Category Archives: Magic

The Veil of Isis

This work is by Ludovic Pinelli; you can purchase a print here.

To Isis, a Veil
En Iset, Behen

This is a gift I bring before Isis the Hidden One, Who, Revealing Herself, Shakes Destiny: an invocation offering of a veil.

For You, Isis, a hiding, a hint, a whisper, an obscuration, a veil.

From behind it, may You send revelations into my sleep. Dreaming, I understand the inner voice and vision; I coax truth from my heart. Yet upon waking, the veil is torn asunder and I only half remember that which was so potent while I lay beneath Your veil.

O, but I adore Your mystery, Your obscurity, the crooked finger of Your concealing veil! Yes, Goddess, yes—veil Yourself in the depths of the indigo sky, in a blue-green blade of grass, in fire, in eyeshine in the darkness. For I could not bear the full brunt of Your beauty!

Draw me on with insinuations. Call to me with half-answered questions. Lead me with unknowns. And I shall ever follow, carrying the train of Your not-quite-translucent veil, hoping for another brief glimpse of You, beneath it.

Listen, O Isis, to the words of the Veil: “I am offered unto Isis as a kindness to mortals for I am their shield against the awe of the Goddess. Woven of darkness and daylight, the Cosmos itself is the loom upon which I was made. All things are connected to me in warp and woof. Tayet Herself, the Weaver, has made me, a perfect thing. I am the Uniting Mystery Never Quite Revealed. I am the Veil of Isis.”

Unto You, Isis, I offer this veil and all things beautiful and pure. M’den, Iset. Accept it, Isis.

The Veil of the Goddess

A coin with the image of Ptolemaic Queen Berenike II of Egypt with head veil

The phrase “the Veil of Isis” is so common that we might not question where it came from. But perhaps we should. For one thing, ancient Egyptian women generally weren’t veiled so it would be odd to see a Goddess depicted so. Oh, there were headdresses aplenty, but not concealing veils.*

By Ptolemaic times, under Greek influence, we do see veils as head coverings come into use, though they seem more decorative than anything else. Both Greek and Roman images of Isis often include a veil covering the back of the head and hair.

The phrase, Veil of Isis, comes to us from our Greek friend, Plutarch in his essay On Isis and Osiris. In it, he is talking about Egyptian Mysteries. He tells his readers that when the new pharaoh was crowned, he become privy to hidden Egyptian philosophy and notes that the Egyptians’ knowledge of their Deities “holds a mysterious wisdom.” To illustrate his point, he notes a certain seated statue of the Goddess of the Egyptian city of Sais. He says She is Athena “whom they [the Egyptians] consider to be Isis also.” She would, of course, be Neith, the Lady of Sais, Who was indeed assimilated to both Athena and Isis.

The statue bore an inscription: “I am all that was, and is, and shall be, and no mortal hath ever Me unveiled.” It speaks to the all-encompassing power and mystery of the Goddess.

If there was such an image, we have not yet found it. Since Plutarch was writing in the 2nd century CE and the Ptolemies came in long before that, about 300 BCE, it is possible that the image of Neith-Athena-Isis could have been veiled—at least with the decorative-type veil we see in images of some Ptolemaic queens.

Proclus, a Greek philosopher writing in the 5th century CE, also quotes the inscription and adds another line: “The fruit that I have brought forth the Sun has generated.” He doesn’t mention Isis, but rather Neith-Athena and speaks in terms of the Goddess being involved in creation processes, both visible and invisible.

There are a few other ancient references to the veil of Isis. The Greco-Egyptian magical papyri refer to it on several occasions. In one, the magician invokes Isis and asks Her to remove Her veil in order to reveal the future and “shake destiny.” By revealing the Mysteries beneath Her veil, the magician hoped that the Goddess Who was worshiped as Lady of Fate and Fortune could not only predict, but could change or “shake” destiny.

Science unveiling a multi-breasted Nature

Even after the end of the open worship of the Pagan Deities in the Mediterranean, Plutarch and other Greek philosophers continued to be studied. Because of Plutarch’s mention of the inscription in relation to Isis, the idea of the veil of Isis formulated more and more strongly and eventually passed into the annals of the Western Esoteric Tradition. The unveiling of the Goddess became a symbol of the revelation of esoteric secrets, sometimes specifically the revelation of Egyptian secrets.

European esotericists of many kinds came to use the metaphor of the Veil of Isis for the hiding or revealing of their own secrets. By this time, Isis was identified with the Goddess Nature, Who hides Her secrets from those who seek to understand Her.

This idea was particularly important to the alchemists who sought to uncover Nature’s secrets—She Who is Isis and Venus and Ephesian Artemis and the Anima Mundi (World Soul). Freemasons took up the idea of a veiled Isis keeping their own secrets and some even found Egyptian antecedents in their rituals.

A French occult magazine titled the Veil of Isis

The Romantic movement, which rejected what they considered the coldness of the Enlightenment, preferring emotion and imagination, was also developing at this time. For Romantics, Isis’ veil concealed not just the scientific secrets of Nature, but a deeper, unexplainable Mystery that is, at the same time, Ultimate Truth.

