Category Archives: Witchcraft

The Sword

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This viking sword was forged in the 9th-10th century and used in Northern, Western, and Central Europe.

This viking sword was forged in the 9th-10th century and used in Northern, Western, and Central Europe.

Swords go hand-in-hand with “knights in shining armor” or Vikings as well as gladiators and Greco-Roman soldiers. Swords are also one of the four suits (with Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of the Tarot’s Minor Arcana. In tarot readings, swords correspond to the element of Air, and therefore signify freedom but also quick change. The Swords suit also traditionally represented the military, which implies strength, power and authority, but also responsibility, violence and suffering. Most readers today, however, interpret Swords in terms of thought and mind, ways of thinking or organizing the world even though certain of the cards retain interpretations of sorrow and anguish.

One of the four traditional tools of the occult practitioner, the sword or athame often — for practical reasons — becomes a small dagger or knife. It is used to cut and loose in a variety of circumstances or demarcate boundaries, as in tracing the outline of a magic circle or other geometric shapes (ex. pentagrams). It was also used to kill in ritual settings, such as offering a sacrifice (an animal) or in cases of alleged ritual murder.

The constellation Orion, easily identified by the 3 stars that form his “belt,” is said to depict the great warrior wielding a sword in the heavens as he prepares to strike a scorpion (which had been sent by a goddess to torment Orion); this battle between the Hunter and the hunted scorpion is said to be the reason that Orion and Scorpius (a sign of the zodiac) never appear in the night sky together. (Hungarian folklore identifies Orion with Nimrod, the great hunter in Genesis 10. In Scandinavian tradition, “Orion’s belt” was known as Frigg’s Distaff (friggerock) or Freyja’s distaff but the Finns call the Orion’s belt and the stars below it as Väinämöisen viikate (Väinämöinen’s scythe), keeping the association with the magical sword.)

In modern playing cards, the tarot suits have developed from Swords into Spades, Wands into Clubs, Cups into Hearts, and Pentacles into Diamonds.

Pre-sales for “Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes”

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Castle Annaghs outside Waterford, Ireland is the location of the actual grave identified in local legend as that of the dearg-due ("red blood sucker").

Castle Annaghs outside Waterford, Ireland is the location of the actual grave identified in local legend as that of the dearg-due (“red blood sucker”).

For everyone waiting for the next adventure of the Evil Conference professors, I am working on Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes and hope to have it finished in time to release next November. It will follow the professors back to Ireland and they will once again confront both Elizabeth, the dearg-due (Irish female vampire), and Eva (the witch who created the dearg-due in 1700s Ireland).

As you recall from the Come Hell or High Water trilogy, the dearg-due was a young girl from 1700s Waterford (southeast Ireland). She was in love with a local shepherd but her father insisted that she marry the local landlord, a much older and wealthier man. (Clearly, her father hoped to profit from the marriage.) But the husband was a cruel and abusive man who beat his young wife to death. She was raised from the grave beneath the famous Strongbow’s Oak, however, and transformed into the DEARG-DUE (“red blood sucker”). She first killed and lapped up the blood of her abusive husband and then her uncaring father and now she continues to seduce and kill men. She is unharmed by sunlight, holy water, or garlic. She cannot be destroyed. But she can be pinned beneath the earth if a small tower of stones is built atop her grave. She will then be trapped in her grave until the stones are dispersed, allowing her to rise from the grave beneath the oak tree and begin the cycle of seduction and murder all over again. Incorporating local Irish history, mythology, and folklore, Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes will be a stand-alone novel (not another trilogy).

You can pre-order your copy now thru the Pubslush website here. By donating the cost of the book in advance, you help cover the cost of editing and research and will get an autographed copy of the paperback mailed to you as soon as the novel is available. Even if you can’t support the book financially yet, please click on the link and become a FAN of the project to show your support.

I will keep you up-to-date with my progress on the book by occasional posts here — but NO SPOILERS will be revealed! 🙂

An Ancient Egyptian Health Plan?

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Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, a god responsible for pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked particularly for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile river.

Crocodiles were associated with Sobek, a god responsible for pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked particularly for protection against the dangers presented by the Nile river.

My current writing project is an academic book about Byzantine attitudes towards sexuality in the 4th–14th centuries. I found that the early Egyptian monks, as well as the later Byzantine monastic charters, insisted that there should be no female animals kept on monastic farms as the monks would be tempted to use them in untoward ways. This fear seemed exaggerated to me, so I did some checking to see how real the likelihood of bestiality was.

It turns out that bestiality was not only common in rural areas but was a part of pagan worship and folk magic. Egyptian gods were always depicted in animal form or as human-animal hybrids and Greco-Roman mythology described gods and goddesses assuming animal form to seduce humans. In northern Europe, heroes and royal families claimed to be descended from animal ancestors who bestowed their strength, cunning, and other abilities on the clan. Sex with certain animals was reported to heal certain diseases.

One example of the healing powers unleashed by acts of bestiality struck me in particular. In ancient Egypt, the god Sobek was depicted in alligator form and was said to have helped Isis collect the body parts of her son Horus and raise him from the dead as well as impregnating Isis and giving her into the protection of a “bask” or group of crocodiles. Because of this, sex with a crocodile was said to heal certain life-threatening diseases and the Egyptians developed a way of catching and then flipping a crocodile onto its back and restraining it so that it could not resist penetration. Clearly this form of bestiality was a large group activity and not something engaged in by a man ashamed and alone in the dark, though it is hard to imagine how terrible the disease must have been to drive people to resort to this as a cure!