Landmarks

The abstract alchemical forces of Landcraft can be understood as a Map of Places. Landmarks are the land of Landcraft: we see the divinity in the natural world and hold walking among it to be sacred, therefore places are expressive symbols. They are metaphors for kinds of energy combinations, embodying an idea the same way an archetype personified as a kind of person embodies an idea.

These Places can be used as

• a symbol in magic
• an astral landscape
• looked for in lore and dreams
• correspondences to go to for workings of a particular type

They are also

• Closely linked to spirits and beings with the same alchemical alignment
  ^{a spirit experienced as a place is in a ✺ aspect}
• abstractions of the kinds of energy that exist at a point or flow between two points
• a learning tool for abstract things (more fun than a table of symbols)

Landmarks have some similarity to the way Sephiroth and Tarot Trumps are used in other kinds of magic you may know, but there are important differences. They are a conceptual filing cabinet which can be tapped to access certain energies. You could certainly imagine the Landmarks as a deck of symbol cards or (one day*) arranged like a series of stops on the London Underground. However, the Landmarks are more like a true Map - as we may use it to travel to and from any points we choose, rather than expecting the whole thing to act as a metaphor for human development; nor does it take us closer to God - there are Gods of many kinds, found everywhere upon it.

You can look up all the Landmarks I know of in the Journeys section, but you may also develop your own.

Each Landmark is like a little universe, with its own physics. Things that are true there may not be true elsewhere. Each has its own magical style, for example, and only has access to some energies and not others.

Landmarks re-enchant the world. When you make in your map of the world a connection between worldly places and otherworldly things, then your sense of the sacred becomes constantly alive. This evening I have been gazing out across my garden and seeing the fogs within the forest edge, knowing they lead straight into the woodlands of fairy. Then behind it, on the pale blue I see the winking of the first star, and through it to all the spirits of sky and the gentle-strange beyond. But yesterday, the evil moon glinting through the black trees against the deep blue of night, drifts of dark cloud moved by no ordinary wind, I felt the Ride rattle against my windowpanes and called it no closer, though neither did I ward it away. I live within magic.

How do we use Landmarks?

Consider these very different sorts of Fen people, and the way they use the Map.

Many Pathways

When I began this work, I assumed this symbol would behave like the appropriated Tree of Life as that is what I was used to: there would be one spirit and one image on each path and in each sphere, and the numbers of each sphere and the positions of paths between them would be known. You could write it all up on a neat, objective list. The Western Esoteric Tradition is certainsure, confident, and inflamed with holy rightness that places humans on the ladder between dull mortal clay and godhood - of course it asserts that the Map can be fully known and predicted.

But Landcraft doesn't function this way. We walk in the strange ways of folklore - unmappable forest paths and mythic labyrinths. We are also seekers of Landweird, that shifting palimpsest of unrecorded things. We dwell in the living landscape and under the weird of the weather. And our gods live. It would be an obvious nonsense if our Map claimed to be permanent and fixed.

Paths are especially flowing places, and that is why they are places of power - because change is possible there, and things in motion can be easily directed this way or that. Locations dissipate and reform. Gates open and are lost.

In my early notes I spent a lot of time trying to pin down, say, how the Lightbringer and Wandererer interrelated, as they both seemed to be in the same place on the Map. Many diagrams covered in squiggly lines and arcane lines were drawn. I have stacks of the things, whole bags and drawers stuffed with mad wizard scrawlings.

It is nonsense, it is like capturing the wind: where spirits overlap conceptually, they overlap conceptually - that is all. They may or may not be aspects of the same entity. They may or may not participate in the same story. They may or may not form contrasting lessons. They may or may not exist in separate frequencies entirely. Perhaps once they were in two separate (pre-)British cultures but treading on similar ground, and over time and forgetting they have been blended.

There are commonly trodden pathways, with fixed and predictable characteristics, and these we label - The Solar-Lunar path or the Sanctuary

In this way, the three Domains and three Paths spread outwards from where we are, leading us into the Otherworlds. Fencraft should never feel 'fixed'.

All images are temporary. We should always be aware of a tugging at the edges, like a cats cradle, like a tide that could pass away, like a figure that could open into new forms. We therefore seek Symbols which have that slippery quality, like a Lunar place which speaks to us also of the Solar and Stellar places it is not, and which we could move towards in turn.

There are only 3 Domains within the system, and 3 Paths in between. Does this mean there are only six locations to learn? No. Because those Domains and Paths can have many different meanings, and therefore a new location is formed to describe each of these meeting-points.

