Thirteen Powers of the World and the Un-World
A Conceptualization of Otherness

"No one had any faith in old Betsy Dodge. She could get around so fast
that everyone knew she was in league with the Devil. One time my brother
William tried a trick on her. He took a brand new darning needle
and when she went out of the house we followed her and stuck the needle in her track
and she couldn't move until he took the needle out of her track."

-William S. Simmons

* * *

We have discussed in detail the notion of metaphysical boundaries and the concept of boundary-crossing. We must now go into further details regarding the chief conceptual elements on "this side" of the hedge, and the "other" side. Thirteen elements and powers stand out for a particular use in the Grimoire of practical Witchcraft which will follow this introductory section.

We must discuss them now in detail, for they form a backbone of a special and crucial Witching operation called "The Game of Masks." But they also help to continue our creation of a strong understanding of the dualities inherent in human society- then and now- and in the Western Christian psyche itself.

There are five person-related concepts, three location related concepts, three beast-related concepts, and two pure concepts, all of which can be understood according to the dualities that form in them between this world and the unseen world. There are 13 altogether, the Witching Number, for it is the number of moons in a year, and the moon is the "lamp of night"- Lilith's Lantern, or the Witch-light. For the night-time, as we shall see, is the day-time of witchcraft- and midnight, the witching hour, is called the "Bull's Noon". Night is aligned to the Unseen world, just as day is to the world that is seen, and thus, night is a natural power-time for Witches and their craft.

Now I present the 13 key conceptual characters and themes of the boundary-metaphysic, and will give a short discussion of them. Like the five presented in the discussion before, they are presented in terms of dualities- what exists on this side of the hedge, and what shadow-form they take on the other side. If one examines this list of pairs, one can see how they all inter-relate, and how they each describe thirteen important, iconic features of both the world that is "within the boundaries" and the world outside of boundaries.


The Church-Goer... The Heathen

The Good Wife... The Whore

The Good Husband... The Rake, Outlaw, or Traveling Man

God as Man... God as Beast

The White Man... The Red Man or the Dark Man

Square Buildings... Round Shelters

The Farm-Field... Bog or Woods, and Toads

The Deer Skull in the Lodge... Deer in Rut, Deer in the Forest

Tamed Beasts... Wolf, Fox, and Wild Beasts

Doves... Crows/Ravens and Serpents

Chickens... Owls

Law... Anarchy

Light... Darkness

* * *





Person-Related Concepts

The Church-Goer and the Heathen represent a powerful duality in the psyches of the Puritanical Europeans of many ages, including this age, though it is Americans that have maintained this particular psychic tension in a much more enduring manner than modern Europeans. The church-goer represents the man or woman who integrates willingly into the dominant spirituality of society- the men and women of the "moral majority" who take refuge in organized religion and allow their social, ethical, and moral thinking to be ordered by those tidy systems. The church-goer tries to live by the "love thy neighbor" ethic, but more often than not, falls prey to judgmentalism and the pangs of guilt over their "temptations"- largely found in their carnal lives and thoughts.

The church-goer represents the majority of people in society, even those who don't attend church regularly. While Puritan New England didn't tolerate people missing church, our more secular day looks the other way wholesale. But the fact of being born in a Christian society creates a "church-goer" mentality and worldview for all, more or less, in some form or fashion.

The Heathen, on the other hand, refers to the non-converted masses of humanity who are outside of God's good graces, those who do not accept the miracles and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The heathen, for New Englanders in the last few centuries, was the Native American- but it could also refer to any who didn't morally line up with the standards of correctness dictated by the dominant church-bodies of their society. The Heathen is wild, untrustworthy, hedonistic, and always motivated by lust and selfishness.

Even if they didn't believe in the "devil" of Christianity, the Heathen was still the devil's disciple, unwittingly. In reality, the true heathen represents the fresh, vital, untamed human spirit, still closer to organic realities and to emotions that can be had without guilt. The church-goer represents self-denial and self-sacrifice, the containment of vital power and urges. The church goer sits in their "Sunday best" in the pews at church, praying fervently; the heathen dances around fires, sooty and dirty, laughing and howling at the moon. The church-goer belongs to the village; the heathen belongs to the wild-lands.



