the Horned Piper a iii j aTHE CALL OF THE HORNED PIPER (1994 Nigel AlderofUJacssoa Fine peinted Apsil 1994 Reprinted Sept 1994 Reprimed Jan 1995, ISBN 1 898307 091 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED in aretin omot Nopunetns pcan iy treater exe ny fm yey mes sleeonc, mechan os scan enter ee 7 rumour anh poe ‘Coes design by Dann Basin corer atinsran by Nie aoa Published by: ‘Capall Rana Publishing Freshfields Chieveley Bers RGIG STF ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. ‘Thaniks are due to the following peeple: Patti Owens, for indispensable help in prepering the final draft of this work and for her invaluable aid from the ‘earliest stages. My parents aod particlarly my mother for computational Michael Howard for his enduring eneouragement and for helping this work emerge from the realm of potentialities into the manifest substance of middle-earta, ‘Bvan John Jones for his stimulating input on Craft matters over soveral years, Finally, thanks are due to those people whose opposition provided me with much-noeded creative friction and who helped me light the need-fre. Faerie Blessings!Contents ‘The Sadbat Seng ‘Hisorial Tnureduction Broomocieks, Grease Birds and The Gandreich Frm Holds, Venus Mountain and The Night Travellers Death Mystories of The Horned Mastor “Hg-Way and Sabbat Stone ‘The Marko! the Wich ‘The Fanaliar Spirit A Short Disquiition Concerning Toad lore Faerie Wiehcraft & the Geography of Eland Werewolvee, Wiehes & the Wary Tree ‘The Shamanic Vampyre Spiri: Masks in Buropean Paganism Herblore & Worteunning ofthe Witches ‘The Witches Compses allowing & Casting the Compass ‘Tho Tels of Witehery Hallowing the Witeh Toole The Sabla Cyclo Initiation nto Wicce-Craeft Spisit-Threads & Knots in Witeh-Magie ‘ystorium Sabbat: Riding onthe Wich Way Commencory an Uae Myateriam Sabbati 103, 108The Sabbat Song Stop i waking, walking sleep sreride the broom across the deep, [iio foul and fol ifr ‘yw and ety had and hare {Roliving die and the dying ve wre turn the shears ad the sive, Tig is dares, darkness light to farers through the mystic night, tp is down and down is up to seckers ofthe eauléren-cop, Iovde are curls and eos are lords swe leap across the bridge of swords, Birth is death and death ia arth wee tred the paths benesth the earth, Bride i Hag end Tag is Bride Iptineen th tres we rage and ride, day is night and night is day {or favers on the witching was Historical Introduction As the millennium draws to it’s close there is & ‘widespread and pervasive awareness ofthe ending of an age and the dawn of a new acon within the human payche. We ‘an palpably sense the demise of the exhausted and outworn ‘Judaee-Cheristian world in a veritable ‘twilight of the god fas the twin demons of reactionary polities and fandamontalist religiosity stalk contemporary society, seeking to terrorise and enslave the free souls of humankind ‘and mould them after their own distorted images. ‘Yet, as the sterile old order perishes amidst the surfeit of toxina it has generated over the laat thousand years we are witnessing a visible manifestation of anakukosis, the eternal return - whilat we stand at the breakthrough threshold of a new cycle of time and conseiousness we are paradoxically drawing closer to increasingly ancient mysteries encoded deep within the neural cortex, we are beginning to glimpse the facry visions of gods and ancestors in the primordial age and to re-activate the deeply-buried archetypal patterns which link us with that ‘great time’ or olden age. In the foretime, middle-earth and the otherworlds were closer and the channels of intercoanection between the realms were more vital and energetic - the sky was closer to the lang, men could fly and speak with animals and birds and the ancestars and divine beings communiested easily fand mingled upon the Many-Colosred Land. The traditional shaman, witch or wizard seoks to re-setuslise these mythicconditions in his or hor own being, te act within the sacred time and space of the paradalsal foretime and to re-manifest the magieal gowers of the primeval divine ancestors. This work of bridging the roalms of middleearth and Elfhame is Still at the core of contemporary Wiece-craeft today. This is the initiatie mystery ia which our human and ovr faery natures or ‘souls’ are re-unifiod into a balanced