There are three columns of Power in our tradition. We use them to cast formal circle space, as correspondences for organising work, as ways of directing energy, and even as pathways we can walk.
This is one of the parts of the system I'm generally most happy with, and confident it will continue in its present form to influence everything that comes after.
Our three "core" columns/currents of power are Solar, Lunar and Stellar energy.
Under the Sun, we do rites which would be thought of as “Pagan” or “Religious Witchcraft” - for the land, for the crops, for the family and home:
We might worship the sun and love it. The Moon is stranger than that. It doesn't want anything blind from you, neither love or adoration.
Under the Moon, we do rites of witchcraft:
Which is not to say we can never learn hidden wisdom from the sun, or dance for joy under a moon; only that these are the primary correspondences we use.
Under the Star, we go mad in the wilderness:
Properly, the Star does not refer to the stars themselves - but the spaces between them, the fathomless black.
The Sun, Moon and Star are our "primary" correspondences: it stands in the place of things like the gender binary or the four elements. Here are some of the ways they are used in the system:
Core Energies |
Start here to learn about the Unearthly Powers Fencraft hopes to be earth-centric, folky, Northern paganism - organic, of the land and its people. It does not recognise gender as a root organisational structure for reality. It also seeks to avoid later, non-Northern intruders: the four elements come from greek tradition, and we wish to avoid the omnipresence of Hebrew mysticism entirely. Systems using Kabbalah or gender are almost impossible to use without them. Here, those ideas are now optional - you can use gender, but it is not essential. (Can you follow Fencraft if you don't agree with the three Unearthly Powers...? Yes. The basic techniques are still open and available to you) |
The Three Paths | The Unearthly Powers also help us understand our own practice: each Power has an associated Pathway, with its own gods, rites and lore. I was always confused by the blurring between religion and magic in other traditions, and the Sun/Moon/Star began as my way of exploring and organising the different kinds of practice that "a ritual" could include. You can dedicate to a Path, or follow each in turn to learn about the craft. Personally, I borrow from all three: it helps me to know what I am doing and why, and therefore what skills and forms are needed. |
As Deity Correspondences |
The Three Unearthly Powers have ideas associated with them: for example, the Sun is community and home, the Moon is solitary, and the Star is forbidden knowledge. When we encounter a Power, we usually understand them as manifesting one of these energies - or a combination of them. A hearth goddess, for example, is almost certainly double Solar. A forge god is Solar-Lunar: he works for the good of the community, and is a friend to man, yet also works for his own delight and mastery, in the private places of the heart where ambition and creativity simmer.
We can also encounter Powers in unusual forms, having been temporarily influenced by an energy. After all, Odin the hall-father, Odin the wanderer, and Odin the hanged are Solar, Lunar and Stellar respectively. It is common to encounter fairy creatures as very closely influenced by the powers: under the Sun, they are flower fairies and Tolkien elves; under the Moon, they are the clever, amoral, untrustworthy fairies of tradition; and under the Star, they are primal, horrifying wild things. |
As Temporal Correspondences |
Fencraft is world-centric, so temporal correspondences are very important. The movements of seasons, celestial bodies, and of animals and plants, teach us that power is cyclical and tidal - it diminishes and strengthens, leaving and returning. Entities associated with Solar energy are, therefore, associated with the movement of the sun - and so forth. This provides an immediate calendar for Powers of all kinds: where other traditions have a single solar deity, we see the sun as an energy source, and thus myriad Powers are linked to the Sun's behavior because they are governed by its energy. We also identify Powers as different "aspects" at different times of day/year/month. The Sun rises, falls, is hot, is absent: thus a Solar power either exists in four forms or "faces", or as four interlinked but essentially different deities. |
As Explanation | Due to history, lost lore and lost memory, our deities are very mutable: they combine and divide, are blurred, forgotten, rediscovered wrongly. Our correspondences help us map this in a way which both recognises them as individuals, AND as organic, living, complex clusters of meaning. A Solar-lunar deity is influenced by four times of day, four times of year, four times of month, plus the way those correspondences mirror, counter and double; and sporadically, by Stellar energy too. That is more than enough "room" to recognise a Power's myriad aspects and faces. |
Traditional Neo-Paganism frequently "flattens" its Powers into a dictionary: Athene is goddess of war, wisdom, owls. There's no mystery or strangeness there, it's all plain on paper. But Athene existed over several continents for hundreds of years; and early deities are always more localised and fluid than religions of the book. Yet 4th century Christianity looks nothing like contemporary, and Ugandan Christianity does not look like Scottish, so even with a figure that seems as fixed and certain as Jesus Christ, it is too shallow to see him as a thing that can be understood. At the same time, Neo-Paganism also goes wrong with "all gods are one god". Astarte-Athena-Isis-Aphrodite did all blur in and out of one another for a thousand years or so - but this is too diffuse and faceless to really mean anything. Fencraft hopes to preserve the best of both worlds: simultaneously, we recognise our divinities as specific, localised, individuals, and as parts of greater wholes (which are messy, contradictory, and poorly understood). We don't have to imagine a single Grecian woman, who embodies both war and cleverness - Athena of the book is one aspect, and Athena of the spear is another, and for practical purposes we can approach them as two separate Powers altogether.