A Grimoire for Modern Cunningfolk
A Practical Guide to Witchcraft on the Crooked Path
by Peter Paddon
First Edition Copyright 2011
SmashWords Edition 2012
By Pendraig Publishing
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except brief quotation in a review.
Edited by Tony Mierzwicki
Cover Design & Interior Images,
Typeset & Layout: By Jo-Ann Byers-Mierzwicki
Pendraig Publishing
Los Angeles, CA 91040
www.PendraigPublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-936922-12-3
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Table of Contents
Gods and Archetypes on the Crooked Path
The Horned Lord, or “Auld Hornie”
Le Grand Belle Dame Sans Merci
The Black Goddess
The Lord and Lady
Encountering the Lord and Lady
Notable Points on the Path of the King
Imbolc
Spring Equinox
Beltaine
Midsummer
Lammas
Autumn Equinox
Samhain
Yule
East
Through the Gate of the Sun
South
Through the Gate of the Stone
West
Through the Gate of the Sea
North
Through the Gate of the Sky
Cross-Quarters
North-East
South-East
South-West
North-West
Ced and Celi
The Gods
Hu Gadarn
Alawn, Plennydd and Gwron
The Goddesses
Calen
Morwyn, Blodwen and Tynghedwen
Root and Crown - The Bilé Tree Turned Upside Down
Sacred Space
Laying the Compass
Treading the Mill
The Cone
Libation
Riding the Dragon
Awakening the Altar
The Fetch
Raising the Flame
A Crooked Sixpence
Casting a Coin in the Well
Contact
Possession
Patrons and Matrons
Contact/Possession Exercise
Working With Ancestors
Tapping the Bone
Reincarnation - Cosmic Soup and the Mighty Dead
Finding Lore
Poetry and Myth
Ancestral Memory
Crown and Drake
The Witch Mark
Red Blood and White
The Stang
The Cauldron
The Hearth-Stone
The Skull
The Horn Cup
The Cane
The Cord
The Giving of Gifts
By a Bent Line, By a Straight Line, By a Crooked Line
Truth Betwixt the Horns
Do What is Necessary
The Sacred Marriage
Awen
The Dedicant
The Apprentice or Squire
The Master Crafter
The Magister and the Mistress
The Guardian
Leaving
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Introduction
A lot of things happened to me when I was seven. Among other things, I tranced out sitting cross-legged on the altar stone at Stonehenge, I heard the voice of (a) God call my name, like Samuel in the Old Testament, and I found out my father was a Witch. These all probably require a little explanation.
Stonehenge was local. The house I was born into was half a mile away from the ancient monument, though we moved about three miles further away when I was very little. Before the day of fences and no touching, we were actually taken to the stones as a school outing, to count and measure them. I worked through my worksheet really quickly, climbed up on the altar stone, and daydreamed for about half an hour before we were all bundled back into teachers’ cars and driven back to school. To this day, I have no idea where I “went”, except for a sense of being very far away.
The day I heard the Voice of God calling my name was a little more complex. It requires a little background. My father had certain interests that my mother greatly disapproved of, and in response to her demands of his “return to Christianity”, he became a Mormon, taking the whole family with him. This irked my mother even more, because the Church wanted her to give up her precious tea. Anyway, despite the lower age limit of the Mormon priesthood being twelve, my father insisted on taking me with him to the priesthood meetings, and as he was not a well man, he taught me to do the healing by laying on of hands that the church taught, using his authority as a member of the priesthood, as I had none of my own — I was seven, after all. Anyway, all this gave me quite a lot of exposure to the Bible, and one day I was playing by the front door, and I heard a deep paternal voice say my name. Assuming it was my father, I bounced into the living room and asked my father why he called. He said he hadn’t called. I went back to playing, and it happened again, with the same result. Then I caught on, remembering the story of Samuel in the Bible, I stood patiently waiting for the third time, but it never came. Not then, anyway.
