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Candlemas

February 2nd is the Feast of Candlemas, one of our many neglected feasts in need of a revival.

Candlemas celebrates the presentation of the Christ-Child at the temple, 33 days after his circumcision and at the end of His Mother's 40 day confinement. As we read in the Gospel of Luke:


Traditional Celebrations

Candlemas is the final, official ending of the Christmas season. I have friends who don't put up their Christmas tree until Christmas Eve, and don't take it down until Candlemas comes to an end. For my family, this is a bit too much-- I take down the tree after Epiphany. But I'm not in a hurry to take down all the Christmas decorations, and I don't think you should be either. January tends to be the longest, coldest, darkest month of the year, without even the anticipation of Christmas that brightens December; there's no reason to remove the extra lights in the home before you have to!

Above all, Candlemas is known (as you might imagine) for the blessing of candles.

According to magical philosophy, the world is composed of a series of discrete "planes" of being, starting from the highest, which is occupied by God Alone, and cascading downward through the Noetic level of angelic intelligences and awakened human souls; the Psychic or Astral level of ordinary mind and emotion; and the Hylic or Physical level of ordinary matter. Between the Psychic and the Hylic is a grey area sometimes called the "Etheric"; this is the level of the life force, qi or prana. Today we tend to call it "energy." Certain physical objects can be consecrated in such a way that they affect the etheric level. Fire, which is itself at the border betwen the physical and energetic, is among these, and consecrated candles are very potent magical tools.

The Cycle of the Seasons

February 2nd, or the days immediately surrounding it, marks a shift in the seasons. This shift is acknowledged in many cultures. Traditional Chinese healers have probably done a better job than anyone else of tracking the subtle shifts of energy throughout the year. (A remnant of this exists in Candlemas itself, of course, but also in the celebration of Groundhog's Day, which was such an important feature of my youth in Pennsylvania.) As we've discussed before, the term "jia qi" in Chinese refers specifically to the energy of the calendar. Today is one of the major qi nodes in the Chinese way of thinking-- days on which a major energetic shift occurs.

At Candlemas, the heavy Yin energy of Winter is exhausted, and has finally petered out. Yang has been reborn, and Spring has begun-- but it's still very, very weak. In terms of the elements, a Taoist thinker would say that Water (Great Yin) has given way to Wood (Lesser Yang). In the Western way of thinking, it's more the case that the Earth element of Winter is still present, but now it's mingled with the Air that will be dominant in Spring. The result is the same. As the Taoist teacher Liu Ming put it:


Meditation for Candlemas

The passage from the Gospel of Luke that I quoted above makes an excellent theme for meditation today. It's worth noting that this is the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, which we'll discuss in due time. For now, enter into meditation in the usual way, and bring the scene before you mind. Watch Saint Joseph and the Theotokos approach the temple with the Child, and make their offering of two pigeons. Listen to the prophecies of Simeon and Anna. Be present in the scene. Then withdraw your mind from the concrete imagery, and allow yourself to simply think about it. What can you learn? What does it mean? 

The Blessing of Candles

The proper magical working for today is, of course, the blessing of candles. You can do that by the following me

1. Open a working space in the usual way, with the Sign of the Cross, opening prayers, holy water and incense.

2. Turn your attention to the candles and say the following prayers, making the Sign of the Cross over them every time you encounter a +. You should visualize the cross in white, holy fire.

Our help is in the Name of the Lord

Who hath made the Heavens and the Earth.

The Lord be with you.

And with thy spirit.

Oh candles, I exorcise you in the name of God + the Father Almighty, in the name of Jesus + Christ His Son, our Lord, and in the name of the Holy + Spirit. May God uproot and cast out from these objects, all power of the devil, all attacks of the unclean spirit, and all deceptions of Satan, so that they may bring health of mind and body to all who use them. We ask this through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is coming to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. Amen.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, light of everlasting life, you have given us candles to dispel the darkness. We humbly implore you now to bless + these candles at our lowly request, and hallow + them by the light of your grace. By the power of the Holy + Cross, endow them with a heavenly blessing. May the blessing they receive be sufficiently powerful that, wherever they are placed or lighted, the princes of darkness shall flee in fear, along with all their legions, and nevermore dare to disturb those who serve you, the almighty God. Let the entire building in which these candles are kept, be free from the power of the adversary, and be defended from the snares of the Enemy. Grand we pray, that those who will use these candles may be protected from every assault of the Evil Spirit ,and be safeguarded from all danger. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

The candles are then sprinkled three times with holy water, and censed three times with incense.

There is also a more traditional, longer form blessing, which you can find here.

3. If you like, you can enter into meditation for a time, concentrating on the nature and the meaning of candles blessed at Candlemas. You may find the following words from Dom Prosper Gueranger a useful guide to meditation:

4. Close by saying the Come, Holy Spirit prayer or another closing prayer of your choice; also, ask for guidance in the use of the blessed candles, which are now a potent spiritual weapon in your possession. Then repeat the Asperges and censing from the opening, and make the Sign of the Cross.

Yesterday I was working quickly, and so I left a few things out of the post on the Sign of the Cross.

(Actually, I'm probably going to need to re-read the whole thing, as I wrote the first half on Friday, then was suddenly called out of town on a family emergency all weekend, then wrote the rest Monday evening without reading the first half. Hopefully it's coherent enough!) 

In any case, I could re-do the original piece, but I don't believe that


1. Symbolism Explained

The point of light represents the power of God the Father. Note that it isn't God the Father himself; God as he exists in Himself is incomprehensible to the human mind. Nor does it represent God's being or essence; rather, it represents his activity-- or to say it another way, his grace.

