Mother, Queen, Harlot

"[A theme of sacrifice can] be found in folk traditions relating to the scarecrow as the spirit of the harvest or corn king. In several English counties the scarecrow was known as a mawkin, an old dialect name for a ghost or ghoul. In Yorkshire, Warwickshire and Devon it was called a mummet or mommet meaning a spirit that walks at night. In Old Cornish a bucca can refer to a scarecrow, ghost or goblin and in northern England and Scotland it was known as a tatty-bogle. Tatty means potato and bogle is derived from bogey meaning any evil spirit or malicious faery, hence the bogeyman used to scare naughty children.

In Shakespeare's play The Merry Wives of Windsor the scarecrow is called a Jackalent or Jack of Lent. This refers to the old and rather curious custom of pelting any stranger visiting the area with sticks and stones. By the 19th century a puppet or scarecrow had replaced a human victim. It was beaten with sticks in a folk ritual to increase the fertility of the fields and ensure there was a good harvest. Originally the mawkin was the name for a bundle of rags on a stick used to clean out bakery ovens. After use it was placed in the fields to symbolically promote the growth of the grain used to bake the bread. When it was windy the rags fluttered in the breeze and were seen to scare off crows and other birds attacking the new crops.

Sometimes in the old days a man desperate for any work was hired to be a human scarecrow and stand all day in the field warding off the birds. Some folklorists trace this custom and indeed the origin of the scarecrow back to human sacrifices in pagan times to protect the crops and livestock from disease and bring a fertile harvest. In this respect it could be a more socially acceptable and civilised substitute for the divine king ritually murdered so his blood fertilised the land.

Dr Jacqueline Simpson of the Folklore Society believes the scarecrow may have originated in the ugly or aggressive effigies once placed in the fields to drive away evil spirits. She has linked them to the puppets in European folk customs that were destroyed in spring fertility rites as symbolic representations of winter and death. After the coming of Christianity, farmers in Brittany in northern France placed a life-sized wooden image of the crucified Jesus in the fields instead of these puppets, as they believed it would produce a good harvest.

Everywhere in folklore there is evidence of the association of scarecrows with the supernatural, ghosts and the spirits of the dead. In North America there was a folk belief that scarecrows came alive on the night of Hallowe'en (October 31st) and roamed the countryside. The popular American author Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a short story based on this belief, which was common knowledge in his home village of Salem, famous for its witch-trials. In the story, which is similar to the Italian fairy tale of Pinocchio, an old witch called Mother Rigby made a scarecrow from a broomstick and used a spell and a tune played on a pipe to bring it alive."

Liber Nox:

A Traditional Witch's Gramarye

Chapter 9: 'Michaelmas'

by Michael Howard

Zillow house listings

if you blow out candle you BLOW AWAY the MAGIC and ur spell goes pllphfphphphhhhhhbbb into the wind and WON'T WORK

Magic circles were originally cast with flour. From Wikipedia: Zisurrû, meaning “magic circle drawn with flour was an ancient Mesopotamian means of delineating, purifying and protecting from evil by the enclosing of a ritual space in a circle of flour. The choice of flour was crucial to the purpose of the ritual, with šemuš-flour reserved (níĝ-gig) for repelling ghosts, wheat-flour for rituals invoking personal gods and šenuḫa-barley to encircle beds, presumably to counter disease-carrying demons.

When you sing a hymn, a chant, a dua, a line from the bible, or if yu recite a Dharani, a Mantra, a scripture - know that it's not just you. There are all the leaves on the trees, all the stones, all the twigs. There are the insects on the floor, the worms, the caverns. There are the spirits of the air, the devas, the asuras, the spirits of the wandering dead. There are the organisms of your body, that reside on your skin and in your gut.

There are the spirits of trees, the spirits of the animals. Whenever you recite, know that you are praying in front of thousands upon thousands of powers and forces. They begin to sing, and they impact thousands of powers and forces. The seeds for awakening are placed in them.

Goldfish breeds and other aquarium fishes, their care and propagation, 1908

Lady Day

mystical rose (pray for us) tower of david (pray for us) tower of ivory (pray for us) house of gold (pray for us) ark of the covenant (pray for us) gate of heaven (pray for us) morning star (pray for us) – litany of loreto

Some of my favorite Marian items out for Lady Day [Annunciation].

see also: #annunciation, #mary

"The forest did not scare her; rather, she wanted to be like it: ageless and impervious, cruel and beautiful. Death could not touch it."

-Emily Lloyd-Jones, The Bone Houses