The Magical World of Tylluan Penry

I was really hoping to be back blogging again more often, but alas, the best laid plans of mice and men...

At the moment I'm working on a rune workshop ready for the Pagan Federations summer camp in September. Workshops are rather different from talks because they're more hands-on, but they're great fun and you get a lot of feedback from the people there, which is always very interesting. I always say I learn far more from my readers and my audiences than they do from me!

I am also finishing another book and working on the first draft of yet another. Some people might say I ought to be concentrating on the one book, but I find it's often easier to move between the two... it keeps my mind more alert somehow. (At least, that's the plan.)

So apologies for not being around much... shall try to catch up on your blogs in the next few days!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan

I really have no idea of the date of this poem to the New Moon; I only know that it is a traditional Scottish folk prayer, originally written in Gaelic. I hope you like it:

Greeting to you, new moon, kindly jewel of guidance! I bend my knees to you, I offer you my love.

I bend my knees to you, I raise my hands to you, I life up my eye to you, new moon of the seasons.

Greeting to you, new moon, darling of my love! Greeting to you, new moon, darling of graces.

You journey on your course, you steer the flood-tides, you light up your face for us, new moon of the seasons.

Queen of guidance, queen of good luck, queen of my love, new moon of the seasons!

Knowing how much Wendlane enjoys things that remind her of Wales, I have tried - for the first time, I might add - to post something for her that I found on Youtube:

Get well soon, Wendlane! Your friends here all miss you!

As you begin looking - really looking - at the world around you, you realise that there is a lot going on that might pass you by. Sometimes nature seems to be putting on a show especially for you.

Recognising and learning from these signs isn't really all that difficult. Part of the problem is that we have forgotten the raw pleasure that being in the open air can bring us. I know that since I've had a number of health problems in the last few years, I really have learned to appreciate just getting out into the garden and watching - and listening - to the world around me.

For example, yesterday I spotted two white butterflies flying together, swirling, looping the loop, it was as intricate as any pas de deux in a ballet. I stood and watched, entranced. It may have lasted barely two minutes before they flew off over the roof, but it was quite, quite magical.

And you see, I have the feeling that it was intended for me to see it. Why? I don't know. But I came away feeling highly privileged and somehow uplifted.

Last night, sitting in the kitchen doing some writing, I heard the owls out in the garden at the back of the house. They were persistent, eerie. Homer shuddered and snuggled deeper into his bed. In Wales it was said that when an owl cried out in the night, a young maiden was losing her innocence.

Be that as it may, there is something quite otherworldly about the sound of an owl. They don't just hoot, they cry, and shriek - all at a time when the night is otherwise silent. It's a magical sound.

What does any of this have to do with magical journeying? Well, there's a very famous text called 'The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus'. You will often hear a quote from it : As above, so below.

Basically what it means is that in magic, or indeed in magical worlds, there is an echo of what is in our real, day to day world. By recognising magic in this world, we make it easier to find and sometimes cross into other magical worlds. Each is a reflection of the other.

And - as I hope to show in my next post - quite often we can begin our magical journeys here, in the everyday world!

Those of you brave, hardy souls who visit my blog regularly will know by now that when I write on magical or pagan topics I'm writing about my own experiences, my own ideas. So here today are a few ideas about things we can do when we fancy giving Magical Journeying a try.

Now magical journeying is one of those things you either love or you loathe. Many people would like to try it, but find it's too difficult. Or they're put off by others who say you must always have 'someone experienced' with you, whenever you take off into the wild blue yonder.

So here are a few thoughts I've cobbled together down the years that you might find useful...

First of all, you need to get to know the world around you. The trees, the sort of stones you find lying around, the birds, insects and plants - all things that will stand you in very good stead when you're starting off.

Don’t panic – you don’t have to turn into a botanist overnight. You can notice without knowing… it’s a very important magical concept… to notice something even though you don’t know exactly what it is or how it works. I do it every day with electricity – no idea how it works, but I use it all the same.

So start looking – really looking – and see what you can find. You might know the names of some things… daisies, dandelions… hawthorn trees… that sort of thing. And look for the insects and birds too. Get into this habit and keep it up for weeks, months even, as the seasons slowly change and our world turns golden with autumn.

My father taught me a lot about plants, and he always used to carry this battered field guide with him. He’d say you’d never be able to remember the plants when you got home and if you had a reference book with you then you could look them up then and there. And of course, the more you learn, the less you need your field guide. This frees up your pockets for important supplies such as polo mints…

Learn to expect the unexpected too…. Mr Penry and one of my daughters were up a mountain a few months ago and reckoned they’d seen a golden eagle. Now there are no golden eagles in my part of Wales. Not one. Not even on a Saturday night. But their description of the bird fitted, they described how it flew, what it sounded like… very convincing. But it couldn’t be a golden eagle. Except….

About a fortnight later, the headlines in our local paper said that police investigating the traffic in illegal birds had raided a house about two miles away from the mountain and found – amongst other things –a golden eagle.

So… my husband and my daughter had really had a treat – they’d seen a golden eagle flying over the mountain for the first time in - well, it must have been centuries.

I'll post some more tomorrow....

Just a brief digression from Anglo Saxon magic today. But I hope you find it interesting all the same.

A great deal of magical practice seems to cross cultural boundaries, so that certain words, numbers, gestures and methods seem to crop up time and again.

