A Witches Bible - Janet Farrar, Stewar Farrar 1981

Notes
The Sabbats and Rites for Birth, Marriage and Death

Introduction

1. Ireland virtually escaped the horrors of the witchcraft persecution. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth century only a handful of trials for witchcraft are recorded. “In England and Scotland during the mediaeval and later periods of its existence, witchcraft was an offence against the laws of God and man; in Celtic Ireland dealings with the unseen were not regarded with such abhorrence, and indeed had the sanction of custom and antiquity” (St John D. Seymour, Irish Witchcraft and Demonology, p. 4 — and Seymour was a Christian theologian writing in 1913). Nor is there any evidence of torture being used to extract evidence in the few Irish witchcraft trials, except for the flogging in 1324 of Petronilla of Meath, Dame Alice Kyteler’s servant, on the orders of the Bishop of Ossory, and that “seems to have been carried out in what may be termed a purely unofficial manner” (ibid., pp. 18—19).

2. There is a tiny Russian Orthodox community in Ireland, based on exiles from Russia; interestingly, “it has attracted quite a number of Irish converts, some of whom regard it as the Irish Church which existed from before the arrival of St Patrick to the years following Henry’s invasion and the establishment of the links with Rome” (Sunday Press, Dublin, 12th March 1978).

3. Ancient Egypt was a copybook example of the transition stage; it was matrilinear but patriarchal, both royalty and property passing strictly through the female line. All the male Pharaohs held the throne because they were married to the heiress: “The queen was queen by right of birth, the king was king by right of marriage” (Margaret Murray, The Splendour that was Egypt, p. 70), hence the Pharaonic habit of marrying sisters and daughters to retain the right to the throne. Matrilinear inheritance was the rule at all levels of society and persisted to the very end; that was why first Julius Caesar and then Antony married Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh — it was the only way they could be acknowledged as rulers of Egypt. Octavius (Augustus Caesar) offered to marry her too, after Antony’s defeat and death, but she preferred suicide (ibid.). Rome confronted the same principle a century later at the other end of its Empire, in Britain, when Roman flouting of it (whether clumsy or deliberate) provoked the furious revolt of the Celtic Iceni under Boudicca (Boadicea). (See Lethbridge’s Witches)

4. Kalderash Gypsies (one of the three main Romany groups) maintain that O Del, The (masculine) God, did not create the world. “The earth (phu), that is, the universe, existed before him; it always existed. ’It is the mother of all of us’ (amari De) and is called De Develeski, the Divine Mother. In this one recognizes a trace of the primitive matriarchy.” (Jean-Paul Clébert, The Gypsies)

5. As this book was going to press, we read Annie Wilson’s newly published book The Wise Virgin. In her Section Four, “The Heart of the Matter”, she deals in depth with this question of the evolution of consciousness and has some very perceptive things to say about its psychological, spiritual and sexual (in the widest sense) implications. She, too, concludes that a new synthesis, of excitingly creative potential, is not only possible but urgently necessary if we in the West “are to balance our acute lopsidedness”. This is very helpful reading for a deeper understanding of the nature, function and relationship of male and female.

6. Like most modern witches, we call the Craft ’Wicca’. This has become a well-established, and much-loved, usage, and there is every reason why it should continue — but we might as well be honest and admit that it is in effect a new word, mistakenly derived. The Old English for ’witchcraft’ was wiccacraeft, not wicca. Wicca meant ’a male witch’ (feminine wicce, plural wiccan), from the verb wiccian, ’to bewitch, to practise witchcraft’, which the Oxford English Dictionary says is “of obscure origin”. For the OED, the trail seems to stop there; but Gardner’s assertion that Wicca (or, as he spells it, Wica) means “the Craft of the Wise” is supported by Margaret Murray, who wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1957) entry on Witchcraft. “The actual meaning of this word ’witch’ is allied with ’wit’, to know.” Robert Graves (The White Goddess), discussing the willow which in Greece was sacred to Hecate, says: “Its connexion with witches is so strong in Northern Europe that the words ’witch’ and ’wicked’ are derived from the same ancient word for willow, which also yields ’wicker’.” To complete the picture, ’wizard’ did mean ’a wise one’, being derived from the Late Middle English wys or wis, ’wise’. But ’warlock’, in the sense of ’a male witch’, is Scottish Late Middle English and entirely derogatory; its root means ’traitor, enemy, devil’; and if the very few modern male witches who call themselves warlocks realized its origin, they would join the majority and share the title ’witch’ with their sisters.

7. We have come across only one apparent exception to this rule. The Golden Bough Frazer says: “In Greece the great goddess Artemis herself appears to have been annually hanged in effigy in her sacred grove of Condylea among the Arcadian hills, and there accordingly she went by the name of the Hanged One.” But Frazer missed the point. ’Hanged Artemis’ is no sacrifice — she is an aspect of the Spider Goddess Arachne/Ariadne/Arianrhod/(Aradia?), who descends to aid us on her magic thread, and whose spiral web is the key to rebirth. (See James Vogh, The Thirteenth Zodiac.)

8. Also doubtless relatable to the Green Man or Foliate Mask whose carved features appear in so many old churches.

9. Read Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon — a terrifying but discerning novel, now made into a very good film.

I The Opening Ritual

1. Both these consecrations are very loosely based on those in The Key of Solomon, a mediaeval grimoire, or ’grammar’, of magical practice translated and edited by MacGregor Mathers from manuscripts in the British Museum and published in 1888. (See Bibliography under Mathers.) The wording for the consecration of magical tools in Gardner’s Book of Shadows also follows (and rather more closely) that in The Key of Solomon. That these were Gardner’s own borrowings, rather than part of the traditional material he obtained from the New Forest coven which initiated him, is suggested by the fact that their English corresponds to that of Mathers, instead of deriving independently from the original Latin. There is no harm in that; like most of Gardner’s borrowings, they suit their purpose admirably.

2. All magical movements involving rotation or circling are normally made clockwise, ’the way of the Sun’. This is known as ’deosil’, from the Gaelic (Irish deiseal, Scottish deiseil, both pronounced approximately ’jesh’l’) meaning ’to the right’ or ’to the South’. (In Irish one says ’Deiseal’ — ’May it go right’ — when a friend sneezes.) An anti-clockwise movement is known as ’widdershins’ (Middle High German Widersinnes, ’in a contrary direction’) or ’tuathal’ (Irish tuathal pronounced ’twa-h’l’, Scottish tuaitheal pronounced ’twa-y’l’) meaning ’to the left, to the North, in a wrong direction’. A widdershins magical movement is considered black or malevolent, unless it has a precise symbolic meaning such as an attempt to regress in time, or a return to the source preparatory to rebirth; in such cases it is always in due course ’unwound’ by a deosil movement — much as a Scottish Highlander begins a sword dance tuaitheal, because it is a war-dance, and ends it deiseil to symbolize victory. (for examples in our rituals.) We would be interested to hear from witches in the southern hemisphere (where of course the Sun moves anti-clockwise) about their customs in ritual movements, orientation of the elements and placing of the altar.

3. Normally, no one leaves or enters the Circle between the casting and banishing rituals; but if it should be necessary, a gateway must be opened by a ritual widdershins (anti-clockwise) sweep of the athame and closed immediately after use by a deosil (clockwise) sweep. (Sword and athame are ritually interchangeable.) See, for example.

4. This Watchtowers ritual is obviously based on the Golden Dawn’s “Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram” (see Israel Regardie’s Golden Dawn, volume I, for more complex material on the Invoking and Banishing Pentagrams, volume III). Incidentally, the Golden Dawn, and many witches, end the Pentagrams by merely returning to the starting-point-s-i.e., omitting the sixth 'sealing' stroke. As always, it is a matter of what 'feels right' to you.