whole in an inner hierogamy or ‘mystic marriage’ which takes place ‘within the hollow mounds of the Sidhe, in the deepest ‘eaverns of Annwvya, ewe would seek the historical origina of Witcheraft as a phenomenon af fell-religion and sorcery we must first seek the ultimate origin of the term ‘witch’ itself. This etymological question has caused a considerable amount of controversy and division with propagandist interpeetations being upheld on both sides. According to Skeat's Etymological Dietionary the word ‘witch’ has the following Tinguistie pedigree: “WITCH. Mediaeval English wicche, both masculine and ferainine, a wizard, a witeh, Anglo- Saxon wioea, masculine, wieee, feminine. Wicca is ‘corruption of witga, commonly sed as a short form of witega, 2 prophet, seer, magician or sorcerer, Anglo-Saxon witan, to see, allied to ‘witan, to know, Similarly Teelandie vitki, a ‘wizard, is from vita, to know”. We might relate the Welsh term ‘guyddon’ for a ‘Wise ‘One’, witeh or wizard to this derivation. Also the Slavonic Vjestica’ and Russian ‘viedma’ for a witch. In any case the ultimate roo!-words behind all these terms are the Indo- Evropean WID - ‘to know, to be wise’ and also *WAT - “prophecy, inspiration, ecstasy”. Yet other theorists see an origin in the Indo-European term *WEIK - meaning sorcery F ‘and religious matters, especially the earth-centred Spirituality of the third estate of the tripartite Indo- Buvopean societal paradigm. These were the agriculturalists, Sishers, hunters and craftspeople; the ‘common felt who Lived and worked close to the land some 6000 years ago. Their shamanistic folk-mysteries were focussed upon the divinities of the fruitful earth and the fertile waters, the powers of fecundity and regeneration, of wealth, pleasure and good harvest, Here we find the archetypes of primal deities of the hunt and the animal herds who are so closely bound to the underworld in clatsieal shamanic lore, On the deepest levels there were eults of aivinised. ancestors. and chthonic deities of death and rebirth in the lunderseorld, the powers of the night-moon and stars and of tho subterranean depths. From *WEIK such theorists derive Anglo-Saxon ‘wicoelwiese’, 'wiecian’ - ‘to east a spell! and ‘wieee-craeh’- ‘witeheraf” and also Old High German ‘wikkerie’-‘witehery? tis likely that the mysteries of the Horned One and the Great Queen were old ia the heydey of the Indo-Buropean ‘expansions some six to four millenia ago when that grasp of peoples migrated in successive waves westward from the steppes of southern Russia, their original homeland in the regions of the Don and Dnieper rivers north of the Biack Sea. As this ancostral ethnic and linguistic entity broke up into separate cultures such a¢ the Roman, Hellenic, Slavonic ‘and Celtic peoples (and the Persians and Indians in their castward peregrinations) the mystery-cultus of *WEIK wes preserved throughout Europe in various distinctive forms amongst the peasantry and common people. The practitioners of witchery were regarded with some ambivalence but were generally respected as powerful folk- sorcerers and soresrosses flourishing as a shamanic 3priesthood throughout gentral snd north-western Europe in the Iron Age with analogues in the classical and southern European sphere, It seems likely that Buropean witeheratt draws upon roots that are ultimately Old European but which were assimilated inte the foundations of Indo- ‘European religion and culture in remote antiquity. One thousand years ago, when the Christian insionazies and evangelists sought to convert the tribal ‘peoples of Europe they primarily concentrated their efforts tipen the visible political powers, the toutal kings and chiefains along with their courts, and warrior bands, in the belief that society could be Christianised from the top downwards. In reality the intervening centuries would ‘reveal that this provess did not gecur and that at the level of ‘agrarian peasant life the pre-Christian lore and practices were adhered to tenaciously and boldly by the greater mes of rural folk, It simply proved impossible to eradicate the initiatic patteras of magical consciousness waich were 50 deeply ingrained in the collective awareness of European countryfolk aad which constituted an ancient oval inheritance of esoteric knowledge, mythopoetics and magical