First Sunday in Advent

 Wise and Foolish Virgins: William Blake

This is not the Advent I hoped for. There is always something of the melancholy but if I had pictured this day two or three weeks ago, I would have been coming from my family's and kissing my mother goodbye, waiting for her to tell me she was home safely. I would not have in the past the last week surrounding her death or the memory of giving her  ashes to my father. This will be a very different Christmas and yet, the visits to the family home, the Christmas day celebration was always only a partial celebration, often with gifts I didn't know what to do with, and things I didn't want to buy, a long night of present wrapping wearing me out. I am the only person coming to Advent with a missing family member, and every year at the holidays I would look around and think how this could be the last and we must treasure it. Well, it seems the last was the last. 

My family was not religious, or at least oddly religious. The relationship my mother had to her faith I didn't understand. She decorated joylessly for the holidays and cooked slavishly. She didn't like Christmas carols and wouldn't lay out a nativity scene.  The idea of reading the Christmas story on Christmas day really seemed to bug her. Despite her identification as a Catholic and a woman of faith, her approach to the holiday was nearly atheistic, and so there isn't much of a way in which her passing changes my observances. And yet, her passing changes my observance.

I have always struggled with the meaning of Advent. I have gone from many waves of Christianity to not celebrating it all while practicing other faiths and now, as the occulted Christian I am, the problem of Advent is before me again. Or maybe it is the problem of Christmas, the joyful day that is followed by gloomy days. Yet, in a way, every day since this plague upturned our world has been gloomy. Every day since my mother's death gloomier still. We begin this Advent in a two days after Christmas place and actually that's a perfect place because for the first time i am in the position to really examine Advent. I know what I expect of it, but what does it expect of me? What is it's promise and what does it ask?

The old and new collects for the first Sunday of Advent I use together

All-powerful God,

increase our strength of will for doing good

that Christ may find an eager welcome at his coming

and call us to his side in the kingdom of heaven.

New Translation

Collect, First Sunday of Advent

Grant your faithful, we pray, almighty God,

the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ

with righteous deeds at his coming,

so that, gathered at his right hand,

they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom. 

I used to irritated and put out by a church that did not celebrate the mystery of the nativity the way it did the mystery of the Passion. But now I begin to understand that the whole mystery is the mystery of the Passion. The Mystery of the Bridegroom is that of the inevitable sorrowful death of all things and life being born from it. In part the wedding is between what appears to be death, what seems to be life and the mysterious weaving of both which we still have yet to see. This mystery encompasses my sorrow and confusion, the deep ache of your losses as well. We pray together that the tender pain of this mystery which has crucified us does not make us numb or frightened, or angry, but transforms us into joy. Only God can do this, and God only comes in if we allow him through the cracks

These prayers are about being strengthened to continue the good work and the Great Work and be ready for the bridegroom when he appears.This is a prayer I need. The work is hard and the work I have been about rather artistically or in the more mundane realm of finding my family's finances and dealing with this new world we are in. That this work be done faithfully not only until the appearance of the Bridegroom, but to bring his appearance about in my life, is the greatest thing I can pray at a time like this.

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Fourth Sunday after Allantide: Christ the King... and Thanksgiving

 

The week of Christ the King is a strange one anyway. What does the feast mean, the readings about the end of time, the judgement of the world, things being rolled away like a scroll. Very often, with the compassion borne from knowing that the tragedy that befalls one could befall me, I detailed the pain in this world and how often we limp toward glory. The readings of Christ the King are end time readings of a world that is being ravished. But this year the ravishment has come close to me and my mother has died. I can barely believe I typed those words. Christ the King was fifth day of her shiva and I was and in many ways am still raw. It makes the feast of triumph and the providence of God even more confusing.