Philosophers took up the metaphor as well. Immanuel Kant said of the Saite inscription: “Perhaps no one has said anything more sublime, or expressed a thought more sublimely, than in that inscription on the temple of Isis (Mother Nature).” Influenced by Kant, the physician, playwright, poet, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (what a guy!) tells a tale in which a young initiate rashly removes the Veil from a sacred image of Isis and is found nearly dead the next morning by the wiser priests; apparently, the secret was just too much for him.

Following in those mysterious footsteps, Helena Blavatsky’s 1877 book, Isis Unveiled, is a compendium of occult lore that purports to draw aside the veil of the Goddess for its readers. It continues to influence occultists to this day.

As a metaphor, the Veil of Isis was ubiquitous for centuries. Alchemists, magicians, freemasons, philosophers, scientists, poets, novelists, and visual artists all desired to life Isis’ Veil to discover the deepest secrets and truths, truths about Nature and truths about human beings in Nature.

This post barely scratches the surface of the many ways and places people were inspired by the veil of the Goddess. I’ve expressed some of my thoughts in the Offering at the beginning of this post. What is the Veil of Isis for you?

“Isis, Goddess of Life” on the Herbert Hoover National Historic site. A gift of the people of Belgium in gratitude for Hoover’s famine relief efforts for them in WWI. Engraved on the statue, in French, is,” I am that which was and is and will ever be, and no mortal has yet lifted the veil that covers me.”

* It is possible to see the daily opening and closing of the shrines that held the sacred images of the Egyptian Deities as a kind of unveiling and veiling of the images.

Isis the Great Re-Enchantress

Golden Isis by Jane Marin. You can buy a copy here. — Golden Isis by Jane Marin. Jane no longer has this art on her site, but see other work here.

I missed a post last week, because like so many of us right now, frankly, I was a bit down. Yet, in times like these, when the glamour is off…well…just about everything, this, this is when we need Her more than ever. Isis, the Great Enchantress.

If you’re like me, your social feeds are filled right now with people wanting, longing—demanding even—to celebrate the magic of sad-sweet-mysterious and beautiful October. Our hearts cry out for magic. We need the re-enchantment of our world.

Yet the heart-cry for re-enchantment is not new. We human beings have long complained about the world’s disenchantment. German sociologist Max Weber famously decried it in the early 1900s and before him Freidrich Schiller in the early 1800s. No doubt the discussion goes back much farther than that, too.

I first read the term in the work of Thomas Moore, a psychotherapist, former monk, and spiritual writer. His books, Care of the Soul and The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, were best sellers, which tells us that there are many of us longing to bring the enchantment back. As steps toward re-enchantment, Moore calls us to get away from our self-centeredness and experience the Other, to relinquish some of our literalism to become more poetic, to get out in nature, and to seek out Mystery.

The enchantment of everything—the magic in everything, the magic OF everything—is one of the things I most admire about [probably my personal fantasy of] ancient Egypt, as least as far as we understand it. I love Jeremy Nadler’s interpretation in his book, Temple of the Cosmos, when he writes about the “interpenetrating worlds” of the ancient Egyptians. Spiritual realities are immediate and present because the spiritual world interpenetrates the earthly: “for the ancient Egyptian, a metaphysical world poured into the physical, saturating it with meaning.” Yes. Yes. YES!

My own quest for enchantment is one reason why I describe my spiritual path as Sacred Magic. In practice, this encompasses everything from simply chanting for Isis to a wide range of the expressions of modern Hermeticism (which indeed has its oldest roots in ancient Egypt), including the theurgic rites of magic that are intended to grow our souls and spirits. Of course, it also explains, at least in part, my attraction to Isis, Great of Magic and the Great Enchantress.

Who else would be the Goddess of Re-Enchanting the World but the Great Enchantress Herself? Yet when we see the title in older English translations, “Isis the Great Enchantress” usually translates Iset Werethekau, which we have discussed here. It seems to have been preferred by some of the Old Gentlemen of Egyptology who were perhaps a bit uncomfortable with the squirmy idea of magic and wanted a kinder and gentler epithet for the admirable Goddess Isis.

A badass magic-wielding Isis inspired by the game Smite; this piece is by KalaSketch.

But enchantment has a long magical history. It comes from the idea that acts of magic are often sung or chanted or accompanied by singing or chanting. To be enchanted is to be affected by the magic carried in the chant or song. About 1300 CE, the word enchantment came into English from Old French, which got it from Latin incantare, “to sing into.”

Isis often activates Her magic by voice. The “Hymn to Osiris” in the Book of Coming Forth by Day says of Isis:

She recited formulæ with the magical power of her mouth, being skilled of tongue and never halting for a word, being perfect in command and word, Isis the Magician avenged her brother.

A papyrus in the Louvre says:

Isis. . .who repels the deeds of the enchanters by the spells of her mouth.

And a healing formula in the collection of the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri says the spell will be successful

…according to the voice of Isis, the magician, the lady of magic, who bewitches everything, who is never bewitched in her name of Isis, the magician.”

In the second example above, Professor Robert Ritner, who has studied Egyptian magic and its vocabulary extensively, translated the Egyptian word shed-kheru as “enchanters.” “Shed” means “to enchant” and “kheru” is “coming/going forth” as in peret kheru, an invocation offering, the “going forth of the voice.” Shed-kheru then is something like “those who send forth enchantments by voice.” Shed seems to have been a specialized form of “to recite” and was used both in magical formulae and in temple ritual texts. When the Creatrix Goddess Neith spoke the cosmos into existence, She shed, “recited,” Her akhu, “spells.”

Especially on His healing cippi, Horus is sometimes called Horus-Shed, “Horus the Enchanter.” And yes, you are way ahead of me again. Of course, Isis, too, is called The Enchanter. In Her case (feminized), it is Iset ta Shetyet. In fact, we have a handful of instances of that name being applied to Isis. And so it seems that Isis is indeed The Enchantress and I shall have to retract my previous snark at the Old Gentlemen.

Chanting, singing, and music were a vital part of the worship of the ancient Egyptian Deities. By the time of the New Kingdom, the most common sacred title for women was Chantress or Singer of the Deity. These priestesses served both Goddesses and Gods, providing the songs and music that raised and channeled the energy of the sacred rites.

The Mereti, a dual form of Merit, one for upper and one for lower Egypt

The Divine archetype behind this ritual role was the Goddess Merit or Meret, Whose name means “The Beloved.” With Her song, music, and magical gestures, Merit took part in the Creation. Daily, Her song greets the dawn and in kingship rites Merit encourages the king to bring good things to his kingdom, commanding him to, “Come, bring!” In this role of speaker and singer, Merit and the priestesses who represented Her—and in some cases, bore Her name as a title—were called “Great of Praise.” This was not meant to indicate that the priestess herself was praiseworthy (though she may have been). Instead, it meant that her praise—that is, the hymns she sang and the words she spoke—were words that had effect. Just as the words of Isis, the Lady of Words of Power, are ritually efficacious, so the words of Merit are ritually efficacious.

Much of the magic of the ancient Egyptians was focused on the idea of renewal, rebirth, and reconnecting to the perfection of the First Time. For us today, perhaps we should add a fourth to those three r’s: re-enchantment. As we work to renew and restore the world around us, it may be that our inner work is to renew our own magical perception of the world, re-enchanting ourselves from the inside out. And I’m quite sure that a chanted incantation to Isis the Enchantress wouldn’t hurt either.

Ahwere & the Magic Book

I was researching something else and was reminded of this Egyptian story. It’s a classic type of ancient tale. Yes, magic is involved. Isis and Thoth are involved. And dead people are involved.

It is usually called Setne and the Magic Book. It’s the one where the son of Rameses the Great, Setne Kaemweset, learns of a previous prince, Naneferkaptah, who aspired to magical knowledge and had discovered a magic book locked inside a series of chests and sunk in the bottom of the river. And now the son of Rameses, also a glutton for magical knowledge, wants it for himself.

I’d seen reference to that story again and again over the years, but I’d never read the whole thing. Turns out the tale is much more interesting than I’d thought. For one thing, the main story-within-a-story is being told by a woman, Ahwere, the daughter of King Mernebptah and wife of Naneferkaptah. What’s more, she’s dead when she’s telling it.

The tale has five separate sections: the story of how Setne gets the book, loses everything, has a strange adventure with the daughter of a priest of Bast, and eventually learns his lesson and returns the book.

For today’s Isiopolis, I’d like to tell you Ahwere’s tale. It comes from the Ptolemaic period, but as historical fiction, it refers back to a much earlier time. There is only one extant copy of this story. I’m using a translation by Flinders Petrie. The first part of the story is lost, but can be guessed from other information in the story.

The ka of Ahura warns Setna — The ka of Ahwere warns Setna

Setne and his brother search for and discover the tomb of the former prince, Naneferkaptah, who was supposed to have this most amazing magical book. But when they get to the tomb, they find the kas of the prince, his wife, the princess Ahwere, and their child, Merib, quite present in the tomb. Ahwere warns them away from seeking the book of magic as she relates her tale:

The princess starts by explaining that she and Naneferkaptah were the only children of the king and he loved them both very much. When they were grown, the king decided to marry them to the children of one of his generals. But the queen objected and said the siblings should be married to each other.

The next paragraph is a bit unclear but is a bantering exchange between Ahwere and her father. Apparently Ahwere, too, wanted to marry her elder brother, Naneferkaptah, and had sent a message to her father saying so. He played grumpy, then they both laughed and Ahwere got her way.

She and Naneferkaptah were married. They loved one another and Ahwere soon became pregnant with their child. The king was happy and sent precious gifts. When Ahwere bore her child, he was named Merib, meaning Beloved Heart, and his name was registered in a book in the House of Life.

Naneferkaptah was very keen to learn from the ancient writings and spent much time reading in the Memphis cemetery and deciphering the sacred inscriptions on the monuments. One day, a priest saw him at his work and laughed at him. The priest said that what the prince was working so hard at was worthless compared to the magic book the priest knew of, which was written by Thoth Himself and which “will bring you to the Gods.”

An artistic imagining of an Egyptian priest magician making offering

The priest told Naneferkaptah that—quoting here—”When you read but two pages in this, you will enchant the heaven, the earth, the abyss, the mountains, and the sea; you shall know what the birds of the sky and the crawling things are saying; you shall see the fishes of the deep, for a divine power is there to bring them up out of the depth. And when you read the second page, if you are in the world of ghosts, you will become again in the shape you were in on earth. You will see the sun shining in the sky, with all the gods, and the full moon.”

Well, Naneferkaptah was completely excited and promised the priest whatever he wanted if only he would tell Naneferkaptah where the book was. The priest wanted enough silver so that he could have a rich funeral, a wish the prince readily and easily granted.

So the priest told him, “This book is in the middle of the river at Koptos, in an iron box; in the iron box is a bronze box; in the bronze box is a sycamore box; in the sycamore box is an ivory and ebony box; in the ivory and ebony box is a silver box; in the silver box is a golden box; and in that is the book. It is twisted all round with snakes and scorpions and all the other crawling things around the box in which the book is; and there is a deathless snake by the box.”

Setne demands the magic book from Ahwere and Naneferkaptah

Then Ahwere says, “And when the priest told Naneferkaptah, he did not know where on earth he was, he was so much delighted.”

She, however, was not happy about her husband’s desire and felt a sense of foreboding. But the prince would not be dissuaded. Taking the royal boat, Ahwere, and Merib with him, the prince sailed to Koptos.

There was a temple of Isis in Koptos and so all the Isis priests came to meet the arrival of the royal boat. The priests entertained the prince and the wives of the priests entertained Ahwere. And so they feasted and “made holiday” with the priests of Isis and their wives.

After four days, the prince was ready to go after his prize. He had apparently learned enough magic that he could create a crew of magical workmen and tools from wax. The prince “put life into” the boat and crew and sent the magical workers off to find the book in the river.

This they did. The book was enclosed and guarded just as the priest had said it would be. Naneferkaptah put a spell on the magical guardians and fought the “deathless snake,” finally cutting him to bits and placing sand between the pieces so they could not rejoin.

The prince opened chest after chest, finally finding the book. He read it and—as promised—he could enchant the heavens and all the rest of the promised powers were his. So he had the magical workmen take him back to where Ahwere waited for him, in her words, sitting “like one who is gone to the grave.”

Now this next part, I found very interesting. Ahwere herself asks to read the book. She does so and she, too, can now enchant the heavens and has gained all the other powers as well. Ahwere can read, but she cannot write, which is needed for the next part of the magic. So she asks Naneferkaptah, who is an excellent scribe, to write everything on the book down on papyrus so that he could dip it in beer, then drink the dissolved words, and thereby know everything that was in them forever.

So back they go to Koptos and “make a feast with Isis of Koptos and Harpokrates.” But by now, Thoth had learned of the theft of His book and the killing of His magical guardians, which really kinda pissed Him off. So Re decrees that Naneferkaptah and all his kin could be killed. Ouch.

And so tragedy strikes. First the child Merib falls in the water and drowns. His father magically brings the body up and enchants the child so he can say what happened. Thus Naneferkaptah and Ahwere learn of Thoth’s anger. They return to Koptos, have their child embalmed and buried, and head back to Memphis.

But on the way back, the same thing next happens to Ahwere. She drowns, is magically brought up, then embalmed and buried in Koptos.

Naneferkaphah drowns himself with the magic book

With such disaster befalling his family, Naneferkaptah could not return alive to his father, the king. Tying the book to himself, he drowns himself in the river. None of the crew knew where he was, so they returned to Memphis and related the entire sorry story to the king.

In mourning, the king and his court went to the boat, only to find the body of Naneferkaptah in the inner cabin of the boat—still dead—but at least available for proper rites and burial, which the king has done.

The king also orders the magic book hidden once more. Ahwere concludes, “I have now told you the sorrow which has come upon us because of this book.”

Oh course, Setne still wants the book (he is being quite unwise) and he contests with the ka of Naneferkaptah to get it. The ka of the great magician actually wins the contests, but with the help of the God Ptah and some additional magic, the brother of Setne (remember him?) brings Setne back.

The story of Setna and his further adventures with Naneferkaptah and Ahwere continue, but this post is long enough for now and I’ll tell that on another day.

There are a number of interesting things about this story. Importantly, it is told by a woman. She is no mere appendage, but a main player. We should also note that through Ahwere’s body is in Koptos, which is a LONG way from Memphis, her ka is still present with her husband in his tomb. It is also interesting that Ahwere can read, but not write. So even a princess did not necessarily learn to write. You can also see some of the main mechanisms of Egyptian magic: magical servants, magical guardians, consuming the words of a spell to integrate the magic into yourself, necromancy, and of course, the power-conferring magical book itself. It was also interesting to see the involvement of the priesthood of Isis and Harpokrates in Koptos. In my fantasy version of the tale, they would warn the prince of his coming folly. But I guess you don’t mess with a royal on a mission.

New article in The Light Extended

Hello, all! I am very happy to let you know that I have an article in the upcoming book, The Light Extended, A Journal of the Golden Dawn. It will be out sometime in June. In addition to my article, you’ll also find work from Chic & Tabatha Cicero, Adam Forrest, Tony Fuller, Darcy Kuntz, Samuel Scarborough, Frater YSHY, Jayne Gibson, Alex Sumner, Soror DPF, Frater D, and Frater Yechidah. Such Adept company!