The point of light at the crown of the head represents God the Father, again. But here it represents God's specific act of creating you. God is that by virtue of which everything which exists, exists. God is therefore present to every being, and present within every being. The crown of the head specifically represents the highest part of us, which is always in the presence of God; the awareness of this is represented in sacred art by the halo.

We draw the light to our forehead in order to activate that energy center which is called the "Third Eye" in some traditions. This is also called the nous in Christian thought, and is sometimes referred to as the "eye of the soul."

We then draw the light downward into the heart of the Earth while chanting "Et filii," which means "And the Son." This represents the act of Christ the Logos, going forth from the father to create the world, as described in the first chapter of the Gospel of John.

Now: Here is where a variation becomes possible, as I wrote before. I simply send the light out to either direction. If you are used to working with the lunar current, you will visualize a second column of light rising from the heart of the Earth, joining the first at your heart, while chanting "Et Spiritu Sancti" (and the Holy Spirit), before sending it out. If not, or if you are working with the Golden Dawn or a similar tradition of magic, you will simply send the light outward, as I described. 

The Holy Spirit can be understood in 2 ways: First, He is the presence of God in all creation. In the Middle Ages it was common, in fact, to talk about the world of nature as the second book written by the Holy Spirit (the first being the Bible, of course). Second, he perfects creation, making everything as it should be. This is why we talk about the "Descent of the Holy Spirit" at Pentecost-- at this time, the Holy Spirit becomes fully present to the Apostles, and they are given extraordinary "magical" gifts. The "powers" which are the gifts of the Holy Spirit are really the unfolding of human nature as it is meant to be. 

The sphere of light is contiguous with the aura of the operator, and thus represents 

Now, this is a very basic description of the symbolism of the Sign of the Cross. There are many additional layers of meaning which can be found, but this is left to each student as part of the work of initiation. 

2. Are we Commanding God? 

The question immediately arises-- and this is a frequent objection to all magic-- whether using the sign of the Cross in this way is somehow "commanding" God. The answer is no, absolutely not. God cannot be commanded by a human being. 

If it's not a command, though, can we expect it to work every time we use it?

Yes!

But doesn't that mean that it's a kind of mechanism? 

No, not at all. 

How does it work, then?

The answer is simple. The Sign of the Cross is a prayer, and prayer always works:

We're going to return to Matthew's Gospel either tomorrow or next week. I've been trying to work through Matthew 11 in my mind this week, but something else keeps tearing my mind away and demanding I look at it.

One of the readers here, who is also a regular patron of my Etsy shop-- hi onesage -- asked my opinion of the story of Noah's flood. The truth is I hadn't given it much thought, at least not on the mythic level on which I prefer to keep the conversation here. (I've given it a fair bit of thought in the context of flood myths and lost civilizations at the end of the last Ice Age, but that's a different discussion.) So I sat down and re-read the story of the Flood in Chapters 6 and 7 of the Book of Genesis, and then I read them again. Let's read them together, and talk about what they might mean.

The Flood

The Book of Genesis, Chapter 6, Verses 11-21:
The Book of Genesis, Chapter 7:

The flood is a destruction of the world-- obviously. Did it happen? Who knows. As I hinted above, I'm of the view that the flood myths that are found all over the globe are, in part, records of the massive flooding that actually did take place at the end of the last Ice Age. But for our purposes, that's the least interesting question. When we're reading hte storeis of hte Bible, as always, we're reading a myth. And myths, as we know, are stories that never happened, but always are (even if they relate to something that actually did happen)! A myth is a narrative description of one of the eternal processes that shape the reality of our experience.

So what's happening here?

In order to understand that, we need to understand why the the world is destroyed, and how.

The Earth Was Filled With Violence

I'm afraid I cheated a bit by starting the story where I did. Genesis 6:11 doesn't make very much sense without the context provided by the beginning of Genesis 6. Here is Genesis 6:1-8:

So we have two issues. First, the "sons of God" turned up, mated with the daughters of man, and produced giants. There is a long history of ignoring or glossing over this passage in the history of Christianity, starting with none other than St. Augustine himself, who insisted on reading "children of God" as descendants of Adam's son Seth. But that's not what it says. 

If you know anything about the paganism of the ancient world, this passage is not at all difficult to interpret. Gods in the ancient world regularly beget child by mortal women (and, occasionally, men); those children are beings intermediate between Gods and men, called demigods or heroes; it was a common belief in the ancient world that the children of gods were three times the  height of ordinary men-- hence, giants.

Now, notice that the appearance of the Nephilim on the Earth immediately precedes a situation where "the wickedness of man was great in the Earth" and "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was of only evil continually."  

To put it in terms familiar to readers of this blog:

Contact with demons (Nephilim) leads to a situation in which the Astral Plane is polluted by negative thoughts and emotions (every imagination of his heart was of only evil continually). 

It's a basic teaching of Occultism that situations like this happen from time to time. Toxicity builds up in the Lower Astral in the form of anger, hatred, addictiveness, despair and bloodlust. Eventually, that toxicity has to be discharged; this happens in only one way, by grounding the negative energy out on the physical plane. What does that grounding look like? There are basically four options-- war, famine, plague, and  natural disaster.

Path Dependence 

There is another issue here as well, and the two are not separate.