Some of them have been around for so long that they seem to have built up a power all their own. The most famous of all magic words, abracadabra was used in ancient times and in its earliest written form is written as an inverted triangle:

ABRACADABRA
ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB
ABRACADA
ABRACAD
ABRACA
ABRAC
ABRA
ABR
AB
A

Although nowadays we tend to associate this word with stage conjurors who produce rabbits from top hats, as late as the eighteenth century Defoe described people using this charm to cure them of plague.

It was popular all over Europe, sometimes to make things disappear (in the written form above you will see that the words appear to ‘shrink’) while Aleister Crowley wrote the word as ‘Abrahadabra’ and regarded it as extremely powerful. It’s up to you of course, whether you want to use it or not, but you never know, one day it may come in handy!

Would you like to see what an Anglo Saxon charm actually looked like?

Well, here's one:
__
+T+p+T+N+ω+T+m+N+ ωA

This is a protection charm from an Anglo Saxon book of Leechcraft or healing called the Lacnunga. Either the patient or his leech (which was another word for a physician or healer) were supposed to write these letters along the patient’s arms. And before you ask – nobody has any idea what they mean!

So – how were these charms constructed? What was the thinking behind them?

Actually Anglo Saxon Magic follows similar patters to ancient magic right across Europe. One of the first things you notice is something called ‘The narrative introduction.’ Although you don’t often find them in modern spells they do crop up all over the ancient world.

Here I should digress a bit and mention that along with our more obscene swear words which all come from the Anglo Saxon, the word 'spell' also comes from that language. It's original meaning was a story, legend or history. So this idea of a narrative in the charm is very old indeed and you can’t get rid of it without radically changing the whole structure.

But what did a narrative introduction do, and why was it used? The idea was to set out deeds that had already been performed by a god or great hero. These deeds usually have some bearing on the purpose of the charm. They set the scene. And the thinking behind this is ‘You’ve already shown you can free someone in this situation… please do it again – this time for me.’

We eventually find the actual spell formular right at the end of the spell, or sometimes at the end of each verse if it is a very long spell. So you find commands such as ‘slip from the shackles, escape from the foe!’ or even 'Out little spear! Out!'

Here's a good example from the Merseburger Incantations - it's a spell for treating dislocated joins and sprains.

It starts off by telling a story of how Woden (the Anglo Saxon name for Odin) is out riding when his companion’s horse sprains its leg. Then three goddesses try but fail to cure the horse.

Then Woden charmed it, who could charm it well: (This is the turning point of the spell – the end of the narrative, and the beginning of the spell formula which is: )

Leg luxation, and blood luxation, and limb luxation,
Bone to bone, blood to blood,
Limb to limb as they were glued together.'

Although the original charm was used by Woden in this form it can be used by humans – calling on Woden to help heal all types of sprains.

This combination of narrative and magical command might seem a bit strange to us nowadays, but they still work. The trick is finding the right story or setting to use. For that, it's often a good idea to look back at Saxon myth and folklore, although strictly speaking you could adapt it to just about any circumstances that take your fancy.

This is a subject that has fascinated me for many years, ever since the day I rescued an Anglo Saxon dictionary out of my school’s dustbin in the library. To read the old Anglo Saxon charms, sitting out in countryside, is to reach back into the past, to an almost long forgotten magical tradition.

So… First of all, who were the Anglo Saxons? Well, it’s a collective term for the Germanic tribes – mostly from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia who began invading England in the fifth century. The Anglo Saxon kingdoms lasted a good five hundred years and we have a wealth of evidence about their magical practices.

Their spells came in all shapes and sizes. Some were chanted or sung, some involved potions, and some had to be written down either on parchment, metal or bone. Some charms were even worn as amulets. An amulet is basically protective or healing; a talisman is more like a lucky charm.

In Anglo Saxon the word galan means to sing or chant. The word galdor or gealdor meant a charm, a means of controlling and directing the power of the healing materials (which could be almost anything, including herbs, stones, bones etc.)

One thing you find in Anglo Saxon magic is a tremendous number of charms against magical beings – especially elves and dwarves - who seem to have spent most of their time attacking humankind, and ended up being blamed for just about everything. Including hiccups!

So – how do Anglo Saxon charms work? Basically they all contained at least one of the following 4 features:

1. A magic ritual on its own.

2. A magic ritual together with a charm that had to be chanted, spoken or sung aloud. Sometimes there are specific instructions for singing these charms over the wound, or in the left ear, or at a particular time of day or moonphase.

3. Some sort of recipte for a potion, the sort of thing that tells you to ‘Take betony, bishopwort, lupin…’ etc. There were three very important Anglo Saxon herbals: the Herbarium, the Lacnunga and the Leechbook of Bald. • Leech was the Anglo-Saxon word for a doctor or healer.

4. And lastly, there was a written formula which was often tied onto a wound to help it heal.

In the next instalment I'm going to show you the basics of how Anglo-Saxon spells were constructed.

Well, I never made it to the Artemis Gathering because of the scarlet fever. However, I thought I would blog a little from the talks I had intended to give there - which would have been on the subjects of THought Forms and also on Anglo Saxon Magic.

Hopefully I shall be back later on today with a post on the topic of thought forms.

Hope to catch up with you then!

Sorry to have been away from blogland for so long. Firstly thank you all for your lovely birthday wishes, these were all very much cherished. I am still up to my eyeballs in writing and falling further behind with every hour.

I hope to catch up with your blogs as soon as possible!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan