#consortish

The Bucca's Stone

In Cornwall the shadow of the old gods is never far away. In the mines, offerings would be left to the Bucca and his faery kin "The Knockers", in the fields he stood as a scarecrow by day but by night lead the "Pisky" revels, but as lord of the seas and the storms he took his most majestic form.

Legend has it he was chased out of Newlyn by Paul Choir. Before he took to the air he chanted his name three times...BUCCA, BUCCA, BUCCA! But in the commotion he dropped his nets. As living proof of this take his nets still mark some of the stones around these parts...and this is one of them

Celtic nations have so much more depth and richness than the romanticised ideas Americans seem to have of them. They also, most of them, have poverty, homelessness, lack of public funding and other long-standing issues brought about by England forcing their culture to assimilate with theirs (Cornwall had it's language erased, Wales and Scotland both have had their children go through abuse in the school system to beat the language out of them).

Hello,

A few notes on Gary's work to clarify myself – her general books are interesting and a useful starting point as, to my knowledge, she does live and practice in the region, and her cited works (while sometimes...mis-cited) are useful for further research. For me her work falls short in that it doesn't recognise Cornwall as region with Celtic heritage, history and culture which has lead to her conflating Cornish traditional & folk practices with wider English traditional and folk practices. Hence Bucca's conflation with the Folk Devil. This is something to be aware of in all facets of researching anything pagan/occult/pre-Christian to do with Cornwall. It was one of the earliest regions to have assimilation attempted.

Cornish ancestry is not a requirement for Cornish polytheism or paganism, as a heads up, and generally Cornish polytheism & paganism is focused on bioreigonality & the Cornish landscape. This extends to deities – practitioners & pagans from the USA I talk with that follow other paths have experienced some difficulty in contacting the Bucca without any hitches. This is certainly something to keep in mind along with engaging with your ancestors culture should include engaging with the regions current struggles & political issues respectfully and putting the voices of Cornish people first (I'd argue this is important for anyone engaging with their ancestors culture) - without a current day Cornwall doing well, how can it's land-tied deities and spirits be honoured and beloved.

The main resources I can recommend are folkloric ones – here is a drive of Cornish folkloric resources that I have (includes some language ones & Cornish Arthurian Legends). Not included is The Cornish Traditional Year by Simon Reed, which I would also strongly recommend because it has a good basis for a calendar for Cornish polytheism. They are unconverted to PDF but I also currently reccomend Cornwall's Pagan Heritage by Richard A. Courtney. There's also this list.

Cornish folklore is an important part of Cornish polytheism for the dual reason of 1 – there are no texts or central record of pre-Christian pagan practices that are easily accessible and 2 – Cornish folklore was largely oral and spread by droll tellers, making it hard to censor or remove any leftover pre-Christian pagan figures or narratives. Of course, don’t take folkloric sources at face value. I use them as starting off points for ‘direct’ research (astral journeying, putting out feelers to communicate or set up a line of contact, ask the Bucca to expand on folkloric stories, etc) along side note taking to seek other resources (I’m unaware if Kresen Kernow has any online resources available internationally, but it’s worth having a look).

In terms of other deities there is a very narrow pantheon (entirely due to above assimilation). Ankow is a shared figure between Breton & Cornwall (spelt differently, of course), an attendant related to death that escorts people from the land of living to the world of the dead (psychpomp would be an appropriate category). It is also easy to extrapolate from the sister region Wales that a lot of deified or deific figures would be, on some level, heroes elevated to that status.

In my personal practice I venerate a pair of deified lovers from the Zennor Mermaid myth and an unverified deity related to land fertility specifically. I’m aware these things may not translate to a polytheist in the USA though. Of course the Bucca is a currently central figure, and if you’re interested in experiences of Them outside of the folk devil lens, let me know and I can collect my notes and type them up for you. I'm also working on my own resource for/of Cornish polytheism for sharing, and I can also let you know when that is finished if you would like.

This is sparked by some interesting posts viewing godspousing and consorting within a hierarchy of devotion to a deity, spirit, entity, etc. The posts placed godspousing above all other forms of devotion or attention to a deity, and by itself that’s a whole can of worms I don’t want to unpack yet but it brought some interesting ideas up about the way an Otherpartnership is held as something more than all other relationships on a general level.

There are plenty within the godspousing community that do hold their relationships with various divinities above human ones - and that’s great for them, everyone has a different mode of loving and it makes people happy. It’s rare, I’ve found, to meet another godspouse that approaches their relationship as a relationship first and devotional second. There are absolutely others and I’m so glad they’re around because otherwise it does feel like the odd one out.

A large part of my relationship with the Bucca involves the fact we are both autonomous, independent entities that entered a relationship willingly with each other. If we have other partners or relationships outside of our pairing, there’s no hierarchy involved with a primary partner. Of course, we do cohabit in Annown and we are currently each others partner, but it’s part of the relationship “deal” that we are autonomous and able to do as we please without constantly checking in relationship-wise. (This doesn’t apply to things like childcare, we check in regularly and frequently throughout the day to ensure we don’t get wires crossed).

Even the more spiritual/devotional aspects of our relationship are entirely formed of give & take with no hierarchy or one putting themself above the other - hunting and being hunted, devotion and being devoted too. I give gifts of offerings to the Bucca, and the Bucca gives gifts of offerings to me. A hierarchy is of no use to us in the most basic sense - devotion goes both ways for us! It’s a deeply emotional experience when it does happen and involves a lot of love and affection. In part, it’s because of the way the Bucca is - They’re of the earth and the wild and the sea, there’s no hierarchy there: if one part disappears, even at the perceived bottom rung, the whole web of life crashes.