Magic and Green Wizardry Pt 2

So I am trying to to picture today what Green Wizard magic would look like. I have been listening to some of JMG's more esoteric podcasts, picking through the Druidry handbook again, reading stuff that influenced him, and waiting for some of his magical books to come in.

Opinions, anyone?

Well, I threw the question out here two weeks ago and apparently gave myself permission to start digging for answers (I haven't done anything magical in a very long time). I dug out my old, mostly blank book of shadows and some of my favorite Pagan books and started jotting notes to myself. Just winging it, free style...

What would Green Wizard Magic look like?

1) Earth Path in Druidry

2) Wheel of the Year

3) Astrology/astronomy, sacred geometry

4) Ley lines, terrestrial magnetic forces, orgone

5) Plant energy

6) Animal energy

7) Great cycles in time and nature

8) Lore: songs, rituals, stories, maxims, jokes

9) Gods, avatars, land spirits, icons, heroes, tricksters, animal people, plant people

10) Sacred places, holy places.

11) Divination

12) Healing

And I scribbled: land based, intimate, particular, from micro to macro, from one's own patch to neighborhood to community..

Also: Seasonal, Sun & Moon, Wheel of the Year, seed time & harvest, active and fallow

Experimental and experiential

Now it's becoming pretty clear where JMG is heading., and it's a departure from modern Paganism--and from the groves of Druidry! I have Secrets of the Temple ordered from inter-library loan. Most of the Pagans I know get the cold pricklies if you mention an organization with, like, a permanent structure--like a temple. The Freemasons obviously don't freak out. So at this point I can't say which way Green Wizardry will go. The hedge witch or the whole rites of the temple.

I've been listening to JMG podcasts for several weeks and I've been gathering up books that he has mentioned as source material in his development. I've had a copy of The View over Atlantis by John Mitchell for almost forty years and just discovered that I haven't actually read it! I picked up JMG's Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy today. I thumbed through it and see he references Graham Hancock's Finger Prints of the Gods--I've got that! And at the moment I'm grounded--more or less--in Minoan history and the architecture of Ancient Egyptian temples. And I expect I will have to start a blog of my own just to sort out everything running around in my head.

Now it's becoming pretty clear where JMG is heading., and it's a departure from modern Paganism--and from the groves of Druidry!

To me, your list reads like the bookshelf of most modern Pagans and Druids I know. Then again, it sounds like we might know different sorts of Pagans. Most of the Pagan groups I know personally, and all of them with more than two dozen members, are actively saving up money to purchase land and erect a permanent temple. The only exception to that is AODA.

I generally only hang out with overtly Polytheistic groups though (again, excluding AODA), so maybe there's something there.

Still, you might want to check out some of the more recent interest in local sorcery.
http://www.strategicsorcery.net/all-sorcery-is-local-a-visit-with-black-...

Most of the pagans I've worked with wanted nothing to do with infrastructure. Christians had churches, Jews had temples or synagogues, Muslims had mosques. Pagans belonged outdoors! Pagans did not need no stinkin' non-profit status or paid clergy, Let's build a big fire in the back yard or go play in the park. Pagans who had survived a repressive religious up-bringing could get apoplectic at the thought of a "Pagan church." Locally we have Pagan leaders who are still in the broom closet, and would probably not be caught dead in a Pagan temple.

That being said, we actually do have a storefront temple/New Age store in town. And LOL! I won't say anything more about that because, even here she might have people reporting back to her. Nope, not gonna do it...

At any rate.JMG published Atlantis: Ancient Legacy, Hidden Prophecy in 2007 just before TAR took off. I listened to a podcast of him discussing the book; I also listened to a podcast of him discussing his book The Secret of the Temple: Earth Energies, Sacred Geometry, and the Lost Keys of Freemasonry. Judging from the new Ecosophia site, he thinks he's on to something old and very interesting. I'm familiar with some of his source material, and I have a lot of my own ideas about Atlantis, so I am anticpating a fun summer.

I'll take a pass on the Strategic Sorcery page, thanks. That was an interesting blog post, but I am not into correspondence courses.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you do the correspondence course, lol. It tends to get good reviews, and I've considered doing it after I finish the Dolmen Arch course, but my impression is that it's not exactly the kind of thing you're interested in.

I like Jason Miller in general, but in this case I was only recommending that particular blog post as an example of the locally focused sorcery thing becoming more popular recently--Jason Miller is about as well known as a Western Occultist on the internet can be. That post was fairly representative of how a lot of the local magic stuff people have been doing tends to work out in practice. Well, that post and this post.
http://www.strategicsorcery.net/witching-in-the-pines/

Most of the rest of his work isn't directly related to what you're talking about.

That makes sense about the kind of people. My home base is in ADF, which is just about the opposite of those things: We're a church that practices a religion involving rituals that are open to the public. We're working to get permanent temples and paid clergy as soon as we can, and there have been some promising starts already.

Let us know about the results of your summer fun!

Christopher Penczak"s book City Magick: Urban Rituals, Spells, and Shamanism is one of my favorite go-to books. He points out that great cities are built at power vortexs, drawing people and resources to them--often from great distances. They have "overlighting" devas or landspirits which give each city unique characteristics and organize the smaller land spirits in its districts and neighborhoods. I have not tried working with local devas and landspirits, but I am intensely aware of some of them. Maybe it's time to start.

