the boundless deep of eternal power- is like a perpetual fire body,but its light is reflected in matter and arisen things, so what we think weknow of the power of the Weird is not only impure, but even reversed. Weconceptualize the strange space of the world-womb as the dark void thatgives rise to all- but what if it is a constant light, which never gives rise tothings- for indeed, how could perpetual things "arise"?- but perhaps itreceives all perpetual things into itself, as a constant sustaining presence.

Thus I say that the crooked path, from one perspective, turns around andinward, but outward at the same time. It is a matter of the fact that ourperceptions are themselves already reflections, one time removed andmediated to our minds in the form of impressions and ideas. There is realityand the reflection of reality, which is the appearance of reality to us.Everything and its opposite come together, one power with perception astheir ephemeral divider- fair is foul and foul is fair, without fail or end.

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II. Mortal, Mirror, And Faery

There was a faery kingdom under that hillSome say it is gone; I say it remains still.

A well and its water cannot be separated ultimately; the source and its"products" are one. If we are (as is believed) possessed of two natures- onemortal and aligned to the natural environment of this world, and the other"fetch" or faery-immortal, aligned to the inner world of the Faery-Weird, andfurther, if it is as some say, that the mortal half of our experience is sprungfrom the inner world, emerged through the magic of birth into the light of day

and the dark of night (that is to say, a world of apparent cycles and duration)from an original a world of perpetuity and wholeness, then we must considerthat the mortal and the faery, or the ferth and the fetch, are not ultimatelyseparate things.

We must retool our understandings to accept that the mortal is the all-arounduprising of the faery, an unbroken stream of the perpetual, a continuity of theimmortal; that the phenomenal experience of mortality is the water drawnfrom the well of the numinal experience of faery, thus rendering them the


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same, despite our relentless categorizations to the contrary.

No longer does a far away or divided-away mortal man seek for his Faery-love or fetch-twin, but he must consider himselfas the union, alreadycomplete, of what is seen and what is unseen. Without this stance of mind,the search may be long and in vain. The immortal nature has not vanished

off, leaving a mortal nature to wander about in fruitless searches; theimmortal nature has not vanished- it is the world of our senses that hasappeared and enchanted one's mind. This very nature must be that faery-nature; something that was immortal has become enchanted and learned toconsider itself as mortal.

This fractured state of being can lead to strange madness- one may seemany things, in this world and in what would seem to be the "otherworld",and one may wonder if one among these things is the "immortal twin" orfaery otherself; it may be that the magical force of the Weird of each of uscan, through reflection or projection, show itself as another. But the searchdoes not end until one realizes that the well and the water are not able to be

separated, that sources and products are one power experienced as two.

The wholeness of the Weird-world or the perpetual paradise of Faery has notvanished. Wholeness cannot be so divided, ultimately, and so it stillmaintains its wholeness. Something that is whole has become enchanted andlearned to consider itself as less than whole- it has been bewitched (after amanner of speaking) and now interprets its own perceptions in a manner thatconvinces it that it is less than whole, and, along with itself, that the worldaround it is fatally flawed.

The perpetual power seemingly arises in many ways, and those arisenparts can sometimes learn to distinguish themselves as "man" and "woman"or as "searching" and "wandering"- but all is still one unbroken and mysticalforce, as much faery in "this world" as it ever was in "the other". Somethingthat was immortal learned to be mortal, and has forgotten the vastness ofitself. It cannot imagine a time when it was not a limited being.

We have never "left" the faery world; if one wishes to engage the old term"faery nature" as a name for our undying nature, then we are faery-naturedbeings that still dwell in their natural world, but who have come under theinfluence of bewitching confusion that has led to the creation of complexfictions regarding who and what we are, where we "came from" and wherewe are going. Our faery-natured companions who are not so deluded as weare still "here", though we have learned not to see them, and instead accordthem existence in an unseen world.

When we perceive death to the bodies of men and women, we areexperiencing shape-shifting through Fateful consequence, nothing more- andthis process is carried out within the faery-world as well- for if it is a fact of"this" reality, it is a fact of "that one"- for they are one reality.

Our faery stories present the faeries as tricksters of men and women- they


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are presented as the masters of glamour, and their world as one full ofillusions, but now you must understand that these stories are trying to tell ussomething about the nature of all worlds, including ours. They are one world.Faery trickery and glamour is not only a danger in the faery world, but in thisone, for they are one world. It is better to say that "existing as we do, wemust accept the glamour that shapes us all and tricks us- and that glamour is

a world-creating power." This is the beginning of wisdom, and the key to its"end".

Those beings who have undergone the metamorphosis of mind andperception that free them from this present mortal darkness do not vanishaway from this reality, nor do they cease undergoing the shifting of shapeordained by mighty Fate and Weird; they merely incorporate those thingsinto the vaster essence, that vastness of truth for themselves that they haveaccess to- an awareness of reality which marks them as different from we"mortals".

Thus, the Gods of Pagans and the God of churches, the Gods of the Hindu

people and the Buddhas of the Orient are truly as all-knowing and perceivingas their followers believe; the Oldest Beings of our own lands, now fallen intothe silence of their people's ignorance, are purveyors of wisdom and truesight, just as the old churchmen feared. And we may become like the Oldest

Things, the Ancients, if we are cunning.

If there is a metaphysical path to understanding this grand experience thatwe call our world, we must begin at the end- we must go forward to thedestruction of duality and thus, by natural paradox, find ourselves back at the"beginning"- as the faery-natured beings that we are, free of limitation, withthose substances we call "numinal" and phenomenal" collapsed into the onewholeness that they are. Then, from that perspective, use language to pointout merely how things appear- never must we deal with "the way things are"-only how they appear to be, so long as we consider ourselves as mortals anddraw breath here.

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III. A Sorcerous Conception of the Divine:The Weird in Bog, Heath, and Moon

Wholeness in mind and fleshIs a river in the bodyA forest in the headThe sky in the fingers

A green dark land in the eye.The Weird is the life spirit

The force of men and womenThe lair of beasts

The flare of the day-star


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The glare of the wheat moon.A hidden company tracks us;

Majesty rises unseen;Many earths on earth there be,

Many skies in the sky above thee.

Many impassioned people tell how all others need to become resolved totheir "God"- but the Weird, the primal origin-force, everywhere apparent,everywhere necessary, dawning everywhere without obstruction, is the true"God" of the wise- the only "God" they need to establish themselves inwisdom and lasting peace. It is this same force that the ancient spiritsworshipped of old as "Gods" draw their divinity from. It is the reason for allthings coming to pass, and the completion of all things.