Have you ever heard the term Path Dependence? This is a term found in the social sciences. The Wikipedia article is relatively useful, and gives a good, straightforward definition:

One example, which is probably relevant to you at this exact moment, is the QWERTY keyboard. This keyboard design is far from the most efficient, but at this point, virtually every keyboard in the world is laid out this way, and every typist in the world is trained to use them. While switching to a more efficient keyboard layout would ultimately save time and money, the cost of making the switch is too prohibitive. And so we don't.

The QWERTY issue is somewhat minor, but path dependence is found at every level of society and often has extreme consequences. It is often the case that armies and navies become locked into path dependence based on a particular military unit or military tactic. This happens due to a combination of past success; sunk cost-- these units tend to be very expensive; and entrenched interests, such as an older generation of officers who are attached to the old way of doing things. Examples are found throughout military history, from the chariot armies of the Late Bronze Age that fell to sudden attacks by ocean pirates; the French heavy cavalry which were defeated by English longbowmen at Crecy and Agincourt; the French Maginot Line, which would have repelled any advance the German army of 1914 could have made but was quickly encircled by the German army of 1940; and modern America's aircraft carrier strike groups, which are probably next on the chopping block. 

Let's talk about just one of those examples. The German Army of 1914 invaded France and immediately found itself bogged down in a stalemate that lasted for the next four years or so. In 1940 the Germans invaded again, and the French surrendered in six weeks' time. What happened in between the two wars? The German Army, in accordance with the treaty of Versailles, was completely dismantled. The result of this was that, when the Germans began to re-arm, they were able to start over from what was virtually a blank slate. All of the entrenched interests, expensive equipment, and hidebound officers that crippled France's ability to adapt to a new form of war in 1940 had been swept out of Germany as if by a divine flood.

The Return of Chaos

Genesis 1 tells us that, in the beginning, "The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters."That God chooses water as his means for destroying the world tells us that he is returning to the beginning. As we've seen, there are two issues-- the Lower Astral has become toxic due to humanity's congress with demons, and the issue of Path Dependence-- which is a permanent feature of human life, as much 6,000 years ago, or in the Dreamtime of mythology, as today-- prevents any solution short of starting over. 

And so the Earth is destroyed, so that it can begin again. 

Because, of course, humanity isn't destroyed utterly. Noah and his family are saved, and are chosen to save a part of the animal creation. Noah is saved because he is righteous, and willing to obey God-- indeed, these two are two ways of saying the same thing.

I'd like to suggest that this is a mythic pattern which plays itself out regularly in human lives-- in the lives of individuals, organizations, communities, and, sometimes, entire civilizations. At the individual level, any story of drug or alcohol addiction that ends happily ends this way. The addict finds that their old life is no longer livable; they must turn themselves over to the care of God and allow the divine floodwaters to sweep away everything from their past, usually including the great majority of the people with whom they used to spend their time. At the level of communities and organizations, one regularly sees situations similar to that of the German army, in which a failed or defeated organization is able to reorganize itself for success precisely because of the earlier defeat.

And now, I think, we're seeing the same thing at the level of our civilization. It's no secret to anyone with the slightest bit of sensitivity that the Astral Plane is extremely toxic right now. Hatred, blind rage, and the sort of bloodlust that fuels tribal warfare float freely through the void, latching onto any human mind that will receive them and turning the owner of that mind into yet another transmitter of demoniac rage and hatred.

Seedbearers, Ark Builders

Myths never happen, but always are. Or, to say it another way, they don't happen once, but they keep happening, again, and again, and again.

Another version of the Flood Myth appeared in occult circles in the 19th century. Unlike the Biblical story of a worldwide flood, this myth is specifically the story of the fall of the island civilization of Atlantis. According to the story, in its late years, Atlantis grew corrupt and the Atlanteans turned to evil magic and human sacrifice. There were warnings that Atlantis was going to sink beneath the sea in punishment for its wickedness, but these were not heeded-- except by small groups who fled the island, taking with them some of the culture and the magic of Atlantean civilization and preserving them for the future. These groups were called "seedbearers"; John Michael Greer wrote at length about them some years ago. The seedbearers of Atlantis are the exact analogue to Noah and his family.

By paying attention to the story of Noah, we can know with some certainty the next act in the story that our own society is living out. The rains have started, and the floodwaters are rising. The institutions and cultural goods of the last century are being swept away. 

Our task, if we wish to make it through the next few years with our souls and our humanity intact, is not to join one partisan side or the other. It's not to hate people who get vaccinated, refuse to get vaccinated, wear masks, or refuse to wear masks. It's to build arks. We each need an ark for ourselves, and our own souls. And we need a larger ark for our family, and another ark for every community that we wish to see still existent when the floodwaters finally recede sometime between now and 2030. Ultimately, that's what I'm trying to do with this blog. It's been clear to me for a long time that the Catholic Church is one of the institutions that quite simply isn't going to make it. It's led by a faction of liberal modernists who are hell-bent on destroying the Church and its traditions and replacing them with a kind of bland liberal chaplaincy that will have the same attendance level as the Episcopal Church within a decade or so. Its opposition, meanwhile, is a collection of ultra-insular "Traditionalists" who spend most of their time shrieking about demons and freemasons and LARPing the 1940s. The rains have been falling for decades, and the floodwaters are rising. But I believe that, just as in the case of Atlantis, there is something vital there that can still be saved, and so I'm making it my mission to help save it. 

Where will you build your ark, and with what will you fill it?

Let's return to the Gospel of Matthew for a bit today, shall we?

The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 10, Verses 16-23 reads:


Sheep and Wolves

In his allegory of the cave, Plato memorably described the experience of those who had made the journey upward into the sunlight, upon returning into the darkness of the cave. Although their actual knowledge of the real world is far advanced than their fellows, who have remained in the cave and spend their days staring at shadows, they seem like idiots as they grope about in the darkness, and they can't even manage to count the shadows on the wall! 

This is very much the experience that Jesus is describing here. And notice where we are in the narrative: Jesus has just finished delivering his Great Teaching in chapters 7-9. From his disciples' perspective, they have just been through an initiation into the Mysteries of Jesus. That initiation took place on the top of a mountain, representing the ascent into the spiritual world. Now, Jesus is sending his disciples back into the every day world, which is the world of Plato's cave.  

The Spirit Speaking In You

That the disciples are Initiates is shown by this, that Jesus tells them that the Spirit will speak through them. In Plato, this is called keeping one eye always on the True Sun, even while sojourning in the cave of shadows. It's also a very effective practice, if you should find yourself in a positions such as Jesus's disciples are in-- or in any difficulty in life. The simple act of putting aside your conscious mind and asking God to speak through you, or work through you, can be a very powerful one. I sometimes say a simple prayer like "God, I trust that you have put me in [X Difficult Circumstance] for a reason. I trust you and offer up this [obnoxious, difficult, painful or unpleasant situation] to you. Act through me, Oh Lord." It's simpler and often far more effective than a more elaborate prayer or ritual.

The Children Shall Rise

In our time, when family drama is more the norm than otherwise, but also not especially harmful, it's easy to miss what Jesus is saying when he talks about setting brother against brother and children against their parents.

In Jesus's time, families were more like microcosms of cities, and cities were families writ large, and both were essentially religious organizations. Cities were gathered around their central temple, families around their altar or sacred fire. This wasn't that different for Jews than for Gentiles; the Jews had different sorts of spirits they were allowed to interact with at home, and different rules governing their relationship with their deity. But when Jesus tells us, in one passage, that he is going to tear apart families and destroy cities, it's necessary to read it politically--

But absolutely not in the modern sense! 

One of the ways that modern people go wrong when reading Plato is that they take his discussions about how to organize a city and they imagine trying to govern an American suburb according to his prescriptions. That makes very little sense, and the image it produces is rather horrific. American cities are not ancient Greek cities; the latter are more akin to what we call families and churches than to towns. 

From an occult perspective, then, what Jesus is saying is that he is going to reorganize the spiritual landscape. Every city has its guardian spirits, and its collective soul-- some of those will accept Jesus, but others will not. The same is true for families and individuals. In the end, the spiritual landscape of our world will be re-organized along new lines. That reorganization-- in which, let us remember, some of the spirits of the world will be gathered in to Christ, while others will not-- did not end with Jesus's resurrection; as he tells us in this chapter, at that point it had barely begun. It is still going on today. 

Epiphany

Happy Epiphany!

The Feast of Epiphany commemorates the visitation of the 3 magi to the infant Jesus; it is the last official day of Christmas (the Christmas Season as a whole goes until Candlemas on February 1st.)

Traditional Observations

There are many old traditions and customs associated with Epiphany, as there have been with the rest of our Feast Days. Many of these have very similar themes; one regularly sees house blessings, various forms of "trick-or-treating," divinations, and the crowning of child-kings and boy-bishops.

Epiphany in particular is associated with cakes in which a small bean or coin is placed; whoever discovers the bean becomes the king of the Epiphany.

Epiphany is also a day for giving gifts. Sometimes the gifts are said to come from the magi; other times a Santa Claus-type of figure provides them. In Italy and in the Italian diaspora, gifts are distributed by a witch called La Befana; in some households, it's the role of the youngest daughter to put on a witch's hat and pass out presents.

Epiphany is also associated with the blessing of waters. It is still the custom among the Orthodox to bless the waters during Epiphany; whether those waters were lakes, rivers, or the ocean. This includes tossing a cross into the water, which the gathered parishioners then compete to find. When I lived in Santa Barbara, there was a large Greek Orthodox Church and, nearby, an Antiochian Orthodox Church-- the "Antiochian Orthodox Church" is the American Orthodox Church for all intents and purposes, and its members tend to be converted American Protestants. Members of both churches would gather at Leadbetter Beach at Epiphany, bless the ocean and dive for the cross.

It's worth noting that cold water has strong powers of magical purification which are used in many traditions. You'll find the Greeks at the beginning of the Iliad purifying themselves after offending Apollo by casting themselves into the sea; you'll find modern Japanese Shintoists doing the same sort of thing with waterfalls. Give it a try yourself sometime, if you have a body of water available, and you'll find the effects immediate and remarkable (and all the more so if you preface your swim with a suitable prayer).

In Greece it was also the custom to take ashes from a hearth in which cedarwood has been burning since Christmas to a blessed river, "baptize" the ashes," and then scatter the ashes at the four corners of vineyars and at the foot of apple and fig trees. Similar customs prevailed as far away as England, where men would drink a toast of cider before the largest apple tree, and sing the following find old song:

Today, the best known Epiphany devotion is the blessing of the home with water and consecrated chalk. As we discussed yesterday, that's what we're going to do today. If you have blessed chalk already, that's what you'll need; if not, you can refer back to the ritual I posted yesterday.

The Blessing of the Home

1. Begin in the usual way, with the following twist-- if you can, you should set up your prayer space either in the kitchen or in some place representing the center of the home to you.


This stands for Caspar Melchior Balthazar, the names of the 3 magi. And it also stands for Christus mansionem benedicat-- or Christ bless this house.

