After lunch on the Saturday of the Gathering Festival it was time for the main ritual which was hosted by an initiate of the Wolven Path Tradition – an oral tradition based in prehistoric European shamanism. This ancestral ceremony was performed at the Shamanic Conference and will be enacted thirteen times over the next year by the shamanic community. As the Gathering has always been largely a neoPagan festival, the witches, druids, and heathens were fascinated and for many it was their first time meeting a shaman and participating in a shamanic ritual steeped in animism. They were curious, coming early to the ritual site in the forest under tall Hemlocks and Douglas Firs to watch us set up pouring libations into the decorated bottles for the four beasts and the bowls of sage, earth, camphor, rosewater, bone dust, and bones.  I sawed some wood to make stakes and the Shaman dug a deep hole in the centre of the ritual site with his shovel, hammered in the wood and iron stakes halfway and placed the libation bottles in the four directions.

After everything was in its place, he put on his regalia consisting of his blue robe and impossibly tall holly staff carved into a spear and adorned with feathers, runes, and hammered copper bells which jingled softly with his every movement.  Everyone came together circling in the forest among the trees around the pit. The Shaman lit a fire in a great iron cauldron decorated with runes and animals made for him by our friend Jarnsmior and smudged us all with a great bird’s wing and bowl of burning sage. After, he proceeded to call the four beasts of his tradition: the Raven Bran in the North of the element of air and sky, the Stag Damh in the East of the element of fire and sun, the Sow Muc in the South of water and the ocean, and the great Bear Art in the West of the earth element who guards the way to the underworld.  Air was invoked with a bird’s wing, fire with birch paper lit on fire in a small bowl, water with a bowl of water poured on the earth, and earth with a bowl of earth poured out. Simple and beautiful.

He welcomed the ancestors and explained the intent of the ritual was to release our hold on our dead loved ones that they might complete their journey to the underworld and come back to us wiser and stronger as ancestors rather than the dead lost and stuck in our middle realm. He sprinkled a circle of bone dust around the pit, stakes, libation bottles, and the people standing at the four quarters. He walked around the circle and anointed each person’s face with a smear of the powdery white dust. Those of us who had volunteered to help each took turns hammering in the wooden stake at our quarter, placing a rock crystal underneath each one to give an offering back to the earth for all we take from it. The Shaman poured out wine for blood in the North, our high priest and drummer from the other rituals poured out milk over the stake in the East, I poured out water on my stake in the South, and a lovely witch in red poured out a homebrewed ale over her stake in the West. In between each wooden stake was an iron one and volunteers were drawn from the crowd to hammer them in. Each was hammered in with surety and without missing a stroke.

Then the Shaman bound up a bundle of bones with cloth and twine and said it symbolized our dead. We passed it around the circle, each of us holding it with reverence and thinking upon those we had lost. At the same time he filled his great bull’s horn with mead and it too was passed around the circle. Each person toasted their dead – some spoke of specific loved ones who had passed recently or long ago who they had trouble letting go of, some their ancestors in general, and some honoured all those in their family line who had come before so they could live today. Some people shook, some people cried, and others smiled lost in happy memories of loved ones. With each toast everyone wassailed and the horn went round and round until we had all drank deeply and spoken of our dead.

The remaining mead was poured into the pit and the bone bundle placed gently in. Each person had been asked to bring a stone and, in a procession, we each came up to the pit and reverently placed stone upon stone building a cairn inside the earth over the bones to the beating of a drum. As we did so a large raven landed in the trees above us and croaked deeply three times, over and over. “In case you’re wondering, it’s a very good sign,” said the Shaman with a smile in his voice. In many traditions the raven is the psychopomp, the carrier of the souls of the dead to the underworld. More mead was poured on top and the Shaman covered the cairn with earth using his bare hands – restoring the pit to the untouched forest floor it had been.  He then passed around a bowl filled with fresh water and rose water for us to clean the bone dust off our cheeks.  After a blessing and farewell to the spirits, we were released from the underworld back to our middle realm.

Some wandered off to contemplate what had happened or to tend to their responsibilities, but others stayed behind and finished off the mead and smoked cigars around the fire in the huge cauldron as offerings to the spirits. I mixed ash from the burned sage in my hand with water to make a paste and anointed the foreheads of those that stayed. Some asked the shaman questions about the ritual, about the ancestors, and about the meanings of his robe and staff. I felt the hunger among everyone for more work with spirits, especially the ancestors, and I felt their hunger to touch upon the shamanic origins of witchcraft and modern paganism. I felt bridges between communities being built in that moment. It was a beautiful thing to see it all come together and everyone from so many varying traditions to understand the ritual’s intent and let it truly move them, participating fully. Friends came to me after and told me the ceremony helped them to let go of ghosts of loved ones and family they’d been holding onto for a long time. There was a sense of awe and wonder after among the attendees that moved the Shaman and I hope made him glad he came and volunteered to host the ritual for us. I will ever be grateful he gave into my pleading and flattery as events coordinator to share with us the beauty of his sacred path.