I make no attempt to describe it in material terms; I prefer only to speak ofits processes- those things it appears to do. I experience it in terms of cyclesand processes, not in matter and material. No matter is inert; to see a willowtree feasting on the riverside, with small fish darting to and fro in theshallows and toads splashing into the water is to see a massive tapestry ofprocesses, of powers in motion.

Our own lives and all lives are this way- we are verbs, not nouns. The world isa verb, a doing thing, because that power upon which our minds and ourexperience of the world relies is a verb, a great doing, a great vibrancy thatappears quite dark at times. For all the "doingness" of the world, it also neverseems to change, in essence- all appearance of motion is the experience ofsomething that is perpetually still.

Like with so many things, what appears in reflection is the opposite of what isthere- and thus, the two halves come together- one does not destroy theother; seeming motion is still seeming motion, and stillness remains stillness.But the wise understand. They no longer accept outward things andapparent motions as simply that, full stop; they know the deeper truth ofthem, but they also do not deny outward things and motions in favor of somestillness that is apart from all things.

The Weird, the primal power that is source and sustainer of all (peering as itdoes from the timeless eyes of the great serpent in the land) lays down noscriptures save the necessity that rules all lives. It does not sit as a white-

bearded man in judicial proceedings against souls; the ancestral powers offamilies and the spirits of the world who guard the natural places and lives ofbeings are the judges of human beings for their virtues and misdeeds, thougheven they lack the power to sanction for eternity. They merely respond to theneeds of the integrity of the moment.

One cannot tear the branches from a grove's sacred tree without summoningthe spiritual guardians of that place, as Janet learned through Tam Lin'sappearance. At that moment of her violation, necessity urged that guardian


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to maintain the integrity of the place to which he was bound, so he went tomeet the violator with a countering force. It is the Weird that compels usforward on fateful paths, in what we experience as this life and during whatwe experience as the state after death.

* * *

When our deaths are upon us, a crucial moment has arrived- the cost for howwe have lived, the swirling impact of our lives must be paid, though thepayment is not a great singular "coin" dropped into the hands of a waiting

judge, but a process, a new path that must be followed in execution of thedebt. It is a path determined by the forces one has gathered to oneself in life,and those forces one has helped and healed, as well as those one hasspurned and injured; it is a path determined by emotion and passion and thefund of personal peace and virtue as well as those guilty memories andanxieties that are carried along in each mind.

This simple perspective yields the only basis for true moral action: our pathsthrough our everlasting existence are made easier andoriented to thehighest truth through words and deeds that minimize harm and maximize thepossibility and occasions of wise, harmonious interactions for ourselves andfor others. Because all powers are intertwined, and no person ever walksalone through the forest of many living powers that exist, our deeds affectothers just as theirs affect us.

Our benevolent regard for others- and our benevolent actsare (unavoidably)both aids to them andto ourselves, and further to all things. It is never apersonal good that is the ultimate basis or primary motivation for the realmorality of the wise, but the good of all life. Fortunately for us, we are

included in all life, and thus it is that the land and I are one- as my peopleand I are one, so speaks the sacred grail king.

All of the Weirds great appearances are parts of us, even those fatefulvisions and powers that seem to be far from our control and which seeminglyvictimize us- thus, the wise bear suffering caused by these seeming lashesof fate without losing their equanimity or benevolent regard for all things.

Part of the greatest spiritual and moral maturity relies on accepting thetears of the world as ones own- and something mysterious and ineffable isrevealed about the Weird in this very way: the greatest capacity for joy andpeace is reserved for those who demonstrate the greatest capacity forenduring suffering wisely. The wisest may suffer the most, but knowing theirown perpetual nature, they have no fear and they have free access toboundless depths of joy and wholeness of vision. They alone can feel truelove or benevolent regard for all beings as though those beings were theirown beloved children.

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We may think of death in these terms: as a time of truth and knowledge- amental re-living of all that has gone before, and a revelation of what the pathahead may be- but in reality, every moment of transition (and each momentcan be understood as a transition) is every bit as crucial as the death

moment. For you live in this moment now, and you will die in no other placethan the moment that you will then be experiencing as now.

When one realizes the perpetual nature of the self and the unbroken fullnessof that concept called the moment- there is only one true moment- onerealizes that life and death are only ideas, only limited perspectives. Afterthis point, we can remain free of life and death, consigning them to wherethey truly belong- as further tricks of perception- or we can re-enter thestream of limited perspectives (or be driven back to that position by long-established force of habit) and at least strive to see causality in a wiser, moreinter-locked way: we can perceive that every present moment is anawareness-point wherein many forces seemingly negotiate for the shape of

future moments; that every moment is a moment in which the fatefulresonance of "the past" collides with the realities of the present- a bubblingcauldron of heat and fluid whose steam will form into the solid shapes of thefuture.

A wiser belief in causality- such as the one presented in the bubblingcauldron example- is still a good perceptual distance from the ultimate truthof perpetuity. Perpetual being, is, in my way of knowledge, the only reality;thus, when our wisdom or bravery become strong enough, we can (with agood measure of fateful luck) shatter our ordinary conceptions- breaking thecauldron, as it were- to see what promise truly lies on the other side of"perpetuity". There was no distant "creation" for all things; the truesubstance of everything has always existed in some fashion, for if "nothing"was all that existed once, how could "something" have suddenly occurred?

Nothing comes from nothing. Things are perpetual. We- the minds that couldnot have arisen out of non-minds- are perpetual. Moments didnt arise assome strange units of mysterious time-material out of non-moments;what we are crudely calling time (and envisioning as a march of manydiscrete moments) is a perpetual space wherein experience is possible, agreat openness without beginning or ending.

We- these relentlessly searching minds, constantly redefined in relationshipto bodies and situations- are perpetual. The wholeness of things was and isalways here; only definitions and conceptions have been changing. Within ourcurrent outlay of perceptions, it is unavoidable that we consider our"beginning" in concrete enough terms to develop mythologies of origins.Within our current outlay of perceptions, it is easy to see how even myths oftime can arise, and with them, myths of life and death.

The truth is more powerful- the Perpetually Weaving Weird is Mother andForeparent to us all, Her many twisting and interacting powers responsible for


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who and what we feel and think that we are, but there was no "first arising"of our minds out of a nothingness. The Weird powers are eternal mothers,and we eternal offspring. The constant rain and flood of experiences iseternal.

Lacking a true "past", "present" or "future"- for they are labels of limitation-

our experience of "judgment after death" and "negotiation of forces" and ofwhat appear to be "fateful forces" influencing us in one manner or another isreally a matter of what level of awareness we have achieved. It is ourconstant and ongoing study of ourselves and our experiences that is trulyhappening, not a courthouse drama. We express what we experience inconceptual terms, draping everything in words and splintered perceptions.