You can then bless the home with holy water; the water will have an added effect if it is blessed today (or yesterday).

A blessed Eiphany to one and all!

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New Year's Day

Happy New Year!

The first of January has been celebrated as the beginning of the year since the time of Julius Caesar. January, of course, is named for Janus, the god of doorways. Janus has two faces: One looks back into the year now gone by, and the other looks forward into the year to come. Nomen est omen, as we've said again and again; the names of things are always significant. When the old pagan world ended, many of its customs and many of its names stuck around. It is our view here that these things never happen by accident-- if the name of January endured, then, in a sense, Janus himself endured. In 2,000 years of Christianity no one has succeeded in renaming the months named for Janus, Februros, Mars, Juno, Julius or Augustus, nor the days named for the Sun and Moon, Tyr, Odin, Thor, Frigg and Saturn (or Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus in Latin countries). That their names endure shows that their power endures, and it must be by the will of God that this is so; and if it is no longer appropriate to offer sacrifices to them, we still honor their work in the world in other ways.

Traditional Practices

The New Year's Party is probably the best known and best kept of our traditional New Year's observances. The New Year's Party is very old and quite traditional. In earlier times, it was followed by a day of visiting-- on New Year's Day the doors of every house were flung open and no visitor could be turned away. This custom endured in parts of the United States until well into the 19th century, after which time the refinement of higher proof alcohols led to doors being locked until at least noon on New Year's Day.

Where I was raised in Pennsylvania, it was the custom to eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day, and it was well known that anyone who failed to do so was in for a year of bad luck. My grandmother was not the most enthusiastic cook, and so in my home this took the form of canned sauerkraut and spam or hot dogs, which one was still nevertheless required to eat. (In fairness to Grandma, she did bring up 13 children, starting in the last days of the Eisenhower Administration and continuing through George W. Bush's second term; at that point you'd probably open up a can of spam yourself. I'm not at that point yet, myself-- while it feels like I have 13 or 14 children, I keep counting them and coming up with only 2. So today I'll be making pork and sauerkraut using my homemade 'kraut and this recipe, which ought to be good as it claims to be the best pork and sauerkraut ever.

And then there's the New Year's Resolution. This is a very good custom, which traditionally took the form of serious reflection on the year gone by and the setting intentions for the year to come. These days, however, it seems mostly to consist of the buying of gym memberships which are used for 2 weeks and paid for for 6 months. Any time we participate in a collective activity, we are influenced by the energies of that activity, and the patterns that play out in others tend to play out in us. For this reason, I strongly recommend avoiding this kind of New Year's Resolution, as the pattern built up around it is one of abandonment and failure. There is, however, a better way to tap into the renewing energy of the New Year, which I'll come to shortly.

Feast of the Mother of God, Feast of the Circumcision

For many centuries, it was the practice in the Roman Church to observe January 1st as the Feast of the Circumcision, Conferral of the Holy Name of Jesus, and Octave of the Nativity. It is still the Feast of the Circumcision in the Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. The Roman Church in its wisdom has changed it to the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. While I personally support every effort to magnify the devotion given to Our Lady, I reject the modern Vatican's love of innovation for innovation's sake. Let this day remain the Feast of the Circumcision.



Now, that doesn't make it not a Marian feast as well. Here is the collect for the day:


And here is the Gospel:


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Saint Stephen's Day

Today [which is to say, the 26th of December] is Saint Stephen's Day.

Back at the beginning of Advent, I wrote that it's even harder to imagine Americans partying for 12 days straight than it is to imagine them fasting for 4 weeks. Saint Stephen's Day, the first day after Christmas itself, is not much kept in this country-- indeed, some treat it as the day to take down the Christmas decorations and throw out the tree!

Well, it's high time that changed. Let's talk about Saint Stephen, his traditional observances, and how we might celebrate his Feast.

Stephen, Protomartyr

Saint Stephen was the first Christian martyr. His story is related thusly in the Acts of the Apostles:

Stephen speaks at length, and attempts to persuade the council to accept Jesus. But they refuse:

It is likely that Stephen's veneration goes back to the First Century, and that this is why the story of his martyrdom was detailed at such length in the book of Acts.

Traditional Practices

The traditional practices surrounding St. Stephen's Day are many and interesting. 

In Tyrol, this is traditionally a time for the blessing of water and salt. The water is sprinkled in the fields to avert the influences of witches and evil spirits, and bread dipped in it is given to cattle. Horses are given consecrated salt and grains. Horses were also bled on this day in many regions, back when bleeding was still good for health. In still other regions, horses decked with ribbons were raced about the town, or through the church, and blessed and exorcized by priests. In Sweden, it was the custom at one time to take horses to water at exactly 1:00 in the morning on St. Stephen's Day, with a reward for whoever arrived first.

It was also a common practice on this day for young men to go from town to town, before dawn, singing raucously. For whatever reason, they were given beer or liquor for their trouble, which is a common theme in traditions of this sort.

Of course, it is just this sort of tradition that is preserved in America in the trick-or-treating that we do at Halloween. In earlier times, trick-or-treating was apparently seen as a fine way to celebrate more or less any holiday, and it was an all ages affair. God send the day may come again! (And it may-- I can report that this year, in my neighborhood, some of the men had set up a "medic's tent" where two guys dressed as doctors were handing out "covid shots" to the adults. My "covid shot" consisted of a large plastic syringe full of whiskey. "Make sure to come back for your booster!" they told me.)