Photos © 2012 Cindy of Witchy Rambles

The Gathering for Life on Earth is British Columbia’s main Pagan festival and has been a successful gathering of community for over twenty years now. It’s where all the different local paths, groups, solitaries, elders, and newbies can come for a long weekend and celebrate our magical lives together. I’ve been to three previous Gatherings just as a merchant and an attendee enjoying all the rituals, workshops, and main events, but this year the chair of the board, who is also a dear friend, sweetly roped (*cough* voluntold) me into being events coordinator when the previous one had to back out due to her job. After months of board meetings, planning, organizing, and crossing our fingers we’d get enough registrations to pull it off – we did and the festival was finally upon us. Some of the events of the Gathering were so moving and powerful that I’m going to write of them as separate tales. This post is to give you an idea of the overall awesomeness of the festival.

Every year we choose a new theme for the festival and this year’s was “Between the Worlds”. I admit it sounds vague, but I think we managed to tie all the rituals, events, and the overall feel of it into a theme of sacred space, altered consciousness, and awareness of spirits and deities being all around us. The opening ritual was performed in traditional NROOGD fashion with beautiful robes, beautiful liturgy, and a beautiful altar. After invoking the God and Goddess with lush words, Persephone and Chthonic Dionysos bedecked in finery led us through the door between the worlds into the underworld with the men and women chanting their own verses in rounds as we spiral danced our way through black raven gates. Then the animals were invoked and we all donned masks of creatures great and small and we mimicked the animals’ movements dancing and twirling wildly around the circle in the fading light of dusk. The sacred space was left cast for the duration of the weekend around the whole site in the forest so that we were literally between the worlds for the whole event.

Well after sunset on the first night was the traditional skyclad ritual, but the mead had found me first and then the sacred fire surrounded by lovely people – faces known and new. We introduced ourselves and talked and teased. A few of the men started drumming and I joined them, borrowing a friend’s djembe. During a break I felt called to the lake and walked alone along the beach and then out to the end of the dock and dipped my feet into the cool, still waters perfectly reflecting the stars and greeted the spirit of the lake and the spirit of the night. I lay down and watched shooting stars and the dark shadows of bats flying above me until I heard the most haunting ethereal music coming across the water from the fire. It sounded like fairy music from ancient folk tales and ghost stories. I let it draw me back to the fire and found the Shaman playing his wooden flute in harmony with a violin played by a lovely druidess who had come all the way from Montana with Eric. I sat by the fire and closed my eyes and let the lush music feed my soul until it was time to be whisked off to the dream world.

The next morning was filled with a nature walk getting to know the genius loci of the forest, a drumming 101 workshop, and a discussion group on the NROOGD tradition of Wicca hosted by an elder who’d come all the way up from California. The sun shone down and many people gathering on the big deck of the main lodge soaking up the sun while listening to a group of musicians play fiddle, guitar, and bodhran. I set up the marketplace for the merchants and then helped the Shaman prepare for his hosting of the main ritual in the forest after lunch. The “Passage Through the Underworld” ritual to heal the ties between us, our ancestors, and the land was beautiful and moving. Eyes were wet with tears and hearts were touched. After, while another friend of mine taught a hypnotherapy workshop, some of us stayed circled around the fire in a huge cauldron to finish off the libation mead and smoke a good cigar in offering to the spirits. This resulted in us being more than a little toasted for the Plant Spirit Discussion group right after, but the mead-induced trance state seemed to work in the Shaman’s favour as he talked to us about ritual death, ego death, and the surrender of control that ritual entheogens can teach us. He scared a few people who thought it would be about dryads and fairies, but the majority of those there soaked it all up and offered their own experiences in return.

After dinner that evening was the Bardic Festival. We call it a no-talent bardic, but it is more often than not packed with talent or, at the very least, entertainment. We had two singers with guitars, Kerri with her violin and gorgeous voice, Fritz singing “White Folks Was Wild Once Too“, the drumming 101 students playing the African rhythms they’d learned on djembes, a story of Pandora’s box, Eric with a monologue from a play, and many other offerings. The sun set, the fire roared by the lake. The drum circle started. There were djembes, bodhrans, snare drums, and a big wood and hide barrel drum. I came with a drinking horn hoping to drum, but before I could, the women dancing around the fire got a hold of me and pulled me in. We danced and danced and the drums got faster and faster. Bits of clothing started to come off with the women creating a game, teasing that more drumming equals less clothing, slower drumming or breaks and the clothes come back on. The men tried so hard to keep up the drumming, but it’s tiring, sweaty work (and I’m sure easy to get distracted by half-naked women) and they broke a few times to which I shouted “a real man could keep it up!” and the drumming would start again. We finally stopped, exhausted and laughing, drinking deeply. We stayed up dancing, drumming, and talking around the fire and in the darkness under the stars until the horizon across the lake was getting far too light for my tastes and I slipped back to my cabin to sneak in what rest I could.

