The death of Scots actor Nicol Williamson was reported on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. As described by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, “Nicol Williamson, a Mercurial Actor, Is Dead at 75” (Obituaries, p. A29), Mr. Williamson could be difficult to work with; I remember his performing I Hate Hamlet in the early ’90s, with it being the rare experience of the performer’s conduct overshadowing the show. Nonetheless, as Jason points out on the Wild Hunt, Williamson was Merlin in arguably the finest “King Arthur” film, and- as Mr. Weber considers, “perhaps because his aggrieved Scottish temperament seemed so suitable”- he played Macbeth more than once, notably in the BBC Shakespeare series. The YouTube clip that shows Macbeth’s pivotal meeting with the Witches (IV.i) demonstrates Williamson’s ferocious concentration as an actor: watch as the scene (and camera) basically settle onto his face, and admire as he holds the scene with his expressions, his thoughts, and his actor’s will. The depiction of the Witches is unique: more so than any other production that I have seen, this presents the Witches as village Wise-Women, positioning them against the Callanish Stones to reinforce their identities as ancient Forces upon the British Isles. (This is perhaps the most benign interpretation of the Three Witches that you are likely to come across.) But check out how this scene becomes about nothing but Mr. Williamson’s face, and his actor’s commitment to his part.
With so much interesting research emerging attesting to Magick-Workers in Early America, it seems undeniable that the Magickal Traditions of the Old World made their way into America through the immigration of European settlers. While such people may not have exerted monstrous amounts of influence in the settling of the New World (preferring, apparently, to seek out relatively unpopulated places such as the Appalachian mountains, or the mountains of the American Northeast, or at least in one case- to judge from the “Joshua Gordon Witchcraft Book” held at the University of South Carolina- the 1600s Southern frontier), it is noteworthy that we- meaning, Magickally-minded Folks, inclined towards the Old Ways- have had our place in America (hidden, secret, living “on the down-low”), but there, and hence, here.
Fascinating as that is, what really intrigues me is the extent to which early American Magick-Use reflects back upon the Europe of the late 1500s/ early 1600s- still the Age of Magick, with the Burning Times still going on (the 1600s, the first period of settlement in the New World, is also the last century of the Witch-Burnings). Early American Magick-Use provides another prism through which to judge the Magickal beliefs and practices of the Old World; what is most intriguing is the degree to which these beliefs and practices appear to involve Circle-Casting, or the Formation of a Magickal Circle-Space.
For instance, in The Silver Bullet and Other American Witch Stories, we learned of Magickal Folk-Beliefs carried into the Appalachian mountains by Irish, English, Scots, and German settlers- which apparently were preserved long enough to be recorded in the stories found in this book, which were generated in the 1930s. Another book, Signs, Cures, & Witchery, also finds copious amounts of Old World Magick-Belief transported into Appalachia- this time, specifically looking at the activities of German pioneers. What is especially interesting (to my mind) is the number of times that someone in The Silver Bullet describes casting a Magick Circle in order to perform Magick: casting a Magick Circle exactly as we are accustomed to casting Circles, but described in the context of Depression Era mountaintop Folk-Magick.
However, not surprising: if one considers the evidence that Circle-Casting was widely associated with Magick-Work in England during the Elizabethan Age of the late 1500s and the Jacobean Age of the early 1600s.
Circle-Casting- or Circle-Formation, as perhaps the case may be- divides in the Time into two categories: (1) the Grimoire-Tradition, carried in medieval grimoires innumerable issued throughout the Middle Ages; these will be the Traditions that seem to us most like those of the Gardnerians, the Alexandrians, and all those influenced by the writings of Gardner, Valiente, Crowther, the Sanders, the Farrars (et al), and which will be reflected by the learned elite of the medieval period, able to read said written occult-works, the Grimoires (2) as well as the Oral-Folk Culture Traditions carried by Oral-Folk Culture practitioners such as village Wise-Women and Cunning-Men; these are reflected in the “Witch” Plays (as opposed to the “Wizard” Plays, inspired by the educated Grimoire-Tradition), and are based upon the sometimes-raucous, often improvisational Tradition that we associate with “Energy-Raising.”
Perhaps the most famous example of the Elizabethan Grimoire-derived (Ceremonial-Traditional) Circle-Casting known to us is that presented to us by Marlowe in Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), in Act I, scene iii, lines 8-24: Faustus formally charges into being the Circle that he has transcribed on his floor (as per the illustration attached to the printed play, seen above). Being of the Christian Magick variety, this Circle is particularly “anagrammatized” with the Name of Jehovah, as well as laid out by the “figures of every adjunct to the Heavens, and characters of signs and erring stars”- that is, it has been made to resemble in miniature an outline of the Astrological Heavens themselves, in a very Microcosm/ Macrocosm, “As Above, So Below” sort of deal. This Circle is further empowered by calling in the Spirits of the Four Elements.
