For anyone interested in a few detail photographs of the altar mural featured in my recent “Underpainting” video, here is a little gallery of semi-decent shots! The room is quite small which means the mural is difficult to capture within a single frame despite being very easily taken in, in person. This is probably for the best from the perspective of magickal integrity… it is, after all, intended to flank my altar! At any rate, I have included the Makertube link for the video below (via the ad-free, collective, non-profit from France – PeerTube)!
Here is the video…
AND here is some bonus cute kitty ‘content’ courtesy of Gurgi:
So, I’m in the middle of a massive change right now and, at the same time, I have also recently done myself the (mixed) favour of getting two full days of colour-work done for a tattoo that covers almost a quarter of my body…
Suffice it to say I’m hecking tired and I’m gonna stay that way for a bit and I did it to myself and that’s what really hurts >_<.
To make up for the lack of posts – but *not* the lack of creativity and general witchery – this post essentially contains a photo dump of (some) recent projects and artistic goings on amidst ::wooooooo:: big change ::woooooooo:: ^_^
Recent shots of my desk – homemade beeswax candles, card readings, and musical practice. You may recognise the first image as the thumbnail for my most recent video post. Terribly cringey and an algorithmic shot in the foot… sorrynotsorry!Before and after mending a rip in my skirt (not pictured is the black cotton backing I incorporated into the stitching) & some homemade earrings (paper layers, glue, varnish; real wishbones, cleaned and varnished; paper mache clay, gold paint, varnish.)Recent shots of glamour altar (including perfumes, paper mache clay horns, and ultraviolet pigments) & a shot of the colours my tattoo artist was mixing and blending directly onto my skin!Adventures in making my own nail polish colours! Ultraviolet green (in various layer combinations)… I called it “Poison Apple” but my partner wants to call it either “Mutant Ninja Ooze” or “Aggressively Green”… thoughts?Random OOTD shots of the general vibe I’ve beeen going for these days! Complete with Evenstar & glow in the dark bugs and sex dice! ^_^
That’s all for now folks. Have fun storming the castle!!!
I have been working on categorising my poetry. I knew there were a few themes that, in general, a lot of my poetry might fall under… but I have spent the last week or so slowly charting, dating, accounting for and making sure I had back ups of my poetry and the first realisation that came out of this is that I have written over 70 poems since the beginning of 2021.
There are almost no poems before that until you travel back about 10 years.
Turns out field-working autistic burnout and shuffling personal care away from heavily medicated *misdiagnoses* brings the poet back out in a person… but I digress.
What is challenging about assigning organised and uniform categories to my poetry is that, of course, there is organic overlap. This is precisely what it is to be an archivist (i.e. why we don’t rearrange physically what we categorise intellectually) …Or if I were to try and write up a descriptive summary of each poem and derive collection schema from there… THAT would be more like the work of a rare books librarian wrangling unique/historic items into DCRM(B) and MARC-XML friendly formats.
…I digressed again.
The point is, it’s tough but I LOVE doing this sort of thing… ad infinitum, it seems.
Here is a pie chart I have constructed and colour-coded to represent the themes and distribution of my poetry as of right now. Representing 71 poems written between January 9th, 2021 and October 15th, 2024. (I’ve written a few more but for various reasons they are not included on this list.)
(Interestingly, there are a few I cannot find copies of though I know I at least have physical copies somewhere. Bad LIS-professional! No cookie!!!)
The colours are loosely significant but the important thing to absorb here is that a) poetry is one of the main ways I channel my anger… especially as an autistic who goes largely non-verbal under social/interpersonal duress and b) I actually think of the Tower Quartet and (Channeled) Anger as subsets of a larger intellectual fonds …which is called “Excavations”. You will see that title in the pie chart as pertaining to a single slice, but really you can also view “Excavations” more broadly as occupying just over 45% of the chart! …The unifying emphasis is on digging deep, getting into the chthonic, and shadow-working my shit… oh, and a little revenge poetry here and there.
The thematics in the rest equally relate to each other pretty intensely. My poetry is always devotional in nature but some poems are more direct forms of near-audible gnosis. This makes sense to me from a mythic perspective as it is (personally) derived from the function of verse, alliteration, sorcery, ‘supplication’, evocation, and so on in medieval Irish literature.
I have made “Death” green mainly to evoke a #deathpositive association – ‘verdure from void’. I could equally (and perhaps should) have made it some kind of gold colour:
“I know you’ll remember me when I’m gone
remember my stories, remember my songs
I’ll leave them on earth, sweet traces of gold
oh, they’re calling me home, they’re calling me home.”
~ “They’re Calling Me Home”, Rhiannon Giddens
I will likely include little blurbs illuminating each category on a basic level whenever I manage to post them.
At any rate, I still need to figure out how to create a poetry gallery where poems that can’t occupy a single slide might appear… Until then, here are some of the poems I’ve written in September and October (minus “Athame”… which I have posted already.)
I suppose this set is all rather on the nose, but the themes of each are as follows: Love, Excavation, Death, Anger, and Anger.
For what it’s worth, I guess.
~ Saoirse.
* Get it? Theme-attics and Scheme-attics? Because it’s a post about poetry thematics and schematics? And I have a thing for sad attics? Ba-dum-tssshhh!!! Genius at it’s finest. I kill me.
As promised, this is Part II of my initial foray into the topic of medieval magic. As a springboard, I will be using a chapter by Mark Williams from the Routledge History of Medieval Magic, titled “Magic in Celtic Lands”. The chapter features examples from Ireland and Wales but, for my purposes, I will focus on Ireland today.
Firstly, what is the impetus for this line of enquiry? The most immediate reason is that I’m obsessed with the middle ages and I function, personally, within ‘the’ Irish mythological framework. Our textual evidence of Irish myth originates or begins in the middle ages in spite of its narrative setting in the Iron Age. Personally, I tend to take the academic view that Irish myth – such as we have it – is medieval literature. More specifically, I’m interested in topics such as the ways in which the format of rosc poetry carries ‘magical’ potency; in Irish mythological tropes around prophecy; the literal singing or chanting component of ‘enchantment’ such as it appears in certain stories; and a certain recurring visual motif involving ‘bird heads’ or bird headed…ness? I’ll get into my thoughts on what this currently means for my magico-spiritual artistic practice toward the end of this post.
Some BRIEF background information… The word “Celtic”, as Mark Williams states, “is a difficult term, precise only when deployed in a linguistic context: it is used in a parallel manner to “Roman” and “Germanic” to denote a major branch of the Indo-European language family.” (123) Scholarship on the topic applies to regions linguistically Celtic whereas popular culture and imagination thinks of places like Ireland and Scotland and so on as ‘celtic lands’ (as Williams words it) or in terms of ‘celtic heritage’. Williams also notes that relating similar motifs between Ireland and Wales and calling them “Celtic” might no longer be done with confidence:
“it is increasingly acknowledged that similarities between the two countries’ literary traditions – formerly taken as evidence for a shared cultural inheritance – may in fact be medieval borrowings or independent innovations. […] The question of what medieval Irish literature in particular owed to the Bible and to the wider European world was a controversial area of critical debate for much of the second half of the last century, and the examination of magic is likely to constellate the issue once again in significant ways. The field of Irish and Welsh magic is therefore excitingly wide open, and a reconsideration of all the surviving records and representations of magical practices is badly needed.” (123)
THAT is exciting!
Dreams of diving headlong into the world of Celtic Magic Academia and never resurfacing aside (for now), I want to discuss some particulars of this chapter that jumped off the page and screamed ‘remember and explore me!’ Firstly, Williams emphasizes the potential for differences between literary magic and historical magical practice. In so doing, he introduces characteristics on the Irish ‘literary druid’ (127) and provides two examples: Cathbad (who we might perceive as ‘good’ or praiseworthy in the the stories, though he tends to get on my nerves) and Mog Ruith, with whom I am less familiar.
“Mog Ruith, in contrast, is a more morally ambiguous figure. In Forbuis Dromma Damghaire, he is Fiachu’s major secret weapon against the forces of Cormac (though Cormac has his own team of druids too), being a miracle-worker possessed of a spectacular repertoire. He can alter his size at will, set things on fire with his breath, cause rains of blood, send people to sleep for long periods and create magical animals which go after enemy champions […] At one point, he puts on a cloak and “bird-headdress” and ascends into the air.” (130)
My eyes nearly fell out when I read that last sentence. Those of you familiar with my youtube channel, you may remember the ritual costume I made for Samhain in which I crafted a bird mask and black linen veil (rather in the style of modern folkloric/pagan pageantry) for the purpose of shapeshifting and affecting change in my personal life and spiritual practice.
