Pagan Magic of the Northern Tradition: Customs, Rites, and Ceremonies - Nigel Pennick 2015

Glossary

ABBREVIATIONS

Abred: (W) This material world, the Middle World (Midgard; ON miðgarðr).

Acht Ort: (G) Ad quadratum (q.v.).

Ad quadratum: (L) Geometrical scheme based on the square and sub-divisions of the square, the octagram, and the sixteenfold.

Ad triangulum: (L) Geometrical scheme based on the equilateral triangle and its development, the hexagram.

Æsir: (ON) The gods and goddesses of the later Norse pantheon.

Ætt: (ON) Direction, place, family (see Airt).

Af hús: (ON) Sacred annex (Pagan chapel) on a farmhouse.

Agrimensores: (L) Roman surveyors.

Airt: (Sc) Direction, place, family (see Ætt).

Álag: (ON) On-lay, a spell or incantation laid upon a particular place.

Álf blót: (ON) Offering to the elves or genius loci (q.v.) of a place.

Álfreka: (ON) A place that has been spiritually defiled so the elves have been driven away.

Alraun: (G) (1) A natural humanoid root, usually mandrake. (2) A humanoid image fashioned from a root of bryony, bramble, or ash.

Amsterdam School: (D) An architectural school or movement in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1911—1940, characterized by ornamental, mythic, and symbolic forms, brickwork, stained glass, and sculpture.

Ankou: (B) Personification of death; the spirit of the last person buried in a graveyard in a particular year.

Annwn: (W). The Celtic underworld known as the Abyss, “the land invisible,” or “the loveless place.”

Ásatrú: (I) The contemporary religion of the Æsir (q.v.).

Asgard: (ON Ásgarðr) The heavenly realm of the gods.

Åsgårdsrei: (Nr) A spectral wild hunt thought to ride through the air on dark, wild horses, led by Thor, Gudrun, and Sigurd Fafnirsbane as evil spirits.

Ásmegin: (ON) Megin (q.v.) of the gods.

Aukinn: (ON) Augmented with power.

Awen: (W) The druidic threefold sigil of godhead, the heraldic Broad Arrow.

Axletree: The timber axle of a wagon.

Beltane: (Sc) May Day.

Besom: Traditional broom made with birch twigs.

Biddie: An old woman, but one who has the power of “bidding” animals and people (and possibly spirits) to do her will.

Black witch: (WE) A practitioner of malevolent witchcraft, bringing evil upon others.

Blast: Magical power projected from a staff.

Bor: (EA) East Anglian expression meaning friend, farmer, comrade, or neighbor.

Bought: (Scots and English dialectal) A circular magical enclosure, a magic circle.

Bregda Sér: (Ir) Shape-changing.

Buck: The body of a post mill.

Bull’s noon: Midnight.

Cardinal directions: North, east, south, and west. Between each are the intercardinal directions.

Ceol-sidhe: (I) Fairy music (òran sidh SG, “fairy song”). Music and songs heard from the fairies and recalled. Examples include “Móraleana,” “Bollan Bane,” and “The Dunvegan Lullaby.”

Ceugant: (W) The transcendent realm of the ineffable source.

Charivari: Riotous noisy assembly intended to express disapproval of an unpopular individual.

Charter: An unwritten code of conduct, such as eastern English Fenman’s Charter, or the Old Charter concerning the license of Plough Monday.

Clim: Chimney spirit.

Closs: (Sc) Passage through a building constructed on a fairy path (q.v.), leaving the right of way unobstructed.

Compagnonnage: (Fr) The French journeymen’s guilds.

Cosmic Egg: In the Pythagorean-Orphic tradition, the symbol of the coming-into-being of the cosmos, the emanation of the material world, renewal and regeneration, and rebirth.

Croomstick: A staff with a hooked end, used physically or magically.

Crowntree: Horizontal beam in a post mill upon which the buck (q.v.) is supported and turned.

Deal: Pine tree.

Deal apple: (EAE) Pine cone used ritually. The sacred emblem (Stadtpyr) of the Swabian goddess, Zisa.

Devil’s Plantation: A piece of uncultivated ground at the corner of a field or road, like no-man’s-land (q.v.), belonging to the otherworld. Also (Scotland) Gudeman’s Croft, the Old Guidman’s Ground, the Halyman’s Rig, the Halieman’s Ley, the Black Faulie, Clootie’s Croft, and (England) Gallitrap and the Devil’s Holt.

