Landmarks 101

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.

This lesson guides you to the Journeys section of the site, and introduces Landmarks as a way to handle magical forces.

Read and Explore

Once you have read the introduction essay, have a casual dig about in the Journeys section. Familiarise yourself with the Landmarks, but be aware that the list is long and it can be no more use than looking over an Ordinance Survey map and trying to remember every stop on a train line as a pale substitute for actually visiting.

Better to do the following practical activities and internalise the Map over time, than to sit down with a list.

Assess

After doing the reading and some exploring, score yourself on the following question:

  1. I have no interest in Landmarks
  2. I'm not sure yet if Landmarks are for me
  3. I might use Landmarks as a correspondence in spells or as a backdrop to religious work, but I have no interest outside of this
  4. Landmarks interest me - I'd like to learn the system in some detail, either for its own sake or to enhance the other work I am doing
  5. I want Landmarks to be my main focus and structure for the next period of time

Note down your answer in your Practice Prescription, described in the introduction.

Then, make a judgement on which of the following activities you want to do, how frequently you wish to do them, in how much depth and time spent, and how great the expectation is that you will know the system well. You can always return to this tutorial in future.

If you are not sure, ensure you do some of the activities to find out more.

Daily

Many people like to draw a Tarot or Oracle card each morning to reflect on its lessons and do basic visualisation, focusing or prayer. While you work through this lesson, adopt this as a daily thing to do.

Take one of the Landmarks and, as if it was a card, consider its imagery and meaning. Enter into it and explore. Contemplate & note down any ideas. Consider what role this energy plays in your life. In this way, you will familiarise yourself with the system quickly.

Walking & Reading

Re-enchantment

As you go about your Walks, start looking out for places which match the Landmarks. Look with your brain and eyes - what matches the description and looks right - but also energetically - what places respond to probing. This is especially important if you do not live anywhere which looks like where I live, and you must be creative with learning how the energies express in your place.

Find one that is especially relevant to the kinds of craft you want to do or entity you wish to communicate with, and start visiting more frequently. Visit it in your dreams also. See if you can wake it up.

This can create a location where power can be tapped for certain magics, but it can also encourage the Landweird to break through. It can also form the basis of a temple. If you do work with entities, gods and otherfellows, it can create a meeting-place.

Reading

Equally, keep an eye out for these locations as you Read.

The Fantasy Map

Think of a children's map or a map from the front of a fantasy novel. Look at the list of Landmarks and how they more-or-less connect to one another. Now, draw a map as if it was a kind of country you could explore. This is playtime so have fun: stain the map with dark inks, draw dragons, add magical letters.

Over time as you use Landmarks, you may need to draw your own maps, very different from mine, to ensure you know the way home.

If you have no interest in Landmarks at all (or even if you do) and this sounds fun, you can always do this for your own local area.

Journeying

The Dwellingplace

If, like Alf, you wish to visit every Landmark as a way to internalise the system, here is a template. This is a very traditional ceremonial approach to alchemy, and can be a satisfying structure for moving through Fencraft as a whole.

Anybody may choose to dwell at a Landmark for a period of time in this way, to align with a spirit or the qualities of a place or develop particular skills.

If you are learning magic for the first time, pick any of the locations from the Journeys page and do a period of time within a place - to learn if this kind of magic is effective for you.

If you are in a group, each choose one different Landmark to work on, and come back to discuss it.

Model-making

Landmarks are, among other things, imaginary places. Therefore, you can make paper models...models in Minecraft...embroideries...drawings...of places you have been or intend to visit, either in this world or the other.

Or make objects in this world of objects you have found in the Other, or that you might expect to find there, as a link. Over time, you might assemble a collection of magical tools, robes, charms, keys, stones or other symbols for each of the Landmarks.

Daydreaming

The Landmarks make excellent destinations for daydreaming (what other traditions prosaically refer to as visualisation practice). Building up your ability to daydream (or lucid dream, if you are able) is essential to hold focus when you start moving away from the near-astral and journeying true.

Spellwork

A Safe Place

When we use the symbol of places for magic, a useful first step is to establish a protective place.

Sacred Space

Think about the magical structures you use. Design a rite which begins with you moving from where you are to a Landmark - in your imagination or on foot or even by walking around the circle many times.

Or, design a rite where a place is hallowed to make a bridge or gate to a Landmark - or which makes the Landmark present in your space - through scents, sounds, daydreaming, and so forth. This place will be more apt to contact certain beings or work with certain forces.

Fencraft magic doesn't require a circle in the same way traditional ceremonial magic does - it's very context dependent. As a rule, we don't need to purify space - as often as not, our magical space begins as a barren lawn and we must re-fill it with leaf litter and beetles. We want spaces to get weirder. However, demarcating an area of space is useful when you intend to change the character of that space by calling in a Landmark or a portal to a Landmark there; your neighbours are Solar and they do not want gremlins wriggling through their chimneybreast.

Spellcraft

Magic in Landcraft is done by moving yourself, energies, situations, spirits or other things from one location on the Map to another.

Using this idea, the symbols you already have, and what you already know about magic spells, put together a simple spell for a not-too-challenging need in your life.

Magic could be accomplished through formal ritual; through a spellcraft such as baking, incense-making, or fibrecraft; through prayer; through pact and persuasion; or anything else. You can employ the Fensymbols if you prefer a ceremonial character - perhaps by putting them onto tools, drawing them in the air or establishing them around your working space - or work in a far more free-form way, as places or imagined places; or use the energy-concepts represented by the places without referencing actual landscapes at all.

If you already know some magic, you may use techniques that already work but put in Landcraft imagery. If you have never studied magic before, look to story for ideas for how, or any teacher of magic (in this world or the others) you prefer. Fencraft on the whole is not strict about form, though you may enter into relationships or magical paragdims where the rules are very specific.

Toolmaking & enchantment

Landmarks and the Map use the metaphor of going on a journey for the process of magic. This echoes the stories in our lore in which an ordinary fellow from an ordinary place sets out on a great and terrifying adventure into the beyond.

This also suggests tools for Fencraft, and for this kind of magic in particular, such as:

And so forth.

Practice toolmaking by doing one as a project. Enchanted objects can be handmade, decorated, or discovered in a junk shop. They might be practical, for ritual, or symbolic - made in miniature, say.

Questions

Do I have to start from the Solar?

In other forms of ceremonial magic, you are required to explore their microcosm from starting from the earthy-ordinary sphere and moving gradually towards Godhead. If you are studying Landmarks, ought you to begin by learning about the Solar City and work outwards?

I would say no, because we all have busy lives. As a human being, your affinity to the Solar comes automatically. You should begin by studying and exploring the place which most excites you. Fencraft is about going on an adventure. Of course, some ability to return to the Solar is beneficial.

Unlike the (appropriated) Tree of Life, which is a metaphor for the process of creation, the magician's journey and aspirations to divinity - the Fencraft Map really is just a Map. The journey you take across it depends on where you want to go. There is no good reason to spend eight months apprenticing to the King of the Hall in order to prepare you to go out and meet the Fairy Queen, any more than learning Finnish will prepare you for a trip to Spain. If anything, the reverse is the case: as each Landmark is a little world in which things work quite differently, and so the skills you learn, alliances and your moral framework will not build up as you cross the Map (although visiting as many places as one can is beneficial too; some of us are hoarders). Fencraft does not call you to be balanced. Its just a Map.

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