My video last Samhain, vlogging the #artwitch process…
I got this idea mainly from associations with the crow and the Morrígan*, my personal obsession with shapeshifting motifs, as well as a specific mention in the foretales of the Táin Bó Cuailgne, as translated by Thomas Kinsella. From Cúchulainn’s training in arms:
“[While on raid for Scáthach, his warrioress mentor] he came back the way he had gone, and met a one-eyed hag in his path. She told him to get out of her way. He said that would leave him no room to pass except the sea-cliff below them. But she begged him to get out of her way. So he let her have the path, except where he clung by his toes. She struck at his big toe as she passed him by, to knock him off the path down the cliff. But he saw her in time and gave his hero’s salmon-leap upward. Then he struck off the hag’s head. She was Eis Enchenn, the bird-headed, mother of the three last warriors to die at his hands. It was to avenge their ruin that she lay in wait for him.” (Kinsella, 33)
These stories are hardly a feminist utopia (just read a few paragraphs in either direction from this point) but – in addition to the one-eyed hag which is a descriptor that exists in other stories, including for the Morrígan, Herself – I was particularly interested in this ‘birdheaded’ detail…is it a kenning? An epithet? Was it literal or metaphorical? It seems important, especially as it occurs in a section of Cúchulainn’s stories that involves so many magically potent martial prophetesses. I don’t yet know how it is phrased in the Old Irish or any specifics about Kinsella’s translation choices here.
Thus, as regards Mog Ruith, I had never encountered an explicit mention of donning a birdheaddress for the purpose of shifting shape or flying before. Yet, from an UPG** perspective, you might say this is what I did for Samhain. I like that but I don’t need it to be objectively ‘true’. I DO need to learn Old Irish and research the heck out of this for the rest of my living days. It has also only further cemented my tendency to merge bird-symbolism and artistic practice. The alchemy of art (including costumery and stitchcraft) is that when we have extant primary evidence from our favoured time periods, we can exist in direct artistic dialogue with them. In my opinion, it makes very fertile ground for personal gnosis.
I have more to say on Mark Williams’ chapter – including another juicy tidbit about the Túatha Dé (god-peoples) and their ‘theological knowledge’ allowing them to occupy a similar ontological category to medieval demons… and how that’s born out in other medieval Irish literature… but this blog post is long enough, I think.
Until next time!
Nerdily yours, Sorsha.
* I don’t use the phrase ‘matron deity’ but I guess you could consider me a ‘devotee’ in so far as I live my life & devotional practice ‘under the auspices of Her wing’ (as I often put it.) In this post, I have used her most well known name… but I’m not necessarily only referring to one Morrígan here. ** Unverified Personal Gnosis
Citations:
Kinsella, Thomas. The Táin: From the Irish Epic Táin Bó Cuailgne. Oxford University Press, 2002. A 2002 reissue of the Oxford Universtiy Press 1970 edition, with illustrations by Louis Le Brocquy.
Page, Sophie, et al. “Magic in Celtic Lands.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, Routledge, Taylor Et Francis Group, London ; New York, New York, 2021, pp. 123–135.
I mentioned in last week’s video (“Who Painted the Lion?” or “Medieval Shadows & Cards of the Year”) that I have begun exploring academic perspectives on medieval magic. The first thing of note is a fairly baseline agreement on the historical distinction between ‘magic’ and ‘witchcraft’ (something we see holds true in the early modern period as well through secondary works by the likes of Ronald Hutton etc.) The second thing to highlight is that, as with most things, this is an entire academic discipline and a developing one. My intention is to pursue the points that interest me and then see how it feels to relate some of that back to my own work as a modern practitioner of ‘medieval-infused’ witchcraft and art magic.
The aim of this post and any others like it (e.g. capering treacherously on the border, with historical research or context on one side and personal gnosis or numinous magic on the Other) is simply to show ‘process’:
How do I gather ideas or inspiration?
When, how, and why does that inform my magick and art?
Why might that lead to further UPG (Unverified Personal Gnosis)?
For now, I’ve started with “The Routledge History of Medieval Magic”, edited by Sophie Page* and Catherine Rider and published in 2019. The main goal of the book is to show the current standing of the field but also to illustrate various directions in which it needs expansion. It’s less an overview of what has come before and more an academic call to action with each chapter serving as useful examples, or signposts, for further research. Yes please!!!
Part I, Chapter I: “Rethinking how to define magic” by Richard Kieckhefer presents some interesting ideas surrounding why magic is difficult to define (even for academics! We’ll steer clear of the choppy waters around definitions of magic and witchcraft in modern practice on this blog!)
Concepts that caught my eye came up as he was establishing his main system of “aggregating terms” vs. “constituitive terms” (pp. 15-16) – i.e. the vague umbrella terms like ‘magic’ vs. better defined component parts. He draws a comparison to the term “mysticism”. Like the word magic, ‘mysticism’ resists attempts at explanation and evokes many different ideas or impressions of what it is.
