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"Expect temporal dislocation."

I'm texting a friend, describing to him our upcoming Samhain ritual, which he'll be attending for the first time this year.

An island at the confluence of two mighty rivers.

On the island, a sacred grove.

In the grove, a stone-built fire-hall.

In the hall, a festive holiday gathering, lighted only by candles and a flickering central fire.

Small wonder that I frequently find myself asking during the course of it: Which century are we in again?

Anyone conversant in ritual will recognize the feeling: that giddy sense of being simultaneously present in other times than this one, when time and times—past, present, and future—become one.

Welcome to the wonderful world of pagan ritual.

I not infrequently get this sense while making the daily morning offering. In the long life of our people, how many times have how many priests stood in how many tribal sanctuaries and prayed on behalf of the people and their continued well-being? Before me and after me, many, oh so many; I'm the one privileged to be doing it now. In a sense, we're all interchangeable; in a sense, we're all one.

My friend, a man of long experience, has been around this maypole a few times himself.

Indulge in this sensually satisfying ritual bath that will make your skin glow and surround you with a seductive aura. You will need the following:

3 ounces apricot kernel oil

John Alden Jr: What do they want, these terrible witches?

Cotton Mather: The same thing we all want: a country of their own.

(WGH's Salem, 2012)

[There] were so many of them [the witches] that they thought that, if they were able to remain at large for just one more year, they might have raised up a king from among them.

Hans Fründ, Report on Witchcraft in Valais (1475)

What is the Third Kingdom of the Witches?

Easily told.

Kingdom the First: the Celtic Dobunni of the Cotswolds and Severn basin, circa 100 b.c.e.

Kingdom the Second: the Anglo-Saxon Hwicce, their heirs both cultural and genetic.

Kingdom the Third: the eponymous Witches, their latter-day children, now in worldwide diaspora.

What is the Third Kingdom of the Witches?

Easily told.

Us: the Younger Witchery.

This is more of a divination technique to find new love, rather than a spell. A big part of meeting someone new is knowing how and when such a meeting may take place. So try a little divination. You need just two things: a length of white ribbon or string and a ring. The ring just needs to symbolize a wedding ring but doesn't need to be truly valuable.

Tie the ring to the end of the ribbon, and let it dangle from your hand. You need to be very still for this, so you should probably rest your elbow on the table for a bit of stability.

The Minoan family of deities includes a variety of what you might call job descriptions. Each deity has unique connections with certain facets of human life and the material world. But it's not always as clear-cut as you might think, since many of our deities appear to be reflections of each other.

Individuation is problematic, as we say in Ariadne's Tribe.

Ugh, “Baphomet.”

Back in the early days of the Witchcraft Revival, when images of the Horned were few and far between, it was felt by some—I was never one, for reasons I'll go into shortly—that, faute de mieux, Baphomet was somehow acceptable. When you need to drink, a cracked glass is better than no glass at all.

By “Baphomet” here what I mean is not the whatever-it-was that the Templars were accused of worshipping back in the 14^th century, but the betitted goat-head with the oh-so-coy caduceus-between-the-legs that Eliphas Levi invented in the mid-19^th.

(This iteration of the Big B. was most recently in the news as the image—sans tits—that the thoroughly secularist Temple of Satan tried to get installed in public places in protest of wall-of-separation issues. That they left the tits off, so as to avoid dealing with problematic gender issues, left a hereditary Satanist friend of mine—her father was abused by nuns as a boy—stuttering in fury. “No tits on that Baphomet!” she thundered. “That's blasphemy!” Satanist blasphemy. Now there's a concept for you.)

Me, I've never been a Baphomite, and for one very simple reason.

This is the perfect spell of enchantment to use when you have met a “special someone” and you wish to enhance your personal charm and magnetism. With this invocation, you are sure to attract your heart’s desire!

You will need the following supplies: