The Lady and the Elemental
Powers
by Ian Elliott Oct. 15th – Nov. 16th,
2013
Introduction
As pagans, we are
aware of being children of Mother Earth.
She carries us with her from life to life as she evolves at the slow
pace of goddesses; for, as a good Mother, she wants to take all of her children
with her in her evolutionary journey.
Pagans are
therefore in no hurry but, as a courtesy, should wish to develop their
awareness to the next level, so as not to be a burden to their Mother but
rather help her along.
Life thus is
school for the children of Earth, and for those who wish to evolve more
swiftly, becoming prefects, as it were, in her school, special schools called
mystery schools are provided in each age.
The Craft of the Wise is one such mystery school.
A mystery school
is so called precisely because its teaching and discipline are designed to
effect an evolutionary leap for its successful pupils, who therefore progress
towards a consummation which cannot be conceived at the beginning of their
studies. This evolutionary leap is called the transmutation in the Craft, and
it will occur in some future life, whether during a gross material incarnation
here in Middle-Earth, or while in the ætheric body in the Summerland, during
the sojourn between lives. Until then, witches
will probably still need to be reborn, but the number of reincarnations will be
fewer. Along the way in the Craft there
are anticipations of the eventual transmutation in the form of initiations.
Awareness or
consciousness is held to consist of four principal powers plus a fifth, which
must be cultivated together in a balanced fashion for awareness to
develop. These are the power to know, to
will, to dare, and to keep silence or still.
When these are cultivated together for a sufficient time, with the help
of the Lady and the demigod known as the Lord or Lad, a fifth power, the power
to go (that is, to go on ætheric journeys), is the result. These five powers are the inner elemental
powers of the classical elements of Air, Fire, Water, Earth and Æther,
respectively. Each forms a body within
the gross material body of the witch, and each is nourished by its appropriate
food. Air is nourished by proper
breathing, Fire by proper perception, Water by proper drinking, Earth by proper
nourishment of solid food, and Æther by proper awareness.
Our Western
tradition of the Craft comes from the last mystery schools of Egypt, which were
still extant in the late Saitic period just preceding the Persian conquest. Some of them, along with schools in Babylon,
lasted until the time of Alexander the Great.
The Egyptian wisdom was taught to the sage Pythagoras, who brought it to
southern Italy, where for some time the Etruscan aristocracy patronized the
Pythagorean communities there, and it found further development in the
teachings of the sage and wizard Empedocles, who taught the doctrine of the
elemental powers.
The mystery teachings of Babylon were brought west by the philosopher-sage
Poseidonius,
and the schools of Italy were revived by the wisdom brought all the way from
India in the first century C.E. by the sage and wonder-worker Apollonius of
Tyana. It is likely that he was the one
who brought the teachings of the Grigori, the Watchers of the four quarters,
from the school of the Medes in Babylon, where they were called the Iygges.
The mystery
schools of Italy survived the catholic persecution into the Dark Ages, with
branches in the Basque country, whence they crossed the Bay of Biscay (which
means Basque) to Devonshire and Cornwall.
This is only one strand of historical development which led to the
secret cult of Witchcraft in medieval Britain.
The Bacchic Mysteries entered into the Craft as well. Some of the arcana, such as the teaching of
the Watchers, were preserved in ceremonial magic, as taught for instance in the
school of Toledo.
Later there was a confluence of this teaching with that of folk magic. Gerald Gardner depicted this process of
amalgamation of the two traditions fictionally in his novel High Magic’s Aid.
The Lady of
Witchcraft has three aspects: Maiden, Mother and Crone. While she favors different times of the year,
day and the lunar month with these aspects, she is also “old or young as she
wishes.” This
means that she can manifest as Maiden, Mother or Crone on any occasion, and
exhibits her influence in ways not dependent on the time of day, lunar month or
year.
The Maiden governs
purification, the Mother consecration, and the Crone charging or transmutation.
Purification
involves the clearing out of stale energy, to make room for fresh. Stale energy was referred to by the ancients
as ‘miasma,’ and was regarded as poisonous.
Spring cleaning is an age-old method of purification, traditionally
carried out in February, when the Maiden returns. The name ‘February’ refers to
purification.
The office of the
Maiden is evident in the fact that if we want some new thing to come into our
lives, we must relinquish some old thing.