Caveat: as the Wikipedia entry on the play will tell you, Marlowe’s play was published in two versions, known as the Text A and the Text B versions: the Text A is thought to resemble more closely Marlowe’s original script, with Text B representing an “improved-upon” version of the play reworked after Marlowe’s untimely death. As the Wikipedia entry notes, there are differences between the two versions of the play- but as the Wikipedia entry fails to point out, in Text B (the text most often reproduced, as people tend to play it safe by putting into print the greatest possible number of words potentially committed by Marlowe to paper), the Names of only three of the Four Elements are called (“Earth” is omitted). Text A calls in all Four Elements- which makes the most sense- and demonstrates to us a genuine late 1500s Tradition of Consecrating a Magick-Circle by Calling In all Four of the Mystical Elements of Life. (The reason for “Earth’s” absence is surely as simple as, the type-setter blanked. Maybe it was getting close to lunchtime, and he was hungry and distracted.)
Another caveat: in the interest of being totally responsible in the transmission of Magickal Knowledge- Dr. Faustus’ Legend comes to us as the Supreme Example of the Perils of Trafficking with the Forces of Darkness. The Middle Ages took such things strenuously seriously, and so we have the cautionary Tale of Faustus: who was Fool enough to believe that he could contract with the Forces of [Christian] Hell and live to tell the tale.
In short, Faust represents the ultimate in Christian Theology cautioning one against Magickal Practicing. But you know what? Here’s how I look at it: Faustus actually ASKS the Devil to come into his Circle (the Devil being represented as the reptilian sort-of creature in the picture next to Faust, just outside of his Magickally Protective Circle). Never mind the Pagan Thealogical Question: Do we as Pagans even give credence to the Thought-Form of the Devil? (I, for one, do not, and therefore- it seems to me- avoid the obvious pratfall of Faust by Calling In only such Deities as Whom I judge to be Honorable and Just, and with Whom I feel comfortable that I have established a fair Working-Relationship.)
Another example of Circle-Casting in a play whose Cultural influence is extremely difficult to question, is that presented by Shakespeare in The Tempest (c. 1610). Although explained merely by a stage-direction- following Line 57, Act V, scene i: “They all enter the Circle which Prospero had made, and there stand charmed”- Prospero’s famous speech “Ye Elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves” is meant to be understood as a Circle-Invocation inspired by Ovid’s account of Medea’s Invocation to the Spirits of Nature in Metamorphoses. As represented in Julie Taymor’s 2010 movie-version starring (in a status-changing gender-bending 
performance) Helen Mirren as the Female Wizard Prospera, the speech is every bit a Circle-Invocation as much as that presented by Shakespeare’s contemporary Marlowe- but oriented from a very Nature-driven perspective. It demonstrates to us that- at least for Shakespeare, in the early 1600s- Circle-Casting could be thought effective if engaged purely from an orientation towards Nature, rather than from a strictly Ceremonial Traditional point-of-view. (It might be, if you watch enough productions of The Tempest, that you don’t see many examples of Prospero or Prospera actually Casting a Circle during this speech; I believe that is because so many people nowadays simply do not know what to make of the stage-direction “the Circle that Prospero had made,” having no cultural context through which to formulate the Magick-Circle. In short, I don’t think many theater-folk today understand a “Magick Circle,” and so, have no idea how to stage this segment of The Tempest.)
And then there is the Circle-Casting found in singular form in the “Witch-Plays” of the late 1500s-early 1600s: whereas the Grimoire-Traditions are preserved in written manuscripts read by the educated and the literate, the 
Ways of Witchcraft must have been maintained through oral Folk-Culture. Apparently there was, at least in England, a coherent system identified as “Witchcraft : the Witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Jonson’s The Sad Shepherd and The Masque of Queens, and Middleton’s The Witch all do the same thing as “Witchcraft” in all four plays, what we would consider to be the most significant Witch-Plays of the early 1600s. This involves forming a Magickal Circle- but unlike the Ceremonial Magicians, who enact recorded ritual in a dignified manner, the Witches generate their mystical Spaces through intention, rhythm, movement, music, and excitement: very much what we would term “Raising Energy.” So much folklore surrounds the idea that Witches (like Faeries) danced in Circles, that we should not be surprised to find Circle-Dancing associated with all these Jacobean Witches: the Witches in Macbeth (c. 1605), for instance, dance “hand in hand” in order to “wind up their Charm” in Act One, scene iii; similarly, in Act Four, scene i, they dance around their Cauldron (which will cause one to dance in a Circle) in order to “set the stage” for the Thane of Glamis and for the Spirits that they will raise for him, ending the scene by performing a last “antic Round,” or excited Circle-Dance.
