Walpurgisnacht 2022 - (2) Dark Occult vs. Basic Definitions of Magic

by Sean Jobst

28 May 2022

   Continuing from the previous Walpurgisnacht article, this one will give some basic definitions of Magic and personal reflections thereof. These are laying the foundations for two upcoming articles - one on the negative aspects of magic and occult knowledge used against us by certain forces (including those who ridicule or suppress its use for the masses); the other is a life-affirming, empowering reiteration that there are positive aspects we can use not only for our personal growth but as powerful tools to affirm our innate freedom and responsibility. 

   Dark Occultists are those who use it for negative purposes: to control and manipulate others for their own illusionary power. They publicly deny and ridicule Magic and Occult knowledge, because they do not want the competition that could resist their control. One law for themselves; another for the masses. The main problems with most online exposes of occultism is they come from an Abrahamic perspective dismissing all occult knowledge, failing to distinguish between Dark Occult and Magic or Occult knowledge in general which is Natural. People whose rejection of it comes from either their Abrahamism or a reductionist view of Scientism that denies spiritual realities, play right into the hands of these Dark Occultists through willful ignorance, as both extremes are founded upon a disenchantment of the Earth and her Mysteries.

   Walpurgisnacht has been the date of many auspicious events even to the present day when many governments worldwide instituted lockdowns and mask mandates (to be understood as ritualistic) on or around that date in 2020. These relate to the "Season of Sacrifice" mentioned by Mark Passio, the forty-day period from 22nd March to 1st May, when modern sacrifice rituals like wars and false flag events are more prevalent. Whether one dismisses this as a "conspiracy theory" matters nothing because its what dark occultists believe that informs their actions - and there is nothing more dark occultist than authoritarian political ideologies, including their mind control and propaganda efforts. 

Saturn, the Roman name for the 
Greek god Kronos, whom they 
related to the planet and astrological
sign of the same name. From an
unknown illustration, 1550-1570.

The Dark Occult Spells of Authoritarianism and Mind-Control

   Theirs is an inversion of the positive energies and symbolisms of Spring, so it is with Walpurgisnacht which has symbolic potential for heightened awareness given its liminal time. These energies are neutral, depending on the will and intention of the individual, so can be inverted by those who seek to control others. "Signs and symbols rule the world, not words nor laws," as often attributed to Confucius (himself purveyor of a philosophy justifying a ruling elite).(1) An example is Saturn, who has his negative and positive qualities. His symbol is the sickle: its no accident that Communism, with its occult origins and symbolisms(2), charged its sigil combining the hammer and sickle. It adopted its official holiday for May 1st, when privileged "revolutionaries" (their revolutions funded by banking houses and industrialists) pretend to celebrate the very proletariat whose energies and power they exploit. 

   Even while their regime was on the verge of collapse, the Bolsheviks ruling Bavaria rushed to execute seven Thule Society occultists on Walpurgisnacht, 1919. The Freikorps entered Munich the next day, May 1st. With its own occult connections harnessed to a political system, National Socialism continued this occult tradition with its own rituals and sigils. Much has been written about the occult elements of that ideology, much of it exaggerations or outright disinformation, but there are some elements of truth in it.(3) It was on Walpurgisnacht, 1945 that Hitler committed suicide; that same day elsewhere in Berlin, Soviet troops raised the Hammer and Sickle over the Reichstag to replace the competing sigil of the crooked Swastika. 

   These were competing totalitarian occultists playing out their magical battles in the physical realm; it mattered nothing to them that millions died in the process (in a war that the Western Allies and their "democratic" ideology had as much a role in bringing about). One example we can view as dark occult is propaganda, and openly totalitarian ideologies were never the only purveyors. Indeed, some of the earliest propaganda techniques were tried and perfected in the Western "democracies". Individuals like Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, Harold Lasswell, émigrés from the Frankfurt School, and various advertising and public relations firms can be seen as examples of dark sorcerers who combine psychology with elements of political ideology harnessed for the ends of government and/or corporations. What are the symbols of governments and corporate logos except new sigils?    

Statue of Shiva the Destroyer's Cosmic Dance,
outside the CERN building in Geneva, Switzerland

Dark Sorcerers of the Cult of Scientism

   What was regarded as Magic in the past is often considered "Science" today, especially in physics. Even the most reductionist scientific types are coming around to admit there are deeper spiritual realities. A perfect example is CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research which runs a hydrogen collider on the Swiss-French border - a modern effort to re-create the primordial cosmic events described in various mythologies, by smashing particles together. They restarted it after a three-year break in late April. The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners-Lee while he was working at CERN and released to the public on Walpurgisnacht: "On 30 April 1993, CERN put the World Wide Web software in the public domain. Later, CERN made a release available with an open license, a more sure way to maximise its dissemination. These actions allowed the web to flourish."
   