Sunday was a day of ritual and rain. In the morning two lovely local high priestesses hosted the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram along with the Middle Pillar Ritual after which I hosted my workshop on altered states after casting sacred space and putting everyone to work with ritual trance techniques (I’ll go into it further in another tale). After lunch were the men and women’s mystery rituals. The women performed a new moon healing ritual and the men worked with their ancestral lines. The annual general meeting for the festival was held before dinner and board members were elected – looks like I’m doing this again next year! Then we feasted and I hosted a couple hours of storytelling by the fire inside the main lodge with the rain falling on the roof – a young man brought down the house with laughter telling the creation story “Coyote and the Assholes“. Afterward, when the sun had set, those who had come to my workshop came to me and asked to try my flying ointments. I brought out two large jars made with mandrake – one with grapeseed oil and one with duck fat and more and more people let go of their fears and tried the ointments. The musicians started up on their fiddles, violins, and drums by the hearth and much perfect chaos ensued late into the night to the heavy beating of the rain and the loud croaking of frogs… but that is also another tale.

Monday was the final day of the festival. We all sat sleepily at breakfast talking as much as we could with our newly made friends. We all pitched in and helped clean up the site, putting away the long strings of lights that had lit the paths at night, the women putting away the silks of Aphrodite’s Temple.  After a delicious lunch the NROOGD group held the closing ritual to continue the rite they’d started on Friday night and closed the circle. Back we travelled with Persephone and Dionysos through the raven gates, back we travelled between the worlds to the mundane realm, with many of us reluctant to go.  The chthonic pair asked us what we had learned, how we had changed, what fears we’d overcome while in the otherworld. Almost everyone seemed to answer “letting go, surrender, losing control” as the workshops and rituals had all unintentionally focused on this theme; letting go of our dead, letting go of our egos and self-consciousness, letting go of fears and surrendering to altered states of being (and mandrake), letting go and trusting ourselves and each other… It was a beautiful thing to see such shared experiences and how we had all come together as one community.

After this heartfelt and playful ritual full of song, the women split off from the men and gathered all the roses from Aphrodite’s temple and made a procession down to the lake. We all stood at the very edge of the dock and released the petals from the roses one by one into the waters while chanting “strong like the ocean, gentle like rain, river wash my tears away, Aphrodite”. Some women made wishes and some offerings as the flowers floated away into the lake surrounded by mist-covered mountains. The men watched us from across the lake, standing at the sacred fire. And it was done. There were hugs and sniffles and smiles as everyone made the rounds to say goodbye and make their way home. It was hard to leave that lovely forest by the lake and the amazing energy we created this year.

I had such an amazing time I didn’t take a single photograph and all of the ones in the post are by the lovely Cindy from Witchy Rambles. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this event so special and thank you to all the lovely new people who came (especially you delicious Americans) and showed us through new eyes how blessed we are by our local community. Slàinte mhòr!

The Poisoner’s Wand

This is a piece I carved a year ago and kept for myself, but in a full year I never used it once in my own magic using my plain rowan wand or yew drum beater instead, and so I released it for sale at the GFLOE Festival and it has found a very good home. It is Pacific Yew wood carved with bittersweet nightshade, a skull, a serpent, and my world tree sigil. I painted the carvings with eco-friendly wood stains and natural red ochre.

The Chieftain’s Beads

This necklace was a gift for a friend of mine who was just initiated this month.  The beads are carved from the woods of the sacred Irish chieftain trees – the holiest of holies. The toggle clasp is Alder and Yew woods. The pendant is an owl skull carved from deer antler, I wish I had carved myself but didn’t (but should), which I found at Bead Freaks on Main St. after the very magical owner Kayla sent me a note that she had more skulls in for my spirit bottles crafted by one of the most talented carvers who works for her. This set of beads took about three days worth of work and were well-received.

After the conference it was time to get ready crafting stock for the GFLOE Festival. I selected some pieces of wood from my collection that had been cured for 1-3 years and went mad de-barking, shaping, carving, and sanding them into wands of twisted hazel, crooked rosemary, lightning-struck maple, rowan, blackthorn, elder, and yew. The spiralling hazel wand I sold at the GFLOE Festival and didn’t have a chance to take pictures of the finished result carved with ogham runes spelling “great wisdom” in Scots Gaelic.

I turned a thin oak branch into half a dozen runestave pendants (of which I forgot to take pictures of all of them) and some larger pieces of split wood into big runestaves. I’d always wanted to make the dream and sleep runestaves and finally had some perfectly cured and split Red Alder for them.

The forked wand is a gorgeous Elder stang with a perfect nubby end. The super-long white wand is lightning-struck Black Maple from an old growth tree on my parents’ farm. The long three-tined wand is a Rowan tree that grew from another tree and has never touched the earth. Each tine is one of the three roots – very Yggdrasil, I know! Such “aerial” wood has long been sought after as one of the most potently powerful woods for magical wands, staffs, and charms.

I found the best and most twisty pieces of the ancient Rosemary bush a lovely lady witch had gifted me from her garden and turned them into sturdy tough wands perfect for Green and Kitchen Witches or for some powerful protection magic.

