Praise for The Witch’s Name “Storm outlines the journey of discovering one’s true name by telling his story as well as sharing the stories of other witches who have taken on new names. There are plenty of practical exercises for assisting you in protecting yourself with naming and discovering the perfect magickal name that expresses your true essence. Whether you are just beginning your witchy path or are ready for a new chapter in your life, this book will ably guide you, helping you to find the perfect magickal moniker.” —Madame Pamita, author of Baba Yaga’s Book of Witchcraft “With his book, Storm Faerywolf has given to ‘witchdom’ (and all magic workers) an invaluable tool that no doubt will find its way to the shelves of all witches, covens, traditions, lineages, systems, and solitary practitioners everywhere. It honors the much beloved and deeply sacred use of the ‘magical’ or ‘hidden name’ of the witch with depth, breadth, and sincerity in a way I have never seen before … I advise my witches to become the greatest spell they’ve ever cast upon the world. The process of selecting, conferring, and announcing the name of the newly born witch or self-proclaimed witch, is the capstone of their arrival in the world and the proclamation of this spell. With this book, we now have a potent and authoritative guide in choosing the shape and outcome of this powerful practice.” —Orion Foxwood, author of Mountain Conjure and Southern Root Work, and The Flame in the Cauldron “Storm Faerywolf deftly takes us on a journey to discover the magic hidden within names. From the magic and significance of names
throughout history and in general, to naming as a process of growth and awakening to our deeper identity, this book is sure to have something meaningful for all who are curious about the sacredness of names. It is also an excellent starting point for someone who feels drawn to possibly assuming a magical name.” —Durgadas Allon Duriel, author of The Little Work “Naming is some of the oldest magick, and it is magick that each of us should personally claim. In this volume, Storm Faerywolf teaches us the liberating power of defining our own identities and why it’s important for us to explore, celebrate, and choose our names. An essential volume not only for witches and magickal workers but also for anyone doing the work to realize their most authentic selves.” —M. Belanger, author of Dictionary of Demons
The Witch’s Name
© Jennifer Lothrigel
About the Author Storm Faerywolf (San Francisco Bay Area) is a professional author, experienced teacher, visionary poet, and practicing warlock. He was trained and initiated into various streams of Witchcraft, most notably the Faery tradition, where he holds the Black Wand of a Master. He is a co-founder of Black Rose, an online school of modern folkloric witchcraft, a regular contributor to Modern Witch, and co-host of the Official Witches’ Sabbat, an annual event that seeks to support and honor the creative work of other Witches. He has written several books including The Stars Within the Earth, Betwixt & Between, and Forbidden Mysteries of Faery Witchcraft. For more, visit faerywolf.com.
Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota
The Witch’s Name: Crafting Identities of Magical Power © 2022 by Storm Faerywolf. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. First Edition First Printing, 2022 Book design by Samantha Peterson Cover design by Shannon McKuhen Editing by Laura Kurtz Interior art by Llewellyn Art Department Llewellyn Publications is a registered trademark of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Pending) ISBN: 978-0-7387-6769-7 Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business transactions between our authors and the public. All mail addressed to the author is forwarded but the publisher cannot, unless specifically instructed by the author, give out an address or phone number. Any internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific location will continue to be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to authors’ websites and other sources. Llewellyn Publications A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd. 2143 Wooddale Drive Woodbury, MN 55125-2989 www.llewellyn.com Printed in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to all those who would take for themselves a name other than what they were given at birth. We all may have different reasons for doing so, but in the end it’s all the same: to outwardly express our inner truth and to claim who we really are, on our own terms.
Contents
List of Exercises, Rites, and Rituals Acknowledgments
xi
xiii
Introduction: My Journey of Self-Naming 1
Part One: What’s in a Name? Chapter One: The Essence and the Name Chapter Two: The Power of Naming
13
33
Chapter Three: The Magical Identity 49
Part Two: Inspiration, Seeds, and Sources Chapter Four: History, Myth, and Literature Chapter Five: The Natural Earth
79
105
Chapter Six: The Stars Above 135 Chapter Seven: Divination, Dreaming, and Magic
157
x • Contents
Part Three: The Choosing and the Weaving Chapter Eight: From Seeds into Fruit 181 Chapter Nine: Rites of Appellation 201 Conclusion: The Name of Passion 217 Bibliography 221
Exercises, Rites, and Rituals
Exercise: Awakening the Spirit 54 Exercise: Awakening the Spirit 56 Exercise: Awakening the Spirit 57 Journal Prompt: Qualities of the Magical Self Exercise: The Place of Power (Summoning the Magician Within) 67 Journal Prompt: Communicating with the Three Spirits of the Soul 71 Exercise: Elemental Balancing 73 Exercise: I Am 75 Divination: Nine Questions 160 Exercise: The Dream Journal 167 Exercise: Lucid Dreaming
168
Exercise: Seeding Dreams
169
Exercise: Educing a Barbarous Name (or, The Barbarous Name Generator) 170 xi
64
xii • Exercises, Rites, and Rituals
Exercise: Drawing from the Inner Planes 174 Art Project: A Magical Self-Portrait 176 Spell: The Magic Bean Dream Spell 183 Journal Prompt: E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many, One” 185 Journal Prompt: The Weaving 187 Journal Prompt: Feeling the Name 188 Journal Prompt: Public vs. Private 190 Ritual: The Taking of a Name 204 Exercise: The Witch’s Signature 207 Exercise: The Witch’s Emblem 210 Ritual: The Giving of a Name 212
Acknowledgments
I
want to thank many people and spirits for helping make this book possible. First, to my partners, Chas Bogan, Devin Hunter, and Mat Auryn: Thank you for putting up with me rambling on and on about different naming conventions both in and outside of Witchcraft. Thank you for stepping up and taking care of some of the more mundane activities so that I could go into my cave and write. This book exists because you took care of dishes, and yardwork, and paying bills, while I obsessively pored over books and myths and movie tropes. I appreciate you more than you know. Second, to my friends who contributed their thoughts on magical names: Anaar, Durgadas Allon Duriel, Phoenix LeFae, Gwion Raven, Soulfire, and Laura Tempest Zakroff. You are all part of my extended spiritual family and I love and appreciate you for all that you do. Thank you for your continued support and for the work that you do to better the Craft. Third, I want to thank the many spirits with whom I have worked over the years that have contributed to my magical work in the public xiii
xiv • Acknowledgments
sphere. Being a public warlock is not always easy, but through my spirit contacts I am doing the work I was called to do. I also want to thank my friends, initiates, and students, as well as those who have attended my classes or workshops over the years. You have each in your own way contributed not only to this book, but to my overall worldview and perspective on the Craft. And finally, thank you, reader, for picking up this book. Thank you for supporting me in my creative and occult endeavors. It was always a dream to be able to do this work for a living and because of you that is made possible. I live in constant gratitude.
