​The Arte Of Witchcraft Part 1 : LIMINAL SPACE.

The Arte Of Witchcraft Part 1 : LIMINAL SPACE.... A blog from 40 years’ experience…

Wow! I AM getting old! My magickal journey started when I was 11 years old. Back in the early 1980’s…. And now after 40 years of practice I thought I might share a few important tips and pointers.

Crowley said “Let success be thy proof”… The interwebs, social media and so on are FULL of self-proclaimed “great and powerful witches” and “powerful learned magicians”… Many are full of shit… Or their lives are a dumpster fire, or they are broke as fuck and always begging for money… That is not me. I have LIVED!!… I left school at 16 with just a high school diploma, no college…. Yet ended up in an international IT executive career that gave me the opportunity to live in Holland, Belgium, Germany, the UK and USA… I have visited more countries than those I have not visited… Got to fly on private jets… Led teams of 120 people with an 80 million dollar yearly budget… Enjoyed a 6 figure salary. Was able to retire at 45 .... Then started Artes and Craft, our witchcraft store and witchcraft supplies online business, which after 10 years is now considered one of the best in the USA… I have a relationship with my wife that most find enviable, I have children and grandchildren, I am the high priest of my wife’s well known coven that has been running some 15 years in Michigan (after she moved from Massachusetts where it ran for more decades previously). I was Master of an OTO body (Ordo Templi Orientis – Crowley’s magickal organization) … I say all of this not in hubris to boast – but to demonstrate that I have been using witchcraft, wicca, ceremonial magick and pagan ritual for over 40 years… And certainly, I have no issues or problems with prosperity magick, or love magick, or any issues at all with manifesting my will.

Now it is time to give back… And in this series of blogs will discuss that which I believe are the “keys” to a successful magickal practice. Of course, that does not mean what works for me will work for you, everyone’s path is their own, and spell casting and spell work and the energy we put into manifesting our desires is very different for everyone.

But I will share what worked for me in spellcrafting and ritual pagan magick.. And WHY I think things work… As there are some key elements… As a friend of mine in dear old pagan Glastonbury in the UK always says… There is an underlying “tech” in magick… Building blocks if you will… Core elements, that if mastered, can be applied to all paths of witchcraft, wicca, and pagan magick practices.

So enough about me and my journey…. Let’s start…

In this PART ONE witchcraft blog I am going to talk about liminal space, and why it’s important…

Back before wicca, we are talking about pre-wicca traditional cottage witchcraft of England here… There really wasn’t degree based “covens”… In all honesty, much of wicca and modern witchcraft borrows heavily from Victorian Ceremonial magick and Grimoire based medieval magick mixed with a little surviving folk magick. We DO know that pellars, horse whisperers, hedge riders, cunning men and women, village “nana’s” and other forms of pre-wicca witchcraft held “liminal space” as a key and important consideration.

So what is liminal space?

Simply put – it is a place that is neither one place or another… A place in between… A special place where worlds touch… Where magick WORKS…

Much modern magick works by casting a circle, or having a temple space… And that’s fine… (more on this later)… But in actual pre-wicca traditional witchcraft the witch would visit a “liminal space”… The top of a hill where the sky and earth meet… A seashore where land and water meet… A clearing in a forest… These places would also be chosen depending on the energy of the place… How they FELT… So a place that felt bad, with a sense of death and decay, such as a swamp or bog, would be used for baneful work such as cursing, a cemetery or place of graves would be for working with ancestors and the dead, a place that felt peaceful and good would be used for healing, a place of majesty or power such as the top of a rocky hill or cliff would be for communing with the divine… Here the witch would do their work with the appropriate energy, maybe scratching a circle in the ground with their staff or walking stick or just by working in the place. This is why stone circles were positioned where they are… Or certain sites were chosen for sacred groves… Its all energy.

And this is why I talk about “keys” or “building blocks”. An old and underlying idea of magick is that by making something special, or believing that something is special… IT BECOMES SPECIAL AND IS SPECIAL.. This is why witchcraft tools, such as an athame or wand or sword are important… Something that is made ritually FOR ritual purposes… That is then anointed and sanctified in ritual… And used ONLY for ritual by the practitioner… Then it becomes special, magick, powerful.

Crowley called it “the magickal link” – that in the psychological model of magick we form ideas in our mind, reinforced by will , desire and ritual… So our magick will work if we absolutely believe that the tool we are using has been bestowed with magick properties and therefore magick will happen when the tool is used… Also, as Crowley stated, “using the appropriate tool or force, in the right time, at the right place, in the right way”.