If you’re looking for a wand, they are available for sale at Stang & Cauldron.

I spent hours hunched over my work table with my tiniest carving knife crafting the detailed runestaves with woods of alder, birch, and oak. I blended natural red ochre with sacred flaxseed oil and painted all the complex carved symbols. Then they were cured with more flaxseed oil and then polished with beeswax and allowed to dry. The beauty of Icelandic runestaves is that they are for magic both sacred and profane – one helping you to fall asleep or to get a good catch when fishing and another to protect your home from all evil or alternately to curse.

From the top left going clockwise: runestave against bad dreams and sleeplessness (Alder), runestave to cause your enemies to fear you (Oak), runestave to Fjölnir (Odin as “Multiplier” – Oak), runestave to Thundur (Odin as seeker of wisdom hanging from Yggdrasil – Oak), runestave to cause one to sleep soundly (Alder), and runestave against evil (Birch).

This week is for writing, professionally and for pleasure, and then I’m off for Ontario for my Grandfather’s birthday and to visit my parents’ at their farm. When I return in the middle of June I hope to do even more woodwork alongside crafting new batches of all my flying ointments.

I have been gone for weeks and yet it feels like almost no time has passed. That is the way of things. Beauty and joy are gone to quickly whereas the daily grind sometimes seems endless. How to describe a whole week of sacredness in one post? I do not know if I have the words to turn my swirling memories of the Shamanic Conference into tales, but I will try my best. The site of the conference itself outside of Squamish, British Columbia is pure beauty – a mix of wild forests and open fields. It is by a fast-moving river with tall snow-capped mountains completely encircling it.

I went early carpooling with a group of women for the two pre-conference days and was so glad I did. Last year I did not attend the pre-conference days and now I know what I missed – these extra days are when the Wolven Path Tradition, who host the conference, perform their more personal rituals of initiations and a fire ceremony. This year I attended the elder ordination ceremony where initiates of the Wolven Path Tradition who’d put in years of hard work, training, and effort were accepted as elders into the tradition and the community.

We all sat waiting in the ritual pavilion with its huge banners in the four directions of the tradition’s totemic beasts painted as skulls for the four directions and a large stone fire pit in the centre. The main altar in the pavilion was massive and gorgeous – full of skulls, bones, antlers, hides, ritual costumes, offerings, and flowers. The procession of shamans entered bedecked in their regalia of blue and black robes, animal masks, and tall staffs covered in bells, feathers, and shells – they were an impressive sight. After everyone was blessed with smudge and holy water, the directions and spirits were called and the ceremony began.

We weren’t allowed to look at the elders-to-be when they came in and each one had to tell us a grand tale of their journey to this point. Some were serious and some were bawdy and loud, drawing out much laughter. As the audience, our duty was to drum and cheer at the parts that impressed us. The core elders of the tradition’s duty was to not be impressed at all. This went on until the elders accepted each candidate as one of their own, finally looking upon them and bestowing them with their new badges of office. There was great cheering and then the new elders joined the rest in their own private ceremony, which mostly seemed to involve getting the new ones fairly tipsy on mead.

The next pre-conference day started quietly with workshops. It was mainly the day of the initiation ceremony where those who had trained in the Wolven Path for years were initiated as shamans into the community. They had to fast for the day and the rest of us tried not to rub in how delicious the meals were. The initiation ceremony was very long and serious, but beautiful and mysterious to witness. The audience’s job was to act as witnesses as in the shamanic community one isn’t named a shaman unless the community witnesses it, accepts it, and names them so (or so I am told).  The initiates were blinded and bound. They were put through trials. They were trapped in darkness under stones. They were made to smoke and drink and eat things that would test anyone’s will. They made oaths before their elders and community. Lastly, after all the trials, they were named shamans and given their blue robes, white scarves, and staffs and each of us witnesses had to touch them and welcome them to complete the rite.

After the celebration feast for the initiates (who were finally allowed to eat), we all gathered in the marquee once more for a ceremony hosted by Christiana Harle, a Tuvan shamaness from Finland.  It was her first time at the conference and I’m pretty sure all of us attending instantly fell in love with her, her magic, her bawdy bluntness, and her deep sacredness. She told us stories of Northern shamans and bear creation myths.  Bowls of vodka and mead were passed around and around and she taught us how to accept and pass the bowl with our left hand, to take a sip and pass it on or to dip in our right ring finger and flick it to the floor before drinking as an offering to the spirits and a prayer that they don’t let us get too drunk no matter how much we drink.

After being plied with alcohol she taught us a singing game the Tuvan shamans play to healthily compete with each other. First we all practiced in groups, but failed miserably and hilariously as Canadians are far too polite and modest to hurl insults at each other and say our ancestors are better than one another’s. After our failed attempt, Christiana got the new initiates to play the game against each other two at a time in front of us all and they were all brilliant – some rhymed perfectly to each other about how much greater their powers were than the other person’s, some sang or rapped about how their animal familiars were more powerful or would eat the other’s, and others brought down the house in laughter. It was unrehearsed, but I swear imbas was flowing directly through all their veins that night. I wish someone had recorded it, it was such perfection, but I will always have my memory of it.