Introduction
My Journey of Self-Naming
To name oneself is the first act of both the poet and the revolutionary. Erica Jong HOW TO sAVe YOUR OWn LiFe
T
he names that we use to describe ourselves carry layers of potency and meaning. The Witch’s name is really just the outer form of an indescribable inner power; that presence of divinity within that guides us on our evolutionary journey. With meditation, rituals, journaling, and magic we will explore our own strengths and weaknesses and work to create our own magical persona, that part of our deep self from which our magical power 1
2 • Introduction
stems and flourishes. And we will work to give a name to that persona, effectively casting a spell upon ourselves to make the presence of that name and persona manifest in our lives. How we get our names varies from culture to culture. Some names are passed down within families and carry with them the expectations of ancestral fulfillment. Some names are given through religious practice and hold identification with particular saints, martyrs, historical figures, and spirits that have a deep and personal meaning to the individual or religious group. Or a name might simply be chosen because it sounds nice or is inspired by a great figure or celebrity. Whatever the origins of our names, they provide us a focal point when it comes to establishing and communicating identity, and allow us each to better connect, providing a window through which we may get an intimate glimpse of each other’s lives. Though these names have their own layers of depth and meaning, there are instances in which it is beneficial to take a new one as a spiritual and psychological tool. A time-honored practice in many different religious systems, the taking of a new name is a transformative act. It acts upon the psyche in a myriad of ways, coaxing, nudging, demanding, shaping the consciousness of the one who undergoes it. It is an initiation in the truest sense and the effects are far-reaching. A name is a house, but not always a home or place where one feels the freedom to be oneself.1 I never felt connected to my birth name. As a child, I often toyed with the idea of changing it, as I’m sure many children do. In hind1. Molly S. Castelloe, PhD, “What’s in a Name? How one’s name shapes identity and the course of a life,” Psychology Today, April 7, 2017, https:// www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-me-in-we/201704/what-s-in-name.
Introduction • 3
sight I realize that this desire was rooted in something a bit deeper than just vanity or a childish flight of fancy. Being originally named after my father, I never felt that my name was truly mine. Additionally, I was also almost exclusively referred to with a diminutive nickname, making my relationship to my given name somewhat fluid and changeable. My name could go from seven letters to five letters, to four (or even three!) depending on which version one wished to invoke. Fluidity aside, the definite drive I experienced early on in my quest for finding my magical name was really also about fully claiming my own identity. What has become my everyday magical name came to me in a series of dreams over the course of my youth which became connected through personal epiphany and gnosis. It all began when I was a boy. When I was about three or four years old, perhaps inspired by the tales of Aladdin, or One Thousand and One Nights (two of my favorites of the many fairy- and folktales my mother would read to me), I had a series of recurring dreams in which I possessed a magical ring. A common theme in these dreams was my constant struggle to understand, harness, and direct its power. I would never know how the magic would manifest—if at all—but I felt that with each dream, I was learning a little bit more about the nature of the unique magic I possessed. I would completely forget about the dreams upon waking and would only remember them when I was having the next one! And then, once again upon waking, the dream was completely lost to me. This continued seemingly at random throughout my youth. Fast-forward. When I turned seventeen, my world turned upside down. Coming out of the closet and moving out of my childhood home set the stage for a period of a couple years in which I was estranged from my family and had precious little stability, emotional, financial, or otherwise. At nineteen, I found myself literally
4 • Introduction
homeless, though thankfully I did so in the company of a friend who later became a covenmate. We would couch-surf with other friends when we could, but there were many nights in which we had no place to stay and so were forced to either sleep outside or try and stay up all night to avoid the cold (not to mention the danger of other people). We slept in a field, at a bus stop, and on the concrete behind a grocery store. It was stressful. After a month or so of this, I felt it was finally getting to me. I was distraught. I felt lost. I was falling down a hole, and a large part of me didn’t even seem to care. It was during this time that I would start having visions of a faery being I came to know as “Mother Wolf.” Late one night, my friend and I had no place to stay and found ourselves at a local park. Our plan was to sit in some dark corner and consume what was to be that evening’s feast: a large can of tamales and some wheat bread. We found a bench deep within the park where we would likely be left undisturbed and proceeded to unpack what was to be our dinner, when we realized that we had misplaced our can opener. With no other options before us we foolishly decided to try and force the can open with a sharp rock. Try as we might we were unable to open the can, only managing to tear open small holes from which the spicy red sauce began to seep. After several minutes of futility, the mangled, dripping can was eventually abandoned to the garbage bin, while the red, splattered mess on the concrete took on the specter of foul play in the moonlight. We felt defeated. I sat on a bench and stared up at the night sky, silently asking the moon, in part hoping for some sort of divine guidance but mostly just feeling a sense of utter resignation. Suddenly I felt as if my awareness had split in two: one aspect of my consciousness was sitting on this park bench looking at the moon and feeling sorry for myself, while the other was sitting in the presence of what I perceived to be a powerful spirit in the form
Introduction • 5
