Posts Tagged ‘Antiquity’

Magickal Traditions Hidden In the Mundane

  It’s really rather pleasantly shocking how many customs with pagan or magickal roots are tucked amongst the seemingly Christian holiday season cheer. Indeed the entire premise of the Christmas holiday is deeply indebted to the ancient polytheistic festivals which could never quite be stamped out. And with mainstream Christmas upon us, I thought we might take a quick look at the continuing magickal trends you might not have noticed going on today and indeed throughout the holiday season and into the New Year ahead.

  This Christmas, the story of the birth of the Christian semi-god Jesus Christ will be reenacted in churches and schools all over the world as part of the Nativity play. But did you know that this classic tale is actually a re-working of an even older myth concerning the Eastern deity Mithras, who also had a birthday on December 25th? The Apostle Paul, who’s version of the birth of Christ is the most heavily relied upon for the traditional Christmas story, hailed from Ephesus- a center of worship for Mithras in the later Roman Empire. His writing was highly influenced by his surroundings and thus incorporated several of the elements of the Mithras cult and birth story into his telling; including both the idea of the virgin birth and visit of the three wise men to his birth site (in a cave vs. a stable). Indeed it is likely that the early church fathers cast Jesus’s birthday in the winter to take advantage of the pre- pagan winter festivities in the first place.

  The Eastern Star associated with the Nativity story, and its derivative decorative value over the holidays is likewise an element of older cults which was refashioned to suit monotheistic needs. Intriguingly, some of its greatest usage is attached to ancient mother goddess cults, including that of the goddess Asherah: the oft forgotten wife of the god Yahweh ~ the original version of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim God celebrated on Christmas. Many other nature symbols, like snowflakes and poinsettias, which are also associated with the holidays were likewise used in older pagan cults. None more so than mistletoe. Added into the Christmas mythos through its Germanic and Norse usage during winter festivals, it is linked inevitably to the Norse gods through its appearance in the myth of Baldr, the dying god of Viking myth. Following a prophecy detailing Baldr’s impending death, his mother extracts promises from all of the plants and creatures of the world but forgets about the lowly mistletoe tucked up in the oak trees. And so when the mistletoe is unwittingly tricked into stinging Baldr at the behest of the trickster god Loki, the sting is fatal and Baldr is committed to the Afterlife until the end of the world (Ragnarok) when he will emerge to lead the new world order. The theme of the dying god appears over and over again throughout world mythology, indeed the story of Jesus Christ itself represents a ‘dying god’ myth. The re-use of mistletoe as part of the Christmas festival is therefore most fitting indeed.

  Also stemming from northern European pagan traditions are the Yule log and Christmas ornaments. The giant Yule log was traditionally chosen to be burned on the Winter Solstice, the darkest and longest night of the year. The cheerful fire of the long burning log was intended to ward off the evil spirits that lurked in the dark. Families would gather together on this dark night both in fear of the darkness and in celebration of the upcoming new year ahead. The winter holidays were highly important in the pre-scientific world. In a time where you cannot fathom the astrological and natural reasoning behind the turning of the seasons, when all the plants die and the weather gets bad ~ you want to do everything you can to encourage a better season to come round.


  Christmas ornaments, however, are perhaps the most gory of modern holiday traditions. Rumor has it that Germanic warriors would hang the heads and saddle gear of conquered foes on trees near their residence as trophies of their battle. These dark prizes eventually transitioned into more metaphorical baubles which in turn were placed on the first famous Christmas trees popularized by the Germanic Prince Albert at the court of Queen Victoria in nineteenth century England. Decorated vegetation was not however limited to Northern European traditions, decorated boughs of a variety of plants were common features of ancient Roman and Greek festivals, and were intended to both encourage the future bounty of the crops and protect the house from evil spirits.

  Other household holiday decorations possess further overlooked magickal significance. Have you ever noticed how many anthropomorphic figures there are around Christmastime? Gingerbread men, snowmen, figurines of angels, the nativity characters and Santa and his crew: there are hundreds of thousands of little simulacra of people associated with the holidays. And while such representations of humanity may seem commonplace in today’s society, for thousands of years and indeed still in some cultures such things were and are forboden. From the ancient so-called Venus figurines of prehistoric Europe to the statues of the classical world, the recreation of the human form was considered sacred and powerful. Perhaps the most well known remnant of this concept are the voodoo dolls of Santeria and other Afro-Caribbean traditions. Their Christmas cousins may be just as powerful. From the helpful elf who watches over children’s good behavior to the angels atop the tree: these personifications of the human soul and spirit are no less powerful if one chooses to believe in them.

  And finally, let us consider the concept of the infamous Santa Claus himself. The story of Santa is ripe with magickal elements. Ultimately, he is a semi-deity who lives in a magickal dimension on the northern fringes of the human world accompanied by a bevy of miraculous toy-making beings and flying creatures. And though the tradition of Santa is not very old in and of itself, the idea of powerful house spirits who bear gifts and good fortune goes back to the very beginning of time in almost every culture. In some cultures, particularly in Eastern Europe and Japan, these house spirits are still widely venerated in the modern world.

  Ultimately, though Christmas is a monotheistic holiday. Its modern celebration is chock full of symbolism and traditions which hearken back to earlier times and brighter pagan customs. One needs only look closer to find them and celebrate their wonder.

