Author: A Solitary Pagan

Footprints are reputed to contain the essence of a person and may be used in magical charms and spells. Dust or dirt taken from a footprint may be used to obtain power over the person who made the print, just as clippings of hair and nails, bits of clothing, urine and excrement are believed to have magical potential. In the lore of Lithuania, footprint dirt buried in a graveyard will cause someone...

The symbol of the “sabbatic goat,” portrayed as a half-human, half-goat figure, or a goat head. The origin of the name Baphomet is unclear. It may be a corruption of Mahomet. The English witchcraft historian Montague Summers suggested it was a combination of two Greek words, baphe and metis, meaning “absorption of knowledge.” Baphomet has also been called the Goat of Mendes, the Black Goat and the...

In Orphic tradition the Nativity, Epiphany or birth (Genethlia) of Dionysus is celebrated in the evening of 24th December, and is the beginnng of 12 days of ritual worship of Dionysus the Saviour, and with each day one of the Olympian Gods (and their Divine Consorts) is also honoured. In Orphic myth, Dionysus has two (or three) births hence He is known variously as the Twiceborn (Digonon) or Thric...

This is the old Scottish name given to anything a witch used to fly on. Contrary to popular belief, the instrument of the witches’ legendary flights through the air was by no means always a broomstick. The earliest accounts often refer to a forked wand, or simply a staff, which is given to the witch when she is initiated, together with a vessel of ointment, the witches’ unguent; and it is the latt...

The Ooser was written about in Doreen Valiente’s ABC’s of Witchcraft and in Margaret Murray’s The God of the Witches. It was a hollow mask made of painted wood, trimmed with fur, and crowned with bull’s horns. The lower jaw of the Ooser was movable, and it possessed a strange convex boss on its forehead. Valiente claims that this boss was representative of the third eye, a seat of psychic power. T...

The Fetch-Beast, also known as the Fetch-Wife, has been dealt with elsewhere in this book, and is the Underworld Self of the Crafter, known in Briar Rose as the Dragon. The third kind of Fetch, the one used in shape-shifting, is traditionally a piece of skin or fur belonging to the animal into which the Shape-shifter transforms. In some cases, such as the selkies in Ireland, it is the actual whole...

here are said to be four primary things essential to magic. These four principles are the Powers of the Sphinx: To know, to will, to dare, and to keep silent Eliphas Lévi indicates where to start in our endeavor to use the Powers of the Sphinx: “When one does not know, one should will to learn. To the extent that one does not know it is foolhardy to dare, but it is always well to keep silent.” Thu...

The castles of our system are based on Grail Lore, but they also have representations in the none world. These castles are symbolic of the energies inherent in their names and attributed to them by myth and legend. In the Arthurian cycle, the knights journey to seven castles, but most mythographers interpret this imram as an Otherworldly voyage, akin to the shaman’s journey into the soul, using th...