The biggest thing for me is looking out over natural landscape, which, for me, like you, is Eastern mixed forest, and thinking that there are spirits out there that I haven't even connected with, that there's a whole spiritual land aura that the natives were intimately in tune with that the Europeans haven't even scratched the surface of. For me, it's one of reanimating the natural world, of becoming an animist and seeing the spirits/gods in the natural world.

David Trammel's picture

I agree that Green Wizard magic would have a distinctive "earth and nature" base to it.

BUT...

(and you knew there was a but in anything I post lol.)

I agree with Yucca Glauca, that Greer definately had in mind the Pixatrix when he proposed Green Wizardry. There is a wonderful quote about all the things a person should be able to do, which I can't find (big frown), which range from changing a diaper to planning a battle.

I don't think Green Wizardry neccessarily implies "hedge and hearth" magic. I think it also encompasses the more Courty aspects of a wizard, things that you would expect a person advising a King would know.

As much as Gandalf enjoyed a picnic at the Shire, he also carried a sword and knew how to use it.

Green Wizards I expect, once the Collapse is fully on us, and we are in the next Dark Age will show up across all walks of Life, and I expect even at times, confront each other, as they support their patron.

David Trammel's picture

(Second Thought on your question.)

I'm very much a person to beleive in entities that are slightly beyond our comprehension, but who interact with us. So I expect that Green Wizardry magic would be familiar with the concept of "Spirits of the Elements", Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and that a Green Wizard would know the ways to appease them and seek their help.

In my garden I have a "appeasement" to the Spirit of Water.

It was sold as a bird bath, but it has smooth slick metal sufaces no bird would walk on and no place a bird could perch except the edge. The center has a deeper spot. A bird taking a dip would have a hard time getting out.

I keep it filled as an appessment to the Spirit of Water, and put flowers to float on its surface, so She will bless my garden with plentiful and timely rainfall.

She's been a bit contrary this year, I planted my carrots right before two solid weeks of rain.

I need to put up a Tiki Torch for the Spirit of Fire and a handful of balloons tied to a Shepard's Hook soon for the Spirit of Air.

David Trammel's picture

(Third Thought)

Not long after I discovered Hawaian Shamanism I ran across Jamie Sams' "Medicine Cards".

It is a tarot like deck but one that the cards are of animal spirits.

https://www.amazon.com/Medicine-Cards-Discovery-Through-Animals/dp/03122...

Like the Spirits of the Elements I find it quite understandable that the characteristics and atributes of an entire species of animals, could manifest itself as a guiding spirit.

Eagle, Coyote, Bison and Bear.

The book and deck, cover 52 animal spirits, and gives you 9 blank card to add a animal spirit that speaks to you.

I introduced this book to a younger coworker who is very much a "seeker". He surprised me by assigning each animal spirit a week. This week, it is the week of the Butterfly, so consider the lessons of Transformation.

Sometimes it helps to lift your head up from gazing into that smart phone like its a God, and consider the world around you.

David Trammel's picture

And a good read. We don't have many crows around here, but they always know when I put out the frozen fat drippings in the winter

Oh yeah, one other thing that might be of interest is some of JMG's more recent work. He's been working on the idea that certain temple structures, in line with sacred geometry, can improve crop growth in the area they're located. He's published the results of some of his research into that idea in The Secret of the Temple. I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but he's been discussing it on a number of recent podcasts, and in a Galabes post.

I didn't mention that before because he's actually leaning towards the idea that the effect is not "magical," in nature, but that it might be a subtle physical effect, although he states throughout that it's the beginnings of a subject that needs a lot more research, including a lot of practical experimentation.

That depends on how you're expecting Green Wizard magic to be different from regular old magic. Most traditional magic would be very useful from a Green Wizarding perspective. The ability to make accurate predictions, improve crop growth, and obtain necessary resources that you don't have an easy way of getting are all very traditional uses of magic that can only be more useful in uncertain times, not to mention the benefits of obtaining a clear and balanced state of mind that is particularly important to the sort of magic JMG practices. None of that is specifically "Green-Wizard magic" any more than we do specifically "Green-Wizard knitting," though.

The Picatrix is, of course, the book that inspired the term Green Wizardry when JMG was translating it, but that was because the book encourages would-be wizards to know so many skills beyond the Renaissance astrological magic that the book is actually about.

Land healing rituals are the only thing I can think of that might count as specifically Green Wizard magic that you won't find in most traditional books of magic. You'll find this discussed in JMG's Druid Magic Handbook. Dana O'Driscoll (AODA Archdruid of Water) has done a lot of work with those sorts of techniques, and you can find a lot of writing about that in her blog.
https://druidgarden.wordpress.com/

After thinking on it for a couple days, I have to agree. There are corners of magic that are more "green" than others, like electional astrology (planting by the signs) and herbalism (medicinal and magical), but overall I am not really seeing anything green wizardly that would be something new. I haven't been doing much on the energy/electrical side of GW though.

One thing I have been giving a lot of thought is how the Wheel of the Year* I was taught (and applies to temperate zones) doesn't work well here in central Florida. It's tripped me up in my plant-growing efforts, and it makes the seasonal celebrations feel off-rhythm, so I am working on redoing it to fit my location and land better. It's a work in progress.

* The Wiccan Wheel of the Year/eight Sabbaths, which likely works well in England, and did work in northeast Indiana and mostly-worked in Tennessee.

I've lived in New England and Colorado and I was surprised to find the Wheel of the Year fit both environments rather well. Some years, I've even seen the first flowers bloom on the day of Imbolc and had my summer crops be ready to start harvesting on the day of Lughnasadh.