5. When a woman gives the Fivefold Kiss to a man (as at the Imbolg Sabbat) she says 'phallus' instead of 'womb',kissing him just above the pubic hair; and 'breast, formed in strength' instead of 'breasts, formed in beauty’.

6. From a poem by Aleister Crowley, originally addressed to Tyche, Goddess of Fortune. Adapted for Craft use by Gardner, who was very fond of it.

7. From Doreen Valiente’s rhymed version of the Charge.

8. The history of the Charge is as follows. Gardner drafted a first version, very similar to the one we give here down to “all in my praise” (this opening passage being adapted from the Tuscan witches’ rituals recorded in Leland’s Aradia: the Gospel of the Witches) followed by some voluptuously-worded extracts from Aleister Crowley. Doreen Valiente tells us she “felt that this was not really suitable for the Old Craft of the Wise, however beautiful the words might be or how much one might agree with what they said; so I wrote a version of the Charge in verse, keeping the words from Aradia, because these are traditional.” This verse version began “Mother darksome and divine …”, and its first stanza is still used as the High Priestess’s response to the Drawing Down of the Moon. But most people seemed to prefer a prose Charge, so she wrote the final prose version we give here; it still contains one or two Crowley phrases (“Keep pure your highest ideal”, for example, is from his essay The Law of Liberty, and “Nor do I demand (aught in) sacrifice” is from The Book of the Law) but she has integrated the whole to give us the best-loved declamation in today’s Craft. It might be called a Wiccan Credo. Our version has one or two tiny differences from Doreen’s (such as “witches” for “witcheries”) but we have let them stand, with apologies to her.

9. Pronounced ’Breed’. If you have a local Goddess-name, by all means add it to the list. While we lived in County Wexford, we used to add Carman, a Wexford goddess (or heroine or villainess, according to your version) who gave the county and town their Gaelic name of Loch Garman (Loch gCarman).

10. In the Book of Shadows, another sentence follows here: “At her altars the youth of Lacedaemon in Sparta made due sacrifice.” The sentence originated from Gardner, not Valiente. Like many covens, we omit it. The Spartan sacrifice, though it has been variously described, was certainly a gruesome business (see for example Robert Graves’s Greek Myths, para 116.4) and out of keeping with the Charge’s later statement “Nor do I demand sacrifice”. By the way, the sentence is also inaccurately worded; Sparta was in Lacedaemon, not Lacedaemon in Sparta.

11. This strange incantation, first known to have appeared in a thirteenth-century French play, is traditional in witchcraft. Its meaning is unknown — though Michael Harrison in The Roots of Witchcraft makes out an interesting case for its being a corruption of Basque, and a Samhain rallying-call.

12. This is the Invocation to Pan from Chapter XIII of Moon Magic by Dion Fortune, with the coven’s God-name substituted for that of Pan.

13. This is an old Basque witches’ incantation, meaning ’The he-goat above — the he-goat below’. We found it in Michael Harrison’s The Roots of Witchcraft, liked it and adopted it.

14. This chant, the “Witches’ Rune”, was written by Doreen Valiente and Gerald Gardner together. The “Eko, Eko” lines (to which covens usually insert their own God and Goddess names in lines 3 and 4) were not part of their original Rune; she tells us: “We used to use them as a preface to the old chant ’Bagabi lacha bachabe’“ (to which Michael Harrison also attributes them) “but I don’t think they were originally a part of this chant either, they were part of another old chant. Writing from memory, it went something like this:

Eko Eko Azarak

Eko Eko Zomelak

Zod ru koz e zod ru koo

Zod ru goz e goo ru moo

Eeo Eeo hoo hoo hoo!

No, I don’t know what they meant! But I think somehow that ’Azarak’ and ’Zomelak’ are God-names.” She adds: “There’s no reason why these words shouldn’t be used as you have used them.” We give here the version to which we, and many other covens, have become accustomed; the only differences are that the original has “I, my” instead of “we, our”, and has “East, then South and West and North” and “In the earth and air and sea, By the light of moon or sun”,

15. Adapted from Crowley’s Gnostic Mass.

II The Great Rite

1. From “O Circle of Stars” down to “since thou art continuous”, this Book of Shadows invocation is taken from the Gnostic Mass in Aleister Crowley’s Magick.

2. The “holy twin pillars” are Boaz and Jachin, which flanked the entrance to the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple. Boaz (coloured black) represents Severity (“strength”), and Jachin (white) Mildness (“beauty”). Cf. the Tree of Life and the High Priestess Tarot card. In the Great Rite, they are clearly symbolized by the woman-altar’s legs.

3. From “Altar of mysteries manifold” to the end of the Invocation was written by Doreen Valiente, who also composed a fully rhyming version.

III The Closing Ritual

1. The Rite of Hagiel, as described in Chapter XIV of What Witches Do, may appear to break this rule; but the special circumstances should be clear to careful readers of it. For one thing, the Lords of the Watchtowers are not summoned.

IV Imbolg, 2nd February

1. Every book reference in the text, with its publisher and date, and where necessary (as here, with The Golden Bough) the edition to which page references are made, is listed in the Bibliography at the end — together with some of the books we have found most useful in our study of seasonal traditions and mythology.

2. Local patterns of the Brigid’s Crosses do vary considerably. Philomena’s ’plain’ cross in fact has the four arms woven in separately with their roots off-centre, producing a swastika (fire-wheel) effect. This is also our County Mayo type, though we have also seen single and multiple diamond patterns. A County Armagh type given to us by a friend has each of the two crosspieces consisting of three bundles, interlacing with the other three at the centre, and we have seen similar ones from Counties Galway, Clare and Kerry; memory perhaps of ’the Three Brigids’, the original Triple Muse Goddess? (See The White Goddess and elsewhere.) A County Derry example has five bands instead of three, and a West Donegal one has a triple vertical and a single horizontal. Such local diversity shows how deep-rooted the folk custom is. The Brigid’s Cross in the fire-wheel form, with three-banded arms, is the symbol of Radio Telefís Éireann.

3. These pieces of cloth probably symbolize clothing. Gypsy women, in their famous annual pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France on 24th and 25th May, leave items of clothing, representing the absent or sick, in the crypt-shrine of their patroness Black Sara. “The ceremonial is clearly not original. The rite of hanging up garments is known among the Dravidians of northern India who ’believe in fact that the linen and clothes of a sick person become impregnated with his malady, and that the patient will be cured if his linen is purified by contact with a sacred tree’. Hence, among them are seen trees or images covered with rags of clothing which they call Chitraiya Bhavani, ’Our Lady of the Rags’. There exists likewise a ’Tree for Tatters’ (sinderich ogateh) among the Kirghiz of the Sea of Aral. One could probably find other examples of this magical prophylaxis.” (Jean-Paul Gébert, The Gypsies) One can indeed. We wonder, for example, why Irish itinerants always seem to leave some clothing behind on the bushes by an abandoned camp-site. They are notoriously untidy, it is true, but many of these garments are by no means rubbish. One magic well near Wexford town was consecrated to no saint or deity, yet was much venerated; its cloth-laden bush, local historian Nicky Furlong records, “was chopped down by a normally well-adjusted clergyman. That ended the secret cult. (He died very suddenly afterwards, God rest him.)”