The male Ceremonial Traditions of the late Middle Ages are driven by the performance of prescribed ritual; the female Witchcraft Traditions of Jacobean England are set in motion through “Energy-Raising” spectacles (as we would think of them); yet both Traditions depend upon an understanding of an enchanted, specialized (Circular) Magickal Space.
Far from being held super-secret, however, Magickal Traditions appear to have been openly embraced in England during the time of Elizabeth: there was a flourishing business of printing and selling pamphlet-edition Spell-Books and “How to” Magickal manuals, with George Lyman Kittredge providing many examples of “grass-roots” Magickal experimentation in Witchcraft in Old and New England. The fact that plays which deal with Magickal matters are clearly popular is an indication of the Elizabethan/ Jacobean interest in Magick, and the fact that Magickal Ceremonies are performed in Magickal Plays presented as popular theater plainly indicates all by itself a means of transmission of this knowledge.
Assuming that Circle-Casting is indeed well-established as late 1500s/ early 1600s English Magickal custom, we would imagine English settlers in the New World to transport faith in Magickal Circle-Casting with them into America: exactly as we seem to find in early 20th century Appalachia.
All of this might be understood as cultural encouragement to consider Circle-Casting as primary in the performance of the Magickal Arts.
McKillip has been successfully publishing high fantasy novels since the Seventies, and her latest, The Bards of Bone Plain, released last month in a trade paperback edition is fabulous. It does not score as highly on the Paganometer as some of the other books we review here: the society it portrays is, apparently, wholly non-theistic, and the relationships it presents are implacably heteronormative. However, if you are part of a bardic tradition, like making music, or enjoyed the subset of McCaffrey’s Pern books centered on the Harper Hall, then you will almost certainly enjoy this book.
The novel is structured into two parallel narratives separated by several hundred years, and the chapters alternate between the two. The earlier narrative takes place at the founding of the kingdom of Belden and the establishment of the kingdom’s first bardic school at Caerau which will grow to become the capitol city of the kingdom. The later narrative takes place at the school in a time when the monarchy is long-established and steam power has just been discovered which gives the novel the faintest tinge of Steampunk.
Continue reading »
Arizona based singer-songwriter Celia has released the new song titled “Bridget’s Song” just in time for Imbolc. The song is available for download here. You can also see the video on YouTube
From Celia’s own facebook page: “Bring on Spring! ‘Bridget’s Song’ is ready! Feel free to share the link far & wide & use this song for Imbolc celebrations.”
Her new album, “For the Asking” is currently available for pre-order on her website.
A significant new biography upon Ben Jonson- Ian Donaldson’s Ben Jonson: A Life (Oxford University Press)- was reviewed Sunday last in the New York Times Book Review (Jan. 22, 2012, p. 1); all the more remarkable, as no one writes biographies of Ben Jonson, who would otherwise be considered the Supreme Writer for the Elizabethan/ Jacobean stage- were it not that he had William Shakespeare for a contemporary: William Shakespeare, who so dominates the Stage-Scene of the era as to render virtually invisible any of his fellows. This new work (praised by the NY Times) represents an invaluable opportunity for Pagan readers of the Juggler to acquaint themselves with Mr. Jonson’s works.
And why, exactly, should Pagan readers of the Juggler wish to acquaint themselves with the works of Mr. Ben Jonson, Play-Writer of the late 1500s-early 1600s, you might ask?
Why, for the simple reason that Pagans might well wish to acquaint themselves with the works of Mr. Jonson’s overshadowing contemporary, Mr. William Shakespeare- because they both are writing in England during the last Great Age of Witchcraft, and so (as any good biography of William Shakespeare will make a point to tell you, and as I expect this biography of Mr. Jonson by Mr. Donaldson will): they are writing from the point-of-view of a cultural milieu that accepts totally the belief in Witches and the Powers of Witchcraft.
Therefore, what Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Jonson have to say about Witches and Witchcraft is presumably going to be instructive, as it emanates from the Last Period in which Witchcraft was accepted as part of English Life and English Culture.
Having read Ben Jonson: A Life, the Juggler Reader will be well-acquainted (I am sure; I haven’t actually read this book yet, which I was unaware of until yesterday) the Juggler will then be well-familiar with the events and context of Ben Jonson’s life: and can then go on to read The Alchemist (Jonson’s satire on the Magick-practicing ways of the London of his time); The Sad Shepherd (a wonderfully elegiac Paganistic Forest-Fable, that features a Witch united in a Spiritual Union with a Pagan Forest-Deity); and The Masque of Queens (basically, a Witches’ Energy-Raising ceremony).
