We can assume that those men and women called “witches” in the past were just crazy, or mentally ill and being persecuted for their illnesses, or innocent people who never once did anything wrong and just got accused of tons of nutty things by a superstitious society, or whatever else. We have many perspectives that are designed (I would say intentionally) to strip away our power to perceive what was real back then- this majestic and dark wonder that was still so close to the surface of our collective minds in those days.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
At day’s end, we may all have stories about why we do what we do, when it comes to Witchcraft or these strange spiritual arts. We may have very good stories about how it’s what our community does, or what our friends do, or what our tiny subculture does, or how it’s a thing that satisfies our personal need for ritual or religion, or how it’s a thing that makes us feel creative, powerful, or engaged. We can say that we started doing it out of curiosity, or because it felt so natural to us, but ultimately I think Witches and Witched People in that deepest sense do what they do because they have no choice.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
We must all lose our fear of what we have learned one day and cast ourselves upon the net of Fate in trust and courage, and let the dark chips fall where they may. We must do. We must become what the Compelling Forces want, and we will.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
We must enter the arena with sorcery or magic at our side, in our chests, in our hearts, in our minds, in our souls- our ally in the strange world of spirits and Fateful forces- and make our mark. We can succeed greatly or burn out epically; we can discover much, we can become more and more obsessed with the depths; we can feel our place in the greater scheme of things, and shed many tears over our inability to share what we have seen; but whatever happens, we will have made our stand and another strange story of the world will be scribed into the Book of Fate by some deathless hand or another.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
One of the biggest walls between us and that mythic dimension, this ever-living mystery that every soul thirsts for but few ever get to drink from, is doubt. Our minds and souls have been ransacked by empirical blindness, such that we doubt the existence of anything we can’t satisfyingly seize with our hands or measure with our instruments. And choosing to believe in things that belong to a subtle world, a world of emotions, feelings, and trans-rational surrealness- feels like dying, feels like slipping and falling into danger, madness, or delusion.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
To be immortal means that one’s entity is wholly invested in the mythical reality; an immortal entity is one whose essence no longer belongs primarily to “that which is happening” or to “that which has happened”, but instead belongs to the ‘unfinished, extemporaneous narrative’ that is the soul of the rhizome of the world.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
The Serpent’s coils are lashing again, opening new doors of understanding and new entryways into what was concealed for so long. Hear me clearly: we are about to study a mystery that will take us back into history, and have us flying about in the surreal cloud of the mythic dimension that we don’t often get a chance to see so directly. If I do my job properly- if those that compel me manage to twist and push my joints, muscles, and neurons just right (and they will)- I will get us close to that place.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
There is a deeper reality unfolding through all of this, which only the most soul-numb of skeptics can possibly deny: there were (and are) communities or realms of spiritual beings that were revealing themselves to men and women over many generations, and creating relationships with them. They were teaching and empowering these men and women in many different regards, often giving them healing knowledge or powers, and they were at times receiving worship from these humans that had joined with them.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
Why are we compelled to seek for the places where the Witches danced, and still might dance? If it’s hard to see why, that’s only because it’s so clear. Why the fascination with the faery ring of mushrooms, the grim old stones still arranged in broken circles from ancient times, the dusty and decaying books of spells, and the blazing fires in woodland clearings or upon hilltops? Why are the Compellors driving us to these places?
Because the hidden world that gave birth to all those things is the place where everything came from, and where everything is going. We are being compelled towards completeness. Not just the completion of our persons, but of the world itself.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
Many parts of the land (not just the human parts) dream, murmur, mutter with strange or indescribable thoughts and feelings, scream, shout, speak, fertilize, give birth, harm, and heal. Even while my body and soul move to give you these words, I hear the voice of the land outside right now giving brief shouts and the splashing of what can only be an overflow of gathered power; then the voice goes silent, and I wonder at the slight hissing breath of the world that is left behind. It’s shaking a few yellow leaves, and the whole air is permeated with tension.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
Witchcraft the practical art is forever in deep enmeshment with the Nameless Religion, the mind-bending and soul-transforming collection of lost or hidden animistic relationships and realities that had their genesis in the first times of humankind, when even our world was another world. This Nameless body of power, forces, impulses, yearnings, and spirit-beings is now concealed below the surface of ordinary awareness, and it penetrates that surface at times in our myths, folktales, and then again sometimes in our dreams. It also breaks the surface in the dances of some of those Witches from our history who were blessed (cursed?) to meet the Great Beings who still bear the dark grace of the truth.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
History and culture can’t wipe away or slam shut every doorway to extraordinary perception; even as times change and new disconnecting stories come to scab over people’s interior eyes, certain methods and means of altering one’s body, soul, and senses remain: entheogens and intoxicants of various sorts, extreme physical ordeals, rhythmic sound immersion, and the like.
It’s good that we maintain these relics of the past, but for us they are largely relics. The deeper sacred contexts that these things once existed within are gone, leaving them “all alone and lonely” to our sight. And we fiddle with them and experiment, and sometimes we are quite shocked when one of them opens a doorway for us into the Mythic space.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
And the powers can seem evil to anyone who is still disconnected and afraid. The worst of demonic things, clustered in the caves of the hills and mountains, and trotting the bogs and haunting the forests will laugh and cackle at the fearful, and from time to time, they’ll harm them, just to make a deeper point. Anyone that afraid of life might be unworthy of it.
And when you face the evil spirits yourself, and if you can find the courage to invade their secret enclosures, and if you can impress them with your courage (or just your stupid audacity), they might hiss, shriek, or laugh at you and spit out the words “You call us evil, you creature of mould? We are the very powers of life itself.”
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
That’s one way the Witch is made- through the illness, madness, misfortune, and fear that can be used as a sword to sever the head of spiritual blindness. Or perhaps through a deep invitation that comes from a place no one understands. These are the ways the witch doesn’t choose, or seldom chooses.
Another way is to court the Powers who may or may not entertain your entreaty. Ask them to visit you with dreams and visions. Ask them to come to you, or send their serving-beings to shed their boons and graces upon you.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
And at last, the Work makes the Witch. Whether spirits come to you, or you go to them, the work makes the Witch. History breathes out this truth in one mighty voice: Witches conjure and adjure spirits. More than any other single thing, this makes the Witch.
Learn powerful words. Learn powerful names. Say them in the proper context, with your whole body and soul. Bring in the needed maps and braces of ritual and implement. Learn to create the trance and be open to the Unseen. Over time, powerful enough conjurations and adjurations change the soul of you. They change the body of you, and they change your surroundings.
-Robin Artisson, fromUpon the Rood Day
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