Author: A Solitary Pagan

If there is one spell that we like to use above all others in Briar Rose, it is this one. It is an old crafting that was used throughout Britain, though it is best documented in the Silver Bough, a wonderful collection of folklore and practices from Scotland. Traditionally, this was performed at a well that was sacred to a local saint. The idea was to take your coin and a rag or length of rope, an...

Malicious acts attributed to witches and sorcerers in times past that caused harm or death to humans, animals or crops. Since antiquity, witches, sorcerers and magicians have been said to cast negative spells against others out of revenge, spite or malice. During the medieval witch-hunting craze, maleficia implied a Devil’s pact and was used to explain virtually any natural disaster, accident, ill...

The answer to that question can only be answered by you. The word witch means “wise person” so if you are interested in energy work, the pursuit of enlightenment, and learning traditions of the old ways across the globe, you might just be a witch. A few factors that might signal a calling to witchcraft include a deep connection and compassion for nature and wildlife, an interest in the...

One of the witches’ most important basic beliefs, obviously, is the realityand possibility of magic. (See MAGIC.) This involves the idea that thephysical world is only part of reality, the part that we are able to apprehend with our five senses. Beyond are vaster realms; and in these thewitch seeks to venture. This, again, involves a further belief, namely thathuman beings have more senses t...

The late Lewis Spence, who was an authority on Ancient Mexico and also on the subject of Atlantis, made an extraordinary discovery, relevant to the history of the witch cult, in a pre-Columbian manuscript. This native Mexican painting, known as the Codex Fejervary-Mayer, shows quite unmistakably, a picture of a naked witch wearing a pointed hat and riding on a broomstick. Spence stated in his Ency...

A tho is the name given to a carved head of the horned god of witchcraft, owned by Mr. Raymond Howard of Norfolk. In 1930, when Mr. Howard was a boy, he lived with relations on a farm in Norfolk. Here he met an old lady called Alicia Franch, who lived with the Gypsies or Romanys. She took an interest in the boy, whom she first met when he was playing by a roadside pond on the day of the summer sol...

The black-handled knife that is the traditional witches’ weapon. It is used for drawing the magic circle and for controlling and banishing spirits. The use by witches of a magical weapon of this kind is very ancient. A picture upon a Greek vase of circa 200 B.C. shows two naked witches engaged in ‘drawing down the moon’, that is, invoking the powers of the moon to aid in their ma...

Belief in the astral plane is part of the common heritage of occult philosophy which is shared by witch and ceremonial magician alike. The word ‘astral’ is derived from the Latin astrum, a star. It was used by medieval occultists to designate that super-physical medium by means of which the influence of the heavenly bodies was conveyed to the earth, and affected all things upon it. In ...

Lucius Apuleius is best known to us as the author of The Golden Ass, one of the most famous romances in the world, containing as it does the story of Cupid and Psyche. His importance to the study of witchcraft rests on the fact that The Golden Ass is a romance of witchcraft, and illustrates the beliefs which were held about witches in the pre-Christian world. This work of Apuleius proves that witc...