   CERN is famously known for the Higgs Boson "God Particle", a vain attempt by Technocrats to simulate and re-create the Divine. On April 1, 2015, CERN physicists affirmed that "an invisible Force permeates the universe, binding the galaxy together," making reference to four other "forces" like electromagnetism innately known to the Ancients (who encoded it within their myths and traditions) thousands of year before being "discovered" by CERN. On October 30, 2020, CERN declared a "Dark Matter Day" to mock and invert "the historic hunt for the unseen" on the Celtic All Hollow's Eve and various Wild Hunt traditions, and manifest in physical "scientific" form the Unseen denied by these same Technocrats. Their delusions that everything can be quantified is nothing but a fool's errand to disenchant an Earth with all the beauty, creativity, and mysteries abounding within life. Where are the Extinction Rebellion and Green New Deal types to protest all the energy used by CERN? Or are Technocrats free from any carbon sin which only applies to the working and middle classes?

   Multiple universes are now accepted by the same Technocrats who scoffed at "superstitions" that were always known to ancient cultures worldwide. Given their disconnect from anything natural and even from a balanced psyche, CERN wants to see gravity transferred across multiple universes, such that "gravity can leak into extra dimensions, and if it does, then miniature black holes can be produced at the LHC [CERN atom smasher]." This is contrary to ancient folklore and mythologies that knew the boundaries between these worlds are not to be crossed, certainly not by most people, and these boundaries should be respected. These Technocrats' hubris is such that they want to open up a portal (much like the occult symbolism present with 9/11) between worlds. We can see this in light of my previous article that detailed how a floodgate of spiritual entities unleashed itself these past few years. Could CERN be such a portal intensifying Wetiko mind-viruses and Archontic Infection on a mass scale through its Technocratic hubris?

   They will selectively take from ancient wisdom but invert the meaning and make the sacred profane. An example is how they distort the symbolism of the Vedic Lord Shiva. On 18 June 2004, CERN  unveiled a 2 meter-tall statue of Shiva and his Cosmic Dance. Why it did so it explained thusly: “In the Hindu religion, this form of the dancing Lord Shiva is known as the Nataraj and symbolises Shakti, or life force. As a plaque alongside the statue explains, the belief is that Lord Shiva danced the Universe into existence, motivates it, and will eventually extinguish it. Carl Sagan drew the metaphor between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the 'cosmic dance' of subatomic particles.” CERN sees itself as “dancing” the life force into existence, their Scientism proclaiming its transcendence along with its hubris to destroy what it “creates”. 

Dissolving Self and Psyche through the Jab

   Doing its faithful part offering its services for Transubstantiation of the Jab, CERN is near headquarters of the World Health Organization and Gates' GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance. All three are funded by wealth governments steal from taxpayers and workers, their policies decided in secrecy and carried out by those governments using propaganda means - Dark Sorcerers of a Medical Tyranny. Their objective is to control and alter minds, as in the meaning of pharmakeia (φαρμακεία): "the use of medicine, drugs or spells; drug-related sorcery."(4) In his "Ultimate Revolution" speech at Berkeley in 1962, Aldous Huxley famously predicted a "pharmacological method of making people love their servitude." When we see the religious fervor with which so many obediently follow every dictate by government and media for their health and bodies, trusting the dogmas of selected "experts" placed before them, lining up for the perpetual-dose jab, and virtue signaling themselves as "superior" than others for their compliance, we are seeing people pharmacologically-induced into a Cult.

   On 16 Jan. 2019, WHO head (and Ethiopian Marxist activist) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted a picture of himself meeting with Chinese officials in front of a Shiva statue: "WHO & #China have enjoyed a long & productive partnership. WHO is proud to have supported the overseas training of more than 2000 Chinese #HealthWorkers. Grateful for China's commitment to strengthening health systems in other countries through its Belt and Road Initiative." Foundations were laid before the events of 2020 which facilitated the geopolitical interests of the Belt and Road and other power-forces of which the WHO is merely the outer "medical" authority. The inclusion of a Shiva statue at their meeting is a deliberate message of their shared will to destroy old systems, including local forms of sovereignty, and rebuild a new Globalist bureaucratic structure on top of those ruins. 

   Witnessing the first modern nuclear explosion at the "Trinity" site near Alamogorado, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted two passages from the Bhagavad Gita(5): "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one" (11:12), and when Vishnu told Arjuna: "I am Death (Shiva), the destroyer of worlds" (11:32). The phrase he rendered as "death" was translated as "Time I am" by a leading Hindu sage.(6) When Oppenheimer appeared before a crowd at Los Alamos on August 6th (the night of Hiroshima), he only lamented it was not completed in time to use against Germany.(7) Almost like an incantation, Oppenheimer was proclaiming himself to be "Destroyer of Worlds" through his work on the bomb. It was a dark occult ritual that was also inverting the true meaning of Shiva.