Having then read Donaldson’s biography and these works of Jonson’s: perhaps the Juggler will agree with me, that the best explanation for what the Witches in both The Sad Shepherd and The Masque of Queens are doing is: they are Raising Energy, as defined by Gerald Gardner in Witchcraft Today (once one has read Gerald Gardner’s description of Energy-Raising in Witchcraft Today, I don’t see how certain major Witch-Works of the late 1500s-early 1600s, including probably the most famous Witch-Work of all time, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, can be read NOT seeing the Energy-Raising dynamic at work).
If one is going to take seriously the idea that Gerald Gardner genuinely did inherit an ancient tradition of native English Witchcraft (as say, Philip Heselton does, in his important revisionary research): one might well look around, to ask- is there anywhere else in English culture that I can see such a thing as Witchcraft Energy-Raising?
The answer, I believe, is actually, yes: and I think it is found in the Witchcraft-Plays of the Elizabethan/ Jacobean Periods- leading me to believe that Energy-Raising is indeed the “Secret” to English Witchcraft (well, hardly secret to the Elizabethans and Jacobeans, who incorporated it into their Witch-Plays- but grown so secret in time that, had it not been for Mr. Gardner and his initiation into a surviving tradition of English Witchcraft, we might never have known of it, and modern Wicca might never have been).
It starts with reading the Witch-Plays of the late Elizabethan/ early Jacobean, and then asking yourself, are these Witches raising Energy or not? If not, what are they doing?
If yes: then what does that mean, to find Witches in works whose provence cannot be questioned- performing Witchcraft through acts of Energy-Raising, exactly as Gerald Gardner claimed all along?
It all begins by reading about Jonson (and Shakespeare) and understanding the cultural context in which they wrote about Witches.
One of the most delightful of the American light farce film-genre of the late 1930s-early 1940s known as the Screwball Comedy- as well as (excepting The Wizard of Oz) the most significant American film-treatment of Witches until that time- is 1942′s I Married A Witch. Starring ’40s Screen Siren Veronica Lake and accomplished stage-and-screen actor (and really good light comedian) Fredric March, the film is certainly a shoo-in for the “Pagan Film Classics Night” once the Pagan Television Network is up and running: in the meantime, it is a delicious Must for Pagan Film-Scholars wishing to understand The Portrayal of Witches On Film as a cinematic expertise. (It is also showing on Hulu.com, available for convenient viewing.)
A caveat: we are currently living in a Revisionist Era of Witchcraft-Study, so we consider such things as Media Treatment of Witches differently than, say, Hollywood did, in (say) the last Glam Days of Old Hollywood (the early ’40s, before America entered the War). Witches, in this film, are on the face of it “Evil.” The film opens upon the Classic American Witch-Story (Puritan Salem), with the Burning of These Two Evil Witches (Veronica Lake and her Sorcerer-Father). Immediate first-thing: Witches (of course) were not burned at Salem (they were hung). The Witch-Trials of Salem was actually not a subject that people had researched well by the early 1940s (holding such things as American Witch-Trials to be kind of embarrassingly quaint), so the supposition that Witches had been burned might not have seemed out-of-the-question for Hollywood at the time. Now we know better, so we can judge that I Married A Witch opens with an anachronism.
And it opens with the Burning of two Evil Witches by Puritans (with a really sharp Screwball Comedy satiric touch, of a vender working the crowd with snacks and souvenirs). The two Witches (Veronica Lake and her Sorcerer-Father) return in the “present-day” as disembodied forms of “Witch-Smoke”: anticipating gleefully the plagues and torments that (being Witches in the early ’40s) they intend to inflict upon Humankind. If one can kind of get past that, however, and embrace the idea that these two Witches (as revenge upon the Witch-Hunter who denounced them) have cursed that man’s family with misery in love (leading to a very funny montage of the descendants of this man knowing misery in love): one can really enjoy this delightfully daft flick.
Part of what makes it work is that the Witches are not genuinely Evil so much as kind of prankster-ish. Veronica Lake is more endearing as a Witch than anything else (as well as an interestingly tomboyish one); her undeniable Femme Fatale allure is directed firmly towards the acquisition of her love (Fredric March); and the Screwball mistakes that she makes in the process are no more than the emblems of Screwball Comedy’s premise, that The Course of True Love Did Ne’er Run Smooth.