 

Of course, Christ the King is Christ the Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The image of Christ the King is always tied to bread and wine offered on the altar of life, body and blood. Christians triumphant or wishing to be in triumph painted the image never seen in the actual Jesus. He was killed. He died. Now that I am in the eighth day of a mourning for someone who will not come back, the not quite three days mourning sounds cheap. If we seize on the story of Jesus coming back, we must understand that in many ways, no matter what your belief, he never came back. No matter how one interprets the resurrection, to really understand the grief of the disciples, one must realize in some ways, the same way my mother and your mother and your husband and your child will never come back, the Jesus they knew was cracked like a grain of wheat, gone. And so shall we be. And to find the joy and the eternal life in this most grim mystery is the heart of the Cross. This mystery of Christ the King and the rending of all things gives way, in the end, to the tiny mystery of Advent.

 

Alongside this is the tender and blessed feast of Thanksgiving. Tender because even on the first one the people celebrating it limped toward it from a year of death and suffering. Tender because I am celebrating it on the ninth day of my mother’s death with a family that honors it as their grandmother’s death day. Tender because we come from so much that has been heart and find joy and gratitude in each other. We think of those who are gone and those who will be gone and remember those times past and the year grows a little grey, a little colder. Tender.

 

And it is blest because it is the one holiday that is a holy day and the one holy day that belongs to know religion, but finds the faith, whatever that faith is, in all of us. Thanksgiving is based upon the flimsiest of prayers which is also the foundation of all prayers, “Thanks.” A thankful heart. We do not know why we were preserved for this moment, We remember those who were not, and we continue on the way. I do not know if we thank “God”. God has a way of letting us down. God is inexplicable enough to be irresponsible. A person called God let my mother die and left such a mess. A person called God let the world be ravished with disease. This person is an underachiever, and he is a convenient thing we all need to shout at, rail at, perhaps ultimately walk away from. Thanksgiving is more about finding the road to joy inside of you. Without thanks, we have no joy and without joy, we don't have much. But there is something else we whisper to, something small, that keeps us going, keeps us smiling, puts joy in us and color in bleak days, wipes away tears and exists in the goodness of those around us, in the strength we didn’t know we had. Though we are bruised and broken, confounded and hurt, we whisper thank you to this little something, this tiny secret, and hallow it, and recognize that smallness for what it is.

Third Sunday After Allantide: Rosh Chodesh Cislev

 

Kislev (Hebrew: כִּסְלֵו, Standard Kislev Tiberian Kislēw; also Chislev) is the third month of the civil year and the ninth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. In the Babylonian calendar its name was Araḫ Kislimu.

In a regular (kesidran) year Kislev has 30 days, but because of the Rosh Hashanah postponement rules, in some years it can lose a day to make the year a "short" (chaser) year. Kislev is an autumn month which occurs in November–December on the Gregorian calendar and is sometimes known as the month of dreams. The Archangel Gabriel is the overseer of the dream world and, as attested by the Quran and the New Testament, the conveyer of messages from the worlds beyond.Gabriel holds the quadrant of the West which is revered at this time of year, so in certain ways the month of Chislev is dedicated to him as well.

The name of the month derives from Akkadian kislimu. But some popular etymologies connect it to the Hebrew root K-S-L as in the words "kesel, kisla" (hope, positiveness) or "ksil" (Orion, a constellation that shines especially in this month) because of the expectation and hope for rains.

In Jewish Rabbinic literature, the month of Kislev is believed to correspond to the Tribe of Benjamin whose totem is the Wolf.

"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he devours the prey, And in the evening he divides the spoil." Moses Blessing - Deuteronomy 33:12 "Of Benjamin he said, 'May the beloved of the Lord dwell in security by Him, Who shields him all the day, And he dwells between His shoulders." 

Genesis 49:27 

*I am indebted to Wikipedia for the initial information in this article.

What is Witchcraft and Does it Matter?