"Saturno devorando a su hijo"
by Francisco Goya, 1819-
1823. Allegory for Time
devouring its "children"

Creativity Flows From Destruction

   None of this proves any devotion of these Dark Occultists to Shiva, but how they invert the polarity of energies he symbolizes. Shiva is the destructive balance to the creation personified by Brahma - and both are associated with Vishnu, who personifies Preservation. Both power-forces(8) are present within Nature and the Cosmos - there is a time and place for both energies. Like the Roman Saturn and Greek Chronos, Shiva represents Time - what we perceive and measure as time decays until a new cycle begins. Shiva relates to us through our own Shadow, the Unconscious aspects of our Personality we need to integrate and make Conscious: "India balances Brahma, the god of creation, with Shiva, the god of destruction, and Vishnu sits in the middle keeping the opposites together. No one can escape the dark side of life, but we can pay out that dark side intelligently. The balance of light and dark is ultimately possible - and bearable."(9)

   As a "Wild God of Power and Ecstasy", Shiva represents a primal archetype through whom "we enter realms deep in our innermost nature and simultaneously penetrate the profundities of ancient history": "The mystery we are approaching is the image of the human being itself. At the beginning of time, the image appeared as in a flash of lightning, by which a surprised primate saw himself for the first time and, in that instant, was torn from the dream consciousness of his animal state. This image of light, stunning that first human soul, has remained engraved in the human memory ever since. Undefinable and inapprehensible, the image was, nonetheless, given thousands of names, decorated with endless attributes, and honored in myriad rites and rituals."(10) 

   Such primal images inspired creativity within early human beings, no matter the specific cultural name they gave this power-force. They viewed seasons changing, with destructive natural forces giving way to creative elements in a perpetual cyclical dance. They observed new life sprouting forth from decaying trees in a forest. Through observing how these cosmic and natural forces "danced" (to use the imagery of Shiva), they extrapolated how these power-forces also exist within ourselves. Creativity means destroying old qualities holding you back from manifesting your talents. Learning something new means creating new neural pathways and destroying your previous ignorance. To know yourself is to destroy the lack of awareness previously held about yourself and the world, bringing what was hidden within your Unconscious into the light of Consciousness. Self-awareness is free will to create more experiences, using your innate freedom to manifest your will into outer reality.

 

Self-Awareness and Power

   Its the timeless maxim to "Know Yourself" as was inscribed on the Oracle of Delphi. All organic tribal societies regarded their spiritual elites as the most self-aware individuals. Druid comes from a Celtic word meaning "true" and "to know", which also relates with "to see" (trusting your intuition and senses). Gnostic comes from a Greek word meaning "those who know as the gods know".(11) Shaman comes from an Evenki (one of the Tungusic peoples of northern Siberia) word meaning "to know". Although the term itself comes from Siberia, tribal cultures worldwide had their own shamanic tradition under different names - there is no "appropriation" as its primal and the potential exists within all. The shaman is the "Wounded Healer" as defined by the Hungarian psychologist Károly Kerényi: "To be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepius, the sunlike healer."(12)

   Self-awareness comes out of confronting the Shadow and one's traumas, ascending and descending throughout a life-long process with no place for such unnatural notions as "perfection" or always being "happy"; one should strive for the contentment that comes from being authentic. Speaking from his calling as a Lakota medicine man, John Fire Lame Deer advised how one "should experience and feel all the ups and downs, the despair and joy, the magic and the reality, the courage and the fear, of his people. He should be able to sink as low as a bug, or soar as high as an eagle." "You can't be so stuck up, so inhuman that you want to be pure, your soul wrapped up in a plastic bag, all the time," but "being right in the midst of the turmoil, not shielding yourself from it. It means experiencing life in all its phases. It means not being afraid of cutting up and playing the fool now and then. That's sacred too."(13)

   A crucial aspect is Intuition, a guiding sense whether or not one is out of sync with Natural Law. It may express itself in bodily sensations, but ultimately is "very deep-rooted in our consciousness" as noted by the Irish artist and magician Thomas Sheridan. "The creative intention that spawns from this intuition truly is a magical undertaking where you know the creative person is connected at a higher spirit." An awareness that we are interactive with the universe, not merely a passive observer. Seeing our lives as an energetic process, where we move with these higher cosmic and natural forces but with enormous leeway to create and manifest our reality. Taking control of our lives and manifesting that creative will outward, following our intuition means we cannot be easily programmed and conditioned. "We can all as individuals build the reality we desire through the artistic creative magic which we may not see the results in our own lifetimes as straightforward but sometimes you do. We can all drop these pebbles of our creativity into the pool of collective human experience from this creative plunge. The ripples will continue into all eternity and beyond."(14) 

"Die heilige Stunde" (1911) by the great German Heathen
artist and visionary, Ludwig Fahrenkrog (1867-1952)

Basic Definitions of Magic

   This brings us now to some basic definitions of Magic. There are few terms as loaded with as many wrong associations, whether it be those who reduce it to stage tricks, elaborate ceremonies and costumes, or to obtain mundane ends; those who arrogantly dismiss it as the superstitious glimmer of a "backwards" history; or those who demonize and confuse it with the inverted magic of Dark Occultists. All these are wrong perceptions that play into the spell that has binded most of humanity by this Psychopathic Control System. The ultimate ways to defeat that is to set up Parallel Societies through Creativity and Non-Compliance - both of which tie into the definitions we will see below. Creativity carries responsibility to "create dangerously" and provides an "emancipatory force" against tyrants, as expressed by the great French writer Albert Camus.(15) 

   Magic also means to see the Earth as enchanted - as it always is and has been, despite the veils of delusion clouding most people from appreciation and Gratitude. The importance of giving meaning to life, seeing it in terms of allegories and metaphors; one's own life as an unfolding Mythology, that we are active writers acting out our own Monomyth as noted by the American mythologist Joseph Campbell. Seeing our achievements as personal heroic triumphs over obstacles. Learning from mistakes and errors, which we can turn into mere opportunities for growth. Realizing the limitlessness of our potential, even through our limitations. These are part of a magical process not only accessible but instinctive to all who care to demystify what has been blinded from us while appreciating the actual Mysteries of life. 

