An Athenæum Azostos Reflection on Approaching Babalon: Essays for the Abyss by Dr. Georgia Van Raalte
Babalon by Poquis, 2022
Lucera A.F.
When Approaching Babalon by Dr. Georgia van Raalte (published by Temple of Our Lady of the Abyss, also known as Templum Abyssi) was nominated as a “small” book to fill in between classes and Dionysian work to be explored this Summer, it seemed unanimous and easy – we would approach Babalon and dive headfirst into the Current of the great paradoxical and primordial Goddess. If nothing else, we had been brought together by the Liminality of the Great Mother Worker from Afar… why not bond and pulse under the All-ness of the Great Mother within Us all?
We had not yet learned how to properly read the flows of the Current. We knew we were in it; we knew the Current had surged and eddied over the course of the last year or so. We had waded through Liber Khthonia, submerged ourselves in The Clovenstone Workings, and eddied and backflowed into various classes and interviews. We had bathed in it, relished. We had become great swimmers. The Current beckoned and we begged and it began and it bided and we birthed and it based. Gimme gimme, we called. Gimme gimme, it retorted.
“She is that which we call shadow. We cannot see Her – but we know Her solid for why else would this great shape rear where the light should be? She would be invisible if not for Her veil, which shimmers in folds round her vacuous solidity. There is no image of the the Goddess but the breasts and the rose; the moon and, sometimes, the honey bee.”
Dr. Georgia van Raalte, Approaching Babalon, page 35.
Much like attempting to grasp water or air or abstractness, however, Babalon did not prove quite as “small”; nor did She flow in any one direction like the known streams of simplicity or the tides of timidity. She was ethereal but immovable, ephemeral but incessant, elaborate, intentional, enigmatic, and thoroughly untamed; She is anti-precious, anti-breakable, anti-graspable, anti-comprehendable, anti-definable. For the uns and the ins and antis She is Queen. She is blood. She was us.
Babalon Rose, art by Poquis, 2017
“We have coded the chthonic as Other, but we are all children of the earth and the mountains. There is far more mud in us than stardust.”
Dr. Georgia van Raalte, Approaching Babalon, page 36.
“She, the embodiment of Apocalyptic Change, came raining down on us like hellfire,” says Genaia of the Athenæum. Small, ha. Complex and deliberate and arcane, more like. Primordial, unchainable, Mistress of Mud. She of the Death and Decay and the Secrets and the Sway. Van Raalte defines her throughout the entirety of Approaching Babalon; each time a paradox – each time a rich contradiction and deep overlap of the innumerable faces of She. Give us the Abyss, Mother, give us hell. Give us all and nothing and every countable nuance of the Stars.
Says van Raalte regarding the Goddess of the “Mystery of Mysteries” (18):
“Babalon is a Modern Goddess. She has risen like a tide in response to two thousand years of the repression of the Divine Feminine in the West. Babalon is represented in a series of archetypes: the Divine Feminine, The Great Mother, The Succubus, the Initiatrix and the Holy Whore.”
Dr. Georgia van Raalte, Approaching Babalon, page 17.
“Our journey into the Abyss was not without moments of destruction and upheaval. Even now, we feel Her scorching current coursing through us; the fumes of cosmic lava shaping our very perceptions” (Genaia). There is no linear way in which to traverse and immerse ourselves into the experiences that ensued; thus, we are not reviewing. We are reflecting. We absorb. We, too, discard our fetishes for fetishes and shit in the Filth of all that is Babalon, for like you we wish to “[l]earn from the caves; [that] true divinity is hag-like. We recognize the Ancient bearded father, why do we run from the dug-breasted ancient, this matriarch of ages? All of our monsters are women of power” (van Raalte 38). We, too, are powerful women. Fetishize the monster and the whore within us as we, Suspiria-like and awe-struck and frighteningly -humbled, approach The Woman and the Monster of Power. Once again, anti-linear. Once again, anti-review. Anti-Current. Anti-All.
Babalon is an eternal echo of ecstasis…
Babalon is not the Current in which we have always written, typed away after experience and then given to you as a pitiful gift; She is the boulder beneath the surface of the Flow, disrupting, guiding, eddying, seething, foaming, calmly, calmer, calmer… then boiling above in the Fury of Femininity as the Siren of the Deep. You are not safe here.
Remember, “Babalon is another way of saying: You are Holy and Divine, because of your flesh, not despite it” (van Raalte 18). Says Genaia, “Babalon teaches us to regard all that we know as divine. Our filth is just as holy as our flame. We are born, we live, we die – and everything we experience is of the Gods as our prayers and devotional workings.”
At the end may we beg to decay and may we cadge to melee. Give us crawling and scrounging and writhing for more or give us death. No, give us all including death and we will regurgitate it in devotion to Her, a begrimed and blackened offering, but one that is truly Us, no? For, “Our Lady is Lady of Filth” (63). Take my cup of recycled filth, please, Lady.
Fetishize the monster and the whore within us as we approach The Woman and the Monster of Power.
Babalon is an eternal echo of ecstasis, and so as to not pervert Her ascent and descent of love and blood and mud, I will close this love letter to Approaching Babalon just as quickly as it began – a rush and a gush and a flow through the Current, over the chthonically-rooted monolith of She and and back again; a watery, salty, sweaty ouroboros of flame and filth and frenzy. Heed the eddies of the Stone of Salvation here, the Boulder of Blood. Heed the Currents above and the Streams below. Run sex, flow rot, course stardust and earth. Spill the iron of our blood and drift in and out of the mycelium. Abandon all who enter and return. Renounce, relinquish, relent. Submit to The Holy Whore. But never acquiesce, dear, never accede. Until then, we still cross the Abyss.
You are not safe here…
The artwork by Brazilian artist Luciana Lupe Vasconcelos for Approaching Babalon: Essays for the Abyss was striking and perfectly illustrated the current of Babalon. You can view more of her work and find out how to purchase prints through her active Instagram account @luciferovs.
Luciana is also currently exhibiting artwork in the United States for the first time in a joint exhibition titled MAGIA PROTETORA at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft from July 1st through September 30th, 2022. Her work is displayed with the late Darcilio Lima (1944-1991), an artist that Luciana claims “became a sort of teacher hailing from beyond the lines of his drawings.” The exhibition is curated by the Stephen Romano Gallery.
Image: Dead Roses by Les Wyn, 2017. Purchases through Fine Art America.
“Devotional Hymn to Babalon” by Genaia de Carrefour
From aeons past through cosmic gates,
the rising of thine infernal state.
Thy chalice filled with filth and flame,
spilling o’er thy voluptuous frame.
But not for men whose carnality seeks,
to suppress the Divine in feminine speak.
False prophets’ and their masks deny,
the truth of She, on Therion rides.
Chorus:
Holy of unholies,
Mother Babalon, enfold me,
(in) the Rose between us, the sting of the Bee,
Scarlet One, we sing of thee.
From fornications and sin’s delight,
to the fury of thy feral bite.
In Apocalypses, the matrix breaks,
ego dissolving in a mire of fate.
For in this blessing, death becomes sex,
the cycle completes in the pitching of breath.
An ouroboros of ecstatic sighs,
the Truth of She, on Therion rides.
Chorus:
Holy of unholies,
Mother Babalon, enfold me,
(in) the Rose between us, the sting of the Bee,
Scarlet One, we sing of thee.
Bridge (2x):
Liberation, consummation (And I’ll call you, and I’ll see you),
Pleasure building and realized (And I’ll feel you from deep inside).
Anguished swelling, in bloody dwellings (Falling for you, dying for you),
Flowing from between my thighs (Scarlet Mother, hear our cries!).
Chorus:
Holy of unholies,
Mother Babalon, enfold me,
(in) the Rose between us, the sting of the Bee,
Scarlet One, we sing of thee.
Current books by Dr. Georgia van Raalte:
Related Materials and Sources:
The History of Sexual Magic Course, begins August 7, 2022.
An Athenæum Azostos Reflection on The Black Book of Isobel Gowdie by Ash William Mills and The Visions of Isobel Gowdie by Emma Wilby
Lucera A.F.
Woodcut of the prophetess and supposed witch Mother Shipton, featured in Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century (1834) by John Ashton. Among the various familiars depicted, one resembles a hare. Source
The Early Modern period, particularly in Europe, was punctuated with witch accusations, confessions, and trials. One of the most well-known areas in which witch trials were held was Scotland, home of the notorious case of Isobel Gowdie (also known as the “Queen of the Scottish Witches”) in 1662 (Mills 16). The Celtic folklore and fantasy were deep-rooted in Scotland. As deeply rooted was Catholicism and the heresy therein of the Protestant Reformation (and the Restoration just two years prior) of Gowdie’s confessions. Catholicism and folk magic were often married – the belief in faeries or the “Faer Folk,” in some cases, was just as strong as the belief in saints or Christ. Catholicism was colored by superstition and folk magic, or “charming” and “cunning”; this was based on “the animism of the pre-Christian Scots… that is, the belief that everything that exists is linked by invisible and amoral occult forces” (Wilby 26-27).
Witches presenting wax dolls to the devil, featured in The History of Witches and Wizards (1720) Source
This animism (to be compared with an “other”-ness, esoterically) and folkloric foundation, when coupled with the concepts of transformation and/or familiars, created a fanatical storm of witchcraft and its trials as exhibited in the many confessions during the European Early Modern period, especially in Scotland (as seen with the aforementioned case of Isobel Gowdie, which includes discussion of Christian concepts, also the Fae, the Devil, and animal transformations, e.g. the hare). Furthermore, much like Isobel Gowdie’s transformation into a hare (as mentioned in her real-life confessions, to be explored below), relationships between these traditional “witches” and animals (here, hares and rabbits, scientifically known as Leporidae animalia) are varied and complex: witch-familiar relations, bewitchments, transformations, and metamorphoses. This, in turn, creates that esoteric “other”-ness via animism, alchemy, and supposed folk magic that is consistent throughout much of the Early Modern period… whether with transformation of familiars, transfigurements into animals, or both. Moreover, these witch trials, albeit centuries-old, continue to color the portrayals of fictional witches’ transformations – and their animal forms and familiars – in contemporary times.
Witch pictured feeding her familiars with blood, in A Rehearsall both Straung and True, of Hainous and Horrible Actes Committed by Elizabeth Stile (1579) Source
Witch-hunting exponentially increased in late 17th-century Scotland. The accusations could be for something common and menial, for example, “troubles of everyday life, agricultural problems, family tensions and disagreements between neighbors” (Henderson 52). Although the tribulations that prompted accusations could be small, the outcome was typically coerced (or possibly forced or even tortured into submission) confessions. Records show that in the period between 1563 and 1736, “at least 3,837 people were accused of the crime” of witchcraft in Scotland alone (Wilby 30). Often, in no small part due to the Protestant Reformation in Europe, old folk charms (which were often based on or rooted in Catholic foundational scripture or ceremony) were simply used by these “cunning folk” (also known as wise men or women) for matters like selling cattle for a fair price or healing a sick child (Mills). These charms virtually always called on a member of the Holy Trinity or the saints. Only in likely forced confessions was there mention of the “Devil.” However, when these conditions (Protestantism in a historically folk-Catholic area, for example) of the post-Restoration period in Scotland (post-Commonwealth, when the monarchy returned in 1660) – which inevitably caused “religious strife and tension” (Henderson 53) – were added to “both national and local factors…[c]hanges in legislation, political or military conflicts, and even the weather” created the perfect onslaught of upheaval for Isobel Gowdie and the thousands of other “witches” accused, tried, and/or confessed or executed (Wilby 30).
Familiars often looked plain, unassuming, and as simply a part of everyday life.
Witch accusations and trials were not just limited to Scotland. Although they began in Scotland officially somewhere around 1563, they had long increased after Heinrich Kramer, a Catholic inquisitor, wrote the Malleus Malificarum in 1486. Just a few decades later, the magus of the Renaissance, Cornelius Agrippa, died in 1535 (Sax 318). Shortly after that, King James I wrote Daemonologie in 1597. There were, then, manuals and guidelines for unifying the witch-hunts and persecutions; moreover, there were famous sorcerous “magi” who had infamously exemplified how a person in contract with the Devil (or with sorcery in general) may appear (as with Agrippa). Yet, even before these examples and manuals, an Irish woman in 1324 named “Dame Alice Kyleter of Kilkenny… had a demonic companion named Robin Filius Artis” (319). This was possibly the first recorded account of a witch’s “familiar” – that is, “a demon (also called a familiar spirit) supposedly attending and obeying a witch, often said to assume the form of an animal” (“Familiar”).
These familiars were “supernatural helpers, which were often shape-shifters” (Graf, as quoted in Sax 318). Nevertheless, “instead of terrifying monsters,” familiars often looked plain, unassuming, and “as simply a part of everyday life”: cats, crows, hares, toads, etc. (Sax 318). Although the familiar most often seen in books and film is undoubtedly the cat, this paper solely explores the less-popular rabbit and hare, or the animals in the Leporidae family.
Frontispiece to Matthew Hopkins’ Discovery of Witches (1648) showing two witches calling out the names of their demons while Hopkins watches above. Source
In Isobel Gowdie’s second confession, she discussed the transformation not of her familiar into an animal form (a hare), but the metamorphosis of herself. Gowdie stated:
Qwhen we goe in the shape of an haire, we say thryse ower I sall gow intill a haire with sorrow and syt and meikle caire, and I sall goe in the divellis nam ay whill I com hom…we startin an hair, and when we wold be owt of tht shape we vill s caire, I am in an hairis liknes just now, but I salbe in a woman’s liknes…
(as quoted in Wilby 43)
Family book of Elector Friedrich IV of the Palatinate(1582-1605). Three hares encircled with their ears forming a triangle was an apotropaic image much like an ouroboros. Source
In Eddie Murray’s 2005 translation Gowdie’s confession is modernized as:
When we go into hare-shape we say: ‘I shall go into a hare, with sorrow and sigh, and meikle [great] care. And I shall go in the Devil’s name. Aye while I come again.’ And instantly we start into a hare. And when we want to be out of that shape, we would say: ‘Hare, hare, God send thee care! I am in hare-shape just now – But I’ll be in woman-shape right now.’
(as quoted in Mills 35-36)
According to folkloric history, the hare and rabbit “are often conflated,” even if they vary in size, habit, and behavior; where they differ in folklore and in actuality is hares’ ability to be “elu[sive]… contribut[ing] to their reputation as tricksters” (Sax, The Mythological Zoo 57). Additionally, the hare is often associated with the moon, as are witches, and with fertility. Rabbits are said to be able to “be out on their own” after 28 days, which is a full lunar cycle (Andrews 303). Hares and the moon have much in common, such as colors (gray, brown, white), crescent shapes (as in leaps), and the tenet of “watchfulness” (Sax 57). The rabbit is also one of the 12 Chinese astrological symbols, representing cautiousness, gracefulness, intelligence, and “Yin” (or lunar/feminine) energy (Ng para. 2). Across the globe both rabbits and hares symbolize new life and fertility, based not just on the story of Easter, but of biological behavior and ability and speed in which Leporidae reproduce. Correspondingly, the rabbit’s history of being used as a somber way in which to administer an old type of pregnancy test (injection of urine into a rabbit) is also in the area of fertility. Thus, the amalgamation of trickster energy with both lunar and fertile energy becomes a breeding ground, both literally and figuratively, for mythos of witches and their familiars.
