As I write, I am unsure what is core to Landcrafting, and what is simply my Personal Court, and which therefore seems crucial to me. I think one can hold all the previously written beliefs or practices of Landcrafting as a layperson, or a servant of particular Powers with more of a religious approach - or even as a witch, who is extremely solitary or has a more intuitive approach to magic. This chapter is specifically about Being A Witch.
Our sources all speak of networks of covens, across the land. Murray in particular describes the Man in Black - who was either the Devil or his representative - who was the head of a group of local covens, as a bishop may oversee a diocese. Many sources speak of flying to the Sabbat across the midnight sky, or becoming part of an ungodly procession.
We understand ourselves as part of this network of covens. We work alone, but on certain nights we fly abroad to join our spirits and siblings all together. When we open the circle to create a place between worlds, we arrive at a shared shadowland. Whenever we circle, we are working in tune with witches past and present all across our land. (In this, I am very inspired by the imagery of Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising - which shows different practicioners preparing for the same event, and working with each other having picked up on the same directions).
In BTA, we are primarily solitary workers.
Solitary witches are well attested across history - perhaps the most iconic witches are solitary figures, on the outskirts of society. Circe, the Sibyl of Cumae, Cerwidden and Morgan; Gandalf, Merlin, Talesin - all walk alone, coming as if from nowhere and leaving again. Now - covens are extensively written about in the witch trial literature of the Early Modern Period, described as if they were a real phenomenon by Murray. Usually, I would take that as my guide. Why have I chosen to prioritise solitary work?
BTA was in part designed to be "Wicca, without the problems". One problem for me is, Wicca was clearly devised and designed to be a group activity - solitary Wicca is a later development, and being solitary you are shut out from many of Wicca's key rites. Another problem with covenwork is practical: finding people, finding time, finding those who you agree with on doctrine, and who are not controlling or dangerous. I wanted to write a path which was solitary first, with covenwork as a footnote - not the other way around. One where being a solitary was not "second best". Our history is full of solitary workers, and we choose that as our heritage. This is also supposed to challege our desire to Find A Coven, and wise teachers who have The Real Magic and The True Hereditary Secrets. We rely on no one. We learn our secrets from the skies and spirits. We self initiate, and seek on our own terms. We are solitaries who sometimes meet - powerful in our own right - rather than coven members, who must sometimes work alone.
We are part of a network of covens, which we travel to at night and in our dreams. When we walk between the worlds, we walk with our familiar spirits. When we work with the Greater Powers, they often attend "In Retinue" - which is to say, they come with attendants, footsoldiers, butlers, handmaids, advisors and bodyguards. When you work with the Witch Queen, you will feel the shadow bodies of other witches dancing in the fire beside you; when you summon the Hunter, his red-eared dogs will prowl the edges of the circles, providing protection. There is only one witch - but you are not alone.
This is called "working in retinue". When designing rituals for Greater Powers, you can designate roles for the retinue in your rites. Specifically, the Greater Powers always come with their own protection for the circle (although by all means try and bring your own, if that Power is the thing you wish to be defended from...). The Witch Queen's retinue can also "stand in" for ancestors, for those of us leery about our actual ancestors. If you do not use the Witch Queen/Coven imagery in your path, then the same could be true of any courts you DO work with.
You can, of course, work in true solitude. But by working in retinue, we can access and be involved in covenwork imagery without having to rely on flaky, insubstantial humans. (Some Landcrafters believe that when we die, we are made part of a retinue, our status reflecting our deeds in life. Witches will be present alonside the Witch Queen, travelling her and working with the other ancestors to aid witches in the future. We see many stories of huge processions across the sky, processions which are either fairy folk and/or the dead, and there are other retinues to join. One who acts well - or for the good of the Great Hunter - may be invited to join the Wild Hunt; one who acts badly may be doomed to forever run as prey)
When we talk about reconstructing the popcultural image of witchcraft, we're often talking about the Witch Trials in Europe. These gave us the images of groups of worshippers, the devil, the Sabbats, ecstatic dance, feasting and orgies; of transformation into hares, flight by ointment or broomstick, hexing, charming, and labouring over a bubbling cauldron.