 

Ged and Vetch: Marion Churchland

 I know I've asked the qusstion several times, but I actually don't think it can be asked too often. I think its good to come back to things. I am thinking of several things. I am thinking of all the videos by people who are doing things very different from what I'm doing, and I mean different not in practice, but in tone, in sobriety, in depth of way even, who are very keen on calling themselves witches. And then there is the fact that I am not greatly concerned with the word, though I own it, and not greatly concerned with the substance of what many people say they do, though I know in a strong way that what is going on in my home and at my altar and in my life is witchcraft. And then there is the statement by Maxine Sanders, enigmatic, slightly pompous and yet with the the ring of truth: "There are many people who think they are practicing witchcraft who aren't."

I've come to this topic many times and will come to it again. The purpose is not to, at the end, camp down on a list of answers about what witchcraft is, but to explore the question. I just finished wading through Margot Adler's tome Drawing Down the Moon, a thick book subtitled witches, druids, goddess worshippers and other pagans in America. It manages to be dull and disorganized all at the same time, long and overly detailed but shallow. It covers every weird white group of the seventies and has a few updates to deal with people of color. It seems like what a journalist from NPR would compile. Reading the book I felt no magic and little wisdom in it, and and had the feeling that these strange people were no more druids than they were pagans or witches, that these contrived words were taken up by people who didn't really know what they meant who, by Adler's own latter day admissions in her revised version of the book, were frankly too white and too middle class to really know what magic even was. Very old, strange magical traditions she most passed over and settled on talking about feminist movements and strange new--and possibly defunct groups founded by elitist hippies. Many of the people she interviewed have since come under fire for fraud and sexual abuse.

But this shouldn't be a surprise. Adler was, in later life, by her own admission, an aspirational witch, and the old phrase, the fifth point of the pentagram is secrecy still applies. How could you put on the page the workings of real magic, and how many actual mages would deign to be interviewed or be comprehensible if they were? Middle class elitist white men, and a few women, are always willing to ramble, and so this is who she found. In the intervening years, there have been better books. But there is a whole movement of writing witches, of (white) people who think their whole task in magic is to write endless books and make endless videos about it. I think this is a mistake and there is little power in it. I do believe in the power of the Fifth Point of the Pentagram.

But then I know that one of my problems with the word witch as it is currently and frequently used is its pairing with the word pagan. There are so many You Tube witches especially who want to tell you what paganism is, who want to style themselves as pagans and set up a dichotomy between "paganism and Abrahamic religions" to say one is this and one is that. But this is just a sort of ignorant agreement to view the world the way that Christians decided to see it from the fourth century onward, Christianity, Judaism and later Islam as something very special with little attention to the diversity of religions all around the world or how Christianity and Judaism were tied to them. This imaginary distinction between "Abrahamic religions" and "pagans" I do not acknowledge nor do I believe in the mostly white reconstruction of a pagan world based on very little evidence, centered around fantastic (usually Christian accounts) novels and movies. Looking at what is called neopaganism it looks, at best shallow and at worst, deceived and self centered.

I would replace the word pagan with "traditional" and say that traditions cross a great many borders. Anyone involved in a tradtion is going to be looking at and doing things which seem from a shallow standpoint "pagan" and "Abrahamic". I feel a little silly using those words. In going down into traditions you may even cross breed the thou shalt not cross breed Abrahamic religions, elements of Judaism and Christianity playing side by side. Islam showing up as well. The Bible speaks of the witch of Endor. It speaks of several witches in fact. These creatures always lived on the border of society and convention. In Greek myth, Jason had to go to the edge of the world to find Medea who not only lived on the borders of society, but on the line between god and mortal. Witches live on the edges and the crossroads, off the beaten path of orthodoxy, and at the nexus of things which seemed to have no intersection. This is why I find the idea of pagan clergy and pagan community so.... stupid. A witch is, in many ways, alone. I don't much believe in covens or books of shadows so even Maxine Sanders, who says that there are many people practicing the Craft who aren't... I tend to hold what she does in suspicion as well. A witch isn't always writing books to tell people how to be witches, and she or he shouldn't always be reading them either.  I know that as I paint it the path is difficult and for very few. It isn't self actualizing or support system, at least not in any easy way. It isn't for normal people. It doesn't not change your life. It isn't a church or a community. It wasn't meant to be.