The Hare and the Frogs by Gustave Doré, 1868
Leporidae are also associated with various gods and/or deities from all across the globe. “During the late Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the practice of worshipping Lord Rabbit” (or a rabbit-headed deity) became tied in with the traditional offerings of “mooncakes,” which are also said to come from the shape of a rabbit (Ng para. 6).
The Nordic Freya, or Freyja, is often pictured with hares as a symbol of her motherhood and fertility. The Hellenic Hermes is a god of communication, and the rabbit is frequently a symbol of the speed in which he delivers his messages. Wenet (Unut), or Wenenut, is the Egyptian goddess of the hare. As Ng states:
Given its nocturnal proclivities, the rabbit has become associated with the moon in other cultures as well. In ancient Egypt, hares (which are closely related to rabbits) were linked to the waxing and waning of the moon and the people of the city of Hermopolis worshipped a hare-headed goddess of fertility called Unut (para. 7).
In Ireland, Saint Melangell became the patron saint of hares (celebrated in the Spring), as many of those Leporidae were said to have sought her protection. Ostara, or Eostre (from whom the holiday Easter is named), is a Germanic or Anglo-Saxon goddess who is worshipped on the Spring Equinox. Moreover, Ostara was also said to be able to take the shape of a hare, like many of the gods above – and like Gowdie claimed to be able to do herself.
And yet, it still has been noted that “there is a certain connection, perplexing and obscure, between the Christian festival of Easter and the worship or sacrifice of hares” (Billson 441). Part of this parallel is the annual “Pomerania” celebration, or the hunt for hares to eat on Easter. The second part is how the children were once told “that a hare lays the Pasche eggs” (Pasche meaning “Passover,” similarly Easter) for the holiday (Ibid.). Not only does this reinforce the fertility notion with the symbol of the egg, but it also creates a “magic” take on the animal not seen in just lunar and trickster ways. Some have even speculated that oestrogen (or the Americanized “estrogen”) is derived from the goddess Eostre (Oestre/Ostara/etc.), further implying the depths of femininity, fertility, and the vitality in which birth, Spring, and Leporidae hold.
The hare and rabbit are often conflated, even if they vary in size, habit, and behavior.
The hare has not always been a symbol of life, though. In West of Scotland Folk-Lore it was said that upon “meeting a hare while going to work would return home and not again venture out until the next meal had been eaten, ‘for beyond that the evil influence did not extend’” (as quoted in Black 85). Old legend from India explained it is “as unlucky to meet a hare as it is a one-eyed man” (Ibid.). Conversely, because of these examples and many more, in countless cultures, a hare can be considered a melancholic omen. But, for every melancholic story there is an equally silly or cunning one, if not one of pure – yet morbid fetishizing – luck (as with a rabbit’s foot). The history of the “lucky rabbit’s foot” may come “from a medieval practice where alleged victims of witchcraft wore a rabbit’s foot around their necks at midnight under the full moon to ward off evil” (Ng para. 10). Nonetheless, as exhibited with Isobel Gowdie’s confession and the idea of a witch’s “familiar,” the “hare is often credited with supernatural powers… [and] like the cat, an ally of the witch” (Black 86). In Scottish folklore hares were said to be seen as actual “devils and witches” – so much so in one Scottish myth one should not even say “hare” on the open sea for fear of disaster (Ibid.).
Crop of an engraving from Basil Valentine, Chymische Schrifften, Hamburg in 1717 Source
The word “hare” itself may have carried some heavy connotations, as with the case of Gowdie, who, according to Sax, “claimed she had taken the form of a hare when hounds surprised her,” only escaping when she used the chant listed above (The Mythological Zoo 60). Still, she “carried a mark on her back where a hound had nipped at her” before transforming back into a woman (Ibid.). This mark may have been from a hound while she was in hare-form, or it could have been a notorious “witches’ mark” (or even a familiar’s feeding mark or “mark of the Devil”). “[W]itches often have a mark of the [D]evil on their bodies,” and whether that is a birthmark, or a “teat” used for feeding a demonic familiar, it had been used for centuries to identify witches in Europe and further, as with the witch trials in New England, United States (as quoted in Sax 320).
The witch would convene with their master, often the Devil or the King and Queen of the Fae.
Sometimes, though, the conflation of witches and hares became a continental phenomenon, as with the cases of “The Witch as Hare” or “The Old Woman as Hare”; in other words, there is legend of a “witch-hare” in Early Modern Europe. From the “witch-hare” stems several folktales: the first being “the belief that a witch can transform herself into a hare and in that shape perform various mischievous or malignant deeds” (this could be most analogous to the confession in which Gowdie defines her ability to transform from woman to hare and back – a skill that enables her nightly travel for witch work or “Sabbaths,” a time in which the witch would convene with their master, often the Devil or the King and Queen of the Fae); the second is most closely related to the lore of the “milkhare” – that is, a woman whose task as a “supernatural creature” was to “steal milk or dairy produce” (often straight from the animal) (Nildin-Wall and Wall 67). The milkhare stories spread all across Early Modern Europe, with the Nordic and British areas having the most concentrated histories of the legends, folktales, or myths.
Devil with a cow and milk hare. Painted in the Ösmo Church in Södermanland
Devil churning butter with a witch and milk hares
Devil and witch with milk hare and finished butter
Often the milkhare did not begin as a woman per se; this milkhare was created out of “heddles and bits of wood” (heddles are the loops of material on a loom), or in many cases, “besoms and scrubbing brooms” (Ibid.). Interestingly, Isobel Gowdie herself mentioned, in her second confession which contained the admission of transformation into a hare, the usage of her besom (or broom) for sorcerous acts of malicious cunning. In fact, Gowdie quite literally discussed the broom right after she finished describing her animal metamorphosis. In the historical confession:
Iff we in the haire or any uthr likenes etc goe to any of owr neightboris howsis being witches… we tak windlestrawes or beenstakis & put them betwixt owr foot and say thry ‘and hattok hors and goe, hors and pellatts ho ho’: and immeditialie we fly away whair and least owr husbandis sould miss vs owt of our bedes, we put in a boosom or a thrieand say thryse ower I lay down this boosom or stool in the divellis nam let it not ste… [damaged, words missing] com again…
(as quoted in Wilby 43-44)
Or, in Murray’s translations:
When we wanted to ride, we’d take windle straws or beanstalks and put them between our feet, and say three times: ‘Horse and hattock, horse and go, Horse and pellatis, ho! ho!’ And immediately we fly away wherever we want. And lest our husbands should find us out of our beds, we put a besom or a three-legged stool in beside them, and say three times: ‘I lay down this besom, in the Devil’s name – Let it nor stir until I come home again!’
(as quoted in Mills 38)
Witches fly on a forked stick. Woodcut by Johann Zainer (1212)
Essentially, the correlations here between a “witch-hare” and a “milkhare” are undeniable: a woman, or quite possibly a witch (i.e. Isobel Gowdie), transforms herself into a hare or creates a supernatural being for metamorphosis and/or baneful acts via a besom in the name of the Devil. In either case it is apparent that the parallels amount to the possibility that Gowdie’s confessions were inspired by the tales of the milkhare, since “the creature may be accompanied by the witch selling herself to the Devil” and Gowdie obviously admitted she was in league with the Devil (Nildin-Wall and Wall 67). Moreover, the two types of milkhare are the transformation of the witch into an animal or the usage of materials (and immoral pacts) to create a familiar. Lastly, there are also accounts of the witch-hare as a “trollhare,” that is, a malevolent trickster often tied to one individual witch or the Devil himself (Ibid.) Whether or not the witch-hare, milkhare, or trollhare steals milk, transforms themselves, or is a metamorphosized familiar, it is consistently – and almost always – some sort of Leporidae in Early Modern Europe, creating that continental continuity of cunning and charm. The parallels between Isobel Gowdie and the milkhare do not stop at the transformation into the hare or with the sorcerous compulsion of besoms. Gowdie also confessed to stealing milk!
Isobels’s claim that she gained milk through drawing ‘the tedder (sua maid) in betuixt the cowes hinder foot and owt betuixt forder foot’ echoed traditional folk belief (where the practice of [stealing milk] was attributed to both witches and fairies) (Wilby 84).
This practice was considered a “maleficium” – or an act of cunning or charming that is not considered benevolent. Therefore, it can be inferred that Gowdie either considered herself a milkhare, knew of milkhare mythos and sought comfort in those tales during her most likely tortured confessions, or in some magical way was metamorphosized, if not transformed a broom, into said hare. In any case, the confessions of Isobel Gowdie and her hare are captivating – and have appealed to and entranced both scholars and legend-lovers alike for centuries. Because of this Leporidae alchemy in the Early Modern period, transformations into rabbits have remained popular.
The hare from the film The Witch (2015)
Why are Leporidae so fascinating to us, regardless of time period or culture? Rabbits persist, giving birth to large litters and embodying life and fertility. They are lucky, or watchful…or melancholic. The hare is an animal of the gods; the rabbit a siginifier of time changing, as in Spring. They mean growth, change, and inevitably as with Gowdie, alchemical transformation and the metamorphosis of self (and Self) in combination with the “other”-ness of animism and of religion. This assiduous attraction is still seen today, from Harry Potter and the “transforming rabbit,” to the Red Dead video game allowing you to play as a hare, to Witch Hazel and Bugs Bunny in Looney Tunes, to modern magicians pulling bunnies out of hats, and more. It appears it may not have started with Gowdie, and the rabbit/hare motif seems to be here to stay. With the added nuances of lunar and feminine energy, coupled with fertility and a rich history of folklore, relationships between witches and their animals (e.g. the hare) remain varied and complex via transformations, and metamorphoses. There are deep roots of animism in these concepts; because of that, the esoteric “other”-ness defined above perpetuated throughout much of the Early Modern period and into contemporary times and today. The effects of Isobel and her hare still – and possibly always will – remain.
Billson, Charles J. “The Easter Hare.” Folklore, vol. 3, no. 4, Folklore Enterprises, Ltd., Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1892, pp. 441-66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1253567.
Black, William George. “The Hare in Folk-Lore.” The Folk-Lore Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, Folklore Enterprises, Ltd., Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1883, pp. 84-90. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1252578.
Henderson, Lizanne. “The Survival of Witchcraft Prosecutions and Witch Belief in South-West Scotland.” The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 85, no. 219, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, pp. 52-74, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25529885.
Mills, Ash William. The Black Book of Isobel Gowdie and Other Scottish Spells & Charms. Edinburgh: Scottish Cunning Ways, 2021. Print.
Nildin-Wall, Bodil and Wall, Jan. “The Witch as Hare or the Witch’s Hare: Popular Legends and Beliefs in Nordic Tradition.” Folklore, vol. 104, no. 1/2, Folklore Enterprises, Ltd., Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 1993, pp. 67-76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1260796.
Sax, Boria. “The Magic of Animals: English Witch Trials in the Perspective of Folklore.” Anthrozoos, vol. 22, no. 4, 2009, pp. 317-332.
Sax, Boria. The Mythological Zoo. Overlook Duckworth Press, 2013, pp. 56-63. Print.Wilby, Emma. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Sussex Academic Press, 2010. Print.
Wilby, Emma. The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Sussex Academic Press, 2010. Print.
The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the sorceress of sword work and scrying: Harper Feist. Harper is an accomplished interviewer, writer, teacher, priestess, scientist, and experienced occultist, among many other scintillating titles. After falling in love with Harper as an interviewer and powerful woman in the occult community, the Athenæum members knew we just had to take her class, “Scrying: A Workshop on Esoteric Awareness.” And after taking the class, it was unanimous that we needed to interview Ms. Feist to learn more.
The enchanting Ms. Feist obliged, and we are pleased to present her insightful and titillating answers that leave us wanting more. Harper has given us – and you – a deep glance into the nexus of her sorcerous devotion by means of written word, connection with Other, and a deep awareness that transgresses the status quo… We know you will feel as honored and magickally excited as we do.
The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.
As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?
Feist: It would be easier to ask what books have not inspired my practice <grinning>. I find hints about myself and the larger world in the strangest places, including scientific, historical, and esoteric sources.
The first books that brought my attention to magic, and the weird relationship that science and medicine has historically had to it, were Lynn Thorndyke’s A History of Magic and Experimental Science series. I ran into the whole of it in the basement of Norlin library on the University of Colorado campus as an undergraduate. My encounter with those books was so life-altering that I remember how they smelled, what the floor looked like… I became ME in those moments, I think.
If the whole trajectory of my life wasn’t set at that point, it was when my college friends and band mates introduced me to Aleister Crowley, Christopher Hyatt, and Robert Anton Wilson (RAW). And so much of scrying is making new stories about what your senses are telling you that perhaps RAW was my first real teacher.
There seems to be expectations by many that magickal practitioners must have been mentored (or require apprenticeship from teachers/elders), when, in fact, it is more often the case that the first form of esoteric knowledge learned by practitioners is via literature/books. To delve deeper into the above question (in the Current of scrying, too), if you could ‘visit’ your younger Self (at the age in which you sought esoteric literature for the first time) which book would you give young Harper?
Feist: At the time I started doing what I called at the time witchcraft, I was reading French surrealist literature, like Le Comte de Lautreament’s Maldoror. Baudelaire and Rimbaud were alongside. So, decadence and suffering, and original sin (I had already been shown out of my parent’s Lutheran church), made up my reading when I wasn’t reading for school. I took the maximum number of credits all the time, and worked more than half-time, so there wasn’t as much reading as I would’ve liked.
That grievance having been made, I wish that someone had enticed me to read folklore at that time. I needed Thomas of Erceldoune, or something else that introduced the Queen of Elfhame. I didn’t appreciate the link between the spirituality that feels best to me and the power of the very ancient and mystical natural environment until later. When I discovered this, awkwardly, I found that being outside gives me such a relief from an incredibly rational life that I now can hardly do without it. I am more easy-going (read: bearable) and more spiritually porous when I have a relationship with place.
This is all linked in my experience to the Francis James Child “Ballads”, since they were the source of the first folklore that I encountered. Have you ever heard the song called Willie’s Lady (or sometimes King Willie)? It’s the most direct description of a sorcerous duel you’ll ever hear or read.