(There is an existing tradition called The Sabbatic Tradition, but its leader self-published his own books at great expense; and I lose interest in any path where money and status-symbol grimoires are necessary to progress. It's not really worthy of the name, especially given so many persecuted back in the day were the poor and the marginalised)
We have three Greater Powers specifically linked to this coven tradition. Witches who enjoy dogma are welcome to adopt them as "core figures" in BTA, a key part of initiations and present in person or in representative in many rituals. Witches who came to BTA specifically to escape this sort of one-wayism may now close this lesson.
If there are networks of covens and memory across the land, who leads them? It is the Witches' Queen (or perhaps, a Prince. It can be hard to tell.) We find Witch Queens popculturally: Diana, Hekate and Herodias were three names used in Shakespeare's time; Gardener et al spoke of Aradia; modern neopagans point to figures like Cerwidden and Morgana. (She also exists as a challenge to the idea of magic's guiding intelligence or "Magician" figure as exclusively masculine. She is not in any sense The Divine Feminine or Mystery - she has power, control, and mastery, and any "mysteries" are things she's simply chosen not to tell you yet. She's a person, not a symbol. You can think of her as similar to your Line Manager, who will occasionally oversee your work or give you directions, and is available for questions when not busy with other things). She is the head of our order. When we work alone, she often sends allies to make up a coven - to guard the circle, and to dance and empower your rites. When we approach her, she sends us teachers and guides. We can petition her for advice. When she appears to us in the circle, she is awesome and terrible to behold. When we take on her mask in mumming, we become unstoppable. Like all our Powers, she wears many faces - she can be a wild woman, feral of face; she appears with her hair knotted into a practical 2-second ponytail; she appears as a wise and crooked old woman, as the leader of the dance, as a regal advisor with a lined face meditating sagely, and sometimes her face is not female at all - she appears as a hare, a stoat, as a young Prince, or a strange thing from the swamps. As a Power, she is comparatively "accessible" - expect to communicate with her as you would to a person in the street - albeit a rather intimidating one. She doesn't symbolise an abstractraction, she doesn't have any particular qualities such as boundless love or forgiveness. In all probability, she was once a human who has ascended to this position on death or through strange magics - a mighty ancestor of witches. As such, she has an interest in any witch seeking to dance with her; and she has great skill at the craft, paired with a sharp, tactical mind. The Witches' Queen has no tides of Power or High Days across the year. She is - like us - a witch, albeit one with the ear of the Greater Powers and great mastery of all she chooses to command. She is associated with the traditional symbols of the witch - the owl, the black cat, the broomstick, the phases of the moon, bubbling potions and horned toads. She is the symbol of all witches who have gone before us. Any work of witchcraft is done, in some sense, in her name and for her pleasure.
The Man in Black is highly optional. I think the Queen of the Witches, and the great coven of the spirits, IS probably a core part of how we do witchcraft in Landcrafting. The Man in Black is not, but I'm going to write about him here anyway as another figure linked to witch spirits.
We find the Man in Black in Murray, and taken on in Cochraine's Craft as a major figure. He is - in short - the Devil; or alternatively, a mighty Pagan deity who was seen as the devil by Christians, and whose characteristics have been adopted into the Christian's image; and he also seems at times to have been a real man, who either represented the Devil, lead the coven, or actually channelled the Devil and was his physical embodiment.
In Landcrafting, we generally understand the Man in Black as a symbol - passive, representative, existing to help unlock parts of our spirit and psyche and is, perhaps, a passive power "source" to draw from - in contrast with the Queen of the Witches, who is active, has agency, has complexity and who we can interact with in a fairly human fashion. He is part of what we celebrate and revere. The Man in Black, like the Queen and the Witches Goddess (below), is a Power linked specifically to witches and the history of witchcraft, not the seasons or land, and so typically he is implied by any rite of witchcraft or ritual and does not have a place on a seasonal calendar; like them, he does not have tides of power - his power waxes and wanes in reaction to our work.
There's a lot to unpack here. The most important thing to recognise is, the cultural war has been lost. We cannot turn back the clock on the Man in Black. When a Power is the focus of the kind of attention the Devil has had, it is changed by our perceptions - even if there is a true God of the Witches still surviving, how will we approach him without bringing the emotional baggage that will summon a Devil instead? Murray's idea that Devil Worship was actually worship of the old gods is intriguing, if unlikely; but in any case, if I go naked to the Sabbat and dance around the stones with a black horned goat, no one will believe I'm not a Satanist.
With that in mind, I want to talk about the various Satans in popular culture, that you can draw from in your work. There are many different Devil archetypes in society we can look to, which will teach us different aspects of the Man.
Original Satanism gives us an image based on the reverse of Christian virtues: self reliance, pride, putting yourself before others, having fun, taking pleasure, refusing domination or conformity, being confident, learning to take and to control. Conceptually, he reminds us that many of these "sins" are no sins at all, but tools of control - it is good to live for yourself. Often linked is the idea that when we worship Satan, we in a sense worship ourselves, as the ultimate power in our lives, our own gods, our own masters.
Sometimes, the Devil is seen as an image of the beast in man - as in the Tarot card, where the Devil symbolises your lowest lusts and drives, often ones which are damaging. Part of this image is of wanton sexual pleasure. We interpret this image more broadly:
I have always connected to the idea that a witch who treats with the Devil loses her soul - and so, loses any chance at reaching Heaven. I find this image very powerful. I interpret it as a call to live fully in this world, the only world we have; to love fiercely and eat well and take pleasure on my body, and not live a life of denial in the hope that I will be rewarded in The Next World. A reminder to live today, each day, on a day by day basis.
Some focus more on Lucifer the Light Bringer, and his attributes of knowledge, rationality, logic, challenging doctrine, seeking the truth - quite literally, a figure of enlightenment. This image is also a reaction to Christianity. In this case, Lucifer is a challenge to the anti-science and the anti-free-thinking that comes with being part of a religion. This Lucifer is quite literally against the rule of God, in all the ways that God has been used as a tool of control. Not anti goodness - merely anti organised religion.
There's also atheistic Satanism - where Satan is believed in as a symbol or challenge, rather than a real force. The Church of Satan, who campaign for a secular American society by trolling lawmakers, are an example of a Luciferian interpretation of the image, and also an atheistic one. When a lawmakers in America seek to put up religious statues or introduce religious after school groups, the Church of Satan also petition to be permitted a statue of Baphomet or to teach children about Satan, as a way of testing the limits of the law and pressuring the original faith to back down.
Finally, there is Baphomet - who isn't a god at all, nor is he a Devil, but he looks a lot like one and so has become part of the image by attrition. Baphomet represents the magician's self-knowledge and mastery - balanced between male and female, beast and man, light and dark, the magician is not swayed by these impulses but able to direct them clearly. There is an under-explored queer reading to the image of Baphomet, with his cross-gendered features.
(I can't neglect the trad Christian image of the devil, which is a figure of evil, sin and temptation to sin. Typically, positive Devil imagery points to the ways that Christianity has labelled perfectly reasonable things as evil or sinful, such as Dungeons and Dragons or having lots of gay sex, and therefore rejects the idea that the devil is a force for evil - instead, he's an anti-Christian force, and quite right too given [specific complaints an individual has about Christianity]. You are nevertheless welcome to use this image, or have a non-devil Figure Of Evil in your Personal Court.)
Well, that's an overview. It's strange to me to have come full circle, and to find I really do want to worship the Devil. As a queer, I find his guidance in rejecting shame and conformity and control and doctrine truly powerful. I think anyone wanting to reconstruct traditional witchcrafts will always have to encounter and wrestle with him in some way, either rejecting him ("Witches do not worship the devil!"), or mutating him ("We worship the Horned God"), or by straight up inverting some crosses and muttering in Latin. For my part, I seem to have split out the traditional Horned God role and recognise both the Man in Black/God of the Witches/Devil archetype and the God of the Green/Hunter/Green Man archetype as two individual Powers.
We find many references to specific goddesses of witchcraft - as mentioned above, Aradia, Diana, Herodias and Hekate were four names mentioned in Shakespeare's day, and we can add figures like Lilith, Cerwidden, Rhiannon or even Morgan le Fay to this list. It's possible that there is a Witches' Goddess - separate to the Witch Queen - who witches can revere and worship. It's also possible that the Witch Goddess and the Witch Queen are the same figure. Or the Witches' Goddess takes the place of a Man In Black figure for your particular coven - you work with both the Queen AND the Goddess. It can be hard to tell.