For example: The Sanctuary is a Lunar Place. It is a calm, pure, cloister of a place, a moment of one-ness, of hermitude. It is implied by both What Is Not Solar and What Is Not Stellar.

It is not being bogged down in a world of interpersonal commitments, day-to-day living and mortal responsibilities - it is the sense of cutting off all that noise, for example, going on a wellbeing retreat, or getting six months in a peaceful place to finish writing your book.

It is also not being caught in the terrifying web of cosmic forces - buffeted by Fate, drawn into a world of nightmares in the dark, surrounded by loud chaos of the Otherworlds, compelled inorexable power beyond your comprehension. It is a place where the door is firmly shut on all of that - a place where shutting that door is possible - where one feels mastery over such forces and is unbothered by them.

From these two energetic correspondences, a picture emerges: a person in clean robes with an overall sense of purity, airily above and beyond the world, perhaps in a tidy garden that the wind cannot touch. It is a person cut off, with the ability to stop the Stellar in its tracks, while also refusing everyday labour; and it is also a person cut off, somewhat selfish and superior, and who has refused to investigate or master the kinds of powers which come from non-Lunar sources; but also a person highly skilled, as comes from that intensity of focus and freedom from distraction.

I get a sense of a magical landscape - the hermit's retreat, the library of the loremaster - and I get the sense of the kinds of spirits and magical abilities emanating from such a meeting of energies. Once mapped, the energies here can be put to use!

This is a Lunar place, but it is not THE Lunar place.

The Fairy Barrow and Glade is also a Lunar place, but it feels very different to the Santuary. More tangled. Not in the least airy and clean.

It too is What Is Not Solar and What Is Not Stellar, but we are combining different meanings in those symbols and finding ourselves in a different place.

It is neither the Solar world of mortals, nor the Stellar strange - it is a place embodying those middle folk, who are people yet not human. It is not the neat, tamed fields around the village, nor yet the wildwood deep. It is not a place where the fairies are gone or hide themselves like rabbits about the hedgerows, nor the impassable terror in the dark heart of all forests. It is a place where Lunar things are comfortable to go - witches and wanderers - to meet the kinds of people who cannot be found at home, but it is also a place where one can trespass safely if one knows the way.

From this combination, I get a very different picture. The landscape is a place beyond the everyday, but before the true wild - a place that frightens most, but is dared by the few. The creatures there embody that same tension, of being the approachable within the strange. The place is an uncertain friend - perhaps a place to rest and the sight of wonders, perhaps a trick for the unwary.

We are in the forest of folklore. It too is Lunar. It could not be less like the Sanctuary.

Discovering Landmarks, then, is a playful process. When we see a place within a dream or the lore, we can consider what combinations and contrasts of Domains cause this place to come to be, what energies pool together there. Alternatively, we can study the Domains and, finding certain tensions or harmonies, ask what place is formed by their meeting. And we can travel: we can go out beyond abstract wizardry into the otherworlds, to places which are no longer symbols of our fancy, into the unmappable.

Landmarks for Magic

Magic in Fencraft concerns a faring-forth and a coming home. As an abstraction it is a process of:

1. Noticing where you are, and locating it on the Map
2. Deciding where you would like to be, and locating it on the Map
3. Knowing the nature of the path between, by your study of the Map
4. Using any preferred process to move from one to another

Preferred processes might be:

• Handling energies as an abstract force, through energy techniques such as movement, breathing and visualisation
• Moving [on the ground, in your imagination, in the near-astral or the otherworlds] from your present location to one embodying your desired position
• Rotating the spirit presently there into a more favourable aspect
• Calling on Powers of the position you wish to be in, or those opposed to the position you are currently in; or banishing Powers of the one you are currently in
• Doing actions and activities in the real world to evoke the position you wish to be in; likewise, stopping actions which evoke the position you wish to leave
• Taking symbolic or ritual actions which reject one position and welcome another

Depending on the context, you might put more emphasis on the departing or the arriving, or both.

Landmarks give you a suggested correspondence for a place, a time of day, a time of the year, a moon phase and a weather, but it's essential to note you do not need all of these to align every time you do magic on this earth - choose the ones which are meaningful to you.

The most important time to master these skills is when moving from a place that is dangerous to one that is safe, shutting down a ritual, getting rid of an unwanted entity, and closing the Stellar gate.

Aspects

A Landmark consists of:

• a kind of place
• a characteristic weather and/or time

You aspect a Landmark by adjusting the weather or time: a village under the sun vs a village in a storm, for example. This is because the magic of Landcraft is closely associated with the metaphor of celestial bodies, and therefore removing the Sun communicates clearly a change of state. Generally, when a place and sky match, the energies are in alignment, and therefore in its usual or core form - when they do not match, you are encountering an aspect:

• ALIGNED
  • The sun over a little village
  • The sea shore with a grim grey blusteriness over a dark sea
• ASPECT
  • A grim grey downpour over a little muddy village
  • A bright sun over a bright ship on a blue day over the open ocean

And so forth

Note that in this example the grey grim village could be a dark aspect of a ☉ place. Alternatively, it could be the most beneficial aspect you can find within a ☽✺ place.

Therefore, looking to change the weather and/or time to adjust the aspect of a situation can also work as well as moving to a different place entirely.

Landmarks are Magical Tools

Here are some examples of approaching Landmarks from different Paths.

☽ The Sanctuary

Against the Solar

You are bogged down in the mundane minutae of everyday life. Your job leaves you no time. Your kids won't give you a break. You are burdened by responsibilities to your community. You eat, you work, you sleep. You need a moment of privacy, a moment of stillness, a moment of clarity and reflection, to make a clean cut and put up white walls with a blank space in-between. You need a relaxing bath, and for your troubles to go down the drain. You need two hours of focused work. You need to cleanse your aura. You need to balance your energies. You need space to do something abstract, personally important but not related to survival - self-improvement, perhaps, or exploring deeply into a line of enquiry. You need the Sanctuary.

Against the Stellar

You have the spiritual shakes. As they say in the Commonplace Book, you experience delicious moments of landscape terror, perhaps too intense now and you need to ground. You need to shut out all that intensity. You need to re-assert control. You put up a brilliant shield of clear white light and darkness retreats. You want to wield a spiritual weapon, and insist that can overcome the noise of chaos. You meditate, focusing on the breath, and the shakes pass away. You need a place of safety and certainty from the horror, but one that is still magical, allies from the Otherworlds who know something of the dark beyond. You need the Sanctuary.

☽ The Glade

Against the Solar

• You need a holiday, not just some time off but time away from the everyday, to play again - to feel a sense of wonder and the weird.
• You don't gel well with Solar things, but Lunar friendships, allegiances, and work is your goal.
• The Good Neighbours are screwing about and a mortal neighbour has asked you for help, so into the woods you go to make a bargain.
• You want to re-enchant or re-awaken a place in the world.

Against the Stellar

• You have Stellar work to do, of course, but you must approach it indirectly - perhaps there is a middle face, a Lunar aspect, who can be your intermediary or your introduction.
• You have been deep in the dark places of the world and must flee or retreat, but home is too far a step to take - you need a place of refuge near to the dark places, but where allies might be found.
• You have encountered an immense Stellar Weird but are looking and calling to find its Lunar face so you might talk with it more safely.
• A place is wildly haunted and dangerous and you need to sort it out, so it is safe for your mortal neighbours to dwell near. Perhaps if it were to be more Lunar, at least, it would be tolerable.

Final Thoughts

Landmarks are what you make of them. For some, travelling through the Landmarks can provide the structure for learning magic and living a magical life, in much the same way learning the Tarot cards or ascending the (appropriated) Tree of Life does in other traditions. For others, Landmarks take a back seat - existing as nothing more than correspondences for spells and a backdrop for sacred encounters. Landmarks can be a tangible way of getting a sense of how the physical and energetic worlds take form in Landcraft, but others prefer to work with abstract forces.

The Landmarks offer one potential route to specialisation. You could set off upon a journey as a kind of wandering wizard of the otherworlds, visiting each Landmark in turn. Doing this can provide a learning structure for ☉☽ ceremonial & symbol magic, build up a lifetime of ☽ relationships and experiences or abilities, or develop the skill to visit the ☽✺ most hostile and strange regions of the beyond.

Alternatively, they can be used as a mere table of correspondences while you put your focus elsewhere - or barely at all - developing ☉ religion or ☽ relationships or developing a magical style that is far more free-flowing and unstructured. If you follow a pull towards particular folklore, history or pantheon, the Otherworlds you visit may be structured very differently, rendering this abstract guidebook useless.

Reading List

Selected works about navigating otherworldly and strange landscapes

• Smith of Wooton Major
• The Lives of Christopher Chant
• The Mythago Wood sequence
• The Subtle Knife
• Piranesi
• Self-initiation into the Golden Dawn Tradition by the Ciceros - useful as an example of how ceremonial magic typically uses a map of imaginary places/conceptual filing cabinet as a training structure, although you will have to re-write everything as their system has little in common with ours. Flick through it on the Internet Archive