Dewar: (Sc) A hereditary keeper of a spiritual heirloom or numinous place.

Dísarblót: (ON) Disting, the January festival of the dísir (female ancestral spirits).

Disciplina: (L) Customary and time-tested modes and traditions of doing things.

Dísir: (ON) The female ancestors.

Dobbie-Stane: (Sc) A cup stone used for offerings to the earth sprites and in wind magic.

Doctor: To doctor something is either to lay a spell on it or to add some substance to food or drink without the knowledge of the recipient. To fix up (q.v.).

Dod: (EAE) A peg or stick put in the ground on which a rig is lined up in ploughing.

Draugr: (ON) A revenant, ghost.

Drove: (1) A herd of cattle or sheep being moved from one place to another. (2) The road along which herds are driven.

Druid’s cord: A string with twelve knots equally spaced, making thirteen equal units.

Ealh: (OE) A fully enclosed timber temple.

Electional astrology: Working out the optimal inceptional horoscope for a project in advance and founding the venture at that moment (punctual time).

Empyrean: The uttermost sphere in European traditional cosmology.

Enhardening: A spell that enables a person or animal to withstand an attack that otherwise would kill.

Enhazelled field: An area delineated by hazel poles for ritual combat to take place.

Épure: (F) Tracing ground used in traditional carpentry.

Etruscan Discipline: The divinatory arts of the Augurs of Etruria, Italy, from the early years of the first millennium BCE (from Latin Disciplina Etrusca).

Eurhythmy: The integrated interrelationship of all proportions within a structure or performance.

Evil eye: The supposed power to attack magically by looking at someone or something.

Ex-voto: (L) An artifact offered in thanks to a divine being who has granted a boon or an answer to prayer.

Fachwerk: (G) Timber framing.

Fainty grund: (Sc) The “hungry grass” or “hunger-stricken earth,” ground where one felt faint; fear gortha (Ir).

Fairy path: A trackway across country, visible or invisible, along which the fairies were believed to process at certain times.

Fane: A Pagan sanctuary.

Far-sighted: Gifted with the ability to see into the future; framsynn (ON).

Farthest beacon: A distant landmark, used in lining up the first rig in ploughing and shepherds’ (witches’) dials.

Fastnacht (Fasnet, Fasching): (G) Carnival, Shrove Tuesday.

Faud Shaughran: (I) The fairy grass, or the stray sod, stepping on which causes disorientation.

Fear gortha: (I) The fainty grund (q.v.).

Fenland: The freshwater wetlands and former fens in the counties of Cam-bridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk, eastern England.

Fetch: See Fylgja.

Fix up: To alter an object magically, either to lay a spell on it or to add some substance to food or drink without the knowledge of the recipient.

Fjölkyngi: (ON) Skilled in the magical arts, literally “much knowledge.”

Foundation: The act of marking the beginning of a building by laying a stone with rites and ceremonies. Traditionally the material foundations are called the Grounds.

Four Grounds: (of effective action) Judgment, distance, time, and place.

Four wentz ways: (EAE) A crossroads.

Fragmentation: See Tileshards.

Framsynn: (ON) Far-sighted.

Frau Percht: (G) Goddess of winter, also known as Perchta, Bertha.

Friðgeard: (OE) “Frith-yard,” sanctuary enclosure.

Frith: (OE frið) Sanctuary

Frith: (Sc) Augury.

Fritheir: (SC) Diviner, seer.

Fur: A color in heraldry, a stylized pattern derived from the fur of squirrel or stoat.

Futhark: Runic “alphabet,” so-called because the first characters are F, U, Þ (= th), A, R, K.

Fylgja: (ON) A spiritual entity connected with every person, a guardian angel.

Galdr: (ON) Magical call.

Gallitrap: (1) A “no-man’s-land” triangle of ground. (2) A magic circle or triangle made by a conjuring parson to entrap spirits or a criminal.

Gandr: (ON) Staff or magic wand, also the power emanating from one (see Blast).

Gast: (EAE) A piece of ground bound magically to be unproductive; a piece of land from which all the spirits have been banished.

Gematria: The art of numerology, deriving numbers from names and words, mainly in Hebrew and Greek.

Genius loci: (L) The “spirit of the place,” recognized in various ways as a literal spirit, as a discernable quality, or both.

Geomancy: (1) Divinatory technique using earth, stones, beans, nuts, and so forth to make figures that are read for their meaning. (2) The art of location of buildings, holistically in recognition of the site and the prevailing conditions, physical and spiritual, as in European Location (the Etruscan Discipline, q.v.), Indian Vastuvidya, Malagasy Vintana, Burmese Yattara, Chinese feng shui.

Goði: (ON) Priest of Norse religion.

Godsoog: (Du) The “eye of god,” a protective pattern of diamond shapes.

Grey witch: A witch who uses her power for ill or good.

Grounds: Physical foundations of a building or the fundamental basis of a principle.

Guild: Cooperative organization of professional craftspeople.

Guiser (geezer): A person who wears disguise at a traditional ceremonial event.

Guising: Performing in disguise; in a mask, a costume that hides one’s identity, or as an animal.

Gwynvyd: (W) The spiritual upperworld, the “white land.”

Haever: (LE) Direction, airt (q.v.)

Haliarunos: Wise women of the Gothic tribes.

Hamfarir: (ON) To travel in a shape other than one’s own; out-of-the-body soul-flight.

Hamhleypa: (ON) A shape-changer.

Hamingja: (ON) Mutable, transferable personal magic energy, luck.

Hammarrsettning: (ON) Sacred rite using a consecrated hammer for empowerment.

Hamramr: (ON) The power of shape-changing.

Harrowwarden: Guardian of a holy place; heargweard (OE).

Haugbonde: (Nr) Spirit that haunted burial mounds near farms of which it was the supernatural guardian; Orkney hogboon (cf. ON haugbúi, “mound dweller”).

Hip knob: Post at the gable end of a house or other building, rising above the roofline.

Hlutr: (ON) A portable sacred image.

Hof: (ON) Hall used for sacred rites and ceremonies.

Höfuð-hof: (ON) Temple.

Hogback: Viking Age tombstone in the form of a small house of the dead.

Hokkiben: (R) Deception, confidence tricks.

Hoodoo: American folk magic.

Hörgr: (ON) Place of worship, an altar sheltered by a tent or canopy (OE træf ).

Horkey: (EAE) Supper celebrating the successful conclusion of the harvest.

Hytersprite: (EAE) Benevolent earth spirit (eastern England).

Icon: (1) Original meaning: a sacred image that is a spiritual embodiment of the power or personification depicted; (2) a striking image in Modernism (q.v.) that is held to embody the character shown or the zeitgeist.

Inceptional horoscope: The horoscope of a project at its beginning (see Electional astrology).

Intercardinal directions: The directions lying at 45° to the cardinal ones: northeast, southeast, southwest, and northeast.

Invultation (invultuation): The practice of making and using images or effigies of people or animals for magical purposes.

Jarðar megin: (ON) Megin (q.v) of the earth.

Jordvättarne: (Sw) Earth spirits.

Kenning: An allegorical and poetic figure of speech, such as “carpenter of song” for a bard or “wave plough” for a ship.

Kirk-grim: (Nr) Ghostly guardian of a church, the spirit of the person or animal sacrificed at the foundation of the building.

Lammas: August 1.

Landvættir: (ON) Land wights, earth spirits.

Landwisdom: (Old Saxon landwîsa) Knowledge of the nature and custom of the country.

Legendarium: (L) The overall body of stories, legends, tales, poems, traditions, songs, and writings about any particular thing or place, without a judgment of veracity according to the precepts of historical research.

Lock: The interlocking pattern of swords in traditional sword dancers.

Locus: (L) A particular place.

Lykewake: The tradition of watching a dead body until it is taken away to be buried.

Main: Personal inner strength, ON megin, linked in the expression “might and main” with personal physical power.

Makelaar: (Du) A specially designed hip knob enabling millers to estimate the wind speed.

Materia Magica: (L) The materials, paraphernalia, and so forth used in the performance of magic.

Megin: (ON) Main (q.v.).

Meinvættir: (ON) Evil sprites who do one personal injury.

Mell: Hammer.

Meridional line: A line running north-south, literally to meridies (L), the middle of the day, due south.

Messedag stav: (Nr) Wooden runic almanac; also primstav, rimstock, clog almanac.

Metal: (1) The physical body of glass as well as what is commonly called metal, as in pot-metal glass; (2) a color in heraldry, white (silver, argent) and yellow (gold, or).

Mete-wand: Measuring stick.

Midgard: (ON miðgarðr) This material world, the Middle World (Welsh Abred).