Instead, my father started giving me snippets of what I later discovered were Witch Lore. My father and my mother had a falling out, and for a while my father moved out, until his worsening condition and another stroke caused my mother to take him back so she could look after him. While he was gone, though, she confided in me that he had been a member of a coven in Bristol, and while she thought he had joined the Mormons out of fear for his immortal soul, I later found out that he had actually joined to gain access to the esoteric teachings taught in the higher levels of the priesthood. My brother later confirmed this, adding that he had also been the member of a ceremonial magick lodge in Bristol (possibly the last of the original Golden Dawn lodges, which closed its doors for the last time in Bristol in 1976).
Fast-forward to the present day, and why I am writing this book. It is a while since I was seven, and in the intervening years I have disappointed my mother greatly by following in my father’s footsteps. I left the Mormon Church pretty much the day my father died, and began to search for a coven or lodge who could teach me what I had glimpsed in my father’s snippets. Along the way I took up with Madam Morgana, the White Witch of Buckinghamshire, trained with an Alexandrian coven in London and even ended up High Priest of my own coven, which slowly slid from orthodox Alexandrian to something darker, more Shamanic, but still not what I was really looking for. I also joined the Rosicrucian’s, the Builders of the Adytum, corresponded with the Servants of the Light and members of the OTO, and even started my own group working the Egyptian Mysteries. During this period I wrote my first two books, on Egyptian Ceremonial Magick, and became husband and father.
The marriage fell apart, and in an attempt to get away from bad memories, I visited the US, fell in love, and came back to get married. Almost as a reward for finding my soulmate, I found non-Wiccan Witchcraft, or rather it found me, as my new wife was a member of the coven I promptly trained and initiated with. Then, as that coven became less active, we were both introduced to another group, one that followed the Elder Faith and practiced the Nameless Art. We both realized we were home.
Now we are Magister and Mistress of our own coven, Briar Rose, and this book is an attempt to share what we have found in a meaningful way. Most books on witchcraft are about Wicca, which is a valid path, but not the only one, and usually from a fairly basic perspective. There are some excellent non-Wiccan books out there (Light From the Shadows by Gwyn, the works of Nigel Pennick and Nigel Jackson, the writings of Andrew Chumley), but they are hard to find unless you know they are there. I’ve been meaning to write more books ever since the first two, and in the last couple of years my series of spellcrafting DVDs (Craftwise) and my Crooked Path podcast have set the stage, so to speak. And my good friend Robin Artisson both encouraged me and led the way with his own books, the magnificent “Witching Way of the Hollow Hill”, “The Horn of Evenwood” and “The Flaming Circle”.
So here it is, A Grimoire for Modern Cunning Folk. I call it a grimoire because it is a workbook, an attempt to give you some of what you would find if you were a student in my coven, and I refer to us as Modern Cunning Folk because the reclaiming of the word Witch has entered very surreal territory these days. The people who taught the people who taught me never used the word witch except in a derogatory sense, so even though technically it is an accurate term to use, I try to steer clear of it, and the term Cunning Man or Cunning Woman is also moderately accurate, without any “mystical” baggage that will make people want to claim it as anything other than what it is.
I should point out that this entire book is based on my own personal Path. I work with a group, Briar Rose, and that group has a specific way of doing things that is informed by the work we have done together and what we have learnt from other sources. As Magister, obviously the group’s work and my own work are very closely aligned, but the nature of this book necessitates that it tells a very personal story — within its pages I am recounting my understanding of that Path, and because I have my own pet theories and bias, that is not going to be exactly the same book that another member of Briar Rose would write.
Originally, this was going to be as generic a book as I could write, and in some respects, it still is. But the qualifier of “as generic as possible” turned out to be “not very”. So despite my original intent, I have elected to include the deities and some of the other entities that we work with, as an example. But just because we work with the Lore and Mysteries of Celtic Wales (specifically those found in the Mabinogion) does not mean that you can’t work this Path with different myths, different Gods. Essentially, this will work within the framework of any religious practice (if somewhat heretically in some cases), mine just happens to be Welsh.
The book you hold is a thank you to my father, for planting the seeds, to Nigel and Seldiy, who taught me the basics of ritual so well, and to those who taught me to walk the Crooked Path. It is an account of my Path, my beliefs, and my practices — I make no claims of lineage or authority for what is given here. Judge it purely by how effective it is for you, for in the end, that matters more than how many generations have said the words and mixed the herbs before you. There is a current that sustains and informs this work, but it may not be the current that is important for you — but the practice is valid whatever the current, so I present the practice here in the hopes that it will enable you to immerse yourself in the current of your own Path.
Bendith,
Peter Paddon, Magister of Coven Briar Rose.
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The Cunning Art
Witchcraft in the British Isles has been called many things; the Old Persuasion, the Art, the Craft, the Nameless Art and the Cunning Art, to name just a few. Most are self explanatory, but the Cunning Art deserves a closer look. The word Cunning comes from the Anglo-Saxon “kennen”, to know, and it makes an appearance in another phrase often associated with Witches, wort-cunning (herb knowledge). So from this, it is easy to see that the Cunning Art is a path of gnosis, or knowledge. As it was written over the entrance to the Temple of the Mysteries, “know Thyself.”
As an esoteric path, the Cunning Art is a journey of self discovery. Although much is taught through the use of myth and Lore, the emphasis is on personal experience. We examine the old stories, or myths, and extract Lore from them, from which we construct exercises and rituals in order to experience the core of the myth and the Lore. We firmly believe in the process of leading students to discover key wisdom for themselves, so that they can own the knowledge and not have to take it on faith. This is perhaps the most significant factor of this path, and it can be very frustrating for the students — we often answer a question with another question, and we talk in riddles, poems, and will push our students to come up with the answers to their own questions. This process requires students to be able to make critical analysis and to think for themselves, and this has become much harder since schools and universities have abandoned this way of learning.
Another key feature of the Cunning Art is the emphasis that is placed on working with Ancestors, which is a good indication of the shamanic nature of the path. Modern practice is concerned with enfleshing Lore passed down from our ancestors, and recovering Lore that has been lost, using practices that are collectively known as “tapping the bone”. In the context of this art, the term Ancestor refers to both our genetic and spiritual forebears, and because we believe time to be non-linear, we refer to “ancestor long gone, and ancestors yet to be”. When we talk about the Ancestors, we often use the term “River of Blood” in the sense of a bloodline, and also the “Bone Ladder”. These are in other Traditions sometimes referred to as the Red Thread, the Ancestral lineage that defines a Tradition. Being somewhat anarchic as Cunning Folk should be, we prefer to think of lineage as something that is only relevant — if at all — within a particular group. For us the emphasis is on the individual forging their own link with the Ancestors, so they do not have to rely on a hierarchy or lineage to validate them.
This is not a path of reconstruction, and although my group works with the Welsh deities, we are not Celtic Reconstructionists. Rather, we attempt to create something that works for us, whether it includes practices from our ancient Ancestors or totally new ones, without fear or favour. So you won’t find us revealing secrets of how the Ancient Celts worked with their deities, because, no matter how fond we are of all things Celtic, we are not attempting to revert to a past that is known only through speculation. Instead, we follow the clues in our Lore, and the results of experiments and conversations with the Ancestors, to forge a practice that is relevant to us, here and now.
I should probably point out that technically and historically, the term Cunning Man refers to a solitary practitioner who earns a living by working spells for the local community, for fertility, good fortune, healing, etc. Some were snake oil salesmen, or con men, and some were genuine practitioners, but none claimed to be Witches, and in fact most were church-going Christians. My use of the term Cunning Folk does not imply that they are the same as what we are trying to be, because that is not so. But the spirit of what they were, the independent search for wisdom and true practice — regardless of the religious persuasion — is at the core of what modern Cunning Folk are trying to construct. I do not consider what we do to be reconstruction, because we are not trying to recreate the practices of times gone by, but rather to create Lore and Practice that draws upon the deep well of Ancestral Memory in a way that gives us tools that are valid today.
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Gods and Archetypes
on the
Crooked Path
It is important to remember that the Crooked Path can be walked in the shadow of any religion or spirituality, or none at all, for that matter. The Gods encountered upon that Path are very likely to be strongly influenced by the God or Gods of the religion practiced, but there are certain archetypes that are embodied for the modern Crafter that are universal.
There is quite a difference in opinion among various Pagans as to the nature of deity. For some, they are living, breathing entities in their own right, while others see them as archetypes, or representations of deep-seated facets of our own psyche. The whole argument of whether they come from within or without is debated fiercely and eternally on various internet forums, but ultimately the only opinion that matters is your own, formulated from your own experience. For myself, I always answer “both”, not only because there are differences in the nature of different deities, but because I believe — based on my own subjective experience and interaction with the Gods and Goddesses I work with — that they truly do partake of both.
The Horned Lord, or “Auld Hornie”
Also known as the Horned Master, this is the archetypical God of the Witches, and can be embodied by the All-Father, Odin, Herne, Cernunnos, Gwynn, and other similar deities. He is often portrayed as the Master Magician, a Trickster who teaches us by putting us through experiences. There are strong influences of the Underworld, as well as the Wild Man of the Forest, and He almost seems to be using His human visage as a mask for something older, deeper and darker. In Scottish Witchcraft, he would be unashamedly referred to as “the De’il”, and he certainly plays the role of the Devil in the pre-Christian sense — the adversary who provides the momentum and motivation to move through the experience and achieve the goal. In this way, he is the Devil wrestled in the churchyard for the Toad Bone, the Black Man at the Crossroads who grants us our greatest desire, the Trickster who fools us into thinking the Path of Fate we walk is one we “chose”.
My own experiences with Auld Hornie have almost always been in the guise of Herne, and some of them have been alarmingly “real world”. I remember walking in Salsey Forest (between Milton Keynes and Northampton in England), and being aware of the sound of a stag walking parallel with me but several feet away, hidden by dense trees and undergrowth. I kept going, looking for a gap, and eventually found one, only to find no sign of the stag except hoof prints astride a fallen branch that made a perfect staff for me.
My second experience was in woodland near Woburn Abbey. It was Yule Eve, and we were gathering holly to decorate the altar for the next night’s ritual, when I saw a white stag running through the trees. But the third encounter was the most profound for me. It was the early hours of Christmas Day, just before dawn, and I had lost my way going home from a gig at a restaurant in London, and had ended up in Windsor Royal Park somehow. The light was that funny pre-dawn grey, compounded by a fog that hung low on the ground, and I parked my car to stretch my legs and get some fresh air, seeing what looked like a huge oak tree looming out of the mist. I decided to walk over to it, and as I did, I heard the baying of hounds, and then the sound of horses’ hooves, and from behind me a horned rider and his dogs swept past me and the tree, fading quickly into the mist. Despite the physicality of all of it, there was an otherworldly quality that told me they were not mundane, and on returning home it was not a great surprise to read that there was once a royal huntsman called Herne, who hanged himself on the Great Royal Oak in Windsor Royal Park, who became associated with Herne the deity, and that there were many accounts of people seeing the Wild Hunt by that tree.
Le Grand Belle Dame Sans Merci, or The White Lady
Often referred to as the Queen of Fate, she is frequently mistaken for the Great Mother of nature-based religions, but she is not a nature or fertility Goddess, but rather the Mistress of the Mysteries. Cold and aloof, she nevertheless brings us what we need on the Path, and is often embodied by such Goddesses as Goda. In Briar Rose we rarely call upon Her, but She will make Her presence known when there is a need, and She is always present at our initiations.
The Black Goddess, or Dark Mother
It is said that the Dark Mother exists outside the Wheel of Manifestation. In the Great Stone Circle of existence, she is the heelstone that stands beyond, to the North East. She is the fixed point to which we apply the lever of our will in order to move the Universe and bring about Change. Some would say that she is embodied by such as Cerridwen or the Mill Wife, and there is certainly value in exploring that, but it is wise not to let that become an assumed truth, because there is far more to this enigmatic Lady than that.
Encountering the Black Goddess is an essential part of your Path if you wish to master the Cunning Arts rather than just be a journeyman, but it is not an easy or enjoyable experience in most cases. Nothing can prepare you for the way She turns your life upside down, but by the same token, there is no substitute for the total transformation She brings about. I will write more about this in the section on the Nightmares of Lilith, later in the book.
