Mandrake Speaks Newsletter

Heka:

The Practices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual & Magic

£15. isbn 1905297076. 198pp

There seems to be a bit of a revival in the practice of Egyptian magick fueled I think in the main by offerings from the more left-field commentators such as the author of Heka. Heka is an Egyptian term signifying the the power of magick, its divine personification or emanation and indeed the human practitioners, male and female, of the art. Although there is a difference between what we might call temple and folk magick in Egypt, there is no really real distinction to be made between religion and magic in the way that has distracted western theorists for so long. A study of Heka is an essential corrective to many a misconception about what magick actually was and indeed might become again.

David Rankine is familiar to many as a regular fixture of the UK occult scene, an officianado of the Children of Artemis; as well as an expert of the less familar byways of occultism - for which he has published, along with Stephen Skinner several substantial volumes on Enochia and the magick of the grimoires. So with a foot in both camps as it were, he has provided here a very useful pemican of the magical arts of Ancient Egypt. Writing as a Sethian, I might not share David's emphasis on the mysteries of the 'goddess' Maat, who seems more of a philosophical abstraction than a real flesh and blood goddess. But even so this is an indispensable addition to an occult library and therefore highly recommended.

[Since writing the above, Maat has demanded some attention - which goes to show that even a synthetic entity can become real given time]

Mogg Morgan

author: The Bull of Ombos

Details of location below

Venues & Organisers:

Fox Hunting in Cairo

Uncovered Editions are historic official papers which have not previously been available in a popular form.The series has been created directly from the archive of The Stationery Office in London and the books have been chosen for the quality of their story telling.Some subjects are familiar but others are less well known. Each is a moment of history.. At the time of this correspondence Egypt had been in the protection of the British Empire since 1882. In 1901, in order to provide sport for the officers, a pack of hounds was shipped out from England to hunt the Egyptian Fox.

Seidr & Seething - the saga continues

UK's Pentacle magazine issue 19 has a response to the updated chapter of Seidr from the new edition of Jan Fries, Helrunar: a manual of rune magick. An extract from the said chapter was reproduced in the Beltain edition of the same magazine. At the moment the pagan scene is gripped by 'academeitis' - that's when someone attempts to end an awkward argument by invoking some supposed academic authority. I say 'supposed' because those cited are often no more of an authority on the matter than us regular mortals. I've heard it several times now - 'academics say that whatever else seidr might be - it can't posssibly be seething'. Given the supposed impossibility of proving a negative - that seems a rather reckless statement from a supposed cooled headed scholar.

I'm still not quite sure why some people get so hot under the collar about Jan's interpretation of the mysterious seidr practice. Surely there is room for more than one view on what it might have been. Jan attempts through various arguments to link it to the universal phenonemon of the shaking trance. But some heathens will have none of it - pamphlets have been published in the vain attempt to repudiate Jan's view; he is accused of an unspecified eastern influence; speakers have been known to digress from their scripts in order to warn their audience of the dangers of following Jan's lead.

Jan's seething hypothesis is hardly that threatening. Jan is sympathetic, indeed supportive to various interpretations of seidr such the new American style seidr. Whilst pointing out the uncertainties of its theoretical basis he recognises that authors such as Diana Paxson have developed a useful syncretistic divination ritual which works well and to which they have associated the ancient name seidr. Jan merely points out that this same title is also associated with lots of things some modern magicians might find distasteful. Perhaps this explains why they loathe his theories and try to argue Nordic literature away?

Jan Fries is very much in favour of people bringing things up to date. Afterall there is no necessity for all good things to be ancient in order to be genuine. New interpretations of seidr should be welcomed, especially as it can now have ethical frame it probably lacked in its historic version.

Alan Nash is the latest to enter the fray. The intentions of Alan's letter in Pentacle may have got a bit lost in 'translation' but I suspect his interest is to provoke discussion and see the arguments rehearsed. Alan questions why Jan's appears to deny that that the lady in Erik's Saga was doing seidr. Erik's Saga is one of the prime sources of information on Seidr, and in it there are details of a supposed seidr rite (see Jan Fries Seidways: shaking, swaying and serpent mysteries, for the full text). I'd say that Jan merely asks why, if this really is an account of Seidr, the priestess isn't referred to as a seidkona as one would expect, but is instead almost invariably called a spakona (seeress)?

Alan Nash also questions Jan's apparent characterisation of seidr as 'evil' - now things are really getting serious as that could be seen as an insult to the whole heathen tradition! What Jan says is that historically seidr did have such a reputation in Nordic literature. Like it or not - there is apparently not a single text in Nordic literature that says anything kind about the practice.

Finally - as has been common on this debate - which has rumbled on for a while now - Alan evokes the shade of Edred Thorson, who apparently has strong views on this issue. The great man may have spoken but whether what he says stands up is another matter: "One thing I must vigorously insist on is that the word seidr can in no way beconnected to the English word 'seethe'."(Witchdom Of The True: A Study of The Vana-Troth and the Practice Of Seidr, Runa-Raven Press, 1999).

As any student of logic knows, definition is supposed to explain what a term means, not what it does not mean. Irvin Copi once wrote: "to define the word 'couch' as meaning not a bed and not a chair is to fail miserably to explain the meaning of a word." But to be fair I've not been able to see the article and perhaps it has some stronger arguments. I'm told Edred is an expert on etymology - so presumably he meant to say "Old English word 'seethe' ", occuring as it does in citations before 1100 AD. According to the lexicographers at the Oxford University Press it is in fact an Old Teutonic word - infinative seothan* - with an obsolete form sod.

There is a related word in Gothic sauth* which brings out its ritual connotations - as a sacrifice - which as Jan says in Helrunar - has the literally meaning of 'boiled meat' - the sine qua non for a Nordic sacrifice. The Oxford Lexicographers explain the limits of the OED's remit in their introduction, thus it is true that they do not mention Seidr as one of its cognates. The connection between the two is thus still, AFAIK, an open question. They do however say that seething had certain figurative uses not found in later texts - meanings such as 'to try someone by fire' or 'to afflict with cares'.

I suppose I ask myself does the word seidr survive in any form in the languages of Europe. If it does, then Old English or Modern English Seething, being very similar in sound to Seidr, would be a far from ridiculous suggestion that might yet be proved correct. The connection between Seidr and Sauthr is not something Jan made up. It has been argued before in many academic tomes, including Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie in the 1830s.

But as it happens, Jan's characterisation of Nordic Seidr as 'seething' was probably never really based on linguistics - his arguments are more about the nature of magick and trance activity. The English word he choose turned out to have a fortuitous and evocative history all its own. Seething takes us right back to the appropriate time and to the rich sacrifices that go into the steaming cauldron of magick.

Check it out for yourself. By all means let's debate the issues but let's also stick to the facts rather than spurious appeals to authority.

"The Temple That Never Sleeps"
By Josh Heller and Gerald Reilly

Cornerstone Book Publishers

"The subtitle of this book is "Freemasons and E-Masonry Toward a New
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from 162 jurisdictions. Some of these jurisdictions you've heard of and
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limitless variety, this "emasonry" model gives Masons instant access to
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religion and sex are as unimportant as the time of day in "The Temple That
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