The Good Wife and the Whore present the classic duality of the "good girl" and the "bad girl"- the dualistic conflict of female sexual power restrained and moderated or lasciviously unleashed that has terrified and enthralled patriarchal society since the dawn of time. Control of sexual forces has been a cornerstone of certain human societies from all over the globe, from the Puritans of New England or the later Victorians, rising up to the hateful extremes we see in Muslim countries today.

A woman's sexual power has several special aspects that male sexuality lacks- it alone can truly satisfy the hungry beast in men, and its presence alone can turn sexual lust into an act of creation- and shape new human beings. The creation of new humans, the way society grows and is sustained, is an institution of power for the masculine rulers of society, both now and in the past. It is no surprise that dominant religions (backed up by social rulership) have insisted that sexuality be satisfied only at certain times, after certain permissions, and only in certain ways between certain people.

The Good Wife is the symbol of sexuality placed on a leash, and handed to a man. She can "come out" of her demure social persona at night, in his bed- but a decent woman never lets herself enjoy it too much... or at least, the Puritans and the Victorians hoped not. Some women today still fear seeming too sexually aggressive, not a surprising conclusion for the psyche of women who grow up praying to statues of a virgin mother.

Oddly enough, control of sexual forces isn't just a matter of political power, but a necessary evil within the ordered world of society. Sexual power in its raw state IS very dangerous- dangerous to boundaries that are set up for kin, families, and society on a wider level. To attempt to control it may be an unconscious urge of needfulness. But it is safe to say that these controls have run to deadly, soul-crushing and life-denying extremes in many times and places.

This is why the whore belongs to the "other side", and why full-blown sexual desire, as we shall see, belongs there too- they are both manifestations of a powerful, hurricane-force storm of life that can blow away weaker minds, and disturb stronger ones. Beyond that, the sexually liberated woman reminds the rest of the miserable "good women" of society just how much fun they could be having- and, of course, those whores tempt good men away from their wives and families.

When the "other side" manifests within the order of society, fears and troubles begin. When the "other side" manifests within the ordered mind, madness and troubles can emerge. Sexual force can unsettle the mind, especially if it emerges into a mind that has been conditioned with Puritanical values.

The Good Wife and the Whore are a needful pair- the darkest truth that no one wants to own up to is this: sexual experience tears us away from ourselves and frees us, for a time, from all things. We get lost in the storm of fresh, vital life. We can't have people falling away into it always, else the order of things would fall away with it; yet, we need release, from time to time- we need a reminder of the vital fire that burns in us, and which can regenerate us. Hate and fear and repression will always surround this complex issue, making it a powerful bridge between two powerful towers for the Cunning Witch.


The Good Husband is a man who protects and provides for his family and society as a whole. He is law-abiding and loyal. In his figure, we see the potency of masculinity turned to good, constructive ends. If control of a woman's sexuality is a sought-after feature of her person, then control of a man's industry and strength is what the powers of order seek.

In his dark shadow, we see the rake (the sexually lascivious man), the outlaw, and the complex figure of the "traveling man"- the man who moves from place to place, never settling. The rake is for men what the whore is for women- a man who lets the sexual beast in himself come out, and takes advantage of women- usually other men's wives. The masculine sexual beast is, perhaps in common with the feminine one, very selfish; it seeks gratification only. The female sexual beast also seeks to entrap men, to use their strength to help provide for the children it will weave. The male beast wants to flee after it is done rutting- it wants to move on to more conquests, caring little for the runts it leaves behind.

The outlaw is the shadow of the good man- the outlaw allows man's natural strength and industry to emerge in harmful ways, not constructive ones. And the traveling man refuses to integrate into any order or structure; he is therefore untrustworthy. It is important to understand that these two dualities- the good wife and the whore, and the good husband and his shadow- are present in all men and women, just as the heathen is always present, in a repressed form, in the church-goer. Wholeness is the key- all of these dualities are part of one another, and each person, and this world, contains them all. The witch must understand this about others, this world, and themselves, if they wish to navigate back and forth between these powers, and draw on those they require.

* * *

The distinction between "God as Man" and "God as Beast" marks a very important layer of metaphysical psychology, and pours forth a fountain of powerful images for the Witch as well as the artist or the historian. That God should become man, in the form of Jesus Christ, might be called the "humanization" of religion in the west; before Jesus, all the way back to the time of Moses and the Jews of old, was not the Golden Calf worshipped as a God? Were not the Gods of old Egypt jackal-headed and hawk-headed beasts?

The idea of heathen Gods being "beasts" is an old one- and the Native Americans presented the Puritans and Pilgrims with many stories of their world-shaping and teaching spirits in animal form. To the mind of the church-goer, the heathen and his Gods are beasts. Those who worship the Christ visualize him as the gentle, all-too-European looking man they see in their heads; the Devil's disciples gather about the goat with a candle stuck between his crooked horns. These two images must be considered deeply.

For divinity has a human side- and an animal side. It must; divinity is certainly the ultimate expression of wholeness. But the "good people" of the ordered world cannot have dealings with real wholeness, for their "either/or" thinking is crucial to maintaining the ordered world that protects their minds. The "both/and" thinking of the Witch is perceived as an anti-social threat, and a devilish trick.

But important reaches of the psyche are unsealed by the experience of divinity in an animal form. Ancient reaches of the mind and the world are accessed by it. This is important to sorcery, as we shall see. The people of the sunlit world will go to their graves insisting on "God" and his eternal, unshakeable goodness- but clearly, "God" cannot be all good, for he is also, more or less directly, the source of troubles, disasters, and the design of the world which contained the possibility of evil- something his omniscience must have seen, and which he did nothing to change.

This fact didn't trouble the Hebrews of old, who were content to think that all good and evil came from their God; they shunned to imagine that other Gods could contend with theirs, and so this was the only logical conclusion. But the Christian mind could not accept their God in terms of ambiguity. They were then, and are now, sadly mistaken and frightened. The Beast-God shows a side of God that speaks to savagery and wildness. This shall be discussed more in coming portions of this writing.


Another "person-related concept", which ends this walk through the dualities of persons, is the oft-mentioned duality of the "white" man and the "red" or "dark" man. The White Anglo-Saxon Protestants who founded America have left us an enduring legacy of mistrust and outright hatred for the "darker races", and the great spiritual and psychic impact of it makes it ripe for sorcerous manipulation, even today. In a way, human beings- and even "races", become symbols of power.

The white man was (for the longest time) Christian; the red men and the black men (Native Americans and Africans) were not when the white man met them- and largely still are not. Instantly, a distinction is created, and two worlds are set apart. The skin-colors of these non-white peoples become symbols: white for purity and goodness is contrasted against red and black for the darkness, blood, violence, and savagery which those races represented to the good, God-fearing white folk.

A long chain of ancient associations- of the world of "us" contrary to the "other" clusters behind these ideas. In the racist minds of people today- people of any color, those ancient forms are still in force. But the darker-skinned "outsiders" have certainly done their own natural witching on European-American society, have they not? For they brought fresh ideas, music, culture, art, and other powers that did change things, fundamentally, for modern Americans. Thus we see the eternal change from the outside stirring up the order within- and both sides changing one another.

It can come as no surprise that red and black people were often feared or accused of being witches and sorcerers- and no surprise that red and black people today are still some of the most powerful witches and sorcerers on the planet.




Location-Related Concepts

Square Buildings- preferably with a good whitewash or white paint, are the hallmark of the ordered village. New England today still has a beautiful selection of them to see in its many quaint villages. The church, especially, needed to be white with a tall steeple pointing straight to God. If your community was new, some good wood-colored planks were to be expected, but the community needed to "whiten up" its day as soon as it could. I'd say it was a sign of our times that we have good "red brick" churches, but we make allowances for the changing climate of things.

The square- and squareness in architecture- is a symbol of progress, of geometric order and tidyness. It stands out because nature doesn't make perfect squares. Those heathens closer to nature lived in round huts- from the round-houses of many of the Native peoples in New England, to the tipis of the red men further west. Raw and wild Nature makes plenty of roundness. The square is a sign of this world; the circle of the primal unseen world. The Indians who lived in longhouses, roughly rectangular houses, were still not quite to the level of whitewash; their structures were crude comparatively speaking, shaped of round logs, not square-cut planks.


Once the people of order got their homes squared away, they squared away the land, to portion out farms. To work the land into great square parcels of acreage and grow food- domesticated plants- is one of the supreme signs of the order of the world on this side of the hedge. Man's taming of nature extends now into the plant kingdom.

But outside the hedge, away from the farms and square buildings and churches, is the bog- the woods, the forest, and their croaking toads and teeming wildlife. One must visualize it, hear it, smell it, feel it, see it, before one understands the difference in power, the difference in weird-beings that inhabit the wild, and the well-dressed, hard-working humans that walk the streets of the village. In this perception of difference is power waiting to be hunted down and seized by the cunning Witch. The toad has long been associated with Witchcraft for a variety of reasons, but none so simple and profound as this- it is the bog-creature, the creature of dark waters that calls from the edges of rivers and beyond the trees. It is a symbol and a power of the outside.


In the homes of many men, and in hunting lodges, you'll find trophies hanging on the wall. The deer's skull, complete with spreading antlers, is a common one. It also happens to be another symbol of the mastery of the natural world, and man's industry turned towards hunting to feed his people and sustain his society. When the deer's skull hangs on the wall, it is a victory for order, for the people of the sunlit world. When the deer runs and leaps free in the forest, rutting and battling with other deer, it is a power of the outside- an animal equivalent of the Heathen, the whore, the rake, the red man, the black man, the beast-god, the untamed and free.

The ghostly white deer of myth that leads a human from the ordered world into the world unseen is a powerful reminder for the Witch- humans have preyed on deer since the dawn of things, taking its power into the heart of their homes and communities and bodies, but its remains hanging on the wall point back to the wild.

The hunting lodge may be outside of the boundaries of society- an island of civilization in a vast forest- but it is just that, an outpost of order.




Beast-Related Concepts

I have been discussing beasts a lot, even outside of this section, entitled "beast related concepts". Why? Because the beast is everywhere, overlapping with all things, even the "civilized" things. The beast is in everyone. The Witch cannot shy away from this fact, but the Witch cannot fall into unconscious absorption with it, either. To fall into either extreme would deny the sorcerous nature and power of the Witch, who draws strength from being able to tap into either end of the spectrum of vitality.

Just like the "Good Wife" and the "Good Husband" are tamed to be of useful benefit to ordered society, tamed beasts- cows, chickens, pigs, horses, and the like- are also "good beasts". They are also classic targets for the wicked spells of Witches, who often seem to be blamed for the blights on farms in folklore.

On the other side of the hedge, you have the wild beasts- wolves, foxes, bears, and the like. Humans have lived in terror of the wild beast and what it may do to their stock, or their children that wander off the forest path. The Witch, always associated with the "other side" by the straight-and-narrow people, was the "wolf of the spirit"- one of the Devil's wolves, ever seeking to drag the doubting and the weak off of the path of righteousness and into the deep forest of satanic abomination and damnation. These dualistic distinctions all overlap, as I said, and the Witch must cultivate the relationships between these concepts, to build a conceptual and poetic vocabulary and grammar of power.

Specific among the tame beasts are two that merit their own conceptual realm: the dove and the chicken. The dove is not just a gentle, beautiful white or light-colored bird, but a symbol of the highest goodness in Christianity. Across the hedge, the midnight-black raven or crow croaks his devilish croak to mock the dove. The Serpent is also an opposite to the dove- for the gentleness of doves and the cunning of serpents is a well-known dualistic distinction made in the Bible by a person of no less stature than Jesus himself. But Jesus didn't tell people to be gentle doves and avoid the cunning serpents- he said that each person had to be both as gentle as a dove and as cunning as a serpent- a powerful statement of wholeness, drawing on the light and dark within each human nature. That advice might well have been given by a Witch.

Corvids are the devil's birds; the serpent his animal form of temptation. Both Corvids and Serpents are held in highest esteem as sorcerous creatures in most Native or indigenous religions. It is no surprise that the order of the Christian world reserves nothing but fear and hate for them.

The long-suffering chicken is the food of the ordered world- always has been, it seems, and always will be. Modern society consumes a hellish amount of chicken. The chicken is the ultimate tame beast- and central to human society for ages. Mounting the top of most barns and roof-peaks is an iron or metal rooster standing astride the compass-cross, the four-pronged indicator of the four directions, a powerful squaring symbol of order.

It was the innards of poultry that the ancient haruspex gazed into to learn the future; it was a cock that crowed to announce the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus about his best friend's betrayal. The hen and the cock appear everywhere within society and our legends. The rooster cries out in greeting to the sun, announcing the breaking of night's power and re-birth of order.

But the owl- the owl is a dweller in darkness, a nocturnal bird. The owl is feared as an omen of death and Witchcraft in nearly every culture in which it is known. Sailing silently and stealthily through the night, it strikes suddenly, snatching prey away- a sure metaphor for death's sudden sting. The Owl's ill omen has led it to be associated with the Devil as well- and it doesn't help that owls will kill and eat chickens and other birds. How ironic- or a matter of deep, unconscious insight on the parts of human cultures- that the owl is also associated with wisdom. All of those who dwell in the "otherness" are wise, in a way.


Pure Concepts

Little needs to be said about the two pure concepts that all other concepts boil down to- law and anarchy, and light and darkness. It's perfectly clear that the ordered world is one of law and light, and that the world beyond, the "outside regions" are of darkness and anarchy. But these basic associations must be made, strongly.

Naturally, the true story is deeper than what appears. What is here, in the ordered world, is not all light or law, and what is there, in the mysterious, is not all darkness and anarchy. But the two worlds resonate with these things, for a reason.

Here, as the good husband plows his ordered, square fields on his farm, and feeds his chickens and cows, and goes with his good wife to church on Sunday morning, surrounded by their fellow "fair and delightsome" white neighbors, to worship God become Man in Jesus, law and light reigns, and all is well. There, beyond the hedge, beyond the village borders, the dusky-skinned savages paint their faces red and dance war songs in their circles of round huts, surrounded by wild forest, with owls calling in the distance and foxes barking.

Only outlaws and evil men wander out there, unable to call the society of good, decent people their home anymore. The beasts that are worshiped as Gods out in those wild-lands are nothing but demons- at least to the minds of the "straight and narrow" folk.

It is all a mere symbol of the body of Christ and his Christian society, surrounded by the gateways that lead to perdition and demonic realms. The Devil is in those woods, just as he may be secretly inside your smiling neighbor.

But the Witch knows a bit better. For the Witch can access the powers of the outside- he or she can come or go at will among them. And now, you will learn how. This tapestry of power, symbolized in so many ways by so many concepts, has always existed in some form, and still exists all around you. And if you are cunning enough, it can yield power for your use. But you must be cautious- too much of either side of the hedge, and the pendulum of your soul will begin to swing in dangerous ways- ways that can either destroy power, or turn your power wicked. If the second of these were to happen, you would deserve the hanging or burning your neighbors would likely seek to bestow upon you.


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All Text, aside from given citations, is Copyright © 2009 by Robin Artisson
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