Below is an excerpt from a Hadean Press blog post. It’s quite a good read, though I do call into question Stratton-Kent’s characterization of Dianic witchcraft as “practiced mostly by militant lesbians, and is more concerned with hatred of men and an offbeat religiosity than effective magic.” To me that is of course ridiculous bullshit; he seems to fundamentally misunderstand feminism and feminist magic, particularly its Dianic incarnations. In this way he paints too broadly, but the rest of his writing in this post I do quite enjoy. He has a few books out via Scarlet Imprint, has anyone read them?
“Grimoires”, conjuring books, which go back to the Middle Age and earlier are also very important, so long as they don’t become ‘working by rote’. They come in many editions, stretching back centuries, but none are complete. They are very workable systems and very straightforward, although they have a dark reputation, which is not entirely deserved, and provide you with incantations, magical descriptions and lists of spirits. It is commonly assumed that you must go back and find an old book which has survived, and use existing rituals or cobble one together solely from surviving materials. Although valuable initially this approach is stifling if adhered to too long, and ignores the fact that these old rites were based on some kind of symbolic language which could be used creatively. My ‘favourite grimoire’ is the Grimorium Verum, I have spent a long time synthesising the various editions into a single practice with which I am happy, and have acquired all the instruments I need. You obviously have to make some concessions to the modern world, like anyone would do when cooking from Mrs. Beeton. For example, if the Grimoire says, “take the head of a dead man”, you don’t go out and try and find one at Tesco’s. Instead, assuming a skull is unavailable you discover from comparative work that the skull of a small animal like a cat, or a clay representation of a head, properly prepared, will be just as powerful. Once you have got everything in place, it is important to do everything right — such as finding exactly the right points of the lunar cycle to work to and the right time of day. It is possible to get results from quite amateurish efforts, which is why the practice is dangerous and should be avoided by the merely curious. The spirits you are summoning have long memories, some say to the time of creation itself, so may recognise elements of even a badly cooked up ritual. One difficulty is that the spirits you summon may not be those you intend and you could then be in for a nasty shock.