Midwinterhoorn: (Du) Ceremonial horn blown during the period around midwinter in the Dutch provinces of Overijssel and Twente and the Achterhoek district of Gelderland.

Mjöllnir: (ON) The hammer of Thor. The “crusher” or “miller.”

Modernism: A theory of art and life based wholly upon industrial production, with a deliberate rejection of tradition.

Monogram: A symbolic figure made from some or all of the letters of a name.

Ná-bjargir: (ON) Death rite conducted from behind the corpse so that the person performing it would not fall under the gaze of the deceased.

Nail down his (her) track: To hammer a nail into a footprint made by an ill-wisher to nullify his or her magic.

Nemeton: (Ga) Sanctuary, often a grove of trees.

Nimidas: (Ga) The “ceremonies of the woodland.”

Noid: (Sa) Sámi shaman.

No-man’s-land: A triangle of ground at a trifinium (q.v.), belonging to no individual, but to the spirit world, sometimes called a Cocked Hat. Closely related to the Devil’s Plantation (q.v.).

Norn (pl. Nornir): (ON) One of the three female personifications of tripartite theory of the states of being: the past, the present, and the future.

Nowl: (EAE) The polar North Star, the Lode Star, Stella Polaris.

Ófreskr: (ON) Second-sighted, the ability to have visions of events in the spirit world.

Omphalos: (Gr) “Navel of the World,” spiritual center point, frequently depicted as an egg-shaped stone.

Ogham: (I) An ancient Irish cypher-script with characters denoted by lines, and with correspondences with trees, birds, and other things.

Önd: (ON) Vital breath or universal soul, likened to Greek pneuma and Sanskrit prana.

Öndvegissulur: (ON). High-seat pillars in ancient Norse halls and temples.

On-lay: See Álag.

Orientation: The alignment of a building, originally toward Oriens (East), but with a more general meaning now.

—rlög: (ON) The history of something, all the concatenation of events that have led up to the coming-into-being of the particular thing or person in question. Not to be confused with the Dutch word for “war” (oorlog).

Ostentum: (L) Something that appears or is noticed suddenly, with a meaning immediately apparent to the beholder.

Otherworld: The area of consciousness beyond everyday appearances; the spirit world or the Land of the Dead.

Outwright: (ME) A journeyman.

Overlooked: Bewitched, stricken with the evil eye.

Pargetting: Making symbolic patterns in plasterwork on the outside of timber-frame houses in eastern England.

Pentacle: A five-pointed, equal-sided star.

Pentagram: A five-pointed, equal-sided star.

Perisomata: (Gr) A person’s individual temperament determined by the relative proportions of each of the four humors.

Primstav: (Nr) A wooden almanac with runes and sigils denoting day, month, solar, and lunar cycles; “Prime-stave.”

Primum Mobile: (L, lit. “prime mover”). The Ninth Heaven, which is the realm of God.

Punctual time: The exact moment for a foundation according to electional astrology.

Put a pin in for someone: To stick a pin into an image, a pincushion, an onion, and so forth to magically harm someone.

Put the toad on: To put the toad on someone is to use toad magic to affect them.

Quarter Day: Significant days in British law: Candlemas, May Day, Lammas, and All Saints’.

Quincunx: (L) An arrangement of five items, four forming a cross with one at the center.

Rammaukinn: (ON) Possessed of superhuman strength.

Rath: (I) A fairy fort or hill.

Reginnaglar: (ON) Divine nails, driven into the posts of a building as a ritual act.

Rempham: An alternative name for a pentagram.

Rig: A straight line, as in ploughing.

Rimstock: (D) A Danish wooden almanac; (see Primstav, Messedag stav).

Rune: (1) a cryptic or magical sigil, carved, painted, written, or recited; (2) character of the ancient Germanic futhark (q.v.) legendarily gained by Odin through shamanic ritual.

Samain (Samhain): (Ir) (1) The month of November; (2) Modernly, Samhain is Allhallows’ Eve (Hallowe’en), properly lá Samhna (Ir). Beginning of the Celtic year.

Sele: (EAE) Time of day, year, or season.

Shape-changing (shape-shifting): To alter one’s appearance, or the ways others perceive one, by magic.

Sigil: A written figure signifying the existence and powers of a particular god, spirit, or energy.

Sill: Ground frame of a timber-frame building.