of a wolf. She was beautiful, gray-white, and seemed to emanate a silvery light like the moon, as well as a feeling of security and serenity. No words were spoken, but I felt as if she was giving me a message, telling me that I was not alone and that I would be protected. In this instant I knew that she was a spirit guide and that she was connected to my Witchcraft—I just knew. I felt that she was a great teacher and that she was telling me to hang on, and that my goals would eventually manifest. The vision eventually faded, but I felt suddenly optimistic and I discussed the experience with my friend. Sating our hunger with our slices of bread, we eventually found ourselves at an all-night diner, scraping up enough change to each nurse a cup of coffee while we waited for dawn. I would feel the presence of Mother Wolf during this period whenever we were feeling low or were lacking a sense of security. She inspired me to look beyond the temporary situation of the moment and toward the future I wished to create for myself. Eventually my friend and I would stabilize, finding jobs and housing, which afforded us a better space in which to practice our Witchcraft both in frequency as well as in devotion. Reading everything on the Craft I could get my hands on, I was familiar with the custom of taking a magical name as a sign of dedication. Coupled with an inner calling to be a public Witch, I began to search for what would serve as a name of power. Immediately my experience with Wolf came to mind, but I initially rejected it out of what I now see was a form of vanity: there are many people in the Witchcraft and Pagan communities who have adopted (or been adopted by) the spirit of Wolf, and I wanted to be unique. Having the vision of Mother Wolf alone “wasn’t enough,” I decided. If the Wolf wanted to claim me, it would have to do more. I wasn’t about to just jump on the bandwagon … er, wolf pack.
6 • Introduction
At that time, I found myself heavily inspired by the writings of Starhawk, a Witch, political activist, and founding priestess of the Reclaiming tradition. Her books The Spiral Dance and Dreaming the Dark were particularly influential to me and were the initial reason I would seek out training and initiation into the Faery (Feri) tradition. She wrote a bit about finding her Craft name which incorporated a personal vision of a hawk, coupled with the Star card from the Tarot, which signifies hope. It was so simple and inspiring. I liked that her name was so very different from what one usually encounters in the “mundane” world. I meditated. I burned incense. I journaled. I worked with gods and goddesses and angels and faeries and spirits of the dead. I chanted and sang and danced and invoked. In the early search for my Craft name I did many things, except follow my instincts. “It seems like practically everybody in the Pagan community is either a Wolf, a Raven, or a Bear,” I told myself. “But did you ever notice that there are very few Marmosets?” Then I had the first of two powerful dreams that would show me the way. A forest at night. The darkness illuminated by a brilliant full moon, the silver-blue light shining down through the trees onto the hillside. I was running … full speed, up the hill. The sheer joy of being alive! Running … running. It was a passion to be able to run this far, and to leap! It was exciting, exhilarating … but also … strange … foreign. My senses themselves seemed alien to me. I looked down and saw my paws as I continued to run up the wooded hillside on all fours, finally reaching the top where I could look down at the valley below and underneath a moon that filled the sky, I howled … and was joined with a chorus of wolf-song. I awoke feeling as if I had been touched by something special and had been changed by it.
Introduction • 7
The second of the dreams that named me brought a piece of my childhood back into my memory. Standing in a large room and looking out through the large glass doors to the vast open plains, the grey-orange featureless sky drew me outside. The world here was flat, unlike the native hilly landscape of my northern Californian home, and I felt a sense of stark longing, a mild alarm of anticipation. My dread was given reason in the form of the funnel cloud ominously approaching from the distance. Shock gave way to fear as I realized that there would be no time to try to escape—the tornado was well on its way, tearing up the earth around it as the hastening winds acted as herald. It would be here soon, so what could be done? I felt the ring on my left hand, the same ring from my childhood dreams, all those years ago. Here I remembered. The magic glimpsed in my childhood was present here, in fact had always been here, just hidden. Sleeping. I stepped out into the field and I caressed the large, smooth stone. I could feel … something. A stirring from within the ring, from within myself. But nothing really happened. The tempest steadily approached, oblivious to my rising fear and near panic. I fumbled with the ring. I cried out. I screamed. I prayed. The cyclone continued closer and closer as I began to tremble and give way to terror. Still I tried to use the ring, even as the raging whirling vortex snatched me from where I stood, and I became a limp and defeated thing. It was in that moment that I felt I was going to die. It was over now. No sense in fighting it. Nothing would save me. All that was left to do was to greet it head-on. I surrendered. In that moment, everything in my world seemed to align. The wind and the rain, the hail, and the lightning all began to move inside me. I felt the elements strengthening me, and as the storm calmed and the winds placed me gently back upon the ground, I knew that I had been blessed. The dream had given me the power of
8 • Introduction
the storm, but I could choose to be in its center, the calm inside of it, the eye of stillness at the heart of chaos. It was after having this dream that I felt I had my answer. Subsequently considering the numerological implications of the various permutations of my proposed name, I initially chose “Stormwolf ” and went as far as to change my legal name to incorporate it. It would be another two years before I would add “Faery” to my name, as a reminder of the fae nature of the wolf spirit I had encountered, but also as an homage to the tradition of the Craft to which I was so deeply drawn, as well as to the fae of folklore, which have played a particular role in my own life and work in the tradition. Each of these elements brings their own special power and influence into the mix; each a thread that when woven together forms a tapestry of magical intention and practice. On the surface, one might be tempted to see the adoption of a magical name (especially one that is considerably unconventional from the mundane standpoint) and conclude that it is nothing more than a contrivance, an appeal to little more than ego or vanity at best or a dalliance into delusion, at worst. But this cynical view fails to understand the deeper implications of the practice, which proves to be an incredibly potent tool in our magical arsenal. Quite simply, the act of taking a magical name is one of the most powerful tools we can ever encounter and use in our work in the Craft. It is a spell we cast each time we use it and it helps to shape us into the kind of Witches we want to be. There is no one way to choose a magical name, but there are some definite things to consider, since this name will have a profound effect on the personality and will affect to some degree every aspect of your life. This book is not a simple dictionary of names or even of name elements. Instead, it seeks to inspire as well as to guide, provid-