The next day, after breakfast, was the fire ceremony.  Everyone in attendance wore red and orange. The huge stone hearth was decorated with patterns created with paprika, turmeric, and a white spice with squares and triangles and flourishes with white flowers everywhere. The ledge around the fire was covered in bowls full of offerings – spices, nuts, butter, resins, flower petals, tobacco, herbs, and more. A circle of water was poured encircling the fireplace to symbolize the masculine being held within the feminine. Grandfather Fire was called down as lightning and the main fireplace was lit with a roar and the crackle of sparks. Wine was poured over the great stones encircling him to symbolize blood. Sacred woods were fed to him in offering and everyone took turns spraying rum from their mouths into the fire causing the flames to leap high. The drums sounded and dancing began, wild and sensual around the fire. More rum was passed and cigars were lit, the elders blowing tobacco smoke upon our heads to bless us. The cigars were rolled along the women’s bared thighs in offering to the masculine spirit of the fire.  It was wild and wonderful, one of my favourite ceremonies of the conference.

Afterward we split off to go to the various workshops all happening at the same time. I went to one where we carved faces of nature spirits into large, thick pieces of black cottonwood bark. I’d never worked with it before and was surprised how easy it was, the bark almost as easy to shape as butter compared to the hard seasoned woods I am used to. I carved a green man into mine. That afternoon was the official opening ceremony which was mostly announcements and explanations for those who had just arrived.

The real meat of the day was the evening ceremony hosted by Xhosa Sangoma John Lockley, a traditional African shaman from a lineage of singers, dreamers, and seers. Dressed all in white with a white headdress, white face paint, beads across his chest and shell rattles on his ankles, he taught us about the Xhosa and their traditions. He taught us their songs honouring and blessing the ancestors. It was an evening of call and response singing in the Xhosa tongue. He got us to all uncross our legs and arms, sit up straight, and open our hearts. He got us to sing a few times as tests until we all were able to sing from our hearts and made him smile with warmth. He spoke of dreams from the spirits and ancestors, he spoke of his training. But it was the singing to the ancestors that truly touched us all. It was simply beautiful – all those voices woven in harmony along to his drumming. We swayed together and danced and raised energy that was pure love. We all went to bed late at night after the ceremony smiling from our hearts.

The Thursday of the conference was when the real work and intent of the “Bones of the Ancestors” theme started.  Over the next three days each morning was full of three rigorous ceremonies all in a row starting with John-Luke leading us all singing to the bones. We were each given a bundle of bones to carry with us for the rest of the conference. It had to come everywhere with us – even to the bathrooms and to meals. It represented our dead that we carry with us when we grieve, that we don’t let go of. Each morning John-Luke led us singing to the bones – some of us sang, some hummed, some wailed. It was very haunting and chilling to listen to. We sang original songs to the ancestors along to Jeff Stockton’s beautiful harp compositions. The music from the large harp filled the pavilion. There’s no comparison to live music.

After the singing, each morning Tom Cowan would step up and tell us stories of the Bone Mother in the Celtic tradition. He had us each bring a rock and create a cairn before the main altar to the Bone Mother over a large cow leg bone. We covered the stone cairn with offerings of dead leaves, ground cedar, and fresh water and it was surrounded with deer antlers. When Tom Cowan would sing to invoke her, geese would call. In Scotland it is said the cackle of geese means the Gyre Carline is near. I took it as a sign that the Old Woman was pleased with this work. Each day Tom would get us to speak to her and to sing and dance for her.  He has the most beautiful grandfatherly energy, the sweetest singing voice, and the heart of a storyteller and bard.

After his rite, Christina Pratt performed her ancestralisation ceremonies.  Beautiful shrines to the elements had been set up in the woods around the conference site. Each day the shamans journeyed for each other, first to find female ancestors from the mother’s line who needed healing and to finish their journey to the underworld, then to find male ancestors from the father’s line who needed the same. Each person was sent to a different elemental shrine to help heal these dead trapped in the middle world. The belief behind this practice being that the dead trapped here are no wiser than the day they died and still hold on to the petty concerns and worries of their lives and that they need to pass through the underworld and complete the journey of the dead in order to join the revered ancestors whose collected body of wisdom and knowledge truly aids us living.

On the day of the third ceremony the dead were released, passing through Grandfather Fire into the underworld to complete their journey and to become ancestralized. My friend the Shaman, dressed in bear hides with his face painted blue, invoked the four elements and directions with a bird’s wing, a bowl of fire, a bowl of water, and a bowl of earth. He and Christina poured out spirits in a circle around the great stone hearth and lit it aflame with steel and flint causing a blue circle of fire to spring up around the massive roaring flames in the hearth. It was a sight to see. In between the circle of blue flame and Grandfather Fire were tokens for the ancestors brought by each person from beautiful cloth bundles to simple objects. Once our dead had completed their journey, those spirits who wished were invited to attach themselves to the tokens turning them into ancestral fetiches the people could take home with them and continue to work with their ancestors. That last night a vigil was held for the journey of the dead and in the morning their success was celebrated and they were welcomed as beloved and mighty dead.

