Author: A Solitary Pagan

This greasy, trance-inducing substance was traditionally made of hallucinogenic (and often fatal) herbs that had been boiled in pig fat and then strained. It was called “green salve” or “witches’ ointment” and it some of the stock ingredients (solinicaeds) caused a “flying” sensation as the hallucination began — hence the popular image of the flying witch. Great care had to be taken in preparing t...

This ritual was one of fasting to aid concentration, for some particular purpose. It was alleged to have been used by Mabel Brigge, who was executed for witchcraft at York in 1 538. The fast involved abstaining from meat, milk, and all food made with milk. During the period of the fast, the witch concentrated all her mental energy and will-power upon some particular object. This was usually to cau...

Traditional witchcraft is an umbrella term that includes many traditions. Essentially traditional witches are practitioners of forms of witchcraft that pre-date Wicca and new age practices. Some of these traditions may be passed down as family traditions, whilst others are cultural, where witches follow the traditions of their own or a specific culture. Traditional witchcraft is based on the tradi...

Between earthly incarnations, witches believe the soul rests in the Land of Faery, a pagan paradise like the Celtic Tir-Nan-Og, the Landof the Young. Many references to this pagan otherworld can be found in British and Celtic legend. It is a very different place from the Christian heaven, involving no harps, haloes nor golden gates, but a country like the old dreams of Arcady. It is conceived of a...

Our first steps on the path of Witchcraft require us to connect to the earth and at least wonder about its inherent value. Could the earth, its seasons, and the natural realm really have value beyond material or monetary advantage? Could it be (as indigenous people across the globe say) “sacred?” What does sacred mean? In Witchcraft, the term refers to something that is holy or that has a direct r...

It has been said by a thoughtful writer that the subject of witchcraft has hardly received that place which it deserves in the history of opinions. There has been, of course, a reason for this neglect—the fact that the belief in witchcraft is no longer existent among intelligent people and that its history, in consequence, seems to possess rather an antiquarian than a living interest. No one can t...

This exercise makes use of what is called the Book of Elements. It’s going to be one of your primary grimoires. The technique is commonly used by most of the occultists whom I have known (myself included), and it works on the premise that practitioners will consistently work at erasing any mundaneconditioning complexes that inhibit their ability to concentrate on, and control, whatever they do wit...

Exercise 1 1. Choose a quiet place where you will not be interrupted. If you are working the technique alone, you will need pencil and paper. If you are working with someone else, they will need the pencil and paper. They will question you and record the replies. 2. Write at the top of one side of the page, What I Want. Under that, write the numbers one through twenty down the page. 3. Write at th...

A witch is either a woman or a man who knows that he or she is a witch. A witch is a natural. A witch realizes certain powers; represents, rather than worships them; calls them Goddess and God (without it being a fixed, or boxed, ideology) and invokes them; fuses with them emotes and lives them; recognizes them in the vast forces of nature and beyond that (within other frames of reference). Witche...

The cauldron, like the broomstick and the black cat, is one of the features of any scene of witchcraft as pictured in the popular mind. Some of the belief derives from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, where the witches’ cauldron is introduced on the stage, with its accompanying dances and incantations. Actors regard Macbeth, because of the witch-scenes in it, as an unlucky and uncanny play. However, th...