Some New Age writers like to suggest that we can immediately access
abundance. They fail to recognize the
fact that our hands are never empty.
Thus, we always already have abundance, though it may include elements
we would rather go without.
We already contain
within ourselves all the magical energy or personal power we need to develop,
but much of our energy is locked up in habits which squander it without giving
us a profitable return on our efforts.
These include nervous movements, expressions of negative emotion, and
inner conversations and imagination. In
order to develop as witches, we must free our energies from these energy knots,
and we do so by engaging our efforts with the offices of the Maiden.
Air, the Power
to Know
Knowledge, like air,
seeks to penetrate everywhere, and all living beings share it among them. Different creatures have different capacities
for using air and knowledge, and we see this variation even among members of
the same species. Humans differ in how
they make use of air and knowledge, according to whether or not they engage
with the energy of the Maiden. Some
people know a lot of information, but they typically pigeonhole anything new in
terms of the old, saying “that sounds like…” Academics in particular are
subject to this gradual ossification of their understanding. Past a certain age, they settle down in their
opinions and appear incapable of learning anything really new. Their knowledge is often very intricate, but
its subtle interconnectedness actually serves to exclude new, fresh knowledge,
such as that which they started with in youth and which guided them in laying
the foundations of their future prison.
In this they are like people who almost never take full breaths of air,
starting with a full exhalation. A full
exhalation exhibits the Maiden’s power as manifested in breathing.
So far we are
speaking of knowledge in general, but in this paper we are concerned with that
special knowledge which advances us in the Craft. In order to receive new understanding from
the Watcher of the East, we must make room for it by hearing new knowledge as
new, as if we had never encountered anything like it before. This is how we took in knowledge in youth,
when it excited us and began building the foundation of our inner home. If we take in a teaching as mere information,
as being on the same level as a novel or academic textbook, it will pass
through us like sands in an hourglass; we shall retain nothing energizing from
it.
The Mother governs
consecration. Consecration inaugurates a
path which we follow throughout life, and which involves a deep sense of
commitment on the part of the learner.
The new knowledge freed from miasma by the Maiden is brought into focus
by the Mother and lives within the witch like an unborn child. The same process
takes place with the magical purpose. It
is divined through the offices of the Maiden, but conceived within witch or
wizard by the fructifying power of the Mother.
Thereafter, as long as we keep it alive and nourish it, the Mother will
cause it to grow within us, until when we are ready to cast the spell, when we
shall be pregnant with it, and ‘heavy with child.’
The Crone governs
charging or transmutation. Her touch is
the touch of initiation, of change of consciousness. She is not gentle like the Mother, but
cataclysmic. The casting of a spell is
like giving birth, which (if I as a male may presume to say so) is far from
easy. At any rate, this is the closest a
male witch, a wizard, can come to the ordeal of childbirth endured by
women. Whether casting a spell or
undergoing initiation into one of the degrees of the Craft, one must engage
one’s efforts and focused energy with the transforming power of the Crone.
Fire, the Power
to Will
T
he very name of the Craft tells us that
it is something done and not merely a body of knowledge. It involves skilled making, both of external
things and of things internal to the witch, his or her inner home.
Learning itself is of course something
done, and if we learn in the right way, we will prepare ourself for many other
forms of doing and making. Jñana Yoga,
the yoga of knowledge, teaches us that we can learn something from every
experience. Even if we encounter
ignorant or obnoxious people, they teach us by negative example if nothing
else, and there may be a small light of understanding flickering somewhere in
their murky darkness, which we will only see later on reflection. So instead of arguing with such people, much
less insulting them, we should take in the lesson they present, wittingly or
unwittingly. Note that word ‘should’;
except for the Rede, there are no oughts in the Craft, so when we say ‘should,’
we mean that it will be better for our energy, our personal power, if instead
of squandering it in anger or frustration we use it to open the wings of
understanding and take in the lesson in front of us. Whoever teaches us, especially in a positive
sense, deserves our thanks, and these people are often astonished at our
gratitude, and this in turn helps to open their own minds a little more.