4. Lines 3—5 of this invocation are from Crowley’s Gnostic Mass.

V Spring Equinox, 21st March

1. The most savage opponents of the hieros gamos and all it stood for were of course the Hebrew prophets. Their tirades against “harlotry” and “whoring after strange gods”, with which the Old Testament abounds, were political, not ethical. The Goddess-worship which surrounded them, and to which ordinary Hebrew families still clung for centuries alongside the official Yahweh-worship, was a direct threat to the patriarchal system they were trying to enforce. For unless every woman was an exclusive chattel of her husband, and a virgin on marriage, how could paternity be certain? And unquestionable paternity was the keystone of the whole system. Hence the Biblical death-penalty for adulteresses, for brides found to be non-virgin and even for the victims of rape (unless they were neither married nor betrothed, in which case they had to marry the rapist); the ruthlessness with which the Hebrews, “according to the word of the Lord”, massacred the entire population of conquered Canaanite cities, men, women and children (except for any attractive virgins, whom “the word of the Lord” permitted them to kidnap as wives); and even the Levitic rewriting of the Creation myth to give divine sanction to male superiority (it is interesting that the Serpent and the Tree were both universally recognized Goddess-symbols). From this ancient political battle, Christianity (outdoing even Judaism and Islam) inherited the hatred of sex, the warped asceticism and the contempt for women that has bedevilled it from St Paul onwards and is still far from dead. (See again Merlin Stone’s Paradise Papers.)

2. Adapted by Doreen Valiente from two Scottish Gaelic blessings in Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica (see Bibliography). Carmichael, who lived 1832—1912, collected and translated a rich harvest of Gaelic prayers and blessings, handed down by word of mouth in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. As Doreen says, “This beautiful old poetry is really sheer paganism with a thin Christian veneer.” The six-volume Carmina Gadelica, though a treasure to own, is expensive; fortunately a selection of the English translations has been published as a recent paperback The Sun Dances (see Bibliography). The two sources Doreen used here will be found on pages 231 and 49 of volume I of Carmina Gadelica, and on pages 3 and 11 of The Sun Dances; Carmichael obtained them from crofters’ wives in North Uist and Lochaber, respectively.

VI Bealtaine, 30th April

1. Of family interest to us: Janet’s maiden name was Owen, and Owen family tradition claims descent from the Canaanite lords of Shechem, who themselves claimed to be of the seed of Baal.

2. There is always overlap. The Cerne Abbas giant cut in the Dorset turf is a Baal figure, as shown by his Herculean club and phallus, and his local name, Helith, is clearly the Greek helios (Sun); yet ’Cerne’ is equally clearly Cernunnos. And Baal Hammon of Carthage was also a true Baal or Bel (his Great Mother consort was named Tanit — cf. the Irish Dana and the Welsh Don); yet he was horned.

3. This (the only substantial item in the Book of Shadows’ Bealtaine ritual) is a slightly altered version of verse 5 of Rudyard Kipling’s poem A Tree Song, from the “Weland’s Sword” story in Puck of Pook’s Hill. It is one of Gerald Gardner’s happier borrowings, and we are sure the shade of Kipling does not mind.

VII Midsummer, 22nd June

1. —Heraclitus, c.513BC.

2. Throughout most of Ireland, the night for the communal Midsummer fire is 23rd June, the eve of St John’s Day. But in some places it is traditionally 28th June, the eve of St Peter and St Paul’s Day, sometimes known as ’Little Bonfire Night’. We have been unable to pin down the reason for this curious difference, but it might possibly have something to do with the old Julian calendar. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII wiped out ten days to make the calendar astronomically correct, and it is the Gregorian calendar which the world still uses today. (It was not adopted by England, Scotland and Wales till 1752 — by which time eleven days had to be dropped — and was general in Ireland by 1782.) But it is noticeable in many parts of Europe that old folk-customs which have escaped official Christian take-over tend to be pegged to the old calendar. St Peter and Paul is nearer to the Midsummer Solstice than St John if the Gregorian reform is ignored. So perhaps a stubborn pagan custom, which did in places ignore that reform, was there merely attached to the nearest important saint’s day to make it as respectable as could be managed.

3. It is symbolically fitting that the High Priestess, representing the Goddess, should perform the Midsummer Dance; but if she feels that one of her other women witches is a particularly talented dancer and would do it more effectively, she may delegate the task to her.

4. Written by Doreen Valiente, down to “Waters of Life”.

VIII Lughnasadh, 31st July

1. On the whole subject of place-magic, not only of places of worship but also (for example) of such things as Bealtaine fires, Tom Graves’s Needles of Stone is practically essential reading for witches who want not merely to feel but to understand and experiment constructively with their relationship to Earth as a living organism.

2. As we were writing this, Ireland’s most respected newspaper even suggested that Domhnach Chrom Dubh should replace 17th March (the present St Patrick’s Day) as Ireland’s national day. St Patrick’s Day 1979 was celebrated in a blizzard; we watched the Dublin parade and felt desperately sorry for the drenched and frozen majorettes, clad in little more than braided tunics and brave smiles. Two days later The Irish Times in a first leader headed “Why March 17?”, asked: “Would it not be better for all if the national holiday were celebrated when our weather is more bland? There is one day which is, if not historically, at least in the legendary sense, apposite and from the weather point of view more acceptable. That is the last Sunday in July, Garland Sunday or Domhnach Chrom Dubh.” Citing Máire MacNeill’s The Festival of Lughnasa to support its argument, it ended: “If any interest, therefore, wants to sponsor another date, and a valid one, for remembering our Saint, the folklore files give a ready answer.” Ireland’s gift for pagan-Christian continuity is clearly indestructible; we are tempted to wonder whether, in this epoch of religious change, it will work both ways!

3. The Book of Shadows says “by thy rosy love”. Doreen Valiente queried this “rather meaningless phrase” with Gardner at the time, suggesting it might be a corruption of “by thy rose of love” or “by the rose of thy love” — the rose being a symbol of the Goddess as well as Britain’s national flower. We have followed the second of her suggestions.

4. Like the Midsummer Dance, the Corn Dance may be delegated by the High Priestess to another woman if she wishes. In this case, she will hand the loaf to the dancer after the invocation and receive it back after the dance, before she takes her place facing the High Priest.

IX Autumn Equinox, 21st September

1. In Ireland, on the other hand, the last day for gathering blackberries is Samhain Eve. After that, the Pooka “spits on them”, hence one of his names — Púca na sméar, ’the blackberry sprite’.

2. Written by Doreen Valiente. In Ireland, instead of “to the Land of Youth”, we say “to Tír na nÓg” (pronounced ’teer nuh noge’) which means literally the same thing but has powerful legendary associations — a Celtic Elysium visualized as a magical island off the West Coast of Ireland, “where happiness can be had for a penny”.

X Samhain, 31st October

1. These two are interesting. In Lebor Cabála Érenn, Part V (see Bibliography under MacAlister), we find (in translation from Old Irish): “Now the death of Muirchertach was in this manner; he was drowned in a vat of wine, after being burned, on Samain night on the summit of Cletech over the Boyne; whence St Cairnech said: —

’I am afraid of the woman

about whom many blasts shall play;

for the man who shall be burnt in fire,

on the side of Cletech wine shall drown him’.”

The woman was Muirchertach’s witch mistress Sín (pronounced ’Sheen’, and meaning ’storm’) on account of whom St Cairnech cursed him; the men of Ireland sided with the king and Sín against the Bishop. The King felt she was “a goddess of great power”, but she said that, although she had great magical power, she was of the race of Adam and Eve. Sín is clearly a priestess of the Dark Goddess, presiding over a communally-approved sacrifice in spite of her personal grief. (The version that she brought about the King’s doom in revenge for his slaying of her father seems a later rationalization.) Of her own subsequent death the Lebor says: “Sín daughter of Sige of the sídh-mounds of Breg died, repeating her names —

’Sighing, Moaning, Blast without reproach,

Rough and Wintry Wind,

Groaning, Weeping, a saying without falsehood —

These are my names on any road.’ ”

The story of Muirchertach and Sín is told in the Reeses’ Celtic Heritage, and in Markale’s Women of the Celts.

Diarmait mac Cerbaill, according to the Lebor, was killed by Black Aed mac Suibne after a reign of twenty-one years (the sacrificed king’s traditional multiple of seven?). The Lebor says Aed “stopped, vexed, slew, burnt and swiftly drowned him”, which again has all the hallmarks of ritual sacrifice; and Gearóid MacNiocaill says Diarmait “was almost certainly a pagan” (Ireland Before the Vikings).

2. Written by Gerald Gardner.

XI Yule, 22nd December

1. Magical transference of fertility from one season to another by a charged physical object — particularly by grain or its products, or by the by-products of fire — is a universal custom. Speaking of the temple of Aphrodite and Eros on the northern slope of the Akropolis, where ’Aphrodite of the Gardens’ dwelt,Geoffrey Grigson tells us: “It was to this temple that two girls, two children, paid a ritual visit every spring, bringing with them, from Athene’s temple on the summit, loaves shaped like phalluses and snakes. In Aphrodite’s temple the loaves acquired the power of fecundity. In autumn they were taken back to the Akropolis, and crumbled into the seed grain, to ensure a good yield after the next sowing.” (The Goddess of Love)

2. Substitute sacrifice is by no means dead in Ireland. On a County Mayo headland frequently lashed by storms, a few miles from our home, we have seen a celluloid doll nailed to a post at the high-tide mark. It was naked except for a patch of green paint where the nail penetrated. Our local-tradition expert, Tom Chambers, asked questions for us; as we suspected, it turned out to be a propitiatory sacrifice to the sea and is known as a ’Sea Doll’ (bábóg mhara).

3. Written by Doreen Valiente, with words suggested by a Christmas carol in Carmina Gadelica, collected by Alexander Carmichael from Angus Gunn, a cottar of Lewis. (See Carmina Gadelica, volume I, or The Sun Dances.) “It was the first chant or invocation I ever wrote for Gerald,” Doreen tells us — at Yule 1953, she thinks. He gave her the task of writing words for the evening ritual without warning, after lunch, “deliberately throwing me in at the deep end to see what I could do”.

4. Pronounced ’Yo ayvo, hay’ (the ’ay’ as in ’day’). A Greek Bacchanalian cry. For some thoughts on its possible sexual significance, see Doreen Valiente’s Natural Magic

XIII Handfasting

1. Chapter 14 of the paperback edition (Star, London, 1976).

2. We cannot resist noting here a belief that still lingers in the gale-prone West of Ireland — that a newly-wed bride has the power to calm a storm at sea. As a neighbour (living, like ourselves, a mile from the Atlantic) said to us: “I believe there may be some truth in it. A bride has a certain blessing about her.”

3. At their own discretion, the couple may end their pledge here, omitting the last sentence from “Nor shall death part us …” if they do not yet see their way to a soul-mate commitment, which should never be undertaken without careful thought. (See What Witches Do, Chapter 15.) The Mormon Church, incidentally, has the same provision; Mormons have two forms of marriage — one for life, and the other (called “Going to the Temple”) for eternity. About fifty per cent choose the latter form.

XIV Requiem

1. Since all the words of the Legend are spoken by the Narrator, we have not repeated “The Narrator says” each time. If the three actors can speak their own lines from memory, so much the better.

2. If the Requiem is for a non-witch friend, or for a witch who was not a member of the coven, the phrase “with whom we have so often shared it” is of course omitted.

3. Any ritually-used object which has served its purpose and will not be needed for further working — especially if, like the Requiem bowl, it has been linked with an individual — must be ritually neutralized and disposed of; it is irresponsible, and may be dangerous, to allow it to linger. The running-water method is a time-honoured and satisfactory ritual of disposal.