  At its most basic level: alchemy is a philosophy. It advocates the idea that things are changeable. That they are transmutable from one form to another: from base to gold, solid to liquid, young to old and back again. During the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when the practice of alchemy was at its peak; alchemy came to be applied not just to natural elements such as metals, but to nature and people as well. For several centuries, ‘Alchemy’ became the category under which magickal transformations were shelved. Alchemy was both an early form of science and a continuing form of practical magick. Indeed, the work of the alchemists of the 16th -18th centuries formed both the basis for the modern study of chemistry, as well as the foundation of traditional high magick as we know it today. The studies perpetuated by these same alchemists also continued the tradition of philosophic, mathematical, and supernatural studies of the Pythagoreans and practitioners of Qabbalah who had tread the same transcendental pathways over the previous centuries. Despite the pseudo-scientific reputation that alchemy often receives in modern pop culture, it is a very real and very important part of the magickal traditions which are carried on today by all esoteric forms of worship categorized under the ‘New Age’ umbrella.

  Alchemy is by no means a unified discipline. There is not codified set of facts which one would learn in order to become an alchemist. Alchemy was more a spiritual and educational pursuit than it was a strict science of any uniform kind.

  True, alchemists gleaned their knowledge from studying the works of their predecessors and being mentored by them. True, also, that some universities included forms of alchemy amongst their curriculum. Brotherhoods of scholars interested in esoteric learning formed, and among their subjects was alchemy. But despite these forms of learning, none of these men and women were necessarily learning the same curriculum. Even with the advent of the printing press, not all the books on alchemy were disseminated by each alchemist, nor were all the branches of alchemy studied by every practitioner. Each alchemist had his own agenda: using alchemy variously to heal, to make gold, or to find youth. Alchemy was an intellectual movement that walked in different spheres of life, spanning the society of its times. By the Seventeenth century, it connected the fraudulent drunk on the streets with the scholars of the university; the highest echelons of late Renaissance society at the royal court with the witch on the pyre: all with a common philosophical idea which worked towards a variety of their purposes.

  Indeed, alchemy operated much like the study of magick today perpetuates itself. Witches, wiccans, and pagans alike are deeply devoted to a pursuit of learning esoteric knowledge, but not everyone from each path chooses to learn the same thing. It is ultimately a personal quest, a search for knowledge in order to achieve a personal transformation.

Alchemy as a Science

  Before we delve deeper into the more easily recognized esoteric accolades of this lost art: let us look at the more scientific side of alchemy, of alchemy as a system of trial and error which was propagated in the universities of the time and by some of its greatest academics. Alchemy was a precursor to the science which we recognize today as fact. And though science may seem the antithesis of magick, they are really just part and parcel of the same thing.

  Initially, alchemical knowledge was collected informally and without passing through the conventional educational institutions which had sprung up in Europe since the Dark Ages. Paracelsus, sometimes considered the greatest alchemist of the Renaissance, never completed his university studies. He collected his alchemist’s secrets by travelling and observing folk remedies he combined with metallurgical practices. But with science’s new interest in the idea of a scientific method, which alchemy was already utilizing: alchemy became employed by some of the greatest minds of the time, at some of the greatest of the universities. In fact, the two great libraries, the Bodleian at Oxford and the Ashmolean at Cambridge respectively, were based off of the alchemical collections of Duke Humphrey and Elias Ashmole. Even the great Sir Isaac Newton is considered an alchemist for his research into ancient Egyptian hermeticists and through later connections made by alchemical groups like the Rosicrucians. But he also saw the science in alchemy and used some aspects of his laboratories at Cambridge University to study it. Sir Fancis Bacon is likewise called an alchemist for his association with esoteric societies, like the Rosicrucians and Freemasons and his literary endeavor The Masque of the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, which he wrote in honor of the marriage between Frederick V of the Rhineland Palatinate and Elizabeth, daughter of James I of England, who, incidentally were all also wrapped up in alchemical studies of very differing kinds. Bacon’s works set up the Baconian method that we today know vernacularly as the aforementioned ‘scientific method.’ Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry, began his education as an alchemist; though did not continue to teach alchemy once he himself became a professor.

  Outside of England, particularly in the Northern and Central areas of mainland Europe, alchemy was also finding a niche among scholars. The Danish antiquarian Doctor Ole Worm was given papal permission to collect so-called oddities, which came to include various texts and items of a magickal nature, later inspiring H.P. Lovecraft to include him in his twentieth century work Necronomicron. Some were not so lucky in support for the new science, like Theodore Zwinger, ~a professor of medicine at the University of Basel was penalized by the University for inclusions in his teachings work done by Paracelsus. But unlike the University of Basel, others, like the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. championed alchemy and supported multiple alchemists on its faculty and taught alchemical methodology in its classes on chemistry and anatomy.

  The leading doctors, the mathematicians and physicists of the day; all studied the ratios of alchemy and its history out of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The scientific method alchemy had long been unintentionally advocating became recognized as the basis for all modern experimentation and creation. The study of alchemy in schools or independently by professors of these schools working outside their professional capacity helped shape the minds of generations of men and women, leading up to the modern science of today.

Alchemy & The Witch Hunts

  Despite this flourishing of alchemy among academia, it was a subject best approached with care. By the sixteenth century, some elements of alchemy’s esoteric studies had unfortunately come to be associated with the dark arts of witch craft and sorcery. The logic of the Burning Times decreed that how else would these men and women know the secrets of the universe unless the devil himself had whispered them into alchemist’s ears? Alchemists devised erudite languages and metaphors to transcribe their secrets in, ones they hoped that would not create alarm among their witch hunting neighbors. But they were not always successful and some alchemists were branded witches and sorcerers for their naïve scholarly endeavors. And many were persecuted alongside the wisewomen, innocents, and political victims who fell prey to the Witch Trials or Burning Times of the 16th and 17th centuries. Bookmakers who published grimores of alchemy were particularly susceptible and often had to move towns to avoid an uprising against their shops.

  The mighty Catholic Church was particularly skeptical of the new alchemical sciences that were springing up. For they threatened previously held notions of God and man and their relationship to the universe, which in turn threatened the church’s power. And if alchemists weren’t careful to make provisions for the Church’s scrutiny, they faced severe consequences. Sir Isaac Newton cleverly combined church sanctioned theology with his science, for instance, to explain his theory of gravity, Newton wrote, “Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.” He justified his science in the eyes of the church, but others were not so clever or else refused to concede. The scholar Giordano Bruno was sentenced to burn at the stake for refusing to recant his alchemy-based theories regarding ideas about the transmutation of the soul and the transubstantiation of the Catholic Mass. He was charged with the practices of divination and witchcraft, both of which had technically been outlawed under church law since the ratification of church doctrine at the Council of Nicea in the 4th century in continuation of earlier Roman laws. However, until the Burning Times, few cases were executed under such charges.

  While many of the alchemists charged for witchcraft during the Burning Times may never have actually practiced direct magickal acts (only studied magickal/scientific topics), others most likely did engage in acts some might call Dark Arts. Giordano Bruno and his one-time mentor the British royal advisor John Dee may have darker and more occult areas of alchemy. Often these pursuits focused on communication between the spirits and bordered on necromancy. Dee was at one point kicked out of Prague by Pope Sixtus V for committing acts of black magic in the city.

  Along with these Dark Arts and the politically motivated Church persecution, alchemy earned an even worse reputation from the slew of fraudulent schemers who pretended to be alchemists to con people out of money and goods. These faux-alchemists would practice simple chemical tricks, rigged to make it appear they could produce gold out of charcoal or other such feats to trick wealthy and gullible lords out of money. This was such a widespread stigma of the day that Dante Aligheri immortalized it in his social commentary of the day, The Divine Comedy, by placing the alchemists on the tenth level of Hell in his Inferno.

Alchemy in Power

  Despite the stigma attached to alchemy, there are many historical instances of European princes, kings, and queens participating and encouraging alchemy from both ends of the spectrum (i.e. as a science and as magic). Many rulers had alchemists as their advisors or as their doctors. Johann Friedrich Helvetius was the personal physician to William of Orange of the Netherlands, Johann Joachim Becher to Leopold I of Austria, Ole Worm to the skeptic Holy Roman Emperor Christian IV, and his predecessor Rudolph II went through a whole series of doctors with an alchemy sideline. Rudolph also utilized alchemists as his advisors, most notably, that king among alchemists, Michael Maier. Maier also spent some time at the court of James I of England. Queen Elizabeth II depended on her spy John Dee. And according to the social commentary inherent in the theatre of the day, James I of England (VI of Scotland) kept three alchemist witches as military advisors. These ‘advisors’ and James’ interest in the occult were included in Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Holinshead histories.

  Some rulers went beyond their advice and medical attention and are suspected by historians of studying alchemy themselves. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I personally ransacked a Benedictine archive in Rome looking for an ancient treatise on alchemy believed to be hidden within. Queen Barbara, the wife of Sigismund Vasa III of Poland is accused by history of being not only an alchemist, but a witch. James I of England and Rudolf II of Hungary delved deep into the arcane as rulers and alchemists. James I of England wrote his own Daemonologie in 1597, a witch-hunter’s guide written by a man perhaps too close to his subject to be perfectly free of the taint of magick. He was careful to lightly persecute others in his realm suspected of witchcraft and the like to avoid church persecution himself (though as leader of the aforementioned church, it was easy to get away with). The Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II set up a veritable playland for alchemists and other scientists of the day, which included an observatory, various labs, and libraries of grimoires. He himself was said to participate in alchemical experiments and work closely within the commune of scholars he had collected. His personal goal was to find the Philosopher’s Stone, a stone which, once created, would continue to spill forth an elixir of youth and the ability to turn things into gold.

  We cannot really know today just how much the alchemists and the philosophy of alchemy had on the rulers of this time period, or of how much their appreciation of what this arcane subject influenced their judgments and rulings over their respective countries. Nor can we really know what was known by the public at the time regarding the alchemy activities related above, or if they would have even wanted to know. All of these leaders made allowances for church dogma in order to avoid persecution. But were they actually religious beyond this façade? It is difficult for the historian to know or even to judge correctly. Regardless, we can at least state that alchemy must have had at least some influence over them.

  The history of alchemy is representative of a myriad of magickal movements and motivations. It is symbolic of both the persecution of magick and the championship of it. It represents both the veracity of knowledge gained and of the deception man is capable of using such knowledge for. It embodies the advancement of the human mind and the human race, of our wonder for the mysterious, and our quest to discover and control the laws of nature and the gods. The use of alchemy, pseudo-science that it may be considered now, encouraged the growth of other sciences still seen as legitimate. It inspired advancements in other fields, seeing the growth of library science in the modern age, and was the muse for multiple works of widely regarded literature. It was a profound step on man and woman-kind’s journey towards enlightenment. And it and its alchemists should not be forgotten. For we today are their descendents. The research scientists in labs, the doctors, pharmacists and nurses in their hospitals, the astronomers looking up at the night sky, the chefs in their kitchen, the students at their books: in our desire to learn something more, we are all alchemists.