When I was looking for a picture to go with this post, I looked up witch, which yielded me commercialized and silly pictures, and then next I looked up wizard, which gave me even sillier images. At last, I looked up Ged the Wizard, referencing Ursula K LeGuin's classic A Wizard of Earthsea. Get, the intentionally non white wizard and his best friend the black wizard Vetch, images not immediately commercial or nearly as famous as Ian McKellan's Gandalf or the movie versions of Harry Potter and his friends. These wizards are wholly literary, not made for lighthearted stories and actually close to the magic and folk mages of the ancient stories and magic all around the world. But they are dark, dark skinned and dark in their doings, and so not accessible to a white and commercial world. And therein lies the point I'm making, or at least the place I'm trying to get to. It isn't really something you call yourself either, and use the term without challenge. It is a thing felt and known around you. Of course, maybe I am too strict. From the Bible to medieval stories to moderns ones there are as many quack magicians as there are true ones. In fact, everything I said is a con has been represented in old stories. So maybe all of these people are indeed witches and maybe I am looking for something better, higher, wiser, realer. Maybe I am looking for the wizard, the mage, the enchanter. The person of wisdom and power. After all, Robert Cochrane who is the more or less parent of my path was very explicit about saying that magic and witchcraft were PART of what he did, and that he claimed to be part of a tradition following after people who were called witches. He was very serious about that phrasing, and so am I, and maybe in the end, rather than insist that the foolishness I see about me is not witchcraft, I should say it is not wise, and it is not powerful and that these are the things which interest me. Maybe I should seek another name, but for now, which will have to do.   

 

Martinmas: The Close of Allentide

 

When I was still a teenager I met St Martin in Diana L. Paxson's novel, The White Raven. I would meet him again in books about what isn ot called Celtic spirituality, the body of texts and prctices that opened the door to a devout Roman Catholic to enter the world of magic. So Martin of Tours was that door.  The soldier turned saint who gave part of his cloak to a beggar and saw that the beggar was Christ because Christ is in the least of us, has always meant a great deal to me, even before I knew that his time was old Halloween or that this feast was the close of that time of reverencing the dead, and drawing near to the world of spirit that begins on All Hallows and is called Allentide. Tonight candles and lanterns are lit for--I doubt a final time--but a final time in this round of celebrations, and we turn from autumn into the season of winter.

Armistice Day was and is the Feast of Martin of Tours, the Roman soldier who became a contemplative saint and a bishop. He was known to be a friend to the poor, and beyond that to the outcast, and the indigent, those who have falled off the main track of life. This matters so much because, unlike Vereran's Day, which paints a picture of a glorious successful warrior of steel, Martinmas points to the truth that so many soldiers, like so many other souls, fall apart, fall through the cracks. This is one of the reasons we light lanterns, for all of those lost and struggling and forgotten souls. 

Words matter. Armistice Day is the end of the war. It is the time to commemorate all who were lost, not to glorify a particular nation or pay a cheesy attention to our idea of soldiers, but to seriously look at the cost of war and focus on the need for peace. In America where war is abstract and the army volunteer, we are safe enough tot talk about glorious warriors and think that hanging a flag and saying "Thank you for your service" does something, but Armistice Day originated in Europe where the actual war was fought, where young men were sent to kill each other in fields of red poppies, where it is remembered that battle fields are farm fields, are real fields on real peoples's land. Mars, the God of War was the God of the Fields and of protection and he lended his name to Martin the Saint. Martin was a soldier, not a warrior. He was a paid employee who had to go into military service for a superpower of a state trying to hang on to its influence. He did his time and got out when he could. There is no glorification of the war cult here. His progression was from sword to plowshare and the incident for which we most remember him using his sword, was to cut his cloak in two and share it with a beggar.

