The Perfect Ashler and The Unhewn Stone
Occult Alignments of Substance and Time

"The Jack-o-lantern was seen occasionally years ago by some of the people. But since
the blacks have been around in the swamp, we don't see them anymore. One time,
years ago, when Uncle Simon Johnson was living, John Randolph, a run away slave
was on his way to Uncle Simon's house when he saw a Jack-o-lantern.
He followed the light and became more and more bewildered..."

-William S. Simmons

* * *

We now reach a final chapter in our creation of an "alternating dark and light" vision of the world, by discussing the occult alignments of substance and time. We have all been treated to movies, stories, and ideas of pious men of God or heroic metaphysicians using salt, holy water, and bells to ward themselves from evil spirits, or perform exorcisms. It is clear from various traditions that various times and substances were (and are) believed to have some relationship to occult powers that makes them either more dangerous, or more holy for the uses of men.

These metaphysical notions can be examined in light of the primal division, buried deep at the most fundamental levels of the human psyche: the division between this world and the other, between the world of order and the world of wildness, between the world of things that are born of artifice and things that are shaped by no hand but nature's.

The notion of the "perfect ashler"- the squared or rectangular tool-worked and smoothed stone of the skillful architect, stands in distinction with the "unhewn stone"- the raw, natural lump of stone found everywhere in nature's great body. The societies of man are ashlers- tooled and smoothed out in every way conceivable to make them "fit" with a vision of reality, a vision of the architects of society which dictated how things should harmoniously fit together. The unhewn stone has no human vision foisted upon it by tools; it is worked by the hands of the Other- of Nature's pure and untamed power.

If one were to walk across the surface of an enormous perfect ashler, one could predict how one's journey would go. So many feet across a smooth, flat surface- a number of feet the ashler's creator could give you- there would be a sheer drop-off. If one were to walk across the surface of an enormous unhewn stone, one could never know how the surface would incline, when it would slope or change. A Witch walking down the streets of their village knows where the village green is, where the church is, where the homes of various people are. They know how far the road goes before it turns or ends. But a Witch walking through the forests of the unseen world never knows what lies around a dense thicket that may suddenly loom up.

If one were to shatter the ashler, one would discover that beneath the artificially smoothed surface, there was rough stone. The "other" is always right below the surface of every perceptual order- a disturbing fact to the psyche of any man or woman who is fully invested in their myth of absolute sanity and reason. Further, the violent act that would shatter the ashler is itself a thing born in the aggressive disorder of the "otherness"- which is why the violence inherent in human nature, always below the surface, is an enemy of the order of society. Its presence is dangerous, and must be controlled, just as the sexual force deep down must be. Sexuality and aggression have a well attested relationship to one another.

Any time artifice- the work of human imagination and hands- is applied to a raw element, order manifests itself. Salt and flour are both substances which the folkloric tradition tells us can combat wicked, disordered powers. Salt and flour are both products of human work; salt has been ground down and extracted and used to preserve food- and thus, to preserve the continuity of human society. Flour is the ultimate product of human agriculture, the ground-down essence of wheat and other tamed plants, used to create bread- the quintessential "food" of civilization.

Salt and flour represent the ultimate means and pylons of the substance of order and civilization- salt is placed in water to make it "holy"; it flavors bread; bread feeds and sustains. Salt, flour, and bread are traditionally used to create barriers against evil in the folklore of the British Isles, as well as many other places. It is not hard to divine the deepest reason why.

Three new "pairs" of opposites now manifest, in our tradition of occult relationships:


The Perfect Ashler... The Unhewn Stone

Salt and Flour... Fungus and wild berries

Bread... Wild Nuts, Fruits, or Game


Fungus and wild berries are the opposite of salt and flour; the wild foodstuffs of the savage heathen in the forest. Wild nuts, fruits, or game become the opposite of bread.

When walking through the village, or any town or city in the West, one sound stands out among others. Since the first centuries of Christianity, church bells have been ringing the hours for the faithful, and reminding them of their duties to the church. Sound has an occult significance, and bells also. Bells were believed to drive away evil spirits, though a closer study of folklore has shown that earlier, pre-Christian people thought the bells to be harmful to the spirits of the land, who fled from the encroaching new civilization that would consider them to be demons. It is another replication of the story of ordered society versus primal society.

What sounds would greet the ears deep in the forest, far from the ordered streets of the village? Howls and barks, the drone of insects, and the birds of day and night. They are the opposite of the sound of bells. They are the music of the otherness. They yield another pair:

Sound of Bells... Howls and Barks or Night Birds





Our final investigation must end with the dimension of time- or perceptual time, as the case may be. Certain times of the year are more associated with the forces of light ascendant, with the powers of Church and society, and others with the rise of supernatural forces, of witchcraft and dangerous powers. This is clear from any study of folkloric time.

Broadly placed, the summer and spring are the times of light, of safety and order, for the warm weather will not take the lives of those exposed to the wildness of the outside. Winter and autumn are both times of the dark, of supernatural danger, for the cold and lack of light represent dangerous powers imposing themselves on human society, bringing challenges and death. Day and night, the two halves of a 24 hour period, are small models of summer and winter, for precisely the same reasons.

The season of the resurrection of Christ- Easter- is the supreme "day of light" for Christian society, for it is the celebration of the ultimate triumph of light over darkness- the defeating of death. Christ rises from the dead, restores the light of consciousness from the dark un-knowing of death, and gives it an eternal, timeless quality which is the reward of all the faithful. It is no surprise that Christians chose to set this sacred day on the time of the heathen Spring-tide and to merge it with the hares and eggs of the spring rites of olden times: for even the savage heathen, as it turns out, once lived in his own order, and maintained his own society from darkness, just as later Christians would.

This is hard for Christians to hear or conceive of, as they pridefully enjoy thinking of themselves as the first and greatest "society of light", but they are only one in a long line. Either way, the Easter-tide represents the greatest hopes for all of the "order" of the West now, metaphysically.

The dark opposite of Easter is the sublime and terrifying season of Hallows- the time of All Hallows Eve, and its secular festival of goblin-mayhem, Halloween. The Puritans and others knew of the ancient associations of the Hallows-time, and shunned it. They may have had a good point- at least from the perspective of minds fearfully hiding behind their desperate order. The Hallows is the beginning of November, the descent into the darkest, coldest time of the year, the old Winter. It is a time when, traditionally, spooks, spirits, and monsters- the powers from beyond the hedge- could gain access to this world, and the dead could return for a while.

If winter is an intrusion of darkness and cold into the summer-warmed fields of the year, and if night is an intrusion of dark into the order of the village, it only makes sense that these seasons and alternations of light are manifestations of a deeper principle- and that principle is the eternal cycling or alternation of chaos and order that undergirds reality. The forces of "light" or "good" (a distasteful association, for it is born in the biased perceptions of the ordered minds of society) cannot exist without the forces of dark and "evil"- they forever live alongside them, are enlivened by them, changed by them, struggling with them, and together, both describe a wholeness which is the way of life, the way of the universe. In its natural wholeness, its natural necessity, it is the only true "good".

And yet, order must be maintained, and disorder must be handled with the care and caution required by those who would either live in the ordered world, or by those who would "Witch" back and forth between them. There is a task here, but not one that is most wisely accomplished by hating one side or the other.

The time of All Hallows, for the Witch, is the finest moment of the soul and mind. None who are wise to the nature of reality beyond the hedge can fail to adore the flickering lights within wickedly-carved gourds, the wild parties, the way humans dress and mask themselves to literally, for one wild period, become the strange creatures and powers from beyond. The "other side" of life enlivens this one; it gives it freshness and renewed vitality- there is something seductive and needful in our yearly plunge into chaos.

But the Hallows season also brings in fresh, dangerous powers that the Witch can utilize. It may be the one time of year that the witch doesn't seem quite so strange.




The pure solar times of Midsummer and Midwinter represent a "purity" of the light and the dark- the longest day of the year, and the shortest. Both of these days are held in the folklore-traditions of Northern Europe (and other places) to be of immense power to Witches and sorcerous types. Midwinter, especially, for the eldritch force of that year-ending and year-rebirthing season has drawn the deepest and most profound longings of all religious folk, from Pagan or Christian times. Even the Christ-child has to be "born" on the dark solstice, deep in December, as a reminder that the deepest dark contains the light-seed.

What a profound statement, even if it is borne in mind by people who aren't hearing it with the full force of its profundity: the deepest dark contains the light-seed. Even in the midst of absolute chaos, something shines in the darkness; that something, as we will see, and as the cunning Witch must know, is the very kernel of conscious mind that the Witch "brings" into the darkness when they cross the hedge.

When the frightened folk of order must die, and give up their bodies to chaos and rot, and have their conscious minds fall away from the temporary order bestowed by the brain and become immersed in the unformed, unmanifest, uncertain and strange world beyond, they go in hope of the light of Christ to meet them. The light that will meet them, however, must be carried by them to that dark place, and it must be born over a lifetime of consciously realizing the goodness of wholeness within each person and the world, else no light will be there "outside" them to comfort them. Few realize this. But the Witch must.

For the darkness is not merely dark, no matter how deep it gets, just as the light is not merely light, no matter how bright it gets. Hope always exists- just as caution is always necessary.

Two final "powerful days" end our study of substance and time Old Walpurgis Night and the time of Harvest Home. Walpurgis is an example of the darkness-grain within the light: at high May-time, the ancient Witching time of Walpurgis is found- a time for Witches to gather and the forces of the outside to be invoked. Even at the time of light, May, leading to summer, we find witches at meeting. And Harvest Home- a blanket term used to describe any communal time of "bringing the harvest home" or harvest-festival, is a sign of light in darkness; there, at the "fall" of the year, as times grow colder, the crop-foods are gathered, the sustenance that will be needed to live through the cold winter-grip to come.

Both of these interesting seasons present us with a rounding out of our understanding of how seasonal powers merge into one another and relate. This is an important perspective for the Witch who seeks wisdom. Three more metaphysical brides and grooms are given you:

Easter... All Hallows

Midsummer... Midwinter

Harvest Home... Walpurgis


...And now the hour has come to seek the Witching way's practical manifestation, empowered by this vision of otherness, our vision of opposition and complementarity that has been built with cunning examination.


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