   Magic (n.) late 14c, magike, "art of influencing or predicting events and producing marvels using hidden natural forces," also "super-natural art," especially the art of controlling the actions of spiritual or superhuman beings; from Old French magique "magic; magical," from Late Latin magice "sorcery, magic," from Greek magike (presumably with tekhne "art"), fem. of magikos "magical," from magos "one of the members of the learned and priestly class," from Old Persian magush, which is possibly from Proto-Indo-European root *magh- "to be able, have power." (Online Etymology Dictionary) 

   "Magic is the art of causing changes in consciousness in conformity with the Will." (Dion Fortune) "Magic is the art of effecting change in consciousness at will." (William Butler Yeats) "Magic is just the art of changing the focus of consciousness at will." (Robert Anton Wilson, The Earth Will Shake, 1982)

   "Magic is the science and the art of causing change to occur in conformity with will." (Peter J. Carroll, Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic, San Francisco: Weiser Books, 1987, p. 15)

Illustration of Wodan and a Seeress, by
the German graphic artist Emil Doepler

   "Magic is a set of techniques and approaches which can be used to extend the limits of Achievable Reality. Our sense of Achievable Reality is the limitations which we believe bind us into a narrow range of actions and successes - what we believe to be possible for us at any one time. In this context, the purpose of magic is to simultaneously explore those boundaries and attempt to push them back - to widen the 'sphere' of possible action." (Phil Hines, Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic, Tempe, AZ: The Original Falcon Press, 1995)

   "Magic is the science and art of causing change, on a material as well as a spiritual level, to occur in conformity with will by altered states of consciousness." (Frater U.:D., Secrets of Western Sex Magic: Magical Energy & Gnostic Trance, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2002)

   "Magick is the science and art of causing change (in consciousness) to occur in conformity with will, using means not currently understood by traditional Western science....In this case 'will' is understood not in terms of the individual’s petty wants and desires, but rather as an intention that is in harmony with the fundamental essence of the individual’s Higher Self, and also in full accord with natural or cosmic law." (Donald Michael Kraig, Modern Magick: Twelve Lessons in the High Magickal Arts, St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2010)

 

   "Real Magick is not merely an assortment of skills and techniques. It's more like an open-minded attitude, a blend of interest and dedication, which allows each honest mage to observe, to learn, to adapt, and to invent unique ways of changing identity and reality from within." (Jan Fries, Visual Magick: A Manual of Freestyle Shamanism, Mandrake of Oxford, 1992)

"The Sacred Grove of the Druids", from the opera "Norma"
(1831) by the Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini

Witchcraft and Concluding Thoughts

   The word and concept of Magic itself is not the property of Kabbalistic-inspired ceremonial magical schools, with their dogmas and ceremonies. Rather, its an organic and natural outgrowth from the landscape itself and each people's unique relationship with that landscape, as well as their potentials. This is why there are unique folk magic traditions down to regional differences, including even in the most-industrialized societies and the "New World". It says much about the human condition, that we have these tools within ourselves and our biospheres already to be empowered, being both and at the same time grounded to the Earth and reaching to the Stars. We can recognize this in the wonderful secrets revealed by the etymology of a closely-related word to magic: Witchcraft. 

   Witchcraft comes from the Old English wiccecræft, combining the two elements: wicce "female magician, sorceress" or wicca(16) "sorcerer, wizard, man who practices magic" + cræft "power, skill". These derive from Proto-Germanic *wikkjaz "necromancer" -> Proto-Indo-European *weg-yo, *weg "to be strong, be lively". There are possible connections with Gothic weihs "holy, sacred" and Proto-Germanic *weihan "consecrate". (Online Etymology Dictionary). The Grimm Brothers suggested a link to the Ingvaeones(17) via a word wikkon related to the Gothic weihs, which he proposed as coming from the PIE *weik- "to separate, to divide", pointing ultimately to Germanic divination and other magical practices reported by the Roman writer Tacitus. (Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch; and Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, Vol. IV, p. 506)

   As noted by the Gnostic teacher and visionary John Lamb Lash, "witchcraft" also comes from the same Indo-European root as "wit," "wisdom", and "magnify", which he identified with using one's will and intention. It was in that same interview that Jeffrey Daugherty gave an interesting distinction between magic and witchcraft: "Magic is where you use somebody else's sigils, incantations, and spells, the names and powers of other people, and many times without concern to the intention or will of other people. Whereas witchcraft is the use of your own intention, your own will in accordance with the laws of nature, only to do benevolent manifestations of your own will." We can see this in our original subject: Wal- has various magical meanings ("wands, staves") + burga/purga ("towns, mountains, hearth"), so is the Magic that comes from the Earth Herself.

   Ultimately, this is an interactive magic that comes from living in balance with a sentient Earth, having an animistic perspective as stressed by Lash: "She is a great power and source of our lives. So when you practice magic to magnify your own intention, you combine your own intention with her intention. That's what causes the magnification. You can't magnify it on your own."  Its a power-sharing, rather than a power-trip. Gratitude is an essential element in this empowering magic - lacking to the authorities whose hubris is compounded by their greed and envy against the planet and humanity. True Magic is the initiatory path of The Anarch, grounding us to the Earth whom birthed us while also allowing our potential to soar with the Stars. We have the power that the profane authorities envy because theirs is an illusionary one that is neither grounded or limitless despite all their desperate efforts.

Footnotes and Sources:

(1) Although the quote itself is very true, it seems to be a loose paraphrasing of more abstract concepts and terms Confucius wrote about in Analects: <https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/36056/did-confucius-say-signs-and-symbols-rule-the-world-not-words-nor-laws>. 

(2) Just some examples: Marx's call for the "abolition" of all traditions, morality, family structures etc. overlapping with the subversive goals of 18th-century secret societies. Influence of Russian occult thinkers like Nikolai Fyodorov (a precursor to Transhumanism) on the early Soviet regime, especially Trotsky whose occult interest was well-known. The burgeoning ideology of Cosmism within the USSR, with its views on the "divine" potential of "scientific materialism" to overcome humanity, nature, and the cosmos. The massive library of magical and occult works released from the Soviet archives only after 1991, quickly seized upon by Western NGOs and academic institutions. 

(3) That movement distorted Germanic archetypes and symbols for profane (political) ends, transposing them upon a centralizing totalitarianism more rooted in Abrahamism than the decentralism inherent to our Germanic tribes. Whether it be the political structures, personality cult, or even the architectural style, it had more to do with the Imperial Roman solar cult and Charlemagne's Reich than with Germanic Paganism. It used the Thule Society and other Occultists to be propelled to power, but once achieved turned on them and suppressed occultism in general for the public while filling their own State archives with that knowledge much like the Soviet elites did.

(4) Strong's Greek Concordance, 5331.

(5) Robert Jungk. Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958, p. 201.

(6) A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. Los Angeles: The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1972, p. 183.  

(7) Ray Monk. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. New York/Toronto: Doubleday, 2012, pp. 467-468.

(8) Calling Deities archetypes or power-forces does not make them less "real" or Transcendent, as our Pagan perspective being Animistic means we know even aspects of Nature and power-forces possess Consciousness. I recognize and respect these Vedic Deities, although for my own ethnic reasons I work with my native Germanic and Celtiberian archetypal Deific power-forces. We have our equivalents and many similar traditions given our common Indo-European heritage. 

(9) Robert A. Johnson. Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding The Dark Side of The Psyche. HarperSanFrancisco, 1994.

(10) Wolf-Dieter Storl. Shiva: The Wild God of Power and Ecstasy. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2004, pp. 3-4.

(11) John Lamb Lash. Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, p. xx. "Gnostic" was the term given to them by their detractors, whereas they called themselves Telestai "we who are aimed," meaning "we know our purpose". I endorse his research that places the Gnostic origins in the Pagan Mystery Schools rather than the "heretical" sect of Christianity as it has been distorted.

(12) Quoted in Paul Levy, "The Wounded Healer," <https://www.awakeninthedream.com/articles/the-wounded-healer-part-1>.

(13) Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972, pp. 75-76.

(14) Thomas Sheridan, "Creative Intentions," Jul 13, 2011, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXsKBN_5Oho>.

(15) Albert Camus, "Create Dangerously," Speech at Uppsala University, December 1957. He presented many great thoughts about creativity despite his socialism, for his was an Anarchic soul.

(16) Not to be confused with the modern religion that has syncretic elements drawn from various Pagan traditions, but lacks in authentic reconstruction of those traditions, strewing together some historical Celtic along with invented holidays on a solar "Wheel of the Year" among many other anachronisms.

(17) One of the three tribal groupings descended from the sons of Mannus in the Germanic origin myth recounted by Tacitus. These were the coastal tribes and related to Ing-Freyr, who was the legendary founder of the Anglo-Saxons. I wrote about this origin myth in an article that needs some updating in light of new research and insights: "Divine Progenitors of the Suebi". 

Walpurgisnacht 2022 - (1) General Overview and Decoding Folklore and Etymology

by Sean Jobst

4 May 2022

   We are now at one of the liminal times of the year, when the flow of energies is greater and barrier between different dimensions or realities are at their thinnest. Walpurgisnacht is on the night of April 30th, followed by the season known as Bealtaine in Gaelic lands. I wrote an article back in April 2020: "Walpurgisnacht - A Journey Across Time, Space, and Darkness" - about the folklore, meanings, and symbolisms of this day.

   Seasonal because holidays in Celtic and Germanic lands being tied to lunisolar dates meant they weren't reduced to just one day. Despite the later creations of modern-day neo-"Paganisms" who embrace an ahistorical "Wheel of the Year" that cobbled together both cultures without regard to the authenticity of either, nor is Walpurgisnacht a "Witches' Sabbat" - the Hebrew notion of a "day of rest" (sabbath) was foreign to native European celebrations of life, fertility, and the cycles of Nature. The basis of our ancestral calendars were lunisolar, not fixed solar dates, although there was a reckoning of lunar cycles around solar events:

   "If we browse the internet for holidays of the Germanic people, we mainly find pages presenting an octopartite year cycle, the so-called 'eight-spoked wheel of the year' based on the solstices, the equinoxes, and four moon feasts in between. This year cycle has absolutely no historical basis. Although it is very popular in neopagan circles, especially within Wicca and eclectic Asatru, there is no verified evidence for such a year circle as basis for the seasonal festivities. The same is true for the Celtic feasts within the year circle, because the Gauls too, used a lunisolar calendar as we know from the examples of Coligny and Villards d'Heria. If one has internalized such ideas, one should get rid of them immediately!"(1)

Painting by Der Meister von
Meßkirch, 1535-1540

Christian or Heathen?

   Walpurgisnacht is an ostensibly Christian feast day, established by Anno II, Archbishop of Köln, in the 11th century. It was to honor Saint Walpurga, an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary to Franconia canonized by Pope Adrian on 1st May 870 after her relics were moved from Heidenheim to a new abbey constructed in her honor elsewhere in Bavaria. "Her bones were 'translated' (that is, moved) on May 1 - which became her feast day - sometime during the 870s to Eichstätt, where he brother Willibald had been bishop. Ever since then an oily liquid has oozed out of the rock on which her tomb rests, and has been renowned among pilgrims for its great healing power."(2)

   Her life-time miracles were only attributed to her later, in works from 895 and the late 10th century, by which time the Church had a vested financial interest in promoting pilgrimage to her site as well as demonstrating the power of its own "acceptable" magic over that of the Heathens, symbolized by her relics being moved from Heidenheim "Heathen home"(3). The translation of earlier works on natural philosophy meant a greater acceptance of magic so long as it was "natural", harnessing the power of natural properties, and not the "demonic" variety of powers and entities outside the Church.(4) Examples of the Church's magical traditions include the traditional Latin Mass, basically an appropriation of previous Roman rituals; doctrine of the Transubstantiation; consecrated altars; blessed candles and oils; and specified incantations used for exorcisms and other occasions.

   Thus were many hagiographies (biographies of saints) written after the mortal lives of their subjects. Her story seems apocryphal, carrying more symbolic than literal meaning. First, her alleged pedigree into an aristocratic family of English missionaries who persecuted Heathens in Southern and Central Germany. The Church tended to send foreign missionaries to convert local tribes and bend them to the dual political power of the Merovingians and Carolingians and religious power of Rome. Walpurga's maternal uncle was Boniface, who chopped down Donar's Oak of the Hessi tribe (known to the Romans as the Chatti) from whom Hesse was named. It was Boniface who sent for Walpurga and her two brothers, Winibald and Willibald, to join in the family endeavor of converting Heathens and building churches over previous sacred sites. She actively participated in the destruction of sacred groves and preached that of the Saxons' Irminsul (later carried out by Charlemagne's Christian jihadi armies in 782). 

Walpurga in the Hitda Codex

Symbolic Authority

   Such "spiritual" powers invested in a fictitious aristocratic bloodline could have been designed to mentally establish the magical power of the Church over the subjugated Heathens. The etymology of Walpurga "ruler of the fortress" comes from Germanic waltan "to rule" + burg "fortress", from Old High German waltan "rule". Authority and symbolic powers abound in apocryphal stories. "The porter who one evening refused to carry out Walpurga's orders and to light the lights of her monastery is the picture of the unintuitive man who always sees and never beholds, while a light welled up from Walpurga's pure heart and flooded around her figure, who in the middle of the night began to shine so brightly that the horde of nuns rushed over in dismay and, speechless with astonishment, surrounded the beaming woman."(5)

   Another clue can be found in the earliest representation of Walpurga from the Hitda Codex, published at Köln in the early 11th century, which depicted her holding stalks of grain. Given that peasant farmers fashioned her image in a corn dolly at harvest time, including what can be called a transubstantiation within the grain sheaf, some scholars have made a compelling case that Walpurga was constructed from an earlier Heathen Grain Mother Goddess.(6) Other folk traditions portrayed her with a three-cornered mirror and a spindle, correlating to the Norns. Folklore holds that spells sent using the spindle originated with Walburga herself, and lazy farmers would be presented with a straw doll called "Walburga" to shame them into ploughing their land.(7) To return to the Hitda image, Walburga was seen as investing Hitda, the Abbess of Meschede in Nordrhein-Westfalen, with spiritual authority:

   "The placement of Hitda on the right of St. Walburga also increases her authority and equivalence in power to men. Traditionally, the right side of a religious figure was reserved for men and symbolized their spiritual strength in the face of passion and intrigue. In contrast, the left side was the arena of women and symbolized earthly desires and the weak souls whom God must protect. By placing herself on the right, Hitda is subverting gender norms and forging an image of spiritual strength. Hitda’s power is also conveyed through her presentation of the Codex to St. Walburga, an act which has been interpreted as a gift exchange by Henry Mayr-Harting. Early medieval monks and nuns believed that through gifts they could hold patron saints to their promises of protection and advance the interests of their houses. By giving the book to St. Walburga, Hitda is showing that she is the authoritative channel of access to the patroness. Also by receiving the book, St. Walburga invests Hitda with the power that a donor has over a recipient."(8)

Walking along the Neckar, Bad Cannstatt, 9 July 2016

Anointing and Initiation

   Her bones exuding a "miraculous" therapeutic oil, upheld by such theologians as Cardinal Newman(9) and in folkloric pilgrimages to the site, could relate to her rocky(10) resting place being the site of a healing spring from Heathen times. The spiritual seeker has long experienced "anointing", such that when I was still seeking mystical experiences within an Abrahamic paradigm, I was anointed with oil allegedly from St. Stephen at a local Orthodox Christian church (although I was only visiting there as a Sufi from an original Catholic background) in 2014; visited a Sufi retreat at a thermal springs outside Yalova, Turkey, in 2015; and drank from and smudged myself with therapeutic spring water at the Meryemana (Mary's House) on Mount Koressos near Ephesus in 2017. It was only as I began researching and delving deeper into my own ethnic folklore that I discovered the spiritual importance of healing springs as we see throughout southern Germany (including my family's experiences living near the thermal springs of Bad Cannstatt). So there is a mystique into which those constructing stories of Walpurga were tapping. 

   Aside from seeking transcendence through initiation, anointing has an animistic origin as noted by John Lamb Lash. He points out how the Greek Chrestos "the good one" represents the function of anointing within Nature, such as in morning dew or the formation of cells since those have porous membranes through which liquids flow.(11) It was only among the Hebrews that it became a physical "anointing" of kings and priests as occurs throughout the Bible, later turned into a "messiah" figure via the mind-virus of salvationism. For such an anointed person, "the application of the holy oil to his head was believed to impart to him directly a portion of the divine spirit. Hence he bore the title of Messiah, which with its Greek equivalent Christ, means no more than 'the Anointed One.'"(12) 

   I've previously traced chrestos to the same Indo-European root as Germanic and Iberian words carrying meanings like "mask" (Old English grima, Old Norse grima, grimr, Proto-Germanic *grimo)  and "disgust" (Spanish and Portuguese grima), reflecting a concept steeped in occultic imagery as its inversion demonstrates - i.e. a figure hidden in social masks or personas, the outer trappings of authority. Yet if we return to an animistic view, Walpurga and her anointing could represent a natural yearning for a feminine counterpart to a masculine anointer, as the previous Gods had their Goddess counterparts. This yearning was resolved after Christianization through the devotion to Mary and localized saints like Walpurga, complete with the imagery and healing qualities often associated with previous nurturing, motherly Goddesses. Its a balance of energies and metaphor for how these flow.

Meryemana, including the niche spring and
the "wishing wall", 25 June 2017

Witchcraft and Magical Workings

   As Walpurga was "celebrated in the Middle Ages as a protectoress against magic"(13), its strange how Walpurgisnacht became known as an infernal night when witches freely took flight and gathered in mountain conclaves. The "threat" of such witches had to be magnified to justify the "protection" from them, so that it became a day of persecuting those seen as witches, as in its Czech version of Pálení čarodějnic "Burning of Witches". Its beyond the scope of this article (or my knowledge) to give a detailed analysis of these "witch trials" except two broad points. First, that it was almost entirely confined to Protestant areas with some exceptions, such as the famous witch-trials in one of my ancestral villages, Ellwangen. Perhaps because the Catholic Church had its own magical tradition (although never calling it "magic"), it was seen as warding off any "inferior" magic outside its institutions. But in returning to the Old Testament, the Protestants disavowed any magic so the "threat" was more heightened.

   Second, contrary to the romantic notion of a continuous network of witches operating throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, I tend towards the view of such contemporaries as Alonso de Salazar Frías and Balthasar Bekker, that the witch-trials and witch-hunts were more about social and political power capitalizing on superstitious fears to entrench and expand their power (sound familiar?). There were indeed some high-profile cases of traditional folk healers outside the burgeoning medical establishment, which saw herbalism and folk medicine as a threat. And there were some isolated cases of people holding to the Old Ways still being persecuted, such as mentions of Elfhame in certain Scottish cases. But for the most part I see pre-Christian lore as surviving most in folklore, waiting to be decoded; and also in a Jungian sense of lurking archetypes within the unconscious and folk soul of a people. On a physical level, there was this undercurrent either hidden in plain sight or deep within the psyche, not an actual network of "witch" practitioners. 

   We can still obtain much wisdom through decoding these folk traditions of Walpurgisnacht. After all, the word "witchcraft" does comes from the same Indo-European root as "wit" and "wisdom". Rather than being about actual witches, more important is the deeper wisdom that Walpurgisnacht tapped into, contrary to the authorities' wishes. Secrets can be found in the word itself. "Clairvoyant, wise women played such an important role among the forest peoples that it astonished the Romans. In the Germanic-Celtic settlement area, they were known under the names Wala and Voelva and in southern and central Germany as Walburg and Walburga, which means 'staff bearer' (Germanic waluz = stave, staff; from Indo-European *uel = turn). They carried wands with which they were able to steer things magically."(14) Also reflected in Gothic walus "staff, wand" and Lombardic Gand-bera "wand-bearer."(15)

   According to Longobard lore, the seeress Gambara sought the assistance of the goddess Frea (their name for Frija), wife and consort of Wodan. The wal- element could also relate to the walkuries, the messengers of death who "chose" selected warriors off the battlefield to take with them into the Underworld. Norse tradition held that Freyja had first pick of these dead before Odin. Historical seeresses likely lent their names to the Walpurga figure. A Greek inscription from 2nd century pottery on Elephantine Island mentions a Germanic seeress named Waluburg who served the Roman governor of Egypt, calling her "Sibyl from the Semnones".(16) Roman historian Cassius Dio mentioned a seeress named Veleda. "The Veleda or Weleda goes back to the original Celtic velet or fili, which means 'visionary' or 'poet'."(17) Given both its prevalence in areas of southern and central Germany settled earlier by Celts, as well as coinciding with Bealtaine - which would have began on Walpurgisnacht since days were reckoned from the night before - I conclude that Walpurgisnacht also had lingering Celtic origins rooted in the German landscape. The second element, -purgis and -burga, could relate to burg "homestead" or berg "mountain", both conveying images of the hearth and the magic coming from the Earth (animism) - but that is a subject for a future article.

"Odin and the Völva" illustration by
the German artist Carl Emil Doepler,
from Nordisch-Germanische
Götter und Heiden (1882)

Sources and Footnotes:

(1) Dr. Andreas E. Zautner. The Lunisolar Calendar of the Germanic Peoples: Reconstruction of A Bound Moon Calendar From Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Sources, trans. Johanna Klapper. Norderstedt, Schleswig-Holstein: BoD - Books on Demand, 2021, p. 83.

(2) Richard M. Wunderli. Peasant Fires: The Drummer of Niklashausen. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992, p. 46.

(3) The existence of a Heidenheim in both Bavaria and Wurttemberg, as well as the activities of such missionaries in the 8th and 9th centuries, show lingering devotion of our ancestors to the Old Ways, contrary to the simplistic narrative of "2,000 years" of Europe being Christian. It was a gradual, syncretic process that eroded and adopted previous Pagan and Heathen traditions under a new Christianized form solidifying dual authorities of Church and State.

(4) Peter J. Forshaw, "The Occult Middle Ages," in The Occult World, ed. Christopher Partridge. London: Routledge, 2016, pp. 34-48.

(5) Annette Kolb, "Das Leben der Heiligen Walpurga," in Wege und Umwege‎. Berlin: Hyperion Publishing, 1919, p. 217.

(6) Pamela C. Berger. The Goddess Obscured: Transformation of the Grain Protectoress from Goddess to Saint. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985, pp. 61-64.

(7) Ernst Ludwig Rochholz. Drei Gaugöttinen: Walburg, Verena und Gertrud, als deutsche Kirchenheilige. Sittenbilder aus germanischen Frauenleben. Leipzig: Verlag von Friedrich Fischer, 1870, p. 40.

(8) "Abbess Hitda gives a codex to St. Walburga," Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index, University of Iowa Libraries, 2014, <https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=34059>.

(9) "Walpurgis, St," in Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 28, ed. Hugh Chisholm, Cambridge University Press, 1911, pp. 290–291.

(10) There was a sacredness often invested in stones, going back to the most ancient Megaliths and including the mythic Omphalos of Greece. Contrary to modern "altars", Germanic and Celtic peoples constructed outside altars from stone, often a simple pile of stones consecrated for sacred purpose. This is reflected in the various words derived from Proto-Germanic *harugaz and Proto-Celtic *krowko, carrying the same dual meanings.

(11) John Lamb Lash. Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, 15th Anniversary Edition. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2021, pp. 140, 173.

(12) Sir James Frazier. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Vol. 1. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1961, p. 21.

(13) John Canaday. The Nuclear Muse: Literature, Physics, and the First Atomic Bombs. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000, p. 98.

(14) Wolf Dieter Storl. The Untold History of Healing: Plant Lore and Medicinal Magic from the Stone Age to Present. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2017, p. 267. 

(15) Rudolf Simek. A Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2007, pp. 135, 333. 

(16) Wolfgang Spickermann, "Waluburg," Brill's New Pauly, <http://www.encquran.brill.nl/entries/brill-s-new-pauly/waluburg-e12208850>.

(17) Storl, op. cit., p. 267.