As the Maiden helps us to make room for
new knowledge, she engages her office of purification with the element of Fire
as well as that of Air. Fire’s inner
power is will, and will is inseparable from action. In setting aside old assumptions, we will
probably feel some resistance and irritation, as old habits do not go
willingly. At this point we must make an
effort to avail ourselves of the Maiden’s power to help us let go of stale
energy in order to make room for something fresh to enter. The effort creates friction; there is a sort
of argument inside us between something saying ‘yes’ and something else saying
‘no’. It is this friction which throws
off sparks, creating the inner heat the Hindus call tapas, the power of
self-discipline. This tapas is simply
another name for the elemental power of fire, the power to will.
The Lady turns the Sun-Wheel, and the
Sun-Wheel is an ancient symbol which describes not only the round of the
seasons, but also the elemental powers.
The circle of the Sun-Wheel has handles extending from the cusps of the
circle, that is, from the transition points between the four elemental
quarters, the northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest points. The handles extend backward
counter-clockwise, forming the sacred symbol known as the svastika. Some svastikas show little handles extending
counter-clockwise from all eight points.
Whether there are four or eight handles, the Lady grasps them in order
to twirl the Sun-Wheel sunwise or clockwise.
Handles extending the other way are for twirling the Sun-Wheel tuathal
or anti-clockwise. Both symbols are
found in ancient cultures worldwide. The
tuathal svastika, long before it was tarnished by the Nazis, was employed in
ancient Britain by the Fomorians, who were oriented to the Dark Moon
cycle. Subsequent Celtic Craft traditions
favor the deosil or sunwise svastika.
The svastika is a fire-drill as seen from
above. [7] The
World Pillar runs through its center down to each witch’s ‘Deep,’ where the
Lady turns it among the flints of the witch’s habits and predilections. She will do this in proportion to our own
efforts, and if we call on her aid, she will remind us at various times to
carry on the argument within between the ‘yes’ of new energy and the ‘no’ of
stale miasma. The same process takes
place on a larger scale in the coven celebrating the Wheel of the Year and
circling the Witches’ Rune to raise the Cone of Power.
Taking it in perhaps its simplest form,
struggle against a nervous or compulsive habit, one examines the habit as a
chain of events and actions. Perhaps we
fidget when we sit for a long time in a chair and are trying to read. The event immediately preceding the nervous
fidgeting (or whatever it is) is called the trigger. The trigger may be taking up a book, or
sitting a certain way, say with the legs crossed. The moment before the trigger
is generally free of compulsion , and if it can be caught by awareness, one can
make oneself get out of the chair at that point and, say, walk to the
kitchen. I am taking personal examples,
but something analogous must occur for everyone with this problem. If I succeed in breaking the chain by getting
up at that point, I feel a little grain of strength, of resistance in me that
wasn’t there before. The events of my
day from that point on will have a different quality and may well take a
different course. It’s amazing how
little changes of this sort can give one more energy and snowball into bigger
changes. And this is a good example of
working with the power of fire, for one always starts with little things.
So now we have a little extra energy we
usually fritter away in the fidgets; but the next minute we squander it, by
yelling at someone (or worse, at no one – the computer), or by mentally
repeating a conversation we had with someone earlier and arguing with him or
her; or by worrying about this or that which may or may not happen in the
future. There are many ways to waste our
energy, our personal power.
Laurel and Hardy once made a film where
they bought an old fishing boat and poured water in it to find where the hull leaked. That is the next step after stopping a habit;
we must observe and see where we leak and lose the extra energy we just
gained. Then we find the leaks and begin
to plug them. That is the preliminary
work of fire, and we carry it out with the help of the Maiden.
When we have plugged some of our leaks, we
can direct the energy saved to a project. Perhaps we have dedicated to the
Craft, so that in addition to continuing general study of lore and skills, we
decide on a particular skill for which we feel an affinity. If another coven member has practiced that
skill for some time, we may decide to work with him or her as an apprentice in
herblore and craft, in traditional handicrafts (particularly those connected with
pre-christian culture), in divination or spellcraft, and so forth. This is work on the second line, work with
others. One is helped by a senior member
and later pays forward by helping another member in turn.