Some of my favourite memories of the conference are of spending time with my friends and with new friends. I remember walking to the river with Nikiah one evening at sunset and we climbed the rocks along the bank like mountain goats and then sat and perched close, our heads together whispering of magic and women’s mysteries. That day I had created a sea fetiche in a workshop which I painted with a salmon skeleton, and lo and behold, when we climbed the rocks to go back to our lodge, I found a complete salmon skeleton an eagle had dropped there in the fall when the salmon return from the sea to the river to spawn. The things that happen when two bone collectors are paired… I gathered up the vertebrae, ribs, some dried scales and fins, and the sharp-toothed jaws and took them back with me. The jaws look like flesh turning into leaves or seaweed – pure magic.

I remember curling up on a couch by a fire in the lodge with my friend and local Pagan elder Fritz, each of us telling stories of dream walking, prophetic dreams, spirits, rituals, spells, weather magic, and old gods. I remember sharing my mead from a great horn by Grandfather Fire and then walking in the deep dark of night under the stars by the river with Nikiah, the Shaman, and Richard speaking of magic and the darker lessons of the soul and the spirits. The black waters carried away our voices and thoughts and we walked back to the fire to the last notes of the live music and left offerings at the Bone Mother’s cairn of stone and antler and to Grandfather Fire. I crushed lavender, fennel seed, and tobacco in my hand, inhaled deeply and blew it into the flames.

On the last day of the conference I slipped out from the vendors’ marketplace where I was selling my incense to attend the Blessings of Mathair Tei, the Bone Mother site. The Shamanic Society had been given permission to build a permanent shrine on the site under a great Mother Cedar tree and built a cement platform over a pit in the earth with a stone to cover it, a large wooden bench under the tree for people to enjoy it, and a newly planted Dogwood tree to bless it. At each corner of the shrine was piece of brass engraved with the word peace in English, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, French, and Gaelic. A main plaque dedicated the shrine to the memory of our ancestors and to peace for future generations inviting those who came to the shrine to leave a stone upon it. Nikiah had brought beeswax candles crafted from the wax of her own beehives and placed them at the four corners. The trees above had been dressed with colourful ribbons and rags. The men removed the stone from the hole in the earth and beautiful red silks were placed over it. Stakes were driven into the earth and libations of red wine, milk, water, and ale were poured over them. I beat my bear drum and two men played flutes. It was a beautiful ceremony.

Later, everyone gathered around the site and women gathered up the bundles of bones we had each carried for the whole of the conference handing them to the men in blue and black robes to gently and reverently place in the red silks over the hole in the earth. On top of the bone bundles were placed offerings of cookies, fruits, flowers, honeycomb, water, and mead. Lastly I came forward with a the mummified body of  a bird, found dead at the shrine, which I’d been asked to prepare and placed it in the earth with the bones as both offering and to act as psychopomp carrying our dead safely to the underworld.

The silks were allowed to drop into the earth and the men placed the heavy stone over the hole. Each of us had taken back a stone from the Bone Mother’s cairn at the main altar and now placed it on top of the shrine rebuilding the cairn anew. Lastly the great clay bowl we’d used to bless ourselves to enter the main ritual area all week was broken on top of the cairn and its pieces added to the stones. The face of a female elder with long white hair shone with glee at such an ancient Celtic practice being performed today – the shattering of a precious object in offering like the Gundestrup cauldron. We all walked away from the shrine in a procession, not looking back at our dead. It was finished and time for us all to say our farewells and go back to the mundane world.

Attending the conference and being surrounded all day every day for a week by the love and acceptance of over a hundred other magical practitioners helped me to finally and wholly accept my seer’s abilities. The lesson I took with me overall was surrender, to let go and simply be as I am and will be, and to let others simply be as they are. It sounds simple, but it took me years to understand it and to truly feel it in my heart and now to live it. I left with a feeling of joy and a good friend drove me home taking me to places along the sea to sky highway I’d never stopped to see and enjoy before though I had taken that road more times than I can count. We went to Shannon Falls at sunset and saw a perfect rainbow in the waterfall. We stopped at a lookout and watched the sun set, shining across the sea inlet, and disappear behind the mountains. We drove on and I saw two huge ravens by the road on the edge of the sea and then two deer walking into the trees and felt blessed.