In the British Aisles, there was an odd variation on this theme which persisted into the modern era and has survived in certain parts of the Northeastern US. This is the "wren day" custom, in which men dressed in mummer's garb would kill a wren and go door to door demanding money for the poor bird's funeral. The money was then used to throw a party for the entire town.

Suggestions for Practice

With few exceptions, most of us won't have a chance to race our horses about the the village at 1 in the morning, or to dress up as mummer's and bury a wren. That said, we can still incorporate some of the traditional methods of celebrating Saint Stephen's Day.

First, if you have horses, and I know some of you do, this would be a good traditional day to bless them. Give them consecrated bread, salt, and holy water-- and you can consecrate these yourself, if you like. 

Of course, most of us don't have horses. But most of us have family, or friends. So do what they did in the old days-- have a party! Invite your friends and extended family, and continue the Christmas celebration by exchanging gifts outside of the immediate family. 

In my family, Saint Stephen's Day has for a very long time been the day that we get the whole extended family together. Stephen is the patron saint of the family as a whole-- you can tell, because there is a Stephen in every generation. Both of my grandfathers were named Stephen, their eldest sons are named Stephen, and, if you didn't know, my name is also Stephen. Nomen est omen; in our way of looking at things, nothing happens by "coincidence." If the name Stephen appears again and again in a family, this tells us that Saint Stephen himself is present. (Our universal tendency toward argumentativeness is another indicator in this direction.) But you don't need a house full of Stephens to celebrate his feast day in the traditional manner. 

As an aside, when I talk about incorporating older practices, it's emphatically not my goal simply to preserve these. The idea, rather, is to start with what we can as a base-- and let the tradition evolve from there. In the modern world, and especially the modern United States, we've lost a lot of our old traditions. We can't simply re-create them; they are products of their own times, places, and cultures. What we can do is start by re-creating a version of them that is suitable for our own time-- and then, critically, let them evolve from there. Tradition is not and has never been a static thing. It's like a river, flowing from the dead, to the living, to the unborn. Our great problem today is that the river has been dammed. To try to simply re-create the past, as though it were a static thing which never changed, would be like accepting the dam and simply going and swimming in the artificial lake created by it. No-- we should, rather, seek to break the dam, and let the river flow again from the dead, to us, to our children.

Saint Stephen's Day Meditation

We should also take the time to honor Saint Stephen by reflection on his story and his martyrdom. 

Today in meditation, read the discussion of Saint Stephen from the Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6 and 7. Enter into meditation in the usual way, and explore these ideas in your mind. This can take any form you like-- You can visualize the martyrdom as an event taking place before your eyes. You can contemplate the meaning of his martyrdom, or of any particular element of the story-- what does it mean that his face shown like an angel? What is the meaning of the long discussion of Jewish history which precedes his martyrdom in Acts 7? You can use either of these methods, or something else entirely. Follow the thought for as long as possible, and then release it with a prayer to God, and perhaps a resolution to face the challenges of life as Stephen faced his accusers. Close the meditation in the usual way. 

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Christmas Eve

Today is Christmas Eve! This means we've nearly made it.

Now, unlike the Feast Days of half-forgotten saints, the celebration of Christmas Eve is one tradition that most of us do keep and keep well. For this reason I don't think I need to spend much time telling you what it is. Instead, I'd like to discuss the traditional observance of Christmas Eve and share some thoughts on the the meaning of Christmas from an esoteric perspective.

A Day of Fasting

Christmas Eve was traditionally a fast day. In fact, on Christmas Eve, the Advent Fast was at its most severe, beginning at sunrise and lasting through the day until the Vigil Mass. In many different countries, the fast was broken after mass with a very specific traditional meal.

In my own family, we preserved at least a remnant of this custom. When I was young, Christmas Eve was a workday; there were many children in the house and we were all set to various work-stations, cleaning or icing cookies or stringing popcorn. We weren't given much in the way of food besides a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. The day ended with the Christmas Vigil Mass-- midnight, when we were older; an earlier service, when the youngest children could not have made it that late. Upon returning from mass, my grandmother would serve up a beef stew she'd been cooking in a colossal pot on the stove all day, cookies were broken out, and beer and wine flowed freely; the tree was lit and decorated, carols sung.

These days, especially if your kids weren't raised with this idea, a severe fast on Christmas Eve is probably difficult. I would suggest, though, doubling down on any technology-fasting you're doing. (For me, by the way, this especially means avoiding social media and any form of online news or political discussion!)

A Reading from the Holy Gospel

Reading the Christmas story together as a family from Saint Luke's Gospel is a very nice way to close the day. Let's read together, and talk a bit about what we're really seeing in this passage.


Every story in the Bible can be read on many levels, and each level itself contains many layers of meaning. Notice the opening: Caesar has ordered a census of the entire world. In ancient times, a census was no mere work of bureaucracy. Every ancient city conducted a regular census as a religious rite. At Rome, it took place every five years; at Athens, it was an annual affair. Ancient cities, you must know, were not random agglomerations of people. They were religious institutions, gathered around a temple, and presided over not by men but by the city's gods. No man, then, was an island, nor could he think of himself as such. Religion pervaded the whole of life, and there was nothing like what we call the "secular sphere." The father was the head of the religion of his household, and a member of the religion of his extended family, his clan, and his tribe. if he was a citizen, he was a member of the collective body of the city. And that means that the sins of any citizen impacted every citizen. In such circumstances, it was necessary to regularly gather all the citizens together, and collectively atone for the sins of the city as a whole, re-uniting the people of the city to the will of its presiding gods. This gathering was called the census; it began with the gathering of every citizen outside the city's walls and their registration with the censor. The presence of any stranger, or the absence of any citizen, would be disastrous; the censor's power was, therefore, very great at this time.