Skimmington: Riotous noisy assembly playing improvised percussion intended to express disapproval of an unpopular individual (also Charivari, Tin Can Band, Rantantanning. Katzenmusik).

Skinnleikr: (ON) “Skin-play,” guising in an animal skin.

Smågubbar: (Sw) Elves, land wights, “little people.”

Snor: (EAE) Ceremonial measuring cord, druid’s cord (q.v.).

Snotches: (EAE) Knots on a snor (q.v.).

Sommarsblót: April 14, the beginning of the summer half of the year.

Sprite: A spirit, elf, fairy.

Stafgarðr: (ON) Sacred enclosure surrounded by a wooden fence of staves.

Stance: (Sc) A stopping place on a trackway or road, especially cattle-drovers’ routes.

Sublunary realm: In traditional cosmology, the sphere of the Earth beneath the Lunar sphere, a realm subject to continuous change.

Sulcus primigenius: (L) The primal furrow made with a plough at the foundation of a city or a homestead.

Summer’s Day: (Sommarsblót) April 14, the beginning of the summer half of the year.

Sway: East Anglian term for a magician’s wand, made from blackthorn or hazel wood.

Tafl: (ON) An ancient northern European board game in which the one player defends the center from the opponent’s attack from the four quarters. Also called Hnefatafl, Tablut, Brandub, Tawlbwrdd, and so on.

Taufr: (ON) A talisman, word related to the German zauber, “magic,” and the red coloring material tiver.

Teir nos ysbrydion: (W) The three spirit nights: May Eve, St. John’s Eve, Hallowe’en.

Temenos: (Gr) Sacred enclosure around a temple or shrine.

Tesselation: A geometric counter-change pattern in two colors with the interlocking shapes the same in either color.

Tetraktys: (Gr) Pythagorean concept of the fourfold.

Three holy names: Many traditional spells in northern European folk magic and American hoodoo use the three epithets of God from the Christian trinity as names of power: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

Tileshards: Assemblage of new patterns in colored and stained glass from re-used older fragments.

Tincture: A color in heraldry.

Tiugunde Day: January 13, the midpoint of winter.

Toadman (Toadsman): A man or woman who has ceremonially obtained the toad bone.

Toadmanry: Magical skills and powers acquired by performing the toad-bone ritual, or Water of the Moon (q.v).

Town crier: Ceremonial civic official in Britain who makes public announcements after ringing a bell and calling “Oyez, oyez!”

Træf: (OE) Place of worship, an altar sheltered by a tent or canopy (ON hörgr).

Trifinium or trivium: (L) A junction of three roads, sometimes enclosing a triangular piece of ground, which is a no-man’s-land (q.v.).

Troll-Knut: (Sw) Knotted string from Swedish magic, either interpreted as “troll knot,” apotropaic against trolls, or more generally as a “magic knot.”

Útiseta: (ON) “Sitting out,” a meditative technique in which a person sat out on the skin of a sacrificed animal at night under the stars to hear inner voices or the voices of spirits.

Vé: (ON) Triangular sacred enclosure.

Vébond: (ON) The posts and connecting ropes surrounding a vé.

Waff: A human’s spectral double, wraith, or doppelgänger.

Warlock: A man with the magic power of binding.

Warlock-brief: (Sc) A magic spell.

Wassail: (lit. “be whole,” from OE wes þú hál) Ceremonial house-visiting and orchard-charming rites and ceremonies around midwinter.

Water of the Moon: The toad-bone ritual, performed at full moon or on St. Mark’s Eve.

White witch: Witch who employs counter magic against black witchcraft, charging her clients money to do so.

Wíh: (OE) The place of a sacred image standing in the open.

Wild stud: The practice of letting a stallion and a number of mares loose in woodland to mate and produce foals, still practiced in parts of Scotland.

Wind shaft: Timber shaft that carries the sails on a vertical windmill.

Wintersblót:(ON). October 14, beginning of the winter half of the year.

Winter’s Day: Wintersblót (q.v.).

Witch bottle: A magically prepared bottle intended to protect against magical attack and evil sprites.

Witch men: English guisers who went about on Plough Monday with their faces darkened.

Wittan: English-Welsh border word for rowan wood.

Wraith: A human’s spectral double, doppelgänger, waff.

Xoanon: (Gr) Pagan sacred image made of wood.

Yarthkin: (EAE) Malevolent earth spirit, East Anglia, England.

Yule: The festival of midwinter, including Christmas.