* * *

Why is the mind, bereft of broad and true awareness, constantly beingshoved here and there by these forces and concepts? Without true

awareness, the mind surrenders to what it believes real. Are there "real"things? Naturally there are. But the mystery of the mind and these "things" issuch that they are entwined without possibility of division or separation,except in perception. Thus, how the mind conceives and believes haseverything to do with the appearance of paths through life and afterlife,and the laws that seem to rule them. Albert Einstein once remarked "It isquite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudesalone. In reality, the very opposite happens: it is the theory whichdecides what we can observe."

Sir James Frazier eloquently described the sheer power of belief when he said"The danger, however, is not less real because it is imaginary;

imagination acts upon man as really as does gravitation, and maykill him as certainly as a dose of prussic acid." Naturally, he wascorrect- imagination and imaginal things are not any less real thananything else. In the wholeness of things, imagination is a sacred power andindeed, it is the shaper of the human world- not a forlorn waste of day-dreaming time.

Men and women are all fatefully similar in many ways, and thus, there arisesa natural consensus on many features of our common experience that wemay collectively elevate to the level of a "universal law" or a truth. We arealso fatefully similar in that we are all subject to the deceits and delusions ofmany forces that prevent us from being free in perception of the truth, and ittakes an extraordinary person to shake free.

If metaphysical laws are relative- though no less concrete in our limitedexperience of them- then it is important to state that only one Law trulyexists: that law that states all things are perpetual and belonging to thewholeness, and thus sacred and eternal. The nightmares and fantasies thatwe create, in our spells of illusion and delusion, are outcomes that areephemeral at best, but necessary in another way, for the Weird is always


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seemingly hungry for what appears to be expression and experience. Wemust not imagine that our dreams and ideas are separate from thewholeness; they too, are part of it.

Thus, every frog in every bog, every deer lifting its head under every tree,and every man or woman sealed in love's embrace is something powerful, a

magic from the oldest of things. They are all expressions of Weird, all of themfollowing a path of hidden laws and all of them products of a sorcery thateven the most cunning witch could not match. This is why love is powerfulenough to repel the spells of witches and devils, and the glamour of faeries-this is why knowledge and love cannot be simply created as playthings or bycheap tricks. They are parts of a greater power and a greater unfolding.

Can sorceryitself be a conception of the divine? Sorcery is a process, anunfolding of power, a verb. The Weird's magic is what we see, not the Weird,though paradoxically we also "see" it without fail. Stillness andmotion/process cannot be separated; the primordial sorcery never"happened" and yet it is there, happening. We can perform sorcery, and by

so doing, engage the primal Weird. On the other hand, we are alwaysengaged by it. Becoming conscious of this participatory fact is what makes"sorcery" in the human sense really possible. And sorcery in this way- as avision of our inter-relatedness within a web of power-processes- can certainlybe a route to a conscious experience of a divine reality.

* * *

Now we walk on the Land, by the waterside, under the glaring sun or thechangeful moon, and we walk in experience of the Weird, the sacredvastness, the boundless deep. There are spirits among us, with us, and an

experience of "seen" and "unseen". We are also spirits, though spirits whohave learned to be mortal through the combinations of many fateful powers.And this brings us to the concept of Fate. Long has the world's days andnights been troubled by arguments between the "free will" believers and thefatalists; long have people misunderstood what the entwining of powersreally means.

An ancient wise man was asked to explain Fate, once. He said that Fate wasan endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the others. Theman that had asked him said that he didn't believe this; he said he believedin "cause and effect". The wise man pointed out that nearby, a man wasbeing led away to be hanged for murder- and what, he asked, was the cause?Was it the silver coin that was given to the man, with which he bought thedagger he stabbed his victim with? Was it the fact that he was seencommitting the crime? Or was it that no one stopped him?

This single conversation fully reveals and sums up what "Fate" is. Andendless apparent succession of intertwined events, each influencing theothers. This is what life is, a great tapestry of countless endless powers andevents, each influencing all the others. No single force- including "free will" or


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a "choice" can be given the final and total responsibility or credit for "why"certain things happen, or why people end up where they end up. Even"choices" are themselves influenced by countless forces.

The Weird must be thought of as a binding power- the Binding Weird. We areall bound by many strands of power, many events, many processes. This is

the truth of providence, the multifaceted origin of all things that weexperience. The lay of the land, the color of the grasses, the slope of hills, thecourses of rivers, the destines of nations, the personalities of people, thepaths birds take through the air- all of them show the influence of countlessforces. This is the same situation of life that humans and all other beings findthemselves in, even the Oldest of spiritual powers, those free of thelimitations of mortality. Being free of mortal illusions does not free one fromthe Binding Weird's power; it merely means that one no longer suffers thedark fate- what mortals call the suffering of ignorance and death.

Some people search for a "God" in the Weird, but this is forlorn. It is no God.It is far more sublime than that. A God is an actor within a system which is

the Weird, not unlike a person or a beast. But the ultimate perceptual originof all life is, indeed, in the intertwined forces that the Weird's magical powerweaves; thus the Weird fulfills, for those who believe in it, a similar role thatGod in mainstream religions fills.

* * *

This brings us to the threshold of an interesting exploration. The God of themainstream is a very conscious being, with infinite memory, will, and volition.Is the Weird self-aware? Is it conscious like we are, or on some higherlevel? Is it possessed of some great awareness, always aware of all other

things within it? To answer these questions, it is best for us to look within ourown natures, though by so doing, one looks within the world and the Weird,also.

We are conscious and aware- and, as the wise say, "nothing comes fromnothing". If the powers of life were unconscious, unaware powers, how didtheir combinations become aware and conscious? If "nothing" really existed,no "thing" could have arisen from it- nothing comes from nothing; if non-consciousness was all that existed, consciousness could not have arisen.

So the aware nature of our minds and beings is itself caused by otherawareness. We can take this as far "back" as the Weird, if we like. My onlyconcern is that people who do this exercise do not fool themselves intoimagining that the Weird has some mind that we can easily grasp orunderstand- if it does, indeed, have some intelligence that can bedescribed as a singular mind, it would be beyond us to grasp fully, if at all,due to the sheer magnitude of Weirds power. We must instead focus on ourown minds and natures, and on the realities of interaction- and through thosethings find peace- instead of living in fruitless speculation about some over-mind that may or may not have motivations like unto our own, but which


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can never be known fully.

As a combination of countless forces coalesced to give rise to mankind andall things, we can consider the Weird the mother (or father) of all things-though the iconography of the Old Path- born in the most ancient ofmythologies- looks to the wholeness as mother, not father. The word

"mother" is used owing to the apparent generative power of the potencies ofnature, their ability to create from within themselves and of themselves, andto sustain. Wholeness- the wholeness of powers, all in the present moment, isthe mother of everything.

The sorcerous conception of the divine is hereby complete: nothing needs tobe done to reach the "divine power" nor the divine powers, in the shape ofspirits or other powers. All are here; all is complete. No special path leads tothe true source of powers; all paths are within it, though not all paths lead tobright ends for human beings. Discrimination and wisdom are not equallyshared on all paths, even though the Weird is forever present.

It is enough to live a simple life on the land, on the heath, by the waters,under the light of day and the light of night. Those who tamper with theminds of others to taint them with guilt and fear are not speaking foranything except their own foolishness- the true primal originating force is notsome strange angry being, waiting to punish or forgive. A calmness andrightness permeates nature and also fills human nature- a basic sanity thatwe can reach and reclaim for it was ours from our birth, and it was oursbefore our birth.

We are beings of the Weird- we are humans, we are perpetual of the faery-world; we are cutters of grain, husbandmen and women of beasts, shapers ofmetal, parents and lovers, fools and sages, all belonging to the Land, thegolden sun and the bone-white moon. We know that the sorcerous nature ofreality is full of a natural and primordial trickery, tied to our perceptions; Foreverything that is seen, nine things are unseen. Nothing is as it appears, andyet- nothing is really fully otherwise.

I have walked under the darkest shade of trees on moonless nights, andheard countless night-birds making their own choir, and every time I havewalked through that dark magic, I have known the Weird. For some, there are

just trees and birds, and the dangers of the night. For me, there is greatpower, there is witchery there. For me, there is heaven and hell, together- aworld of wonder and a world of deep, inward-turning mystery, full of powerand fear.

For me, wherever I go, I know my natural and eternal environment, and Iknow it as part of me and me of it. Beyond whatever we think, there is adarkly glimmering mystery far beyond reason and sanity, but full of thewholeness of beauty. It perpetually sustains and bestows all things with theirown nature and being- perfectly, fully and without need for furtherelaboration or rectification. This is the sorcerous conception of deity.


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* * *

IV. The Old Ones, Familiars, and theSummoning Art

Throughout the ages human beings have interacted with powers theyhave called Gods or spirits; they have rendered worship and obedience to theOld Ones; they have learned from them, and even struggled with them. Thereis much wisdom in the past and in records of humanity's experience of otherbeings and powers in this weirded wholeness, and much power is needed totrace those old roads, though the only real necessity is that we understandour true relationship with the powers that dwell among us and all over amidthe dark and bright spaces of reality. Understanding the truth of ourrelationship with everything- how things really exist, and thus how we really

exist, and how we rely on all other things and they on us- is tantamount tothe highest attainment.

So much of Witchcraft and sorcery leans on the human sorcerer's ability tointeract with familiar spirits and other great powers that lend their aid toworking. We must investigate the nature of these relationships, how they aresummoned and why.

The Old Ones don't have to "come" or "go"- as is the nature of spiritualbeings, they are always "here"- wherever this "here-ness" of the world maybe. It is we who do not see them, and wander far from them in our thinkingand perceiving. From our side of the mirror, it seems as though they are the

ones who have wandered away from us or have been driven away by onething or another.

In these wasted times, bereft of much ancient wisdom, where farmers nolonger sate the spirits of fields with glad offerings or sweeten their fresh-plowed soil with milk, blood, and honey, and where the spirits of houses areignored by the lady of the house and hearths sit empty of bowls of offering, itis easy to imagine that the Old Powers and spirits have wandered far from usperceptually, dejected. The forests around us- what few remain- graduallycollect rubbish and litter dropped by thoughtless hikers. People place thebodies of their dead in the ground and seldom render them the ongoingofferings, attention, and prayers that the wise of the past did- Christianity,

with its focus on the supreme "god", frowns on too much attention beinggiven to other powers. The dead are left in their graves until judgment day, tosleep in un-knowing.

What Gods of old would remain to bless us? We have become numb andblind, and we have treated the world like it was a heap of materials to bemanipulated for our benefit, but in so doing we have mistreated the sacred,and abused our own minds and characters, for the world and the mind are


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entwined. Did the Heathen Gods flee from Christian crosses in disgust, orleave finally after their sacrifices ceased, or did we simply smear the mud ofvice and ignorance into our own spiritual eyes? I must go with the latterexplanation.

* * *

Many kinds of spirit exist, and while some Old Powers may be the true lordlytype whose ancient presences still permeate the Land and the skies, and theforests and fields, others were more akin to mankind, maintaining differentmodels of relationship and different styles of interaction- and folklore revealsthat how humans responded to them and acted had everything to do withhow they responded and interacted. Folklore reveals their propensity forharm and for help, and the need to treat them with respect. The veryexistence of these powers- these People of the Hills- and others of the hostsunseen- was and is a gateway to the deepest animistic awareness native tothe children of Europe. That awareness can still be awakened, though it is

questionable what extraordinary wisdom or memory would be required tofind the old paths to the Unseen People's hidden halls and dwellings.

No one knows if they've gone for good, or just fled the land under the mind-numbing and soul-shattering power of the sinister church bells that shatteredthe peace of the air and frightened the spirits of the ground. Maybe theychanged their residence, or withdrew deeper into the earth. Maybe theirFateful time ended, or maybe it still persists. Folklore would reveal that someof these ancients did maintain their twilight existence alongside the mortalworld, such as the Faery-clan discovered upon Selena Moor.

Approaching the Unseen World has many practical motivations: if that world

exists (which of course it does) and if it is peopled by the hosts of the deadnow transformed into countless new orders of existence, and with shape-shifters, ancient spirits once called "Gods", and by the non-ordinary bodies ofthose things we experience normally as trees, plants, stones, and winds (justto name a few), then our walk to knowledge and wholeness requires that weunderstand this world and how to successfully interact with it.

But our quest for personal sorcerous transformation and deeper wisdomtakes us to the unseen hosts for their aid in attaining the highest seals ofascension. Some among the people of the world are prepared for the fullblossoming of life's potential, which is conscious wholeness. On that path,sorcery arises as the unfolding of certain potentials- from the outsideperspective, it seems as though one may have become a miracle worker; oneseems blessed with extraordinary gifts. This has led to the perception on theparts of many that sorcery is about these powers and experiences, when theyare merely side effects of a greater exploration.

When we attain conscious contact with non-human powers and beings, weare again experiencing something of the Weird- not that it "appears" as thesebeings, for they are as fully individual powers as we are- but moving closer to


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the non-human sentient world brings us closer to the strange wholeness ofthings, and to consciousness of its eldritch presence. It is easy to mistakesome of the luminous powers of the Unseen as messengers of the Weird, asministers somehow of the highest reality, but this is only a perception on ourpart, informed as it is by Christian models of otherworldly experience.

The deep and refreshing (yet odd) joy sometimes felt by those who move intothe "otherness" is not a sign of Godly grace, but of the natural joy inherent toconsciously existing in our sorcerous and perpetual reality. Joy may exist fornatural, simple reasons; how strange to think that we have all become so

jaded that our most in-depth and defining "joys" can only come from fulfillingmythical imperatives that we believe will give us perpetual joy in someafterlife or some redemption, or from the most unbalanced depths of physicalgratification or augmentation through body-deteriorating substances. Whendid living quietly on the land, or watching the moon fly her course in thestarry sky become insufficient to fill us with rapture? The moment it becomesenough for a man or a woman is the moment the Old Powers return for them.

* * *

People wonder a good deal at the prospect of summoning the Old Ones. It isnot so hard as is imagined, though not as easy as many books today makeout. On must alter one's perceiving in such a manner that one enters the"spiritual climate" of the power. One may do this with the power of the mindand the natural poetry of the soul, but more direct means are so much thebetter- the Secret Spirit-King and Protector of wild places and wild creaturesis not a caricature to be imagined in a "visualization" of a forest; it is to anactual wild and wooded place one should go, moving on whatever fatefulcourse through the trees and brambles one is sent, to alter the character of

the mind and souls experience.

The forest is not just a place, but an environment of the mind. It does notmerely contain trees and animals; it changes the feeling, shape, andorientation of the soul. Poetry- good, strong poetry- is the only thing thatsuffices to replace the bodies of trees and plants, and the holy force of theforest-Weird. But few today can speak the forest with poetic sorcery; most ofus must enter into its precincts.

Poetry is a wonder that can transport us anywhere- the power of words is theoldest and greatest sorcery taught to man by ancient powers. But an evenmore organic sorcery is simply the act of going to the waters, walking thepaths through the forests, going to the graves and mounds, walking to thecrossed roads or the forked road, entering the plowed lands or the heath,going to the standing stones, the fields or the mountains, or going to the sea-shore. There, in those places, the mind changes, the mind and spirit reachout- and within- differently. The positions of stars, the moon and the sun, andthe corresponding rising and falling of light and heat and cold also change aperson, alter perception and transform soul and spirit. Being immersed inwater, in the heat of a fire, being amid strong wind- these things alter a


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person, as well. Seeing the sun rise or set, seeing the moon in its manyphases- they alter, they make things possible.

Not just where we are, and when we are, but what we do is the third stakethat makes the tripod. All is process. There are activities that summonpowers- the lord of sorcery, the ancient spirit of the Sagely Firebringer, the

Witch-Father and Master, is called by the mere act of sorcerous operations,though one must be prepared to receive him by knowing this fact. Theplowing spirits of field and farm are called precisely through the act ofmaking furrows, however small; the powers of fertility and fruitfulness arecalled by the acts of love.

The spirit of fire is in the kindling of fire and in seething liquids and cookingon it, or fixing one's gaze into it, feeling its heat suffuse the flesh; the hearth-spirits are there, in the cleaning of the hearth and the lighting of its fires, andin the domestic activities done before it. Poetry and the magic of words alsocalls to any of them- and both doing and speaking is finally the strongestcombination of power. No one knows the spirit of the hunt like a hunter; no

one knows the grain-spirits and the plow-spirit like a farmer. No one knowsthe secret fire like a poet, and no one knows the great power of the wordmore than a sorcerer.

The symbols of the spirit-powers sought as familiars and as teachers andsupporters by sorcerers and witches are another aspect of summoning; togaze upon their symbols is to change the mind into a new condition. Allsymbols were born in the appearances of animals and natural phenomenonbelieved to be connected to these ancient powers- and what was true then istrue now. Merely seeing an animal which is mythically or folkloricallyconnected to a spiritual power makes one more capable of summoning it, aswell as seeing a representation of the animal, the marks the animal mayleave on nature (hoof, talon, or paw-prints, for example) or its bodily remains-and the same is true for natural phenomenon like lightning, thunder, waves,fires, stars, or any others.

This is why entering the forest- going away from civilization and into the wildand untamed wood- and setting up a pole bearing an antlered skull, gazing atit through firelight under the cover of night, will practically summon thepower of the Lord of Beasts, the mighty and savage protector of naturalplaces and power, all by itself. The act of traveling into the forest, bearing theskull, making the fire with intention, of being in the darkness- all of these actsare sorcerous acts if one turns their attention to them in such a manner. Theyare the strongest of summoning magics. Desire, too, is the strongest ofsummoning magic, for it is a dark or bright desire that begins the call to otherpowers- and can finish that call, as well.

* * *

I have seen the dull yellow haze of the moon arising behind the dark forms ofwinter-stripped trees on cold nights, and felt the Weird with such great power


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that I knew with certainty the ease I would have contacting the unseen world,and manipulating the sorcerous powers that pulse through myself and theworld alike. I knew that I would have this ease because I was already incontact- to live in this way makes the sorcerer what he or she is. One neednot summon familiars or spirits to aid in sorcery, though doing precisely thisis what makes a witch a witch or a sorcerer a sorcerer- but any sufficiently

aware person may contact the Weird and conjure directly within the web ofpowers. Most people will discover what the witch or sorcerer already knows:familiar powers provide strength to working, and provide it with a speed andease that is nearly impossible to match. A relationship with familiars is wortha high cost.

Nothing special needs to be done; yet, a tapestry of many things creates aspell of summoning. The presence of times, places, things, beasts, symbols,and evocative poetry- it all transforms the mind, makes the mind morereceptive to the presence of these living powers. One will know these forceswhen they enter into the sphere of one's presence and awareness, on manylevels. What is more important is the knowledge that they will know you, as

well.

When you have summoned, if it was your goal to affect changes through thesummoning, or to increase one's own power or insight, it is intention and willthat you must join to the summoning, making the spell complete. Youcombine these substances into the wholeness that they already naturally are,open yourself up to that wholeness: there is the summoner, the summonedpower, and the will/intent. The three must become one; the three are one,and with your new awareness of the fact, the spell is perfect and done.Perceptual transformations begin apace.

Understand that every spell is a contract. It is a two way flow of power, andmore than that, a multi-directional arising and falling, a great multi-layeredbreathing of Weird. It affects you and the world in many ways. Sentientspiritual powers of high wisdom and power normally expect recompense-they do not give without expecting the courtesy of repayment- but this is notmaterialistic hunger on their parts. It is their knowledge that human beingsmust practice reciprocity if they are to be wise.

Francis Bacon said it best and wisest when he said

Consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and they seek it noteither for pleasure or mind, or for contention, or for superiority toothers, or for profit, or for fame, or power, or any of these inferiorthings; but for the benefits and use of life.

Some "minor" powers are very wild or even destructive and wicked to humanperceptions, so their motivations for reciprocation- should they consent toserve you or aid you- may be dark. It is not advised that one conjure thedangerous stories and choppy, chaotic poetry that calls these things intoconscious contact and relationship, though many do and have done such


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things throughout the ages. If you are wise, you will never do such thingsnear one's home or loved ones.

* * *

V. The Devil's Pitchfork: The Three ProngedFork of Sorcery

Occult rites have their power from the eternal uprising and persisting ofthe power of wholeness experienced as countless inter-related strands ofpower, which is the Weird. To truly access the power to perform sorcery, onemust, for a moment, consider the wholeness as a singular power, an all-around manifesting power with a seeming of many parts. Every intention, act,

phenomenon, or experience is the arising of the Weird as a totality.Everything is, in a manner of speaking, present here and now, present withinevery other thing, tied to every other thing. Whatever you desire, whomeveryou desire to affect, they are present now, in the wholeness.

The "terrible oneness" or the wholeness/totality is the underlying origin-power of all things including sorcerous arts. Without the totality of power, thewholeness of things that excludes nothing and binds all things, sorcery wouldnot work. Without this Weird-connection, the poppet designed in the shape ofa recipient of a sorcerous work would be so much clay or fabric, with noconnection through which the power could affect anything. Without thisconnection, knowledge and communication could not pass between two

beings; fire would not burn wood, light would not suffuse the eye and mind,and there would be no birth. There would be no reality, and no experiencepossible.

The sorcerous Master's pitchfork has three prongs; every spell, conjury,charm, or working of Art has three aspects that together make a powerfulwholeness, a complete and effective working. The first prong or aspect is theworld itself- containing as it does the relative objects that you may desire, thepersons you may wish to affect, or the place or thing you are working towardsor with somehow. The second prong or aspect is the working; the words andactions spoken and done by you to make the working. So, in the first twoprongs, we have the object of the working and the method- and the method

may be a grand creation of sorcerous areas or circles, combined with theburning of incenses and resins and the boiling of philters and various worts,combined with sacrifices and chants and dancing- or it may simply be a poemwhich states- with the darkling force of creativity that all real sorcerouspoetry must have- what you wish to see occur.

The third prong or aspect is the missing prong that the vast majority of occultspecialists these days lack: and this prong is simply the knowledge, the


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certaintyon your part- that the world and the working, the first two prongs,are not ultimately separate. Without this awareness, the inner triangle ofmanifestation which IS your spell cannot be complete and the spell will notwork. The mindis the third leg of the sorcerous tripod, the bridge that bringstogether the world and your working's intentions and specific activities. Itmakes a totality, completes the loop, as it were. The mind brings it together,

perceives the wholeness, and the power of transformation can flow in thewomb of that triple-yet-one force, and manifest in the outward-appearingworld. Metaphysically speaking, three-ness is one-ness, oneness with thepossibility of fertile, arising newness of situations and forms. The fire ofcreativity is what drives that one-ness, that wholeness, to make new forms,new situations, and new creations seemingly emerge.

The pitchfork is one tool, but with three prongs. Three and one meld into oneanother, back and forth- just as the stang has two "horns", two prongs, but itis one stang- Wholeness and multiplicity working alongside one another. Ourminds are great Weird-powers themselves, with the capacity to join all thingsthat seem separate into oneness. When your will and intention flows into that

oneness, things begin to happen. But there can be no mental reservation orhesitation on your part- you must believe in the connectedness of things, inthe wholeness of things, so much so that there is no room for doubt. Such amind will feel the truth of this ancient belief. Such a mind can perceptually"bring any forces together", directed by will. The secret is deeper- the forcescan be "brought together" because they are already together.

Even though master sorcerers know the very best and most effective types ofpower manipulation through word and deed, it really doesn't fully matterwhat your "working conjury" is, nor what the details of your working are. Ifyou have an intention, if there is a person (for instance) that needs relief froman illness, and you know this person, have seen them or their image, and ifyou have a simple poem created which calls for a healing for them, then all ofthe powers are in play.

From that point, the work means entering into the "space" of mind in whichyou understand and fully accept how the world and that person, and you andyour working are all tied together in one great wholeness, and that thespeaking of your poem (though the recipient is a hundred miles away) is still"occurring" in theprecise same unitary metaphysical fieldas that target-person, and furthermore that your will and memory and familiarity with thisperson further tightens your bond with them, cementing that bond in yourmind, then you cannot fail to affect them. If you did not believe in thisconnection, nor have a conscious awareness of it, your mind cannot becomethe bridge nor manifest the "three pronged" power, the whole power of thespell. There is no possibility of magic, then.

You cannot fail to affect them, however, if you know what you must know anddo what you must do, as they and your conjury are one. Words- andsympathetic magical gestures- are simply that powerful, when used underwill and with mystical conceptions of wholeness and connection- words were,as they say, originally magic and even today maintain much of their ancient


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magical force.

The world and its parts and peoples, the acts of spell-work and especially thespoken word, and your awareness of the oneness of all these things: that isthe pitchfork wielded by the sorcerous spirit.

* * *

VI. The Elemental Conjury

It is by earth and living water,The world's own breath and golden fire,

The power that alone masters allThat I conjure you back to the groundDo not rise from your grave again

Instead sink, further to the world belowTo the reward that awaits and rest.We will be with you when it is time.

Elemental conjurations have to do with the concept ofauthority. Whenwe look at the tapestry of forces that appear to our senses, when we examinethe composition of the entire world, we can use ancient notions of the "fourelements" to categorize our experience- it certainly seems that some things

are of the nature of solidity, others of fluidity, others of a gaseous, diffusenature, and then there is the pure energetic and rapidly moving nature offire. To have an "earth, water, air, fire" perspective is a simple matter ofaccepting the four "states" that all things we see and experience seem to bemoving through.

But it is more- the Weird would appear to manifest many of its powersthrough these basic states or through combinations of them. Thus, the"elemental signatures" of things can be considered almost like four "chiefavatars" of hidden power, not unlike the western cabbalistic notion of eachelement corresponding to one of the four letters in the "name of God". Toconjure "in the name of the elements" is to conjure through constraining

other powers to obedience in the "name" ofevery way that spirits or powersappear to exist in the world.

There was an account of an historical elemental conjuration used during anecromantic working, a sance, by the witch Tamsin Blight who lived from1798-1856 (she was also known as Tammy Blee i.e. Tammy the Wolf- Bleebeing Cornish word for wolf). She was hired to conjure the spirit of JaneHendy for a male relative who wished to know were she had hidden themoney she was supposed to leave him:


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"Spirit of Jane Hendy, in the name of all the powers above andbelow, I summon thee to rise from the grave and appear before meand this man! By the spirits of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water, I summonthee to arise! Come hither, appear, and speak to this man! Come!"

What is salient to notice here is that Tamsin Blight summons the dead by theauthority of the spiritual powers that dwell within those elements.

Thus it is, in my own practice- I look to the elements not as "four majorsubstances" but as four processes or conditions of power as it moves, and Inote that other sentient powers seem to dwell alongside or within theelements- the many sentient spirits and powers of the land within earth, thewater weirds or powers of rivers and lakes and other fluid bodies withinwater, the spirits of winds and other aerial powers in air, and of course thealways mysterious and crucial powers of fire. To conjure through theelements is to call upon wholeness in a new way- to call for "all powers" thatapparently exist to notice or give force to your conjury.

"By those powers that dwell in the wide earth, those that dwell inthe waters, those who take flight in the airs, and the ephemeralforce of the fire of the world, and by that power that masters themall, I conjure X. thusly... I constrain you by all powers that you fulfillX."

Naturally, "that power that masters them all" refers to two things- both theBinding Weird, the Weird itself that is origin and final truth of the elements,but also the mind of the sorcerer.

* * *

VII. The Arcane Inscriptions in the Land

"See you the dimpled track that runs,All hollow through the wheat?

O that was where they hauled the gunsThat smote King Philip's fleet!

See you our little mill that clacks,

So busy by the brook?She has ground her corn and paid her tax

Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,And the dread ditch beside?

O that was where the Saxons broke,On the day that Harold died!


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See you the windy levels spreadAbout the gates of Rye?

O that was where the Northmen fled,When Alfred's ships came by!

See you our pastures wide and lone,

Where the red oxen browse?O there was a City thronged and known,

Ere London boasted a house!

And see you, after rain, the traceOf mound and ditch and wall?

O that was a Legion's camping-place,When Caesar sailed from Gaul!

And see you marks that show and fade,Like shadows on the Downs?

O they are the lines the Flint Men made,

To guard their wondrous towns!

Trackway and Camp and City lost,Salt Marsh where now is corn;

Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,Water or Wood or Air,

But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,Where you and I will fare."

-Rudyard Kipling, from Puck of Pook's Hill

The Land itself is a grimoire, a book of secrets. "She is not any commonEarth, Water, or Wood or Air..." but a living repository of all the powers thathave gone before. In the Land is inscribed a hidden history and many of thepaths to power that any wise sorcerer or witch will work to understand.

It does not do to walk across your land- wherever it may be- as though itwere a "common earth"- it is not "common" except to the dull senses ofpeople who look upon it only as a mass of dead dirt. It is the holy andpowerful canvas that the tools of Fate are always etching and painting upon,not unlike the body and mind of each man and woman, as they grow, becomemarked, scarred, and filled with memory. We are living repositories ofexperience, just as the Land is.

Rudyard Kipling's amazing poetic talent was as powerful a sorcery as any inhis day might have seen. He was able to use the sorcery of words to peel


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back layers in the Land itself, and so we must- words are the first andforemost powers that can open up the Land's secrets, but there are otherpaths, as well. Attention is the first and greatest tool you will need- payingattention to the history of your Land and to how the Land itself appears atpresent.

Take notice, wherever you may live, of the expressions of the Land near youand around you. Examine how mountains and hills surround you, or wherethey rise, and what sorts of collections of trees grow, and where. Look at howbodies of water are placed around you, and how rivers or streams flow. Itmay help to hand-draw your own map, concentrating on the features of theLand. If you live in the center of a swarming city- a sad arrangement, but notlacking in all power- look to the natural forces that surround your city beyondits boundaries, and even to the land as it struggles to manifest within thewell-ordered blocks of the city.

You will begin to make a catalogue, in this way, of the pools of power and thechannels of power that are nearest you, and which can be experienced in

terms of sorcerous reality. Look to the history of your place- discover wheregreat events once took place and tragic events- do not be fooled intoimagining that they do not still influence the inner reality of those places inwhich they played out, and sometimes the outer reality.

Every place has its own mythology, born in the events that took place there.There is a mythology, an inner story, which is born from the collection offorces that may have attracted human beings to the place originally- was itthe river that the first settlers desired to make their home on? Was ithighlands that kept them safe from the other people they felt threatened by?Why did they come here? What did the land offer them?

Who was here before you and your people? And before them? The ancienthistories tell their own stories. We are all part of a greater story, our lives justrecent chapters in an endless march of events. And there is no "commonearth"- there is only an extraordinary earth of power, full of powers whoremember many things. Without them, your sorcery will be cut-off and weak.If you entertain the attitude that the earth is common, and let entire daysslip by without taking time to appreciate the land around you with the properawe and respect, your sorcery will not be strong.

* * *

VIII. Powers That Come and Take

There are powers and combinations of powers that come and takepeople away from themselves. By saying this, I mean that there are powersand combinations of power that steal a person away from those perception-states that they consider as "normal". The experience can be of three


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characters: it can be traumatic or exhilarating, full of emotion andexcitement; it can be overpowering and steal a person into basicunconsciousness; or it can be so subtle as to be ignored or not noticed. It isthe first of these three characters that the sorcerer hopes to cultivate, and ofthe last two, he or she hopes to defeat. It does not do to be dragged awayinto unconsciousness or to be so numb to the mystical changing of mind-

states that we accept them as "common" or "normal" and disregard them.

Of the first character, while we do not wish to be assaulted by fear or terror,it does happen, to everyone. Some power, some Weird is like that- it showsits power through its ability to disturb.

There are many powers and combinations of power that come and takepeople into new conditions of mind. The cunning witch or sorcerer will knowthem and utilize them to the best of their ability.

1. The Moon: the moon, throughout its phases, sheds the mediated light ofthe sun into a trance-inducing light, and it calls those who see it with eyes of

wisdom into deeper states of mystical introspection.

2. Gravesites: these places have been seen as powerful since timeimmemorial, though today they normally only get a passing "fearful"reputation as possible sites of hauntings, and then only on the part of theuninformed and superstitious. Every grave is a passageway-point into theunseen world, and the shade-like power of the dead hover about and neartheir graves for some time- often a very long time. Graves are doorways, andbeing near them, especially in the night, causes an alteration of the mind forthose who are sensitive to such things.