Interesting Signifiers of Witchcraft abound: the film opens (“Long, long ago, when people still believed in Witches,” ahem) with a Puritan condemning all “Witches, Warlocks, and Sorcerers”- demonstrating that in 1942, “Warlock” was seen as the male equivalent to a Witch; there are witty sequences involving Witches’ flying implements such as brooms, and (in a pre-Harry Potter instance) a flying car; the Witches are heavily associated with fire, smoke, and storms; there is a wonderful scene of Ms. Lake charming a Love Potion in a cauldron bubbling over a fire; I love the cloak with a peaked hood that they put her in at the end; the Colonial New England ambiance throughout is really fun, as is the sight-gag ending with Ms. Lake and Mr. March married, the parents of two boys- and a girl who wears her hair in Ms. Lake’s signature over-one-eye peekaboo, while she gallops around on a broom.
I Married A Witch contributed to the inspiration of Bewitched, and one can see the various elements borrowed: there is the Witch so in love with a Mortal that she marries him (even replicating the marital-night confession of Witchcraft); the Witch-Relatives and the confusions that they cause; the Witch-Relatives who can’t quite get their Magicks right, as well as the slightly vindictive Witch-Relatives; and the settling down at the end, to raise a kind-of unconventional Witch-Mortal family.
IMAW seems so much like a Veronica Lake vehicle, it looks as if it must have been created for her; as with most Witch-flicks, this credit tends to stand out on her resume. In the manner of the Screwball Comedy, it is primarily about women and men falling in love (well, in this case, Witches and men); its presentation of romance, unlike our own hyper-sexualized era, is subtle, restrained, and dignified. Its overall mood is boisterous and fun-loving; the definitive Golden Age Hollywood Witch-Screwball Comedy classic, and a Pagan film-treat.
In the category of “Pagan Scholars to Watch For,” please add the name of Robert Mathiesen. A medieval philologist teaching at Brown University, with a great interest in the history of Magickal practices, Prof. Mathiesen uncovered (from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania) Charles Leland’s remarkable Book of Shadows (recently published); earlier, he collaborated with Theitic (an Initiate into the Tradition founded by Gwen Thompson in the early 1970s, and now an Elder in this Tradition, as well as its archivist) on The Rede of the Wiccae: Adriana Porter, Gwen Thompson, and the Birth of a Tradition of Witchcraft (Olympian Press, 2005), wherein they examined the “Rede of the Wiccae,“ published in the Ostara issue of Green Egg Magazine in 1975. Attributed to her grandmother, Adriana Porter, this was a series of rhyming couplets, intended to preserve a bit of wisdom or folk-knowledge in an easy-to-remember rhyming style. The last couplet- “Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill- an it harm none, do what ye will”- is probably the best known.
Because of Ms. Thompson’s attribution of this “Rede,” or series of rhyming folk-couplets, to her grandmother, the story of early-on-the-American-Witchcraft-Scene High Priestess Gwen Thompson and her grandmother Adriana Porter has come to be recognized as one of those “Grandmother Stories,” whereby someone claimed Extreme Authenticity for their Practice of Ye Olde Crafte by citing some elderly relative (often one’s grandmother) as an Initiating Instructor. (Wicca Spoilers): Mathiesen and Theitic, in reviewing the Rede, find that most of the couplets appear to represent genuine examples of folk-culture “Lore-Text”: or the transmission of useful folk-knowledge through an easily memorized couplet-form. These, however (the majority of the couplets that comprise the Rede), do not really reflect any specific Wiccan or Witchcraft sensibility.
Upon examination of the smaller number that seem specifically Wiccan-oriented (such as the one cited above), Mathiesen and Theitic determine that someone else (probably Gwen Thompson), acting upon the inspiration of her grandmother’s folk-collection, created certain couplets intended to reflect a Wiccan viewpoint.
Lore-Text, and the types of rhyme-meters generally employed in such (as according to Mathiesen and Theitic) is a very interesting subject (to which I wish to return): however, what is intriguing at this point, is the research presented in this book that suggests that the first migrations of European settlers into the New World brought with them the Magickal customs of the Old: exactly as one would imagine they might, considering the degree to which Magick remained ingrained in Europe through at least the 1600s.
Mathiesen and Theitic begin Part 3 (p.33) by quoting John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1865 poem Snowbound, wherein he recalls the Oral Culture tradition of story-telling around a fire on a winter’s night. Things take an oddly Classical tone when Whittier brings up a “gray wizard’s conjuring-book,” seen by his mother as a child, as well as an uncle, “rich in lore of fields and brooks, of Nature’s unhoused lyceum, in moons and tides and weather wise, he read the clouds as prophecies, and foul or fair could well divine, by many an occult hint and sign, holding the cunning-warded keys to all the woodcraft mysteries”; “Wherein the scenes of Greece and Rome had all the commonplace of home, and little seemed at best the odds, ‘twixt Yankee peddlers and old gods.”
Trusting that their reader will have seized upon the mention of a “gray wizard’s conjuring-book,” encountered in rural New Hampshire in what must have been the late 1700s, the two authors describe (p.35) how Whittier explained in his foreword to the poem that the book belonged to one “Bantam the sorcerer,” a member of the “strange people who lived on the Pisquataqua and Cocheco,” and the book, a copy of the 1651 English edition of Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy. In another work, The Supernaturalism of New England (1847), Whittier elaborates upon this individual, describing him as a Quaker who was considered a “conjurer and skillful adept in the art of magic,” who acted as a neighborhood Cunning-Man “without price”; his book (in 1847) was “still in possession of the conjurer’s family.” The 1790 United States census lists this man as Ambrose Bantam, the head of a small family living in Somersworth, New Hampshire. (p. 36) Remarkably, Mathiesen and Theitic find that, in old New England, “such people were not particularly rare.”
Fascinating as it will be in a moment to discover why such people were not particularly rare in old New England: let us stop and dwell upon this “conjurer’s book” (a mid-seventeenth century edition of Agrippa), possessed by a Cunning-Man in the late 1700s, in the northernmost New England states. So far, at the Juggler, we have seen (1) a Colonial Era grimoire, known as the “Joshua Gordon Witchcraft Book,” held at the University of South Carolina, and (2) a German-language “Cure-Book”, carried into Appalachia by a German immigrant in 1790. And here we have a copy of Agrippa being put to operative use by a Cunning-Man or local Wizard, in rural New Hampshire, also in the late 1700s. It does indeed begin to look as if Magick-Use played some part in the early settlement of America (maybe not a huge part, as obviously Magick-Using America has to square with the America of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams: still, the Revolution is “only” eighty years after they literally tried Witches at Salem).
In “Magic and the Occult Sciences in Old New England” in The Rede of the Wiccae (p. 36), we learn of Cunning-Women and Men, Fortune-tellers and Palmists, Scryers or “Glass-Lookers,” Dowsers or “Rods-Men,” “venders of charms and other small magics,” and even the occasional astrologer, alchemist, or perhaps even a conjurer of Spirits. As the authors observe, such folks will not be found among “the urban elite of New England,” preferring instead the privacy and low profile of relatively isolated rural areas- and seaports, as sailors have always been an especially superstitious lot, eager to improve their chances on the hazardous seas with charms and spells. They point to George Lyman Kittredge, who (in 1928, in his fantastic book- and one of my personal favorites- Witchcraft in Old and New England) “recognized a great continuity” between England and early America in such Magickal practices- “as was only to be expected.” Since England is so heavily dominated by Magickal thought during the 1500s and 1600s- both Queen Elizabeth, in the late 1500s, and King James, in the early 1600s, believed in the Powers of Witchcraft and Magicke, as did innumerable of their subjects- “by chance alone,” a proportion of Magickal-Practicing folks will make the migration into the New World.
The reason that this is not more generally known, is that scholars have only recently become aware of these facts. Mathiesen and Theitic observe that it has been only in the last 15 years or so that research has been undertaken into such subjects; they refer to Richard Godbeer (The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England, Cambridge University Press, 1992), who has reviewed much of the evidence of 17th century New England Magick-Use, finding it to resemble 17th century English Magickal practice (as one would expect). They refer also to the work of Peter Benes, who identifies 90 such individuals in New England between 1644 and 1850, suspecting that he has only scratched the surface.
Other fascinating research is alluded to, involving early Mormonism and follow-up on “old hints” that the Smith family (of the Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Jr.) had been “deeply involved with a subculture of magic that had flourished in New England and upstate New York during the 1700s and the early 1800s.” A “persistence of occult and hermetic teachings as well as alchemy and ceremonial magic” was found throughout “the same regions during the same centuries,” with specific evidence “far more numerous and varied than anyone had ever suspected”- including general stores that advertised books on the occult sciences for sale, both current and antiquarian, as well as traveling Spirit-Conjurers who maintained sideline interests in alchemy and perhaps even counterfeiting. Mathiesen and Theitic even point out a photograph published by D. Michael Quinn, of a curious, black-handled, double-bladed, hand-forged knife possessed by Joseph Smith, Sr., engraved with sigils (as were several other artifacts owned by the Smiths) copied from Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy and Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft (both of which were re-printed in England during the mid-1600s).
Add to this the 1950s documentation of one of Edgar Allen Poe’s West Point military instructors, who wrote “extensively” on alchemy and who owned a manuscript copy of the medieval grimoire the Lemegeton, said to date from 1512- and, as the authors of The Rede of the Wiccae conclude (in this kind of digression from their main topic, which is Gwen Thompson’s Rede): “The myth of a Puritan New England, where occultism and magic were rare, and quickly stamped out whenever they appeared, is no more than a myth. The reality was very different indeed.”