The Lord and Lady
Here we come to a more familiar place for those who started out in Wicca. The Lord and Lady here can be embodied by the Gods and Goddesses of Nature, or by the Faery Court. It is the Lord who is manifest in the Wheel of the Year as Sacred King, and the Lady who is His Consort. He goes through the metamorphosis from Child of Promise, through Warrior, Lover, Priest and King, to the Wraith form of the Dragon Beneath the mound. Each year at Midwinter he is born of the Dark Mother’s barren cauldron in wraith form, to be brought to manifestation as the Child of Promise by the Maid, brought into manhood by the Mother, sacrificed by the Crone, and reborn by the Queen.
Even in my Wiccan days, I used a vision quest technique to go and talk with the Lord and Lady, and found to my surprise that few of the other Wiccans I knew ever did that. They would draw down the Moon and the Sun in circle, invoking the God and Goddess to empower their rites, but never seemed to go and talk to them. I remember sharing my technique with a Witch from Aberdeen, and the tears running down her cheeks as she talked about how she had never had an experience like that in all her years of the Craft. For that reason, I give the exercise in the form of a pathworking here.
Encountering the Lord and Lady
Start by using any relaxation technique you like, and sit with your eyes closed. Make sure your arms and legs are not crossed, and take three deep breaths. With each breath, feel the stress and tension of the day fading away, being replaced with a calm expectation. Continue to breathe deeply, as your journey begins.
See before you a pair of pillars, with a midnight blue curtain suspended between them. You part the curtains and see a grey mist beyond, but right in the centre of your vision is a silver star, floating without support. You examine the star, noticing how clear and “present” it is, but suddenly, without warning, the star disappears. You find yourself pulled into the space where it was, passing through the pillars and into the mist. Everything goes grey as you feel yourself lifted up, floating up and away, eventually drifting down, to find your feet landing on a grassy hill, as the mist clears. You find yourself on a hilltop, looking down onto woodland in the valley below, a narrow dirt path leads down the hillside to the edge of the forest, and you begin to follow it, feeling a breeze in the air as you descend.
Entering the forest, the path continues along, winding between the trees, and you follow it in the dappled green light that filters through the leaves. You hear the rustling of creatures in the undergrowth, but do not see any of the animals as you follow the crooked path deeper and deeper into the forest.
Ahead you notice that there is a fork in the path, and you pause, pondering which fork to take. Suddenly you see a flash of white further along one of the paths, and this is the path you choose, walking rapidly along, trying to see what the white flash was. Turning a bend in the path, you see a white stag a short way ahead, looking back as if to check that you are following, before it heads off down the path again. You follow, unable to catch up, but avoiding being left behind, as the path continues to twist and turn between the trees.
Deep in the heart of the forest now, the canopy is thick and the dim green filtered sunlight serves only to accentuate the shadows, so it is with some surprise that you turn a bend in the path to find yourself breaking out into a clearing at the heart of the forest. In the centre of the clearing is a fountain, encircled by rocks about the right side to sit on, and the tranquil atmosphere along with the gentle tinkling of the water draws you to go and sit by the fountain.
Sitting in contemplation, you hear a sound like a church bell ringing in the distance, and you look up in the direction it came from, to see a beautiful woman entering the clearing. Naked and tanned, with long flowing hair, she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen, and you watch, captivated, as she walks across the clearing to come and sit by the fountain across from you. Her eyes are filled with joy, and a smile forms on her face as she regards you.
Then another sound breaks the silence — a hunting horn. Looking up in the direction this new sound came from, you see another form enter the clearing. This time it is a handsome man, muscular, tanned and equally as naked as the Lady who now sits with you. As he walks towards you, there is a grin on his face and mischief in his eyes, but you hardly notice because you cannot take your eyes off the magnificent antlers growing out of his head. He too comes and sits beside the fountain, next to the Lady, and beckons you to speak with them.
(Pause)
Once your conversation is at an end, thank the Lord and Lady, and ask them if you might return again. Then say your farewells and turn to cross the clearing to the path that brought you here. As you turn, you see that while you were talking, the animals from the forest have come into the clearing, and are waiting patiently for the Lord and Lady.
With one last look over your shoulder at the pair, you re-enter the forest, and follow the twisting path back to the fork, where you pick up the original trail that leads to the hilltop. You quickly make your way to the edge of the forest, returning to the hilltop, where the mist once more envelops you and you feel yourself lifted up and back, until your feet come to rest once again at the two pillars. You walk back between the pillars, as the curtain closes behind you. Contemplating your journey for a moment, you then turn your attention to your physical surroundings as you open your eyes, and the journey is over.
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Notable Points
on the
Path of the King
Everything hangs on the Wheel. Well, as in most things esoteric, there is more to that statement than meets the eye, but it is true that in this path, the Wheel of the Year creates a powerful framework on which to hang Lore, practice and ritual in a way that ties everything together. For us, the cycle of Festivals laid out around the Wheel of the Year embody the journey of the King, and our seasonal rituals are all about enacting these Mysteries rather than the agricultural celebrations found in Wicca. For simplicity, I have included the eight Sabbats that are familiar from Wiccan Lore and literature. Some traditional Crafters — including us — use them, others do not. But they are a good balanced starting point. You might want to eventually add to them (we did), or replace them altogether, but they are perfectly fine as a starting point.
So who is this King? Well he is the Sacred King, the Hero of Myth and Lore, often personified as a slain and risen God like Llew, Osiris or Jesus. We tend to work primarily with Welsh Celtic deities; so much of our Wheel work revolves around aspects of the story of Llew, although it applies also to Math, Son of Mathonwy, Mabon, Son of Modron, and many other heroes. I have a personal bias, as Llew is my Patron, but I try to be fair to the others. It is important to note that while the term King is a masculine title, and many of the heroes of these stories are male, the Mysteries themselves are not gendered, and can be enacted or worked by either sex. We sometimes look to myths that have a female protagonist to make this clearer, but in truth the important polarity in the myths is that of initiator and facilitator, rather than male and female.
We have used the Sacred King cycle in several different ways, by having a person “carry” Sacred King for the coven through an entire year, having a male and female “Jack and Jill” work the cycle together, and with everyone being their own personal Sacred King. We have also run through a couple of years with a different person as Sacred King for each Sabbat. Each version has its pros and cons.
Carrying Sacred King on behalf of the coven is a very profound experience for the individual, but it does tend to relegate the other coveners to the role of spectator, though they can still get deep insights if they make the effort. In an ideal world, everyone would get to take their turn at it, but in a larger group that entails waiting several years for your “turn”. Using the “Jack and Jill” model (yes, named after the nursery rhyme characters) speeds up the process as well as exposing the Initiator/Initiatee relationship nicely, but it is a very different cycle because the focus has changed. Letting everyone be their own Sacred King keeps everyone involved, but the focus is on the personal path then, rather than the shared Lore and egregore of the coven. We have found that changing it up between all of the methods to be most effective, because it enables us to use what is appropriate for the dynamics of the group, the specific time period and the wider world.
I was lucky enough to walk the Wheel as Sacred King for my coven the year after I was initiated into the Crooked Path, and it is an experience that I cherish, even though it has to be said that this particular journey is not an easy one to make. My “reign” started with the coven Mistress announcing at the end of the Yule celebration that I would be Sacred King for the coming year.
Imbolc or Candlemas
Most accounts of the Wheel of the Year start with Imbolc or with Yule, and this one is no exception, but it is not an easy place to start. You really have to understand that our Wheel considers the period between Samhain and Imbolc to be the Dark Time, when the Horned Lord is beyond the Veil of the mound and is essentially inaccessible to us. At Imbolc, the Horned Lord is made manifest in the form of the Child of Promise, and the manifestation is the work of the Maid, bringing Him forth from the Cauldron. This is not to be confused with a birth, despite the cauldron-womb connection — note it is the Maid, not the Mother that brings Him forth. He enters manifestation from the Cauldron-as-Mound/Tomb rather than the Cauldron-as-Womb.