Mostly here to help me keep track of terms I'm now using as a standard part of my vocabulary, but which aren't from mainstream Paganism.
The Great Court refers to all the spirits of the land collectively. An individual Court refers to all the Powers of a single story or legend cycle - for example, Robin Hood and the Merry Men. Finally, Fencrafters have a personal Court. These are the spirits they work with, and the ones they recognise as existing (even if they don't interact with them).
Term ripped off and entirely decontextualised from a song by the Sex Pistols. Would have replaced it with just “The Dreaming” - if that wasn't already a term in use by Aboriginal Australian culture; sorry punks. Suggests that the land is asleep and dreaming about itself, the way that when you are asleep you create mixed up, half-meaningful visions from the odd fragments of what went before; suggests that perhaps the Powers exist as part of Penda's dream, or the dream of the land itself - and the land will one day wake up. In any case, punk is generally held to have killed off prog rock, folk-psychedelia and hippy culture, everything I'm drawing from as I write, and perhaps the implication is that there IS a future in England's dreaming, it's not too indulgent to dream, and that these earthly visions are necessary for our survival.
But this is pretty tenuous; mostly I just like the phrase, and when I use it, I typically mean that pre-punk era of songs, movies and stories which evoke a countercultural English pastoral landscape. You can get a really good grasp on what I mean by England's Dreaming by reading Wind in the Willows and the Hobbit, watching Penda's Fen or the Wicker Man, or by listening to King Crimson while smoking something illicit under a tree while the sun comes up.
I personally prefer this term to “astral travel”, which sounds very impressive and intimidating. Look, there's near astral and far astral. Daydreaming, forcing a visionary journey or listening to a guided meditation, actually dreaming, zoning out, or using your imagination are all forms of astral travel. They get you to the near astral. They get you interfacing with parts of your subconscious or elements of the divine which you already understand. True visionary experiences are rare, and only ever come when someone is 1) using their imagination a lot, 2) letting go of the need for things to be “real" and have "proof", 3) able to play and believe in what they do. A belief that Astral Travel is this very specialised, very challenging skill actively hampers your ability to do it. Just be ok with making believe.
(advice for all sorts of divine contact very much like advice for orgasms. If you focus on trying to get there in a functional way, you never will. But if you are able to commit and lose yourself to the experiences and the journey, they sort of sneak up on you. Don't worry about trying to do “real” astral travel or asking whether your god contacts are “real” or not. Do make-believe a lot, and fervently believe in the things you imagine.)
The Great Court refers to all the spirits of the land collectively. This is slightly different from the Landweird. I've made a list of many of the Great Court at this page - the landweird is altogether more nameless and unsettling.
The uncanny sense that there is something older, more ancient, impossibly powerful, impossibly strange, hidden in the landscape, and half-remembered in stories and songs. Percieving parts of the landweird is the key task of Fencraft. The easiest way to understand what the landweird is is to walk into a dark forest alone at night. When I write, I talk predominantly about England's landweird because that's where I live - but I have no doubt that every country on earth has something similar.
A relatively unique ritual tool. The candle lit in the spirit lantern is the link between your spirit and your body; if the candle goes out, it signals that you have become lost, or are under attack, and must make your way back immediately if you can. We don't tend to work in very “clean” or “safe” ways, with circles and cleansings and whatnots that other traditions have; so the spirit lantern is like our canary in a cage as we go about. We are the freedivers of the witching world.
(I think one could replace the Spirit Lantern with another non-burning object, but it would almost certainly be cheating to choose a stone or something "reliable". Make a paper boat and anchor it in a running stream.)
Designing and adopting a "persona" of yourself as a super cool witch, through imagination, clothes, music, and so on. A formalisaton of something other traditions already do with robes, ritual cleansings, meditation, godforms etc. A usual first step in ritual is to "put on your Witchself", and essentially think yourself into the mindset which embodies power and connection for you. Developed because I'm too dysphoric to shower, as an alternative to "first take a ritual bath". Attempting to take baths just mean ritual doesn't get done for me; so putting on a Witchself is a variant which accomplishes some similar psychological goals, of stepping into another frame of mind and separating from your mundane life. Almost certainly, one could develop an assortment of Witchselves for different purposes.
< Home