teehnologies. This body of foll-esotericism was expressed in traditional mythic lays and faery-tales, in seasonal mmumming and guizing rituals and other symbolic dance ‘uals and processions, in the secretive craftesceistions of blacksmiths, shepherds, horsemen, midwives, spinners and ‘weavers, in agricultural rte and custom and io the manic pructioes and mysterious lore ofthe traditional witches. ‘The earliest, churchmen whe mentioned the ‘night- travellers’ and ‘myrk-riders’ of the Witch-cult merely ‘regarded their otherworldly tranco-fights in the train of the goddess Herodins as 2 folly, a delusion which lured people away from the rectitude of Christian piety, Thus at first Wilchos were only sentenced to mild punishments such as penances or temporary banishment, However, it became [pparent by the mediaeval period that such deeply-zooted magical and religicus forms, fur from diminishing in fsecurrence, were actually flourishing and growing apace, feelled by a bold new impulse of spiritual rebellion against ‘the Chureh, barons and royalty. By tho time of the infamous Papal Bull of 1484 which, condemns witches as malefic poisoners the ancient cultus of, Wicce-Craeft was being obscured and misrepresented amidst the fogs of ecclesiastical ‘diabolism’ raised by cerie- ‘writers in innumerable garish tracts and sermons. Men such a8 Bornadina of Siena in his Roman sermons, the German Dominican author, Johannes Nider and the Inquisitor Bernardo Rategno in his ‘Teactatus de Strigibus', worked hhard to transform the chthonic cults of the ‘night-raveliers* with their vision journeys and worship of Our Lady of the Night and Owld Hornie into an anti- social threat, a pernicious und perverted mirage which is still employed in ‘evangelical propaganda today. ‘The Dominican writers Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger penned the definitive work of diabolistic misinformation, the notorious ‘Malleus Maleficaram’ or "Haramer of the Witches. This classie Catholic text virtually defined a literary genre which would persist well into the 17th Century and contributed to the torture and suiferings of many thousands of people. ‘The Old Faits, now under direct attack from above, recoded further and further into the marginalised regions of society and persisted under a closer veil ef seeneey than ever Even through the cruel persecutions and insane mob- hysteria engineered by the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Europe it asema that the Craft of the Wise was continued along hidden channels of transmission, often in 5old families in remote rural districts, in loose coven groupings, and in the lore of solitary Wyse-wives and Cunning-men. ‘The 17th Century witeh-hunts and executions porpetrated ia the Puritan England of the Commonwealth reveal more clearly than ever the socio-plitieal motivations behind the attack on witcheraft. Puritanism, with all i's self-righteous ‘work and prayer’ ethic, it’s joyless and repressive morality and fanatical enforcement of total socie~ religious eonformis, appealed mostly to the prosperous end ising merchant clases. The mercantile classes of Cromwell's England were the hard-working, upwardly sobile Puritans who were beginning to own the land and ‘employ the ardinary people. These dreary people were beginning to oppress the traditional peasantry, dissolving the traditional apprentice’s rights and exploiting the agrarian workforee. Politically motivated by a desire to intimidate, disempower and break the common folk and their culture, justified by a sour and malicious dogma and maaddoned by their own lowly social backgrounds, the Puritans embarked upon a veritable freazy of megalith smashing, chureh-vandalising, maypole felling destruction which reached it's deranged crescendo in the torture and hanging of witches across the British Teles. Within this historical environment of evangelical dementia, sevial disruption ané the atrocities of the Civil ‘War we see Puritans and pavliamontarians employing sadistic Iunaties like Matthew Hopkins, the Witehfinder General’, to eradicate witchery and strike terror into the people as part of their overall politieal seheme of authoritarian contro ‘This miserable tyranny eollapeed after only a few briet ‘years bot Witchcraft had gone to earth, receding ever deeper into the hidden recesses of the foll-consciousness. Amidst the xationslistic ‘Enlightenment’ of tho 18th Century end the materialistic positivism and ‘Churchianity’ of the 19th Century the Wite®traditions still persisted in silence and obscurity, preserved in many shadowy nooks and eorners, xnow dismissed as moro rustic superstition, quaint relies of ¢ bygone era, collected by scholars and antiquarian vicars as part of the burgeoning science of foll-lore studies. In the twentieth century we have seen the revival of both an academie and a religious involvement with European srich-lore in which an effort has been made to re-assess the ubject accurately, free from the disterting filters of Christian prejudice. This great work really began with Girolamo Tartarott’s ‘Del Congreso Notturno Del Lammie’ (COF the Midnight Gatherings of Witches!) published in 1749 Sn which he rediscovered the pre-Christian nature of the Witeh- cult and the Brigade of Diana’. At the same time & theme #o richly imaginative aad vitally irrational Witcheraft could not help but exert « powerful influence upon the Romantic and Gothie movements in art and erature which were then boginning to flower in Germany and England, ‘The ground-breaking works of Dr. Margaret Murray in ‘the 1920's caused a furore in academia which was even then infested with clerics and churchmen and her work quiekly became a focus far misogynistic resentment in that period, Her examination of the heathen nature of witeheraft was pioneering in it's nature and she proved very clearly that this was an ancient religion which had survived into the dawn of the modem era. She erred in underestimating the visionary and chamanie nature of with-spirituality and exaggerated the organisational and congregational side of the Crafl as seeret network but she led the way for further developments and provided a stimulus to revivalists along ?swith the Victorian works of Charles Godfrey Leland whose forays into Tuscan Witcheraft in Ttaly led to the publication ‘of Aradia: The Gospel of the Witches’ in 1898, ‘The work of Gerald Brosseau Gardner, Doreen Valiente and Alex Sanders in the 1950's to the 1970's led to the ‘stablishment of a particular form of revival witeheraf as a popular mystery-religion in the modern ere. Gardner and Valiente elaborated this form of the Craft from the teachings of a traditional New Forest coven, floshed out with @ good dleal of literary, occult and folk-lave material from various Another name to be reckoned with is that of Robert Cochrane who prior to bis death in 1966 propagated traditional witeh-practices through his group, the ‘Clan of Tubel-Cain’, He claimed to have derived his lore from a Norfolk source within his own family but he tended to ‘obscure these simple concepts and practices beneath a ‘morass of personal invention and fabrication, Nonetheless the pure oore-practices of the ‘Clan of Tubal-Cain’ bear the pallmarks of the ‘trae persuasion’ and are continued today by some old members of the graup such as Evan John Janes. Witcheraft studies in the 1980's and 1990's have undergone an intense period of acceleration and great Jnroads into an academic understanding of the trae nature of the historieal Craft have been made through the work of Scholars such as Hans Peter Duerr io his ‘Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary between Wilderness and Civilization” (1985) and Carlo Ginzburg in his "Bestasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath’ (1990). These two indispensable studies contain revelatory research and insights and I have relied considerably upon their findings in my present exposition of the subject a3 a practical and ‘experiential path of European magic end spirituality. In addition hitherto unsuspected seerets about how tradonal Wtcbret late sacred ls, an tly boundaries, and ‘spirit-lines’ on the ritual landscapes of Burope are being unearthed by Paul Devereux - research ‘which hold tremendous iraplications for consciousness-work in general end the Craft in particular, So the time has come to enter inte the world ofthe Faerie Sabbat and to penetrate the tangled and shadowy forest of ‘mediaeval witeh-lore with it's lurking ancestral ghosts, spirits and archafe divinitios. In that eldritch realm we shall doubtless encounter many strange things but if we let the seals of ieslon fall fom our eyes we may disse