Introduction • 9
ing signposts along the way of our journey of self-naming. In Part One: What’s in a Name?, we will consider the history of names and naming, as well as the occult concept of the magical persona. In Part Two: Inspiration, Seeds, and Sources, we explore the topics of history, mythology, and the natural world—animals, plants, stars— and even the practices of astrology, and the tarot; all tried-and-true pieces of the inner puzzle that is the magical identity. From these pieces, we hope to derive a name that speaks to our inner power and presence. Part Three: The Choosing and the Weaving begins to draw it all together, taking the pieces to which we have been exposed, and by which we have been inspired, and weaving them together into a cohesive whole, engaging both numerology and ritual to more fully claim the name of our choosing and to step more fully into our true magical self. Whether we use this work to choose or own magical name (or even the names of our groups or covens), feel free to find your own way among these humble suggestions and offerings. There is no one right way to discover one’s magical identity and name, and so there is no agenda or plan other than experimentation and a good healthy dose of philosophical pondering. No two journeys are exactly alike. We will simply meander through the different offerings as the trails, peaks, and valleys that some have found helpful on their own quests, in the hopes that you may find some guidance and inspiration for when you embark on your own journey to discover the power extant in the Witch’s name.
Part One
What’s in a Name?
Chapter One
The Essence and the Name
Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior. Logan Pearsall Smith AFTeRTHOUGHTs
T
he very oldest recorded names actually pre-date writing. They are somewhere around 30,000 years old and are painted on the walls of caves across Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Not rendered in any language or script, but simply the silhouetted handprints of the artist. A spray of colored dust marks the place around where an outstretched hand once was pressed upon the ancient stone. A moment captured in time from prehistory. “I was here,” they seem to say. “Remember me.”
13
14 • Chapter One
A name is a statement. It says, “I am me” or, “you are you.” It expresses uniqueness. “I am not that.” Or, “I am like this.” It differentiates, it divides. But it also can group together; shared names drawing associations. Names are dynamic. They have momentum, spirit. Names are alive. Names can build us up, or they can tear us down. Names are the most magical words that any language can ever produce. Names have power. And each of them possesses an essence of intention, of history, of aspiration, or in some cases, even of warning. Names are an integral part of all of the strikingly diverse tongues that have been spoken on this planet since time immemorial. Without them we would be lost in an endless sea of nebulous relations, unable to make discernments about others around us, where we are, and even who we are. Names allow us the specificity necessary to traverse a complicated network of people, places, and things, each with their area of influence within the tangled web of interactions and relationships. Every person, every place, every object carries with it a series of names that can be used to help identify it within the context of the larger whole. When dealing with a small group of friends and acquaintances, first names will likely provide enough of a distinction to effectively identify the other members of that group. When the field is widened, however, we need more identifiers in order to get precise. For example, we need to know we are talking to a specific Jonathan and not just any Jonathan. Jonathan Baker just isn’t going to do when we really need to be talking to Jonathan Fisher. Widen that circle further, and we realize we need to talk to Jonathan Fisher of San Jose, California, and not those living with the same name in Richmond, Virginia, or Ontario, Canada, or Sydney, Australia. Places also each have names that dictate a certain “personality,” and yet they too, like our many Jonathans, are different. As someone
The Essence and the Name • 15
who grew up in Dublin, I can tell you that there is quite a difference between the capital of Ireland and where I lived in California. We might look at a purple semi-precious stone and be content to call it a crystal or even a rock. But if we needed to get more specific, we could say that it is a piece of amethyst. This distinguishes it from other purple stones, such as sugilite or charoite. But perhaps we need to put an even finer point on it, and we might go further. Perhaps it is a piece of chevron amethyst, which has specific markings that make it distinct from other types. Or maybe it is a piece of botryoidal amethyst (even if its “street name” of grape agate is grossly misleading). Each name gives us a deeper layer of description, meaning, and even history that helps us to properly and definitively identify our point of focus. (In the case of the poorly named grape agate, it has to do with how it was misidentified when first discovered and the incorrect name has simply already stuck. Whoops! But hey, that’s history for you.) It’s not just for matters of convenience in which we find the importance of names. There are deeper layers to the names that we use; layers that offer a larger context than just the individual alone, often handed down in families through cultural observances that each have their own story to tell. They provide for us a greater sense of history, and even shape how we may feel about the people and places that bear those names. Names provide us the opportunity to personalize the past, the present, and our hopes for the future. Names are magic.
