The Devil's Due

Yesterday I had to leave town. I had to get out because I had lost a part of myself and had to get it back. I was out of courage, out of imagination, out of some vital witch spirit.  I know that it’s a chic habit to seek the witch spirit in the dark forests in the middle of the night, but I had to find my spirit in the bright sun, on white gold sand and by big water on the beach.

The seeking of the witch spirit came at the end of a powerful working, the fact that the working had turned out might make you think I was full of my own power, full of courage for anything that followed, but no, not so. And so I headed to the water and the sand. I did it like a pilgrim, even a little joylessly, certainly desperately, ready to crawl the fuck out of my miserable skin. The trip was not easy, and I was going through a place I’d never been—but finally I was there, and the Great Goat was there to greet me.

What?

Coming onto the beach I was greeted by, of all things, hovering above me, on a great pole, a giant red ram with curved and shining horns. I reached up and stroked the fiberglass wonder, patting the ram’s nose. I came just short of kissing him because, well, I’m on a public beach. But as I left him, wading onto the white gold sand, I thought, “I had forgotten to make the Devil apart of my life, That’s the problem.”

As we depart from whatever conventional and popular witch teachings there are, and even as we evolve from what schools we are deeply called to, we add our own revelations. Truths specific to us arrive ar our door. New gods, old friends revisiting. It is well known that the Solstice is regarded as the birth of John the Baptist, but the truth is, in Christian tradition, John the Baptist means very little. He baptizes Jesus. He is later arrested by king Herod Antipas and beheaded. His territory is the desert, the sand which is reminding me again of the ram on the sand before the beach. It is John, whom when Jesus is preaching, sends a message to Jesus, ‘Are you the one promised, or should we seek another?” This is a message of challenge, and John challenges King Herod. He is the model of the prophet Elijah who also challenged or opposed the kings of ancient Israel. The word for one who challenges, who opposes, who tempts, is satanas, Satan, a devil. Of old, the territory of devils was, to the Israelites and other desert people, not hell, but the sand, the desert.

In the Egyptian creation story, though Set is called the Dark God and we might associate him with evil, for he certainly brings disorder and challenges the perceived natural order, when he opposes the god Horus, who by conventional morality ought be to considered the hero, Amun and Thoth, the gods who judge between the two of them as they judge all things,  cannot see a definite difference between the two until, by a technicality, Set loses. Set, the husband of Nephthys is also an Egyptian devil, but a great power, and his territory is… yes,  sand, heat: desert.

            The association of the Summer Solstice with the birth of a young green (and beneficent) god who will be slain at winter or some such, is an invention of Robert Graves and an article of faith for Wicca. I am not the first to say that we must again return to the witch’s devil, even as in the last six months I have returned to some type of witch’s Christ. The Old One has many and powerful faces, and while it is fine and good to show some reverence for the corn deity and Forest Lord, to remember the hot force of the of the one who is Prometheus, Coyote, Loki, the Prophet, the disruption, Pan, the Tempter, and the Crooked One, is also important. This summer let’s spend a little time in his burning and mesmerizing heat. There had been so much of sacrifice, let the indulgence begin.

Summer Solstice and the Extraordinary Time

Tonight I hear a sermon for Trinity Sunday in which the minister announces the liturgical year is over. This is a surprise to me. In Catholicism it is always said that the liturgical year ends at Christ the King in November, right before the first Sunday of

Advent. But what this minister has said is more honest. From December till now, the witchly feasts have been fed by and mirrored ancient Christian feasts. The two come from the same source and are related. But it is at this heated time of the year the Churches, which just barely enter into mystery in their deepest of days, leave mystery and story all together and enter into the blank time where nothing happens and nothing is celebrated, the blandly titled, Ordinary Time.

From now on, with precious little relation to mainstream religion, the witch and the wizard tramp on into other side of the year which is shadowed and blank from Christian eyes and still unexplored by the eyes of others. The Birth of Christ yields to the Birth of Saint John, and the next months, beginning with the Solstice yield their own witchly mysteries.

As we come to the longest day of the year, we set our sights on the Stone Castle. We also acknowledge other things, resolving ourselves to what is, to the lack of money or having less of it than before, to the quest for new work, finding new ways to get old things which are going away, to adjusting ourselves to the new rhythms of the summer months, the time when I delve into the past and feel the sweetness of something that is more than nostalgia and the ache of something more than a love of the past. This is the bending toward something old time, when I reach into the past for links to the future.

            Now it is time to take down the Stone Castle and examine it. The first thing it is to me is Tintagel, the castle by the sea where Arthur was born, the place where the Roebuck brings the child our of timelessness into flesh from Igraine’s body. In a shadowy way, Tintagel is also the Grail Castle,  the Castle of the Great Alchemy, the Castle called Corbenic where Galahad is conceived. And the mystery is that Galahad, born from the rape and deception of Lancelot is another form of Arthur born from the rape and seduction of Igraine.  The young prince who in Arthur’s old age pulls a sword from a floating red stone is the mirror of the young king who pulled a sword from a grey stone on an anvil.

The Castle of Stone is the Castle of many contradictions. Though, in the circle it lies to the southeast, it is in Britain southwest, on the world’s edge in Cornwall looking over the sea and the sunken lands of Lyonesse. Though Arthur has been called the winter king born at December 25^th, this is the castle of the Summer Solstice and the Child born of Fire and Heat. As Christ and John the Baptist are linked on two sides of the year, so Arthur and Galahad.

The Stone Castle is the castle of paradox. It is Morgan le Fay’s Castle of Mirrors and rightly so, for she was born here, at Tintagel, daughter of Igraine and Gorlois, sister of Arthur.

She is also Dame Bryson, the maid of Elaine who brings about the conception Galahad about.

Every Castle mirrors every other castle. All castles Mirror the Spiral Castle. But the Castle of Stone is the Castle of Paradox and the castle of deep looking. Galahad is not only the other Arthur. He is the perfected Arthur. Arthur’s swords complete themselves in each other. The Sword in the Stone is the sword in the anvil planted on a rock. It breaks in time and is replaced by the sword from the water, Excalibur. But Excalibur itself is not whole for long. Morgan Le Fay steals the sheath that heals all wounds and never returns it. Galahad is the perfected hero who takes the place of the old hero, and his sword is the sword of perfection. It is the Sword in the Stone that rest not on earth, but on the water much as did Excalibur. It is the two in one. And Galahad is the many in one. He is the new Arthur. He is son of Lancelot, the perfected Lancelot. He supplants Percival, the failed Grail knight, the who is too stupid, who gets the questions wrong. He is the all too perfect knight conceived in sin, the perfect sword raised from stone. Though for the outer world, this is Ordinary Time, to the witchly mind, this is simply another beginning.

Approaching the Stone Castle

As we come to the longest day of the year, we set our sights on the Stone Castle. We also acknowledge other things, resolving ourselves to what is, to the lack of money or having less of it than before, to the quest for new work, finding new ways to get old things which are going away, to adjusting ourselves to the new rhythms of the summer months, the time when I delve into the past and feel the sweetness of something that is more than nostalgia and the ache of something more than a love of the past. This is the bending toward something old time, when I reach into the past for links to the future.

            Now it is time to take down the Stone Castle and examine it. The first thing it is to me is Tintagel, the castle by the sea where Arthur was born, the place where the Roebuck brings the child our of timelessness into flesh from Igraine’s body. In a shadowy way, Tintagel is also the Grail Castle,  the Castle of the Great Alchemy, the Castle called Corbenic where Galahad is conceived. And the mystery is that Galahad, born from the rape and deception of Lancelot is another form of Arthur born from the rape and seduction of Igraine.  The young prince who in Arthur’s old age pulls a sword from a floating red stone is the mirror of the young king who pulled a sword from a grey stone on an anvil.

The Castle of Stone is the Castle of many contradictions. Though, in the circle it lies to the southeast, it is in Britain southwest, on the world’s edge in Cornwall looking over the sea and the sunken lands of Lyonesse. Though Arthur has been called the winter king born at December 25^th, this is the castle of the Summer Solstice and the Child born of Fire and Heat. As Christ and John the Baptist are linked on two sides of the year, so Arthur and Galahad.

Whitsunday

Pentecost is where so many things have happened. As I was putting on the rings and going through the morning rituals I was remembering not only my Confirmation, but also my twenty first birthday party—a week late—and so many other birthdays which took place around this holy time. This summer festival is unlike Christmas and Easter. There is no special Whitsunday dinner, no gifts. The day is simply private and beautiful to me. There couldn’t have been a better day to take the pearl ring and complete the road of Initiation I have walked the last several seasons.

This is the day when the Holy Grail Quest has begun. This is the day the Church was born and another type of quest begun, a type of an ending, but also the start of a new thing. We are led by the Spirit. The White Masked Lady is present as is the Dove, but this Spirit is more force and less form. Calling it she falls almost as short as saying he.

The Spirit is the force moving through all things, the She is the Grail Maiden who bears this force to all who wait for it in the form of the Grail. This energy is moving through us, and we don’t need to force it or push it or make ourselves feel it extra extra good for it to work. At a time like this, the work is the work of stillness and waiting in quiet for the Grail Maiden, she who delivers the Grail in which grace becomes force and force becomes form.

Ascension

Ascension Sunday stands seven days before Pentecost, also known as Whitsunday.  According to conventional Christianity, Whitsunday is the day the Holy Spirit descended to the earth. Mythologically, witchologically, it is the day the Quest of the Holy Grail began. Seven days after the flesh and blood and therefore somewhat limited God—seen in western terms as Jesus—was translated into the High Realms, seven days after the celebration that we will also be translated into the upper realms and are more than we appear, the Grail Maiden appears with Galahad, and initiates the Quest for the Holy Grail.

            In America, in the early part of this century, we all suffer from failing to understand that while we separate church from state and private mystic religion from the common religion of the masses, the Medieval world which is in many ways the source of what witches do, did not see these separations. Before devoting ourselves to the Grail we must understand that the Grail mystics understood that in some way the Grail Maiden coming to Camelot with Galahad and the Grail was at one with the Holy Spirit (Lady Sapientia) descending on the Apostles and the Virgin Mary. In a time before evangelical Christianity as we know it, the Apostles going into the world to propagate the Gospel was, in some ways, linked with the knights who were not going to tell other people the One Truth, but seeking to experience this Truth. The catalyst for both of these stories is Ascension Day. For in the mystic mind,  it is not simply that Jesus of Nazareth the focus of mainstream Christian devotion rises to heaven, but that we are also Jesus, also daughters and sons of the divine, and in true devotion, we have, we will and we are also transcending death, ascending from the ordinary plain to return to the limitless light from which we have come.