art is the weapon

Ostara (March 19-21)

Ostara is this week, with this sabbat we celebrate the beginning of spring and perfect balance between night and day. The winter months are officially over, and from now on everything will bloom and get warmer 🌞

ー 𝐡𝐚𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞🕯️⚰️

“There are numerous holy wells, even well into recent times, that have magical healing traditions involving the ritual use of human skulls. This is a tradition, surviving and adapted into modern era Christian usage from ancient pagan practice. The tradition at these wells, of drinking the curative waters from the interior of a human skull, would suggest that from the skull itself are imparted into the waters additional virtues, perhaps associated with life force, divinity and creation. Perhaps by such practices, the sacred, curative waters were believed to be enhanced and given extra potency by the virtues associated with the sacred cultic vessel of the skull/head.

The ritual use of human skulls at holy wells is a tradition that appears to have been at its strongest in Wales but is not an isolated one, for it is found also in examples of well tradition in Ireland and Scotland.

In Pembroke, West Wales, is perhaps the most widely renowned tradition of a skull's ritual use at a holy well which survived well into the 19th century. St Teilo’s Well was home to a healing tradition using the skull of the 6th century Bishop St Teilo of Wales, which was in the guardianship of the Melchior family who lived close to the well. Those seeking a cure had to receive and drink the waters, handed to them in the skull of St Teilo by a member of the Melchior family who had to have been born in the family home in order for the rite to be successful. Another Welsh well at which water was drunk from a human skull for healing purposes was Ffynnon Llandyfaen in Carmarthenshire. Here the practice was still extant by 1815.

The skulls employed in such rites were not always those associated with Christian saints or holy people. In Wester Ross in the North West Scottish Highlands, is the well of Tobar A' Chinn - meaning The Well of the Head. Here, the skull employed within the well's curative rites was believed to have been that of a woman who had committed suicide in the 18th or 19th century. As a suicide, the woman was buried outside the churchyard, later however, her skull is said to have appeared on the surface of the ground, indicating that it was possessed of miraculous powers. The skull was taken to the well, where it was housed in a stone container. Sufferers of epilepsy would resort to the well in search of a cure. There they would be instructed by the guardian of the well in the ritual procedure that was to be performed. This rite involved the circumambulation of the patient around the well in the direction of the sun three times. The well guardian would then draw water from the well in the skull from which the patient had to drink three times.

A particularly macabre skull ritual was performed on the Isle of Lewis. Here a cure for epilepsy might be performed by a skull being disinterred from a graveyard at midnight and brought to the home of the patient who then would drink water from it drawn from a holy well. The ritual was completed by the skull's return to the graveyard for re-interment.

The use of water in which saintly relics have been steeped for curative or protective purposes is an established tradition within folk magic, thus water did not always have to be drunk directly from a skull in order for the patient to partake of the virtues of the osseous vessel. In Aberdeenshire, in the parish of Marnoch, Banff, water in which the skull of St Marnoch had been washed was considered for many years a potent curative for the sick.”

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Wisht Waters:

Aqueous Magica and the Cult of Holy Wells