An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Zodiac, The

It has already been suggested that the source of the mystic power of the witches’ number, thirteen, is the thirteen lunar months of the year. There is, however, another important source, namely the twelve signs of the zodiac plus one of the luminaries, the sun by day and the moon by night, which rule over them. The Sun makes his journey round the magic circle of the zodiac in the course of a year; the moon travels through the twelve signs in a lunar month.

No one really knows how old the zodiac is, or who invented it. Our word ’zodiac’ is derived from the Greek zoidiakos; meaning ’figures of animals’, according to the usual dictionary interpretation. It is akin to zoe ’life’ and zoidion, a figure of some living thing. As not all the figures of the zodiac are animals, one may at least speculate that a better interpretation would be ’a figure of Life’, or ’an image of the course of Life’, for all things, human and cosmic.

The zodiac is a circle, divided, as all circles may be, into 360 degrees, or twelve signs of 30 degrees each. This circle is the course in the heavens of the apparent path of the sun, moon and planets; it is about 18 degrees wide. Its twelve signs are named after the adjacent constellations, which symbolically depict the characteristics of the many things including human beings, which the signs govern. The zodiac of the sun’s path, or ecliptic, is not the same thing as the zodiac of the starry constellations; a fact critics of astrology do not always realise. (See ASTROLOGY.)

There is a story that in very far-off days the zodiac was reckoned to consist, not of twelve signs of 30 degrees each, but of ten signs of 36 degrees each; the sign Libra being omitted, and the signs Virgo and Scorpio being reckoned as one. This, says an obscure occult legend, referred to the time when the human race was androgynous, having both sexes in one. But when the separation into male and female took place, it was signified by altering the signs of the Great Wheel of Life. Virgo, the female, was separated from Scorpio, the male; and between them was placed Libra, the sign of marriage.

The zodiac, with its patterns of relationships between the planets and the signs they rule, its triplicities of the Four Elements and so on, is a wonderful design of beauty and harmony, like a great mandala. It is truly a magical circle; hence the popularity of zodiac bracelets, and zodiac rings, with the signs represented upon them, as ’lucky charms’. They are emblems of infinity and eternity, of ever-becoming life. To wear one’s own zodiacal sign, as an emblematical piece of jewellery, is to express the wish of putting oneself in harmony with the best qualities inherent in one’s own sign. All of the zodiacal signs have their own good and bad qualities; all are necessary parts of the Great Pattern.

ZODIAC, THE. The Leo the Lion figure from the Glastonbury Zodiac.

The signs of the zodiac have often formed a motif for decorative art. A fine representation of the zodiac was carved in the Temple of Isis at Denderah; and passing down the centuries, the zodiac reappeared again as a decoration in many old Christian churches and cathedrals.

Perhaps the most wonderful zodiac of all, however, is that which is claimed to exist among the green hills and winding rivers of Somerset, in the neighbourhood of Glastonbury. I say “claimed to exist”, because some sceptics deny its actuality; and it is of course not recognised by any orthodox antiquaries. Nevertheless, anyone who will examine the evidence, particularly of aerial photography, most surely concede that coincidence has to be stretched a very long way to account for it.

In brief, the Glastonbury Zodiac, as it has come to be called, is formed by the natural configurations of the countryside hills, rivers, etc., aided by prehistoric earthworks, the lines of old roads, lynchets, and the patterns of fields. It forms a great circle, some 10 miles in diameter and about 30 miles in circumference. The centre of the circle is at Butleigh; Glastonbury, the ancient Isle of Avalon, is on its northern boundary; and below it, to the south-east, lies Cadbury Castle, believed to be the site of King Arthur’s ’Camelot’.

The great Zodiacal figures were first discovered in modern times by Mrs. K. E. Maltwood, F.R.S.A., in about 1925, as a result of making maps to illustrate the twelfth-century Arthurian romance called The High History of the Holy Grail (translated by Sebastian Evans, J. M. Dent, Everyman’s Library Edition, London, 1913). In surveying and studying the ground covered by King Arthur’s questing knights, Mrs. Maltwood realised that the mythical ’Kingdom of Logres’, with its various strange adventures, was actually a veiled description of this great planisphere, of pre-Christian origin, as the Arthurian Romances themselves are. This was the real Round Table of King Arthur.

Mrs. Maltwood has described her discoveries in A Guide to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars (James Clarke and Co., London, 1964), together with An Air View Supplement to Glastonbury’s Temple of the Stars, and The Enchantments of Britain (Victoria Printing and Publishing Co., British Columbia, 1944). Since the publication of these books, many other students of Britain’s antiquities have taken up the quest for further information and proof of this wonder of Ancient Britain.

More clues, have emerged; in particular, a striking and cryptic passage from the diaries of Doctor John Dee, who was occult adviser to the first Queen Elizabeth (See DEE, DR. JOHN.) Dr. Dee and his colleague Edward Kelley were very interested in the Glastonbury area; and his mention of “the starres which agree with their reproductions on the ground” shows that he knew of the Great Zodiac’s existence, though he refrained from describing it plainly. (Dee knew the value of the virtue of silence upon occult matters, having himself been persecuted in those less tolerant days.)

This passage from Dr. Dee’s diary is reproduced in Richard Deacon’s recent biography, John Dee, published by Mullers, London, in 1968. It should give people who scoff at the existence of secret traditions something to think about.

The implications of the existence of these great effigies, like those of the alignments of Stonehenge and the mathematics of the stone circles, are tremendous and far-reaching. The Old Religion of our ancestors, call it Wise Craft or what you will, is worthy of study, and cannot be dismissed as superstition.