The Magical World of Tylluan Penry

It's always tricky doing a workshop rather than a straightforward talk. Partly because when you have a large group of people you want to get everyone involved and doing something in a workshop - but where to start?

I took a large bagfull of Rosemary from my garden to the workshop this year, and gave some to everyone. The idea being that when they left they could at least try out some of the ideas I'd suggested with the sprigs of Rosemary.

But firstly, let's look at the whole idea of magical protection. The basic magical thinking is that anything unpleasant protects against something equally unpleasant. As above, so below. The old Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus. If you haven't heard of it before, then please try and read it (there are several versions online at the sacred texts site).

It's certainly one of the most important texts for anyone interested in magic. The quote I've given comes from paragraph 2 of the tablet. And basically, what it means is that you work out the properties of something here, in the real world and then you adapt and apply them to the magical realms. Because they are all interconnected. The macrocosm (the universe)and the microcosm (us). Okay, I'm probably over-simplifying, but it's a start. And the idea has been a basic magical principle since ancient times.

In my talk I drew attention to several features that mark a plant out as being a good protective plant : its thorns, its colour (particularly red) and its smell.

Almost all culinary herbs can be used protectively. Which is a great relief since these are some of the easiest to get hold of!

Tomorrow I'll post up a few ideas on how to use a sprig of Rosemary (or other herb) protectively....

Another way of discovering more about our herbal heritage is to look at plant names, especially the popular folk names. Many of them have Lady or Old Man in the title. So you get Lady’s Mantle or Lady’s Smock – both apparently named after the Virgin Mary – but who or what were they named after originally? I suspect it must was a Pagan deity.

In the same way plants with ‘old man’ as a nickname were often associated in some way with the devil, which after all was a demonised version of old Pagan deities. So you get ‘Old Man’ for Southernwood, ‘Old man’s beard’ for Traveller’s Joy, ‘Old man’s pepper’ for Meadowsweet and in southern England ‘Old Man’ was for Rosemary. All these were probably very important plants that had to be demonised to discourage veneration. Find these plants – honour them, and you’re half way to reclaiming our Herbal Heritage.

With Rosemary we know something else, too, that it was said to grow best wherever ‘the old grey mare was the better horse – in order words, where the wife was the boss! Even now I think Rosemary grows best wherever the Divine feminine - the goddess - is honoured. The plant may well have originally sacred to her.

This might sound far fetched, but the best evidence we have is actually within the rosemary plant itself. It can grow huge, with branches thick enough to make a good wand (or spoon - food stirred with a rosemary spoon was supposed to be extra nourishing!)

Look at this Rosemary wand that Mr Penry made earlier in the year:

Made of Rosemary wood, can you see the familiar witchy 'goddess' outline here?

The way the early Christian bishops and missionaries behaved towards plants can make depressing reading. Personally I think there's nothing more magnificent than a great tree, its roots deep in the earth, its branches soaring to the heavens.

And the ancients thought so too. Literary sources tell us how the ancient Greeks and Romans punished anyone damaging a holy Oak. Even the Ostrogoths had a law forbidding anyone from chopping down Oaks and Hazels because they were regarded as trees of peace. But it all changed with the spread of Christianity, and suddenly these trees were going to be prime targets for destruction.

For me, destroying a tree (unless, obviously it's dangerous and about to fall over) makes little sense. Christians believe that their god created everything, so why destroy his creation?

And yet that’s exactly what happened. In Germany, St Boniface smashed up Donar’s sacred oak. In Rome Pope Paschalis II ordered a sacred walnut tree to be chopped down and a church was built on the site. Yet in ancient Rome the walnut was regarded as sacred, only with the coming of Christianity did it become known as a witch tree.

And it wasn't just individual sacred trees that suffered for these frankly loopy ideas. Pear trees were ripped up en masse, and elsewhere Christian missionaries felled what they called ‘god oaks’ to prevent people worshipping them.

Yet in spite of all this axe wielding, people still revered trees. The magical thinking behind this was that trees were so closely associated with both the gods and with mankind, that they could take on people's sickness and disease and effect a cure.

We know from various snippets here and there, pieces of folklore, local traditions, that many trees were used for magical healing well into the nineteenth century and sometimes the twentieth.

That’s almost within living memory. And what that means on a practical level, of course, is that we have a much better chance than you might think of reclaiming this herbal heritage. Yes, it will be corrupted with the passing of the centuries, and sometimes it will feel a bit like trying to read a book through a dirty window pane! But the knowledge is there - and it's up to us to see what we can find.

The first talk I did on Saturday was entitled 'Reclaiming Our Herbal Heritage.' It's a theme I often return to especially after a glass of wine and a bucket of bitter chocolate ...ahem... well, when I started researching for my book I began to notice certain themes recurring time and again. And the more I looked, the more I found.

Basically, my theory is this - that the early Christian Church did it's best to either appropriate or suppress the use of plants in pre-existing pagan rituals, particularly in northern Europe (which, let's face it, is the area I know best.)

For many of us Pagans plants symbolise the cyclical nature of existence: birth, growth, death, rebirth and metamorphosis. Christians on the other hand weren’t all that interested in what plants symbolised because they believed everything – life, death etc. was controlled by their God.

But it wasn’t easy for the early Church to convert people to this new way of thinking. They used two main methods to overcome this:

The first thing they tried was using the plant to promote Christianity. Like St Patrick and the shamrock. Basically they changed any link between plants and pagan deities and nature spirits into links with Saints. We’ll call this Christianisation.

But Christianising didn’t always work. Plan B was to preach that the plant was a home to devils, witches or demons; or that it was somehow dangerous. This was to frighten people away. We’ll call this Demonisation.

Now the fact that the Christian church actually did these things at all helps answer our first question – did we have a herbal heritage? Obviously we did or they wouldn’t have needed to subvert it. They could have just ignored it. But it was clearly too important to ignore.

And this helps us see that we do indeed have to reclaim our herbal heritage - because much of it was either Christianised or demonised.
We simply have to work backwards from whatever scraps of information we can find.

And the first place to look isn’t in the fields or hedgerows, but actually in the records of early Church edicts. For example, in 452CE at the Second Council of Arles, the Church passed a decree that prohibited burning lights near trees, rocks, crossroads and springs. Any Bishop who allowed it to continue was to be excommunicated.

That’s interesting. The senior clergy had to be threatened! Paganism wasn’t going quietly. And Pagans in Europe were burning lights in places they must have considered sacred. And one of the places mentioned is ‘trees.’ It’s easy enough to reclaim that idea. A couple of tea lights, a box of matches and head off to your nearest tree… why not?

In another edict around the same time, the Emperor Theodosius II ordered that sacred groves should be cut down “unless they had already been appropriated for some purpose compatible with Christianity." That shows how their minds were working. If you couldn’t Christianise it or demonise it then you just chopped it down!

And still, they couldn’t stop people venerating trees even though the early Church did its damndest to cut down sacred trees all over Europe.

In the next century – that’s the 6th century - the Council of Nantes ordered the destruction of Druidic Stones and holy trees. So people were still visiting these holy sites. And threatening the bishops hadn’t stopped them.

In the late 8th century – over 200 years later, the Emperor Charlemagne issued some more edicts - almost identical. In the 11th century King Canute had the same problem in England. And what this shows is that the Church found it almost impossible to eradicate Paganism. And this is good news for us. It means we might be able find some of our herbal heritage even though we have to look for it under a layers of Christianity.

Because you can knock down shrines, you can smash statues… but you can’t get rid of the plants.

I'll try and blog some more on this subject tomorrow....

Well, I am back from the Witchfest but still buzzing with the fun of it all. And it WAS fun - fun to meet new people and old friends, fun to see the wonderful stalls and listen to others' talks. My books all sold out on my publisher's stall, and one of Mr Penry's wands was aquired by a Museum of Witchcraft in Switzerland, so he's really pleased about that. And of course, I was fairly busy at the Witchfest myself.

I was very honoured to be asked to conduct the opening blessing ceremony. As you know, I love blessings and feel the world would probably be a much better place for them. But in spite of my enthusiasm, it's still quite nerve wracking to have to walk onto a darkened stage (the lights came up as I walked on) and make a start.

The atmosphere however was fantastic. My blessings are always practically based.... I feel the simpler they are, the more chance we have of making them heartfelt, and that's what propels the blessing along. Also, blessings are not just good for the person on the receiving end, they also benefit the giver.

I encouraged everyone to greet those around them, to make eye contact, because then the blessings we give are personal. And I reminded them to spare a thought for all those who couldn't make it to the Witchfest, to keep them close in their thoughts too.

The actual words I used were these:

Welcome to my left! Welcome and bless you for coming!
Welcome to my right! Welcome and bless you for coming!
Welcome to those who stand behind me! Welcome and bless you for coming!
Welcome to those who stand in front of me! Welcome and bless you for coming!
And to all here today! Welcome and bless you for coming!

And then afterwards :

Father Sky honoured be, (hands outstretched to sky)
Mother earth blessed be, (hands towards earth)
We arise and welcome thee.(hands in supplication)

Finally - and rather recklessly, considering that I'm not the most co-ordinated person on the planet) - we then invoked the compass points.

This involved turning in (roughly) the correct direct for each compass point:

Guardians of the North, bless this day,
Keep us grounded in all we do and think and say.

[TURN to the RIGHT]
Guardians of the East, bless this day,
Teach us to fly like the wind in all we do and think and say.

[TURN TO THE RIGHT]
Guardians of the South, bless this day,
Make us blaze with shining love in all we do and think and say.

[TURN TO THE RIGHT]
Guardians of the West, bless this day,
Teach us to go with the flow of life, in all we do and think and say.

Silver Goddess, mother of the stars, loving and serene,
Great Wise God of seasons, Lord of all the Green,
This is our very special day,
May joy and love fill our hearts,
In all we do and think and say.

Bless you all!
Bless us all!

A number of people said they enjoyed the blessing ceremony, which gave me a wonderful warm glow in my heart that stayed there all day. Blessings should be enjoyed, and I think the best blessings involve everyone together. I don't like the idea of someone standing on a podium and imparting blessings as though they are somehow set apart.

Even Cassandra Eason, the author, complimented me on my blessing ceremony! Praise indeed!

Well, I've not been blogging as much as I would have liked recently, but this is partly because I'm getting ready for Witchfest International on Saturday. I'm going to be a busy girl - doing a talk (on reclaiming our Herbal Heritage), giving a workshop (on the use of plants for magical protection), conducting the opening Blessing Ceremony and also sitting on stage with several other speakers as part of a 'Meet the Witches' event.

Oh, and I have a book signing too... because at long last, after much nail chewing - my book is out! The Magical Properties of Plants.... and how to find them is finally a reality, all 426 pages of it! I haven't seen it yet, but I'm so excited. It was a labour of love, dedicated to the memory of my father, and I can truthfully say I felt I was born to write this book.

From the proofs I know that Capall Bann have done a beautiful job (as always) with the layout. And they've told me they're very pleased with the cover (which I based on the idea of a Book of Hours type of illustration.) Here, take a peek, this is my original artwork:

I think I shall just tootle off and have a well earned glass of sherry - care to join me?

Artemis Toxia used to blog here a few years ago. She used to write about history in the ancient world, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and about ancient warfare.

I am still honoured to keep her on my blogfriends list even though she hasn't blogged in ages, and we've kept in touch. And tomorrow is her birthday.

I want to dedicate this post to a very brave girl who has battled with ill health for about ten years now, but never given up. Who never complains, never asks for favours or special treatment, never even asks for extra energy to be sent her way. She just gets on with things.

About two years ago, when she stopped blogging here, things began to come together for her.... only life being what it is, there were a few more huge hurdles ahead that nobody anticipated. She kept going.

If you meet her, she is the most quiet, unassuming, lovely girl you could meet. People who know her naturally gravitate towards her. They appreciate her quiet good sense. She is an exceelent person to have at your side in a crisis.

And although I miss her blogging, I accept she has moved on with her life and wish her all the very best. Especially tomorrow, which is her birthday.

Penblwydd Hapus, Artemis Toxia! May life be good to you!

Brightest blessings
Tylluan Penry