YES. I am sorry that this question even needs to be asked. Fencraft is open to all. I think the Powers of Fencraft mostly like power, attention and presents, and aren't so fussed who they get that from. I am very, very embarassed for racist groups in the Norse tradition, and ashamed that they are part of Paganism. I hope no one brings that hateful ideology with them into Fencraft. If you do hold strong views that your racial group is superior to others, or that only certain sorts of people are “truly British” or “truly English”, I would like to discourage you from following our tradition.
(A friend wrote: "You made me think again of that lyric from Song of The Lonely Mountain, ‘and all who find us shall know the tune’ meaning very much to me, not that 'only the right people find us’ but 'all who are here contribute to the song of our spirit’. That there is nothing concrete, static, ancient and pure but a living thing that embraces the current and doesn’t fear the change of future.")
Yes, and you've got two options for how you do this.
Plenty of international Pagans revere British gods, and Landcrafting is no different. Wherever a story has travelled, it has power - you can use the same major figures, such as Rhiannon and Pwyll, and couple that with spirits you have found in your area.
That said, a local focus is a key part of Fencraft. So you could use the same approach to the myths of your home - looking for myths, urban legends, old gods, and using our framework to work with them. I write about my local landweird, but it seems likely that all places have one, and it is - I guess - more “authentically” Fencrafty to seek the mystery under your feet. The practices and ideas of Fencraft are the same internationally, but in America - say - you may be encountering the ghost riders, skinwalkers, jackrabbits, Johnny Appleseed, whatever local myth-fragments make up your cultural detritus, instead of Maid Marion.
My focus on Britain as I write this is entirely selfish - I'm writing the ritual and spiritual framework I intend to follow, and the land is central to that.
Absolutely. Witchcraft is furiously pragmatic. You can gain personal and emotional benefits from following our ways and traditions without believing a word of it.
Landcrafting has no official position on hexes and curses.
The history and myths we draw from show Powers with very strong personal values and honour. Witches should develop their own value system, perhaps adopting some values from the Powers they serve. This may include a personal stance about whether they hex, and when.
In these myths, our Powers do not always act well, or in accordance with modern values. Many are warriors, who use violence to pursue their ends. Being cruel for absolutely no reason is common in fairy lore. Additionally, the traditional figure of the witch casts evil spells on her neighbours. This would support use of hexes.
However, these stories are not didactic as the life of Jesus is. They are stories, depicting what happened, rather than a guide to how to live. Often, we are shown Powers making terrible choices by any standard - Guenevire did commit adultery, and Merlin and Gwydion arranged rapes. We should not copy these things automatically. Hexing may be one of many things we should not emulate.
It's up to you. Determine your own comfort with the psychic equivalent of punting someone through a wall, and act accordingly.
Absolutely.
The focus on Britain and the land is rooted in what I know and am good at - it's perfectly OK to use this framework with any sort of pantheons you choose. You might like the practices, ideas and structure of Landcrafting, and want to use them - but use exclusively the ancient Egyptian gods. This is essentially creating something new, but that's totes OK and very encouraged.
Additionally: people have been moving all over the world for thousands of years, bringing their gods and rituals with them. We know, for example, that people from North Africa were here in Roman times. Societies have always been multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, following the patterns of trade and discovery. It is therefore very likely to discover gods you think of as "Egyptian" or "Greek" or "American" here, having been brought by their believers in centuries past. Britain is not a static concept, a pastoral fetish for bigots to dream of a green and pleasant land before diversity. Britain is alive, and changing, and we still have the movement of people and their gods. In short - you can also follow Landcrafting "by the book", as a very British pathway, but have one or more unexpected "non-British" Powers in the mix.
When I was researching notes for this path, I was trying to pin down a certain “feeling” about the landscape of England, a feeling we now call “the landweird”. I made >long lists of films like The Wicker Man and Wuthering Heights which capture the unsettling sense of there being something older here and dormant, quite beyond human understanding, something we've sought to crush and forget - but remember horribly whenever we are momentarily lost in a wood, or alone late at night, an almost Lovecraftian vision of weird buried in the barrows and the burrows, something that the Church of England was never quite brave enough to face, nor strong enough to conquer. Something we try to call Odin, and cry out to, and yet we are only touching the very edge of vast Otherworld, gaping vast and dark into our soil.
This lead me to the film Penda's Fen, newly re-released and very popular among fans of hauntology, folk horror, presence, pastoral woo woo, and so on.
It tells the story of a rural teenage boy, embedded in the polite, moderate middle class world of grammar schools, pride in the military, church on a Sunday, wrestling with his sexuality and questioning these establishment forces - and having a spiritual crisis, somehow linked to the uncanny force of the fen itself. About how "traditional ‘englishness’ is a fiction, a fiction that’s been violently imposed throughout an impossibly bloody history." I am quite certain the author of the play was writing a political piece, about rejecting middle-class authority and paternalism, and would be rather disappointed to discover it has been embraced wholesale by Pagans.
I was very moved by the imagery. It captured what I was trying to say about the land, and about the terror of not knowing, and about the unsettling awe of the Powers around us. I've borrowed some of the script, written by David Rudkin, into my personal liturgy.
Penda was the last Pagan king of England. We are his children, because we keep the old ways alive. One mythic cycle in Fencraft teaches us that he is not dead, but asleep, waiting to re-awaken and with him a new era where the land will be saved and the Old Gods restored. A fen is an area of marsh, and has no real relationship to anything we do - except from the title of this television play, and the fact that "Fencraft" sounded decent and I was keen to release what I was writing as soon as possible, for which it needed a name. There is no need for you to watch Penda's Fen, and it is not necessary for you to understand Fencraft better - although it is really rather good if you ever get the chance.
I've since done some experimenting with Penda as a tutelary figure, and have pulled back from focusing in on this. It began feeling too "fixed" and even "Biblical". I'm now less certain of how to incorporate Penda into what I'm doing, although I'm not getting rid of it entirely. It has a role, but what I'm not yet sure
yes.