Finding room for the Craft in our
typically busy schedules involves invoking help from the Maiden to find the
right activity to sacrifice, or spend less time at, in order to make room for
Craft activity. For instance, you may
feel it necessary to take a little time early in the morning for meditation. There is no specific form of meditation
practiced by witches; rather, each witch meditates ‘after her (or his)
ways.’ But the way once taken should be
adhered to regularly, and at a regular time of day or night. If you try to set aside a meditation period
and encounter conflict with other interests, these are perhaps the leaks in
your boat which need to be patched. At
any rate, the Maiden is pointing out to you a possible sacrifice.
Fire’s quarter is in the South, which was
the direction of sacrifice in PIE (proto-Indo-European) rituals. The sacrificial fire was at the southern end
of the ritual area, which was rectangular in PIE times. The ancestors were in the South, and prayers
and sacrifices were made to them in the sacrificial fire-pit.
When we have established a period of meditation,
and/or a period of study or perhaps handiwork connected with a Craft skill, we
will come to feel a new fullness within and a feeling of dedication to our new
work with Fire. The Mother is blessing
our work with her power of consecration.
Provided we continue with our practice, we shall reinforce this feeling
in us; we shall feel that we are getting somewhere. If we are not attempting too much to begin
with, we should be able to continue our work. Consecration lends an activity a
place in one’s ongoing life story, just as an unborn child involves the life of
its parents from the moment they know it is there and growing. It is not a mere hobby like stamp-collecting,
which we can take up and put down at whim.
The Craft itself often begins as a sort of hobby, but once the Mother
has consecrated it, it acquires more weight.
In the course of time, our practice
matures to the point where we develop a personal style, and feel increasingly
energized by it. The Crone takes our
inner heat, our tapas, and uses it to ignite our awareness. We feel that in divining, or making, or
whatever we are doing, we are gaining insight into truths. These truths are known through our own personal
Craft – our knack, as it is called. The
knack is celebrated and symbolized in the Craft by the sacred loaf baked on
Lammas Eve.
Water, the
Power to Dare
If, in a given situation, I ask myself not
merely what should I do, but what would a witch do, then I am exercising the
power to know, the power of Air, in conjunction with the consecration of the
Mother; for it is the Mother who consecrates us to witchcraft so that we feel
personally involved in the Hidden Path.
On the other hand, the reason we were
looking for something and happened on this path is due to the elemental power
of Water, which makes us discontented with our present state and urges us to
seek the unknown, to find something new and more satisfying to our nature. Water’s inner power is called the power to
dare, and it is not for timid souls content to live out their lives within
familiar limits. If we observe a
waterfall we can see how impetuously water throws itself off the edge of a
cliff, seeking wherever it happens to land, and then flowing on.
Wherever it is, water seeks the lowest
point, searching out the deep and secret places of the world instead of
aspiring to the obvious heights. The
Maiden therefore helps us to let go of the security of the familiar so we can
flow freely into the realms of the unfamiliar.
When water encounters an obstacle, it goes
around it by taking on its form. Thus,
in grief, we must take on the form of life without the beloved, and then we
shall flow around the grief and out into new channels. Water, seemingly one of the weakest things,
is in fact irresistible in its force.
The unknown can be sought lightly, as in
taking a different route to work, or changing our morning or evening
routines. As with the work of Fire, it
is best to start with small things and then we will go on to greater
changes. The greater changes could
include seeking initiation.
The deep and secret things of the world
are not far to seek. They are close at
hand, though not in front of our eyes.
They are secret because we are in the habit of ignoring them. When we turn our attention to things we don’t
usually notice, we loosen the hold of certain mental habits which are connected
to the ways we use our attention. These
habits could be called energy knots, because they lock up some of our energies,
preventing them from flowing freely.
They manifest in dreams as a sort of
synopsis explaining the situation to the dreamer and prescribing his or her
actions. For instance, we may find
ourselves roaming endlessly through a large house, and occasionally coming out
into the front or living room, but then going back into the halls and other
interior rooms instead of going outside through a door which is obviously an
exit. If our dream begins to be more
lucid, allowing us to see that we have choices, we may decide to leave the
house through the exit door. When we do
that, we find ourselves outside. Perhaps
it is a crystal-clear night, and we can feel the cold air as we become much
more lucid. Now we know we are dreaming,
and we have considerably more freedom of choice and movement than before. We have managed to unravel an energy knot in
our dream.
The same thing can happen in the waking
state, as we turn our attention to background sounds, things seen out of the
corners of the eyes, our own apparent headlessness (when we are not looking in
a reflecting surface),[9] the
play of shadows, and a number of other sensations usually ignored. [10] We
soon begin to feel freer within, and the longer we can keep at it, the freer we
shall feel. We begin to feel a cooling wind blowing through our bodies, and it
blows us through our memories.
This is where the Mother manifests in the
power of Water. She does so in two ways:
as a feeling of joy in the journey we are taking, and in the form of older
energy knots from long ago, which may include childhood enthusiasms or even lifelong
predilections. Witches, unlike mystics,
are not concerned to unravel every energy knot they come across. An early love of music, an attraction to the
ancient Gods, a certain sense of humor may remain with the witch as he or she
ascends back to everyday life in Middle-earth.
These are brought back and replace or supplement some of our current
synopses or energy knots. At the same
time, the witch’s journey has unraveled several energy knots which were
constraining his or her choices, leaving a spacious sense of freedom of inner
and outer movement.
After a number of these journeys, once we
have decided on which knots we want to keep, at least for now, the Crone
appears and her touch fuses our revised collection of concerns and perspectives
into a new, magical personality. This
personality contains nothing that has not been part of the witch at one time or
another, including far memories from previous lives; nevertheless, the
combination that now appears is entirely new.
I the witch am much more myself than before, yet I am also most truly
the person I have always been.
Earth, the
Power to Keep Still
The Lady lives in the Earth and is the Earth. The Earth is her gross material body. Therefore North, the quarter of Earth, is
called the place of power, and stillness, the elemental power of Earth, is the
master power.
Science knows now that nothing in the universe is still; everything is
constantly moving, and what we call stillness is simply the motion of two or
more bodies synchronously with each other.
To achieve the elemental power of Earth and keep stillness, then, is to
cease motions peculiar to ourselves and to move synchronously with the Earth,
with the Lady. When we become still
without and within (including silent), we shall feel the Earth’s movement,
spinning on her axis and traveling round the Sun. This feeling is subtle but definite.
The Earth is part of the World Tree.
Middle-earth is the trunk, the Underworld is the roots, the Upper world
is the foliage of the tree. The World
Tree is a map of consciousness. As we
travel up and down the World Tree, we pass through different dimensions of
awareness. Science examines the universe
in one of these dimensions, but there are several, some below us, some
above. Since there is no one way to
depict these dimensions or worlds, pagans describe the whole as a great tree, a
map of possible journeys.
Each of us is a miniature replica of the World or local Cosmos, and
our spine is our inner tree. The spine
is made of both gross matter and astral or subtle matter. Hindu yoga describes three channels made of
astral matter passing up the spine. The
central channel is the sushumna. Round
the sushumna spiral the ida and pingala.
These cross each other and the sushumna at certain points called
chakras, wheels or lotuses (as they variously appear to inner sight). These chakras are the worlds or dimensions
already mentioned. India is not alone in
describing the inner tree thus; many other cultures from different times and
places describe it similarly, though they may differ slightly in the number of
chakras or worlds ranged along it. These
include the Hopi, the
Tibetan, and the Norse; also the Greek, for the caduceus or staff of Hermes
replicates the yogic model.
Our home on the World Tree is halfway along it, in the lower trunk, a
place called Middle-earth in this Craft tradition. Our inner consciousness has the fourth
chakra, located in the solar plexus near the heart, as its center of gravity,
although it ranges a little above and below it in certain experiences.
When the witch cultivates inner and outer stillness, the inner or
dream soul awakens and begins to travel along the trunk of the inner tree. It is called the dream soul because it is
associated, in many pagan cultures, with dream or spirit journeys, but it can
also travel while awake. It can go up or
down the inner tree, though in witchcraft we are primarily concerned to travel
down it, eventually reaching our root souls in the Summerland, a place in the
Underworld. This will require many
tentative journeys partway down, and at the conclusion of each, the inner or
dream soul reascends to Middle-earth. So
it is just as important to practice ascending as descending the inner tree.
Preparation for the journey of inner stillness is made by cultivating
outer stillness. The witch learns to sit
still and refrain from fidgeting. It is
also important to exercise regularly, through yoga or ch’i kung or some other
form of non-strenuous exercise. This
should be done before attempting to sit still.
Exercising the muscles and tendons helps them to let go afterward and
relax more fully.
Restraint of mental talk cultivates inner stillness. Thoughts are not blocked, but neither are
they followed. The witch lets them fade
out, like a sail observed on the horizon at sea. Meditation, sitting still, will involve this
cultivation of separation from mental talk until a degree of inner quiet is
reached. The Maiden aids the witch in
letting go of mental chatter, and at a certain point she cuts us loose from our
usual level along the inner trunk. We
feel this as though we were in an elevator which has suddenly slipped its cable
a few feet. There is a feeling of sudden
descent into greater silence.
In this silence there are no words spoken, but there are still
whisperings, almost silent, going on.
These are specimens of what has been called “the still, silent voice
within.” You might wonder how a voice
can be silent; it is a question of degree, for the whispering is just above the
threshold of inner awareness. At this
point, the witch has not descended a chakra but is halfway down to the next one
below, the one associated with the belly.
When the next chakra is reached, the momentary peace felt beforehand
is replaced by passions and colored obsessions, as it were. This is the place where we store drives and
energy knots which are too volatile to be usually allowed up in the everyday
life of Middle-earth. The experience of
the third chakra can be quite disturbing, full of sexual urges, many of them
strange and infantile. We need the help
of the Maiden to separate from these denizens in our inner cellar.
Beneath this third chakra we begin to experience poignance, beauty of
a sad character. This is where we feel
what Buddhists call ‘the pity of things.’
The Mother unites the witch with some of these in turn, filling the
inner soul with compassion. If the outer
eyes are open during this part of the inner journey, we begin to see the people
around us as suffering from various forms of sadness, grief, terror and
anxiety. When the dead in ancient Baltic
lands reached this part of the World Tree in their journey back to their root
souls, they sent messages to their bereaved through priests and shamans, pleading
with them “don’t grieve so much!”
This writer cannot describe deeper levels of the inner journey. But when the inner soul reascends to
Middle-earth, it brings back beauties and talents collected along the way. The Crone charges these with her uncanny
energy, so that they unite with the everyday personality when the traveler
returns. The deeper the descent, the
more of this treasure is brought back.
The shallow descents this writer has made have nevertheless enabled him
to enrich his life here in Middle-earth with a few jewels delved from the
depths.
Æther, the
Power to Go
The journeys described in the last section,
traveling down the inner tree, are already ætheric or astral journeys. [12] Nothing has been said yet about journeys up
the inner tree to the chakras above our usual one in Middle-earth. The journey to the sky-world, called daušos in ancient Baltic religion, is undertaken
by shamans, traveling the whole length of the World Tree. In our Craft tradition, this journey upward
to the Sun is undertaken by the witch after he or she has been transmuted to an
elemental being balanced in all four elemental powers, the powers of Air, Fire,
Water and Earth. The transmutation
generally takes place in the Summerland, though in the past, when esoteric teaching
was more widespread, it could also take place while in the gross material body
in Middle-earth. This was, reputedly, an
excruciating experience and may have given rise to church tales of witches
suddenly catching fire and burning from within.
So perhaps it is just as well that it occurs very rarely while in this
dimension.
The journey to the Sun is described in the
Prasna Upanishad as the journey of no return, and it is certainly true in the
sense that the being transformed in the Sun into a body of light is not the
same as the one who began the journey. Apollonius of Tyana was probably the one who
brought back this teaching of the Upanishad to Italy, where it was handed down
as part of the lore of stregheria or Italian witchcraft.
In all of this we are speculating on the basis
of ancient teachings. All we can say
further is that after being transformed in the Sun and given bodies of light,
we will be given real work to do for the first time in our lives. We shall have grown to the stature of
demigods and will take on some of the work of World-maintenance, possibly
helping with relations with other cosmoi such as those circling the royal stars
of the Medes, also called the Watchers: Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares and
Fomalhaut. With the Lady we can only say
that our relations will be different, as our relations with our mothers in
Middle-earth were different after we grew up and left home. But here even my tentative lore fails me.
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TRINKUNAS, Jonas, ed., Of Gods and Holidays; the Baltic Heritage,
Lithuania,
Tvermé, 1999.
WATERS, Frank, Book of the Hopi, New York, Penguin Books, 1963.
