Witchcraft for Tomorrow E-Book

Doreen Valiente

• Herausgeber: Robert Hale Non Fiction
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Now reissued again due to popular demand, Witchcraft for Tomorrow answers many frequently asked questions about witchcraft including: 'How can I find a witches' coven?' and 'How can I become a witch?' Doreen Valiente tells you what the old religion of witchcraft has to offer the new age of Aquarius; how the age-old Craft of the Wise can be practised in the modern world; how to initiate yourself as a witch and found your own coven. The author, who was the leading figure in the establishment of the modern Wiccan movement, includes a new Book of Shadows (the witches' handbook of rituals and instructions) based upon ancient magical tradition but geared to the age of the future. There are witch songs, spells, incantations and practical advice on how to run a coven and how to acquire your own collection of magical implements; as well as methods of divination and other witch lore. The author shows how the oral traditions of witchcraft throw light not only upon the origins of the present-day witch cult and the activities of the witch leader George Pickingill and his covens, but also upon the mystery of the founding of the famous magical order, the Golden Dawn. Also discussed is the relationship between the witchcraft of Britain and Europe and the magical belief of the Far East. Do both traditions hark back to the legendary city of Shamballah and to the shamanistic practices of Asia? And why do the secret circles of the witches resemble those of the Tantric sex-magic of India?

Leseprobe

Witchcraft for Tomorrow

by

DOREEN VALIENTE

ROBERT HALE

First published in 1978 by Robert Hale

Paperback edition 1993

This edition published by Robert Hale, an imprint of

The Crowood Press Ltd, Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2017

© Doreen Valiente 1978

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 71982 695 5

The right of Doreen Valiente to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1The Old Gods

2Witch Ethics

3Witch Festivals

4Witch Signs and Symbols

5The Magic Circle

6Witch Tools

7Methods of Witch Divination

8Witches’ Attire

9The Witches’ Alphabets

10The Working Site

11Witchcraft and Sex Magic

Liber Umbrarum—A Book of Shadows

Casting the Circle; The Rite of Self-Initiation; The Rite of Consecration; The Full Moon Esbat Rite; The Sabbat Rite; Initiation into the Coven; The Coven Spell; The Seven-Pointed Star; The Runes of Andred; The Spell of the Cord; Invocation of the Moon Goddess; Invocation of the Horned God; Chants and Dances

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Between chapters 9 and 10

1A Witches’ Wishing Mirror

2Old-time conception of flying witches

3Portrait of a modern witch

4“Old George” Pickingill, the master witch of Canewdon, Essex

5Chanctonbury Ring, the traditional meeting place of old-time Sussex witches

6A typical example of a blocked-up north door

7Witchcraft implements displayed on an altar

8Wooden carving of the Horned God

9The Regalia of the Horned God

10A modern version of the Green Man, or Foliate Mask

11The Hand of Glory

12The Sabbat wine-cup

13Use of the water-filled cauldron for clairvoyance

14The invocation of power into a glass ball

15Traditional witch costume

Line Figures

The Eight Ritual Occasions

The Ogham Alphabet

The Wheel of Ogham

The Runes

The Pentacle

The Seven-Pointed Star

The Runes of Andred

THE WITCH’S BALLAD

Oh, I have been beyond the town,

Where nightshade black and mandrake grow,

And I have heard and I have seen

What righteous folk would fear to know!

For I have heard, at still midnight,

Upon the hilltop far, forlorn,

With note that echoed through the dark,

The winding of the heathen horn.

And I have seen the fire aglow,

And glinting from the magic sword,

And with the inner eye beheld

The Horned One, the Sabbat’s lord.

We drank the wine, and broke the bread,

And ate it in the Old One’s name.

We linked our hands to make the ring,

And laughed and leaped the Sabbat game.

Oh, little do the townsfolk reck,

When dull they lie within their bed!

Beyond the streets, beneath the stars,

A merry round the witches tread!

And round and round the circle spun,

Until the gates swung wide ajar,

That bar the boundaries of earth

From faery realms that shine afar.

Oh, I have been and I have seen

In magic worlds of Otherwhere.

For all this world may praise or blame,

For ban or blessing nought I care.

For I have been beyond the town,

Where meadowsweet and roses grow,

And there such music did I hear

As worldly-righteous never know.

D.V.

For those seeking the Old Ways and Green Spirituality, The Pagan Federation – BM Box 7097, London, WC1N 3XX – Europe’s oldest Pagan organization, can supply information, publications, events and contacts in all Pagan paths, including Wicca.

Introduction

This book is written as a contribution to the Aquarian Age. The concept of the new Age of Aquarius is discussed on all sides today; but how many people know just what it means?

Our planet earth has three kinds of motion: its rotation upon its axis every twenty-four hours, giving day and night; its orbit round the sun, giving the seasons of the year; and the slow circling of its axis, like the motion of a spinning top, which gives the apparent alterations of the poles of the heavens, and the shifting of the equinoctial point known to astronomers as the precession of the equinoxes.

This gives the Great Year, consisting of about 25,920 earthly years, during which the equinoctial point moves right around the Zodiac. The Great Year is reckoned to have twelve ‘months’, one to each zodiacal sign, each of which consists of about 2,160 earthly years. The equinoctial point is observed to move at the rate of about one degree in seventy-two years, the average span of a human life. This makes one ‘day’ of the Great Year, which has 360 ‘days’, divided into twelve ‘months’ of thirty ‘days’ each, corresponding to the 360 degrees of the circle.

At the moment, the equinoctial point appears to be in the constellation Pisces; but it is moving backwards through the starry Zodiac towards Aquarius. (The Zodiac of the starry constellations, the sidereal Zodiac, must not be confused with the tropical Zodiac, the apparent yearly path of the sun, divided into twelve signs. In the latter, of course, the spring equinox is always the first degree of Aries.)

We are therefore in the last part of the Age of Pisces, when the characteristics of that sign, which have been imposed upon mankind in general for nearly 2,000 years, are giving place to those of the sign of Aquarius. All over the world, human society is in a state of flux. The forms of the old order are breaking down, so that those of the new order may be built up. The characteristics of Aquarius, the fixed sign of air, are very different from those of Pisces, the mutable sign of water.

Aquarius has two ruling planets, Saturn and Uranus. Taken in its highest manifestation, Saturn stands for those things which endure, which have their roots in the very ancient past: the eternal verities, the ancient wisdom, the Dharma as it is called in the east. Uranus, on the other hand, is the revolutionary, the bringer in of what is new, strange, even bizarre. The influence of these planets working together can be seen in our society today.

A great alteration in human attitudes and behaviour took place within the decade of the sixties, much to the alarm of conventionally minded people. It has been called the sexual revolution, the swinging sixties, the advent of the permissive society, and so on; though a lot of it is simply the frankness of Uranus bringing out into the open what was always there anyway, but discreetly hidden beneath a cloak of polite humbug.