Why We Read
What is the purpose of Reading? Why have we elevated this activity from a functional act to a sacred one, crucial for ritual readiness? Here are some of the threads I have discovered as I’ve read.
Make Space for the Landweird
Reading and Walking work in similar ways. Both open spaces in your life to reflect and encounter the Landweird. Like the Walk, Reading cannot be rushed: reading a text hoping it will provide enlightenment is bound to failure, just as a Walk which intends to meet with fairies will end in failure. The Landweird is half-glimpsed; it creeps up on you. Like the Walk, therefore, you are instructed to go out and enjoy your Reading – and in that unguarded, immersed state, the tune will come to you at last.
Seeking Traces of the Landweird
We understand the Landweird as a kind of collage, which has influenced the hand and eye of many a creator. Part of our work is finding the clues and traces in their creations, to reassemble our lost lore and approach the Landweird more fully. Anyone can be included on this list – including individuals who are quite personal to you. One occultist I'll not name wrote about how artists tapped into a magical current seem to produce works which have that special something compared to other artists of their field and day; choosing Jimmy Page, WB Yeats and Tolkien as three examples.
This is a view we’d broadly endorse; many people become aware of the Landweird, momentarily or for a long period of time, and their perceptions of it are threaded throughout our culture.
Understand the Nature of the Landweird
The Old Ways remain as good as ever – so your Reading can also focus on primary texts, like Beowulf and the Mabinogion; or on history books about the lives + religion of our ancestors. These texts have come down to us in frustratingly fragmentary form, the original stories long-lost and half remembered by later writers. This process is central to our understanding of the Landweird – we know our gods as half-remembered, fluid things whose identity we can never be sure of, except in glimpses. Where other traditions may see gaps in the record as frustrating, we embrace them as part of the nature of the Powers.
What about Pagan art? It’s all a bit crap, isn’t it. A song about the Goddess is not as powerful as an odd, old folk song – because the former is fixed + certain, and the latter is a blurred mystery, suggestions and space. In short, the folk song is Landweirdy. Our Reading List contains much non-Pagan art which seems to express a pagan spirit; paradoxically, the un-named and un-fixed nature of their expression makes it more powerful for our purposes than a Doreen Valiente poem, no matter how good.
Reading generally emphasises non-Pagan books. Religion is not an instruction manual, but a felt sense. You can learn far more from Tolkien than Scott Cunningham. Devotional texts spark the imagination and the mystery, and work on the inner levels. But I am constantly borrowing ritual-ideas and techniques wholecloth from stories and films - there's a certain wacky creativity you can only find in Hammer or Hammond.
Creating a Commonplace Book
Collaging images and quotes is the first and easiest step to deep Reading. You can then read the Commonplace Book when you want to reflect or meditate, use it for bibliomancy, use fragments of it for ritual and prayer, and create your own reflection of the Landweird. It’s a great tool for low-spoon magic – you can just sit and read through it – and I draw from mine continually in finding quotes and images for this book.
But the true Commonplace is your heart and mind: assembling the book helps you focus and learn these images, these words and stories as if they were your own, and tap into a deeper presence more easily. The land is a book and so are you.
Keeping the sacred in mind
The Reading List enables you to be constantly filling your world with the sacred – from music, to film, to books and images. When you do this, it follows you into your dreams, your language and imagining. When we combine Reading with Disconnection, your mind can wander very far indeed. You do begin to feel as if you had been made strange.
Going Deeper
We can use snippets we find in our Reading as texts to meditate on or speak in ritual – ideas for costumes, visualisations, how a spell might be put together. We can find ideas, sensations, atmospheres, moods and emotions which help us slip into the Otherworlds or understand the infinite more fully. Music and film can form the foundation of ritual; songs sung to trees or on long walks; short films looped in the flickering and hypnogogic black.
A Symbolic Language
Colours. Shapes. Objects. Sounds. In initiatory tradition magic, you might be shown a sheaf of golden wheat, an occult symbol, or an image of the god holding particular objects: and you would then focus your attention on these as a devotional practice. When we Read, we rediscover images and objects that can similarly be an object of focus. We create our own mystery tradition. We can paint images or make replicas of these objects, imagine them, reflect and meditate on them.
Making Connections
You’re drawing from an interlinked mythic heritage spanning centuries. Over time, you’ll make links: words which are repeated, images which recur, figures which repeat. You’ll find your Reading coalescing into something bigger. For example – finding words which link
Answering Questions
We are rediscovering our lore and mythos. When you have a question, you can look to your Reading to answer it. For example – “How ought we to practice in groups?”. You could look to the what ought our values be?
, and so forth.
Entering Trance
I spend so much time Reading that it seems as if part of my mind is now on standby. In unstructured ritual, words from my Commonplace Book arise unbidden. They follow me into my dreams. When paired with Disconnection, this can become very powerful indeed.
Research
Paganism is often referred to as “religion with homework”. Whether it’s reading a spellbook or a collection of myths, most traditions will get you reading pretty early on. We differ in part, because we see the act of reading as itself a sacred act, which over time will lead us into trance states. Still, you can absolutely use your reading time to bone up on magical techniques – so long as you understand that in Fencraft, this is not all that it is.
No Heaven Is Promised To Us
Both Practices also express a primary call towards joy and pleasure in this world: listen to music you love, read your favourite books again, do things for their own sake. Where the Sun is collective, the Moon is selfish: and so Reading calls us to indulge, in fantasy, play and pleasure. Life is short. We often talk about ritual in terms which are boring, high stress, or challenging – but ritual should be acts of pleasure, delight and celebration, and so it can be you and some cushions with your headphones in. We also call our followers to play and re-enchantment, rediscovering their capacity for make believe and imagination. There’s no better way to do that than consuming or creating fantasy.
I have long embraced a myth in which the Devil’s pact, in which the witch sells her soul, is really an acknowledgement that we have no Heaven coming to us – and we are then freed to seek pleasure in this life, full and entire.
No Bible, No Vicar
Existing world faiths have a very low-barrier to entry and practice: they have centuries of spiritual art, practice, and well-winnowed texts. As a relatively new faith, we have no Michaelangelo, and no man waiting to stand at the pulpit and point the way once a week. Contemporary Paganism usually calls you to be your own priest: we have no Bible, nor priest following up on what we’ve been doing.
Our Reading stands in for simple activities like listening to a sermon, consulting our priest, or reading a book of psalms. Constructing a Reading List takes time initially (you are welcome to borrow texts from mine), but now I have one, it is such a relief. It’s constantly inspiring me to practice, and engage with the spiritual when I am at very low spoons.
Practice Self-Loss
Self-loss is the key Stellar technique we must learn and recapture to propel ourselves through the barriers and encounter the Landweird in its full terror. Art has always had great power to beguile and overwhelm us. By assembling your own hoard of words, imagery and music, you are discovering that which has the power to dissolve and transform you. This is a key Stellar value, as well as of practical use: different kinds of sensory experience can be put towards different ritual purposes in future.
Develop Your Practice
After you finish this course, you may not identify as part of Fencraft any more – you may have found a different spiritual tradition which is a happier fit. Alternatively, you may still feel Fencraft is your way – but your day-to-day practice is centered around particular Powers or Pantheons, rather than the Landweird itself. In any case, you’ll find your way sooner by Doing A Lot Of Reading. A book of Norse myths, a documentary about the history of your area, a Pagan blog detailing certain practices: the more widely you Read, the more likely you are to discover your call.
And the Lunar
In the next essay, we'll be approaching the most complex of the Domains - the Lunar - and how it relates to Reading.