I’m so pleased that this article is being published because it’s been a long time coming. I wrote it a number of years ago for a different book that didn’t happen. For this one, the article has been updated and edited. I hope you’ll like it. It’s titled “I Have Put On the Cloak of the Great Lady; I Am the Great Lady”: The Assumption of Godforms and the Key to Egyptian Magic. Here’s a bit from the introduction:

I am in the retinue of Hathor, the most august of the Gods, and She gives me power over my foes who are in the Island of Fire. I have put on the cloak of the Great Lady, and I am the Great Lady. I am not inert, I am not destroyed, and nothing evil will come to pass against me. I am the Great One Who Came Forth From Re, I was conceived and borne by Shesmetet, and I have come that I may weave the dress for my mistress. The dress is woven by Horus and Thoth and by Osiris and Atum; and indeed I am Horus and Thoth, I am Osiris and Atum.
Formula 485, the Coffin Texts

A series of Coffin Texts dealing with the weaving and wearing of the cloak of Hathor is among the clearest examples in Egyptian magic of what is most-often known today as the Assumption of Godforms. As in the example above, the deceased puts on the cloak of Hathor and becomes Hathor. He is both the weaver and the wearer of the magical covering of the Goddess—Her “cloak,” “dress,” or astral form.

Art seems to capture the Assumption of God/dessforms best; this is *The Lotus Soul* by Frantisek Kupka, 1898. This is what the energy feels like to me.

The Assumption of God/dessforms may well be the most powerful magical technique human beings have available—in this or the afterlife. It was one of the vital keys to ancient Egyptian magic and it can still be a key to the working of powerful, sacred magic today.

We will look at how the ancient Egyptians may have developed this important technique, how they used it, and how it passed into the Western Esoteric Tradition. We will see how and why the technique was largely lost to us until being re-discovered and reconnected with its Egyptian roots by the magicians of the Golden Dawn at the end of the 19th century. Then, readers who would like to try this ancient technique for themselves are invited to use the brief ritual at the end of this article. It combines classical Egyptian and Hermetic theurgic formulae to assist you in Assuming the Godform of Amun, a Deity Who may be considered the God of God/dessforms.

I’ll let you know when it’s available!

Isis & the Re-enchantment of the World

Golden Isis by Jane Marin. You can buy a copy here.

As those of you who have been reading along know, I rarely comment on the ongoing discussions in the Pagan blogosphere. But this week, I am inspired by some current posts and commentary about the “re-enchantment of the world” over on Patheos Pagan and Witches and Pagans. I believe the discussion was started by John Beckett, whose work I often admire and who has written on this topic previously. Others added their own thoughts: Galina Krasskova: Re-Enchanting the World; Sara Amis: The World Isn’t Disenchanted. It’s You; Ivo Dominguez Jr.: Already Enchanted.

The disenchanted Max Weber

The God Heka, “Magic”

You have probably also seen Isis described by the lovely title, “the Great Enchantress.” Who else would be the Goddess of Re-Enchanting the World but the Great Enchantress Herself? Yet when we see the title in older English translations, “Isis the Great Enchantress” usually translates Iset Werethekau, which we have discussed here. It seems to have been preferred by some of the Old Gentlemen of Egyptology who were perhaps a bit uncomfortable with the squirmy idea of magic and wanted a kinder and gentler epithet for the admirable Goddess Isis.

A badass magic-wielding Isis inspired by the game Smite; this piece is by KalaSketch

But enchantment has a long magical history. It comes from the idea that acts of magic are often sung or chanted or at least accompanied by singing or chanting. To be enchanted is to be affected by the magic carried in the chant or song. About 1300 CE, the word enchantment came into English from Old French, which got it from Latin incantare, “to sing into.”

Isis often activates Her magic by voice. The “Hymn to Osiris” in the Book of Coming Forth by Day says of Isis:

She recited formulæ with the magical power of her mouth, being skilled of tongue and never halting for a word, being perfect in command and word, Isis the Magician avenged her brother.

A papyrus in the Louvre says:

Isis. . .who repels the deeds of the enchanters by the spells of her mouth.

And a healing formula in the collection of the magical papyri says the spell will be successful

…according to the voice of Isis, the magician, the lady of magic, who bewitches everything, who is never bewitched in her name of Isis, the magician.”

The Goddess Merit

The Mereti, a dual form of Merit, one for upper and one for lower Egypt

The Divine archetype behind this ritual role was the Goddess Merit or Meret, Whose name means “The Beloved.” With Her song, music, and magical gestures, Merit took part in the Creation. Daily, Her song greets the dawn and in kingship rites Merit encourages the king to bring good things to his kingdom, commanding him to, “Come, bring!” In this role of speaker and singer, Merit and the priestesses who represented Her—and in some cases, bore Her name as a title—were called “Great of Praise.” This was not meant to indicate that the priestess herself was praiseworthy (though she may have been). Instead, it meant that her praise—that is, the hymns she sang and the words she spoke—were words that had effect in the Divine realms. Just as the words of Isis, the Lady of Words of Power, are ritually efficacious, so the words of Merit are ritually efficacious.