Scrying comes in many different forms, and this is something students learn when taking your course. We would love to learn which scrying method(s) you prefer; also, what compelled you to create such an immersive and in-depth course?
Feist: I created the course simply because there was such a demand for information on the subject. I’ve always been sort of a natural at it, possibly because I have a past that left me with the ability to sort of easily dissociate. I refer to it as being “porous on demand.” My working hypothesis is that people in general are able to obtain to these states and are limited only by the focus upon linear and rational thought that is the focus of education. Too bad that education doesn’t actually work! The inability of people in general to think in a straight line is obvious, I suppose, but neither can they choose to loosen themselves from the grip of their need to pretend. At the least, I can be a role model. At the best, I can give people experiments to help them loosen up a little bit.
My favorite scrying technique is currently the classic bowl scrying with water. I like to sit with it in my lap and watch my heartbeat skitter across the surface of the fluid as I fall into the trance. I will say, though, that I do plenty of scrying on the inside of my eyelids, too. Further, tomorrow, I will probably have a different favorite technique.
“Wolf Tracks” Photo by Lucera
As Ms. Feist so astutely states: “scrying is listening.” By listening not only to Other through scrying, but to Self and the genus loci of the Land, I learned to anticipate where and when I could cross paths with animals and spirits (and find tracks). I was One – we all are. But I learned to listen to that Oneness on a meta-cellular level.
-Lucera
The temperature in the room began to rise as I relaxed my eyes willing myself into a trance. Gazing into my cosmetic mirror, a beautiful male face appeared. I could not see his eyes, only full lips and a chiselled jaw. His face shifted closer as if he was attempting to push his head through the mirror. This startled me, and I intuitively flipped the mirror around.
-Poquis
Scrying Experience Art by Poquis
Transformation – you mentioned in previous interviews about your fascination with the art of metamorphosis. How has your magickal practice transformed you as a person? As a teacher? As a student?
Feist: That experiment is an uncontrolled one, of course. You might as well ask the opposite. What would I have been like without my spiritual practices? Who knows, honestly?
I will say that it has given me a path to follow in my personal evolution, and that I’m moving steadily to a larger and more exciting universe with each new thing I try and each new working I do. And even more, every person I interact with about these gorgeous and tasty things… my magical and writing partners have changed the world for me.
Recently, I’ve been playing around with the model that the gods are at least in partial control of what I do, think, want, dislike… As much as the rational part of Harper hates it, there’s some good explanatory force within that model.
You have alluded to your practice being mostly or highly devotional. Is this a new path for you or have you always had a devotional practice? If you do not mind sharing, which deity/deities have inspired this devotion?
Feist: As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a devotional practice. When I was teeny, it was Christian, of course. As an adult, though, I was taught my devotional approach by Brigid.
My first job after grad school was in Andover MA, and shortly after moving to the Northeast, I developed a link with the local Reclaiming group. After the prerequisite nasty coven rearrangements, there were three of us that celebrated quarters and cross-quarters, oftentimes leading large public rites at the Unitarian church in town. I was at this time doing instrument development for a living and spent a certain amount of time in the machine shop. I did some machining, but mostly I hid there because I got along with the machinists better than the other Ph.D.’s. I was in the shop one snowy Imbolc morning when a piece of copper pipe found it’s way into my hands. It was about an inch in diameter and two feet long.
I took it home and nearly in a blind trance took it to the basement and started cutting it open along the long axis. I had only hand tools, and I was blistered and sore at the end of an hour and had made a slit a couple inches long. I cleaned myself up, dealt with my parental and spousal obligations, and fell into a dark slumber. When I woke up, a slightly different person, I went and bought flowers and candles and took them to the basement. I set up an altar to Brigid and worked for a couple of weeks with all the spare time I had to create a crown for her. I beat the pipe flat with a hammer and then shaped it to fit me.
I never wore it. I left it for her later in a meadow. Hail, Brigid, who made it possible for me to truly offer myself and my gifts to other gods and goddesses.
As if being a scientist and occultist was not cool enough, you have mentioned that you practice martial arts – which involve sword work. First of all, hell yes!! Please tell us more about that. Does this discipline and art ever overlap with your magickal practice?
Feist: It does, of course, because discipline. I refer to my magical work as work for a reason. We should give ourselves to the practice of magic in the same complete way one gives oneself to a martial art. We need to prepare to be stretched and molded, sometimes injured, for our art. My bloody acceptance by Hekate will soon be common knowledge… and involved the emergency room.
A principal focus to sword arts is the elimination of extra or unnecessary movement. This need is mirrored in all magical efforts. Find and do the necessary. Further, sometimes beauty is necessary. Lastly, as one of my sword teachers said, “don’t be a pirate.” What he meant by this was “don’t do extra-fancy things with your blade,” but I see it as a philosophical imperative.
Photo: Harper Feist
You have mentioned in a previous Blackthorne School interview that your spiritual practice is a relief… and authoring is a service. Do you view this service as being a devotional service to deity, or a service to a community of spiritual learners? In your opinion, in what ways does the skill set differ from that of a good magickal practitioner and that of an effective author?
Feist: When I talk about service, both aspects are present, but they are very different from one another. Devotional service to deity makes me a spiritual person, and community service makes me a useful one. I have performed a variety of services to the community, including leading the local Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) body, teaching classes (including those with the Blackthorne School), giving lectures, etc. I do the latter when I have the bandwidth because there is a need. I do the former to remain sane, open and fully alive.
The members of the Athenæum have followed your work for several years now. Often, we hear you mention purification. How do these purification processes play a role in your praxes, and how do these processes translate from science to magick – and even coexist as one?
Feist: Aleister Crowley has a set of writings called the Little Essays on Truth. One of them addresses his views “On Chastity.” Of course, Crowley being Crowley, he’s not at all talking about the no-sex kind of chastity (I know, he would have exploded). He’s talking about purity being the lack of contamination in the same way that chemists talk about purity. Something that is pure is only itself.
That foundation having been revealed, I am fascinated with the concept of purity as a magical requirement. I have employed most of the traditional means and find them all more or less effective at clearing the mind, body and environment of distractions to enable a firm and unwavering focus on anything, here the topic at hand being a magical working.
Think you don’t need to work on your focus? See if you can set your phone down for five minutes (laughing).
This is mirrored in the focus on preparation in both my The Blackthorne School classes and the one-hour versions that I’m sometimes invited to give for other audiences. All preparation, all temple work I suppose, is meant to put the practitioner into a useful state of mind.
At its root, scrying is listening.
One of the things that we found incredibly insightful about your class “Scrying: A Course on Esoteric Awareness” was the astute conflation of the mundane and the magickal. At what point is the line between the two (mundane and magickal) blurred so that there is – or can be – very little distinction? Do you find that a steady and deliberate scrying practice enhances the blurred line? And, at the risk of sounding overly philosophical (if not existential), does such a line even exist?
Feist: In the class, we often refer to the fact that, at its root, scrying is listening. The whole of life these days is about trying to be heard, advice to be assertive, even the writing edit “active, not passive” fits here. To be complete, I would argue that people need to know how to be receptive as well as projective. Learning new ways to listen and reasons to do it will make you a better parent, a better friend, a better employee, a better leader… a better lover. At the nuts-and-bolts level, there’s not a lot of difference except the entity to whom you’re listening.
How has your role in the OTO influenced the ways in which you approach scrying? Magickal practices? Devotion? Which of Thelema’s tenets do you find are most translatable into the semi-untranslatable and transgressive experiences in which scrying and body work evoke? Which are the least?
Feist: Thelema is a very body-positive philosophy/religion. It gets around the Christian body-as-evil paradigm and permits sexuality a role in religious and magical practices. Sexuality is one of the most holy things that any of us will ever participate in, so being embedded in that milieu has been an important shift for me both as a woman and as a magical practitioner.
Interestingly enough, the whole “do what thou wilt…” thing implies we should optimally have control over our own thoughts, which is counter is some ways to my model for scrying. The contradiction is not enough to worry about but is a slight strain. I’m still absolutely involved in the OTO, as I’m sure you know, and that won’t change, but I’m not encapsulated by it, either.
One of the skills that initially attracted the Athenæum to you was your captivating interviewing approaches and techniques in Thelema Now. How do the processes of being the interviewer differ from this, being the interviewee? Which do you prefer?
Feist: I’m still most often the interviewer, which is lovely to me. A funny thing happens when I interview people…we start with me reading a book, or listening to music, or partaking in their art, we iterate over questions and then we do the actual interview. Somewhere in the process, I learn such regard for all of the people I speak with, I somehow don’t really want to stop hearing them. It’s really an amazing process, and I honestly think I’ll never tire of it.
There’s not the same alchemy when I’m being interviewed, but folks tell me that the things I say are useful, and so I’ll likely continue to do that occasionally.
The U.S. Grand Lodge Thelema NOW! podcast features interviews with artists, writers, magicians, and others whose unique perspectives contribute to the modern flowering of Thelemic culture. New episodes are published roughly once a month. You can listen on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or your favorite podcast player.
What is next for the Harper Feist? We would love to hear what you have planned – from sensational scrying sessions to science to sword work – for 2022 (or the foreseeable future).
Also, I’m doing a couple of projects with magical partners that I am going to be very proud to unveil when the time is right.
Hint: You can find some of Harper’s work in Volume I of Katabasis
If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential scryers, seekers, and/or students, what would it be and why?
Feist: The answer to this question probably changes weekly, but today it’s Philip Shepard’s Radical Wholeness. It’s a study of how western people are separated from their bodies, using data as diverse as neuroscience and mythology. He talks about life in the same way I do: from a completely different, arts-related, background. It’s good information, firstly. And then, you know what? He makes me feel less weird. Always good!
Thanks so much for your generosity, Athenaeum Grrlz! <3
The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the always enchanting and entrancing Red K Elders. Red is an accomplished and talented Otherwordly graphite artist and body worker, among many other alluring titles. After being introduced to Red’s art via her first HEKATE, the Athenæum members began following and falling in love with her work. When we heard Red was releasing a new print on the Dark Supermoon, aptly titled LILITH, we knew we had to reach out.
Ms. Elders obliged, and we are pleased to present such generous and intimate answers. Red has given us – and you – a deep glance into her sorcerous and skillful devotion by means of art, movement and written word… her gifts, her genius, and her daring abilities. We know you will feel as utterly indulged and honored as we do.
The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.
As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?
Elders: You know, I only really came to Western mysticism these past few years. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life deeply immersed in Eastern traditions. So I really don’t know very much at all about the classic occult texts that everyone knows and I’m only now just discovering.
On a structural/somatic level, the many works of Hua-Ching Ni, and then Mantak Chia shaped a lot of the foundations of who I am as a creative-energetic-spiritual being. Also Esoteric Anatomy by Bruce Burger. There’s also a particular book I worked with deeply for a couple of years from my Tibetan Buddhist practises, though that one isn’t available to the general public.
Robin Artisson’s amazing book An Carow Gwyn was really my way into Western practises, and Jack Grayle’s incredible The Hekatæon continues to be hugely influential, along with The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) translated by Hans Dieter Betz.
But also, so many other books! I live in a tiny old cottage that is packed to the rafters with books, and there’s quite a wildly varied mix. I’ll pick a few at random:
The Wolkstein and Kramer translation of Inanna lived within me for quite a while, as I did a lot of deep movement journeying with those ancient texts. Similarly Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Perera.
Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner helped to validate and put into words a lot of strange experiences I have had through my life.
Offering From the Conscious Body by Janet Adler, as a companion to my movement practises, helped me navigate through some wild inner terrain.
Of Water And the Spirit by Malidoma Patrice Somé – and also the novel The Famished Road by Ben Okri. Both are just astonishing in giving rich insight into ritual and spiritual practises in African culture. So much of it feels so right in my bones, and it brings me the revelation of spirits living very closely, alongside and with us – and a deep grief that my own culture has largely lost connection with this wealth and power.
As an artist and practitioner, do you have a Patron of Art? If so, how does this Patron play a role in your creative and magickal endeavors?
Elders: On an everyday level, I’m just enormously grateful to anyone who has ever bought any of my prints, and there are some very kind and generous people who continually support me in this way. I’m greatly indebted to them, because their patronage enables me to devote days to going so much deeper in my work.
There are also several patrons from unseen realms, who I feel hugely blessed to be connected with, and continually humbled to be touched by Their presence. Cultivating and tending my relationships with Them feels fundamental to everything. There is never a day I don’t express my gratitude in some way, and every drawing day involves a great deal of ritual work in propitiations to these ones. I have them to thank for any success. I feel very tiny in Their presence.
You have mentioned publicly that you picked up drawing again due to the pandemic. This is fairly recent! What inspired you to create magic-infused graphite (and we must know, how did you come to choose graphite?) portrait drawings of Old Gods and Mythic Beings? Did you begin with the intent of creating this body of work?
Elders: I was creating an oracle set in Robin Artisson’s ASKION course offered through the Blackthorne School. That was where I also met Jack Grayle, whose work would also become very influential to my drawings. It was a very potent oracle making!
Robin asked us to make some drawing or representation of Hekate to help consecrate the oracle. I hadn’t done any drawing at all for about three years; my mode of creative expression for quite some time had been writing. But I picked up my pencil and this simple drawing of Hekate just flowed out quite effortlessly and astonishingly. I was amazed to see the lines still so very strong, clear and graceful. I felt again through my whole body the ecstasy of drawing and became instantly addicted once more.
Hekate by Red K. Elders 2019
I work with graphite because I love the barely perceptible sound of it sliding over the tooth of the paper. I feel that resonance in my body. It is a delicious fingernail down my spine. I adore the impeccable precision of the finest sharpest pencil point. And also – graphite is rock, and I come from rock people. That is deep in my ancestral blood.
I didn’t have any intention about creating any body of work, it really just evolved organically into this theme. After that first Hekate, I looked back to the last body of drawings I had done several years previously, where I was fusing figures with sacred geometry. My two most potent drawings from that time were of some mystery goddess named RUNE, and also ORPHEUS. I couldn’t find any information about RUNE and I didn’t know much about ORPHEUS or any of the Greek myths, so I began reading and researching. Then a drawing of VENUS emerged, followed by ZAGREUS.
There were some animals and child portraits and animal-human pairings and hybrids for some time. Then some first very simple drawings of Hermes and Artemis, then Persephone, so there was clearly already a theme developing around the Greek Gods that was becoming fascinating to me. I began researching into their myths and histories.
I was also continuing to work with Robin Artisson’s writings and some of his ritual work, and one day I carried out a ritual of his to connect with and honour a body of water. I went to one of my very sacred places out on the salt marsh to make an offering to the sea there, which felt very powerful.
The next day everything shifted in my drawings and a whole new piece came called INITIATION. It was like everything flipped and I went underground. My drawings had been very clean and white, but for the first time, this one had a dark background, which felt much more complete and right.
INITIATIONby Red K Elders
After that I found myself drawing some of the spirits I was connecting with through Robin’s work. LUCIFER came next, and CERNUNNOS, followed by GREAT GRANDMOTHER, THE CAILLEACH, ANDEDION and DALIX. They all demanded much more depth and focus from me and the level of detail They were asking for forced me to start working with real models.
Do you have plans to implement any other types of mediums in future pieces? Have you created artwork in other mediums like paint or sculpture? (If so, may we see?)
Elders: I have a quiet longing to make oil paintings. I have experimented with painting in the past and I know I have skills there too, but oil painting feels like a whole new world to learn.
About fifteen years ago I was exploring working with clay and that always draws me back. Clay is so sensual, ancient, and permanent. I love the thought of creating future ancient relics. Yes, I do have a photo of a series of little porcelain pieces I was making from around that time.
Body of Work by Red K Elders
Twenty years ago I was running my own successful graphic design and photography business in London, mostly working for the city’s top hotels and restaurants. But I was also creating my own art through photography. I was fascinated with the magical and telekinetic powers of adolescent girls and the latent Gods in men. I’d assemble a team of highly skilled stylists and assistants and create an entire shoot making darkly-lit portraits in sacred places such as disused Masonic temples hidden beneath the city (which I only discovered through working with the top hotels and restaurants). It was a lot like ritual, really. I was trying to draw forth the hidden mythbeings laying dormant in the heart of my subjects. There was a feeling of grace when everything suddenly flowed together like a gorgeously choreographed ballet and I clicked the shutter at just. the. right. moment.
Red’s photography is reminiscent of her graphite work with beautifully posed, elegant models and dramatic lighting.Photos by Red K. Elders
In many ways those photographs were the precursors to my drawings today. I was quite surprised when I revisited them recently to see this strong thread running from then to now that I hadn’t even noticed. I do still have a yen to set up whole big gorgeous scenes in ancient temples again.
But I also feel a deep belly pull downwards to just to stay focused with the pencil drawings that are currently moving me most, and become absolutely masterful with that.
Would you please share some of your tips/tricks/life hacks on how to stay focused and motivated on artistic production – and also as a woman with adult responsibilities in a world ravaged with digital distractions? Moreover, if we may ask, how do you balance adult responsibilities with artistic endeavors and a spiritual/magickal practice? Any words of advice for the hoards of us also juggling more than enough?
Elders: My biggest impediment to creative work is also my greatest help. I have two daughters, aged 13 and 9, and I just can’t drop into the space required to work when they are around. So I have arranged my life to give me three full days each week where they are not with me. Those three days are so precious to me and thus I become incredibly focused, with zero procrastination. There are certain rituals I always engage in on those days, that release the tension of the previous days, reset my body into creative flow mode and open the seams for the Gods to flow.
I feel extraordinarily lucky to have those sacred days every week, which I’ve now built a ring fence around, to keep protected. I absolutely do not do any everyday chores or tasks in those days. The rest of the week I’m an ordinary middle aged solo mama, finding it quite a challenge sometimes to manage everything that mundane life throws in our path, whilst always secretly yearning and plotting and preparing for my next days alone to give myself to my Muses. Like probably every mother, I feel guilt and regret not being able to give my daughters more of myself, more of what they need and deserve.
So even though I have engineered this situation where I can immerse myself regularly and fully with the strange sirens that sing out to me, it also comes with a sense of loss, to not have a more wholesome and healthy family system for my daughters to be held by, nor a greater community and cultural support structure in general that respects and values both mothers and artists.
Regarding balancing digital distraction, that’s hard, as I rely on social media to promote and sell my work, so most evenings I have to be online to do that. I just think of it now as part of the work, but I do have to set limits for myself. I rarely scroll the Facebook feed. As soon as the question comes up: ‘What can I look at next?’, I’ve made that a trigger for me to: Switch. The. Damn. Thing. Off.
If I’m ever distracted during an art working day, by picking up my phone or such like, I become acutely aware of being watched by the Gods who I may have been propitiating that very morning. I immediately feel guilty, like I’m doing something extremely disrespectful, squandering this sacred time that I have carefully choreographed and created with Them. I feel Their negative judgement bearing down through my whole body. If scrolling screens is what I choose to do with sacred creative time, then why should They honour me with Their presence? It’s imperative to maintain my end of the deal if I want Them to keep theirs.
I don’t have TV, rarely watch films and never do gaming. I watch videos of lectures and courses I’m doing as research for my drawings, in the evenings. I think I must be quite boring, really! On the nights my girls are with me, we sometimes watch the lectures together. My nine year-old is loving Jack Grayle’s video presentations of his readings of The Iliad from his totally inspirational GodSong course!
Anyone who follows you on social media will have seen glorious photos of your native landscape and the intimate body work that goes into gathering inspiration for your art. Clearly this process is deeply spiritual and complex, but if you could indulge us, we would love a peek into your processes and/or ritualistic creation. How important is this work to the overall outcome of the piece?
Elders: It’s a strange thing, this deep eros I feel with the wild places in the land. I spent a lot of time in a vast ancient wildwood when I was a child, feeling safe and connected, protected and energised by that place. Later I lived in a shack in the woods for nine years with no electricity, feeling again that deep care from the tall pines that held watch all around. They were the midwives that helped me birth my daughters. So it feels natural for me to always be feeling into establishing these kinds of relationships with the land.
The wild places cleanse me; something of the land seems to rush all about me like a flurry of handmaids and wash all my stresses away. I soften into the process, let myself be held and moved by something unseen. I just go with it. It looks like dancing, but it’s really some kind of unblocking, opening, loosening, clearing process. I feel myself being filled with this immensity rising up through my roots, that seem to extend infinitely downwards. I don’t know really what it’s all about but I feel enormously humbled by it. I become like a newborn babe, all glowing. Receptive. That’s a good place to be when I pick up a pencil. Then the drawing just comes, and doesn’t stop… for six or eight hours or more.
If I don’t go and connect with those wild places regularly, then the drawing just doesn’t flow as easily. It comes in stuttering, small chunks, or I get distracted.
Which artists (either in the traditional sense or a more ambiguous definition) have influenced your artistic work, your creativity, and your praxes? In a similar vein, which of your pieces is your personal favorite and why?
Elders: I adore the German choreographer Pina Bausch. Her contemporary dance theatre pieces are bone-throbbingly powerful, extraordinary, raw, primal, beautiful. They speak to the human condition, with all its tender hopes and losses, its grief and wonder. Pina has sadly left this mortal realm now but I was lucky enough to witness her grace in one of her pieces many years ago. She annihilated my sense of self. I have always said if I could choose my life all over again, I’d have joined her Tantzheater Wupperthal company as a dancer.
In visual arts, I’m always drawn to the darkness of Caravaggio, and in a similar vein, the contemporary paintings of Roberto Ferri totally twist my guts.
So many other incredible artists too! Off the top of my head: William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Leonora Carrington, Zdzisław Beksiński, Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha and Art Nouveau in general. I’m also totally obsessed with Russian landscape paintings, especially Arkhip Kuindzhi whose work makes me cry.
And then, Russian landscapes in films… Tarkovsky’s Stalker was hugely influential on me, as was his Andrei Rublev. Several of Terrence Malick’s films also speak to me of that mystical union of landscape and being.
Of my own drawings, I’m always rapturously in love with whichever current drawing is coming. I have to be, it really is a devotion that I crave to be with. When I have to put a drawing I’m working with aside for my days of being “mama,” it’s some strange torture that I have to try not to think of.
I can’t get enough of Jack Grayle’s offerings. He produces the finest kiln-dried tinder for my creative fire. His courses on Hekate and the PGM, and currently his year-long journey of readings and discussions with T. Susan Chang on Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, are all absolutely fundamental to my work with the Greek Gods and Goddesses. I’m enormously grateful to him for his support of my work, and for generously sharing his extensive knowledge in such eloquent and accessible ways
Before drawing did you have any other creative outlets that you integrated with your spiritual path?
Elders: I have had several periods of writing, which twines really well with my movement practises, where it becomes witness, or helps me to keep some grounded witness presence within myself even as I let myself go fully into the void.
When my children were young it was harder to find any moments of aloneness, so my creativity was expressed through creating a woodland based community group which ran for six years where we’d explore handicrafts such as knitting, sewing, weaving – and also singing and storytelling, all out under those watchful pines. That was a magical time, where I really felt creating and holding that space for all those many families was feeding the land there in a very deep way. All the elements seemed to move harmoniously in unison with our endeavours. We’d be gathered in a circle round the fire and I’d be singing seasonal songs to the earth and elements. I’d sing a love song to the wind, making elegant gestures with my whole body, and the wind would come and swirl around us and be with us at that fire. It was a very special feeling of being at one with the universe, and some great mysterious unfolding.
Ostensibly it was a group for children, but I loved seeing the parents who would not otherwise have been out there in the woods, being touched and moved in some very profound ways. They still talk about it now. I like that.
As Hekate devotees ourselves, we love the artwork that you have created for the Goddess. It is through Her that we were introduced to your talent. In what way has Hekate influenced and/or changed your art and praxis?
Elders: A few months after the transition in my drawings from light to dark, Covid arrived and put a stop to my regular work as a deep bodyworker and massage therapist. I had no other financial support and rent and bills to pay and two children to feed, so it was pretty scary.
By some kind of divine timing I had just begun Jack Grayle’s in-depth 13 week course on Hekate, also offered through The Blackthorne School. The practices we were doing to connect more deeply with Hekate – Goddess of transitions, of liminal places – were absolutely fundamental to me staying sane and grounded as my only income literally disappeared before my eyes.
Early on, Jack reads “Document to the Waning Moon” from The Greek Magical Papyri. It was incredibly powerful for me. I had several very clear strong visions and one of them was of another drawing of Hekate. I also felt a huge compulsion, a directive even, to really push and promote my drawings in a shameless way that I never would have dared before. I needed to survive, and my drawings were the only asset I could see at the time to make that work, as we were in full lockdown and I was home caring for my daughters.
I really felt Her presence, holding this totally unknown transition for us all. I was immensely grateful and started giving more honouring to Her, setting up a shrine in my house and making heartfelt urgent prayers to Her for continued support. I was amazed when the drawings started to sell, enough to just about support us, and enough for me to realise that my drawings were something I needed to take seriously for the first time in my life, and devote proper and full attention to. Still, She made me wait several more months before granting me the opportunity to draw Her again. I had a lot more learning and research and prayers and offerings to make first!
HEKATE – SILVER EDITION by Red K Elders
It is so beautiful that you gather inspiration from real human beings. How do you go about choosing models for your work? How did you choose the model for your newest piece – LILITH?
Elders: Social media really has been fantastic for meeting and creating mutual support with a whole community of other artists, and an excellent way to find the models I have been working with. I follow a lot of great photographers and models, and the process seems to happen in a couple of ways:
Sometimes I have a vision for a drawing and then I will search for the right model – or I come across a model and then have a vision of them already in some finished drawing. In those cases, I will ask them to pose for me, I’ll send them sketches of what I see, and pay them to make a specific photograph of the pose that I need.
Other times a photo will appear on Instagram that immediately seizes me and I see something more in it. Then I contact the photographer, and often the model too, and ask for permission to work with their image and change it into something else. Sometimes its not much of a change – like in Lilith, which is really very similar to the original photograph of model Ellia Brightmoon, made by Blas Photographer. The original photo focuses on her body, and does not include the whole left arm. But I saw that whole left arm, with a snake twining round and sliding up to her heart, with the golden geometry of the sun illuminating behind her.
Fascinatingly, when I contacted Ellia to ask how she felt about being Lilith (because that also feels absolutely important that the model and photographer are giving their blessing to the drawing), she was astonished. She does theatre work, and Lilith is the artist name she uses; Lilith is one her own Patron Goddesses.
LILITH by Red K Elders
Also, I posted a video clip of the drawing process with music by a band called Archive that I had been obsessively playing while making the drawing, and it transpired that Archive is her favourite band.
These things do fill me with wonder, at how we are mysteriously brought together in these synchronicities and resonances through creative processes, for deeper reasons sometimes that we may never know. I feel some kind of strange kinship connection now with the models and photographers I’ve worked with in this way, many of whom I have stayed in contact with, and who have opened the doors to more curious places.
This Lilith piece is breathtaking. What elements were you aiming to capture? What inspired you to choose these elements and portray them as what registers as so poignantly and hauntingly Lilithian?
Elders: It’s funny, I’m almost ashamed to say that I really didn’t know ANYTHING about Lilith when this drawing appeared. I was working with the Greek Gods, and felt that was my focus at the time. But I randomly saw that photograph and had this strange clear flash of vision and had to sketch it: a sensual woman with left arm outstretched, eyes rolling back in her head, the snake sliding up that arm to bite in her heart, all in the ferocious glare of a mystical sun. As I was sketching I was hearing ‘LILITH, LILITH, LILITH’ over and over, so I had to find out: Who the hell is Lilith?
Through some research I connected with Idlu Lili Regulus, who has been writing an immense tome on Lilith for several years (called She Of The Night, to be published by Theion Publishing in 2022. Recommend!) Idlu was incredibly generous and helpful to me in sharing information and supporting my understanding of the drawing of Lilith. I now see the snake as the embodiment of the divine pairing of Lilith with Samael. The huge golden sun burning down on their union in the desert, molten with the sacred geometry of all mystical union.
Now I also feel this kinship and mutual support with Idlu Lili Regulus that otherwise would not have existed, so these drawings also are bringing me into relation with other humans in this world and that feels mysterious and precious too.
What is next for the great Red K. Elders? We would love to hear what you have planned – esoterically, cunningly, and innovatively – for the remainder of 2021.
Elders: Well, as is often the case when following the subtlest of shimmering threads, the way I keep thinking things are going to unfold keeps rapidly shifting. I think that’s a sure sign we are on the right path, when we encounter the trickster that riotously upsets the table just after we have all politely sat down to tea.
My fascination with the Greek pantheon of Gods continues, as does my research and praxis with them, and I had planned to make a book in this vein. I have several clear finished drawings in mind, I even have the models and have already shot the reference images for the next two drawings which are ready to go. And yet, that inner flame I feel for that project has curiously just recently diminished somewhat, and I have a strong demand from some other wild dark female Goddess who wants to come first.
I quite like that, because Zeus was next in the queue, but sorry Zeus, you will have to wait while this other dark feminine force takes centre stage. That’s what I’m working on now, and She’s coming very clear and fast so She may even be complete in the next few weeks.
Beyond that, in 2022, I’m certainly feeling a book of some sort will come. I have acres of writings, but need to sift through it all for the gold and merge it well with my drawings.
Many people have been asking me to teach them drawing but I don’t feel I can do that as I never went to art school. But I can teach people about the processes and practises I use to get into creative flow states, the movement bodywork and the rituals I work with. So I’ll be doing just that by hosting a weekend residential retreat in England next Spring called ‘Conjuring the Mythic’.