“A comparison may help. It has long seemed to me useful to think of mysticism […] not as a single phenomenon but rather as a cluster of phenomena that may at times be distinct but tend to become intertwined. There is mystical prayer, mystical relationship and mystical consciousness.” (p. 15)
In the medieval Christian context,
mystical prayer – involves “fervent and intense, highly concentrated, focused prayer, cultivated within the setting of the contemplative or monastic life.”
mystical relationship – Kieckhefer represents through Bernard of Clairvaux or “the German sister books that are deeply steeped in “theoerotic” relationship […] with Christ.”** This is the view in which one might ‘burn with love’ for deity.
mystical consciousness – Kieckhefer says can be found in the vernacular sermons of Meister Eckhart “who wants his hearers or readers to gain a lively awareness of God’s presence within herself […] and her own true and eternal presence within God.”
Kieckhefer clarifies that these may all be combined in different ways by a single medieval writer. His example is the writing of Teresa of Ávila. (p.15)
I’m already interested in the murky waters of mystical thinking… not to mention words like “theoerotic” (which, incidentally, might be more readily available to the imaginations of non-Christian devotees of deity or deities).
**Some books on my ‘TBR’ taken from my atheist partner’s bookshelf (who’s shelf SHOULD these belong to? Squabbles abound.)
However, coming back to the aggregating term of ‘medieval magic’, Kieckhefer offers at least three options for its constitutive terms: conjuration, symbolic manipulation, and directly efficacious volition. (p. 17-18)
Honing in on symbolic manipulation (hello, art witch here!) Kieckhefer says some really juicy words:
“If a plant shaped like a liver is useful for healing the liver, it is in that sense a sign of what is thought to affect, and the intelligible resemblance is what effects the healing. […] If conjuration is a reprobate branch of religion, symbolic manipulation claims an efficacy like that of science and will be seen by its practitioners as a type of science. The magician who manipulates symbolic links in the natural order might be thought of as tugging on invisible cords that link one level of that order with another. The symbolic links may be articulated in terms of cosmic correspondences and sympathies, at least in sources that provide theoretical grounding for magical practice. If the invisible cords are not thought of as efficacious symbolically, then the process is not magical; the user may not be told explicitly that symbolic links are entailed, and may simply be assured that the results are tried and proven, but in magical operations, the symbolic causality is at least implied by the types of word, ritual and object used.” (p. 17)
Taking this historical analysis and running wild with it in the modern day, I think the analogy of tugging on unseen cords of meaning is just…poetry. This may also provide a very useful visual for what some modern practitioners mean in their discussions of magical correspondences or energetic work. In my view, this perspective posits a model for developing personalised magical symbolism in art as and when it feels creatively powerful to do so. Whether the ‘invisible cords are thought of as efficaciously symbolic’ might be the keystone for agency in that approach. If I were to use the language we have explored here in Kieckhefer’s chapter, then to be an art witch is just as much the work of developing artistic style, an individual (and recognisable) ‘voice’, and recurring visual motifs that – when aggregated – convey an added layer of meaning in the whole that is the finished piece. In other words, they constitute magic.
Art must also speak for itself… but in theory, part of the magick that heightens its efficacy might lie in some of the following: symbolic connections forged by the individual artist; the time spent exploring the meaning of what they want to do or say; practicing techniques for how that might be rendered; and strengthening those motifs (‘correspondences’) over time. Perhaps this is contained in colour choices? Or recurrences in textural play? In different media? Or in more literally repeated visuals like egg symbolism?
I’m reminded of the medieval Irish approach to manuscript illumination and prayer…where the word and all its colours and symbols IS the prayer, IS the presence of the divine in an even more literal sense. (A famous example being the Chi Rho page in the Book of Kells.)
I would very much love to hear your thoughts in the comment sections! How do you feel about the way your creativity or your magick comes together or what that process entails? What do you think about sources of inspiration and how that becomes magickal for you (whether you make art or not!)?
Incidentally, medieval Ireland, medieval Celtic magic, and how that might impact art witchery will be the topic of Part 2 of this post. I’ll leave you with that cliff-hanger – mainly due to space and time constraints – and hope very much to see you there.
Page, Sophie, et al. “Part 1, Chapter 1: Rethinking How to Define Magic.” The Routledge History of Medieval Magic, Routledge, Taylor Et Francis Group, New York, NY, 2019, pp. 15–18.