3. Seasons and Sacred Times: the outward seasons of winter with its coldand snows, of summer with its heat and greenery, autumn with its riot ofcolors, and spring with its watery and cool boundless energy- they causechanges in people, even if people have learned to ignore them. The cold callsus to introspection; the heat calls us to activity; the relaxing autumn calls usto secret places, and the spring fills us with hope for renewal. You can feelthese powers best after sleeping, and then walking outside as soon as youawake and communing with the force of the day and of the season.

Early in a season, I find that I "feel" the new power of it best, only becomingused to it a few weeks in. It is good to try and never become "used" to a dayor a season's power, and to let it be new to you every morning and evening.

The hidden seasons are likewise powerful- bright Beltaine, dark Samhain, theold days of Harvest and merry-making, the twelve Wolf-nights and Mother-nights of Yule- all of the old calendars captured days and weeks of strangeoccurrences that coincided often with the changing of seasons. These daysare best for sorcerous workings by virtue of the Weird forces that collectaround them. And they change people, if those people can feel.

4. Liminal Areas: like graves, certain places wield a natural power to exertchange and transformation on the mind: the banks of rivers, the tops of hills,


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the borderlines of properties, forest deeps, ocean-shores, hedges, crossedroads in the lonely country or forked roads, and this list continues on. We donot walk on a "common earth"- it is a very powerful collection of Weird,showing itself as many powerful locations.

5. Lack of Sleep: going without sleep is a stress on the body and a

transformative power on the mind. Going without too much is a gateway tomadness, but forcing the mind and body to find new sources of energy bydenying them sleep places a person in a more hyper-aware spiritual statethan many believe.

6. The Wild: being far from human beings and their cities, normally in aforest or anywhere on the untamed land makes your mind and soul changeover into a new shape. All who love spending their time in such placesalready know this, though they may not realize that their love for thewilderness comes from the fact that it changes them and orients them to feelthe natural bliss and boundless infinity of the Weird.

7. Cold: cold winds and temperatures force us naturally to turn within. Thecold is to the moon as the heat is to the sun- the sun turns us outward; themoon inward, and thus it is with temperatures.

8. Fog: mists and fogs exert an uncanny presence on the world andtherefore on the mind- they remind us of what is hidden and they make itpossible for anything to be "near us" though unseen. They swirl and movelike ghosts.

9. Religious and Spiritual Rites: whether it be sorcerous operations orworkings and devotions of "religious" power, doing things that you considerpowerful- chants, the blessing and eating of sacrifices or offerings, dances, orwhatever- these things do change the way you perceive, while you areengaged in them, though (sadly) many don't feel this strongly enough. Itbecomes routine for people, but this is death to the cause.

10. Intoxicants: it goes without saying that intoxicating substances canchange a person's perceptions of things, but too much and too often, and themind becomes heedless.

11. Spiritual influences: in every place, there are powers and Weird andthey can alter and change perceptions when people come too near to them.

The wise seek out places that seem to have these powers hovering aboutthem.

12. Occult training and pacts: deals with familiar spirits and allegiances toother powers cause a life-long change in perception, or at least a change solong as the deal holds good.

13. Strong emotions and pain: the most common powers that alterperception are also the ones most people never stop to notice or utilize: great

joy and elation or sorrow, or rage- and even physical pain. They do change


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us, cause the extraordinary perceptions to come near to the surface ofawareness.

14. Hunger: not eating for a while- anywhere from one day to three days-has an enormous power to make one more receptive to extraordinaryrealities. These sorts of practices have been done since time immemorial by

ancient peoples from all over the world.

15. Fever: when the life-fire of the body runs high and hot, one may feelwasted and tired, unwilling to engage in works of Art or sorcery, and perhapsthere is some wisdom to this, for most. But fevers also give access to subtlereaches of perception that can have sorcerous use.

Together, these 15 powers and combinations of power can be furthercombined- and many are they who have already seen the great potential ofthese things. What greatness and depth of perception can be found for aperson who goes out, on Lammas eve, deep into a forest to the bank of ariver, with a mist pouring off it, the cold settling in, and the moon bright and

large in the night above? What if that person has prepared himself or herselfby fast and by ingestion of a stout brew, enough to raise the spirit of theflesh, but not enough to confuse them? From that combination of powers,consciously pursued, many forces can be entwined in him or her for contactwith the extra-sensory reality, and much can be gained. A great poetry canappear in them.

* * *

IX. Tree-Coil and Tree-Weird: The GrowingPowers

If the Land is already the greatest book of secrets one may ever havethe privilege to read, the growing things that spring from the land are thewords that comprise the oldest spells and speak of the deepest mysteries.

There is an entire Witchcraft available to those who are wood-cunning andwort-cunning, those who can view the growing things of the world as thesorcerous powers that they are, but also as the expressions of the presenceof sentient forces that they are. The forest is as much our natural home as

anything that dwells there- though the civilized man in us thinks ofbuildings and streets first in terms of "home". The wild places in us are forest-dwelling things, things that yearn for hills and heaths and woods and waters.

Here is the lore of the woods that I have collected over much time and onmany journeys.


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Alder, the Fire-Tree: full of the nature of fire, the Alder-weird resists water.It was used for all supports to buildings or structures that had to be exposedto moisture, like the foundations of bridges. No fire burns hotter than analder-fire, for the essence within is released to full expression. Watersymbolizes that force that gradually washes things away, the persistentchange of time and cycles- and the Alder can resist it longer than any other

power. Carving symbols that represent your relationship and happiness withloved ones onto Alder bark and keeping these safe is a means to preservingyour happiness as long as it can be from the Weird powers that dissolve andwash away life-situations.

Apple, the Life-Giving Tree: Apples are expressions of the Weird powerthat gives eternal life- or should I say, which opens the awareness to thealready-existing reality of eternal, perpetual existence. This is why the Godsof the Heathen world derived their "youth" from magical apples- theirperpetual existences come from their awareness of the truth of themselvesand this world. It is said that the dead eat apples for their sustenance; the

power of the apple in this world can sustain our lives, and in the inner world,it continues to sustain, though in another manner- the dead need therealization of their true natures, and the living leave out apples hoping thatthe dead will receive it.

The apple is the Aphrodite-fruit, the beguiling fruit of love and deathsimultaneously- and here we see the ancient connection between love andeternity, but also sex and death. Those who are sweetened by the applecharm may find love, and those who eat the flesh can fill their bellies and liveon, but one day must die. Those who consume the true essence of the app

II. the Toad Bone Treatise

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