Black Easter in the Witches’ N.O.X.
Welcome to the Waste Land
Dumblecott returns on this blasphemous Full Moon to remind all – Witch and cowan alike – that “April is the cruellest month,” at least by the reckoning of the casually cynical T.S. Eliot.
“Our discussion is serious; if you do not deign to give me your attention, I am not going to bow and scrape before you. I have the underground.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground, 1864
To carry along our rolling theme of disenchanted malcontent with the Witchcraft collective (and especially the ‘Gardnerian Family’ elitists), it would be remiss to waste this opportunity to raise the question of the collective priesthood’s seeming mass conversion to Christianity – indeed, even the most cursory look at many Crafter’s social media presences this past week suggests that a good number have given up Janicot for Jesus; or at least – are splitting their time equally between Heaven and Hell.
Irma Martin – The Three Women on the Tomb of Christ
For the less reserved amongst us, however, nature remains our only house of worship – and the only tithe we pay is to the coffers of Love and Trust.
“See, dear people,
on every church steeple
an imp of the devil at play”
– John
Whiteside
Parsons
(occasionally
Belarion),
1943
The Great God Pan is Dead
In that same dualistic spirit, these words are more inclined toward breviary than my last two pieces – a trifle lighter in trivia-esque potpourri, but much more grounded in the tidings of the day that would otherwise be historically ‘lost’ and hidden from a future Seeker.
With this sort of cultural shift and mission creep becoming par for the course in the postmodern Witch world, it should be no surprise, either, that standards in secrecy and praxis have dipped commensurately.
“Nowadays, no uninitiated persons are ever present…“
– Gerald B. Gardner, Witchcraft Today, 1954
Old Scire also claimed that Witches “deliberately never know where the next coven is,” which stands in stark contrast to the multiple ‘Gardnerian Gathers’ held each year across different makeshift ‘territories’ in the United States, each ruled by a ‘soccer mom style’ committee dictating everything from guest list to the type of gruel being served up from the cauldrons in their cafeteria mess halls. For roughly a hundred bucks (that is, if you know someone who knows someone) – you, too, can get an up-close look at the circus itself when it comes to a town near you.
“Fortune always
favors the brave, and
never helps
a man who
does not
help himself.”
– P.T. Barnum
Gardnerians Worldwide + the Gather Grift
As outlined last June and October, the ‘non-existent network’ of Gardnerian Witches is, contrarily, quite cohesive despite the community’s farcical projections to non-Initiates that coven autonomy is held to be sacrosanct. They are gatekeepers, and not in a Magical context – but rather, a purely administrative one.
In January 2022, a new kind of splinter faction formed – this time on the popular chat platform Discord – spinning up a server for ‘Gardnerians Worldwide.’ Of course, admittance to the chatroom was (and is) based on a ‘vouch’ that ultimately follows the hackneyed ‘telephone tag’ system that the ‘Family’ has used to blackball Initiates – who fall afoul of this or that elder – all the way back to the Buckland days.
Or, in my case – someone will try to join the server under the name of ‘Brother Hazel’ and a pot-bellied pundit with an axe to grind realizes that the only ‘Sacred Oak’ he’s chopping down by attacking this writer is his own.
Speaking of that sort of scammer and the greater con at play, it’s necessary to share here as an ‘Easter egg’ a few more details about how the GARDNERIAN GATHERS work as a real-world extension of the power structure lamented above.
These events are generally open not only to just Witches, but also ‘distinguished’ (read: non-Initiated) guests of various covens. Public knowledge of them has historically been extremely rare, but with ‘inclusivity’ now ruling the day within many branches of the ‘Family tree,’ (and also in honoring the legacies of Charles Cardell and Roy Bowers) it’s only appropriate that they are spoken of more plainly and that all might hope to be welcome.
The next one (at least in the Northeast) shall be held at the Deer Park Camp & Retreat Center in New Hope, Pennsylvania from August 11 through August 14, 2022.
Although I myself have no affiliation with this event or its organizers, they may certainly have a ticket (or t-shirt 1 ) to sell you for the gala if you ask nicely.
1-It could be observed that last year’s Mid-Atlantic Gather ‘shirt sale’ smacked of shame, with no garments finding their way to attendees despite money being collected. Be advised that rumor holds this one is a dry event (we call it an “apple juice gather”) – priestesses inclined toward wine will have to pre-game in the parking lot!