rare‘The witch shapeshifing into the form of a night-flying ow! the Striga or sereech oul of classical tradition 0 Broomsticks, Grease Birds and The Gandreidh ‘An ow calls from the darle windswept woods and the tide of midnight draws nigh in the eottage whose chamber is alight with reed tapers. A woman unbinds her long hair and begins chanting her eall to the dark robed master and the ‘wild Mistross of the Night. In the fickering gloom her black cat sports restively as the witeh’s incantation echoes about ‘the low-beamed room, She now begins to anoint her brow, temples and soles of her feet with a goose feather from a ‘mall pot af dark green ol, kneeling by a biveh twig besom. ‘Swirling mists slowly begin to wreathe the chamber as she enters into the dreaming-trance of the Dwale spirits. ‘The sonorous Sebbat-call continues as her spirit begins to leave her body, it is being sung through her. Her lips whisper the words, °Horse and Hattock, in the Divall’s rname" and then she is astride the becom, rising upwards ‘througla the broad chimney hole. Up into the clouds and the wright soars the witch, riding through the windy dsknesss over meadow, river and dale to the caverns of the Sabbat mountain and dowa into the netherworld af the Nine Mothers. ‘This archetypical image of the witeh’s nocturnal Ioometiek flight, a0 deeply ingrained in the European fol consciousness, derives its potency fom truly arcasic roots In traditional witcheraft the broomstick ie the symbolic means whereby the joumey is taken beyond this world and "into the unfathomable realms of the Underworld, Tt is ‘essential to understand the magico-poetic code employed there, for in the shamanistie context Cight’ always alludes to trance-eestasy and the visionary movement of the spit ‘The broomstick is therefore a mystical emblem of the ceestatic night ride of the followers of the Dark goddess, Dame Holda, Diana or Herodias. This shamanie Mystery ties at the core of the Elder craft, as aa ancient initiation- pattern transmitted down through thousands of years in Europe. The three customary woods used ia the making of the broom handle conceal an innor esaterie significance - the fash handle stands for spirit (Anda) and air through which the witea must journey, the World-Ash Yggdrasill and the Shamanic ecstasy (Odhn) through which that spirit Might is “echieved; the willow withies which bind the brush stand for ‘the moon and the fog-shrouded waters that mvust be crossed to enter the reali of death and wisdom; the birch twiga are saored to the White Ledy, Dame Berehta, the Barth Goddess through whom the witeh hopes to attain purification and initiatory rebirth, ‘Thus the ash handled broomstick transforms into a mystical image of the World-Ash Yggdrasil (The Horse of the Terrible Ono’ - Woden) and aptly symbolises fight into the upper and lower worlds, Shamans of the Siberian Buryat tribes travel through the worlds astride a hors headed stick a8 a magical steed, which is ritually viviied ith the blood of « sacrificed horse. In Siberian cosmology the universe is seen as a vast yurt (tent) with the Pol Star/Heavenly Nail fixed above the smoke hole. This aperture gives access to the Otherworlds and in trance the shaman rides through it. In like meaner and with tae seme intention the witch ides the broomstick up the chimney-hole in the Northern 2 folk Traditia. As Frau Holt is the Elder Mother it comes as ho surprise to lear. that the witches rode Elder stieks on thelr nocturnal travels, for the elder, or Bourireo, hie feputation a8 a ‘witch tre’ IU equivalent in Bird-Ogham in (Petaven, rymbolising oasiewisdomy, fight thd the Chthonic regions of Aanwoya, Sootish witches sometimes fent forth ther souls in raven form and the Gaelic word sadbh’ signifies both tho black crow of tho Morrigan and alo a witch or Fury. The Portuguese witeh, the Bruzsa goes fora by darkness a8 @ huge and sinister night bird and the nigatjr is caled the hexe in Germ folslre being thought fas shape-shifted wilebes who suck the axle from goats in the night. Swedish witches favoured the shape of the magpie fn thelr aerial spirit-ights ‘The airborne cavaleade of the witches was known in ancient Scandinavia as the Gandreidh (Wand-ride’, the agandr being the Old Norse term for the magical wand or tae magician’s rod of power. Thare is a reference to such a ‘Miia’ in the 120 coany CE. Law of Vasgoalend ‘where it says; “Woman, I saw you riding on a fence switch with eose hair and belt in the troll skin (mask), et the tSme when day and night were equal.” The Saxon word for witeh is Haogtossa, which means ‘hedge-rder’ the hedge being the boundary between this ‘world and the mysterious Otherworld which lies beyond the parameters of ordinary reality and eopaciousress. The Old Noree lay ‘Wavamal refers to hedge-riders, witching alo In the trial of Lady Allee Kyteler in Ireland in 1224, @ oseription was given of her ‘pipe of oyntmant, wherowith she greased a stafi, upon which she ambled and galloped ‘through thick end thin” This ‘oyntment’ was undoubtably a 8psychedelic unguent prepared from the nightshade plant ‘which induoed the fying trancs' of the Mirk riding wie The 17th century antiquarian Praetorius reported that witches are called ‘grease birés’ due to their use of euch preparations, In 1608 we find Guazzo describing how the wilehes ‘anoint themselves upon some part of their bodies with an ‘unguent rade from various foul and Gltay ingredients. and yo anointed they are carried away on a cov staf or a broom or aroed ora clef sick or a distal, which things they ride? In the 17th century Scottish witehes reported that they rode cora sticks and pea straws to the Sabbat whieh they Transformed into horses echoing the Buryat ‘norte stick’, An ‘dealical sbamanic feat is recorded in Finnish mythie Tore ‘here the wiaard-hero Vainamcinen ‘took 2 stallion of straw, {horse of pea-stalxs' to ride into the Otherworld regions. In 1696 the Aberdeen witches were hold to have performed & ‘devilish dance, riding on trees by a Tong spece’. Mention should also be made %o the horse of the ancient British oddest Andrasta which was called the March Maten and ‘was the steed of fying sorcerers. ‘The herb called ragwort is known as a favourite witch's steed throughout England, gs it is eaid, “as rank a witch as fever rode on ragwort” but Celtic witehes in Ireland are said fo fly upon stalks of yarrow. The witch shamans of the Hungarian cultural sphere, the Taltos, mounts a reed to sravel throogh the heavens. A remarkable Meso-American parallel is to be found in the Aztee goddess of the moon, Female sexuality, pbmning and crossroads called Mazolteot In the Codex Fejrvary-Mayer, ths goddess is depicted upon ‘atoroor, holding a serpent in her hand and with a spindle in hher headdress 1“ ‘Tho theologians and churchmen regarded the brooms sigh asm aa peal loon ad prs by te infernal adversary This was a crude misapprehension of the symbolie Mystorios of the witehes within which the broomstick is the inner vehicle and glyph of nocturnal Journeys to the goddess ofthe Underwarc, the winging of he mally Uberted pach fem tis wild ato iden eid ta: hassoon ow ips tr across te bendary bobo Mata arth ae the cons tnmeneie af Arsevye The myn estan tt hd Tiere nt be tapped and oe amned ord forte scales of Bevadlap to antes ints her deepest Mysteries and feria ofthe Sabet Pons fo her Mac Cashion ne Hidden lands. —Fraw Holt or Dame Holda, the northern witeh goddess ‘travelling upon her sacred goose through the night 16 Frau Holda, Venus Mountain and The Night Travellers From the 10th Century cc. onwards Frankish eleries and churchmen such as Regino of Prum felminated sourly against the ‘devilish’ belief of ‘certaine wicked woraen’ thet ‘in the night sieves they ride abroad with Diana, the goddess of the pagans, or else with Heredias, with an innumerable multitude upon certeine beasts.’ This was echoed in the fourteenth century law-code of Lorraine which censured ‘hose who rode through the air with Diana, The iraage of the Wild Ancestral Goddess had a powerful influence upoa the mediaeval imagination; the avthor of ‘The Romance of the Rose’ wote that a third of the people have dreams of geturnal journeys with Dame Habondia. In Northern Europe, the sect of night travelling witches were held to fly through the sky in the retinue of the goddess Herodias or Holéa, who leads the ancestral spirits of the Furious Horde in the winter months around Sarahain and Yule, Like the Cymrie goddess Cerridwen, Frau Holda is the archaic underworld Earth Mother, mistress of death, {initiation and rebirth, who rules over the chthonic realm of Hel or Annweyn, In Scandinavia she is known as Hela, the