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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in sacred kingship

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

 Theirs and Ours

 

If you followed the coronation of un-bonny King Charlie—as I hope all you aspiring ritualists of Pagandom did—you'll have seen the Sacring (lit. “making sacred”), i.e. Anointing, of the Sacred King.

Or, rather, you won't have seen it, since it was performed behind Ye Olde Anointyng Screene to protect Ye Royal Privacy (that's prih-vacy, with a short I).

Not to worry: it's all right there in the ritual script.

 

The AB of C (that's Archbishop of Canterbury) anoints the royal hands with holy oil.

“Be your hands anointed with holy oil,” he says.

Then the breast (“Be your breast anointed...”) and lastly the head (“Be your head...”).

 

Sacred kings are a big deal in the history of the Craft—take a look at Katherine Kurtz's Lammas Night* if you don't believe me—and we have our own version of the Sacring, which we call (in Witch) the Hallowing.

The accompanying verbal formulas I'm not at liberty to disclose, but the king-signing marks are there for all to see: right there in—incredibly enough—the slightly faded technicolor of the movie pagans love to hate, The Wicker Man.

(You can see it here. The Hallowing begins at 16:58.)

Our story so far:

The people of Summerisle strip Sergeant Howie (naked bodies don't scare pagans), ritually wash and dry him.

Then they anoint him.

  • Right breast (right and left here are from the king's perspective)
  • Left breast
  • Right breast (again)
  • Sternum
  • Solar Plexus
  • Brow

Why these five places? That, you'll have to figure out for yourself.

(To do so, you can start here. The King-making of Artos the Bear in Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset will also give you a good leg up on inner meanings.)

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Power being the immemorial fantasy of the powerless, it's unsurprising that modern witches should ask: What if the king were one of ours? What if the king were a witch?

Ever since Margaret Murray, who viewed witchery as a kind of Protest Paganism, first suggested a hundred years ago that the ancient cult of the Sacral/Sacrifical Kingship persisted in the British Isles into early modern times, novelists have asked the question again and again.

Forthwith, a few memorable examples.

 

The King is a Witch (Evelyn Eaton, 1965)

The year is 1342, the king is Edward III, and yes, he's a witch: our kind of witch, the pagan/Old Religion kind.

Alas, that doesn't mean that he's not a nasty piece of work who spends most of his time looking for divine substitutes to die—in his stead—for the life of the people.

So maybe he's not our kind of witch, after all.

 

The Devil and King John (Philip Lindsay, 1956)

The king isn't a witch, but his wife is. Bad “my kingdom for a horse” King John, from an Old Craft Revisionist Historical p.o.v.

Well, it's a romp.

 

King of the Wood (Valerie Anand, 1989)

The king isn't a witch, but his boyfriend is. The life of William II “Rufus”—he of Lammas sacrifice fame—like you've never heard it before.

Let me just mention that his boyfriend, Ralph des Aix, is a horn-wearing King of the Witches himself. He leads the secret (but international) Cult of the Wood, and has a grouping of moles shaped like the constellation Orion on his chest.

Are you in love yet, too?

 

Watch the North Wind Rise/Seven Days in New Crete (Robert Graves, 1949)

You'll never forget the Midsummer sacrifice of the Antlered King of New Crete, Robert Graves' Goddess-worshiping utopia (but is it?) of the post-apocalyptic future.

Pagan ritual should always be so good.

 

Dies the Fire (S. M. Stirling, 2004 et seq.)

I'm a sucker for “Witches-rebuild-civilization-after-the-apocalypse” fiction—to my mind, it seems a realistic enough possibility—and Stirling's Emberverse series gets a place of honor in that surprisingly well-populated genre. Hel, at fifteen novels, it gets its own shelf in the section.

In King Artos I of Montival—that's plain old Rudi Mackenzie of Oregon, back home at the covenstead—Stirling aims for a larger-than-life hero in the old Cuchulainn/Achilles/Beowulf mold. His most memorable feat: surviving the unstoppable stampede of a million-strong bison herd by mounting and riding a buffalo bull.

Alas, in the end, this (literally) post-Modern hero simply does not measure up to his counterparts of yore. Heroes engage because, though in some ways larger than life, their flaws nonetheless instill in the rest of us a sense of fellow-feeling. In this way, they inspire us to become better than ourselves. If Cuchulainn, with all his flaws, can be so generous, then maybe I can, too.

Artos, though, has no flaws. Though Stirling, skilled writer that he is, strives mightily to make us like this character, at thirteenth and last, he's simply too perfect. Drop-dead gorgeous, wise, generous, unfailingly fair, good at everything that he does, incapable of losing a fight—he even has a sense of humor—he successfully quests for the magic Sword of the Lady that gives him the ability to read minds and to speak any language fluently, and so (in the end) manages to save the world from an attempted invasion by Cthulhu & Co.

Yes, that Cthulhu.

 

Lammas Night (Katherine Kurtz, 1983)

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

The Madness of King Donald – Foreign Policy

As the Game of Thrones franchise keeps reminding us, the problem with hereditary monarchy generally comes down to succession.

Once Trump (may squirrels eat his face) manages to pull off his second and (this time) successful coup—with full so-called Republican support, of course—and declares himself Autocrat of the Americas and US King-for-Life, we're still left with the usual problem: who inherits?

Diehard supporters of both the Simple Primogeniture and the Male Primogeniture theories of monarchy will, of course, back Don Junior.

There are other models of succession, though. Among the ancient Germanic-speaking peoples of Europe, the new king (the ancient Germanic-speaking peoples mostly didn't have ruling queens) was the one chosen by the Council of Elders from among the Royal Kindred. In theory, the elders elect the most capable among the eligible candidates, and so you get a good king. Downside: we're back to Game of Thrones. This system pretty much guarantees wars of succession.

Proponents of this theory of inheritance will, of course, back Ivanka, arguably the most capable of King Donald's offspring.

(Image: a Jewish Prince Consort. Only in America.)

Realistically, though, we can also look for “Republican” backing of the younger, and presumably more readily manipulable, members of the family. Expect Mitch McConnell to support (and plan to rule through) either Eric or (my own bet) Barron—with, of course, full support from Queen Dowager Melania.

Trump Dynasty: coming soon to a country near you.

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Mr. Posch, It's like I've said before: Trump is the archetypal tyrant who overthrows democracy, from Book 9 of Plato's Republic.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Alas, Ill Rule in America

 “I was not the High King, that my doing should bring evil on the land.”

(Artos the Bear, in Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset)

 

Pagan leadership is sacrificial leadership, and I'm not just talking about the kind of petty sniping and backbiting that dogs pretty much anyone with the audacity to step into a position of leadership in pretty much any pagan community.

All those stories about the King Must Die aren't really talking about cutting out hearts on altars; not literally, anyway. What they're really talking about is the price of leadership.

If you're not willing to lay yourself down on the altar, you have no right to lead.

Only those willing to sacrifice themselves are worthy.

That's why—rightly or wrongly—the Old Ways saw a direct connection between the actions of the leader and the well-being of the land and the people.

So look at the current situation in America.

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