And so our Gospel begins with a census. But this isn't just any census-- now the entire world is going to be enrolled. And this means that the entire world is going to make its atonement-- not to the presiding gods of a house or a hearth or a clan, or even an entire city. No-- for the world to make its collective atonement, it must re-unite itself to the will of the God of the entire world.

When we fast through advent and fast severely on Christmas Eve; and when we then come together with our families, and read the story, and attend mass if it is available to us, we re-enact this atonement in the little worlds of our own homes, communities, and churches. And if we do so, we are then blessed the next day with the birth of Christ.

Merry Christmas Everybody!

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Saint Thomas's Day

Today is the Feast of Saint Thomas. This is another day little celebrated in America, but one with many fascinating traditional customs, worthy of a revival. 

Saint Thomas himself was, as you know, one of Jesus's apostles. After the Resurrection, Thomas made his way to India, where a community of Saint Thomas Christians exists to this day. He remains the patron saint of Indian and Syrian Christians to this day. Of course the Gospel attributed to him is very old, and may in fact pre-date the Canonical Gospels.

His Feast Day was one of many days during this time of year especially devoted to children. Given that, it seems appropriate to quote one of my favorite passages from the Gospel of Thomas:


Traditional Celebrations

In Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Clement Miles opens the section on Saint Thomas's Day by simply saying: "Many and various are the customs and beliefs associated with the feast of St. Thomas." In Denmark, it was the last day of school for the year; the children would bring their masters an offering of candles, and he would provide them with a feast. More interestingly, in some areas the children were made masters of their own schools for a day; testaments to their scholarship were written out, and they were given titles like "Pope" or Emperor." In some areas, the children would lock their schoolmaster out of the building, or even tie him to his chair; he had to buy back his freedom with punch and cakes. In other regions, the schoolmaster provided his charges with hens, and let them chop their heads off.

During the age of Christendom (the "Middle Ages"), there were many such festivals, known collectively as "feasts of misrule." What they all had in common was that ordinary social customs were suspended, or upended; lords served their serfs and parents their children. These sorts of customs are, or were, found in many parts of the world. At Rome, this is how the god Saturn was celebrated at his great feast of Saturnalia, which fell during what is now the Christmas season. These customs have a re-balancing effect on society, allowing grievances to come out and tensions to relax.

St. Thomas's Day was also a good time for magic of various kinds. In some regions, divination was practiced of the same sort as on St. Lucy's Day, with girls performing various rituals to learn the names of their future husbands. In others, St. Thomas himself turned up in the churchyards, riding a flaming chariot. Then all the dead men whose name had been Thomas in life rose from their graves, and accompanied the saint to the cross, which now glowed red with power. At home, the people listened for the sound of the chariot. When it was heard, they would pray to the saint for health and protection.

St Thomas's Day was a "smoke night" in Austria-- one of the nights in which the house was blessed with incense. Elsewhere, it was also a good night to bless the animals, especially the cows. In certain parts of Germany the cows and their barn were blessed with holy water and consecrated salt by the father of the household. "St Thomas preserve thee from all sickness," he prays as he sprinkles each cow with salt. In other areas, the cows are fed with a blend of consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to avert evil and illness.

Suggestions for Practice

The customs traditionally associated with this feast day are many, and quite different from one another. Some of them are probably unavailable to us in modern America-- our villages won't be crowning a boy bishop, nor will most of our children have a chance either to behead a hen or to lock out their schoolmasters. But with some creativity, we can catch the spirit of Thomas's Feast Day celebrations of old-- and add some new ideas of our own.

So here are a few possibilities:

1. The Feast of Misrule. This requires a bit of preparation-- or, at least, mental preparation. But if you have children, this might be a good day to grant them-- well, if not the entire day, then a part of it in which they can run the house. (Because I'm a masochist, I just told my ten year old son about this, and suggested that, in the spirit of St. Thomas's Day, he and his baby sister could be in charge of the house tomorrow evening. My only stipulation was that he listen to me discuss the saint at dinner and share in a prayer. He was delighted by the prospect.)

2. Divination. Like Saint Lucy's Day, this is a good traditional day for divination practices.

3. Meditation. Today, consider taking some aspect from the traditions of Saint Thomas as a theme for meditation. If you are an orthodox practitioner, the appearance of Jesus to Thomas depicted in the icon at the top of this page would be appropriate. If you're willing to dip into Gnostic ideas, consider the passage from the Gospel of Thomas I quoted above.

4. Blessing the House and the Animals. Most of us don't have cattle or barns, but we can still bless our homes and what animals we do have on this day. Holy water for blessing can be found at most Catholic or Orthodox churches. The stuff you find at Catholic churches these days is rather weak, as the ritual used to bless it was deliberately hobbled during the "reforms" of the last century. Weak doesn't mean useless, though; I just find its energy rather thin and pale. If you don't have it, you can take an ordinary cup of water (rainwater is best, but your tap will do), make the sign of the cross over it, and say a prayer like "May this water be blessed and become an agent of divine grace in the service of Thy mysteries, to drive away evil spirits and dispel sickness, so that every-thing in the homes and other buildings of the faithful that is sprinkled with this water may be rid of all uncleanness and freed from every harm. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."

