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Connecting Dots in local Witchcraft and Folklore
-or why this journal exists-
I have mentioned in a lot of topics that I have a very local craft, I did build it from a young age and in the first 5 years separate from knowing existing traditions. We had no internet in that time and I never had the chance to go to the big bookstores and libraries in the city. I called it witchcraft from the very first beginning and I called myself a witch from that beginning. From the age of 18 I first start to read things and 'dicovered' that there were more people who self define of witchcraft and learned about the existence of Wicca. I dabbled some years in that, but long story short I came back to my own praxis. My praxis is a kind of homemade thing, I build it from scratch. There was folklore, there are certain powers in the landscape, there is history science and occultism in Europe but my way of working is not build on existing tradition. I don't believe in a uninterrupted witchcraft tradition that lasted for centuries long. (But that is another topic and it is beyond the scope of this Journal)
Now, how did I connect bolts and pieces over all those years? Where did I start, what kind of information did I use or discard, where do which magic operations link to the landscape and why? Are there local things that define one or more parts of my witchcraft? Or that confirm things? How did I build the bridge between the natural world around me and the astral and the world inside me?
This journal builds up the story and my personal myth. I am hoping to inspire how things work If one build things like this. Till now I did not read that many books that really covers this process as a whole. Thus when people start to ask questions, I can't point them to books or blogs to start their own route. I don't have the intention to write a book, but I can understand that people want to try out things by them self. I will try to share this in a serie of posts, links to posts I made earlier, maybe pictures, some maps and thus painting a picture about the process that was there for over 30 years. It was a really organic process, so it is not always easy to put things in themes and fixed ideas......... I don't know if I will stay on a forum for many years or that I go back to my own little world of silence. One word about where I grew up: I lived in a very rural region, could walk the forests for hours with the dog and was not missed because the dog needed to walk hours, friends lived alongside brooks that had their own powers.
Correspondences
As mentioned, when starting my praxis, I did not had the opportunity of consulting internet or books. I had the idea in my mind that I use all kinds of things in magical potions And I think that making those, was the very start with everything. That in combination with weather magic practices, but about that later. If you have no internet or books, you can't read about correspondences for the magic. Then there are three things that stand in front of how you practice: cultivating your own witchpower, imagination and find correspondences yourself in your area. Cultivating the own witchpower and how to discover how that works when you don't have a mentor or another form of guidance, I will post later about that. Imagination and finding correspondences goes hand in hand.
But how do you find correspondences in your own region? It was not always by association. It boiled down by running the same experiments over and over again. So, for example I had a intent/purpose. I designed a potion that was exactly the same in operation, exactly the same in ingredients, except for one thing: the plant that I wanted to use. So I tested every time another plant and repeated the experiments over and over again. If I had enough information, I did the same thing over and over again, but changed the intent/purpose. So every plant got tested many times in different intents/purposes. Then, you have to test it again! Roots act different from flowers or leaves.
The other way of finding is about what you see that is present in your region and where those plants grow, how they behave throughout the seasons. Nettles alongside a brook can connect different than those that grow in the forests..... And if you gather information, you need to have knowledge about how the landscape historical evolved. Now, what was it like? We had swamp-like grounds in the winter, sand in on the higher grounds on which forests and heather flourished. Those swamp-like areas were described for the last 300 years, and there is no evidence found that confirmed otherwise. On all kinds of lands were blackberries often present, not only in the last century but much longer. They were there for hundreds of years according to the people who have enough knowledge about the historical landscape. This was why I incorporated the blackberry in my magic, here in a talisman:
"choose blackberries in your neighborhood to harvest from and harvest some blackberries itself and the thorns. Choose the thickest and prickiest thorns you can find. If the plant makes scratches on your skin and you bleed, it is a plus and maybe even a prio. Dry the thorns. Cook the berries till you have the black juice. Cut 3 branches of the bramble and make a hoop from it. If it cracks you need start over again with everything with another plant! Before picking the blackberrie stuff you have find some white sheep's wool. Clean it, spin a thread of it and make a little pooch of it in your preferred method. Paint the pooch with the blackberrie juice and vinegar or urine. Handwash it, dry it. Then take all those thorns you collected, put them in pooch and close the pooch by sewing. On full moon lay down the hoop (your circle) and place the pooch in the middle to make it gain more power. There you have another strong working talisman. Needless to say that you have your intention in mind the whole time in this whole process. Make sure you choose blackberries from a place that is not so cultivated by modern humans. I have some special places: a bronze age burial place and a place where there is a folk story about a giant who lives behind a thorny hedge. If you are open for folklore and history you can find places like that yourself."
Utilizing the thorns of the blackberry:
Another thing what was present was spruce and pine. The pines are there in the landscape because they thrive on the sandy soils on the higher grounds, but the pines that were present in my youth were there because of wood harvesting. So that is mixed. Spruce was not so present over many hundred years but forestry made them a part of our region. My own way of working with it, can you find in the link.
Then there was a lot experimentation with dandelion in those beginning years. I tested both the flowers and the roots. In the very beginning I used the harvested fresh roots in a potion for protection and in contact with local spirits, but I got disappointed by that. I changed over time my method to work with it, I made that change in the period I didn't live with my parents anymore. I collected the plants, used the flowers for tea and honey and used the roots otherwise: I did cut it in pieces dried them in the sun and grounded them. So I got a powder from it and the drying process was accompanied with connecting to it every day and connect the intent/purpose to it. Same with grounding. The powder has more power because of the process. You can use it in similar operations as the curse with clay and thorns, or mix it with clay and form a talisman from that. This is something you can do with more herbs/plants/trees. Over years I tested honeysuckle, oak, rowan, stinging nettle, mugwort, hawthorn, elder, heather and fox glove from our area. Rosemary, sage, grape vine, walnut, onions and yew from gardens. Later on I had the hobby of growing hot pepper and did some experiments. You can find a hot powder recipe/method with hot pepper on WF. The last years I am testing mandrake and datura. If you want to know more about walnut, there is a topic on WF but keep in mind that it is a much later developed method. The next year I will work with blueberry that is to be found in a part of my territory that is promising and where I worked on a very intens way my magic. Later on some comments about that...Ten, I used after intensive test driving rowan for protection purposes:
'I start visiting the tree long before the berries grow: in the end of the winter to be able to watch the complete growing process. I bring with me attention, intention and maybe some water or manure to help the tree growing, The moments of the visits can be daily, but it is possible to carefully choose those moments. (Under influence of planets, or chosen by divination, use your own method) For harvesting the rowan berries I pick a special moment too, but it can be that nature chooses another moment: every growing season is different and you need to accept that, Doing so, you will develop a relationship with that tree also. After harvesting I dry the berries and after that I chain them on a tread with a little help of a sharp needle. You can add dried root parts of mandrake too, preferably a home grown plant."
Then the clay, why is it in my praxis? In the places where the local streams were present there was a kind of clay, so decided over time that clay was a ingredient with lots of potention. I can't find much local clay anymore, so I take some soil from a swamp-like ground that are alongside the brooks and that is more fat like clay and work that through store bought clay. Sometimes you need to be a little practical and are things what they are................. The map is for another time, but I give it already to study it. It will be a post about building a territory.
Little adds about the herb correspondences
I forgot one thing in the 'herb' part of the path. When living on my own at age 19, there was a very sigil-like way of working with herbs. I did put non poisonous herbs on my pancake while baking and shaped what I called at that time a magic sign with intention/purpose. Nowadays I would call it a sigil. When eating the pancake I imagined how the pancake was ground between the teeth, how I swallowed it, how it was knead in the stomach, how it went further where digestive juices were added, how it transported inch by inch through the digestive tract, how I pooped it out, how it went in the sewer further on. When I was at the end of that I mostly was forgotten what the magic was all about. I made that experience very intens and detailed. For that pancake batter I used flour from a windmill in the north-west of my area. I cannot use it from a mill of my village. One of the mills was blown up in WO II and the other doesn't mill anymore.
Why using flour from a windmill? The windmill is a transformator of air-to-earth magic. The wind blows against the mill blades and with an intricate system it keeps a millstone (earth) turning, grinding the grain. So you have a connection between inspiration and communication on the one hand and grounding things on the other hand, of having ideas (air) put in manifestation. (earth) If you are lucky and knowing the miller, you can have the information of which batch of flour is milled on which wind but not all millers are keeping information about that. It is interesting to mention that Dutch windmills turn counter-clockwise seen from the front of the mill. The push is against the natural turning of the wood and that firms the wood thus being able to withstand greater forces.
Ice and fire
Another method was the fire and ice. I took a herb, controlled it with intent while pushing for that power from withing my body in it. I put the herb in a container with water, freeze it. And then took it out of the fridge to leave it in the hot burning summer sun to not only let it melt the ice but drying and let shrink the herb. After that I put it on fire. If I needed magic that had to last for a long time I would do the freezing in the winter with water from the outside (or snow) and the melting and burning around midsummer.
Deep dive in the territory:
Here a dive in the territory. It is been said that the witch is the most strong in her own territory. I hope to share how a territory is build and where powers come from. In building the territory over years there are a few things playing a role. On the one side it are the folklore and historic sites that played a role. On the other hand, the visions I had in astral travel played a role also. And third on the most places I mention, we had tree planting days. Om primary school a lot of Dutch children planting trees in their area on a special dedicated day each year. I was really lucky to have that. Planting trees on locations, connect you to the landscape itself.
If you watch the map, we have in general a strong Nort-West direction in the landscape. Now, when I was discovering things years ago, I had no map like this. (only a little map of the village itself) So, I was not aware in a way I am now, but I had visions in astral travel of processions of death people walking in the Nort-West direction. When I have those visions, I levitated about 30 centimeters above ground level and I am only allowed to watch it from the distance. On the place where I was levitating, I could change things and later on I could detect some of the changes I made. Some of the things I left over there, have had a replacement done by other beings. So here was my first clue about how powers are moving through the landscape. The processions are on the line between B and C.
But let's start on A. Here were the first experiences of my life with magical things in the landscape. What I mentioned in the above link/post about pine trees, started here. The forest was not so overcrowded 30 years ago. You could easily walk for a few hours alone, hearing the wind in the trees, seeing an occasional deer and often foxes. There were places I just sat down, listening to the stories of the trees, where I could disconnect from daily life. These were the places I saw a ghost-like figure that, thanks to later information about folklore, got a name. He was the 'lange wapper'. White ladies or, known by the name witte wieven in the rest of the Netherlands, were also there, but also on other places. They are strange kind of spirits. It was in that area where I started to do my first magical experiments with herbs like I described above. No one had a clue about that. We had a dog that needed to run for a one to a few hours a day. Another thing that started in this area was mirror magic and scrying in a little local water. I had one succes experience, but long time it was a standalone experience. I couldn't duplicate it and it was so frustrating! So every time I was in the forests, I tried again and again and again. Later on I discovered that it was not about trying to keep control, rather than letting it go. A part of this training this took place at home, I took a bowl with water. Good to know that I couldn't use the water of the little streams around my village. The water was polluted by liquid manure that farmers not only did put on their land, but also in the water. So, to sum it up, it was this part of the area where my practice and craft started.
Then I want to put your attention to B. In this part is a burial hill of the bronze age. I had the luck to have parents who saw the importance of having some knowledge about history. It is a nice little forest to walk, so we walked there every now and then. When later visiting it in the astral, I saw those processions I mentioned above in a more clear way. The burial hill is together with that of Hoogeloon the biggest of the Netherlands. it has a diameter of 25 meter, has a trench around it that is approximately 1,5 meter width, a 3,5 meter width wall from earth and another additional trench of 3 meter width. Rests of cremation and a bronze ax were found here, buried approximately 3500 years ago. Local historians think it is quite possible that there are more burials hills here because the old name for the area was 7 hills area. The burial hill is reconstructed, but it is still a place with power. It is one of the oldest liminal places in our landscape, a crossroad. I use a little bit of earth ( a few kernels of sand) in plants that I grow for magic purposes or in the clay I described above. Another thing I did was making an amulet, bury it quite near to the hill to dig it up later and take it back home. The amulet stayed long underground sometimes and I tended to do both the bury and dig on dark moon. Near the amulet I would bury as an offer a coin made out of wood. Wood is biodegradable. When not being able to visiting the place IRL, I could go astral. The place is quite accessibel in the astral, which is not necessarily the case on other places.
Then over to C. I have made a bigger map of that area, that is what the second map is about. In that area there is also a burial hill, but made in time that Napoleon was the overlord of this region. It was declared that noble people in the region not were allowed to be buried in the churches in the nearby city of Breda. The burial cellar was build around 1812 and two noble ladies of the family that owned the estate were buried here. Later on in WO II the Germans did use it as a mass grave, but the bodies were unearthed in the end of the war, leaving a piece of concrete on top of the hill. Now, most children of the village did play in my youth over there when they walked with their parents or when the their parents had to pay the rent of the land to the local noble man. So we had all the most fantastic stories about what that hill had to be. It was many years later that we understanded and discovered that it was actually a grave. That it was a cross road and liminal place, that was something a lot of these children did understand however. In our minds all kinds of entities could be hidden in that hill, or we had the idea that there was a treasure cove in it. And standing on the hill and seeing 4 roads (there were 5 originally) starting on the foot of the hill, was tantalizing our minds. I could do the same kinds of magic I described in B and if you stood right on the hill watching the nearby pasture you could see on certain days white ladies dancing. Later on, when going to high school, my route by bike (we could bike to school, just 10 miles) was short near the hill. So at dusk in winter time I danced at the foot of the hill together with the white ladies. So if I want to, they are to be found over there.
If I go by foot to this estate, I have to walk on a route through the swamp-like area that is part of the biosphere of one of the crooked little streams of area. On the border between the swamps, the pastures and the estate Tawny owls and buzzards are living. The buzzard comes quite near when I am alone, I can feel the air coming from his wings then. The tawny owls are very noisy in dusk and at night.
A few hundred meters from the hill there is a Rock that is called the blood stone by now. The flat rock was not always there and stands on a brick base. Some people say that one the estate owners of the 19th century did bury his favorite dog there. But, in the Netherlands there are also stories about blood stones like the rock of Kernhem. It was told that on that rocks animals were offered and that the rocks did absorb some of the blood. When you go on full moon at midnight to those rocks and point them with a knive, blood comes out of the stone and you could talk with demons/devils. Although the story is connected much later on to this particular rock I describe here, you can do that on this place. Yes, been there and done that but can't talk about it. For European people, you have to try it yourself.
In the link some information about blood- or sacrifical stones. (To declare things: in Dutch we are calling a large rock a stone too, perhaps because we are a flat delta without mountains and rocks)
Within 100 meters of the rock there is a crooked little stream. That stream connects to the story on D and connects with the safe little village, see point A. So go over to D which provides the story of the Giant Hilbert. In the area of D lived the giant Hilbert, or in earlier stories Hillibert. The giant lived on a clay hill (yes clay again!) behind a thorn hedge without doors. In folklore hedges like this are borders between the normal world and the world of the spirits. It was not easy to go to the world of Hilbert. First you have, according to the stories, make him a offer of mild and bread. And according to one of the stories Hilbert is friendly for the people, but doesn't really want contact and lives on his own. I tried to do in astral travel and I was put to the test. First of my tries I ended nearby the hedge and had to count flowers of the heather that stood in the field just before the hedge. Another time I saw doors in the hedge that disappeared when nearing them, and so on. Or I had to count thorns et cetera. I've never been putting so intens and often to the test in my entire life and I can't really talk about it further. Anyway, Hilbert is connected to village. When the stream flooded the surroundings of the village a local road was devastated by the water. The people in the village panicked. Hilbert took his giant cauldron and went to the place I marked with D. He did put the sand of that hill in his cauldron and repaired the road. On the little road is now a little chapel attributed to St. Mary. I still bring milk and bread to a certain place and I clear that place of garbage that people are leaving behind. It is ok to connect if I need it.
E is the village I live and if you walk over there, there is much noise of the very busy road, tourists in the summer. This is the mundane human living part of the map. The lines between where I live and the other magical points of interest on the map are drawn in on the map. When going over to F you have the direction in which you go if you are going to the place where the Goddess Sandraudiga was found, 7 miles in that direction. There were iron objects to be found at the votive stone and iron was found in the stream valleys in our area in form of bog iron which colored the soils red on certain places. There are still little streams with that red color in the soil. So here another magical link that is to be found in the landscape.
Now, if you want to invoke these local powers in yourself and in your magic, you need to visit those places regularly and entwine them in your magic. I gave some ideas about how to do that above and I will re-share down under a method I described in an earlier topic. If you have build that very basis, you can draw on a map lines and use that as a sigil and focus point to invoke. So the landscape itself becomes a enormously big sigil and with imagination you have to be able to rebuild in your mind that sigil or secret sign. To protect my magic, I didn't draw the complete sigil here and I will never share that in public also. That works together with my magic name, one part is not known by humans but that part of the name has a connection to my local area also. But I think I gave the idea how to invoke local powers. Using parts of the area in my magic:
On this map with leylines my area is under a line I marked with a red C and this shows the same direction as a mentioned above. So there is another connection in thoughts and energies.
-or why this journal exists-
I have mentioned in a lot of topics that I have a very local craft, I did build it from a young age and in the first 5 years separate from knowing existing traditions. We had no internet in that time and I never had the chance to go to the big bookstores and libraries in the city. I called it witchcraft from the very first beginning and I called myself a witch from that beginning. From the age of 18 I first start to read things and 'dicovered' that there were more people who self define of witchcraft and learned about the existence of Wicca. I dabbled some years in that, but long story short I came back to my own praxis. My praxis is a kind of homemade thing, I build it from scratch. There was folklore, there are certain powers in the landscape, there is history science and occultism in Europe but my way of working is not build on existing tradition. I don't believe in a uninterrupted witchcraft tradition that lasted for centuries long. (But that is another topic and it is beyond the scope of this Journal)
Now, how did I connect bolts and pieces over all those years? Where did I start, what kind of information did I use or discard, where do which magic operations link to the landscape and why? Are there local things that define one or more parts of my witchcraft? Or that confirm things? How did I build the bridge between the natural world around me and the astral and the world inside me?
This journal builds up the story and my personal myth. I am hoping to inspire how things work If one build things like this. Till now I did not read that many books that really covers this process as a whole. Thus when people start to ask questions, I can't point them to books or blogs to start their own route. I don't have the intention to write a book, but I can understand that people want to try out things by them self. I will try to share this in a serie of posts, links to posts I made earlier, maybe pictures, some maps and thus painting a picture about the process that was there for over 30 years. It was a really organic process, so it is not always easy to put things in themes and fixed ideas......... I don't know if I will stay on a forum for many years or that I go back to my own little world of silence. One word about where I grew up: I lived in a very rural region, could walk the forests for hours with the dog and was not missed because the dog needed to walk hours, friends lived alongside brooks that had their own powers.
Correspondences
As mentioned, when starting my praxis, I did not had the opportunity of consulting internet or books. I had the idea in my mind that I use all kinds of things in magical potions And I think that making those, was the very start with everything. That in combination with weather magic practices, but about that later. If you have no internet or books, you can't read about correspondences for the magic. Then there are three things that stand in front of how you practice: cultivating your own witchpower, imagination and find correspondences yourself in your area. Cultivating the own witchpower and how to discover how that works when you don't have a mentor or another form of guidance, I will post later about that. Imagination and finding correspondences goes hand in hand.
But how do you find correspondences in your own region? It was not always by association. It boiled down by running the same experiments over and over again. So, for example I had a intent/purpose. I designed a potion that was exactly the same in operation, exactly the same in ingredients, except for one thing: the plant that I wanted to use. So I tested every time another plant and repeated the experiments over and over again. If I had enough information, I did the same thing over and over again, but changed the intent/purpose. So every plant got tested many times in different intents/purposes. Then, you have to test it again! Roots act different from flowers or leaves.
The other way of finding is about what you see that is present in your region and where those plants grow, how they behave throughout the seasons. Nettles alongside a brook can connect different than those that grow in the forests..... And if you gather information, you need to have knowledge about how the landscape historical evolved. Now, what was it like? We had swamp-like grounds in the winter, sand in on the higher grounds on which forests and heather flourished. Those swamp-like areas were described for the last 300 years, and there is no evidence found that confirmed otherwise. On all kinds of lands were blackberries often present, not only in the last century but much longer. They were there for hundreds of years according to the people who have enough knowledge about the historical landscape. This was why I incorporated the blackberry in my magic, here in a talisman:
"choose blackberries in your neighborhood to harvest from and harvest some blackberries itself and the thorns. Choose the thickest and prickiest thorns you can find. If the plant makes scratches on your skin and you bleed, it is a plus and maybe even a prio. Dry the thorns. Cook the berries till you have the black juice. Cut 3 branches of the bramble and make a hoop from it. If it cracks you need start over again with everything with another plant! Before picking the blackberrie stuff you have find some white sheep's wool. Clean it, spin a thread of it and make a little pooch of it in your preferred method. Paint the pooch with the blackberrie juice and vinegar or urine. Handwash it, dry it. Then take all those thorns you collected, put them in pooch and close the pooch by sewing. On full moon lay down the hoop (your circle) and place the pooch in the middle to make it gain more power. There you have another strong working talisman. Needless to say that you have your intention in mind the whole time in this whole process. Make sure you choose blackberries from a place that is not so cultivated by modern humans. I have some special places: a bronze age burial place and a place where there is a folk story about a giant who lives behind a thorny hedge. If you are open for folklore and history you can find places like that yourself."
Utilizing the thorns of the blackberry:
Another thing what was present was spruce and pine. The pines are there in the landscape because they thrive on the sandy soils on the higher grounds, but the pines that were present in my youth were there because of wood harvesting. So that is mixed. Spruce was not so present over many hundred years but forestry made them a part of our region. My own way of working with it, can you find in the link.
Then there was a lot experimentation with dandelion in those beginning years. I tested both the flowers and the roots. In the very beginning I used the harvested fresh roots in a potion for protection and in contact with local spirits, but I got disappointed by that. I changed over time my method to work with it, I made that change in the period I didn't live with my parents anymore. I collected the plants, used the flowers for tea and honey and used the roots otherwise: I did cut it in pieces dried them in the sun and grounded them. So I got a powder from it and the drying process was accompanied with connecting to it every day and connect the intent/purpose to it. Same with grounding. The powder has more power because of the process. You can use it in similar operations as the curse with clay and thorns, or mix it with clay and form a talisman from that. This is something you can do with more herbs/plants/trees. Over years I tested honeysuckle, oak, rowan, stinging nettle, mugwort, hawthorn, elder, heather and fox glove from our area. Rosemary, sage, grape vine, walnut, onions and yew from gardens. Later on I had the hobby of growing hot pepper and did some experiments. You can find a hot powder recipe/method with hot pepper on WF. The last years I am testing mandrake and datura. If you want to know more about walnut, there is a topic on WF but keep in mind that it is a much later developed method. The next year I will work with blueberry that is to be found in a part of my territory that is promising and where I worked on a very intens way my magic. Later on some comments about that...Ten, I used after intensive test driving rowan for protection purposes:
'I start visiting the tree long before the berries grow: in the end of the winter to be able to watch the complete growing process. I bring with me attention, intention and maybe some water or manure to help the tree growing, The moments of the visits can be daily, but it is possible to carefully choose those moments. (Under influence of planets, or chosen by divination, use your own method) For harvesting the rowan berries I pick a special moment too, but it can be that nature chooses another moment: every growing season is different and you need to accept that, Doing so, you will develop a relationship with that tree also. After harvesting I dry the berries and after that I chain them on a tread with a little help of a sharp needle. You can add dried root parts of mandrake too, preferably a home grown plant."
Then the clay, why is it in my praxis? In the places where the local streams were present there was a kind of clay, so decided over time that clay was a ingredient with lots of potention. I can't find much local clay anymore, so I take some soil from a swamp-like ground that are alongside the brooks and that is more fat like clay and work that through store bought clay. Sometimes you need to be a little practical and are things what they are................. The map is for another time, but I give it already to study it. It will be a post about building a territory.
Post automatically merged:
Little adds about the herb correspondences
I forgot one thing in the 'herb' part of the path. When living on my own at age 19, there was a very sigil-like way of working with herbs. I did put non poisonous herbs on my pancake while baking and shaped what I called at that time a magic sign with intention/purpose. Nowadays I would call it a sigil. When eating the pancake I imagined how the pancake was ground between the teeth, how I swallowed it, how it was knead in the stomach, how it went further where digestive juices were added, how it transported inch by inch through the digestive tract, how I pooped it out, how it went in the sewer further on. When I was at the end of that I mostly was forgotten what the magic was all about. I made that experience very intens and detailed. For that pancake batter I used flour from a windmill in the north-west of my area. I cannot use it from a mill of my village. One of the mills was blown up in WO II and the other doesn't mill anymore.
Why using flour from a windmill? The windmill is a transformator of air-to-earth magic. The wind blows against the mill blades and with an intricate system it keeps a millstone (earth) turning, grinding the grain. So you have a connection between inspiration and communication on the one hand and grounding things on the other hand, of having ideas (air) put in manifestation. (earth) If you are lucky and knowing the miller, you can have the information of which batch of flour is milled on which wind but not all millers are keeping information about that. It is interesting to mention that Dutch windmills turn counter-clockwise seen from the front of the mill. The push is against the natural turning of the wood and that firms the wood thus being able to withstand greater forces.
Ice and fire
Another method was the fire and ice. I took a herb, controlled it with intent while pushing for that power from withing my body in it. I put the herb in a container with water, freeze it. And then took it out of the fridge to leave it in the hot burning summer sun to not only let it melt the ice but drying and let shrink the herb. After that I put it on fire. If I needed magic that had to last for a long time I would do the freezing in the winter with water from the outside (or snow) and the melting and burning around midsummer.
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Deep dive in the territory:
Here a dive in the territory. It is been said that the witch is the most strong in her own territory. I hope to share how a territory is build and where powers come from. In building the territory over years there are a few things playing a role. On the one side it are the folklore and historic sites that played a role. On the other hand, the visions I had in astral travel played a role also. And third on the most places I mention, we had tree planting days. Om primary school a lot of Dutch children planting trees in their area on a special dedicated day each year. I was really lucky to have that. Planting trees on locations, connect you to the landscape itself.
If you watch the map, we have in general a strong Nort-West direction in the landscape. Now, when I was discovering things years ago, I had no map like this. (only a little map of the village itself) So, I was not aware in a way I am now, but I had visions in astral travel of processions of death people walking in the Nort-West direction. When I have those visions, I levitated about 30 centimeters above ground level and I am only allowed to watch it from the distance. On the place where I was levitating, I could change things and later on I could detect some of the changes I made. Some of the things I left over there, have had a replacement done by other beings. So here was my first clue about how powers are moving through the landscape. The processions are on the line between B and C.
But let's start on A. Here were the first experiences of my life with magical things in the landscape. What I mentioned in the above link/post about pine trees, started here. The forest was not so overcrowded 30 years ago. You could easily walk for a few hours alone, hearing the wind in the trees, seeing an occasional deer and often foxes. There were places I just sat down, listening to the stories of the trees, where I could disconnect from daily life. These were the places I saw a ghost-like figure that, thanks to later information about folklore, got a name. He was the 'lange wapper'. White ladies or, known by the name witte wieven in the rest of the Netherlands, were also there, but also on other places. They are strange kind of spirits. It was in that area where I started to do my first magical experiments with herbs like I described above. No one had a clue about that. We had a dog that needed to run for a one to a few hours a day. Another thing that started in this area was mirror magic and scrying in a little local water. I had one succes experience, but long time it was a standalone experience. I couldn't duplicate it and it was so frustrating! So every time I was in the forests, I tried again and again and again. Later on I discovered that it was not about trying to keep control, rather than letting it go. A part of this training this took place at home, I took a bowl with water. Good to know that I couldn't use the water of the little streams around my village. The water was polluted by liquid manure that farmers not only did put on their land, but also in the water. So, to sum it up, it was this part of the area where my practice and craft started.
Then I want to put your attention to B. In this part is a burial hill of the bronze age. I had the luck to have parents who saw the importance of having some knowledge about history. It is a nice little forest to walk, so we walked there every now and then. When later visiting it in the astral, I saw those processions I mentioned above in a more clear way. The burial hill is together with that of Hoogeloon the biggest of the Netherlands. it has a diameter of 25 meter, has a trench around it that is approximately 1,5 meter width, a 3,5 meter width wall from earth and another additional trench of 3 meter width. Rests of cremation and a bronze ax were found here, buried approximately 3500 years ago. Local historians think it is quite possible that there are more burials hills here because the old name for the area was 7 hills area. The burial hill is reconstructed, but it is still a place with power. It is one of the oldest liminal places in our landscape, a crossroad. I use a little bit of earth ( a few kernels of sand) in plants that I grow for magic purposes or in the clay I described above. Another thing I did was making an amulet, bury it quite near to the hill to dig it up later and take it back home. The amulet stayed long underground sometimes and I tended to do both the bury and dig on dark moon. Near the amulet I would bury as an offer a coin made out of wood. Wood is biodegradable. When not being able to visiting the place IRL, I could go astral. The place is quite accessibel in the astral, which is not necessarily the case on other places.
Then over to C. I have made a bigger map of that area, that is what the second map is about. In that area there is also a burial hill, but made in time that Napoleon was the overlord of this region. It was declared that noble people in the region not were allowed to be buried in the churches in the nearby city of Breda. The burial cellar was build around 1812 and two noble ladies of the family that owned the estate were buried here. Later on in WO II the Germans did use it as a mass grave, but the bodies were unearthed in the end of the war, leaving a piece of concrete on top of the hill. Now, most children of the village did play in my youth over there when they walked with their parents or when the their parents had to pay the rent of the land to the local noble man. So we had all the most fantastic stories about what that hill had to be. It was many years later that we understanded and discovered that it was actually a grave. That it was a cross road and liminal place, that was something a lot of these children did understand however. In our minds all kinds of entities could be hidden in that hill, or we had the idea that there was a treasure cove in it. And standing on the hill and seeing 4 roads (there were 5 originally) starting on the foot of the hill, was tantalizing our minds. I could do the same kinds of magic I described in B and if you stood right on the hill watching the nearby pasture you could see on certain days white ladies dancing. Later on, when going to high school, my route by bike (we could bike to school, just 10 miles) was short near the hill. So at dusk in winter time I danced at the foot of the hill together with the white ladies. So if I want to, they are to be found over there.
If I go by foot to this estate, I have to walk on a route through the swamp-like area that is part of the biosphere of one of the crooked little streams of area. On the border between the swamps, the pastures and the estate Tawny owls and buzzards are living. The buzzard comes quite near when I am alone, I can feel the air coming from his wings then. The tawny owls are very noisy in dusk and at night.
A few hundred meters from the hill there is a Rock that is called the blood stone by now. The flat rock was not always there and stands on a brick base. Some people say that one the estate owners of the 19th century did bury his favorite dog there. But, in the Netherlands there are also stories about blood stones like the rock of Kernhem. It was told that on that rocks animals were offered and that the rocks did absorb some of the blood. When you go on full moon at midnight to those rocks and point them with a knive, blood comes out of the stone and you could talk with demons/devils. Although the story is connected much later on to this particular rock I describe here, you can do that on this place. Yes, been there and done that but can't talk about it. For European people, you have to try it yourself.
In the link some information about blood- or sacrifical stones. (To declare things: in Dutch we are calling a large rock a stone too, perhaps because we are a flat delta without mountains and rocks)Within 100 meters of the rock there is a crooked little stream. That stream connects to the story on D and connects with the safe little village, see point A. So go over to D which provides the story of the Giant Hilbert. In the area of D lived the giant Hilbert, or in earlier stories Hillibert. The giant lived on a clay hill (yes clay again!) behind a thorn hedge without doors. In folklore hedges like this are borders between the normal world and the world of the spirits. It was not easy to go to the world of Hilbert. First you have, according to the stories, make him a offer of mild and bread. And according to one of the stories Hilbert is friendly for the people, but doesn't really want contact and lives on his own. I tried to do in astral travel and I was put to the test. First of my tries I ended nearby the hedge and had to count flowers of the heather that stood in the field just before the hedge. Another time I saw doors in the hedge that disappeared when nearing them, and so on. Or I had to count thorns et cetera. I've never been putting so intens and often to the test in my entire life and I can't really talk about it further. Anyway, Hilbert is connected to village. When the stream flooded the surroundings of the village a local road was devastated by the water. The people in the village panicked. Hilbert took his giant cauldron and went to the place I marked with D. He did put the sand of that hill in his cauldron and repaired the road. On the little road is now a little chapel attributed to St. Mary. I still bring milk and bread to a certain place and I clear that place of garbage that people are leaving behind. It is ok to connect if I need it.
E is the village I live and if you walk over there, there is much noise of the very busy road, tourists in the summer. This is the mundane human living part of the map. The lines between where I live and the other magical points of interest on the map are drawn in on the map. When going over to F you have the direction in which you go if you are going to the place where the Goddess Sandraudiga was found, 7 miles in that direction. There were iron objects to be found at the votive stone and iron was found in the stream valleys in our area in form of bog iron which colored the soils red on certain places. There are still little streams with that red color in the soil. So here another magical link that is to be found in the landscape.
Now, if you want to invoke these local powers in yourself and in your magic, you need to visit those places regularly and entwine them in your magic. I gave some ideas about how to do that above and I will re-share down under a method I described in an earlier topic. If you have build that very basis, you can draw on a map lines and use that as a sigil and focus point to invoke. So the landscape itself becomes a enormously big sigil and with imagination you have to be able to rebuild in your mind that sigil or secret sign. To protect my magic, I didn't draw the complete sigil here and I will never share that in public also. That works together with my magic name, one part is not known by humans but that part of the name has a connection to my local area also. But I think I gave the idea how to invoke local powers. Using parts of the area in my magic:
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On this map with leylines my area is under a line I marked with a red C and this shows the same direction as a mentioned above. So there is another connection in thoughts and energies.
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