Much of the magic of the ancient Egyptians was focused on the idea of renewal, rebirth, and reconnecting to the perfection of the First Time. For ourselves today, perhaps we should add to those three “r”s, a fourth: re-enchantment. As we work to renew and restore the world around us, it may be that our inner work is to renew our own magical perception of the world, re-enchanting ourselves from the inside out. And I’m quite sure that a chanted incantation to Isis the Enchantress wouldn’t hurt either.

Litha’s Coming

I woke up this morning aware that we're only a few weeks out from Litha, the longest day of the year. Here in my corner of the myth-crammed MidAtlantic, the period from Yule to Imbolc seems very long, and then, from Imbolc until Beltane, although things speed up, it seems as if I still spend much of the time looking, hoping, dreaming, wishing: focused on every tiny sign of Spring, turning the appearance of a single snowdrop or a haze of green on the bleached-bone frames of the beech trees into a cause for celebration. And then, ABRACADABRA, it's here and time seems to speed by.

It's likely my Swedish ancestors dancing the spiral dance in my DNA, but I have to admit that I love, best of all, these long, long, long sunlit days. In Sweden, I read once, no one sleeps when the sun near the Arctic Circle stay up in the sky all day. People have late picnics in the woods and gather berries and get in boats to row across to Denmark to get beer. I don't really care whether or not it's "factual"; in my cosmology, it's "true" and I've picked those berries and rowed those boats often and often sitting at my altar or knitting sweaters in the dark of deep Winter. Something about Litha connects me deeply to that place where "I've" never been.

This time of year is, as well, an amazing time to just sit out in the evening and enjoy the garden. The voodoo lilies are just finishing up. The magnolias that worried me so and over which I did so much magic are in bloom, an embarrassment of lemon, vanilla, and gloss. The herbs are almost out of control. The Dutch iris have replaced the bearded iris. The astilbe is a white, lacy froth of abundance; the gardenias are still going strong, and the day lilies have giant buds that will open any day now. I should have lilies -- Casa Blanca and Adios Nonino -- in a few more days.

Soon, too soon, the days will start to get a bit shorter, but the daisies and black-eyed susans will show up, the sunflowers will exult, and the purple obedient flowers will make the bees and hummingbirds happy.

And then, and then, but, no, I'm not going to go there -- yet.

For now, I'm going to sit in my twilit garden, smell the magnolias and gardenias, listen to the birds, watch the wisteria bushes creep towards each other on the top of the garden shed, and store all of this up. It's an old magic that I do, creating the ability to get myself through those hard-as-iron February days when I've seen nothing blooming for months and I know that I still have a ways to go. I'll release them the way you release any spell from the magic bottle into which you crammed and stoppered it, set aside for when it's needed.

I shan't be gone long. You come, too.

Picture found here.

Printing Prayers on Water

In Becoming Animal, An Earthly Cosmology, David Abram writes:

[At a gompa, the resident lama] took my hand and led me down a long trail to the river, so I could watch his two students as they worked with temple woodblocks artfully carved with Tibetan ritual verses. Normally these precious woodblocks were used to print out liturgical books. But now -- amazingly! -- the students were stamping the wood-blocks over and over into the flowing surface of the river, so that the water would carry those printed prayers to the many lands through which it traveled on its long way to the Indian Ocean.

Here, remarkably, was a culture wherein written letters were not used merely as a record of words once spoken, or as a score for oral speech, but as efficacious forces in their own right. The letters were not just passive signs, but energetic agents actively affecting the space around them. Whether written on the page of a book or carved into woodblocks, whether etched into standing stones or printed on flags, the Tibetan letters held a power that could be activated not only by human beings but by insects crawling through their cracks, and by water flowing along their shapes, and even by the breeze gusting across them. Human intentions, carried in dreams and prayers, mingled here with the intentions of stones, trees, and rivers. Clearly, "mind" in this mountain region was not a human possession; it was a power proper to every part of the elemental field.

It's common at some point in the training of almost every Witch or magic worker to hear that "words have power." We say it and then we move on. IMHO, it's one of those "basic teachings that are too basic for beginners"; one needs to keep coming back to this precept over and over, spiraling back and learning it more dimensionally each time.

It's part of the reason that I love poetry and promote it regularly to my (mostly) Pagan readers and it's part of the reason that boring, repetitive, bland calling of the Elements drives my priestess soul insane. It's why I'll go to the wall over the need for magical workings to have clearly stated intentions. (If you can't state it clearly, there's a pretty good chance that you've not thought it out, clearly, either. The one tends to foster the other. And I'm too respectful of magic to go releasing energy at some vague, misunderstood target.) And it's the reason why I go on and on about the importance of how we frame issues. When we mingle our intentions with those of stones, trees, and rivers, we owe it to those other entities to use one of our tools -- language -- as respectfully and as skillfully as possible.

What power do you find in words?

Picture found here.

Elegant

I'm thinking a lot lately about "elegance," not only in terms of my own professional writing and the writing of the young lawyers that I mentor, but also in terms of my magic and my life. I've been particularly struck by this interview with Matthew E. May, the author of Elegance and the Art of Less: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing.

May says:

Something is elegant if it is two things at once: unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. One without the other leaves you short of elegant. And sometimes the “unusual simplicity” isn’t about what’s there, it’s about what isn’t. At first glance, elegant things seem to be missing something.

I really love that notion in terms of magic. "Unusually simple and surprisingly powerful."

One of the strongest, best magics that I ever did, one of the ones with which I'll be glad to face my ancestors, I did with my brilliant friend E. We wound up at the house of some serious activists, who were due in court the next day for, well, for speaking truth to power. We didn't know that we were going to be asked to do magic that evening and we walked off into the kitchen, away from the hub-bub of a loud, busy, party, and stared at each other for a few minutes. The people who'd asked us to work magic weren't Pagans or Witches and really didn't know what to expect from us, but were desperate and they asked us for help. They needed for it to be effective, esp. on the level of their Younger Child, so that they could walk into court (scary for anybody) and be confident. And so we looked into each others' eyes -- we'd been, thank the Goddess, doing magic together for years at this point -- and said, "Well, if they can give us a bowl, some salt, and some water, and if we can . . . ." And it all came together and it was more simple than almost any self-respecting magic worker ever worked and, most important of all, the next day, when the judge ruled, the magic, which had been unusually simple, was also surprisingly powerful and the activists walked.

Elegance, I want to say, matters. And, although life is messy, an elegant life is unusually simple and surprisingly powerful. Like good legal writing, like good magic, an elegant life takes two things. The first is a blindingly clear objective. And the second is ruthless editing. Like good real estate, which is location, location, location or like getting to Carnegie Hall, which takes practice, practice, practice -- elegance takes editing, editing, editing. Take things out. Remove the extraneous (which requires you to know the essential). Get down (as we do in Winter in the garden) to the bones. The more time that I have to work on a legal pleading, the shorter and simpler it will be. And that's what, IMHO, makes good magic -- and a good life -- as well. Get rid of stuff. Figure out, in Shilo's words, "Who is it in me I am excited about letting go?" Discover how, in Theodora's words, to travel light. What can you chip away from the stone to reveal the sculpture hidden inside? What are you willing to give up? What is it that you hold essential to find?

A Spell for a New Decade

Respect for our planet.

Time outside in nature for our children.

Clean water.

Local produce.

Jobs for those who want to work.

Love of poetry.

A place for women.

Respect for wisdom, education, knowledge, experience.

A warm spot at the fire for Grandmothers.

An understanding, much greater than we've had, that we are all connected. Actions based upon that understanding.

A transformative woman president.

A much better role for men and fathers in our culture.

Gardens.

Trees.

More salmon.

Councils of women.

Co-ops that grow sunflowers to remove toxins from the soil.

Circles.

Women who use technology and social media to work magic.

A serious progressive movement.

An end to the duality and other evils of patriarchy. Bye-bye.

A free press.

Stories that are true.

A focus on ensuring that mothers' milk is safe. Everything else: second.

The rule of law. No, really.

Retirement for old women.

(Feel free to add your own.)

Picture found here.

Have a Fantastic Solstice. No, Really.

From Strategic Sorcery:

Now you may not know this about me, but I am the mythic Yuleclipse Fairy. I need you to know a few things.

Tuesday is a lunar eclipse. It will be visible from most of North America

Tuesday is also the Winter Solstice - the longest night.

Tuesday is the first night that a lunar eclipse has occured on a Winter Solstice in 456 years.

Tuesday is the day that you will be outside doing magic.

If you don't do something I will know and I will be displeased. You don't want to piss me off. Just get your lazy ass out there and meditate, cast a spell, dance a jig, do something!

You should read the whole thing.

Picture found here.

Magic

About two decades ago, I was doing something v difficult and, one evening when things seemed most difficult, I got a blast of energy from my future that sustained me and got me through the rough time. It taught me more than I can say about sending magic backwards and forwards in time, something that I've been doing ever since.

And, last night, I lived the night that generated that blast of energy and knew that I was sending it to my not-yet-40-year-old-self on that long night in the past. Turns out that, when it came time to send that energy back, it was the easiest thing in the world to do. It's all good.

Picture found here.

Calling the Elements

I've been thinking a lot lately (well, it's sad; you get old, your mind wanders down strange pathways, but at least I've been thinking about this in between v practical issues for a rather demanding appellate brief; my job does do wonderful things for me) about the role that Calling the Elements really plays in Wiccan ritual. Coming, generally, at the beginning of the ritual, I think that Calling the Elements serves a role greater than the sum of its parts.

By that, I mean that Calling the Elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water! Come be with me; I'm your daughter. Air, Fire, Water, Earth! To my better self now give birth. Fire, Water, Earth, and Air! Bring me now the power to dare. Water, Earth, Air, and Fire! I call you now with all my desire.) is one of the parts of ritual that speaks most clearly to Younger Child and, as a result, can, when well-done, lead us quickly into that space between the worlds where magic is, indeed, possible. And when done perfunctorily, or as an afterthought, or as an Oh-Shit-I-Volunteered-to-Call-Water-and-then-Forgot-about-It-Well-Let-Me-Start-Babbling-About-Flow-and-Drops-Coming-Together-and-Hope-this-Works (I've been totally guilty of this), it can put a damper on the entire ritual, can make it that much more difficult for the magic to happen.