And following on from that, I’ll be hosting an online course on the same subject, perhaps in Spring too.
Lastly, I’m courting a few galleries to have my first exhibition. The majority of my print sales go to the USA so it seems likely that’s where my show will be.
If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential artists, what would it be and why?
Elders: I have a gorgeous huge volume: The Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Collection which documents the collection of artworks in a wonderful art gallery that just happens to be fairly close to me here in Norfolk (we don’t have many big galleries here so it’s quite a wonder!). As well as gorgeous works by Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, the collection includes a great many folk artworks and objects spanning 5000 years of creativity from Polynesia, Alaska, Western Africa, Mesoamerica, Japan, and the Cyclades.
There are so many objects of power and beauty in the collection, made without artifice or pretention, that still seem to house some magic of great immensity. Even the tiniest hand carved walrus tusk is utterly exquisite. I always feel totally aflame when I am in the presence of such artistry, and even the book still conveys that.
How can my art also be a house for Spirit?
So for anyone starting out with art, I’d recommend exploring that, feeling that presence, letting it seep into their bodies and then begin to wonder: How can my art also be a house for Spirit?
The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the enigmatic albeit brilliant Robin Artisson, who has come to be known and celebrated as a modern traditional Witch, author, teacher – and an absolute authority on folklore, pre-history, “Spiritual Ecology,” and the “Unseen World.” Artisson is the author of An Carow Gwyn: Sorcery and the Ancient Fayerie Faith, The Witching Way of Hollow Hill, Letters from the Devil’s Forest, The Flaming Circle, The Resurrection of the Meadow, The Horn of Evenwood, Hands of Fate, The Secret History (and several more!)… and of course, The Clovenstone Workings: A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft.
During our experiential, deeply moving and profound analysis of Clovenstone, the Athenæum became so Witched and bewitched by both the book and the author, we just knew we had to reach out to Artisson for an up-close-and-personal glimpse into his sorcerous life, work, and praxes. Artisson obliged, and we are so honored to present an in-depth Interview with his generous, intimate, and hauntingly truthful responses – his current projects, his upcoming works, his processes of writing, the collaboration with Molly McHenry,and which of Robin Artisson’s books is not just the Athenæum’s personal favorite – but his as well.
The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.
As we are the Library of the Ungirt we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your writing? Which have inspired your craft/practice?
Artisson: This is quite a difficult question to answer, because many sorts of books have provided needed supports to me as I spent years trying to get into a more direct space of experience of the powerful things that I know indwell this world, and even our own bodies and souls. Some have provided support; others have been inspiration at a more creative level; this is critical, because creativity within a certain aesthetic or spiritual range is the essence of just about everything to me.
Other books have provided a powerful academic or historical basis for what I write or understand, and the reason why such books are important is because (aside from just good information being gained from them) they bring a sense of confidence to me, and to others; there is a confidence that what we are doing is within a range of human experience and within a historical range of reality which can still be felt and even make us stronger today.
I would say that the first book that ever inspired me was Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft, and for multiple reasons. He actually had historical workings of real Witchcraft adapted into that work, but he also didn't follow the formula for other Witchcraft books from the 1970s through the 1990s; there was no attempt to graft in a duotheism of a Nature God and Goddess; there was no attempt to really hit up dubious "Celtic" origins or aesthetics for everything; he starts his Witch Mythos in the occult-baroque legends of the Watchers and the Nephilim, and stays with that spiritual aesthetic throughout. It was quite a divergence and very satisfying to my younger mind.
Beyond that book, others I have found critical, for all the reasons I listed above, are Arcana Mundi by Georg Luck, Jennifer Westwood's Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain, all of Emma Wilby's works, but most critically Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits and The Visions of Isobel Gowdie, Evan-Wentz' The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, the works Warriors of the Wasteland and Beowulf and Grendel by John Grigsby, Hyatt and Black's book Pacts with the Devil, and Wirt Sikes' book British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends, and Traditions.
Also critical to me, over the years, have been Stories from the Six Worlds by Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Powers Which We Do Not Know by Daniel Merkur, Spirit of the New England Tribes by William Simmons, The Underworld Initiation by R.J. Stewart, Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads by Lowry Charles Wimberly, and literally everything by Katharine Briggs - particularly her Encyclopedia of Fairies.
I would also have to mention the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, alongside Schönwerth's collection Original Bavarian Folktales, A.H. Wratislaw's collection of Slavic Folk-Tales, and Kvideland and Sehmsdorf's amazing collection Scandinavian Folk Belief and Legend.
This list is of course extremely far from complete. Pretty much any book by Claude Lecouteux would belong here, too. So would the works of Derek Jensen and David Abram (whose two books Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous were both completely critical to my entire understanding, and still are) and Paul Shepard's book Coming Home to the Pleistocene. Still not a complete list, but these books all stand out to me strongly.
A few examples of the many books recommended by Robin Artisson
What compelled you to write something as powerful and visceral as The Clovenstone Workings?
Artisson: I wrote The Clovenstone Workings because my own efforts towards developing Oneiromantic power - power, clarity, and capability in dreams - became strong enough to lead me to many dramatic successes at making contact with the Unseen World. But this happened in conjunction with my growing personal understanding of how much of historical Witchcraft was a phenomenon completely interlaced and tied up in dreams. I felt like I had achieved a breakthrough in understanding, an understanding of both history and of modern-day technique towards the gaining of these special dreams, that could help a lot of people right now.
I say "a lot of people" while knowing that it won't ever be that many people, relatively speaking. But all I needed to help was one person and it would have been worth it. I believe - firmly - that our real success as human beings, our most ancient (and now largely forgotten or deeply hidden) path to authenticity and peace, lies in how well we penetrate the depths of ourselves and the world and learn to be friends with spirits and with the many powers we live among and with in this world.
And I knew this book would, along with some others I’ve written, help some people to do that. And I know that powers in the Unseen World want this. And I know I stand to gain favors from them for doing what I do, favors beyond what I’ve already gained. And then the inspiration hit from a deeper level and took me away. I didn’t have any choice after that; the book really wrote itself.
Define the processes that facilitate your writing. Are these words from you? Channeled? Do you have a Patron of Writing, much like the “Empowerer of Dreams” discussed in our review re The Clovenstone Workings?
Artisson: The way I write is largely tied up with feelings. It's like a great storm or force inside me, very deep inside, which contains a lot of things that I understand or have learned, but also a lot of things I don't understand. Normally, it feels perfectly fine but it can make me agitated. As time has passed, it has become somehow changed or manipulated by spiritual powers that I maintain relationships with. They seem to have done something that can make me feel crazy or even ill at times, a thing I consider to be a holy affliction of types.
“I try to spill ideas into outlines or notes, but they are usually quite chaotic. I lose whole days and often stay up all night while typing away; it’s a kind of delirium and really unpleasant much of the time, but I feel better after typing for long periods, getting it out of me and into some other medium.”
Then, special times come when ideas appear inside me and I think "A book? An article? A big essay that I can turn into a PDF?" But then it just comes as it wishes, outside of my control. I won't feel well unless I sit down and create it. And often, I don't know what it will look like when finished. I try to spill ideas into outlines or notes, but they are usually quite chaotic. I lose whole days and often stay up all night while typing away; it's a kind of delirium and really unpleasant much of the time, but I feel better after typing for long periods, getting it out of me and into some other medium.
I don't know how organized most writers are, but I'm not too organized. When the works want to come, they just come. They can't be forced, or planned. They also don't come on any schedule. Sometimes they feel like messages from other beings or places; sometimes I get a break and can say things I really want to say, but it's always very mysterious to me, the whole process.
I do not have a specific patron of writing or efforts of that nature. I do have familiar spirits that I relate to for certain matters, though, and I do have my own ways of requesting guidance or help of a tutelary nature from certain other-than-human persons. I do that often; I think everyone in this vocational life-way should.
As Clovenstone is a “Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft,” how much historical research did you put into writing this book? Describe the information-gathering processes (and/or rituals) and how those facilitate what the previous question encapsulated.
Artisson: Clovenstone is called "A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft" because its primary focus is on topics and experiences that are directly connected to, or tied in with, what historical sources tell us Witches were involved with or experiencing. I would say years of research went into this book, even long before I knew I would ever write a book like this. Things I had researched and read about years ago were "activated" in my mind and memory as the book itself began to emerge inside me.
Sometimes I think most of the craft of writing is like that - you spend years reading things, learning, and then life flows along, and one day you have a special need for what you learned long ago, and it's there for you, ready to help. I sometimes wonder if we don't run across things and take them into us which only reveal their reasons why some time later, or a long time later.
I did a lot of time interlacing my own ritual or metaphysical understandings with the patterns of Early Modern Witchcraft that I was trying to breathe life into, in Clovenstone. Glanvill's book Saducismus Triumphatus was one of my primary historical texts that fed into Clovenstone, and it's a tediously long book, very hard to read! But I was looking for special things within it, things that could bring some of the experiences it's describing back to life for me and for others.
When I gained what I was looking for, I had to find a way to give it the power to exist. That meant relying on divinatory arts and familiar spirits to channel the special words used in the book to perform many of the feats described within. That process was onerous enough all on its own, but nothing compared to testing these things to see if they could produce the extraordinary effects I was wanting. I tend to believe that if something works on me well enough, it can work for most people. And when I was comfortable with these workings, I put them in the book.
Of course, this is still a simplification of the process. I partly feel like I assembled a work, but another part of me feels like it assembled itself. I know I couldn't have any peace until it was done.
Let’s discuss “Words of Power.” In which ways have Greco-Egyptian sources inspired and/or influenced how you divine powerful words? In which ways have they not?
Artisson: The Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) has been my ultimate source for what I call "Strange Words," ancient words utilized before the rise of the Christian world, to add power to my attempts to reach the powers in the Unseen World. Though the PGM material requires many years of study to really utilize at high effectiveness, those years of study have been done and certain formulas or sequences of Strange Words have been selected for their high degree of effectiveness. I would say the influence of the PGM is very profound on my spiritual work and life, but even discovering some ancient sequences of sounds that cause things like trance states to form, or gain the attention of spiritual beings, is not the end of these efforts, only tools for an ever-increasing exploration.
The PGM formulas are very practical, and that is their greatest use. They work; they accomplish what I or others need, and that is the final reason why they get utilized. But again, they are not the end of any road; what they unlock leads to other places, and thence to even other experiences. In my own work (private, and soon to be shared publicly) there are other means and methods beyond PGM phrases or formulae that allow for the conditioning of the mind and body towards awareness of the Unseen. These other means don’t relate directly to the PGM but they aren’t at odds with them either. We’re blessed to have the surviving information in the PGM acting as another gateway to deeper points.
Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri. Chicago Univ. Press, 1986.
Was there a target audience of sorts in mind when writing/performing/doing/divining Clovenstone? Is there a target audience for other types of writing that you do, and if so – what or who is this ideal audience/reader?
Artisson: There was a target audience for Clovenstone; it was the Strange Souls of the world, the people who are either Witched (transformed in their souls such that the closeness of the Unseen World or its entities is more apparent to them somehow), or the people who were just sideways enough within their deep selves to desire to become so. That was the primary intended audience; the secondary intended audience was those men and women who are not excited or engaged by what passes for "Witchcraft" in so much popular culture and on the popular market.
My ideal reader is anyone who feels like the world (and our lives in it) has depths that are very rarely penetrated, or which stand outside of our easy conscious reach due to countless ages of foul social conditioning and the impact of the many lies of the human social world. I hope to reach people who understand that what is real, sacred, and true cannot be stolen or destroyed by human nonsense, but that our power as humans, so deeply conditioned by human society, can be hindered with regard to how we access the real, sacred, or true. Those people are ready to learn to use their minds and bodies in new ways - which are also very old ways - to overcome the modern world spiritual impasse in the only way I think it can be.
Too much spiritual optimism traps people in a dangerous place. I want as much as anyone to believe that I can just go stand outside, open my arms, and invite in the whole world, or spirits, or Gods, or (insert thing here) and if I just trust enough, or still my mind enough, I can leap into profound connection, but I think most serious and aware people already know it takes more than that for us modern people.
The forces that imprison us in certain states of mind/convention naturally lead us to think that the spiritual journey is a thing of ultimate ease, or somehow democratically open to all, but that is a kind of opiate. And that's charitably assuming that those imprisoning forces even allow people the relief of a spiritual anesthetic. These days, they are just as likely to try to force or shame people into atheistic nihilism.
As far as audiences for my writings go, I write for different people. I described the chief sort of person I might be trying to reach above; but I do consider the Witched audience to be different, in one or two important regards, from the more general audience I intend to reach. That more general audience is the audience of what I would call "Spiritual Ecologists". Spiritual Ecology is a movement that I am deeply invested in and very proud to be a part of. These people, like myself, simply wish to live being aware of the spiritual dimension of everything we encounter, and everything we are.
And this ambition is possible! But it requires a lot of work de-conditioning ourselves away from many modern assumptions. To say that everything we encounter and everything we are has a spiritual dimension is not to say that the spiritual aspect of things is the primary one, the only "real" one, or the only important one. That is never the case. The many experiential dimensions of things - from the most dream-like and surreal, to the most fleshy and tangible - are all important, valuable, and needful. Within Spiritual Ecology we run face-to-face with what some might call Neo-Animism or the modern revival of a general Animistic worldview; that's an important expression of Spiritual Ecology, hearkening back to its original expression.
Would you consider Clovenstone a standalone piece or is it complementary to other works you have written? If so, which works?
Artisson: The Clovenstone Workings was very much written to be a standalone work. I wanted it to be a kind of go-to book, the sort of book you'd choose to have if you could only have one book of its sort. That's how I felt about Paul Huson's book Mastering Witchcraft for many years; and in reality, one of the things I was fantasizing about while creating Clovenstone was how it might be considered (one day) to be in the same category of book as Mastering Witchcraft - that some people would have those feelings about it.
Having said that, I allude to sorcery and the deeper workings of sorcery in some of my other works, and Clovenstone could absolutely act as an adjunct to expansion to those. In An Carow Gwyn I give all of the bare-bones basics of sorcery as I understand it, and then go into advanced topics even - but Clovenstone could be seen as a branch that goes further from that point, describing a special kind of sorcerous feat (the creation and achievement of Pacts), among other feats.
Do you feel, in hindsight, there is anything you would wish to add to Clovenstone? (And we are dying to know – when can we expect a hardcover?)
Artisson: There's an enormous quantity of things I could add to The Clovenstone Workings, but it appeared and arose in the shape it needed to be in. I would be more likely to write a second volume, another book about Witchcraft in the stream or current begun by Clovenstone, than I would be to expand it. And I have had a hardcover version ready to go for some time now; by this time next week I will have done the final things the company needs me to do and should be able to make it available. It will contain a tenth image by Molly McHenry that no one has seen yet - a fantastic image of a young witch on the floor of a forest somewhere drawing a Gateway Ring, while all manner of spirits and strange entities watch her doing so.
