“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to
examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their
replicas in antiquity.”
-
- Niccolò Machiavelli
‘Witch’ and
‘sorcerer’ are ideas that come with the air of amorality and inconsistency,
being forms and functions ascribed to people possessing supernatural powers,
being void of moral and consideration for others than themselves. To some
extent a moral nihilism and an amoral stance might be observed, but on
background of what?
If the moral
canvas is spread out upon the nails and torches of Christian ethics a moral
nihilism is often present in an rejection of ethics shaped by a society that
seeks to oppress its participants either financially (if you are holy, you must
be poor), emotionally (originally sin will make you reek of constant doom) or
socially (in the name of equality you have the freedom to fail in your
aspirations of being what you are not).
If we speak
of what in academia is loosely referred to as ‘pagan ethics’ in reference to
pre-Aristotelian ethics, the witch is no longer amoral, but a force of nature
that brings Memory, Necessity and Fortune to the table of ethics. From this
judgment of the right course of action in the moment is made upon the insight
and memory of past patterns and its consequences.
All these
three forces held a real presence in the pre-modern age, they were not solely
functions tied to the actions of a thinking organism; it was real potencies
moving beneath the actions said or done. For Machiavelli these three powers
were tied to the perfection of the prince as symbol of land, city and populous.
The perfect prince was seen as perfected by his memory of the past, which led
to him being able to perceive timeless patterns in history. Consequently this
opened the prince up for being advised by people representing memory, which was
usually people of a saturnine disposition, it be of age or mind. Necessity was
the spirit of the need fire, to possess the force of character to do what was
needed to do in order to bring the grace of Fortune to be present at all times.
So, the
perfect prince was the perfection of a character moulded by the fire of need
and necessity, holding hands with Memory and Fortune. In this way the Prince
would be able to forge the destiny of his city. In this way Machiavelli shaped
an image of the Perfect Prince from the ideas that we today associate with
‘Witch Kings’ and ‘Witch-Queens’. This is not strange as his ideas hearkened
back to Greek and Roman philosophers and historians and also typifies the ‘fey
kings’ and ‘fey queens’.
If we take Memory
or Mnemosyne which held a central place in Machiavelli’s political philosophy
we see the reasoning behind this importance in Hesiod’s Theogony where Memory
is seen as the vinculum that infused kings and poets with authority. This
authority revealed itself in mindfulness of thought and speech which in Nordic
mythology was represented by Odin’s ravens, Hugin and Munin. A true king or a
poet would be someone who had drunk from the well of memory. Likewise Ananke (Necessity), mother of the
Fates, were considered the power not even a king or poet could bend as she
represented the very law of nature which could only be attempted to alter by
possessing memory. In this field we find Fortune and misfortune playing herself
out as the principle of change and transformation, the element of
unpredictability and benevolence that could be summoned and understood by kings
and poets mediated by their character (moralis/ethos).
Insofar as we
can speak of morals related to a ‘witch’ or a ‘sorcerer’ it might be within
these parameters we find a given moral taking shape. We know from researches in
Byzantine, Bogomil and Balkan Craft conducted by Radomir Ristic amongst others
that both ‘witches’ and Bogomilian Gnostic sects used the traditional ideas of
kingship as a guiding line for how they understood the world and their position
within it. This is exemplified by the ‘Witch god’, it being the patron of
witches or the Magister of a synod or group, being referred to as ‘the silver
tzar’ , holding a regal dominion in the image of night and moon, just like the
fey kings and queens, a mirror of the temporal solar reign bound by time and
constraints.
The witch
would then be someone who held the laws of nature in awe as a directive for
deciding upon the right course of action. A king or queen amongst witches would
be someone who possessed memory and was able to recognize repeating patterns
and decide upon the rightful course of action. This link with memory would also
access the power of the muses, where prophecy and poetry would be amongst the
many avenues available for the king and queen to enter the fields of memory and
bring forth predictions for the future. This would enable an understanding of
Fate and through this a need fire would be kindled as the king or queen would
be seen as natural representatives for a given land and people: a leader
amongst its own.
This office
is recognized amongst one’s own based on a capacity for observing nature that
results in an understanding of fate that enables one to bend it, or at least to
approach in ways so it will work to ones benefit and fortune.
We see how
this is similar in the kingdom of beasts – if we limit ourselves to solely the
natural laws - where a king is recognized not only by his strength or force
(one of the epitaphs of Ananke), but more because of possessing the necessary
force he would bring stability to the pack. This role would then be susceptible
for ordeal and change in conformity with changes in the pack or the habitat as
it would be in the meeting with another pack representing potency for alliance,
resistance or war – but always by a dance of force. This dynamic merged with
memory will generate wisdom and understanding, a particular ethos.
This ethos
would be informed by an understanding of the dynamics of the natural world, its
laws and spirits and an ability of following the threads of time back and forth
on this seasonal water of change. By drinking the dregs of past a vision of the
future emerges and is acted upon to the benefit of the pack, sodality or city. By
this factor alone the king and queen rises like totems for a clan being endowed
with symbols, power and meaning treasured for its capacity of representing and
for its willingness to bleed back into the land if need be.
We are here
at the holiness of the house and home as temple and hearth. We build our home
in what is or once were the daughters and sons of Nature, the more we build our
homes in the wild the more our home will be within the original embrace of the
occult laws of night and from this the home as temple will become a totem in
its own right and the family attending will become the adherents and protectors
of a meaningful sacredness informed by land, blood and memory that through its
guardian spirit will inspire Need and Fortune to take shape and force at the
hearth of the home. A unique moral will burst forth. It is from this forge the
witch expands its world and hence becomes an image of ambivalence and
frustration in the world by being someone who enters the world from the outside
or simply the ‘other side’...
Like a solar
and temporal king, the king of night represents, but the representation is
eternal and nocturnal, an icon of the secret formulas that make the temporal
world under the sun possible. In this the powers of necessity and fate are
wholly spirits of the night and the fire born from lightning. While a solar
king serves as symbol for a given force, the lunar king represents meaning and
force – and in this a volatile danger is often perceived.
The king of
night is at the same time a protector and an embodiment of meaning and understanding
and confronted with this enmity is surely to surface. In the lunar king an idol
is at times seen, a throne of aspiration whereupon failure of aspiration will
turn the king into the face and form of the enemy. The enemy is appointed by those who refuse to
admit failure and in their enemy they see their aspirations denied. People
experiencing such toil might feel they are deserving of better enemies, but
those seeing an enemy in their king are not enemies of the king. Rather they
are journeymen who desired the king’s road and not their own path.
He or she who
possesses this royal character will be recognized by being a force of stability
and transmutation and the same time. An idol and an enemy, someone who reads
the matrices of wisdom that has ploughed the reeds of time in repetition and
difference. It is someone humble in front of nature, Fate and the memory of
ancestry and the world. It is someone who sees clearly and knows what needs to
be done, never with unnecessary force... It is someone who does as Machiavelli once
wrote:
“When evening
comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my
muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and
in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed
by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was
born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their
actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four
hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble
no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.”