The Perilous Castle Continued: The Housle

Though mythologized in the stories of Gods and demonstrated in blood and juice and bread and wine, ultimately, the offering is ourselves. AFW has a specific ritual, but there are several. AFW made this Housle Chant worth learning and worth singing. They’ve also posted it to YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBPtptln8mM

To Housle now we walk the wheel

We kill tonight the blood red meal

A leftward tread of magic's mill

To feed the Gods and work our Will.

Red! Red is the wine we drink!

Red! Red are the cords we wear!

Red! Red is the blood of God!

And red is the shade of the Housle.

There’s a lot to be said about these words, but first I would like to say something about the Craft. When we call things metaphors in the modern world, we tend to mean it in a Protestant way. We mean that the thing is “just a symbol.” The miracle did not “actually happen”, the bread and wine is not “really” the body and blood. Witchcraft is a Catholic phenomenon, which is to say the done act, the performed ritual,  is not merely a symbol but a deed which actually accomplishes something. The symbol may point to a deeper truth, but it is also a truth. When we make our offering, regardless if it is called the Housle or Cakes and Ale or Blot, to “feed the Gods and work our Will”, the moment of offering bread and wine (or in some traditions actual flesh and blood) is the act of offering our very selves. The only offering we can make that is worthwhile is ourselves. The Gods are God and so need no feeding unless we understand that the God works and lives in us. This is God in the world, and this God needs feeding indeed. The God in us needs to be fed and fostered and this act is done in the Housle. The Upanishads call the deepest part of ourselves the Self and say the Self is God. In the Northern mystery of Yggdrasil, Odin sacrifices ultimately to Odin to realize his fullness, that is, in the Housle our Cain self offers our Abel self to the true Self so that the God within, the God in this world, is manifested and sustained. It is not only that We feed the Gods to work our will, but that the feeding is the work and the manifestation of the Gods in this world is the Will is Magic. This is why the Housle is enacted, like all magic, in perfect love and perfect trust. But, I have said enough for now and too much talking verges on rambling and nonsense.