The Starry Cave

“It would perhaps be nice to be alternately the victim and the executioner. ”   -           -  Charles Baudelaire The victim, from Latin victima denoting a sacrifice echoing in the Gothic wihs , meaning ‘holy’ and the Germanic weihen ,’ consecrated’ took a long journey until it surfaced in British language in 1650 denoting a person tortured or in deadly suffering until  it Germany 1718 was given the meaning of someone oppressed by people, powers or situations. It is the latter we are accustomed to refer to when we use the term victim in our vernacular. It is a sad condition – because at the root of it all to be a victim is a choice. Because we are a victim only if we choose to be one. I recall a conversation long time back, a friend of mine were a victim of sexual abuse – as I saw it and told her. She got furious; calling her a victim was for her quite different than stating the facts. I got a lesson that day – an insight if you will – and thi...

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear. - Marcus Aurelius Modern man struggles constantly with making sense of the world, making sense of his station in the world – with why his experience of the world is as it is. It is constantly an army of questions invading the life of modern man, questions rooted in the question ‘why’ things are as they are. For traditional men these questions were easily answered – it was all about looking to the stars and realizing the unique celestial imprint that made who you are. As we entered the modern era astrology had a revival – but in this revival the practical and pragmatic considerations of astrology was forgotten and astrology was reformed on the desires of modern man. It became a tool for soul searching – to disclose who we really are – but classical astrology is about providing the clues all around in your life and dreams that make it possible for you to realize who you are. Let me take one example, close to the hea...

I believe we all seek to be happy, to be fulfilled and to live life as the hero in our own journey. This journey is a series of choices, a dance between fortune and misfortune where we embrace the curse and the blessing with equal acceptance. When the flow is good we revel and when the hooks and crooks of the path and the sandbanks in the river entangle us, asking us to stop, rest or make choices a state Ifá calls Òwónrín arises. Òwónrín is a form of internal turbulence, a transformative power, which forces us to make a choice. The more agitated we are in the choice the more we tend to make choices of desire and by consequence some form of misfortune or setback is instigated. It is natural for the human being to immediately looking for scapegoats when we make the wrong choice. Ifá tells us that it is from Òwónrín that the Orìsá Èsú is taking his ase – or power.  This means that Èsú is a force we will meet constantly in our journey on earth.   Ifá consider our soul, our consc...

The Yoruba term àjé , carry associations to movement and trade – we might understand it as a marketplace of night unfolding in silver rays. This nocturnal marketplace is conceived of as a gathering of long beaked and predatory birds. The concept of àjé has in the New World and the Modern West been equaled with ‘witch’ – and this is true, in so far as we understand what a witch is – on African premises. Àjé is considered a power some people have by inheritance, initiation or by birth. It is considered to be an excess of àse (natural power) – and therefore it must be kept under control and in balance to avoid damage to the wielder of àjé and the community itself.  Àjé is the primordial emotional depths of womanhood. It is not a generative force – on the contrary. Honeysweet Òsún is the generative powers and fertility. Àjé and their mother Ìyàmí Ò s òr ò ngà is the barrenness and otherness, the femaleness prior to the first blood and the lament upon the last blood. This means...

In the modern vernacular to refer to something or someone as a sacred or holy cow, is to state that what is spoken of is undisputed in its authority, it takes on the features of a monist God. Usually this term is used about a person considered to be in a position of untouchable power or an organization that makes common man helpless if he wishes to agitate against it. Confronted with sacred cows we find that in their field of authority grows paranoia, fear, brutality both within the cow itself as much as without. It is a form of symmetry at play here that leads to games of secrecy, espionage and leaking of information from within the sacred cow and from without feelings of oppression and theories of conspiracy that gives the sacred cow even more of the often illusory power it holds. The sacred cow can be about people in powerful positions, about organizations considered to be powerful – but the sacred cows can also touch the kingdom of Self and Ego. The most frequent statement of the...

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ” - Anaïs Nin -          As we walk the paths and tracks of life there is a constant urge within that asks us if we should stay or move on at every waymark and fork in the road. The choice to stay, to make the sojourn at an oasis of pleasure, bane or blessing is given at all times – and with this death comes as a shady friend to ask us to stay and accept the state encountered.   Our journey in the world brings meetings with other pilgrims, journeymen and lovers – here worlds can collide or merge. In our journey we all take on guides – willingly or by our acts and declarations to the world – and our guiding stars and the intelligence of our daimon will prepare the unique map that is your life – a journey of a thousand possibilities... At times we restrain our selves, because we ...

Or;  Why this broom is not taking flight… “Witchcraft is something like gardening, something like cooking; it is a little bit of everything starting off with the basic ingredients. We are the stew or potage in the cauldron, the roots, the trunk, the leaves and the tree. It is dependent on ourselves how we flourish or wither with the winter’s storm.” – Robert Cochrane (quoted from Shani Oates: The Star Crossed Serpent) To define traditional witchcraft, a term Robert Cochrane coined, is not an easy task – and making a historical study of its key personage is quite hopeless unless you have access to the total array of the many legacies intended to be studied. Traditional Witchcraft is always followed by an unwritten history – its shadow where truth lies and blossom only amongst those sworn to protect the truth and its light. This factor alone makes the kind of historical account Howard attempts to present here impossible – at best biased and distorted. In ‘The Children of Cain’,...