Aodhan

The Holy Mountain is a forthcoming zine of comparative religion, polytheistic theology, occult leftist theory and discourse. We are accepting submissions for visual elements, as well as poetry and prayers, until February 20th.

From April 1st 2024 to May 1st 2025 I went through a 13 month ritual process. Through this process I gestated and birthed 4 familiar spirits, specifically serpentine entities. While there are certainly shorter and easier methods for acquiring familiars, this was something revealed to me by the spirits of my practice. Where the result isn't just a spirit for you to work with, as these familiars are designed to be gifted or lent to others for use.

At the suggestion of my spirits, I gathered 4 glass/stone eggs. They were prepared and brought to the woods where a serpentine spirit of my practice fertilized them. A nest was made of sticks, ribbon, red and yellow cloth, spicy smelling powders, and serpent skin. The glass eggs were anointed with a serpent oil of my own design and brought home to rest on my altar for 13 months. Every month under the full moon the eggs were anointed with oil and warmed with offerings of fire, incense, and liquor.

Upon the completion of this process, when the eggs were due to hatch, they were brought back to the place of their making. At that same spot in the woods I preformed divinations to see if any had reached maturity and would be born that day. To my surprise all 4 had been successfully fertilized and would hatch into a serpent familiar. Under that spring full moon they were born, and the next day around noon they were brought to the cemetery to be greeted by the rest of my spirit court. And to receive more offerings in celebration of their birth.

“To reveal invisible spirits and to be able to hear and speak with them, in whatever way one desires, so as to find out hidden things write your name and then these words in red letters on a chip of spruce wood:

Filx Gackte ol hordea OSS. YQQ Pelock Bjelsebubb Behov vara

On a Thursday evening go to the cemetery and put that chip under an earth- fast stone. Return there the following Thursday evening. Then take the chip and say. giving their names:

I order you spirits to come and meet me here next Thursday evening in the name of Domine Pater Filius Saned Spiritus or in the name of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Oh heckin yes I do My amazon wishlist is literally like six pages long… ALL BOOKS

WARNING: This Is Going To Be Extremely Long!

First though I want to note that while I 100% understand your feelings about the Wicca stuff (being a very NOT Wiccan Witch), not all books that are Wicca leaning are bad! I’ve gotten loads of useful information from books that tended to be a little new agey. That’s where being objective comes in! With ANY book, you should take it with a grain of salt, and some with a whole shaker. But it’s up to you to pay attention to misinformation and conflation, and to know how to do research to prove or disprove that something in a book you read is true or not. Does that make sense?? 

Anywho, a couple of books that are still kind of “Wicca-y” but great:

Grimoire of the Green Witch

The Goodly Spellbook (This one is an INCREDIBLY AWESOME REFERENCE)

The Modern Guide To Witchcraft (Written By Skye Alexander who seems to mass produce books, so need some good fact checking here)

The Modern Witchcraft SpellBook (Written By Skye Alexander who seems to mass produce books, so need some good fact checking here)

The Witches Broom (LOTS OF SALT but good basic history)

The Witches Athame (LOTS OF SALT but good basic history)

The Witches Mirror (LOTS OF SALT but good basic history)

Cottage Witchery (This author is pretty good about keeping away but there’s still some slips)

Practical Protection Magick (This author is pretty good about keeping away but there’s still some slips)

The Big Book of Practical Spells (Written by Judika Illes, who did the Encyclopedia of 5,000 Spells; it’s a good book, but there’s too much Cultural appropriation for my taste. Tread Lightly, and bring that shaker I was talking about)

Those are all books from my personal collection that I would recommend! Now as for the Non-Wicca Books, Let’s dive in! Not all of these have I read or owned, and they are in no particular order. You’ll notice most of them relate to “Traditional Witchcraft” or West Country, because that is where my practice is focused. 

The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices 

The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets: Tradition and Craft

Cornish Charms and Cures

To Fly by Night: An anthology of Hedgewitchery

Treading the Mill: Practical Craft Working in Modern Traditional Witchcraft

Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History

The Black Arts: A Concise History of Witchcraft, Demonology, Astrology, and Other Mystical Practices Throughout the Ages

Grimorium Verum

The Devil’s Dozen: Thirteen Craft Rites of the Old One

The Witching Herbs: 13 Essential Plants and Herbs for Your Magical Garden

Defences Against the Witches’ Craft - Anti-cursing Charms from English Folk Magick, Traditional Witchcraft and the Grimoire Traditions

Nummits and Crummits: Devonshire Customs, Characteristics, and Folk-lore

Encyclopedia of Folk Medicine: Old World and New World Traditions

The Art of Black Mirror Scrying

Enchantment: The Witches’ Art of Manipulation by Gesture, Gaze and Glamour

CHILDREN OF CAIN: A Study of Modern Traditional Witchcraft.

The Pillars of Tubal Cain

Witch’s Workbook

The Left Hand: The Cabal Grimoire of Walking in Darkness

Profane Seals: A Compendium of Vile Sigil Magick - Volume I

Eye of the Oracle: The Cabal Grimoire of Psychic Magick

The Book of Smokeless Fire

Azoetia: A Grimoire of the Sabbatic Craft

Between the Living & the Dead: A Perspective on Witches & Seers in the Early Modern Age

The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

The Horn of Evenwood: A Grimoire of Sorcerous Operations, Charms, and Devices of Witchery

The Cunning Man’s Handbook: The Practice of English Folk Magic, 1550-1900

Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath

The Book of Oberon: A Sourcebook of Elizabethan Magic

The Grimoire of Arthur Gauntlet (PB)

Witchcraft: A Handbook of Magic Spells and Potions

Cecil Williamsons Book of Witchcraft: A Grimoire of the Museum of Witchcraft

Under the Witching Tree: A Folk Grimoire of Tree Lore and Practicum

Veneficium: Magic, Witchcraft and the Poison Path

Witchcraft For Tomorrow

Pharmako Gnosis: Plant Teachers and the Poison Path

The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie

The Taper That Lights The Way: Robert Cochrane’s Letters Revealed) 

The Call of The Horned Piper

A Deed Without a Name

Heritage Witchcraft (This one is kind of useless unless you’re taking his Classes)

Letters from the Devil’s Forest: An Anthology of Writings on Traditional Witchcraft, Spiritual Ecology and Provenance Traditionalism

The Devil’s Plantation: East Anglian Lore, Witchcraft & Folk-Magic

Liber Nox: A Traditional Witch’s Gramarye

Thirteen Pathways of Occult Herbalism

Traditional Witches’ Formulary and Potion-making Guide: Recipes for Magical Oils, Powders and Other Potions

The Black Toad

Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways

PHEW!

That was a lot! Okay anon I hope this gives you a good starting place! 

Mongolia’s shamanic rituals

Banned for 70 years under communist rule, the ancient practice of shamanism has been protected by Mongolia’s constitution since 1992.

Antler fox!

I’ve been telling everyone I know for YEARS not to buy Blue Buffalo.

This is the short story:

A few years ago I took my sick cat, Ankh, to the vet. The vet and vet tech asked what I fed her. I told them Blue Buffalo. They looked like I had just told them I fed her razor blades and cyanide. They diagnosed her with pancreatitis and said that nearly all of the cats they’d been seeing lately with pancreatitis were being fed Blue Buffalo.  They gave her medicine and sent her home.  Two days later she had a seizure and died right in my arms. 

The day after she died Hannibal started displaying the same symptoms she had so I panicked hard and took him to the vet.  Got the same meds and the same diagnosis.  Luckily Hannibal survived.

I wish Ankh had survived. She was only ten and the best cat I’ve ever had. Literally the best and five years later I still cry when I think about her.

- salmonella

- mold

- aluminum

- melamine

- toxic levels of vitamin d

- propylene glycol

you guys remember when PETA stole people pets off their porches and euthanized them?

you guys remember how it came out that PETA kills about 90% of the animals it takes in, including healthy and adoptable puppies and kittens, stating “ We could become a no-kill shelter immediately. It means we wouldn’t do as much work”?

you guys remember when PETA advocated killing all pit bulls for the crime of being pit bulls?

you guys remember when PETA handed out these comics to children when there were no adults looking?

you guys remember when they made a porn site and then filled it with videos of animal abuse, and (also in that link) claimed cats should be vegetarian?

you guys remember when PETA lied about sheep shearing, got caught, and defended the lie as true even after they admitted the sheep in their picture wasn’t even real?

you guys remember when they tried to excuse their horrifying ways by claiming that the person who exposed them was manipulating the facts by taking them and putting them in the wrong context?

Because I remember. I remember everything. 

PETA cares about money and publicity, its a corporation run by a psychopath who is afraid of pitts as it states in the link: she was apparently bit by one, and now she hates them. 

-spread false information about milk causing autism based on outdated bullshit information

-used holocaust imagery to compare the meat industry to concentration camps (no pictures)

-used a young man’s brutal death as a way to say “yeah that’s awful but it happens to animals every day and nobody cares about that” (tw: no pictures but the way the guy died is described and it is really horrible)

-dressed up in KKK robes and protested outside of the Westminister Dog Show to protest breeding/pure bred dogs (tw: racism)

-offered to pay the water bill for literally the poorest neighborhood in Detroit if and only if they all went vegan for a month (tw: self-righteous shitheads)

-and they definitely didn’t have two of their workers accept perfectly healthy animals from an animal hospital, with the implication that they would give them good homes, clarify that these animals were all healthy and well-tempered, and then euthanized them all in the back of a kill-van before dumping their dead bodies behind a grocery store (tw: PICTURES OF DEAD ANIMALS, animal death)

-and they totally didn’t get off pretty much scot-free for it because PETA has loads of money and lawyers to defend themselves, which coincidentally might be why the Cerate family hasn’t seen justice for their kidnapped and murdered dog, Maya. (tw: animal death)

Nah. PETA’s not that bad.

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×Craft is constantly growing and expanding and the organization as a whole has just launched this month (although the leadership has been working together for some time on our first amino community). We are startled by the huge amount of false information and confusion within online witch and pagan resources that often leave beginners stuck at the starting line. We have friendly members, helpful staff, and the tools you’ve been looking for to further your craft.

We are a group of witches and pagans who work together to reach beyond the basic and scantily available occult information to find and create useful and relevant resources and have through doing that built a family of supportive and wonderful individuals.

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