I believe that I predicted, a year ago, when Helen Mirren’s film of The Tempest came out (reinterpreting Prospero the Magician as a female), that this would become a hot trend in Shakespearean circles (especially as it is unusual, 400 years later, to come upon a truly revolutionary reinterpretation of a part, and as it discovers- yea, like unto the New World- a fascinating new Gender-Dimension to a Major Shakespeare Play, as well as suddenly making available to accomplished actresses of a certain age a Major Shakespearean Role, hitherto played exclusively by men). Apparently so, as today’s “Arts, Briefly,” in the New York Times, compiled by Adam W. Kepler (Mon., Jan. 16, 2012, p. C2) announces that Olympia Dukakis will play [Prospera] this summer, at Shakespeare & Co, in Lenox, Mass. In another interesting casting move, her own brother, Apollo Dukakis, will play Prospera’s usurping brother (it’s rare to have actual siblings in the roles). Considering that Vanessa Redgrave started this actress-trend by first playing The Wizard of Shakespeare’s canon in 2000, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, in London- she performed it as a man, but still- this brings to 3 the number of notable actresses to play the part. (And I so hope that someone films the Divine Ms. Redgrave in the role, if only in a filmed stage-version such as Christopher Plummer’s.) All this means, for Pagans: we see a reinvigorated interest in the one Shakespearean character to represent the Magickal Traditions of Elizabethan England- down to the Casting of an Elizabethan Magick-Circle.
All was not Love and Light for the Native American Two-Spirit, according to Jim Elledge, in his anthology Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Myths: From the Arapaho to the Zuni (Peter Lang Publishing, 2002). Native Americans could be as conflicted as we over Queer People, and a distressing number of stories reflect violence against LGBT Two-Spirits. For instance, in the Assiniboine story “Lesbian Love” (1909), a man lived with his wife and sister: “The woman wished to have intercourse with the girl.” “While her husband was hunting, she eloped with her sister-in-law.” Finding the two of them gone when he returned, the man went to look for them. He found them in a camp, his sister nursing their child. Having been born of an “unnatural ” love, the child had no bones in its body, and was all floppy and continually crying. The man approached the two women, and demanded to know, “Which of you has seduced the other?”
His sister cried that, “Your wife persuaded me to elope with her.” The man killed the abominable child and told the women to accompany him home. After a distance, he bade his sister to go ahead. He pulled out his knife and killed his “wicked wife.” He severed her limbs from her body, and although the “slain woman had many relatives, no one cared to avenge her death.”
The idea that grotesque children resulted from Queer Love was widespread. In the 1907 Fox story of “Two Maidens Who Played the Harlot With Each Other” (the title alone tells you all that you need to know about this tale): “Once a long time ago,” there were two young men who were interested in two young women. But these two women were so aloof, they would not even speak to the two young men, who began to suspect “something was wrong with them.” One day, when the women went to gather bark from the trees, the two men stole after them, creeping out of hiding to spy upon them. “When they drew nigh, behold, the maidens were then in the act of taking off their clothes! The first to disrobe flung herself down on the ground and lay there. ‘Pray, what are these (girls) going to do?’ was the feeling in the hearts of (the youths). And to their amazement, the girls began to lie with each other.”
As shocked an exposure to Same-Sex love as one might hope ever to encounter. The two young men ran up to the two young women; the one who had been lying on top fell back- her “clitoris was standing out and had a queer shape, it was like a turtle’s penis.” The maids pleaded with the youths not to tell on them, explaining that they did not act under their own will; “we have done it under the influence of some unknown being.”
In time, one of the young ladies came with child, which was (“strange to relate”) born like a “soft-shell turtle”- another example of the Native American belief that unnatural babies came from “unnatural” unions.
Then there is the 1906 Pawnee tale of “The Hermaphrodite.” Once there lived in a village a young man who, despite being a “fine-looking” youth, “never cared anything for women.” One night, the youth dreamed of Spider-Woman, “sitting with her legs spread out and a spring of water was coming out from between her legs.” She told the young man that she was turning him into a woman. The youth felt sick, and had medicine-men come to him. One confirmed that Spider-Woman was turning him into a woman, and told the young man’s family that they would have to gather the green moss from the bottom of a stream, for the medicine-man to cure him. Alas, no moss was to be found, so it was decided that Spider-Woman did not want the youth cured. The young man was so ashamed, “he committed suicide rather than be half woman and half man.”
An extreme form of anti-Gay bullying might be seen in the Western Mono story of “The Coyote Called ‘Another One’.” (1942) There were three coyotes, and “another one,” who wished “that he might be a woman, for he wanted to cohabit with one” of the coyote brothers. That night, “Another One” changed himself into a woman, and approached the three coyotes. They recognized him as “Another One,” and skinned him alive. While they laughed themselves sick at the sight of him, “Another One cried at every twig that touched him, for being nothing but raw flesh, he was bleeding all over.”
Let us not forget how “Falcon Captures the Cannibal Berdache” (Yokut, 1940): “Berdache [a somewhat derogatory word denoting a debased 'Two-Spirit'] was a cannibal. He went around tying men up and cooking them.” Talk about your rabidly anti-Berdache stereotyping: this is a Berdache John Wayne Gacy, combined with a Berdache Jeffrey Dahmer.
However, few stories, are equal to the Sioux tale of “The Sioux Woman Who Acted Like a Man.” Powerful in its brevity and concision, I offer it (quoted verbatim) beyond the jump, as an example of how ideas of honor and propriety may differ from culture to culture.
One of the reasons we face our own darkness is to heal. Unpleasant though it is, we cannot heal our physical or emotional wounds without acknowledging that they exist. If one has cancer, looking away and pretending that lump in their breast is harmless will not heal the problem. Marriage counselors dig into the heart of a couple’s emotional troubles, often uncovering long-hidden sources of pain that both partners would prefer to ignore. They treat the root rather than the symptoms so that the marriage can be mended. Shamanic practitioners guide you down to meet your shadow, helping you heal the sources of your own problems.
In 1998, Laramie, Wyoming was in desperate need of healing. The brutal torture and murder of 21-year old Matthew Shepard, motivated by homophobia, had cast the entire town into a pit of darkness. Where locals would once have said that their town was full of good people who “live and let live,” that they “don’t grow children like that,” they now had incontrovertible evidence that they were wrong and that something malignant was living in their town.
Into this fragile town 
came a big city writing team led by Moises Kaufman. The team interviewed just about everyone in Laramie, from Shepard’s close friends to the local Baptist minister. Their story became The Laramie Project, currently running at Mysterium Theater.
Very few plays are as grippingly honest as Laramie. The idea was to tell the story of the town, not the story of Matthew Shepard. The result is documentary-like. It does not re-enact the events. It presents the interviews with the residents and the commentary of the writers, woven together to tell a heart-wrenching story of destruction, soul searching, and resurrection.
The weaving is very important to the pacing and power of the play as the actors must switch effortlessly from character to character as the show moves forward. Director Stephen John accomplishes this masterfully, getting the most out of his brilliant cast while maintaining the urgency and mood throughout.
This play is extremely demanding on the performers. Each one spends the majority of the time onstage, exiting only for lightning-fast costume changes. Each one plays multiple roles, switching in an eye blink from one to the next. Each one must hold up the flow and channel the overwhelming river of emotion that gushes through the piece. John has assembled a cast who is adept at just that.
It is such an ensemble piece that it almost seems wrong to mention individual actors. Jeff Lowe is excellent in each of his roles, from Doc the oddly philosophical limousine driver to Russell Henderson, one of the murderers, and even the disgusting Fred Phelps. Gregory Cesena shines as a local theater student, but plays all of his roles with conviction.
Theodore Lance does a wonderful job, particularly as the young man who found Shepard tied to the fence. He also gives appropriate grace to the part of the local Catholic priest. Tiffany Berg is very memorable, giving especially poignant notes as Reggie, the officer who responded to the emergency. Probably the single most challenged member of the community, Berg’s portrayal showcases Reggie’s incredible kindness in a situation in which most of us would have lashed out in anger.
Jessica S. Runde’s portrayal of Reggie’s sassy mother is close to perfection and she excels in her other roles as well. Joe Parrish handles his roles with incredible sensitivity. The cast is rounded out by Jill Cary Martin and Meghan McCarthy, both of whom are riveting and honest in their roles.
In the end, the Laramie Project turned out to be just as transformative for the authors as it was for the town. They healed each other. The writers guided the locals through their pain, helped them face their shadow in a safe and supportive way, and brought them back to a place of healing. Although they were resistant at first, the residents learned to trust these srangers, learned new things about themselves, and came to resolutions that helped the city move on with dignity.
Kaufman and his fellow project members also were healed. They begin by making fun of the rural town, mocking the less-than-perfect grammar of the state’s welcome sign, and proudly announcing to a waitress that they are just passing through. However, after many trips to Laramie and hundreds of interviews, they learn to love the place. They see their own shadows while talking to these simple, honest people. They confront and change their own assumptions. They are redeemed every bit as much as the town is.
Although Laramie centers around one specific incident and could easily become dated, the story is universal. It is a rarity of theater: a play about real, living people attacking a real problem and finding wholeness by the end. Its power is undeniable, and even sitting in the audience can be a healing experience.
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