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For more on the BC Shamanic Conference here are my tales from last year’s conference: 2nd BC Shamanic Conference & Gathering

For those interested in the Wolven Path Tradition, this year I created a website, logo, artwork, and a blog for them. You can find the new site here to learn more about them and get in touch: wolvenpathtradition.com

For those interested in joining the SCGM Shamanic Society and attending their events, such as this conference and smaller rituals throughout the year, their website can be found here: circleofgreatmystery.com. There is also a sister conference happening this September in the UK: www.shamanicconference.co.uk

The presenters and ritualists from this year you may want to learn more about:

• Christiana Harle
• Christina Pratt
• Grant Guindon
• Howard & Elsa Malpas
• Jeff Stockton
• John Lockley
• John-Luke Edwards
• Nikiah Seeds
• Tira Evans
• Tom Cowan

My Beltuinn eve was spent out of town by the sea with the European shaman-folk feasting, chanting, dancing, and drumming. Dressed all in white, we listened to mythical stories and learned dances and songs to be performed at the upcoming BC Shamanic Conference (which I’m off to this Monday for a week). We sat around the altar prepared as a feast table and dined with the ancestors sharing strawberries, freshly baked bread, chocolate, a luscious fig cake, and pomegranate mead.

The theme of the ceremony was to remember we are spirits, that we fell from the stars, that everything is magic and everything is a sacred spirit. A beautiful message of animism – to treat plants, animals, and the rest of nature on par with human life as well as teachers and keepers of wisdom.

On the day of Beltuinn I made mead – blackcurrant mead. I’ve wanted to make it for a while but blackcurrants or juice are surprisingly hard to get a hold of and I couldn’t use Ribena due to the yeast-killing sulphate content. But I finally found pure blackcurrant syrup and juice. The yeast did not cooperate however. One trick to make it happy is to give the mead a bath. So into the bathtub filled with hot water went the primary fermentation bucket to create the moist, warm atmosphere that yeast loves so much.

I burned raw bee propolis and beat my bear hide drum to call and appease the spirits and my home filled with the smoky sweet scent of the resin. The second batch of yeast took and now I stir it every day and wait until the alcohol content is high enough to transfer it into the carboy.

I’m going to miss my ritual group’s annual Beltuin camp out due to the shamanic conference falling on the same weekend. It’s one of my favourite local rituals and in about its 22nd year and though I am sad about missing it, I’m looking forward to the conference and a week by the river surrounded by mountains. I’m going to miss saying farewell to my friend the May King and watch him die for a new king to take his place. I’m going to miss my friend the May Queen pass on her mantle to the new. I wish them both the best and many blessings upon whomever wins the challenges to become the new King and Queen of our group. The King is dead, long live the King! Hail the King! Hail the Queen!

Here are the posts about the past two Beltuinn’s my ritual group put on for your reading pleasure:

The Sacrifice

Beltuinn in the Wild Wood

Hope you all had a wonderful Beltuinn full of mirth, mischief, and hopefully mead!

A while back I wrote about being lucky enough to get my hands on some fresh local black bear fat which I rendered over a period of days into an oil this winter.  I had been actively looking for wild fats to use in my ointment making and decided that a pairing of black henbane with the black bear fat would be perfection. Mundanely because animal fats have been shown to cause plant alkaloids to absorb faster and better than vegetable oils (and there are few animals fattier than bears), and metaphysically because they both share magical associations. Bears are masters of the dream world with how much of their time they spend sleeping in a half-death-like state akin to trance. It makes me wonder how much of their lives are spent in the spirit world.

 Jars of finished bear oil with a drum made from the hide

Bears are sacred to the Moon which to me means sacred to the underworld, the night, one’s spirit fetch, and the subconscious and unconscious minds (dreams, emotions, and animal instincts). According to Ted Andrews, bear medicine can help us to bring things up from our subconscious into our awareness. As most of our psychic abilities dwell in the subconscious, the underworld of the soul, I believe Bear can help us to better access and make use of them – whether they be of seership, prophetic dreams, or shapeshifting.

The black henbane I grew in my garden and have had a gardener’s love affair with for the past few years even though the flowers smell of rotting meat and onions, the leaves are hairy and sticky, and it’s a bit of murderer when it comes to insects. It grows like a weed for me and I always ended up with more plants than I intended to grow. Henbane isn’t just a poisonous plant associated with witchcraft and having a long history of use in ancient Pagan rites of divination in Greece and Northern Europe, it’s also an excellent topical pain-killer and our ancestors once used it as a sedative long before our modern anaesthetics.

I painstakingly processed my last harvest for all the seeds and then cut and ground up the stems and leaves, weighing it all and adding it to the bear oil. After the mixture infused for a while I tested it rubbing the oil over my heart and the top of my spine. I didn’t notice any effects, but did note interesting dreams (which says something when you’re an oneiromancer). I doubled the amount of henbane added and let it sit and infuse before testing it again. The next tests were much more fruitful. The henbane and bear oil produced a light, beneficial altered state and I found it really enhanced my trance work and dream walking. I noticed the effects and benefits of it much more in ritual use and in the otherworld than just the mundane physical reaction.

As I’m a seer, I noticed it significantly enhanced the abilities I already have when it comes to receiving visions and prophetic dreams. Henbane is also known to produce a sensation of flying making it excellent for spirit-flight and shapeshifting. Like many other entheogens, it seems to respond to the user’s intent as well as their predisposed psychic and magical abilities.

