SONNENKREUZ
THE WICCA ISSUE
EDITOR’S NOTE
I was 13 when I found out about Wicca. Reading through the Wikipedia page from the safety of my room, I learned about the Goddess and her consort, the Horned God, their rituals, and rites. I was entranced. It was as though they had put a spell on me. Wicca stuck with me for a while. The symbol of the Triple Goddess drawn on all of my notebooks, taking her with me wherever I went to school. I couldn’t worship her openly, but through drawing her symbol, I was covertly invoking her to watch over me. It was hidden, obvious only to those that understood, and I was content. Eventually, Wicca was pushed to the back of my mind, and I moved on to other things. An interest in tarot cards kept me loosely linked, but I never came as close as I did when I was 13. As an agnostic, I would hardly like to call this divine intervention or fate, but to do am issue on Wicca years later, I couldn’t deny the inexplicable coincidence. If anything, though I am much more of a skeptic now than I was before, I did learn much more than before and I do enjoy the knowledge that 13-year-old me would be ecstatic at my chosen topic. This issue focuses on Wicca in recent years, the journey from an obscure religion to a term recognised in the mainstream.
CONTENTS
THE APPEAL OF WICCA 1 THE LOCAL WEIRDO 7 LET’S PLAY DRESS UP 11 THANKS FOR THE INTERNET 17 SPELLS FOR SALE 23 CREDITS 29
THE APPEAL OF WICCA WITCHCRAFT AND THE MODERN WOMAN Contributed by Jen Tombs, Sady Doyle Edited by Shanice Lee
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With its focus on the Goddess, and its relatively open approach to creating canon, Wicca seems to be a natural fit for women interested in writing their own spiritual script. 2013’s American Horror Story: Coven, in which witchcraft stood for girl power, has been the most popular season so far. In an era where feminism and liberal ideals are taking centre stage, Wicca seems to have found a place in urbanity. Wicca, a religion informed by pre-Christian traditions originating in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, was created in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner, internationally recognised as the “Father of Wicca” among the Pagan and occult communities. The last explosion of Wicca was in the 70s, where witchcraft permeated pop culture, before resurfacing in the 90s, this time regarded as ‘satanic panic’. Once again, Wicca has come out of obscurity and back into the mainstream. In the age of the internet, Wicca might offer millennials something they don’t get from more mainstream ones. A 2014 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that members of “new age religions — 46 percent of which are defined as millennials — tend to trust their common sense over scripture or teachings, and don’t believe in a blackand-white system of morality. Over 20 percent don’t believe in a God. For the generation behind the Women’s March and #MeToo, this gender balanced and deeply personal approach might be a lot more appealing than a patriarchal deity whose orders you have to unquestionably obey.
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Though calling oneself a “witch” still evokes a certain fear, bringing to mind the ability to blight crops and hex their enemies, Starhawk writes in her seminal 1979 book The Spiral Dance, “To reclaim the word witch is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful.” Today, The Spiral Dance is in its third edition, and has sold over 300,000 copies. It is many people’s first introduction to Wicca, and has come to be a recognized religion around the world. However easy as it may be to trivialise Wicca as newage nonsense, mixed in with the spells and rituals of The Spiral Dance, there are meditations on sexual violence, ecology and anarchist group building, and thoughts on how men can overcome patriarchal conditioning in order to participate effectively in left-wing activism. Back in the 1970s, the term “witch” didn’t only appeal to those who were explicitly Wiccan. Non-religious women also claimed the witch as a symbol of their feminist ambitions. The socialist-feminist collective WITCH – the letters stood for anything the leaders felt like from moment to moment, but Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell was a popular choice – held theatrical protests, starting by “hexing” the New York stock exchange and going on to attend a “bridal fair” where they unleashed white mice into the crowd. It was a gimmick, but it resonated with others. The appeal of the witch has stood the test of time it seems. After all, feminists could be calling themselves harpies or sirens, both dangerous and feminine mythological images, but the witch still resonates. Starhawk thinks that part of the power
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of the word is that it refers to a kind of power that is not legitimized by the authorities. Even though a lot of men are witches, it seems to connote women’s power in particular. This power appeals to women, as it’s not coming from the hierarchical structure, but some kind of inner power. As women of the 1960s and 70s did, the current generation identifies with the ancient myths and iconography of goddesses, or with the mythological figure of the witch. This means a renewed respect for the stories of women who were persecuted in the past, together with the legacy of their spirituality movement quietly following behind. This is part of a larger phenomenon – the tendency for Gen X-ers and those who came after them to be “spiritual but not religious”. Rather than converting to one set mythology, younger people tend to pull spiritual ideas and practices from any source that works for them. There’s something deeply appealing in the idea of being put in touch with an inner source of power that can’t be taken away. That power doesn’t have to be mystical in nature, it can be something as simple as intuition. Embracing the witchiness – deciding you can know something about your life by looking at tarot cards and listening to your hunches, or trying to affect a situation by focusing your will on it – might be just a process by which women can come to trust themselves.
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But of course, it may just be the pull of the taboo, that draws women to the craft.
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MEET THE LOCAL WEIRDO GROWING UP WITH WICCA BEFORE IT WAS POPULAR Contributed by Hanna Brooks Olsen Edited by Shanice Lee
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Wicca is now chic. It’s in an essay in Elle about teenage flirtation with religion. It’s in a Grazia piece about “cool girls.” It’s all over Tumblr and Instagram. To grow up in a time where Wicca was shunned, and now revered as the new ‘it’ trend, one wonders what it must have been like. Hanna Brooks Olsen describes growing up with Wicca as a hot shame. Her Wiccan mother displayed her faith proudly - crystals, a pentacle bumpersticker at the back of the Volkswagen, sage smudges, tarot card readings in the garage. She prided herself on her unconventionality and felt no shame and embarrassment, as she truly believed that Wicca is the truest religious ideology. Wicca provided her with an avenue that “helped her catalogue her feelings of spirituality in a way that made the most sense”. She remembers her mother abstaining from modern medicine, treating various ailments with tinctures of distilled herbs kept in the refrigerator in a row of neat glass bottles with eyedropper caps, her mother performing spells in the moonlight when money went from “tight” to “officially a problem”, her meditation cassettes, and when “Christmas” became “Yule”. Wicca was a marker of their difference, especially in a small, conservative town. No one wants to be at the centre of negative attention, especially during the painful years of puberty. To the members of Olsen’s town, her mother “stole babies and ate children” and subsequently barred their children from playing together. Olsen’s friends were no different - coming back from Christian camp one summer, they proclaimed that the Olsens were going to Hell, and
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spread news that they were sinners. If she wasn’t going to Hell, she was regarded as having weird religion and “(couldn’t) just take any vacation days you want” despite celebrating a valid Wiccan festival, the Winter Solstice. However, as an active practitioner in a small community, she was the default Witch for commentary and questions, appearing on the local news and newspaper, as well as invited to give talks around town. Olsen’s mother often took delight in embodying the alternative to the mainstream audience, but Olsen would not. Her classmates would say “I saw your mom on the news!”, but it rarely felt positive, especially when it was often followed by “she’s kind of weird”. It seemed like there was little attempt at understanding Wicca, and this communal contempt only served to push Olsen further away from her mother’s belief. Olsen, like any other child, just wanted to fit in and be normal, her mother’s dreaded word. It didn’t help that Olsen herself was non-religious she didn’t believe in reincarnation, in spirit animals, or the power to bring about change in spells. All Wicca was was an inconvenience. All that changed when Wicca became all anyone could talk about. Soon, Olsen’s wealth of knowledge about Wicca became a valuable - it was no longer embarrassing, it was intriguing. The new generation was starting to try out a new faith system, one Olsen was very familiar with.
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Though the popularity of Wicca (and more broadly, Paganism) may have made Olsen and others like her feel less like oddballs, it may also have an alienating effect. For some Wiccans and members of the Pagan community, they may feel the urge to remind that Wicca is after all, a religion. More than carefully curated images of tarot cards on crushed velvet with captions relating to the season, there is history and there is story and there is sacredness. There is a shared language and internal critique and arguments about texts. There also exists persecution, both historically and at present, something practitioners of “alternative� faiths face in the workplace, in educational settings, and in the eyes of the law. Though the new wave of trendy Wicca feels like a cheap approximation of something they hold sacred, and in a way appropriated by the mainstream audience by reducing it into a commercial trend, Wicca and Paganism are now more accepted and less stigmatised than before. Increasing awareness and its accessibility, it is now much easier than before to find resources and tools, for active practitioners and beginners alike. Granted, those that regard Wicca as evil and worshipping the devil still exist, but it can be assumed that Wicca can exist in a mainstream conversation where it is likely to be regarded with interest, rather than suspicion and ignorance. We can at least hope that for every 10 seeking out Wicca due to its trend status, there may be 1 who truly found something fulfilling, and may never have known about it if not for Wicca being chic.
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LET’S PLAY DRESS UP WHAT WILL SATAN WEAR TODAY? Written by Shanice Lee
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The Horned God and Baphomet, images mistakenly referred to as the Devil, and the very picture of evil. No, the Horned God isn’t going to drag you to hell, and neither is Baphomet. One of the two primary deities in Wicca, and some related forms of Paganism, the Horned God represents the male aspect of the religion’s duotheistic theological system. He is the consort of the female Triple Goddess of the Moon, or other Mother Goddesses. In Wicca, he is commonly associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting and the life cycle. This depiction of him with either horns or antlers, and having a beast’s head emphasizes “the union of the divine and the animal”, humanity included in the latter. His two horns symbolise his dual nature, and in conjunction with the three aspects of the Goddess, the total of five aspects are sometimes mapped on to the five points of the Pentagram. Similar in appearance, the name Baphomet originally appeared in trial transcripts for the Inquisition of the Knights Templar starting in 1307. It first came into popular English usage in the 19th century during debate and speculation on the reasons for the Templars suppression. However since 1856, Baphomet has been more commonly associated with the “Sabbatic Goat” image drawn by Eliphas Levi, a French occult author and a ceremonial magician.. Levi considered the Baphomet to be a depiction of the absolute in symbolic form.
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“The goat carries the sign of the pentagram on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light. His two hands forming the sign of occultism, one pointing up to the white moon of Chesed, the other pointing down to the black one of Geburah. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice.
His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the androgyne of Khunrath, the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because he is one and the same symbol. The flame of intelligence shining between his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter, shines above it. The beast’s head expresses the horror of the sinner, whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its nature and can only suffer when it materializes.
The rod standing instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts and the androgyne arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences.�
- Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, Eliphas Levi, 1854-1856
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Medieval Christians were known to adapt previously existing pagan iconography to suit depictions of Christian figures. Much of Satan’s traditional iconography in Christianity appears to be derived from Pan, a rustic, goat-legged fertility god in ancient Greek religion. Early Christian writers such as Saint Jerome, equated Pan - resembling Greek satyrs and the Roman fauns - with demons, adapted the Devil’s pitchfork from Poseidon’s trident, and Satan’s flame-like hair from the Egyptian god Bes. Classical historian Georg Luck, theorises in Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds, that the remaining worshippers of the ancient Celtic and Greco-Roman gods had refused to convert to Christianity, and combined their gods. Cernunnos, a horned god of the Celts, and the Greco-Roman Pan/Faunus - said to be able to invoke a “panic” terror in you encountered him at noontime - together produced a powerful deity that the remaining pagans rallied around. This deity, regarded by the Christian priests as indeed powerful, is assumed to have used his likeness as a prototype of the Devil: horns, hoofs, claws, a tail, and a generally shaggy appearance. Hence, if this CeltoRoman deity was said to be the devil, his female worshippers were then labelled as witches, which might have sparked the witch craze in medieval Europe and early Colonial America.
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Satan’s appearance is never described, though Paul the Apostle does write that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). The Devil only began to appear in medieval art of the ninth century, where he is shown with cloven hooves, hairy legs, the tail of a goat, pointed ears, a beard, a flat nose, and a set of horns. However, Satan may have first become associated with goats through the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, recorded in Matthew 25:31–46, in which Jesus separates sheep, the saved, from the goats, the damned. Perhaps this mistaken identity is best described by Sarte in the phrase “Hell is other people”.
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THANKS FOR THE INTERNET WICCA AND THE NEW MEDIA AGE Contributed by Corin Faife Edited by Shanice Lee
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Witchcraft is once again back from the dead. In the 1990s, movies like The Craft, and TV shows like Charmed, and of course Sabrina the Teenage Witch tapped into a cultural archetype of the time, women women who were independent and quietly powerful, not to mention smarter than the mostly oblivious men in their lives. In the 1970s, a boom of interest in the occult throughout the cultural underground dovetailed with a growing recognition of female potency in both creative and sexual terms, and a form of spirituality focused on the Goddess(es) and the divine feminine. Every resurgence of witchcraft seems to come with the changing perception of women in popular consciousness and new strains of feminist thought. This time, witchcraft joins the internet in holy matrimony, resulting in Instagram as a platform for potential witches to find each other. The imagesharing app has become a gathering place for younger witches, where tags like #witch (more than 3.7 million posts), #witchy (more than 600,000) and #witchesofinstagram (nearly 700,000) bring a community together around a constellation of imagery, including jewelery, makeup, sÊance circles, tattoos, astrological charts, herbs, crystals, and lots of vaguely gothic selfies. In the last quarter of 2013, the trend forecasting agency K-Hole published a report that came to define the overriding fashion trend of 2014: normcore. The document argued that young millennials were bored of the advertising industry’s doctrine of individualism through brand consumption, and were instead adopting a kind of radical conformity
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that favored unadorned clothing and knowingly mainstream tastes. As a movement, “normcore” came and went and two years later, the tastemakers at K-Hole published another report identifying the new cultural trends they had observed: Conformity was out. In its place? Chaos magic. Once again K-Hole was right on the zeitgeist. Individuality was back in, magic was cool, youth brands were making documentaries about covens in Bushwick, and seemingly everyone was carrying crystals. Compared to a hidden grove deep in the woods, social media posts are much easier to seek out, so a new breed of witch-hunter has come after these mystical trendsetters. For potential witches, the draw might come from things associated with the mystical or magical — like astrology, crystals and ouija boards, a big part of internet culture and popular aesthetics. Grunge and “pastel goth” looks are a big part of fashion on social media, and witchy objects definitely complete the look. What better way to find outfit “inspos” than on Instagram? As in any other Instagram community, certain accounts emerge as “influencers,” usually combining a recognizable visual identity with taste-making content and a distinctive voice that followers can relate to, creating a connection that feels personal even as it’s transmitted to a large audience. Elisabeth Krohn, founder and editor of Sabat, explained that trendy representations can often serve as an entry point for the cultivation of a more
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serious interest. She realised that a lot of people who are deeper into witchcraft than her first got into it through pop culture references, and that’s more accepted in the community than she first thought. In terms of being attracted because of the aesthetic, she feels that if someone picks up a pentagram because they think it’s a cool symbol, it doesn’t mean they won’t then learn the meaning behind it, too. For most young witches now, it’s a combination of the aesthetic and the search for something spiritual, she adds. In the hyperconnected world of social media, it’s no surprise then that another witchcraft renaissance is at hand, and one that makes heavy use of the same media to disseminate text and image representations of the craft in a way that speaks to a new audience of digital natives.
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SPELLS FOR SALE THE WITCHES OF ETSY Contributed by Rosin Kiberd Edited by Shanice Lee
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Witchcraft is the hot new profitable trend. While
brick and mortar shops specialising in occult paraphernalia have always had a modest presence, online retail has really allowed the trade in all things witchy to take off. Enter Etsy - the gravitational centre of the online witchcraft economy, the marketplace that has revolutionized the way handcraft makers of all kinds list and sell their products online. Etsy supports an entire economy of “intangible items”: sellers buy supplies there as well as offering their services. The marketplace offers an online home for spell casters, fortune tellers, and those ladies you might see in the local alt-weekly ads peering into a glowing crystal sphere. They source occult books and even offer witchcraft correspondence courses. Originally based on eBay, the witchcraft community migrated to Etsy due to a policy revision in 2012. They discontinued the sale of readings, spells, and potions due to “a large number of misclassified items and eBay policy violations”, leaving the large metaphysical community homeless. Victoria Zasikowski is one such Etsy witch. Her profile bills her as a “professional astrologer and practitioner of Hoodoo Magick,” while her shop - the Enchanted Land - offers a menu of spells, pendulum readings, and cartomancy. Depending on what spell she’s casting, she uses candles, cauldrons, mojo bags, and customized “spellvelopes.” Once she’s done, she sends pictures to every client as proof that the spell has been cast. Back-and-forth emails are standard procedure as part of the average paranormal purchase to work out what’s required, a personal recommendation, and finally the casting of the spell,
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with a date given for when the client can expect its effects to start kicking in. Etsy spells live in the “Handmade/Everything Else/ Metaphysical” category of the site and can take several formats. There’s the haunted object - most often an antique or jewelry with a “spirit” inside for good luck - and there’s also downloadable magic in PDF form. But most common of all is the spell similar to a Catholic indulgence, or any other faith encompassing paid-for prayers: For a price, the seller will cast a spell for you. More so than with face-to-face readings, the internet allows a client to relax and let their guard down. Adhering to a moral code, spellcasters often have to be respectful of people who come to them laying their bare souls. They sometimes have to refuse customers, and instead recommend psychiatric help. The witches of Etsy are nothing if not thorough: as with every industry built on trust, they have their own directories and review sites. Revenge spells are traditionally bad karma, and spellcasters often refuse those. Nevertheless, hexes, curses, and “EXTREME black magick” are available online from sellers with fewer scruples. In some ways, the range of magic available parallels Amazon’s self-help book chart: they reflect consumers’ hopes and dreams, their ambitions and anxieties. Though Etsy insists on spell casters using the legal disclaimer “FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES,” it allows for pretty much any kind of spell, from “extreme telekinesis” to sending a succubus on a loved one. Many of the spells seem like little more than commodified good vibes that rely on good intent, though even within the community there are
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conflicts. As in all fields, there are charlatans, scams. Though it’s not always obvious as sellers can just copy and paste text from other shops, and buyers may never know, attracting criticism to the community. Perhaps hard to fathom, but you would think that a witch is not to be trifled with, but clients who refuse to pay are another occupational hazard. There are stories of clients who refuse to pay, and sellers making threats, despite not being good for business. At face value, it’s hard to understand paying anything for printable instructions for an “Extreme Binding Bewitchment”, but then commercialised faith is nothing new. The Pope’s hat was sold on eBay, and its proceeds donated to humanitarian aid in Congo.
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After all, as the Wiccan rede goes, “An it harm none, do what ye will”.
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CREDITS
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EDITOR’S NOTE Witches on the Sabbath, 1878, Luis Ricardo Falero
CONTENTS Festival of the Witches, 1880, Luis Ricardo Falero
THE APPEAL OF WICCA (5-6) The Love Potion, 1903, Evelyn De Morgan
MEET THE LOCAL WEIRDO (9-10) Big black cats howl as naked witches ascend into the night over the city, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen
LET’S PLAY DRESS UP The Witches’ God: Lord of the Dance, 1989, Stewart Farrar, Janet Farrar Horns of Power, 2008, Sorita d’Este History of France, 1860, Jules Michelet The Devil: A Mask Without a Face, 1995, Luther Link Devil, 2010, Luther Link Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Collection of Ancient Texts, 1985, Georg Luck (13-14) Baphomet, 1854, Eliphas Levi
THANKS FOR THE INTERNET (21-22) Hexensabbat, 16th century, Hieronymus Francken I
SPELLS FOR SALE (27-28) Saul and the witch of Endor, 1526, Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen
CREDITS Witches’ Flight, 1798, Francisco Goya
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