  Want to learn more about historical magickal movements and the witches behind them? Keep your eyes peeled for History of Witches in the Western World, a new class from the College of the Sacred Mists on the Witches of Antiquity. Coming later this year!

Partial Bibliography

Cobb, C. & Goldwhite, H. 1995. Creations of Fire: Chemistry’s Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age. New York: Plenum Press.

Fernando, D. 1998. Alchemy: An Illustrated A-Z. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

Moran, B.T. 2005. Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rice University. The Galileo Project.

Note: Image at top is William Fettes Douglas’ The Alchemist (1853).

Prayer and song are elements of religious culture which anthropologists assume were some of the key early features of the world’s first religions thousands of years ago. The spoken or sung verbalization of a wish, a cry for help, a thank you and other types of prayer formalizes the supplicant’s desire ~ pushing it out from them and into the wider cosmos. It is a beautiful expression which bridges the gap between human and divine.

With the advent of writing in ancient Mesopotamia, these prayers began to be written down ~ their power deriving now as much from the vocalization of the desire as from the act of being written. Early writing was considered sacred. The knowledge of being able to read and write was a powerful skill; one which was possessed by the rare few; in fact, initially only priests, royal administrators, their scribes, and occasionally the royals themselves were capable of writing and reading. It was used as much for organizing the newly expanding Empires of the world as it was for magickal purposes. Over time, it would filter down to the merchants and beyond, sifting down through the ages until the invention of the printing press in China in the sixth century AD and the later, more prominent Western discovery of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, and the wider spread of literacy that ensued because of these discoveries. But in ancient Mesopotamia, the power of the written prayer was myriad, and was used to call upon the gods for a vast array of purposes.

The following prayer, or hymn, to the goddess Ishtar is from approximately 1600 BCE, during the first Dynasty of Babylon. It was written in cuneiform on behalf of the King Ammiditana, and survived the ages, to be deciphered by the archaeologists of the early twentieth century and ultimately read by you, dear reader, at the beginning of the twenty-first.

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One of the things I love most about the Sacred Mists is its emphasis on learning; learning not just about oneself, but about the world at large. We are not alone, there is no singular Big Brother bland culture but rather an awe-inspiring multi-faceted tapestry of cultures. And I find that the Sacred Mists encourages people to take a step back and appreciate the vast and powerful picture the people of the world have created.

I recently had the opportunity to experience the magick of Hindu rituals up close and personal and thought that perhaps those of you at Sacred Mists might like to hear a bit about it. My lovely friend Anjali was recently wed ~ and as a bridesmaid at her fabulous Indian wedding, I had a chance of a lifetime to witness firsthand the beauty and sanctity of several ancient Hindu ceremonies in their modern contexts. Hinduism is one of the oldest continuing religious traditions still flourishing in the modern world. Based on the prehistoric beliefs of the Indian subcontinent, it was shaped by millennia of social and political upheavals, and influenced profoundly by its philosophical offshoots, Buddhism, Jainism, and Lamaism. With over one billion followers worldwide, it is one of the largest mainstream religions; and the biggest religion which recognizes more than two deities. Its emphasis on spirituality, myth, ritual, and polytheism make it of particular interest to Sacred Mists readers. Read the rest of this entry »

Native American Landscapes at Lake Tahoe

In North American it is easy to forget how long mankind has been wandering around its sprawling landscape. History here seems to start post-conquest and often ignores the thousands upon thousands of years during which Native American groups initially crisscrossed the continent.

I myself was once guilty of this thinking. When I started my academic career I very pointedly steered myself towards classical Mediterranean subjects; explicitly ignoring the archaeology of my own American backyard. Older now, I recognize the error of my ways and the sublime interest and importance of all anthropological topics. I also recognize the primary reason why North American Indian topics are so easily overlooked by the education system and the media: lack of archaeological and anthropological evidence, and particularly lack of spectacular archaeological evidence. Alas, there will be no equivalent of Tut’s tomb in North America. But there is a rich and varied tapestry of ritual and mythology that belies this lack of archaeological evidence, perhaps making it all the more magickal for its mystery.

I recently had a chance to visit one of the most gorgeous natural wonders of North America, one which despite a loaded ancient past, is often ignored as a site of Native American importance: Lake Tahoe. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California and Nevada, Lake Tahoe and its surrounding smaller lakes were created through a combination of fault line activity between the geological plates of the earth’s crust and the eruption of the nearby and now extinct Mount Pluto, which dammed up a large portion of the northern end of Lake Tahoe, resulting in the Lake’s particularly unique size and depth for the region. It is, in fact, the sixteenth deepest lake in the world, and the second deepest in North America.

Lake Tahoe is surrounded by ridiculously majestic mountains and strands upon strands of alpine trees. It is a place both of great beauty and abundant resources. It is no wonder that when mankind first migrated across the northern icy land bridges and into what is now the continental USA; many of them lingered by Lake Tahoe, refusing to follow their brethren farther south and east across the wider North American plains as indicated by the antiquity of the local dialect and its unique place within the linguistic branches of Native American culture. Classified in antiquity variously as the Martis complex and then the Kings Beach complex; when white settlers arrived in Lake Tahoe approximately 300 years ago, the local people called themselves the waashiw, which means ‘the people from here.’ A fitting term for a group who had indeed been ‘here’ as long as being there was humanly possible. Waashiw in turn was transliterated into the modern name for the group: the Washoe. The Washoe furthermore divided themselves up, not into tribes, for they did not consider themselves a tribe or to have smaller tribes within itself, but rather family units who associated themselves specifically with a particular side of the Lake. In my exploration of Lake Tahoe, I particularly explored the sacred sites round the south end of the Lake, the sites of the Washoe who called themselves Hanalelti.

Ritual Landscapes

The southern end of the lake encompasses both rocky cliffs dropping steeply into the freshwater below on its western side; narrow, boulder strewn beaches on its eastern, and gentle plains descending into the water between. It is a varied place. One minute you can be strolling through the forest with only trees ahead and the next you’re overlooking the lake in all its glory or below a pulsing waterfall. It is a place of natural wonder. And if it still conjures up images of a magickal landscape to modern eyes, one can be sure it did the same for ancient orbits. One of the widest trends in the majority of Native American mythology is its use of the local landscape to define itself. A tree is not simply a tree nor a mountain a mountain. They are ideas of a mythic place set in the mundane human world. They are portals into the Platonic realm of the otherworld where the divine shapes are kept. This tree is the tree of Ta-iw, the god of the sky; that rock is where the Star Wives fell to earth. Places were not simply places, they were a part of a cosmic mythos themselves.

Washoe rituals reflected this idea of space. The Washoe spent their summers up on the mountain slopes overlooking the lake, and their snowy winters and springs along the more congenial lake shore. This annual migration is reflected in what little is known of their rituals and where they were held. In September, when the pine-nuts, a Washoe staple food, were plentiful, they would hold the pine-nut dance, the Tlagum-las: a processional ceremony begun by the dance, culminated in the movement from the mountain slopes to the lake valleys as they harvested pine nuts along the way and ending again with the dance in their new encampment. They likewise had a similar acorn dance, the Mallun-las performed higher up the mountains at the elevations where the oak trees live and a Peleu-las, the jack-rabbit dance, performed in the forests to ensure a good hunt. As you can tell by the types of the festivals held, the Washoe were very interested in keeping their food supply bountiful, not surprising given the harshness their mountain winters.

Cave Rock: A Site of Shamanic Dreaming

The wisemen and women of the Washoe were likewise influenced by their landscapes. The Washoe believed that their shaman and herb-doctors (both of which, by the way, could traditionally be held by either a man or a woman: a delightful affirmative action rarity in the ancient world) earned their power and their sacred knowledge through dreams. And that dreams could be influenced by sleeping in certain sacred places within the landscape.

Cave Rock, on the southeastern shore of the lake is one such site. The Washoe believed that whilst sleeping in the caves there, their medicine men would be visited by the water sprites of the lake who would teach him or her about healing and potentially give them special medicinal powers. However, for all its magickal significance to the Washoe, Cave Rock, like much of the lake was sold to the US government by the Washoe between 1916-1924. And though a small national park hunkers just below it, much to my dismay, I learned on my trip that the actual caves themselves are now highway tunnels. To get round the eastern shore of the lake, one actually drives through these sacred caves on the main road just above Zephyr Cove. A very sad development indeed, and unfortunately just another in a long list of sites which have been regrettably misappropriated by the government or other agencies before their anthropological significance could be appreciated and the site thereby preserved.

The Mythic Origins of the Tahoe Landscape

But it was not just individual spots which held mythological and ritual significance to the Washoe. Local legend attributes the entire creation of the surrounding landscape to magick and myth. The following was recorded by local colonists attempting to document the fascinating anthropology and mythology of their Native American counterparts at the turn of the last century.

Legend has it that once upon a time, The Good Indian tried to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains. But he was being chased by an Evil Spirit who did not want him to reach his destination on the western side, so he beseeched the spirits of the earth and sky and a Good Spirit heard him and gave him a magickal branch. The Good Spirit informed the Good Indian that whenever he plucked a bit from the branch and dropped it on the earth, it would create a body of water behind him to slow the Evil Spirit down long enough for the Good Indian to get away. For the Evil Spirit could not cross water and would have to detour around it. The Good Indian continued along his way and when next the Evil Spirit caught up with him, the Good Indian attempted to use the magickal branch. But in his haste to use the magickal branch the first time; he snapped off a huge piece of it and tossed it to the ground, thus creating Lake Tahoe, Tahoe meaning ‘big water’ or ‘big lake’.

The Good Indian fled further south through the canyons but eventually the Evil Spirit caught up with him again, and so he tossed a second smaller bit of the magickal branch to the earth and it became ‘doolagoga’ aka Fallen Leaf Lake. The Evil Spirit was briefly detoured but kept at him, and the Good Indian kept right on making lakes behind him until finally he came out of the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, thus reaching his destination and defeating the plan of the Evil Spirit to stop him. The Evil Spirit gave up and went away to torment another Good Indian and our Good Indian lived a long and happy life with the family he found in his new home.

My recent trip to Lake Tahoe and its sacred sites was, shall we say, otherworldly. And its brought home, literally, a very intriguing concept. There are statistically few places in the world that have not felt the instep of a human foot at one point or another. Look around at your own backyard. Who passed through it once upon a time? Even if there isn’t any archaeological evidence for anyone having been there doesn’t mean that it wasn’t once part of a greater mythic landscape which the modern world can but glimpse.

Bibliography

E. S. Curtis, 1907-1930. The North American Indian Courtesy Northwestern University Digital Library
G. W. James, 1917. The Lake of the Sky, Lake Tahoe, in the High Sierras of California.
Include link to Cave Rock website
Sacred Land Film Project: Cave Rock
Site Materials, assorted

In the modern era, when one thinks ‘witch’ one is far more likely to conjure up images of Samantha Stevens, Sabrina Spellman, or the Halliwell sisters before ever settling an ancient and mysterious figure like the Greek witch Erichtho. And yet, over the course of the last two millennia, several famous authors have done just that: gone back and pulled her up from the depths of history and re-crafted her to fit into their contemporary culture.

Although it is not uncommon for mythological figures to crop up in the pop culture of multiple time periods, it is always rather mystifying and intriguing when a particularly obscure figure of the folkloric past manages cameos in a multitude of classics throughout the ages. Such is the case of Erichtho. She initially appears only in Lucan’s Pharsalia at the beginning of Imperial Rome, only to resurface more than a thousand years later as a guest star in Dante’s Divine Comedy, an inspiration for Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth, and again a few centuries later in Goethe’s Faust.

But there are many “minor” sorceresses of the classical world: what was soo special about Erichtho that she was singled out and summoned up again and again by the writer’s pen ~ never as a main character; always as a suitably evocative and darkly magickal presence representative of the prevailing beliefs regarding witchcraft in each author’s contemporary society. It is almost as if the witch herself moved through time – immortal- to act as the muse for four of the western world’s arguably greatest writers. Given the current society’s flair for literary blending, It is surprising that she is not a figure of more prominence given her mysterious and villainous re-appearances in these latter two classics which have gone on to become the cornerstones of literature; and that she is not featured more often in further fictional works as an immortal witch travelling through time akin to Anne Rice’s vampires and the likes of Count Saint Germaine. And if this is not so (as sadly it is most likely just my imagination running rampant on the idea), then what was so endearing about this witch to bring her back time and time again?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Erichtho in The Pharsalia, Book VI, Lines 496-987

In her intial appearance, Erichtho is cast in the role as the ultimate wicked witch, a role she is destined to repeat from thenceforth on. She appears for the first time in Lucan’s epic poem describing the Civil war between Julius Caesar and the Roman Senate under the Pompey the Great; which culminated in the Battle of Pharsalus in Greece on August 9, 48 BCE.

The son of Pompey the Great, Sextus Pompeius, having heard rumors of the local super-witch Erichtho, defies convention and rather than going to a reputable oracle or priest, consults her and her scandalous spirits on the eve of battle to find out who will die on the battlefield the next day. Lucan casts Erichtho as a witch who lives on the fringes of Thessalian society, having taken up residence in an abandoned tomb not far from the battlefield and who conducts her rituals in a sacred cave in the foothills just above Pharsalus. Thessaly, in much of ancient literature, is already given a rather haunted reputation. Located at the base of Mount Olympus and consisting of some seriously rocky terrain and scraggly forests; it was where the Titans fought the Olympic gods for supremacy, where Jason, Peleus, and Achilles were born, where the Argonauts set sail from, and where Medea travelled by dragonback to collect certain diabolical herbs from. It was also home to one of the earliest Neolithic Greek societies, which may account both for its prominence and centrality in so many of the famous Greek myths, as well as for its diverse and often chthonic local legends.

Beyond a strong knowledge of herbcraft, Erictho’s primary skill is that of necromancy. She calls up the spirits of the dead and can either ask them to do her bidding or else use them to inquire as to the actions of the Fates, thereby knowing the future. She also has the ability to make it possible so that no one will be able to raise a given spirit from the dead to use them for their purposes. She works using the body of the deceased, which in Lucan’s tale, she gets from among the Roman dead on the fringes on the battlefield. She cleans the body, ritually anoints it, and in a cave sacred to her magick performs a ritual which summons the spirit of the dead back into the body for questioning. Lucan does not seem to be sure of himself as to the source of her power, as throughout the text he variously states that she invokes the gods for aid in her magick, that she doesn’t invoke the gods and therefore has some other power beyond them, and that she provokes the gods and they’re so scared of her for unknown reasons that they do her bidding. He even indicates that she can summon a god or goddess in physical form if need be, which would have been a highly controversial idea at the time if done outside of a temple atmosphere (contrary to what the TV shows Hercules: The Legendary Journey and Xena: Warrior Princess would have fans believe). Most magickal practices in the ancient world revolved around the idea of beseeching the gods and performing a ritual and/or sacrifice to entice the god/goddess to come to the aid of the supplicant/the community, so the idea that she calls on the gods but does not need them but something else is an interesting prospect given this context.

One of my particular favorite facets of the story is its use of the serpent. When Sextus and his gang of morbid men first come upon Erichtho at home in her tomb, she is nude. But for the summoning ceremony she puts on a kind of ritual outfit.

“Discordant hues
flamed on her garb as by a fury worn;
Bare was her visage, and upon her brow
Dread vipers hissed, beneath her streaming locks
In sable coils entwined. “ (L. 772-776)

She also later uses a live snake in the summoning ritual itself, as a scourge to beat the dead body as she begins her chant to bring it back to life (L. 861). The symbolism of the snake, especially in the ancient Mediterranean, is a fascinating icon of life, death, and rebirth. It lives, but it burrows underground, essentially living in the Underworld. And it sheds its skin: symbolically it gets a new life while discarding the impure old one. It is no wonder that ancient man (and modern man for that matter too) were so fascinated with this creature.

Fact or Fiction?

The Pharsalia was written just over century after the battle in 61-65 AD, and Lucan would have been able to draw on the considerable resources of contemporary Roman records to flesh out his tale into a historical epic, one that was so well considered as a historical source, that for the remainder of the Roman Empire and beyond it was one of the core pieces of literature retained by the church and schools. Lucan was in a unique position for much of his career and its associated research: he was a close friend of the Emperor Nero, which allowed him to move quickly through the ranks of the poets and access to the same archives Plutarch would later accidentally preserve when he wrote his great histories of classical figures. However, Lucan would later fall from the Emperor’s grace and for much of the time he was writing the Pharsalia, he was a vocal political dissident against imperial rule and his once friend.

Regardless, Lucan’s access to records means that his poem included a high level of fact among the fiction. This leaves the slight possibility that Sextus Pompeius or some other figure in the army may have indeed consulted a local Thessalian witch for the outcome of the battle. It was not an uncommon practice for the military to consult a soothsayer, reputable or no, before a fight. Even so, it is still likely that Lucan’s portrayal of their meeting is more on the fictional end of the spectrum and probably a composite of friends experiences with similar country witches of his own and the previous two generations, the mythology of the Thessalian region, and general superstition. However, it is rather interesting to note that there are in fact a series of somewhat sacred caves located not far from Pharsalis, or modern Farsala as it is now known. Surveyed in 1920, the caves feature a series of ancient Greek inscriptions dedicating them to Chiron and the Nymphs of the wood: all of whom have at times been associated with darker magicks and esoteric knowledge of nature and life and death.

Erichtho’s form of magick is generally anthropologically likely to have been practiced as described. Its assignment by Lucan to the fringes of society has much to do with the changing politics of science, magick, and magic in his own times. Magick was still acceptable in civilized temple-going format but not when it is the wilder darker magick of the countryside or the later variants of magic (with no ‘k’) peddled on the streets as a pale, purchasable shade of the rural witchcraft aforementioned ~ which was a huge issue in ancient Rome and incurred the wrath of many laws against frauds, fakes, and other charlatans promising magick and delivering make-believe results. Like with Medea’s forms of magick discussed last week, the darker acts of ancient, more primal ritual are most likely representative of older shamanistic cults, of a religion before the mainstream ethics of polite society took over from superstition. And one which the more civilized post-Pax Romana Roman world would have shied away from as a reminder of their earlier, less powerful days.

Erichtho’s use of a dead body in her ritual and of her dwelling place within a tomb are of particular note in this context. Both of these elements of ritual would have been distinctly taboo and considered bad form when Lucan wrote his text, similar to as they are today. They were not, however, always taboo. Ancestor worship was a powerful factor leading up to the Greek and Roman civilizations, and while the body was no longer as important a facet in their death rituals as it once had been; the physical dead body was initially held in high esteem as a vessel of power and of the spirit. Take for instance ancient Egyptian beliefs that the body must be preserved in order for part of the spirit to return to it or even earlier Near Eastern beliefs regarding the need to have one’s deceased relatives buried underneath ones house to have their favor. Or the ritual of feasting with the dead, not just by leaving them an empty seat at the dinner table, but by having a feast in their tomb, situated among the macabre decaying bodies of their ancestors. Necromancy may seem like a thing straight out of B-horror movies to the modern world, but in the ancient world it was no laughing matter. If someone was rumored to be bringing up the spirits of the dead to help forsee the future, it would have been considered a powerful act of magick indeed. With the progression of mankind, science, and particularly medicine, death became a less mysterious, more understandable thing, and the body became more and more untouchable and its presence less tolerated among the living, for whatever purpose.

With regards to Erichtho living within a tomb, while other cultures, as I’ve just pointed out, had few qualms about interacting with the bodies of the dead, the Romans in particular were very superstitious about such things, and especially tombs. The Roman landscape in ancient Italy was dotted with Etruscan tombs which the Romans simply left alone out of fear of the ancient spirits and potentially political persecution by families claiming a genealogical connection to this or that tomb. Roman tombs likewise were sacrosanct. There was such strong element of superstition in the region that it was not until the Renaissance that most of these ancient tombs began to be vandalized (verses Egypt, for instance, where often tombs were robbed within months of the burial).

So while whether or not there was an actual historical Erichtho is debatable, it seems very likely, that at the least, she is based on a composite of the darker witches known to haunt the fringes of society during the late Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. And that the circumstances of her presence in and her actions in the Pharsalia are understandable given the context of the then contemporary society which created her.

Erichtho’s Later Cameos

Flash forward to over a millennia later to the early fourteenth century and Medieval Italy: Erichtho’s second appearance in the literary canon. Since her first appearance, the Pharsalia had gone on to wide acclaim, and even following the fall of the Roman Empire, it remained one of the mainstays of classical history and of the Latin language. It is probably in his capacity as an informal student of Latin literature that Dante came across the dark and wild Erichtho.