Younger Child, at least as I conceive of Her, is that part of us that responds to poetic language, to symbol, to things just below the level of language and conscious thought. It's funny (well, funny-strange, not funny-ha-ha, except in the sense that the Universe and I have, for almost 55 years, been having grand jokes on each other and then, of course, it's also funny-ha-ha) that, for many years after reading and understanding (intellectually) the concept of Younger Child, what I said to myself was: "But I'm deficient in this area. I'm too left-brained to have much of a Younger Child. If I see a sigil, I translate it into words and turn that task over to Talking Self, so, really, I don't have much of a Younger Child."

And, then, somehow, I remembered the first time that, as a child, I somehow wound up in a v nice section of a v nice restaurant. My memory is foggy about how this happened: I was the oldest of five kids in a working-class family and we didn't spend much time in any restaurant, much less one that wasn't (a special treat) a McDonald's. But I have this vague sensory impression of being in such a place, of reveling in the way that sounds were muffled there and that empty space provided room for one's being to expand. Once I made the association between that impression and the way that it made me feel as if maybe I could be who I'd always meant to be (this is shallow, I know; so is Younger Child), dozens of similar impressions came flooding back to me.

The way that great architecture has always made me feel. The way that fountains instantly make joy bubble up within me. The way that wearing elegant, well-fitting clothes has always changed the way that I move, the things that I say, the way that I feel towards others. The feelings of both groundedness and airiness that the scent of lilacs can induce in me. Copeland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The way that a man's cologne can make me weak in the knees. Poetry.

So, I'm a slow learner; it took me a long time to get in touch with my own Younger Self; the one who didn't get much validation from my writer-father or my left-brained, Vatican II Catholic education. And, yet, once I did, I quit worrying about whether or not a sigil or rune induced anything within me and began to focus on the many ways that my Younger Self could be induced to feel comfortable, expand, do magic, invoke what I needed.

And, so. Here's Margaret Roach, in A Way to Garden, discussing the element of Air:

Where I live, I’d have to count wind—not cold, despite my Zone 5-ish climate—as the most destructive force in the garden, bringing down or splitting apart woody plants when it roars, and desiccating evergreens in winter. Particularly when it combines with or follows drought, as it is this year, it’s a force to be reckoned with.

For now, all that means is a few stray sycamore leaves (Platanus occidentalis). We’ll see what . . . other tricks it has in mind this winter. Batten down the hatches, won’t you?

Can you invoke Air more powerfully for your next ritual? I'd love to see it in comments.

Picture found here.

Do It

Why Magic Works — And Why It Takes Work

[The Second Law of Thermodynamics] has been simply summarized as follows: "The more complex a structure, the more energy it must dissipate to maintain all that complexity. This flux of energy make the system highly unstable, subject to internal fluctuations -- and sudden change. If these fluctuations or perturbations reach a critical size, they are amplified by the system's many connections and can drive the system into a new state -- even more ordered, coherent, and connected. The new state occurs as a sudden shift."

~Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize Winner, quoted in The Possible Human by Jean Houston.

Picture found here.

Dark of the Moon, New Beginnings

Dark Moon tonight. New beginnings. Dark of the Moon, plant a seed tonight. Dark of the Moon. What we envision, will come to be in the Full Moon's light.

What new thing are you working on?

What do you envision that will come to be in the Full Moon's light?

My goals for the coming Moon are pretty prosaic: I'm going to add two workouts with weights a week to my now-already-pretty-well-established-daily treadmill walking. (I'm an old woman. Suddenly, that whole weight-training-can-fight-inflamation-and-thus-stave-off-arthritis-stuff (given the pain in my hands from knitting the last couple of cowls) is starting to sound pretty good to me.) If I don't show up this same time next month and tell you that I've done 8 sessions at the gym, well, now that I've made it public, no worries, I'll do it. I'm working, too, on a commitment that I made a while back at an important ritual: I'm going to get out more and do more "fun" stuff, even if it is getting cold and even if I do have a ton of get-ready-for-Winter stuff to do in my garden. (Yes, fun can be very important. Especially if you're the oldest-daughter-super-achiever-type-A-introverted Queen of the To-Do List.) This weekend, I'm debating between this, a trip to one of my favorite places, a browsing (and, OK, a yarn-for-Yule-projects-buying) trip to my favorite yarn store, and listening to Congressional staffers gossip about the new Congress at Hawk & Dove.

What would you do if you had promised to go do something just for fun?

Picture found here.

Prone to Pronoia

Thrive

Christine Kane:

"Ask yourself: What does 'thrive' mean to you?"

What does it mean today?

If yourself from a year from now were to visit you today, what one change would you really wish that you'd gone ahead and made?

"Thrive" is a key magic word for me. One simple spell I often do is to use it as a password for various accounts, websites, etc. I've long used the 9 of Pentacles as a meditation on this point.

But, first, you have to figure out what "thriving" means.

What does it mean to you?

Picture found here.

Post Script: I spent today at home, working w/ Landscape Guy and his crew, doing some serious practical magic in my yard. If you'd asked me some time ago what thriving would look like for me, today would have been a good examplar. I want to get Landscape Guy a really nice Greenman, either a plaque or a statue or a talisman. Not a tacky one. If anyone can suggest a source, I'd be grateful.

The Goddess of Willendorf

In Search of the Feminine Divine