
Across the run from me and back against the mountain is a dark wood cabin which maybe 50 years ago was owned by a Doctor and his wife. Then the property changed hands until DP and his gf bought it. They used to come up on their Harleys every couple months and stay over to get away from work in the suburbs south of here. After about 8 years they came less and less. They did recently have a green tin roof installed, which is nice. The rich man who owns almost the entire end of this mountain wanted to buy it from DP, but he would not sell. Finally one spring night, after a long hiatus in them coming up, i had an hour long talk with him and he checked with his gf and they decided to sell, as is. I took a big financial hit and bought the property adjourning mine with that black cabin on it.

The place was so overgrown one could barely get into any doors as the trees and shrubs had encased the place. The entire yard was overgrown with white pine saplings from the many big old white pines back there. I hacked my way in and had to sacrifice lots of saplings, many of which i replanted, and finally got to work. It was and is good work as i need to keep busy to distract myself from being ill and bored now that i am prematurely retired.
I had an idea back then that this cabin would become the Coven of the Catta’s Covenstead since the one up north is pretty much dismantled. I cleaned and cleaned and tossed and tossed and burned and burned, even stuff i should have not environmentally burned, but i cleaned all that up recently. When i started the Blau Stern Schwarz Schlonge blog it was meant to be the start of an offshoot of the Coven of the Catta, including many more western and eastern magickal systems. You can read about that at this blog and at the BSSS blog. But it was not to be. Coveners due to circumstances beyond their control, and because of age, came less and less and the rituals became just us individual witches doing our rituals in our own homes. One has to adjust to one’s energies and one’s life situation.

I kept at work fixing it up anyway, eventually it becoming a kinda “man cave” away from technology (except for my smart phone) and i hired some guys to do some work but only about 80% of what needs done is done and i cannot do the rest myself, but i will. I had painted the old cracked concrete floor bright red as a base for the COC circles i was going to paint, but i did not feel the need to paint those circles since who was going to come here for ritual? But it still looked good against the white walls and brown wood cabinets. Now this cabin is in the swamp land and the water pressure under the concrete over decades took its toll. In the middle of the floor the concrete had burned up and cracked because the demon under the house wanted out, i mean the Naga of the valley wanted in, i mean the hydrostatic pressure of the water cracked the floor, LOL, gotcha.

And as summer and autumn came and went i did a lot of clearing outside, made a fire pit, made an outside aniconic altar of stones in the parts of an old heavy concrete bird bath i found in the woods, and just enjoyed the nightly adventure of traveling there and back to my main house in the dark with flashlight and firearm because of the cougar and two black panthers i had seen in the same time frame. Hmmm, HPT of the Coven of the Catta aka Cat attracts the rare local panthers…..

The spirits took notice of me immediately, first because of the minor destruction i was making, but also because they knew i honoured them and was building altars and doing fire pujas and water offerings and offerings of coins and stones to the land to bring it back to the Sacred Place it once was, but in reality always was. I just stopped the previous owners bad environmental practices, like throwing all their glass trash on a pile, from which i harvested many a fine old blue, green and amber glass piece.

The AmerIndians started coming down, armed with bow and arrow, club and hatchet, but they soon became less leery and benignly aggressive. One week in a few days i realized All the animal spirits at the Hex Haus wanted to get away from the road, which was most of their demises, and move back to the black cabin far away from a road, up against the mountain, with plenty of food and water. So, i dragged All the animal bones etc from the HH to the BC.
I started setting up a large altar which has taken almost 4 months to get right for them and for me.

Full altar on red dyed calf skin.

Native American Spirits (I originally had Injun spirits but was corrected on that term which is a pejorative amongst The People and will explain in a footnote the etymology of the word Injun).

Side view of the Altar

Lots of deer antlers a guy gave me in exchange for a walking stick with a tine upon it, in the works.

Austrian crystal skull vodka decanter, wand and blade, goat skull, my grandpa’s arrowhead collection and two center pieces from the graveyard archeology dig up at Wapwallopen, gifted from the Santee Memorial Library by Lady PAN.

Sage incense and turtle shells.

The central bone, wood, ceramic throwing wood table for skrying, with fox penis bones, a native clay skull pipe, malachite skull, twisted copper, copper ball, deer ribs and old ceramic insulators from the cabin.
Well now that all the animal and AmerIndian spirits had come on over to the mountain side of the run, now the animal deities and lwa from my main house and temples wanted to come over ! So, thus came about this altar of the goat headed one, the jackal headed one, the Ram headed one (yes, that an old hood ornament off a Dodge Ram) and Pan himself. I would not call this a Satanicke altar since there is no high religious philosophy over here, just pure Shamanism, and these gods and goddess Are shamanic.


And finally some selfies, one in the lodge showing the red floor and one over at the Hex Haus wit me in a mirror bundled against the cold.


So, the black cabin has become the Red Lodge of the BSSSH, even though it is a Hexenzirkel / Coven of one, moi…..
Note – All photographs and text Copyright GLHoke 2015
Etymological Footnote on the term “Injun” – As you know when Columbus and other European explorers ran their boats into the Americas they thought they were in India, thus they called the natives Indians, a mistaken term which was misapplied for a few decades until they figured it out that it was not so. For a few hundred years the Native Americans were referred to as “Indians” by the English and as “Injuns” by the French who made much more early contact with the native tribes in northern North America than the English who landed in eastern NA and the Spanish who landed in southeastern NA. It was just the way the French spoke, and to be honest i think they had a more equal relationship with the Native Americans than the rest, wanting to just trade furs, not conquer for gold or convert to Christianity. I don’t think it was until the final “Great Migration” of blancs across the continent that the word “Indian” changed to mean ” those dirty primitive stubborn animals (early theologians considered them as less than human) who fight for their land against us superior Caucasian races from Europe under the banner of GOD, etc etc”. So I know the names Indian and Injun as from the same period 400-500 years ago, but nowadays it is not pc as explained to me by a Native American friend and HPS in the COC, so, i will not use that term again because it is offensive to some or many.
Addendum 11 January 2015 – I apologize to whomever is reading this, and judging by the lack of commentary i assume no one (or this is just too weird for people to comment upon) for interjecting my own personal Gnosis into the Coven’s blog, even though i am the writer of this blog. And BTW i have deleted some photos and inserted some others from today. In the future i will confine such ramblings to my BSSS blog. The COC lineage continues onwards in those who are third degrees within it, though i may have grown too weary to be much more than a teacher and adviser on the sidelines. This is not a large Coven, but it is an old one, and what is important is Quality, not quantity of Initiates, and i can tell you there are some wonderful wise witches in this Coven. It is, and is going to be, one long cold lonely winter. This is the time of year when we all withdraw and contemplate and regroup both physically, psychologically and spiritually. May the Goddess carry us with her as she sleeps in the cave of winter, and may she hold our hand as she slowly comes out of that cave at Blessed Candlemas. So Mote It Be and Blessed Be to you all.
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