How did you begin a working relationship with the artist for The Clovenstone Workings, Molly McHenry?
Artisson: Like nearly all great relationships and friendships in the modern day, Molly and I's began while strolling through the internet, and we just bumped into one another. We started talking through Facebook messages, but I was a little reticent to reach out to her, because I was a stranger guy from FB and every female friend I personally have has told me ten different horror stories about dude-bros from the internet spamming them with out-of-the-blue requests for friendship or conversation.
But lo and behold, Molly responded, and there was never any talk about restraining orders or reports of harassment, nothing like that. She recognized the name Robin Artisson and was completely open and friendly. It wasn't long after that I discovered she was an artist, and at the time she didn't have a lot of her art on her FB (or at least not where I could see it) so I was really shocked to discover how good she was.
As we came to know one another better, and as I saw how hard she worked and how talented she was, I knew I wanted to help get her art out there, but I also knew that I probably couldn't afford her talent. My only hope was to turn the charm on and get her to agree to completely exploitative rates of pay, and hope that she would accept her work being exposed to a wider audience as partial payment. I hate to pay people less than they're worth, and that's really all I've ever been able to do with a talent like Molly.
She was a total champion about it, she worked for rates I could afford and turned out ten masterpieces that really captured the feeling of the soul of Clovenstone. It couldn't have existed completely without her. She has done other incredible work for me too, that will be seen in the future. I've always been a bit jealous of the things Molly can do so easily, like make incredible art, be liked and trusted by people, etc. I have a lot to learn from her.
Artwork by Molly McHenry for The Clovenstone Workings
Which of your books (that you have written) is your personal favorite? Why?
Artisson: I think The Clovenstone Workings might be my current favorite of my own works, with An Carow Gwyn coming in very close behind it. And this is because those two books really say so many things that are important to me, at a soul-deep level. These are like testaments of a sort (if such a term can be used) to things that I think are very critical in human existence, and in existence in a much wider sense than that. They are a means of adding my own input to the very large, complex, and old dialogue my culture has been having, on the margins of society, about what might be real, compelling, sacred, or important to know or experience. When it comes to the Neo-occult world or Neo-pagan world, too, there are many voices but not many that I find straying from the stale center of the regurgitated metaphysics that stem ultimately from the flawed presentations of our civilization. While these things are popular, and while they burn hot in people’s lives for a more-or-less brief period, many find them unsatisfying in the long run and there’re very good reasons why they should. There was always a sense of wanting to offer meaningful alternatives, of putting a “difference that makes a difference” out there, and circumstances conspired to make me able, and so I try hard to do so.
Artisson, Robin. The Clovenstone Workings. Black Malkin Press, 2020.Artisson, Robin. An Carow Gwyn. Black Malkin Press, 2020.
Not many authors start their own publishing company. What inspired you to open Black Malkin?
Artisson: Black Malkin Press is more of an imprint of sorts, just a way of marking my books and showing where they really came from: from the whole complex of spiritual-ecological and sorcerous efforts that I and certain others are involved in. Sad to say, we are not a “really real” publishing house, just a self-publishing operation at present. I’m not against going through a traditional publisher, though I have heard some horror tales about things that certain publishers wanted writers to do, to alter their manuscripts.
Logo: Black Malkin Press
And really, while I have nothing but respect for reputable publishers who have fair practices and treat writers and creators well, we are living in a brave new world and self-publishing has come a very long way from where it was when I first encountered it. These days, if one can do a clever technology dance (which I personally despise doing but have little choice) one can really reach people with self-published works.
Many of us are anxiously awaiting “The Wish-Man’s Children.” Is there anything in the works now in which you want the reader to be aware?
Artisson: Due to various circumstances, related to everything from pandemics to interpersonal gymnastics, The Wish-Man's Children had to be pushed over into 2022, but it is still in preparation. As a project, it is very new ground for me, because it is multi-media and requires the creation of a lot of different things, like traditional visual art, fake articles and news stories, maps, even some videos. It's about 65% a fiction story and 35% practical lessons in sorcery based on that fictional narrative, which is intended to be instructional. It has a long way to go, but I am committed to making it happen.
Right now, aside from getting the hardcover of Clovenstone out, I am also about to publish The House of the Giantess which is an in-depth survey of beliefs, culture, and a sort of "history of pre-history" focusing on prehistoric Britain. In it I give a very detailed analysis of the famous monument Stonehenge, and give what I consider to be a strong, supportable deciphering of how and why it was built, and for what purposes. I also talk about many other deep spiritual-ecological issues tied into our spiritual pre-history and give many resources within for deepening spiritual practices.
Other projects that are working in the deep (and there are some) will be announced in good time. I'm always working!
If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential seekers, what would it be and why?
Artisson: This is a very hard question to answer. I guess it might be impossible to answer because there's many things a "neophyte" might be seeking. So it depends on what the person in question is looking for. If they were looking for Witchcraft in the British or Western European sense of that word, I would want them to read one of Emma Wilby's books Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits or (more especially) The Visions of Isobel Gowdie. Neither of these works are what I consider hard to read, but they are long and academic and the information can be dense. But every letter of every word in those books is solid gold if people want to understand the truth about Witchcraft in the most profound historical sense.
Some might not like the idea of giving a neophyte some academic books, but these are more than just academic texts. Much more. Below the words and deep in the ideas is a vision, a real and powerful reality, which is still alive now just as it was alive centuries ago. It just sleeps and dreams a bit deeper now, but it is there. And a person must be guided or do their wanderings with reference to such a vision. It's like navigating around a countryside using a high mountain in the distance as a reference point.
If the neophyte in question was looking for something more general like Spiritual Ecology or modern Animistic life-ways, I would not hesitate to direct them to David Abram's book The Spell of the Sensuous. That book has the power to free us from the many cultural assumptions that bind and limit us, especially assumptions that bind and hinder almost all Western occultists. I would hope that a person who read The Spell of the Sensuous would also read Becoming Animal right after, also by Abram. These books are total expressions of what the freedom of the soul and the ecstasy of the sensual and the sacred really look like.
The members of the Athenæum Azostos have carefully collaborated on a series of 13 interview questions in which to ask the talented, magickal artist Molly McHenry. McHenry provided illustrations throughout Robin Artisson’s The Clovenstone Workings: A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft, the most recent Review by the Athenæum. We were so impressed by not only Clovenstone, but the beautiful, haunting art that made the magickal manual come alive, that we just had to learn more about the wonderful artist behind the illustrations.
Molly McHenry, or Artharpy, has provided an honest and insightful glimpse into her creative world, her processes, her projects on the horizon… and how she was able to combine visionary worlds with Robin Artisson whilst collaborating for The ClovenstoneWorkings.
The Athenæum has chosen to present this and future Interviews in written form so that we may honor, if not return, the power of and to the written word. Moreover, the questions and answers in written form allow translatability in all its forms for our readers – and for you.
We are the Library of the Ungirt, we have to ask: which books, either historical or occultic, have inspired your art? Which have inspired your craft/practice?
McHenry: I'm a lifelong book lover so there are many that have been an inspiration. I all but completely stopped reading fiction by the time I was a teenager, but the spark was not diminished with non-fiction. When I discovered witchcraft and herbals, it was clearly a lively new road I had to explore.
Grimm's fairy tales have been an obsession since early childhood. Even editions without illustration still painted pictures. I was one of those kids with an "overactive imagination," so I got used to dreaming up scenes everywhere, not just in text but also music and random patterns in nature. It was a game that stuck.
As an adult, I see dramatic scenes in the classic grimoires. I have a sizeable collection of spellbooks old and new that stir artistic and magical inspiration any time I need it.
I'm a big fan of Agrippa but also Anna Riva and Judika Illes. I respect that no-nonsense, "no way but through" kind of approach to the occult.
It is nearly impossible to embody the power of the occult – let alone the Current in The Clovenstone Workings without a working knowledge of witchcraft. We must know: are you a magical practitioner as well as an artist?
McHenry: Yes I've been practicing and studying folk magic and traditional witchcraft for the past 24 years.
I've spent time leading a local coven, teaching classes on successful spellcasting, and also selling my services to the public as a spellcaster and tarot reader. It's been a busy time lol.
The things I've experienced in magic seem to me both deeply mystical and also quite plain and obvious. I like to try to express that in my art. Magic has been a daily part of life for me; only sometimes do I realize how odd that might appear to others.
Feeding the Familiar by Molly McHenry
Do you have a Patron of Art? How do you divine the pieces that you create?
McHenry: I have no Patron specific to my art but what I do have is dreams.
In late 2019, I got terribly sick suddenly and my life came to a halt. I lost months of my life to a few surreal hours of consciousness a day and then 15+ hours of sleep at a time.
I painted as a way to have some value in those strange hours and my long deep sleep gave me lots of inspiration. My dreams became vivid and detailed, full of lifelike characters and places full of backstory and lore. I've painted many of my dreams since then.
Other paintings of mine are based on the complex emotions that come along with my somewhat complex life. It's a comfort to put a face to a name, as it were.
It is mentioned on your website that you are a self-taught artist. Which artists – alive or not, well-known or not, either historical or contemporary – have inspired you?
McHenry: I have a soft spot for decorative, stylized art like that of Alphonse Mucha, but also the fantasy of Boris Vallejo, James Gurney, Arthur Rackham, N.C. Wyeth, and Maxfield Parrish.
I've also been a huge fan of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists, especially Van Gogh. I've been trying to recreate anything as perfect as The Potato Eaters for a very long time.
The Potato Eaters by Vincent Van Gogh
Is this your first time collaborating with an occult author? How was the overall experience creating the art for Clovenstone?
McHenry: It was my first occult collaboration but not my first time illustrating an occult work. I have a few as yet unpublished manuscripts of my own and have been adding the needed artwork to them in between other projects. I'd say my first love is illustration so it's a delight for me to work this way.
This collaboration was very pleasant. Mr. Artisson and I quickly fell into a good rhythm with his vivid ideas feeding my sketches. Each of the images seem to come together effortlessly.
How did you and Robin Artisson come to work together?
McHenry: We met a few years ago with me as a huge fan of his work. The level of conversation that ensued has been a deep expression of our different yet connected practices and beliefs.
Especially as art became a greater and greater part of my life it started to reflect that conversation. Of course Robin's always in the midst of a project as well. Working together was a natural fit.
Please divulge the creative processes that went into creating the art for Clovenstone. We know it was a collaborative effort in some form, but we would love to know if these images were based solely on your experiences with “The Workings” or if you were asked to create specific images by Robin Artisson?
McHenry: I was kept in suspense about much of the workings inside the book as the rest of you! We would talk at length about the focus of each image and he would give me cues and bits of information so that I could match the tone of the text as much as possible. However, I didn't get to read the text until much later. I think that helped me not to become cluttered with possibilities.
The process was a back and forth exchange with me sending sketches until I'd landed on the right angle, the right expression, etc. That's where all the excitement is, when you're first putting form to an idea, so I never rush it.
Some of my own ideas ended up woven within, naturally, but I did my best to do justice to a style and focus that Robin created.
It was quite an honor, of course, that the 10th illustration--the one found only in the hardback edition--was based on an original painting of mine.
Various artworks by Molly McHenry for The Clovenstone Workings
What medium did you choose to create the work in Clovenstone, and why? Is this your typical medium? If not, why did it differ?
McHenry: The medium I used was sepia ink on toned paper. I love traditional art and use it as much as possible, though I do a fair amount of commissioned work digitally.
Toned paper is easy to work with, inspiring deep shadows and drama, so I used it for my own pleasure. I wasn't sure how the images would appear in the book--if the look would still fit--but that element was easily adjusted as the book grew, and I would say the two sort of merged organically.
I love working with ink so I do quite a lot of it, especially in the month of October, of course. My main affection is for oils, but this book was asking for some old-world pen and ink crosshatching, and I was happy to oblige.
If you have done any of the work in Clovenstone, which of “The Workings” were most potent for you? For your practice? Do you continue to refer back to this book?
McHenry: I think I was most captivated by the use of "The Great and Terrible Names" and also "Dream Incubation."
As I've said, dreams are a flowing and constant part of my life so incubation has been a fascinating and rewarding experiment. The use of Great and Terrible Names is a fresh, dark take on my beloved practical magic. I'm thoroughly enjoying testing myself with these works.
Dreams are a flowing and constant part of my life…
Pertaining to the above question: How has Clovenstone inspired your artwork outside of what you created for the book? How has it or continued to impact your art, your creative processes?
McHenry: Illustrating Clovenstone brought out more of a desire to create scenes of the occult world in action. I’ve grown an even greater appreciation for images that tell partial stories to whet the viewer’s curiosity and not completely satiate it. Indeed, I believe that magic already does that to us.
Meeting in the WoodsThe Ancient White OneThe Price of the MandrakeAbundantiaA gallery of painted works by Molly McHenry
Would you say Clovenstone introduced you to something new or did you find yourself comfortable in the current before creating the artwork for it?
McHenry: I’ve read several of Mr. Artisson’s other works so I was familiar with his practice and style. This book is its own creature, as readers well know, so I was content to be led and let it unfold in time.
Can we look forward to any future occult projects/books featuring your artwork?
McHenry: Yes indeed! There is a large project on the horizon which isn’t quite ready to be discussed, but will contain more of my pen and ink work.
Also, soon I will be releasing my first book, “The Thousand Fruit Tree and Other Pagan Fairy Tales,” a modern set of fairy tales told in the Grimm style specifically for the magical community. It will contain many, many full-page color illustrations carefully crafted by me.
Each time we express that little-seen side of ourselves, others get to view our distinctive fingerprint. Those imprints are something special, uniquely human, and they will last longer than our lives.
If you could recommend one book to neophytes or potential artists, what would it be and why?
McHenry: Oh my. That’s a tough one.
I think the most important book any newcomer could have is the one that inspires them to begin today. Magic is in the action so I encourage everyone to find a place and step in immediately. Spellbooks were my place but it might be elsewhere for others.
Older spellbooks like Valerie Worth’s “Crone’s Books” and Kathryn Paulsen’s Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft we’re greatly inspiring to me since I first picked them up in the 90s. Mastering Witchcraft by Paul Huson is another that has a spirit of its own.
Art is a similar beast. I find anatomy and reference books inspiring but that might be a little dull for others. The Spectrum series, however, is an annual collection of the best in contemporary fantasy art and is always a good bet for feeling the creative flow.
In the end, though, creativity and magic are both tied to something deep within. Each time we express that little-seen side of ourselves, others get to view our distinctive fingerprint. Those imprints are something special, uniquely human, and they will last longer than our lives.