All that was left to do was add a preservative and some local beeswax. I use balm of gilead in all of my flying ointments because it is found in many traditional flying ointment recipes with properties of aiding in spirit-flight, and also because balm of gilead is a natural preservative (and an antibacterial & antimicrobial) rivalling most man-made ones. Funnily enough, balm of gilead (aka poplar buds) are also a very strong anti-inflammatory making its combination with henbane very good for topical pain relief. So you can kill two birds with one stone by taking care of your arthritic knees or sore back while performing your rites of magic and spirit work. Keep in mind henbane is a poison and may cause irritation for those with sensitive skin. Wash off the ointment after use and be careful not to touch your nose, mouth, or eyes and keep it far away from mucus membranes – this is not the ointment to pick for sex magic! That’s what mandrake’s for!

I have to include a legal note for this ointment. Bear fat is illegal to purchase in some US States – you are responsible for looking into your own local laws before buying (imported from a legal area may be fine). Bear fat is only listed as “fat of wild beast” on the label, so purchase at your own discretion.

Now available in the shop in small 15 ml amber glass jars: Henbane Ointment

Toe of crow and foot of hare, leg of toad, and tooth of bear

And now for a little sneak peek at what I’m crafting tomorrow to sell in the shop on Friday. This witch is feeling an itch to craft amulets and talismans again… Out comes the box of bones and taxidermy bits, spools of cotton thread and sinew, leathers, awl, and sewing needles.

Being an artisan I can’t just make an ordinary drum beater, no, it must be awesomely fancy or my inner art nerd is not happy. Carved from a holly branch ritually harvested from a friend’s tree on a full moon and cured for two years. A hand stitched black leather head (suede side out) stuffed with raw wool and bound with black bear fur – stitched tight through its hide. Plus a hand braided black cotton tie on the end for hanging it up. Not for sale as it’s already in someone’s private collection. I think I will make more fancy drum beaters like this for the BC Residential Shamanic Conference coming up in two weeks…

You may not know they exist, you may have heard rumours about them, or maybe you’ve been invited into a back room. Maybe one day when you were visiting your favourite botanica or occult shop the owner leaned conspiratorially towards you and quietly told you if you needed anything you could not see – just to ask them for it. Maybe one day you did ask for something (something more advanced, darker, rarer, shady…) and they took you with them to the back of the shop where most people think there’s an office or boxes of inventory. But that’s not what you saw. You saw a temple and altars and ritual tools and shelves of objects looking like they came from a wild witchdoctor’s hut. Perhaps there were herbs rumoured to cause madness or death and perhaps there were bones and skulls. Maybe it was normal for you and you bought exactly what you needed, or, maybe a whole other world opened up and you realized, up until that moment, you had only scratched the surface of the magic available to you.

I’ve always had a back room, but only a handful of local magicians and long-term customers have known about it. The back room exists in Stang & Cauldron where shifty, darker, and more advanced items are sold: poison plants, skulls and bones, hearts and tongues, dirts and dusts. If you seek it, there is a chance I will have it or find it for you (seers make very good procurers). You must know what you are asking for and how to use it and accept sole responsibility for its possession and use and I always reserve the right to say no to a request – especially if it’s illegal. It’s an unspoken rule that only those who do not need hand holding are invited into the back room. There is no way to physically or digitally access the shop’s back room – just fire me an email if you’re looking for something in particular.

The back room also exists here on this blog in the form of private password protected posts divided into two main diaries. I will also be password protecting posts I consider more personal regarding my personal praxis and don’t feel comfortable sharing with the general public.

The Bone Collector Diary will tell tales of my practice processing dead animals (mainly roadkill) in a safe and sacred manner to turn their remains into ritual tools for spirit workers. As I work with other bone collectors I will speak of our practices and adventures together as well. These entries are private because of this practice feels very personal to me, the graphic gorey content will offend some people, and because I will be writing about others who want more privacy.

The Veneficia Diary is where I will write of my ritual practices and experiences with entheogens. I grow poisonous plants, I ingest poisonous plants, I smoke poisonous plants, and I make and use classic flying ointments. This diary will be kept password protected because I am not yet comfortable writing openly of this part of my practice and there are some grey areas with some of the plants worked with.

I emailed out the password to people I feel I know well and who agreed to a disclaimer. If you didn’t receive the password it’s because I don’t know you well enough to share these more personal aspects of my spiritual praxis with you and I hope you won’t be offended by my choice to keep some things more private. If you and I have chatted about these topics away from the blog and you didn’t receive the password it’s probably because I don’t have your email or I have forgotten you (sorry) – email me to find out. I reserve the right to say no to anyone who asks for the password and also to revoke access to the posts without warning. The password is subject to change at any time.

Note: There has been some confusion – this blog is still continuing as it always has. I am still writing this blog for the general public. There will still be new posts for you all to read. I’m not going anywhere. Only a tiny handful of posts will be password protected. You won’t even notice.