The Magical Law of Names It is a longstanding occult teaching that words have power and that someone’s “true name” is a powerful taglock, a connective link
16 • Chapter One
through which magical influence might be exerted. To know something’s true name is to ostensibly have power over that person or thing and examples abound in the folkloric record to support this magical assertion. Probably the most famous example from mythology concerning the sheer power of the true name is that of Isis’s victory over the Egyptian sun god, Ra. According to this ancient myth, Ra, having grown old and feeble, drools upon the earth, thus exposing some of his divine essence.2 Isis witnesses this and takes the opportunity to mix it with earth and forms the resultant clay into the likeness of a snake, which she then sets upon the sun god’s path. When Ra comes upon the snake it strikes, filling his veins with divine venom. As the creator god lies dying—none of the other gods able to help—Isis (the Mistress of Magic and Healing) informs Ra that she can only heal him by using his true name, a deeply guarded secret known only to Ra himself. After trying to appease her with lesser names and titles, he finally submits and transfers his true name (which grants the power over life and death) from within his breast and into hers, which she then uses to restore him to health, on the condition he swear an oath: “Bind thyself with an oath, O Ra, that thou wilt give thy two eyes [the sun and the moon] unto Horus [her son].” 3 With this act, Isis becomes the most powerful of the neteru, even more powerful than the creator, Ra himself.4 But this belief in the occult power of names was certainly not confined to ancient Egypt. Many other cultures share a similar 2. Margaret Alice Murray, Ancient Egyptian Legends (originally published 1920 by J. Murray, London), https://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/ael/ael13.htm. 3. Egyptian Gods: Isis, Egyptian Gods and Goddesses website, http://egyptian -gods.org/egyptian-gods-isis/. 4. Neteru is the ancient Egyptian term for powerful spirits (“divine names and principles”) usually transliterated as “gods.”
The Essence and the Name • 17
assertion about their hidden power, forming systems of belief that have persisted throughout the centuries. In what is one of the oldest recognized accounts in Western culture, we see how this belief in the power of names has been handed down from generation to generation. Collected and recorded by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, Rumpelstiltskin is a 4000-year-old fairy tale centered, in part, on the importance of the true name. In the story, a boastful miller lies to a king, bragging that his daughter can spin straw into gold. The king orders the girl locked in a straw-filled tower and charges her with spinning it all into gold by sunrise on the pain of death. Since she has no idea how to do this, she begins to cry and wail. When she has lost all semblance of hope, she is surprised by an imp, who agrees to spin the straw into gold for her in exchange for something. She offers him her necklace, and he performs the task as promised. The next morning, when the king discovers that all the straw has indeed been transformed into gold, he imprisons her in a larger room filled with even more straw to repeat the achievement, again under the threat of being killed. The imp returns that night at the sound of her cries and agrees to do it again, but only in exchange for something. She offers him her ring. On the third day the king takes her to still a larger room and tells her that if she can do it a third time he will marry her (but still under the threat of murder, mind you; kings are not known for their empathy, it seems). That night, the imp again returns to find her crying but this time she has nothing with which to barter. He asks her then to agree to a deal: he will spin the straw into gold for her one more time, but only in exchange for her firstborn child. Since she has little choice, she agrees. The king is very pleased (it must be nice to have three large towers filled with gold) and makes good on his promise and marries her. A year later, when the queen gives birth to their first child, the
18 • Chapter One
imp returns to stake his claim. She offers him all the wealth of the kingdom in exchange for her baby, but he is only interested in fulfilling the bargain that had been struck. After much debate (and her woeful sobs) he finally agrees to relinquish his claim on the infant if she can guess his real name within three days, during which time she makes many failed guesses. But one night, one of the queen’s messengers stumbles across a secluded little house up a mountain and finds a strange little imp dancing around a fire there. He is singing a song, the lyrics of which conveniently contain not only his plans to steal the queen’s child the following day, but also his very unusual name. (What a twist!) Armed with this new information, the queen awaits his reappearance. When he returns on the last night to give the queen her final chance, she at first pretends to still be ignorant, but then finally reveals his name, much to his shock and horror. She has bested him according to his own rules, so he must comply. Whether he originally blamed the Devil or witches for revealing his name to her is a matter of some academic debate. Also uncertain is how he ultimately responds, with some tales saying that he stomps his feet so hard that he falls down into the earth, or even that he tears himself in two, straight down the middle! In still others he either just goes away mad or flies out the window on a cooking ladle. (You know, as imps are prone to do.) The only real detail that they all agree upon is that, having been defeated, he leaves the queen and her baby in peace, never to return again. While this particular tale is considered to be German, this same theme plays out in the Scottish Whuppity Stoorie, the British Tom Tit Tot, the Welsh Silly go Dwt, Italy’s Tarandandò, and the Slavic Kinkach Martinko, among many, many others. In fact, there are so many variants of this particular theme in folklore that it has an official collective designation under the Aarne–Thompson–Uther
The Essence and the Name • 19
Index, a categorization system for the collection of stories and folklore. These are examples of folklore type 500: The Name of the Helper, in which an otherworldly (and threatening) helper is defeated when the hero (or victim) discovers the helper’s true name (which almost always occurs because the helper is overheard revealing themselves).5 Variants on this theme 6 appear in India (Tapai and the Brahman; where the protagonist must learn the names of a ghost’s ancestors to avoid being killed), Norway and Sweden (King Olaf and the Giant; a king strikes an impossible bargain but slips out of it by learning the giant’s name), and the Shetland Islands (The Black Dog; a witch who transforms herself into a dog to wreak havoc is defeated when a neighbor recognizes her and calls out her name, driving her away), to name but a few. Suffice to say that the theme of the true name as a means of protection from the restrictions of otherworldly power is well-established in the folkloric record.
Names as Blessings In many regards, we can see that the examples above represent a type of blessing inherent in the names, for to utter them results in casting aside the threat of doom. In a sense, these names are protective in nature, as they prevent otherworldly powers from preying upon our frail humanity. Many different religious traditions employ the use of specialized divine names as a means to more deeply connect with deity or to invoke certain blessings or protections. Christian baptism is one such practice. In Christianized Ireland and England, it was believed that 5. D. L. Ashliman, “The Name of the Helper,” University of Pittsburgh, 2000, https://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0500.html. 6. Ibid.
20 • Chapter One
any unbaptized baby was in danger of being stolen away by fairies, to have a changeling left in their place. Presumably the child’s lack of a “proper” name placed them in particular danger, so the rite is one that possesses spiritually protective qualities. It is a common Hindu practice to engage in the devotional chanting of divine names or mantras (translated as “sacred utterances,” “words of power,” or “mind freedom”) a specific number of times in order to obtain access to the blessings and power that the deity or mantra possesses. Chants like the famous Om Namah Shivaya (“O salutations to the auspicious one!”) are repeated until a trance is achieved, offering the devotee a sense of balance, well-being, and divine protection. A common Witch practice is to chant or affirm certain words of power, which may or may not include the names of divinities with whom the practitioner is energetically or spiritually aligned. For example, one might string together a series of goddess names and repeat them in a rhythm as a chant, such as: Mari, Inanna, Demeter, Persephone, Athena, Aradia, Diana
Each of these names brings with it a thread of power from its individual pantheon, making this a potent chant to the divine feminine. For those wishing to get in touch with the Goddess, chanting this or similar will create for you a type of energetic gateway through which you may more deeply access that consciousness. It is common in Witch and Pagan circles to repeat a chant until a trance state is achieved or to simply raise power for the individual or group.
The Essence and the Name • 21
The Barbarous Names These are words that are on the surface unintelligible “gibberish” whose meanings have been lost to antiquity, that nonetheless are purported to hold magical power. Occultism is full of such words and phrases and despite the lack of literal translations (and in some cases alongside mistranslations) the chants themselves still function as expected. Aleister Crowley postulated that the meanings of these words were largely immaterial (and in many cases, rather dubious) and that the true occult understanding of them would be found through their passionate repetition during a ritual working.7 One particularly famous (and largely incomprehensible) Wiccan chant goes: Eko, eko, Azarak Eko, eko, Zomelak Bazabi lacha bachabe Lamac cahi achababe Karrellyos Lamac lamac Bachalyas Cabahagy sabalyos Baryolos Lagoz atha cabyolas Samahac atha famolas Hurrahya! 8
7. Aleister Crowley, Mary Desti, Leila Waddell, Magick: Liber ABA, Book 4 (San Francisco: Samuel Weiser, 1994), 231. 8. Gerald Gardner, The Gardnerian Book of Shadows (originally published 1949 as Ye Bok of Ye Art Magical), https://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gbos/gbos07.htm.
22 • Chapter One
While many different attempts have been made to explain the meaning of the chant (which also shows up in various different versions, including one from 1926) none have been successful, to my mind, in offering a discernible translation for the text. Here I feel compelled to share an amusing story. Several years after my initiation into the American Faery tradition, a gathering of initiates was planned in which we could collect and share the inner mysteries of our Craft together. This was a proverbial big deal, because in our tradition we are mostly a bunch of far-flung solitaries, covens, and lineages that quite honestly don’t really get along that well together for the most part. A portion of this gathering was to document certain pieces of lore, pieces of which were not necessarily made available to everyone on such a grand scale, making this a golden opportunity to really learn a little bit more about the evolution of our Craft and its history. In one workshop (which I sadly did not attend), the focus of one discussion was the little bits of Welsh language that find their way into some of our lineages’ rites. I had been passed an invocation or two, but in some lines, there were entire passages of the stuff. Since no one in our tradition actually spoke Welsh, we mostly had to take it on faith that what we were saying was actually what we were told it was. Over the years we would learn that certain words were being mispronounced or that assumed meanings were simply not true. In this case, there was a particular invocation to the ancestors that was beautifully recited each Samhain. At this particular gathering we had an initiate who actually spoke Welsh and was going to “check” the Welsh language in the scripts for those in attendance, which he did. Much to everyone’s surprise, the invocation in question that was used and beloved for years by this particular lineage of our shared Craft was revealed to roughly mean “Insert ancestor invocation here.” Needless to say, there was much discussion about this for the remainder of the gathering.
The Essence and the Name • 23
The discovery of the Welsh words’ actual meaning in no way invalidates the practice of using them, of course. If they had been recited for years and the rituals themselves were effective, then it mattered not what the “actual” meaning of the words may be, as they had become the carriers of magical intention and the emotions of the participants that had been built up over time, ritual after ritual, year after year. They had become those barbarous names, uttered without regard to their supposed rational meaning, but spoken aloud in order to engage something deeper, something raw, something primal, something that speaks of life and death, feeling and power. And these can even be among the names that we adopt for ourselves. The meaning need only be personal to ourselves and no one else. Mat Auryn, author of Psychic Witch, told me about his own experience with the magical name. He described how it was born from a ritual working and how the word that came to him truly possessed no external meaning. But he was also intrigued when he found another occultist using it in a different context: I received my name one night while performing magick from my familiar spirit. It’s a one-word name that on its own is gibberish, but when dissected takes on various levels of different meanings. Interestingly, this name coincidentally turned out to be the name of an untitled grimoire by a popular occultist that was never published but might later on down the road. I was told the title of the book in conversation with a person close to this occultist that now heads the occult order. Of course, I didn’t say anything to him about that being the name I was given but thought it was interesting synchronicity, as again, the name isn’t a “real” word or name that actually exists or means anything.