Check out the artist’s social media links below to learn more.
It started like a fever dream. A visceral, vivid, and evocative experience. The Athenæum had voted, and The Clovenstone Workings: A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft was up. Hekate, the Witch Mother, the Queen of Elphame – some form of the Dark Mother had brought us together as a book group. But upon starting Clovenstone, a subtle metamorphosis began; whether this was due to the “emotional meaning” carried by the very real and very ungirt Folkloric Devil, the convergence of fear into that of a Covine, or the bonding that is birthed from unreality or surreality, the simple nature of this refinement, this rebirth is (and was): the Athenæum would never be the same again (Artisson 20).
We sat in our rooms, bathrooms, and closets – individually yet as a collective – scrying in the dark, watching as our faces melted and morphed in the dimly-lit mirrors. The flashes of the faces – human, nonhuman, superhuman, transhuman – created a surreal and sublime, albeit controversial and frightening, experience in the Athenæum. As Poquis stated in the Athenæum’s private group:
“It didn’t take long for the shapes in the darkness to morph into something other than the familiar image of myself. In that amount of darkness, this was a scrying process in every sense. It wasn’t just a visual experience, there were physical sensations received from my mind’s eye and a deep sense of knowing of what was looking back at me.”
Seeing the Death by Poquis
But it was not just Poquis who undertook “See the Death” (the first exercise in Clovenstone) and experienced and encountered exactly what Artisson outlined. We all did.
Every member set out to practice this “profane scrying” on three separate nights; every member had the same experiences and events with “the Other” (Artisson 50-53). The “Witching” had commenced.
Then, as if in that trance-like dream of feverish primality, this state of being “Witched” deepened. With Seeing the Death. With the Breaching Talisman. With the Pact. The pull was undeniable.
Our conversations increased, with a sole focus on Clovenstone, on pacts-that-shall-not-be-named, on serendipitous parallels and primordial and instinctual urges. We had been magnetized. The allure of our Patron of Dreams was all-encompassing. Demanding. Because Witched Witching is terribly lonely, solitary with our pacts and dreams and demands… unless, perhaps, it is not. In some ways, we of the Athenæum were fortunate to have our threads woven together – separate, but together – for some (or all) of the book. Artisson would be entirely remiss if he had not mentioned the loneliness of pursuing life-long commitments with Other and other Spirit-Others – yet, Artisson defines in detail not only the haunting isolation, but the balance between this, the magick, with the drudge of monotonous mundane drear after seeing the world in techni-faery-color:
No degree of spectral attainment nor any spirit-relationships are worth much if one cannot also relate somewhat functionally in the human world… Nothing else is possible without this.
The Clovenstone Workings, p. 47
Of course, this balance is not quite as essential without the smothering pull of Witched-ness, that is being “touched by Otherwordly forces and given special benefits, powers, knowledge, insights, abilities, or extraordinary help of some kind, to accomplish something in the human world that they would not otherwise have been able to accomplish” (Artisson 12). Sounds simple enough, but this straightforward definition is and has been a paradigm of polemic controversy, for not only had the Athenæum researched Robin Artisson himself, but others who had reviewed The Clovenstone Workings. What being “Witched” meant for the Athenæum: a sometimes-mutual always-communal subversive and transgressive series of inexplicable equivalences that could not have happened (nor been described or defined) without the help of these “Otherworldly forces,” Artisson himself, and the growing closeness of the collective (some would even say Covine). But other reviewers or anti-Artissons read the above and immediately threw up defenses, for then being Witched meant an exclusive club in which they were not a part – or had not done the work for, made the pact, received the dreams or invitation, buried whiskey and cream and butter conscientiously – or maybe just not ready for. And maybe never would be. The Black Phillip caricatural concept of the Witch Father, the Folkloric Devil of Olde, may be stereotypical, but there must be a reason Artisson seeks patronage in He-who-can-present-as-a-goat, for Artisson so often becomes the scapegoat in magic circles where the past is never forgotten and UPG is relentlessly crucified. Modern Traditional Witchcraft – it just really is not for everyone, and that is not an assassination attempt on one’s adeptness as a Witch, or Sorcerer, or Magician, and so on. Not everyone likes cilantro, and not everyone has the gene that makes cilantro delicious. Sometimes it is preference, sometimes genetic, sometimes fate. And that is okay.
If you doubt the reality of the occult arts Put this book aside; It is not here to convince you. If you fear damnation, Or dismiss what you cannot see, Abandon this book. Walk away swiftly…
The Devil is “Aye gude to his ain’, And his ain know themselves without fear or shame. They may not know how they know, But they know (Artisson, The Clovenstone Workings).
Yet, here the Athenæum was, almost over our heads with the multi-months long commitment of not only reading Clovenstone, but doingClovenstone. Experiential reviews. That is a big part of our purpose – providing deeply experiential reviews of occult literature in the most honest and ungirt ways. Which leads us to discussing the true nature of our subjectivity: we are experiencing this literature, practicing this literature; we are taking months truly becoming the words and rites and exercises. That is the epitome of a subjective review.
Artisson’s book, as mentioned above, was a bit misleading in that it was incredibly inexpensive. We assumed (incorrectly) that we would get roughly $22 US worth of content (the book, published by Black Malkin Press, can be purchased on Amazon). What we really received was an unforeseen gift; the number of exercises and the amount of information and supplementals (the appendix, for one, or the in-depth article on Artisson’s website concerning “The Gateway Ring”) was staggeringly unexpected. This book is loaded. And it is not just a “A Manual of Early Modern Witchcraft” – it is an enigmatical arcane backdoor to the realms of not only dreams and connections, but hypnagogic mastery.
Clovenstone is an unknown black book shrouded in protective layers, inviting in only those who dare, those who know, those who will, and those who are silent (Eliphas Levi: “to dare, to know, to will, and to be silent,” as quoted by Artisson, p. 55). The artwork was generous and intimate; Molly McHenry perfectly captured every aspect of Clovenstone in black and white, so much so that the art of McHenry and the words of Artisson became an inception of a subliminal intersection, an intuitive overlap of knowing. Quite frankly, McHenry’s art persistently evoked further contact between self and Spirits. Brava.
Molly McHenry’s artwork in The Clovenstone Workings
But how did we practice this silence, particularly amongst ourselves? We knew. We knew that, even though we began with Hekate (much like the conflation the Hekate of the Greek Magical Papyri(PGM) and the Queen of Elphame in many ways by Artisson), we were all being led to a different Patron of Dreams during the experiential dive into Clovenstone. And it was not the Queen. That is when it all began to change. That was the point that those – we – who became the “Devil’s Own” through climactic depths… and cataclysmic destruction.
This Patron of Dreams came to us almost immediately, before we even attempted the profane scrying of “Seeing the Death.” I dreamt of Him after beginning the book in earnest, and the others found the pull as unassailable as I. As the exercises continued, and unfolded into “The Workings,” the Athenæum was not only Witched, but bewitched and enchanted with the potency of these “Great Powers.” Artisson writes:
And [the Devil’s] very name still has the power to provoke some kind of emotional response deep inside us, whether it is a secret shudder, or a sudden alarm bell of danger, or a mocking laugh at what we hope is the unreality of such a monster.
The Clovenstone Workings, p. 20
So, which is it? For surely, “[w]e become considerably more powerful and considerably more free the day we recognize the Devil is real” (Artisson 20). This may not be the Theological Devil preached about from pulpits, but there is a Folkloric approach, or an “Ecology of Powers” as Artisson calls it. The Athenæum, from the point we were all pulled to and by this King, described this ecology as “The Current.”
This Current was in full chthonic primordial swing by this point. It was not a fever dream anymore. We were lucid. During the practicing of “The Gateway Ring,” I became covered in ladybugs and butterflies. Not just a few. Hundreds. Poquis was submerged into a realm of Fae nostalgia remembering the countless times she had created “fairy rings” as a child– a memory that could have been subconsciously sequestered or disguised indefinitely without this work – with not only spiritual affirmation from auditory confirmation. Other members were also reminded that they had created magickal rings from childhood – a ritual that had become so natural that re-living and re-performing based on Artisson’s book re-established the point that we as humans are born magickal… We simply dull and distract ourselves with the mundane as the years progress.
Clovenstone allowed us to inoffensively return to our childlike wonder, raw with reverence and humbled by the limitless powers of Other. We could simply create a circle, stripped of artifice and ceremony, and connect with these Unseen Forces. And not only were we becoming better practitioners, but we were also becoming more closely attuned to the Spirits around and the genus loci of our homes.
Gateway Ring photo by LuceraButterfly greeting Lucera during Gateway Ring.
The Gateway Ring introduced the Athenæum to Artisson’s words of power. These words of power, or Artisson’s interpretations therein, were not only at times reminiscent of the barbarous words contained within the PGM, but they created a delightful segue from the magick of Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period to the Witchcraft of today.
These words are also broken down phonetically, granted to the reader as a gift with pronunciations. Not many books gift knowledge so freely; not many arrange it so that the work becomes accessible, doable, semi-rudimentary yet deliberate. The work feels simple, yet it is anything but. In fact, how Artisson broke down the content is essential to how “The Workings” flow. Without guise, layers of pretense have been stripped away…until all that remains is instinctual work in its most austere and archaic form… until just the essence of the untainted magick dances through the pages (And just how does one delicately assume a role of being unsullied whilst making pacts with the Devil? How? Artisson knows), becoming as complicated or as straightforward as one chooses… humbly, prudently, modestly, yet commanding and powerful, formidable. This work is and was essential. It is a force, so much so, the Athenæum has been reconsidering how we have viewed/processed/reviewed works we have read (either publicly or not) in the past.
One of the most time-consuming of The Workings was “Yielding the Green Oyl.” This ritual takes a minimum of three months to complete; yet, the Athenæum found it one of the most enjoyable. There are various ways in which to approach this working, and Clovenstone truly gives the reader the liberty to explore and, dare I say, play? Furthermore, Artisson goes in lengthy detail in not just Clovenstone but most of his work about the importance of forging relationships with our Spirit-allies (this includes asking permission of the plants used in the Green Oyl!) through a form of what I would call meta-animism: an animism that is so aware and interconnected that it supersedes that in which we have grown habituated. It is beyond. It is crucial to the Witch and those who seek to be Witched.
Green Oyl photo by LuceraThrifted Avon bottle. Fitting for some Green Oyl. Photo by Poquis
The Green Oyl itself though was more than collecting plants. It was also about scalding this Oyl over the course of several months, with an accompanying word of power. As Poquis so eloquently defined after her first scalding experience:
“ABANHOU…this word is alive. I can’t quite put into words why I feel that way, it was a physical reaction to say the least. I suppose for the purposes of the Green Oyl, you would need an utterance as powerful as this.”
Scalding Green Oyl on a full moon. Photo by Poquis
As our relationships with Other continuously changed and morphed – closer, deeper – our relationships with Patrons, with each other, and with ourselves continued to evolve. Moreover, the ways in which we viewed, considered, and honored (or learned how we had not been honoring) sleep and sleep-states advanced. Or maybe it was not advancing at all, but rather an un-advancing – back to the ways in which sleep was considered serious, critical, and vital for a rich spiritual life. This became fundamental; sleep was now an elemental and pure operative for our success and our connections. No one really talks about sleep and dreams and humanity’s (lack of) relationship(s) with this essential part of our lives. The Clovenstone Workings outlines this with rigor. Artisson is adamant about how we should perceive and embrace these “sacred realities”:
[T]ry to arrange a more gentle and aware manner of understanding and approaching the sacred realities of sleep and dream. Every descent into sleep and every dream should be thought of as a possible revelation or sacred vision from the Great Powers. They should all be thought of as potential times of visitation, or empowerment. They should be revered.
The Clovenstone Workings, p. 158
The importance of sleep and dream work climaxes in “Transvection or Soul Flight”; for, after all, Clovenstone is a detailed exploration of the Witch’s relationship with Other through hypnagogic and dream realms. Part of this relationship with Other (“between Seen and Unseen”) in being Witched, is the ability to maneuver how “[t]he doorway to the world of dreams is the doorway to the World of Spirits” (Artisson 141). The Athenæum found the essence of this in the use of “Sauwendei,” another word of power that elucidates and strengthens our connections to dreams – and more.
Riding pole photo by Lucera
Photo by Lucera featuring her Breaching Talisman
Alas, the fires from scalding the Green Oyl burned brighter than some of the flames from the Athenæum. For just as this work united as a Covine, it also illuminated the ways in which some of us differ.
Just as some flames burn brightly and quickly, so too will the ending of this review. It may have been exceptionally long, and still does not fully embody the depths of the Athenæum’s collective and experiential subjective submersion into Clovenstone. Much like Marie Kondo’s ability to teach us to discern when things spark joy, so too must we distinguish which experiences sparked joy – and when and how to include those in something so truly personal, visceral, intimate. Teasing apart the denseness of our experiences proved thusly challenging as so much felt purposeful, essential… and therefore “sparked joy.” Marie Kondo’s work may too appear simple at first – falsely that is. Misleading. We have been altered permanently; these experiences and workings are nothing short of life changing. And if you find yourself immersed yet hindered, remember the these words from Poquis:
“The dream aspect of this work, particularly Sauwendei, was a struggle and it actually made me question if this was for me. I have yet to experience it in the way Artisson describes in Clovenstone, and if it wasn’t for my familiarity with the Unseen, I might have abandoned this work entirely. What good is an Empowerer of Dreams to the one who can’t dream? I have come to learn, He is plenty good. To anyone who might feel a struggle here, know this Current is still for you.”
So, may your reading be Witched and your Sabbats be transvesctive, always. Fall into the Current. Be on the lookout for written interviews with Robin Artisson regarding The Clovenstone Workings and with Molly McHenry about her art as featured in this work – coming very soon. Until then, readers… happy dreaming.
Written by: Lucera • Illustrations by: Poquis
This review, as with all reviews, was developed by all members of Athenæum Azostos through multiple weeks of practical workings, research, and discussion as a submersive collective experience.
Learn how Athenæum Azostos weighs material for each experiential review via the Planetary Rubric.Our final score for this Review was 20.25 out of 21.
Reference: Artisson, Robin. The Clovenstone Workings. Black Malkin Press, 2020.
For examples of how The Clovenstone Workings inspired and ignited a primordial creativity for us all, check out some of our personal Instagram posts:
As Hekatean circles grow larger and occult books more readily available, there seems to be no want for Hekate-related material. But the occult community is small and, well, witches and sorcerers and devotees make strange bedfellows, oh my.
The Athenæum Azostos seeks to illuminate the smaller society of Hekateans within the confines of the occult community through providing the most unrestrained, ungirt, and unbound experiential book reviews. In the case of Liber Khthonia, this mission and member bias is no different. We aim to review the book and not the author – based on writing style, research, content, and craft of the book itself. Do we all know of Jeff Cullen? Yes. Do we have anything beyond respectful and friendly acquaintanceship with him? Not at all. So, then, let’s dive right in.