His classical masterpiece, the Divine Comedy is the story of a young man, likewise named Dante, who travels through Hell and Heaven to find his dead love Beatrice. In its first book, The Inferno, Dante is guided by the shade of the Roman epic poet Virgil, and as they travel through Hell, they encounter several figures from Roman and Medieval Italian history, including Lucan himself. Virgil admits that this was not the only time he was summoned as such, and that the witch Erichtho had once called him up to bring her another spirit from a deeper level of hell (Book IX, L 22-33); presumably that of one of the conspirators against Julius Caesar, as in Lucan she is particularly excited at the possibility of having the body of either Caesar, Pompey, or one of the other generals (some of the aforementioned co-conspirators) to use in her magicks.

Jump ahead again to almost three hundred years later to the turn of the 17th century and Shakespeare’s Macbeth and his weird sisters. Their famous “double double toil and trouble” chant and subsequent listing of all their nefarious ingredients is based off of Erichtho’s magickal workings in the Pharsalia, lines 788-820:

Then copious poisons from the moon distils
Mixed with all monstrous things which Nature’s pangs
Bring to untimely birth; the froth from dogs
Stricken with madness, foaming at the stream;
A lynx’s entrails: and the knot that grows
Upon the fell hyaena; flesh of stags
Fed upon serpents; and the sucking fish
Which holds the vessel back though eastern winds
Make bend the canvas; dragon’s eyes; and stones
That sound beneath the brooding eagle’s wings.
Nor Araby’s viper, nor the ocean snake
Who in the Red Sea waters guards the shell,
Are wanting; nor the slough on Libyan sands
By horned reptile cast; nor ashes fail
Snatched from an altar where the Phoenix died.
And viler poisons many, which herself
Has made, she adds, whereto no name is given:
Pestiferous leaves pregnant with magic chants
And blades of grass which in their primal growth
Her cursed mouth had slimed. Last came her voice
More potent than all herbs to charm the gods
Who rule in Lethe. Dissonant murmurs first
And sounds discordant from the tongues of men
She utters, scarce articulate: the bay
Of wolves, and barking as of dogs, were mixed
With that fell chant; the screech of nightly owl
Raising her hoarse complaint; the howl of beast
And sibilant hiss of snake — all these were there;
And more — the waft of waters on the rock,
The sound of forests and the thunder peal.

But her most substantial role since her debut would be in the early 1800s in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. Faust tells the story of the title character, a young scholar, who makes an arrangement with a devil known as Mephistopheles, and with whom with he has a series of adventures. Erichtho appears in Part Two of the play, which was published later and separately from the more famous Part One which details Faust’s failed romance. In Part Two, as Faust and Mephistopheles travel through various Hellenic scenarios, they encounter Erichtho, trapped on the battlefield at Pharsalus. She laments that she is doomed by history to repeat the night over and over again thus maintaining her evil reputation, one she feels she does not wholly deserve. She has a fabulous monologue (imagine it being recited with full early theatricality on a German stage, better yet, picture Lea Michelle from Glee up there lamenting), which starts off with the wonderful declaration:

“To this night’s awful festival, as oft before,
I stride in view, Erichtho, I the gloomy one,
Not so atrocious as the tiresome poet-crew
Calumniate me to excess… They never end
In praise and censure…..”

A Witch for All Ages

Erichtho’s journey through time is also the journey of the representation of “the witch” throughout time. In each of Erichtho’s appearances, she personifies the version of the witch or sorceress popular with the author’s contemporary society.

In Lucan, she is a Thessalian sorceress. She continues what Medea started and embodies the new version of us vs. them, the civilized world vs. the fringes of society, the new science and new morals vs. the old, darker, more superstitious ways.

By the Time of Dante’s Divine Comedy, opinions on witchcraft and magick had changed considerably for the worse. And though Erichtho is still cast in an antique role alongside the similarly ancient Virgil, she is intrinsically linked with the sending of people to Hell and the evil summoning of spirits; the latter of which is, certainly by the thirteenth century, is irrefutably considered a demonic act.

And by the writing of Faust by van Goethe in the 18th century, the continental witch craze of the Renaissance and Reformation was beginning to wane as the Enlightenment firmly took hold of Europe, and the figure of the witch, once evil through and through was being reconsidered. Learned society became split into two skeptical groups: some scoffed at the very idea of the witch and found the few remaining pockets of magickal accusations and witch trials laughable, and others, like Goethe, decided there was something more behind the figure of the wicked witch, something which was not entirely evil and was more a misunderstanding of her power than anything else.

It is perhaps then Erichtho’s adaptability which draws society to her again and again. As an obscure composite character of figures outside society, she is malleable. Each generation can see her as they wish and take from her what they require. Lucan needed a naughty sorceress to do forbidden magick for a weasel-y general, Dante needed a witch powerful enough to command the gates of Hell, and Goethe found in her the misunderstood witch who could symbolize the plight of the past several generations of victims of the European witch trials. In my own reading of the text, with a contemporary bias that witches are more Glinda style good than anything else, I can’t help but look through Lucan’s text and see his own bias against magick and against things he and the rest of his world did not yet understand. It is perhaps, for the best, that every few hundred years Erichtho is dusted off and reinvented. Like Elphaba in Wicked, it is always worth a second, or third, or fourth look before judging a witch.

Informal Bibliography

Magic in Greek & Latin Literature J.E. Lowe 2003
Magic & Magicians in the Greco-Roman World by Matthew Dickie 2003

Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece & Rome by Bengt Ankarloo & Stuart Clark 1999
Recent Surveys & Excvacations, 1920. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. XXIV.

Please note: Links to primary sources are included in the text.