                                    

                                                                Martinmas Lantern Walk

Of old, Martinmas was the beginning of Christmastime. Now it is the herald of it and leads up to the next quiet weeks before Advent. Much as they say at Yom Kippur, the gates, the gates are closing, but these are the gates between us and the other worlds. However all mystics and magicians know that, in the end, the gate is never.... ever... truly shut. No.

First Sunday after Allentide: Virgen San Juan Los Lagos

When they come to us it is through dreams and coincidences to perfect you know it was meant. For some time I honored Lake Michigan as not only the chief temple the Watery Mother, but her chief manifestation. The honoring happened alongside with Clarissa Pinkola's own honoring of Lake Michigan as a form of Our Lady which she records in her book about Our Lady, and it was echoed in a remark by the Chicago practioner Scarlet Ravenwood.

This has been a hard year in many ways and hard to travel. I plan four trips a year to be at the Lake and this year I settled for three, but the third did not seem to be happening, at least not until I asked for it. On the edge of that water in the chill of late October, I thanked the Lady and only a few days later saw the blue votive candle of Virgen San Juan Los Lagos, an image I had always revered but never seen a votive for. I then knew that, for me, this crowned Virgin in her blue with her blue wax candle was the image by which I would revere the Lady of the Lakes. I was even too stupid to realize until last night, that Los Lagos, means the Lakes.

Today, with the news of a new presidency, I feast in her honor, not only grateful for the end of a wicked era, grateful at having lived to see it pass, but resolved to remember that this is only the beginning of things, not the end goal. Our Lady is Maristella, she who is the Lady of the Seas and Waters as well as the guiding star above them. She is Lucifer the Morning Star and Lucifuge the Evening Star as well. So she is one with Babalon the Creatrix. She is Tanit and Caelestis, the Virgin Asherah and she is the chief of the female spirits of the sea. She is, in Nahuatl Cihuapilli, Great Lady, and being my Great Lady, I honor her.

 

A Fond Adieu.... or A Fond A Don't

    

This blog must have some sort of staying power, some enchantment even, because I pretty convinced of being done with it, and yet, after my goodbye article, have written for subsequent articles and so.... I guess... I actually don't see Young Tradition closing, but I might as well keep this up as.... a memento?

 This blog was created, not quite two years ago, for a reason. I assumed that I would break it off at its one year anniversary, and today I'm assuming I'm going to break it off now. I mena, never say never, but I have a blogs that came to an end before, that achieved their purpose, and the end of the blog was like an ened of a book. It was to leave a sort of archive of this Craft I was creating, to make it make sense to myself. I was attempting to do this with thin skin witches on another page, but they kicked me out, and so I kept this page. Years later, because of this page, thin skinned would be witches from that same group, became angry again. And so, in a way, this page was an act of rebellion. But rebellion has an end and this page was also a work in itself, and that work, as far as I see, has come to its end. I feel that what revelations will come in the future to this thing I have created, the Young Tradition, the Alchymical Rite, the Judaic Rite, the Anharic Rite, are revelations whihc will not be typed on an online page, but written other places or not written at all, and so, in much love, I bid you adieu, and to Tomothy Foster and Stuart Inman and all the half grown pieces of shit who call themselves witches but stamped their feet like children when I posted what they did not like..... Go fuck yourselves. : )

All Souls

The Narthex for All Souls began somber, even almost a little threatening, but ended in rejoicing, in a switch from the black robe to the white, the lights bright, the reminder, and I willl rasie you up, and I will raise you up and I will raise you up on the last day. The mystery of All Souls is the mystery of the Cross, all of our living and dying is taken up in that, so at the end of the night, we raise and eat bread and wine, uniting us not only to the Sacred Resurrection, but the Sacred Dying as well.

This is such a strange time of the year. The world is beautiful in its dying. The trees are red as they pass into sleeping and there is a good chill in the air as we head toward winter. The year begins, magic begins,we remember the timewhen many of our vocatiosn begun and yet this is a time of ending. This dying and rising ending and beginning is a great mystery, one we have taken to ourselves. Christ is not born in the spring--though apparently for some he was--he is born in the darkness of the dead winter. The gloom is the home of birth, not its enemy. We cannot have one without the other. John the baptist is born at he height of summer, but the deepest matter is born from the dark and cold of winter.