Jeff Cullen’s Liber Khthonia reached Hekatean audiences at a time when new material, new books, new gnoses – were and are released every few months on the great Titan Goddess. This, in stark contrast to where seekers and devotees were ten years ago, can be viewed as both a blessing and a curse; we stand at Her Crossroads looking down either path. Is it good? Bad? Embodying the Liminality of both? Do these books honor Hekate? Are they accessible, reliable, and in-devotion-to? Workable? Approachable?
When Liber Khthonia was first received, the members of the Athenæum felt enthused to explore and practice a book that felt both low in magick and deeply personal. Cullen’s book seemed to embody the ectasis of witchcraft; he is well-known for his art, icons, and jewelry for Her. Now, whereas many Hekatean books focus solely on scholarly regurgitation, Cullen’s Liber Khthonia seemed to incorporate both personal praxis and studious research. It was apparent Cullen loves Hekate. It was even more apparent that he wanted to do right by Her in his debut book.
Image by: Lucera
Contrary to what other reviewers have said, the quality of the book leaves something to be desired. The gilding was inconsistent, the cover a bit flimsy and easily-smudged, and the pages were thin. However, as it was funded via Kickstarter and self-published, these are all forgivable mistakes for a first book. Moreover, to keep costs down (Liber Khthonia being one of the more affordable occult hardcovers of 2021), it is likely the quality suffered just a bit in turn. It seems as though Cullen wanted to make the book available for all – an admirable trait and feat – and for that reason, the Athenæum cannot wholeheartedly knock him for this. The in-margin citations were creative, and yet, they left little room for those who dare to take notes in hardcovers. The editing was strong; but, it would have also been beneficial to have an outside/unbiased editor for overall flow and read. In the future, however, we would suggest purchasing the paperback edition.
The content, though, is where the real magick is. There is an effortless flow to the material: from introduction and history to Her cult (both ancient and modern), to tools, recipes, prayers, and rituals. Cullen touches all the appropriate bases when it comes to Hekate’s history, without being overly scholarly and semantic. Simply put, Liber Khthonia feels accessible and clear – for the neophyte witch and advanced sorcerer alike. Cullen’s relationship with Hekate (as viewed within the pages of Liber Khthonia) showcases witchcraft – which is a welcomed change from many previous works focusing on reconstructionism and/or ceremony alone. This should not and does not devalue the work in any way. It provides a more practical, get-your-hands-dirty, “work”-centric, folk magick stance. As mentioned above, there are dozens of books written for and about Hekate; there are few that combine verified and unverified personal gnoses in a humble and comprehensible way. Cullen’s bibliography is also impressive and adds to the overall experience. These sources are a great launching point for any new practitioner.
However, history and modern cults per Liber Khthonia aside, there are areas that left us, the readers, a bit bewildered. The Athenæum found ourselves having similar concerns and questions about Liber Khthonia as we read and worked through the material. One of these concerns that we would be remiss not to address is “Recipes for Sacred Incenses, Oils, and Potions.” Cullen seems to take on an undeniable “more is more” approach to the creation “of unguents, brews, potions, and mysterious bottles filled with dark ingredients” (p. 221). This theme is constant throughout the book; the rituals and rites themselves also embody an over-the-top selection and absurd amount of ingredients – some expensive, difficult to obtain, or questionable within the recipe or rite ascribed. In fact, some recipes would cost hundreds of dollars to create or perform. As experienced practitioners of the Poison Path, the Athenæum in no way turns its noses up at the inclusion of baneful and toxic herbs. What we do find concern with is the prescriptions of said herbs or ingredients, and how a neophyte may feel they need to follow the recipes verbatim – at detriment to their health and/or wallets. In Cullen’s own words: “The more you do, the better the connection.” (p. 155). One of the “more is more” inclusions is the creation of “The Sacred Vessel” (pp. 121-124). The ingredients listed, which number at dozens and dozens, include such rarities as “nine pearls… nine shark teeth… nine precious stones… human bone… artifacts from a shipwreck… and bones of a sea snake,” among many others. (See below for Athenæum member Poquis’s alteration and personal customization of the Einalian vessel.)
“The more you do, the better the connection.”
P. 155 Liber Khthonia
With that being said, the lore included in “Herbs, Roots, and Stones” was refreshing, as was the tedious attention given to caution (“A Witch’s Warning!” on page 13 being one) and notes of personal implementation and adjustment. The prayers were beautiful and sacred. The tools were comprehensive and inclusive. The rites and initiations felt truly accessible. There were even many other additions that emphasized Her roles and attributes: from “Other Gods” to “Anima Materia Magicae” to “Stones.” These indulgent and enjoyable sections were in no way exhaustive, but an exhaustive book on Hekate would take several volumes, no doubt. This book feels like a practical approach to truly “working” – and to truly “working” as a witch.
Although there is an abundance of recipes and rites, what is truly missing is the author’s personal experience performing these rites or creating these recipes. This is a book of witchcraft – the reader wants to know how the author, the witch, has found the experiences throughout his time in devotion to Hekate. We would have loved to hear about Jeff Cullen’s personal practices (or family practices). Furthermore, the book has many pieces of art that Cullen has created over the years of (and possibly for) the Goddess. But these pieces of art leave us wanting more… tell us why and how and when these arts were created! As readers, we would have loved to have seen photos of the vessels, the workings, the tools, and so on. Much care was put into writing about said vessels and workings – that is very obvious. It would have been welcomed to see them in action, in photo form – or even in his unique artwork style.
Some examples of the artwork featured in Liber Khthonia by the author himself. Photos from Jeff Cullen’s blog
Liber Khthonia does, in many ways, fulfill a need within Hekatean communities. There has been a great division lately between those devoted to history and those working from a more practical starting point. There is a wave of reconstruction battling the current of ecstatic work; these wars do nothing to benefit the community or new seekers in the slightest. All-in-all, Liber Khthonia was an authentic and new approach to Hekatean Witchcraft. We would recommend this book to new witches and seekers (and advanced practitioners and sorcerers as well!), with the caveat that the recipes are a bit “extra.” Cullen embodies that of a modern magickal Renaissance man – he is adept in practical and folk magick, no doubt. By overlapping Hellenism with conjure, something unique (and much-needed) was created: Liber Khthonia. In the words of Cullen, “Let Hekate’s torches guide you and never let your Witch Flame burn out!”
Putting It Into Practice…
Hekate Einalian Vessel, pp. 122-124
Poquis’s Hekate Einalian Vessel Experience
Pictured first: The basic ingredients for the vessel, minus the herbs and plants. Various shells collected over the years, a silver coin and sand from a monumental beach/cave, as well as stones/crystals that felt “Einalian” to Poquis. Himalayan salt was also specifically selected due to its connection to ancient bodies of water. Cullen mentions creating a “heart” for the vessel; his version is a large clam shell filled with various ingredients and sealed with beeswax. Poquis’s vessel was a blue jar given to her, which added to the charm of building something grand without purchasing anything new. She topped the vessel with a hand-blown glass eye that represents the monsters of the deep.
Second photo: Hekate Einalia invocation, and harvesting the moss that was used for the incense recipe.
Third photo: In fumigating the vessel, Einalia incense was made using the recipe outlined in Liber Khthonia. Cullen suggests leaving the vessel in a dark place by the sea or under the kitchen/bathroom sink from New to Full Moon. Poquis decided to leave the vessel under her sink for a full cycle from Full Moon to Full Moon, as she associates the Full Moon energy with Einalia as her own personal gnosis.
Lustral Water, pp. 103-105
Poquis created two versions – Full Moon and Dark Moon Lustral Water. She followed Cullen’s instructions and saluted the Four Directions, using the prayer he wrote, minus the part about the Agalma (p. 91). She included her own hymn to bless the Lustral Water to make it more personal, and extinguished the flame in the bottle. Overall, a beloved experience and she will definitely continue to do this. The smoke split in two, but moved upward in perfect lines, and with this it was believed that the ritual had been acknowledged.
Poquis’s Full Moon and Dark Moon Lustral Waters
This review, as with all reviews, was developed by all members of Athenæum Azostos through multiple weeks of practical workings, research, and discussion as a submersive collective experience.
Learn how Athenæum Azostos weighs material for each experiential review via the Planetary Rubric. Our final score for this Review was 18 out of 21.
To learn more about Jeff Cullen and to purchase your very own copy of Liber Khthonia: A Contemporary Witchcraft and Devotional Tradition to Hekate, visit the links below.
Material that involves experiential reviews demands more than words or ratings; it implores experience and beseeches boundary-crossing. This is why the Athenæum has created the Planetary Rubric. The outline of the seven influential spheres herein underscores many currents and traditions; these planets are steadfast and transcendental. This will be the formulaic prescript for which reviews, experiences, and thoughts are weighed.
Sun ☉
The Sun illuminates and radiates: both content and delivery for the Rubric, and creativity and power esoterically. The Sun is conscious and confident; it is also the personification of vitality, life, and health. The Sun category of the Rubric seeks to highlight the ways in which the source examined displays uniqueness, through successful delivery and experience. This is about power, image, command, and experience, as well as the overall life-force of what is in question.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of The Sun, the Athenæum wants more than ego or brightness. We seek to understand how successful the information is presented to readers and seekers at differing levels of experience. Is the content difficult to digest and unnecessarily complicated? Are the mysteries given freely and processable?
The overall power must lend to how the information is presented, either in new ways or methods (and with key points highlighted that we would come to expect from the topic). Mostly, is it unique, clever, creative, successful, illuminative, and does it embody vitality and power in the Occult?
Moon ☽
The Moon embodies the work of the Unconscious: all things that pertain to the tides of Occult practice are listed here. The Moon category of the Rubric involves spells, rituals, rites, recipes, meditations, and all that the word “workings” may blanket. This also implies that the way in which these workings create a resonance within the reader and worker/performer is of the utmost importance. Whether this be in dreams, knowings, outcomes, or submersive experience, the Moon epitomizes it all.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of the Moon, the Athenæum seeks content that penetrates and permeates beyond invocation – does the content evoke an emotional and magickal response? The Moon is what carries the waves of the Unknown into the conscious and unconscious realms and soul of the reader and seeker.
When scoring here, we ask ourselves if the content is doable, workable, successful, attainable, lasting, effective, magickal, and so on. Simply put, do the rites, rituals, recipes, spells, meditations, and workings therein create a natural cycle of phases in which one grows and flows?
Mars energy is that of motivation and action. Although commonly considered aggressive and ignitable, Mars embodies the ability for the content (whether that be rites or art or words or anything between) to become living and breathing workable, doable, inspiring materia. The encapsulation of said energy shall transcend just action and motivation, however; it should light the flame of the reader or performer to that of transported, exalted, or activated dealings and doings. Moreover, the energetic frenzy of Mars is that of pure strength. There shall be formidable and potent forces that incite the action, growing exponentially from the strength of the source.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of Mars, the Athenæum aims for quality of strength coupled with the innate workability therein. Does the content create desire? Does it become a catalyst for arcane undertakings? Mars also fosters a specific magnetism, so is the material attractive and drawing?
When scoring here, we ask ourselves if we are moved, inspired, motivated, lured… and if, within the realms of these feelings, we can pull from the strength thereof – and work, forward and upward and out of bounds.
Mercury ☿
Mercury exemplifies☿ communication, in more ways than one. This category concerns writing style, editing, and overall communication of content (including development, processes, and technology). Mercury is a messenger, so how the messages of the source content are delivered and received are of vital relevance. Mercuriality aside, the main purpose for this Rubric is conciseness, seamlessness, and poignant conveyance to the audience. Flow, grammar, intonation… All of these are weighed deliberately.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of Mercury, the Athenæum delves into all means of how the content is transmitted via communication. Does the content percolate flawlessly and smoothly? Is the editing impeccable and the relay of information memorable?
Things considered here are: engagement, delivery, writing style, overall editing, and the ability of the material to become significant, meaningful, and unforgettable. In a world saturated with various technologies and means of communication and content delivery, Mercury asks us to take it all in simultaneously, while isolating the means and skills of the content assessed therein.
Jupiter ♃
Jupiter encompasses more than just luck and “money magick.” Jupiter feels accessible; it is the energy of availability and helpfulness – a steadfast aide – that makes this category essential. It involves the ability to both ascertain and perform the content with reasonable ease. The Jupiter category of the Rubric addresses the price, the availability, the accessibility, and the innate capability and skillfulness for the material to be helpful, truthful, and prosperous. Jupiterian energy is indulgent. It is a wealth of material in a positive and expansive current.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of Jupiter, the Athenæum questions and explores the material for how it is conveyed, via convenience, access, and possibility. Is the price reasonable? Is the material feasible, usable, and accessible for the general reader? Is it readily available?
But most of all, we seek to find authentic and truthful material that is a conduit for Jupiterian energy and its helpfulness.
Venus is all that is love and beauty; but, more so, Venusian energy is total aesthetics and attractiveness by way of creativity and charisma. This category envelops all enhancements: art, quality, initial and lasting attraction, construction, and magnetism. Creativity is a must here, as is beauty, value, and charm. Venus is what initially appeals and engages. Enticement, captivation, fascination… all of these epitomize the reactions sought from the Athenæum, and in turn, the general readers/seekers/workers.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of Venus, the Athenæum demands a certain quality – not just of luxury materials, but of art, aesthetics, and intrigue. Is the material enchanting, does it draw one in? Is it worthy of Venusian energy? Does the content forge a relationship with the reader, etc.?
The material must bring pleasure, fashion, abundance, beauty, and be elegant yet comfortable. Furthermore, it must be quality, both in construction and concept.
Saturn ♄
Saturn is reserved, tentative, and penetrates depths unsought by casual observers and participants. The Saturn category of the Rubric deals with the intense and expansive journey to the soul’s substratum. This category traverses how complex and nuanced these laylines run beneath the content. Additionally, this section questions how well the content is researched (and therefore cited). This means exploring the bottom of the depths through the paradox of sources and inspiration used, i.e. bibliography.
When using the Rubric to score under the category of Saturn, the Athenæum surveys the levels and layers of the work as a whole. What is underneath the Venusian aesthetics and the action of Mars? Is/are the inspiration/sources/research strong, admirable, and provocative?
How scholared, experienced, and well-learned is the creator/author? Saturn exemplifies wisdom, discipline, practicality, and lessons via discernment, study, and more. Are these depths and lessons both present, and if so, do they resonate with personal effectiveness and growth?
Each planet is weighed on a scale of one to three. A score of three means the source material exceeded expectations; a score of two means the material met expectations; a score of one means the material disappointed or did not meet expectations.
For examples of the Planetary Rubric in action, see the following Reviews:
