Stewart Farrar (1916–2000)

This is what I would call social Wicca—covens/circles—it’s Alexandrian, which is basically like being Gardnerian, only more characterized by being litsy, than thwack-y. It details a lot of group rituals, which don’t interest me because I can’t do them; meaning of the mysteries stuff which is ok but which I have surprisingly few thoughts about; and very little in the way of what we might call practical witchcraft, you know. I also started to read and read a large part of it, when I was merely curious about Wicca, you know—(tea and crumpets) Yes, I’ve heard that there are people tolerated in our Empire that say that….—and so probs didn’t read it, optimally well, right. But like I said, it IS kinda more curious/background/rituals of meaning, than health/love/wealth, you know.

But some of the basic background concepts of the goddess—dark/bright, for example—were very helpful, even if they weren’t new enough to me that I didn’t have an essay of my own to return, you know….

…. Yeah, and it’s cool how they take all that information out of “777”—you can obviously get a lot out of it—but I think I’m going to have to give away my copy of that book, because I looked at it, and I was like…. What the hell is this, right?…. I mean, when I read Crowley’s book on his tarot deck I can get maybe half of it, a third, I’m sure, at least—but “777” is like…. What are all these little lines and marks?…. It’s like, (Mabel from Gravity Falls), “He talks with a crazy voice….”….

But yeah: I felt like this book was: I mean, it was very bookish, but it wasn’t nonsense, right. And I mean, a lot of Crowley is good, and a lot of things are the roots of more practical teachings, right…. But yeah: “he talks with a crazy voice”…. Janet and Stew aren’t ~quite~ like that, lol.

…. Re: casting and banishing the Circle—I feel like this is very special and very important and I would like to do it, but in any near foreseeable future I won’t be doing it in any sort of Old Coven Wicca sort of way. (I feel like calling it “British” is misleading, as though it had something to do with the Anglican Church or Manchester United or Charles Dickens or imperialism or the monarchy or something.) I was planning on doing my First Big Ritual—I mean, I’ve dedicated candles to a few gods and turned them on, done a few even less dramatic things along those lines, like change my meditation practice to include witchy visualizations, (and yes it is “turn on”, not “burn”—the candles are flame-less)—I mean, I was planning various rough idea things, but I was like, when XY&Z happens, I’ll do a Real Ritual out in a park somewhere to celebrate—and obviously I am not going to take my flameless candles out into the park where people would assume that they were wax and that I was a crazy person setting the grass on fire; lots of little things like that—and actually XY&Z did not happen and it was very unpleasant, but I feel like it was a growth experience in a couple of ways: rethinking next-job-industry plans (long-term plans) was one—but maybe putting off doing my, almost trial ritual, right: trial-run…. I definitely don’t consider myself an initiated witch anyway: I kinda am starting to view “a year and a day” as being, well, originally I just ignored it, right—“it’s going to take a long time, maybe like seven years or something, AND THEN, I’ll feel, ~Initiated~” like: “non-baby-witch has begun, right; now I can start trying to become an “adept”, like a powerful person, almost, before I die….” But yeah, it’s almost like a symbolic time-phrase: they used to have “year and a day marriages”; your training is your “year and a day” because it’s the time before you’re really “long term intimate” with the gods, if you like…. Just like in a year and a day marriage, you were learning and doing stuff, but you hadn’t decided if this was going to be your whole rest of your life: I do think this is my whole rest of my life, (so to speak), ~~but I don’t know what that means yet~~….

But yeah, coven practice, often in a room or if outside in some kind of like prepared area where you can have candles—well, it probably was inside, then; but I don’t really know—is really pretty different from solitary and privacy-is-difficult-sometimes practice.

As for group practice, though: it’s not just difficult to arrange; I really want to have a much better idea what Wicca is to me, before I start to fool around with other people’s notions, right. And I don’t want to just practice the way that somebody else decided was the way to worship the gods, even though I don’t know them, right. That’s not my personality. I want to pass down my own tradition, preserved in books even if they’re only unpublished manuscripts, and even if only like four people practice it in my lifetime, but it’ll be like so four other people could also do it, a hundred years after I’m dead. With obvious alterations and adaptions made by the three other people I meet, and the four people who live like in a hundred years, right.

(shrugs) But yeah this is still not a bad things to have read, even if you’re not planning on hunting down Alexandrians or any other kind of representative of Old Coven Wicca, as I call it.

…. “For behold, I have been with thee from the beginning; and I am that which is attained at the end of desire.”

I liked that the first time I read it, too. A lot of the Anglicanisms/Shakespearese I’ll dispense with: but THAT line, I will keep.… (more)

I’d been after this books for years, although I forget why, when a copy popped up on eBay. The book was only ever published in hardback, and the hardback was published by Robert Hale, which no doubt explains why it had proven so hard to find. Unfortunately, I lost the auction on eBay for the book… but found a copy for less on abebooks.co.uk from a seller in Australia. (I see there’s now a copy on Amazon going for £590. I paid nowhere near that.) And, after all that, was it worth it? I understand most of Farrar’s fiction revolves around witchcraft and Wicca – I believe he practiced it himself – and certainly a coven of witches makes an appearance in Forcible Entry. But the story is mostly about parapsychology research, particularly telepathy and astral projection. Matthew is a professional photographer and dying of cancer. He also volunteers as a test subject at a parapsychology study run by the university. Which is where Sheila, an attractive young woman, works as an office manager. The two prove to be gifted at astral projection. On one such trip Matthew, knowing he is dying, steals Sheila’s body. So while his real body dies of cancer in hospital, Matthew takes over Sheila’s body and feigns amnesia to cover any mistakes he might make in his impersonation (he had been studying her for weeks beforehand). However, Sheila had been an unwitting agent of the CIA investigating an organisation that wants to use people with parapsychological abilities for nefarious reasons. But not everyone is convinced by Matthew’s impersonation of Sheila – especially her American boyfriend, who involves a coven of witches to undo the possession – and when Matthew is forced to kill to defend his secret… It’a an interesting premise, and Farrar’s prose is readable and unremarkable. I’m surprised the book is not better-known – or rather, surprised it never made it to paperback, because there’s certainly a market for it. But then, I don’t think many of Farrar’s novels made it to paperback, so it seems his chief readership was library borrowings. There were a couple of other Farrar novels offered by the seller on eBay who was selling Forcible Entry, and one or two of them looked interesting. But I’m not going to go out of my way to track down his books, although if I see one going cheap I might give it a go.… (more)