Sorita d'Este

Sometimes when I think of the Orphic Oath ie. “I am a Child of Earth and Starry Heavens, but my race is of Heaven alone…” I wonder, why they forgot to include “Fire” in there somewhere.   I admit it, I am a pyromaniac.  I make no excuses for that, I love fire, I love setting fire to things and watch it burn and I love sitting by an open fire – big or small, it makes me feel happy and no matter about the scientific explanations for it, fire is inherently magical.  To quote Theodore Roszak “Unless the eye catch fire, the god will not be seen”. 

Fire was described by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as being the universal cause,  when he was writing in the 6th century BCE. He believed that fire was ‘intelligent’. Many hundreds of years later this view would still be echoed through the archives of time in the Chaldean Oracles of Zoroaster.  It is a masculine element, associated with the concept of “The Word” (Logos) and in the physical macrocosm it is most obviously manifest in as the Sun in the sky.   Fire is the great transformer, whilst being in some ways the least obvious in the physical world around us (after all air, water and earth are all more physically manifest) the manifestation of fire is that of light, caused by the light of the Sun and enabling us to see and for life on Earth to flourish and grow. 

Its creative and destructive power is contained within every tiny spark and flame.  Right now parts of the world are experiencing extreme heatwaves and are facing fierce forest firest, whilst here in the UK we are experiencing a “mini-ice age” as the ground is covered in snow and ice, and we (especially humans) have to rely on fire for warmth and protection.   Fire is an element which embodies the concept of control very well, reminding us that venturing into the wonderful world of the mystical, we need to find a balance and continiously strive towards perfect, to avoid burning our fingers whilst at the same time keeping warm enough.

 Sweet fire the sire of muse, my soul needs this;
I want the one rapture of an inspiration.
O then if in my lagging lines you miss…  [Hopkins]

Its a new year, and a new decade!   And let us make it a beautiful one, full of aspiration, creativity and learning, full of love and friendship and all things good and happy. 

It might not come as a huge suprise to those readers who know of the passion I have for the Goddess Hekate, that I should also have a strong interest in that, sometimes obscure, Roman God Janus.  The God who is depicted as being bifrontal, with two faces, facing forwards and backwards and who is often associated with this very time of the year for that reason – gazing forward into the new year and backwards onto what had been achieved and experienced during the previous year.   Like Hekate, Janus is associated with doorways and gateways, guarding and protecting in the process, as he is able to watch bothways.  He is the personification of that doorway through which we all must pass from one place to another. 

This link between Hekate and Janus has been established for some time, in the 5th century CE Proclus wrote a hymn to Hekate and Janus, which is absolutely stunning.  A good translation thereof was published by Stephen Ronan in his excellent work “The Goddess Hekate” and with his permission we reproduced it also in our book Hekate Liminal Rites which was published last year.    To inauguarate this new decade on my website & blog then, I will start the year with:

“Hail, many-named Mother of the Gods
whose children are fair
Hail, mighty Hekate of the Threshold,
And hail to you also Forefather Janus,
Imperishable Zeus
Hail to you Zeus most high.
Shape the course of my life with luminous Light
And make it laden with good things…”

[Proclus' Hymn to Hekate and Janus, translation by Stephen Ronan. Full text available in The Goddess Hekate by Stephen Ronan or Hekate Liminal Rites by Sorita d'Este and David Rankine]

Avalonia recently published Kim Huggens’ anthology From a Drop of Water which contains 17 essays by a wonderful combination of modern esoteric writiers, pagan scholars and magical practitioners.  All the essays, though written from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, touch on the concept of “water” in religious, magical, spiritual and religious symbolism.  The contributors explore some of [...]

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon [...]

Last night, the lovely Karagan from BlogTalk Radio’s “WitchTalk” program once again interviewed me. We had endless technical glitches at the start of the show which meant that we had to abort the show and start again, but due to the way things were set up we had to start two and a half hours [...]

Karagan of WitchTalk Radio (on BlogTalkRadio, an internet radio service) will be talking to me again this evening.  The topic this time is The Moon, The Sun and the Magic of Equilibrium.  We will be talking about the heavenly bodies in magic, especially the magic I am passionate about and about the importance of having [...]

As the darkness and cold continues to descend on us here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a great time to catch up with reading and studies!  It would also seem that in the last few weeks more reviews of books I have worked on, and other forms of feedback on my work is being [...]