Culture Blogs
Join Devin Hunter for insights, magic, and pop culture as we celebrate modern witchcraft, mysticism, and living the occult in the 21st century.
A Solitary Midsummer with Lucifer
In Black Rose we celebrate the longest day by honoring Lucifer the Witch King. In our tradition’s mythology Lucifer is the bringer of light and is personified by the brilliant shining sun. This Midsummer we will be invoking the spirit of Lucifer through an adaptation of one of our most treasured practices known as Kala. During Kala we gather energetic blockages and purify them with the power of our own light. We finish this ritual by consuming this energy, now instead of it being a toxic blockage it is nutritious power that can fuel us.
What you need:
A drinking glass
Distilled or Spring Water (boiled/filtered water will do in a pinch)
Access to direct sunlight
How to:
Fill the drinking glass with water and place it somewhere close to you. While standing in the sun take a few moments to collect your thoughts and ground your energy body. Begin by breathing slow and deep and allow your attention to become centered on the sensation of that breath. Allow your belly to expand first as you breathe, followed by your lungs and make sure to keep your body relaxed. When you feel ready to move on, pick up your glass and hold it six inches from your solar-plexus.
Focus now on the blocks you perceive to be present in your life. What areas could you benefit from clarity and wisdom? Where might light be shed so you can continue to blaze courageously along your path? Allow these thoughts to become symbols in your mind and bring the glass to chin-level.
Take three deep breaths and as you exhale envision these symbols spilling forth from your body and into the cup. See that the water grows thick and dark with each breath as symbols of all those things that block you leave your energy body. Feel the cup grow heavier in your hands. When you feel you are emptied of the blockages place the glass down in front of you.
Reach with your left hand to the sun above and say, “By Lucifer’s aid I am made strong, Hail the Witch King!” See now a sunbeam land in your raised palm. Let its energy move through your arm and chest finally spilling forth into your right arm. As the energy reaches your right hand draw a pentacle of golden sunlight above the cup. Raise now your right hand towards the sun and chant three times, “Hail the Witch King for he is light!”
With your hands above you make the shape of a triangle by touching the ends of your index fingers and overlapping your thumbs. Catch the sun in the empty triangle and envision that you have trapped a bit of it’s light. Slowly bring the triangle down to the glass. As you do this envision that the light of the sun travels with your hands and fills the glass. See that as the light spills through the pentacle it’s golden energy dissolves into the water. Breath slow and deep. Direct the energy of the sun into the cup and as you do so see that the light clarifies the dark contents of the glass and say:
Lucifer, the Holy Sun
Whose fire burns within the soul
By witch’s right
I claim thy light
For on this day we share his might!
When you perceive that the water in the glass has become clear and vibrant take the glass in both hands and drink deeply. Feel the water enter your body and rejuvenate you. Repeat as needed, an excellent practice for Sunday’s as well.
For more information visit www.blackrosewitchcraft.com.
Comments
-
Tuesday, 24 June 2014
Hi Christopher, I am surprised that you haven't, it's at the heart of traditional Wicca and many other traditions. There is a very well done post by Sarah Lawless where she explains Luciferian Witchcraft. I hope you find it enlightening.
http://sarahannelawless.com/2009/10/09/luciferian-witchcraft/
I would also suggest reading the full text of Aradia: Gospel of the Witches by Lleland. You can find a free copy here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/aradia/index.htm -
Tuesday, 24 June 2014I have been Wiccan for almost thirty years. I have two hundred in my personal library on various type of Wicca and had not run into that.
I have a copy of Aradia Gospel of the Witches. But like Margret Murray, Leland tends to be questioned today about his accuracy. In my personal opinion what he was told strikes me as more likely to have formed in rebellion to the later Catholic Church, which I can understand.
Even as late as the 1800s I cannot imagine, in a Catholic country, any witch giving away such secrets. It is possible he was being told whatever made his lady money. Fooling wealthy foreigners certainly has a long custom among the peasant class and the gypsies.
The Church also tried to tell us what Witches did and I would hardly consider that the Church gave accurate information about anything that it opposed. Remember for hundreds of years the Church had been telling people that magic and witchcraft was an illusion of the devil but not for real.
In fact when the Church decided to go after witches it had to study old Pagan Roman and Greek records to discover just what witches were accused of doing. The early church had not official definition of Witches that it denied could actually exist.
Magic practiced by the priest of the temples in the ancient days was perfectly fine, but claiming to practice magic outside of the temple grounds was considered to be questionable and possibly fraudulent by educated people and nobility in a great many civilizations including Ancient Greece and Pagan Rome.
Malefic magic was always illegal, but there were a great may crack downs of magical practice in the streets nearly every generation. Needless to say one thing cracked down on was any prediction from astrologers on whence king might die. This even at a time such as the Renaissance when royalty and nobility might have their own court astrologers and court magicians. One of the ironies of the Renaissance was it may have been one of the historical high points in the widespread the practice of magic in Western Europe.
While modern day Wicca is a neo-Pagan religion old Witchcraft could be practiced with or without a religion. It was not uncommon for local witches to make use of the local religion as a cover but the practice of magic does not require any religious background to function.
I have interviews a couple of family tradition Witches and neither of them made use of any gods. They also do not cast circles, call quarters, or use a athame as we modern Wiccans tend to, do nor do they see any need to purify the space as they consider the Earth already to be pure and sacred. Needless to say they also do not have a Rule of Three nor a Wiccan Rede. Hexes are done as necessary. Magic was pretty straight forward in its use and with little or no ceremony at all. Just as a fact that most of it was never written down but passed orally. After all, for a few centuries one could get killed for having any magical writings and the vast majority of people, including witches, could to read or write. That continued to be true into the late Victorian period even in our own country.
Quite different from any Wiccan Tradition. Wicca in fact seems to borrow more from Western Ceremonial magic then from any older form of Witchcraft. In fact many of the names, tools and wording can be traced back to ceremonial practice.
Anyway if you get results, by all means continue. What works is important in magic and I would not argue against anything that gets results. I just tend to be a bit of a history nut, including laws on such things in ancient times.
Much of our modern traditions may have more to do with the romantic movement starting in the late 1700s with the beginning of industrialization and more and more people living in towns, even the beginning of depending on clock time. The old farming folks rather being seems as old fashioned and behind the times hicks were suddenly looked upon by the poets and artists as keepers of ancient wisdom. Nature for the town folks began to be seen as magical and romantic when most people never left the towns any more.
Christianity of the time was rather strict and dower plainly not much fun, so the artists and the poets and the writers began to romanticize the old gods and the old Pagans. We begin to see the horned god and the mother goddess in the form we note today. Meanwhile our Pagan ancestors did not romanticize their gods nor nature because they lived and died in nature which could be raw and even brutal. The gods had their own reasons for doing anything and it was not always good for those that the gods choose to notice. The gods and goddesses could be benign, but they also could be terrifying if upset. Note some of the old stories of early goddesses of love that could also be a goddess of war perhaps we should refer the as goddesses of passion positive and negative.
So when I approach my own god and goddess, I claim nothing about them and admit they are a great mystery to me. They are more forces of nature to me. I have no idea whether they have shape, or emotions, or anything else vaguely human like. If they want me to know such things they will show me in some way. Until then I will not claim anything about them. They have permission to use me as they will and on occasion curious things seem to happen influenced not by my skills nor intent. So far those things seem to have been beneficial and they have helped survives some occasional desperate periods in my life. -
Please login first in order for you to submit comments
I have to admit that is a new one one for me. I have ever heard the claim that Lucifer was a Witch king, nor related to witchcraft in anyway.