A Ritual for the Censing of a House

You will want to use good quality incense for this. Any combination of frankincense, myrrh, sandalwood, or benzoin, will do nicely. Palo santo sticks are also good-- you can use them by themselves, but I also like to melt a couple of grains of frankincense resin onto one. If you are using stick incense, good choices are Korean jing kwan or any of the daily incenses offered by Shoyeido.

Set up your prayer space as usual, and put an extra bit of incense-- a stick or loose resin-- in the center of your altar or working table.




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Saint Lucy

Today is Saint Lucy's Day, a feast little kept in America, even among Catholics. Historically, it was celebrated throughout much of the Old World. Let's talk about Saint Lucy, and some of the traditional customs of her feast day, and then discuss how we might engage with her in our magical practice.

The Life of Saint Lucy

Saint Lucy lived in Syracuse during the time of the Emperor Diocletian's persecution of the Christians. A Christian herself, she dedicated her virginity to the Church. Unfortunately, when she was young her father died, and her mother decided to find a husband for her; she therefore had her betrothed to a wealth young man from a pagan family. Before we condemn her mother, it's worth remembering those times, "property" was still a kind of religious institution, held by males in a particular family line; it consisted of tending a family sacred fire, and making offerings to the spirits of the family's ancestors. Lacking a male head of household, women were more or less out of luck.

Now, it happened that Lucy's mother had a bleeding condition, which had troubled her for quite some time. Either Lucy's mother or Lucy herself--stories vary-- made a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Agatha; in either case, St. Agatha visited Lucy in a dream and told her that her mother's faith would heal her. Lucy's mother was promptly healed, and agreed to give away all of her considerable wealth, even as Jesus enjoins his followers in the Gospels.

Word of this reached Lucy's fiancée, who was less than pleased, as the wealth that Lucy's mother gave away had necessarily to include Lucy's dowry. He ratted the girl out to Paschasius, the governor of Syracuse, who had her arrested.

While imprisoned, Lucy foretold the death of Paschasius and the end of Diocletian's persecutions. Enraged, the governor had her eyes torn out, and sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel. When her guards attempted to take her to the brothel, however, they found they were unable to move her. Resolving to burn her instead, they heaped wood about her, but it refused to light. Finally, one of the guards thrust his sword through her throat, and it seems that did the trick. One very often finds these two or three part deaths in the lives of the saints, and I suspect a close examination of them in meditation would be very fruitful. At her funeral, it was discovered that her eyes had been miraculously restored; of course, her prophecies later came true, as Paschasius met his end, and so did the purges of Diocletian. 

Traditional Celebrations

Over the long centuries of Christendom many different customs sprang up around Saint Lucy's Day. In Sweden it was called "Little Yule" and marked the beginning of the Christmas festival. There it was the custom for a girl to dress in a white robe with a red sash, wear a crown in which 9 lit candles were placed, and wake everyone up early with coffee and a special song. The family then had a fine breakfast together in a room lit with candles, and even the household animals were given special treats. 

In Sicily St. Lucy's Day is celebrated with torchlit processions and bonfires. We can see that one of the main themes of her celebration is the presence of light. Lucy's name is a cognate of the Latin lux, meaning light, and it's been speculated that this is the reason for the focus on light during her festival. I would suggest, rather, that two things never resemble one another by "coincidence," but only because they participate in a common energy. Our forebears, wiser than we, knew this, and so knew that God would not have given Lucy a name to remind us of Light for no reason.

Other St. Lucy's Day customs relate to divination in particular. In Denmark, girls traditionally made use of St. Lucy's Day to discover the names of their future husbands. In Austria, it was a time to cense the house to ward off witchcraft. Miles also describes a very interesting St. Lucy's Day tradition from the same region:In America, immigrant communities from Sweden, Sicily and elsewhere have preserved versions of the St. Lucy's Day custom in certain parts of the country, particularly the Midwest. Unlike the Christmas Tree, however, these traditions haven't spread beyond those communities into the country as a whole, and now they are in danger of dying out altogether as the patchwork of European cultures that marked the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries continues to fade into the crumbling postindustrial gray of the 21st. The question before us is whether we can revive the older traditions, or, what would in my view be much better, re-work them into something suitable for our own time. And, I would add, for my countrymen (who compose the majority of this blog's readership), rework them into something uniquely American, rather than European. 

Suggestions for Practice on Saint Lucy's Day

We can see from the foregoing that there are two major themes associated with St. Lucy's Day. These are the celebration of light in the darkness of Winter, which is, of course, the major theme of the Christmas season as a whole and the practice of divination. Of course, these are not at all unrelated. Rather than vain or anxious fortune-telling, the true purpose of divination is to open our inner eye to the Hidden Light of the spiritual world, in which Time does not run the way it does here.

In meditation, today, we can contemplate the life of Saint Lucy, asking for the courage to face death as she did, and the wisdom to know hidden things, as she did. 

We can also use this day as an opportunity for divination. Sitting at our altars, with a candle lit, we might imagine that a new light begins to enter the world today, bringing with it the first hint of the year to come. Taking a moment to be aware of the light, we might then make our divinations, asking what we might need to know about the year ahead of us. 

Now, many of you already read tarot cards or geomancy, or practice horary astrology, and these methods will do just fine. For those of you who don't have a regular practice of divination, you might consider taking down a Bible, asking for a particular verse to guide you in the year to come, and opening it at random. 

Now, it needs to be said that divination can be, and often is, misused; this is one of the reasons that many spiritual traditions warn against it. Its proper use is best described in the book of Acts, Chapter 1, Verses 23-26. In this scene, the apostles are trying to figure out who should replace Judas, the traitor: