Thanks to all for a delightful conversation this week. And now – onward and upward with with W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries! This week’s selection: pages 69-116. (Begin at “The Testimony of a College Professor” and stop when you hit “IV: THE ISLE OF MAN.”)
Safe travels through the wyrding!
This week we continue with W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. In preparation please read pages 17-69, from the beginning of Chapter II until you hit “The Testimony of a College Professor.” Grace and blessings upon you, Illegitimate One!
This week we’ll begin reading W.Y. Evans-Wentz’s The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. We’ll discuss the Introduction (not the Preface) and Chapter 1: Environment.
This Wednesday, the Bastards will discuss a selection from Emma Wilby’s The Visions of Isobel Gowdie. Pages 31-36 will furnish a bit of context about the alleged witch and the Scottish Witch Trials. The heart of the matter is the confessions themselves, pages 37-52. Please read through the confessions before coming, and attempt your own translation of some portion of the text. The Confessions are written in delightful but sometimes confusing 17th century Scots.
This week, many of the Bastards are ailing and must lie abed, awaiting the resurgence of their inner fires. We reconvene next Wednesday!
This coming Wednesday, at the recommendation of Sorcerix Helios, we will discuss our first-ever audio text: Vincent Price’s 1969 recording, “Witchcraft – Magic: An Adventure in Demonology.” Listen to it before you come to us, and formulate a few questions for the group to discuss!
Helios offered the following comments:
“Vincent Price’s Witchcraft – Magic: An Adventure In Demonology is a highly narrative audio grimoire released on vinyl in 1969. With just enough detail to help a fledgling witch get started, the long form lecture is interspersed with sound effects, dramatic readings from Shakespeare, and a plentiful helping of Price’s characteristic editorializing and dramatic charm. I swear by the gems that can be plucked from this performance; the details in this audio have served to bridge gaps in my research on the Sumerian Zisurru Magic Circle rite.”
Everything seems to be coming up Dysnomia. This week, a few compact pieces from Andrew D. Chumbley, late Magister of the Cultus Sabbati and an enigmatic icon of the sabbatic craft. We’ll look at pieces from both volumes of Opuscula Magica: from vol. 1, “A Short Critique and Comment Upon Magic” (pp. 19-24) and “The Hermit” (pp. 35-42), from vol. 2, “The Crooked Path” pts. I and II (pp. 21-34). This is for you.
Dysnomia here. Wednesday we’ll read a few sections from Peter Lamborn Wilson’s Peacock Angel on the antinomian religion of the Yezidis. The reading will of necessity be a bit longer, so pace yourself. We’ll discuss Chapters 2 (“Cosmogony”) & 5 (“The Redemption of Satan”) — any more is at your discretion. Methinks you’ll like it.
I’d rather be censured (it would be a delight)
than suffer ungratified wishes.
The spread of ardent desire is finer than a breeze.
By popular demand, the Bastards are finishing an entire book together! Of course, that means reading the middle, because we started at the end. Even if you only read this week’s section, you are welcome to join us.
This coming Wednesday, we discuss pages 69-113 of Steve Wilson’s Chaos Ritual. This is the Medicine Wyrd chapter, “…the book of the great secret, of how to enter the world of Wyrd, of how to travel to the land of Spirit, of how to steal the Medicine from them by strength or guile, of how to return alive and sane, or at least as sane as can be expected.”
Next Wednesday we will continue our conversation about Steve Wilson’s Chaos Ritual. Some perverse whim has bidden us to go backward and discuss the beginning of the book, pages 19-67.