In this path, so often what we are about is re enchanting ourselves and unlearning lessons we have been taught that are not worth learning. And then, on the other hand we are learning how to take back the babies thrown out with the bathwater. Some of this has to do with the religions we were brought up in, but not all of it. One for instance is the idea that a holiday occurs on one time on one day, that we must cram everything into a particualr twenty four hour period. The time of All Hallows, alternately called Allentide, Samhaine and All Hallows perfectly illustraites this, its high days stretching across Samhaine (Halloween) Hallowmas (All Saints and the following day of All Souls) And all of these days are interchangable, not just a progression of celebrating one thing or another, but a constant moving back and forth in a celebration of the other world, the fairies, the lost souls, the ancestors, the saints and much much more.

Lions, Lands and the Discoveries of Samhaine

There was no posting here last week. So much was going on, and in a strange way, for the very same reason posting must go on here now, because so much is happening. This journal has been called so many things and documented the evolving witchcraft or mage craft that I signed onto when initiating into 1734 almost two years ago, and as the Craft changes, and even as the name of this page changes, so the way this page is written changes. It is November First, Hallowmas, the second day of Allentide, and last night, through the rituals, things began changing. In ritual I call myself the high priest, but I am the assistant high priest. God who is Adaon, Adonay, Hermes, even Odin as Sacrificer to Odin is the true high priest.

                       

The mystery of magic is the mystery of sacrifice and the mystery of the sacrifice is the mystery of Cain, Or rather, sacrifice has several mysteries and this is one of them. Another, by the way, is the Alchemical Wedding and still another is the Annunciation while another is the Virgin Birth, and if you have eyes to understand, all of these are happening upon the altar. In all of the mysteries it is the God who is the high priest, the leader, the chief musician and the result of the sacrifice.

Last night the Anharic Rite was born, the Abyssinian Way, the Black Practice, the 16th, 17th and 18th degree. The Anharic Rite moves alongside the Alchemical Rite as both move aside Young Tradition. They are evolving parts of each other. In the Anharic Rite all we have done finds its peace. It is the embracing of the Christianity that has always been a part of my life along with the Judaism that has been part of me while at the same time it is a rejection of the whiteness, unspirituality and mediocrity of both. We may return to this later. The Anharic Rite forms its own magic, a deeper, blacker one, and its symbol and great totem is the Lion of Judah.

We blessed this Rite with the Sword of Lucifuge, he who flees from the light, the male counterpart of Babalon, the pink heat in darkness. She is the fiery chalice, he the sword, their union the Left Handed Temple. I cannot publish this. This is too deep, like a book of shadows now it makes sense only to me and anyone who would walk this path, and aside from me, I know of no one who would walk this way. Gabriel, prince of dreams, messenger of the unconscious, strengthen this Rite which was dedicated at Hallowmas at the approach of the dark time of the year.

The further we get from our first initiations into the Craft, the more we will come into our own thing and our own imagery. This is appropriate. In Orthodoxy we come to one place and we stay in it because the boundaries have been set, but in Heterodoxy, the common place is the beginning place and we shouldn't be so put out about walking alone. As we continue down the path, signs and symbols and ways unseen will become part of us. The Lion is one such symbol, not only as Lion of Judah, but the Lion of the Goddess Allat, she who is another form of Babalon.in the city of Palmyra. Palmyra and her Godforms were part of our practice in summer and they will be again.

The mystery of the Lion of Judah is the mystery of the Lion and we will come back to it Now, as we come to a new emphasis, away from Maid Marion and Robin Hood and onto Arthur and his mysteries, we behold the Lion of Yvain. What else we come to, we cannot say, for this road and the mysteries of Allantide and the season of Samhain is, as yet untrodden. Every year we cannot count on the past, what we have known and what we have done. We must trod the path again and discover it fresh.