Occult Training Wheels

Of course I do. That’s why I write letters to my nephew that are from Santa Claus.

Why would it be wrong for kids to think and know and understand that the world is a magical place? Why would it be wrong for someone to experience a protective force of love that gives and asks for nothing in return?

Anyway, the fact is Santa Claus is real. I can see the effects he has every day. Anyone I ask on the street will know his name and who he is and what he does. Just because I may never see him with my eyes and touch him with my hand doesn’t mean that he doesn’t affect me. I’ll never see or touch President Obama, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still have influence on me.

Santa Claus is real in the way that Superman is real and that ghosts are real; and, in fact, in the only way that really matters: they are indelibly laced with metaphorical power and metaphor is one of the strongest weapons we as a species have in our arsenal. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may destroy or heal me forever.

Cinematography by Jack Cardiff.

Black Narcissus (1946), The Red Shoes (1948), The African Queen (1951).

What I had picked up from painting was that light was the most important thing. The lighting played an important part. So it’s easy enough to analyse it and work out what looked good or what worked and so on. The only difference was I realised early on that because film was a transparency, and the Hollywood photographers used to use a lot of back-light because it made everything look crisper and glamorous. I realised that back-light and I relied very much on what I had picked up from paintings – a simplicity of lighting. Mind you, I recognised that painting’s a still picture where it’s easy enough to have a lighting effect, and on film where the actor gets up and walks around the room, you had to bear that in mind. But I still felt then, and still do, that you stick to a simple form of lighting.

1. If the land is poisoned, the witchcraft must respond.

2. It is not our way if life, it is life itself which is under threat

3. Witchcraft is our intimate connection to the web of life.

4. We are the Witchcraft.

5. Our World has forever changed. The trodden paths no longer correspond. Witchcraft thrives in this liminal, lunar, trackless realm.

6. We are storm, fire and flood.

7. We will not be denied.

8. Witchcraft is the recourse of the dispossessed, the powerless, the hungry and the abused. It gives heart and tongue to stones and trees. It wears the rough skin of beasts. It turns on a civilization that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

9. If you have no price you cannot be bought. If you do not want you cannot be bribed. If you are not frightened you cannot be controlled.

10. Witchcraft is folk magic, the magic of the people and for the people.

11. We call an end to the pretence of respectability.

12. We will not disarm ourselves.

13. The war is upon us.

14. Choose then to become a Mask.

15. Those with nothing left to lose will dare all.

16. There is one Witchcraft under many names. There is one Grand Sabbat on one mountain. There are many ways to fly. There is no witness present at the Sabbat.

17. Witchcraft is a force, not an order. Witchcraft is rhizomatic, not hierarchic. Witchcraft defies organisation, not meaning. We simply bear the marks.

18. Witchcraft is power and possesses this in ekstasis, sex and ordeal. Witchcraft is unbridled sexuality.

19. In witchcraft it is the woman who initiates. We challenge man to be the equal of this woman.

20. Witchcraft is the art of inversion.

21. Witchcraft is the beauty which is terror.

22. Witchcraft is a myth, which drawing on the past, clothes itself in the symbols of (its) time. Witchcraft does not mistake myths for history, it harnesses them to transform the future. Witchcraft knows the ground upon which it stands.

23. Witchcraft honours the spirits. Witchcraft enchants for the lost. Witchcraft will not forget.

24. Witchcraft embodies our ancestors and saints, they carry us with them.

25. To Her is offered the blood, to use the care of the ask and bones.

26. The example we follow is our own.

27. The practice of witchcraft is one of revolution and of the power of woman.

28. The Goddess who speaks through us is known among men as Babalon.

29. Witchcraft concerns itself with mystery. Through the gates of mystery we come to knowledge. Knowledge enters us through the body. The highest form of this knowledge is Love.

30. Every drop of blood is sacrificed to the grail. Love cannot be bought with any other coin.

31. We seek and drink this wine together.

32. Will is finite, passion infinitely renewed.

33. Witchcraft is present, its is ensanguined and vivified. Witchcraft is prescient, it gazes on the future. Witchcraft is oracular, it will not hold its tongue. Our time has come