24 • Chapter One
The power of names is certainly not limited to magic, religion, or folklore. The very sound of the words that we utter, hear, and read can determine how we will react to them. Consider this experiment, conducted by the psychologist Wolfgang Köhler, written about in 1947. Of it he states: “In primitive languages one actually finds evidence for the thesis that the names of things and events, which are visually or tactually perceived, have often originated on the basis of such resemblances.” 9 To illustrate this, he introduces two nonsensical words, “takete” and “maluma,” and asks a series of people to match them to what feels like the “correct” figure from those like the two given below:
Which is which? Most of Köhler’s respondents went the way of malumas being curved and soft while taketes were perceived as being jagged and hard, based solely on the sound of the words. With this in mind, could the names that we call ourselves and give each other have similar, albeit unconscious and unintentional, effects?
9. Wolfgang Köhler, Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology (New York: Liveright, 1947), 224.
The Essence and the Name • 25
The answer, resoundingly, is yes. Consider the Portia Hypothesis (which takes its name from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice wherein the character, Portia, disguises herself as a man in order to argue as a lawyer.) The study finds that women with a more traditionallymasculine sounding name will be more likely to be successful in the legal profession than those with traditionally feminine-sounding ones.10 But sexism is not the only demon that has been exposed lurking in our collective relationship to names. Further studies have concluded that job applicants with names that sound white will be given preferential treatment to those whose names sound Black.11 We may believe ourselves to be completely unbiased, but those hidden unconscious prejudices just keep creeping up, time and time again.
Warnings and Taboos As with all things in life, it’s not all hugs and puppies. While we can— and should—use language to bestow names that empower, heal, and support, real power is always a two-way street. Just as knowing (or speaking aloud) certain divine names has been historically used to invoke blessings and protection, so too do certain names carry with them a “curse,” a dark stain or negative power, perhaps serving as a warning to others. We can again turn to folklore to see how the dark
10. Debra Cassens Weiss, “Female Lawyers with Masculine Names May Have a Better Shot at Judgeships,” ABA Journal, September 3, 2009, www.abajournal .com/news/article/female_lawyers_with_masculine_names_may_have_a _better_shot_at_judgeships_st. 11. Cody C. Delistraty, “Who Wins in the Name Game?,” The Atlantic, January 16, 2018, www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/who-wins-in-the -name-game/374912/.
26 • Chapter One
side of linguistic sorcery has been employed, and how this knowledge has been handed down for generations, even to the present day.
“Speak of the Devil (and he doth appear)” This famous idiom is today used when a person unexpectedly arrives shortly after being mentioned. It stretches back to the sixteenth century, drawing from the then-custom of avoiding mentioning the Devil for fear of being noticed by him. This alludes to an old belief that speaking aloud someone’s name could in fact draw their attention outside of normal means. Here again we see the use of a name as a taglock, for even to speak aloud the name runs the risk of magically alerting the named being. Consider also the folktales of ancient Ireland, in which the otherworldly faeries are often referred to indirectly by euphemistic titles rather than by their specific names, for fear of attracting their attention and thus incurring their wrath. Names such as “the Good Neighbors,” “the Wee Folk,” and “the People of Peace” may have been used precisely because they were decidedly not good or peaceful (or sometimes not even wee). This usage can be understood as a means to help appease the faeries to avoid their ire, or perhaps even as a protective charm to encourage them to appear in more pleasing and gentler forms. Similar accounts are told of the mighty Furies, the three sisters from Greek mythology, which is why one traditional euphemism for them is “the Kindly Ones.” (You do NOT want to get on their bad side!) Taboos surrounding names are not solely for one’s protection. Jewish culture discourages the pronunciation of what they consider to be the true name of God, believing it too holy to speak aloud. Usually transliterated as YHVH, this tetragrammaton (Greek for “written with four letters”) omits the vowels, which have been lost
The Essence and the Name • 27
to history. Usually a Jewish speaker will substitute another word in place of saying the actual name, such as Adonai (“the Lord”) when engaging in formal prayers, or HaShem (“the Name”) in conversation. Many modern Jews continue this practice by omitting the vowel from the word “God,” thus rendering it as “G-d.” One interesting addition to the above is that the true name of God is specified as a necessary component to create a golem, an artificially created being that is bought to life to perform tasks. The name is usually written and placed in the golem's mouth or forehead. This procedure is stressed as being quite dangerous, as the power the name is said to unleash is unruly and could easily turn against those who use it. Some taboos have evolved around certain names as a natural part of history. This is evidenced by the lack of Adolphs running around these days, as compared to the early twentieth century. And I’m left wondering if after 2020 is just a distant footnote in the history books, whether the name “Karen” will ever be looked at in quite the same way again. (Apologies to good Karens everywhere.) One rather uniquely modern issue with “bad names” concerns those with the surname “Null.” Because of the words’ meaning in terms of computer code (“empty field”) this has produced headaches for people who possess that name, especially when in need of purchasing airline tickets. The computer systems that some airlines use simply refuse to accept a null response.12 (See what I did there?) It might not be mystical in origin, but the “bad energy” spends all the same.
12. Chris Baraniuk, “These unlucky people have names that break computers,” BBC Future, March 25, 2016, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2016 0325-the-names-that-break-computer-systems.
28 • Chapter One
Nomen Mysticum—The Mystical Name Moving beyond the names that we might use in our common lives, there is a rich history of adopting certain other names that better reflect what we might be experiencing on the inner planes: our inner world of hopes, dreams, and visions. This is a basic premise behind the spiritual renaming practices that abound in religious systems across the globe. In what is quite literally a religious experience, the practice of adopting a new name that reflects a new life within a spiritual system or order is a relatively common one, and one that should be considered carefully. Whatever names to which we attach ourselves will affect our inner lives, as well as the interactions that we will have with others. It behooves us to take our time and to embark on a journey of self-discovery. In short, we must search for our true name. What exactly is a true name? Is it what is printed on one’s birth certificate? Words spoken by a priest or family member in the first few days on life? Or is it something else? Something deeper, perhaps that exists as a possibility within each of us, just waiting to be discovered? Depending on one’s culture or belief, the correct answer might be any one of these. But living in the modern Western world means many of us have been divorced from much of our premodern ancestral observances, leaving us with little recourse but to draw from inspirations and sources wherever we can find them. Witchcraft is one such source, in that it enables us to look at the world through a poetic lens, freeing us from the strictly rational awareness of waking consciousness, allowing us to proceed unfettered between the worlds of the magical and the mundane.
The Essence and the Name • 29
With ourselves shifted into the “right-brain awareness” of art and ecstasy, we will be better suited to learning the magical power of names and the implications they may have for us. Famed English theosophist C. W. Leadbeater described the true name in the sense of a series of combined “notes” emitted from the subtle bodies of the human being, each combining into a specific chord which energetically distinguishes the individual on a soul level.13 While many humans might share certain aspects or notes, Leadbeater asserted that when taken together, each human being’s chord was unique and constituted a type of energetic signature that could be used to spiritually identify that person and even to make a connection on the inner planes. This is the reason that tradition and folklore demand that the true name must be concealed. To know this name is more than just memorizing a word—it is having intimate knowledge of the object of intention’s subtle energies. And this knowledge, once gained, grants those who hold it a kind of mystical access to those energies; a potential “weakness” in the psychic armor, if you will. The true name is our divine quintessence, that spark of divinity with which the spiritual practitioner diligently works, cultivating it into a steady flame. When ignited, we experience the “true initiation” not necessarily one performed at the hands of another person, lineage, coven, lodge, order, or tradition, but a personal, revelatory experience that serves as an immersive and transformative encounter with the numinous. Though we have thus far described this name in terms of a sound or chord, we should also recognize that these terms—though certainly 13. Charles Webster Leadbeater, The Inner Life (volumes I and II combined), originally published 1911 by Adyar, Madras, India, reissued 2003 by Aziloth Books, Kindle version, 258.
30 • Chapter One
helpful in cultivating a deeper understanding of the subject—are still woefully insufficient, as they rely on the limited perceptions of the physical body to present their analogy. What is perceived on the inner planes may manifest to us quite clearly as a sound, but just as easily could it be perceived in other ways. We might just as well describe the name as a feeling, or an image, or a memory, or a dream, or any combination of these and more. In one sense, the true name is unpronounceable by human tongues; it exists as a spiritual vibration or energetic frequency. In order to truly harness its power, we must “draw it down” from the celestial sphere and anchor it within ourselves. And we do this through acts of magic and intention. We are well beyond the petty limitations of the rational at this point and are squarely in the middle of the “woo.” But that’s perfect, because that’s exactly where we need to be in order to get to the next step. The essence of our true name is, in a sense, an archetypal power, one that calls to us through a mysterious resonance in our souls. It speaks of many things, each an aspect of who we are, whether we are consciously aware of them or not. But deep down, we know. We know to what we are deeply drawn. Our hopes, fears, desires, and dreams, alongside our wounds and regrets, each play a part as we grow and change and evolve. And all of these things affect our inner chord, that unspeakable essence to which we ultimately must give a name if we are to harness its power. It may be unpronounceable or even ultimately inexpressible with words, but consciously being in its presence will inspire something real within us. This is the point to which we must look. The name that we give to this essence (or the name that is given to us, if you prefer) is a symbolic anchor which becomes “attached” to our quintessential being. In essence they are one and the same, but like
The Essence and the Name • 31
so many things in the realm of magic and spirit, they are also not. They are a paradox. And this is where the real magic happens. We lean here now toward the realm of art and poetry, for these are the true tools of the Witch, ever searching for ways to describe the indescribable. If we are to be successful, we will need to make use of whatever tools present themselves to us along the way. The conscious identification of one’s own quintessence is not necessarily something that comes easily. The world of form has many distractions that can potentially keep us from this discovery. While the rare person seems to come into this world with this spiritual knowledge “pre-installed,” the rest of us require some level of methodology or practice to shift our awareness to the degree necessary to be able to truly perceive and consciously engage it. It will often appear to us in glimpses—just enough to keep us encouraged on our continued search, guiding us along the way. For most, it is a lifetime of work. And even once we have made that discovery, that work continues. We must learn to interpret what we find; how to translate the numinous into terms understood by the mundane. This is where we find that the power of names is a two-way street. For there is not only power in the names, but also in the namer.
Body, Mind & Spirit / Witchcraft
Create a Magical Identity that Resonates Deeply with Your Soul The magical name is one of the most powerful tools in Witchcraft. Each time you use it, a spell is cast that empowers and protects you while also helping you transform into the Witch you’ve always wanted to be. Not just another book of monikers, this thoughtful resource will help you understand the history and mythology of spiritual names according to various cultures. Explore your strengths and reveal deeper layers of your true self with meditations, rituals, journaling, and other practical exercises. With inspiring ideas for how animals, plants, astrology, and tarot can help you form your magical persona, Storm Faerywolf provides clear steps for choosing and claiming the right name. You’ll also enjoy wise words from well-known contributors like Mat Auryn, Phoenix LeFae, Gwion Raven, and Laura Tempest Zakroff. You are a unique, magical being. Your Witch name should reflect that.
“Faerywolf deftly takes us on a journey to discover the magic hidden within names.” —Durgadas Allon Duriel, author of The Little Work STORM FAERYWOLF is a published author, experienced teacher, visionary poet, and professional warlock. He is a regular contributor to Modern Witch blog and is a founding teacher of Black Rose, an online school of modern folkloric witchcraft. He has written several books, including Betwixt and Between and Forbidden Mysteries of Faery Witchcraft. For more, visit his website at faerywolf.com. Facebook.com/LlewellynBooks Twitter: @LlewellynBooks Instagram: @LlewellynBooks
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