Cultus
Sabbati
Provenance,
Dream and Magistry
Found
@ http://www.xoanon.co.uk
The Sabbatic Craft is a name for a Nameless Faith. It is a term
used to describe an ongoing tradition of sorcerous wisdom, an
initiatory path proceeding from both immediate vision and
historical succession. In a historical sense, the Sabbatic Craft is
usefully set against the background of both rural British
folk-magic, the so-called Cunning-craft, and the learned practices
of European high ritual magic. The medieval and early modern
magical observances of cunning-men and wise women were broad and
varied in form, but invariably rooted in pragmatic deeds of
healing, love-magic, wortcunning, curing and cursing. Where the
practices of cunning-folk overlapped with those of the high ritual
magic traditions, the calling of angels, the apparatus of
astrology, and Latin incantations were integrated into the magic of
the everyday. Notably, these rituals, spells and formulae employed
the idiom of the predominant religious culture, namely
Christianity, often melding folk religiosity in a seamless blend
unique to each individual practitioner. Although ritual magicians
and cunning-folk alike used Christian formulae in their praxes, one
could argue that this religious language was naturally the timely
idiom of narration for magical rites. However, beneath the shifting
of language and culture, the immemorial methodologies and tools of
magical ritual - the spirit-evocation, ritual circle, wand, knife,
sigil, cord, knot, charm, starry aspectation, flora and fauna,
invocation, exorcism and so forth - remain more or less
constant.
An important dimension of magical and folk religiosity was the
oneiric or dream realm. Peripheral areas of European folklore
retain vestigial myths which relate the oneiric location of
witch-meetings, fairie convocations, and the nocturnal flight of
the Wild Hunt. Merging with Christian theological conceptions the
background of folk belief assisted in the formation of the
stereotypical witch ritual we know as 'The Witches' Sabbath'. From
an esoteric perspective it is considered that the Sabbath is the
astral or dream convocation of magical ritualists' souls, animal
selves, and a vast array of spirits, faeries and otherworldly
beings. It is considered that the true location of the Sabbath is
at the Crossroads of waking, sleeping and mundane dreaming, that
is, in the state of True Dreaming - the realm in which the Lady
Moon, the nocturnal sun, illumines a world beyond the reach of the
uninitiated.
The teachings of the cunning-folk have come and gone for the most
part from modern European culture, but here and there fragments of
lore have been passed down to the present-day. In instances where
the custodians of lore and ritual have been ardent students of the
magical artes, the fragments have coalesced to establish streams of
self-conscious tradition. Where two or more of these streams
conjoin a river is born, and it is from such a confluence that the
present-day Cultus of the so-called 'Sabbatic Craft Tradition'
emerges.
Cultus Sabbati is a body of magical initiates who practise both
solitary and collective rituals, whose lineal tradition/s descend,
in both oral and textual forms, from surviving 19th century
cunning-folk and ritual magic practice. It is not claimed that we
practise the very same rites, spells and so forth of the 16/17th
century cunning-folk, for it is the very nature of these things to
change their form and manner. One must remember that rituals are
ensouled with practise, that spirits as well as men and women pass
on and teach the Arte Magical. As the generations pass, some lore
remains constant, some does not - it changes, evolves and adapts
according to time, need, and insight. In the last century the
streams of custom and oral tradition have flourished in small
circles of ritual observance, and in being passed from generation
to generation, the simple teachings of rural magicians have grown,
coalescing with their longevity to establish traditions with rites
of initiation and formal induction. Readers here are well-advised
that the Cultus Sabbati and allied initiates of the tradition
maintain a closed circle and according to long-standing custom,
those who ask for entry are refused. Initiation is by invitation
only. Where the spirits so will it, a path shall be found.
The circle of the Cultus Sabbati holds dear the spells and customs
which generations past have bequeathed. The use of psalms, biblical
divination, oral customs of ritual praxis have remained with us,
merging amidst a greater body of lore, some old, some new - yet all
constant in vivification from the timeless wellspring of dream. For
as time passes, the circle hearkens to the spirits patron to its
heritage, and through dream and spirit-mediumship the circle
fleshes itself and moves forward. The authenticity of our work does
not rest in antiquity, it is active through present and on-going
vision.
Traditional Sabbatic Craft often employs demonological names and
imagery as part of a cipher to convey a gnosis of Luciferian
self-liberation. Similarly, and as aforesaid, rituals may also
utilise Christian forms and terms, both as part of long-standing
custom and as part of a sorcerous intent to willfully re-orientate
culturally accumulated 'belief' to magical purposes. The positive
and negative aspects of this arcanum are dealt with in Azoetia
(Xoanon: 1992, 2002) under the name 'The Iconostasis of Blasphemy'
and readers are directed there for more detailed understanding of
this matter.
One must be wise to discern the use of veil upon veil: the use of
demonological terms should not be misconstrued as advocacy for
vulgar 'satanism', 'black magic' or such like; neither should our
positive use of Judaeo-Christian terms imply religious adherence in
any conventional sense. The Sabbatic Craft uses sorcerous teachings
of a specialised gnostic character, an outer part of which combines
a coded use of both Luciferic and Christo-pagan terms. One must be
careful to interpret this; it is a test! Few pass beyond it.
A defining feature of the Cultus is its specialised use of the
mythos of the medieval and early modern European Witches' Sabbath
as the basis and idiom for its rituals and practices. This is not
simply an indwelling of the past or human contrivance, but rather a
spirit-taught reification of the Sabbath's potent oneiric reality
in an ongoing tradition of magical practice. The whole complex of
imagery that is the Witches' Sabbath is esoterically understood as
the atemporal reality of our ritual. When perceived anew through
praxis, dream and spirit-mediumship, the myriad motifs of the
Sabbath yield new wisdom and serve as wholly apposite cyphers for
the teachings of oneiric flight, atavistic transformation,
wortcunning, divination, ritualisation, dual observance,
spirit-worship, and so forth. Sabbatic symbology has thus been
utilised to encode and narrate the teachings accumulated and still
developing in our tradition.
Dreaming and the mutual translation of dreamt ritual and
ritual-as-dreamt form the basic rationale and context for our work.
The active discourse between initiates and our spirit-patrons
inspires and motivates this dreaming. This is demonstrably manifest
in the magical artistry of individual initiates, whether through
text, ritual performance, song, tapestry, craftsmanship, or image.
Where the spark of vision leaps, where inspiration is
communicated..... the path strays anew. So mote it be!
Alogos, Cultus Sabbati
....................................................................................................................
Where
the Old Serpent and Man meet in murder and marriage, the
spiritualisation of matter, the materialisation of spirit; the Pole
of Heaven becomes the Crown of the World.
Both in one: Xoanon
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