Getting Lost in Golgotha
Tongue less in cheek (aside from the osculum infame?), the reality is that this carnival circuit of Witch glamping is inherently hypocritical and counter-initiatic in the Guénonian sense. Remember, though – that this is (by and large) a Starhawk crowd – with adeptship running in short supply – and the lunatics often running the asylum. That is, when they don’t get lost in the woods because they’d gotten too drunk to find their way back to the fire, like I’m told happened at another campsite a few years back somewhere in Massachusetts…
“I am afraid you have still got the idea that the Great Work is a tea-party. Contact with other students only means that you criticize their hats, and then their morals; and I am not going to encourage this. Your work is not anybody else’s; and undirected chatter is the worst poisonous element in human society.”
– Aleister Crowley, letter from April 30, 1943 (excerpted in Magick Without Tears)
Luke 22:36 / The Blade of Truth
On Halloween, I made it a point to focus specifically on TIME.
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” – Leo Tolstoy
There is a decidely Saturnian streak to this Magical experiment called REX NEMORENSIS which, in many ways, hopes to bridge the gap between Fulcanellian flights of fancy and the ‘fluff bunny’ occulture that finds itself the target of its philosophical ire. The intention being to spearhead an effort in the Tradition’s rectification with its own Mysteries and secret spark, rather than those revisionist reductions which have placed it in a vice for the last four to five decades.
In ‘FireHeart Number 3,’ printed between Spring/Summer of 1989, we see one of (if not the) first published references to ‘Gardnerianism’ as a ‘family.’
This is extremely noteworthy for a few different reasons:
- The phrase is employed here by Judy Harrow, who (as I’ve taken care to note previously), was ‘run out’ of the Craft by some of the exact same people – including one very active ‘Witch Queen’ – whom are discretely attempting to redefine the Tradition itself in the present day.
- In 1989, Judy’s ‘Proteus Coven’ already represented the ‘liberal’ side of the ‘family’ – which is to say that she was run out (at that juncture), by the ‘Hard Gard elite’ of her day.
- The ‘Hard Gard elite’ of the 1980s, in some cases, have considerably changed their values toward a theologically liberal slant, and although their viewpoints have shifted, their bulldozing tactics remain consistent.
- This is such a hot-button issue that years ago, I was privately cautioned against forcing certain minutiæ pertaining to it by one of the most prominent perpetrators of the ruse itself.
Context like this is everything and – make no mistake – this is a relatively young battle for the very soul of the thing that these Crafters are desperate to hide from the eyes of the masses… especially some of them behind the ‘Annual Samhain Gather 2 ‘ still held to this day in Louisville, Kentucky.
2-Of course, real Witches don’t call it ‘Samhain.’ Curiously enough, Kentucky
remains key in the modern Gardnerian world for reasons that
still (to this day) remain mostly secret to outsiders.
“…and on that stormy night in 1957,
Rex Nemorensis awoke from his sleep,
and drawing the Sword of the Water City,
set forth to do battle…”
– Charles Cardell,
Witch!, 1964
Who are they? The individuals who are desperate to tell you what Witches are, rather than what we are not – and some of them are even proud to claim their rank publicly.
It is an absolute statement of truth that amongst the undersigned, I have personally encountered ideals, values, and behaviors which are directly antithetical to the virtues pretended to be espoused thereof. This jarring hypocrisy is something of an open joke amongst serious Initiates and a regular conversation that hasn’t let up within the Craft for years.
Here, it’s claimed that the affirmers “support the voices of victims and that they will be able to report abuse without fear of retaliation” but it may be that portions of this ostensibly ‘well-meaning diaspora’ are amongst the worst offenders of all. Equity is a wholly-empty promise from this 2019 ‘statement,’ which highlights the fact that Witchcraft proper now behaves in many ways like an ‘organized religion with none of the benefit’ (thank you, Lady S., and Blessed Be…)
“Gardner is characterised by two very striking and compelling attributes:
he is a fighter, and a stubborn one.”
– Idres Shah [ghostwriting as Bricket Wood’s
Jack Bracelin], Gerald Gardner: Witch, 1960
This writer was “banned for life” from at least one ‘Gardnerian Gather’ with posturing predicated by legitimate threats, and one organizer of the same August Gather revealed above has openly called for my death with their fellow covener cheekily asking a Witch sister if I was, in fact, ‘still alive.’
Yes, I am.
“Love everyone, but never sell your sword.” – Paulo Coelho
Five Holy Wounds + Resurrection in the Silver Star
While the Gathers are perhaps the high water mark of nepotism within Witchraft-proper, they’re but one of many ‘failsafes’ to ensure compliance with the greater collective and what sometimes amounts to a culture of fear.
To outline a better sense of the undue influence exerted on Initiates by ‘elders’ of the Gardnerian Craft, I point to the little-known habit of many Witches wearing certain trinkets (usually silver pendants featuring motifs foreign to the mass market) as a wink toward affiliation with specific covens or Initiatory ‘lines.’
This is essentially an ‘off-label’ practice, but reflects a social nuance which is taken seriously enough to be observed by multiple groups and their adherents – even their jewelers!
For the ‘Long Island Line’ (or parts of it) pioneered by Raymond Buckland (who himself, as we have discussed, was ruthlessly smeared in the end), the symbol is a very simple motif of an ankh within a pentacle.
Even something so cliched as this becomes a point of contention for this quarrelsome clique, with debates raging as to who holds the rights to produce a design with an almost universal appeal – and one whose horse has already left the barn.
It’s tempting here to draw reference to author/occultist Jason Miller’s interview with the shadowy ‘Simon,’ (of vintage New York occult and pop culture Necronomicon fame) recounted in the O.T.O. publication Behutet (issues 16/17), who describes the early “Gardnerians on Long Island (not Ray or Rosemary Buckland but some of their inductees” as “pretty aggressively blue-collar,” “anti-intellectual,” and imagining them as “holding circles in hot tubs.”
Although not willing to confirm or deny such practices at the present moment, I’m inclined to suggest that this kneejerk sentiment certainly seems to fit the bill when petty issues like necklace designs rule the day. Moreover, it speaks specifically toward a ‘watering down’ of the individual personalities making up the Tradition itself that began with the freshman class underneath the Buckland’s conservatorship in the 1960s and beyond.
Simon even goes so far here as to quip: “Imagine ‘The Sopranos’ as witches,” which is an interesting allusion given the unquestionably direct and ‘ruffian’ nature of such threats as those which I have endured during my tenure as a Witch with an aversion of overextended authority.
Wisdom from the Widow’s Son
“The Secret Chiefs arranged for me to be in a situation where I was at their mercy. They meant to initiate me whether I liked it or not. And this is how they went to work.” – Aleister Crowley, The Spirit of Solitude [The Confessions of…], 1929
Remaining steadfast and true in the Great Work – through, and especially in spite of threats of physical violence – is archetypal enough that it’s enshrined in the Masonic legend of Hiram Abiff. Accosted by ruffians, Hiram (the candidate) dares not betray his virtue or obligation – and sees himself through to the third ‘blue lodge’ Masonic degree.
History has occasionally hinted at dire consequences for individuals who divert from the prescribed ‘floor work’ of a given egregore or initiatory current – one need not look much further than the intrigue surrounding the disappearance of Captain William Morgan in 1826 to get a sense of the effects of what happens when the quest for light goes dark, or when the wrong kind of alchemist distills a dastardly brand of bad medicine.
Certainly, timeless mythos occasionally leap out from the page or Lodge setting to the very real lives of practitioners, and even Crowley himself provides an interesting anecdote along these lines in his Confessions: “Three of the men passed me; then they turned. I was surrounded. Strong hands gripped my arms; greedy hands sought my pockets.”
For his part, Morgan was never found – but the Beast would go on to tempt Fate by publishing bits and pieces of the Golden Dawn ritual corpus within the pages of his A ∴ A ∴ journal, The Equinox, with the saga quite cheekily recounted in a 1911 pamphlet titled “Rosicrucian” Scandal.
Coyly, in Confessions, Crowley even weaves in repetitive references to ‘archways’ and provides other tells to readers with the ‘eyes to see’ what is really being said between the lines.
…and what has been said here?
headline and lede from Pentagram: A Witchcraft Review (issue 2), 1964
“We may be the very last of the old school,
but we still uphold the old attitudes and expect the same things.”
– Roy Bowers (Robert Cochrane), Letter VIII to William Gray, circa 1960s
Rex Nemorensis
HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
April 17, 2022
“They muddy the water
to make it seem deep.” – Nietzsche