The power of belief is therefore EVERYTHING in magick. Magick is a mind fuck, a head trip… If we believe utterly that if we cast our spell in the right place, in the right way, at the right time with the right tools/correspondences… Then the right results will absolutely follow… Failure is because we did not believe, or entertained doubt or allowed ourselves to doubt that we DID things in the right way… All the trappings of tools, ritual bling, magickal words and rituals – are all reinforcing the very BELIEF that magick requires to work…

Some of the most jaw droppingly powerful magical works I have produced have been done in these liminal places… My favorites are on the high moors of Cornwall, Penwith… The Nine Maidens Stone Circle is my spiritual home and temple, that and the high moors of Burns Down, an ancient gathering place of Cornish witches high above the Conish coastal village of Zennor…

Although highly, recommended, it is not always possible or practical to visit a sacred liminal space… And this is where we get to modern ritual witchcraft.

Casting a circle is therefore a modern way to create a liminal space. Janet and Stuart Farrah described magick as working on the Astral planes first, which then manifests next on the earthly plane.. And that casting a circle is like going up in an elevator to the astral..

Casting a circle creates a bubble insulated from the mundane gross ordinary world where magick is possible. Therefore a cast circle is not of the ordinary world but is a place where the mundane and astral meet. These ideas most certainly came from vistorian Ceremonial Magick of Crowley and the Golden Dawn.. Which used the qabalah heavily… In the qabalah we are in “Malkuth” – the kingdom, the lowest plane of existence… The everyday world, the earth and therefore the element of earth… Ceremonial ritual causes you again to “rise on the planes” just like an elevator and visit different spiritual spheres and planes. The first of which, above earth,is Yesod, the sphere of the moon, and the sphere of dreams, astral travel, divination and so on…

When a witch casts a circle they are taught to project energy, typically through a tool depending on the tradition, such as a wand or athame. They visualize and more importantly FEEL energy pouring forth and creating a circle, more than a circle, a sphere, around them. Pentacles are often also invoked at the four elemental directions, drawn and visualized in the air, and the elemental watchtowers or guardians called (quarter calls and watchtowers are AGAIN taken for the medieval Elizabethan Enochian magick of Doctor John Dee - sorry, but old school traditional witches did not make pentacles in the air and call quarters – that all ended up in modern magick via Crowley and the Golden Dawn). In Ceremonial Magick you are taught that wether your eyes are open and closed you must SEE the circle and pentacles and guardians, and practice visualization techniques to master this.

The witch similarly “sees” and “feels” the circle during and after casting the circle, they see the pentacles, they see the energy, they feel the guardians and know they are there… This power of belief is the same therefore as performing ritual in an old sacred grove or stone circle… The place is magick as it has been made magick by magick rite and the witch believes so absolutely.

I do most of my personal practice in the Ritual Room at our witchcraft supplies store. Every single time I enter the room, even for mundane reasons like fetching a chair or spare table, I SEE the circle and pentacles I cast and reinforce every time I cast a circle for ritual. If I enter the cast circle I use “the sign of the enterer” and “rend the veil” – special gestures from Crowley’s Thelema and Hermetic Magick that allow me to open and enter the energy field of the circle, and close the mundane world outside. This “acknowledges” the circle and reinforces it in my mind every time I use it.

Andrew Chumbley, the late great magister of the Cultus Sabbati coven of traditional English witchcraft, wrote a highly recommended essay in the Children Of Cain anthology that discusses these ideas further… This sense of sacred place and ritual are reinforced further by our robes, bling of office… Guising – the use of masks to become other… Animalism – wearing furs or horns to become other… These ideas are all intertwined and the same.

In the mundane ordinary world I am Paul, blacksmith, shopkeeper and owner of the witchcraft supplies store called Artes And Craft.. But once I dress up in my ritual robes (or in my case sky clad – I prefer to work magick naked) ..And put on my ritual jewelry… And Rend The Veil and enter my circle… Then I am no longer mundane ordinary Paul… No. Instead, I immediately become Serpentarius, initiated high priest of Moonfire of the Order Of Ganymede, Perfect Initiate and Knight Of The East in the Ordo Templi Orientis, he who at midnight one Beltane eve stood naked on the witch rocks high on Burns Down and offered my life in a pact with the Horned One in return for the right to work magick. And my circle is where the magick is worked by rite and right.

In the next part we will extend this idea and the power of belief to the “Statement Of Intent” – sadly overlooked by many modern practitioners… A bold proclamation of who and what you are and what your will is at the very start of a witchcraft rite….