My Teacher, Lady Phoebe Athene Nimue, Would Have Been 94 Today

Today is the birthday of Lady PAN, and as the title says she would have been 94 had she lived this long instead of passing 5 December 2005, so this December she will be gone for 10 years. I loved that Lady, my Teacher of Witchcraft. I am going to try to paste into this post a short bio from a Word doc which is in the booklets I have written about the Coven of the Catta.

Lady Phoebe Athena Nimue
aka
Edna Jane Kishbaugh Williams

© 2009 Coven of the Catta / Gary Lee Hoke

Born: 13 April 1921 Berwick, Pennsylvania
Died: 5 December 2005 Berwick, Pennsylvania

Parents: Edgar and Mary Slusser Kishbaugh (deceased)
Brothers: Ethan and Ralph Kisbaugh (deceased)
Husband: Dale Williams Deceased 2/22/1998

Funeral: Wesley United Methodist Church, Nescopeck, Pa.
Burrial: Pine Grove Cemetery, Wanut Street, Berwick, Pa.

Soulmate: Dr. Frederick LaMotte Santee Deceased 4/11/1980
(See separate biography of Dr. Santee for more about his life)

She met Dr. Santee in 1956 and was his receptionist-secretary at the Santee Medical office and Santee Memorial Library in Wapwallopen, Pa. She wrote a column in the local newspaper called “The Witches Kettle”. She also wrote and edited a local publication entitled “The Cat’s Tale”. In 1967 she and Dr. Santee and others were initiated into the Witchcraft Lineage of the Coven of the Horsa by the late Sybil Leek from the New Forest area in England. Dr. Santee had previously been initiated into various magickal and Wiccan lineages from England, Germany, Italy, and France including the Golden Dawn, Rosicrucians, and the Illuminati. She has said that she remembers previous lives, one of which was as the wife of an Indian chief who lived along the Susquehanna many years ago.

At that point she (as Lady Phoebe Athena Nimue) and Dr. Santee (as Lord Merlin) then founded the Coven of the Catta in Wapwallopen which continued until Santee’s death on 4/11/1980. The Covenstead was originally in the basement of his house where he practiced medicine. Then next to his house he built a library which was stocked with over 20,000 books including tomes from the 1500s, books of the Greek and Roman classics, and an occult section. In the back of the bookhouse was a room used as the temple of the Coven of the Catta.

A year later in 1981 students from the Harrisburg area, following an ad in a national Wiccan paper, contacted and met Lady Phoebe and the two remaining witches of her coven. The bookhouse had been robbed and a fire set to cover the robbery, and the temple was piled full of the doctor’s stuff recovered from his house which had been sold. We cleaned all that up, repainted the three circles on the floor, and started learning from her and doing rituals with students from the local area and from the Harrisburg area. We would drive almost 100 miles 8 times or more a year to hold ritual and for me to copy her Books of Shadows. The Coven of the Catta continues to this day.

And here are some other pictures someone shared with me years ago from his Aunt who lived in Wapwallopen, but i do not know her name to attribute them to her, if she is even alive.

A Day in the Life of an Appalachian Witch 19-20 February 2015 – A Trip to Wapwallopen and some Weird Synchronocities with the Living and the Dead

After no sleep at 4am I spontaneously drove north to the Berwick / Nescopeck / Wapwallopen area. I stopped half way up that two hour trip and took an hour long cat nap in a parking lot of an abandoned business distribution center.

Unfortunately i was not able to meet with two of the High Priestesses in the Coven d/t their schedules. I did meet with an old coven member for awhile before she had her son, whom i had never met before, take her to a doctor’s appointment to have her new pacemaker checked out, something i did of course for 11 years. Her home health aid was there and Lady Persephone and I were able to talk Witchcraft openly in from of the aid and the son for a short time, then i moved on.

So i decided to visit Council Cup mountain again after a trip to Dr Santee’s grave. Its a weird angle backing into the driveway to the gate of the graveyard especially with two hills on the road and people driving 55mph there, so i drove past to find a turn around for a safer back in a pull out.

Well on a road i have never gone that far down before I saw a sign for a campground, so i drove down it to check it out in case it had a supply store with some local history booklets or whatever. There was no one there but a guy drove by who does maintenance there and contacted the campground owner who shortly arrived and let me in. Wow, did i find the “mother load” of information on the area. Not only did he know and doctor with ole Doc Santee, but he knew all his nurses and librarians. AND he was a collector of not only local AmerIndian artifacts but native artifacts from around the world. He graciously took me to his house which was right across the street from someone i knew in town mentioned above.

Yes i am being rather obscure here because i want to protect his privacy and the privacy of all involved because as mentioned in previous posts there are still plenty of “Santee tourists” up there who have broken into and stolen stuff from the old Bookhouse, which is getting a new roof and i assume mostly gutted and being turning into i do not know what. Santee’s house, from what the owner and his wife told me, has been mostly refurbished already. There were workers on the roof when i was there, rebuilding it in the single digit temperatures with a wind chill of in the minus signs amazingly. I missed the owner twice as when i drove by twice he was away getting more wood at the lumberyard. It is what it is.

So, this new friend and his wife as i said invited me into their house, let me rest, served me tea and food, let me wash up in their bathroom, etc. They trusted me as i had already at the campground told him i was the spiritual son of Santee and High Priest of the Coven of the Catta which does still exist. It turns out he wanted to buy the Santee property and turn it into a museum to Santee, but Bill the former cop got it first somehow.

Bottom line – and i am keeping this close to the cuff. I would estimate a collection of 30,000 pieces worth 3 million(?). Most is in his museum which is Heavy Secured so don’t even thing about it because he is ex special op and if you would step one millimeter within his door uninvited you would be dead in less than a few seconds.

So, i have met the most amazing friend, who does not want anything from me except the money for what i bought and have on hold, and i can trade Tibetan Buddhist artifacts for that since he has been to Tibet and climbed the 108 steps up to the Potala. Weather is sunny and above freezing Monday so will text him Sunday to confirm meeting up.

That’s my life.

Postscript – no answer to my emails or call so i guess that is not going to happen until later in the week when the temps are above freezing and there is no snow/sleet/freezing rain to deal with.

 

 

The Duties of a Witch High Priestess and High Priest for a Wiccan Rite of Passage even for someone you do not know, but who Is a Witch

i have been dwelling for days trying to write the words to this blog post, because there are so many profound angles and synchronicitys to it all. So i am just going to ramble on and tell it.

To supplement my meager SSD and pension incomes i am in the buy-sell-trade business and run it out of the back of my jeep. I dumpster dive, stop at places with lots of “junk” in the yard, meet a lot of interesting people that way, go to yard sales, go to store front buy-sell-trade stores, find stuff along the road, dig up stuff in old forgotten dumps, etc etc etc. I make a little extra money that way, but also find some treasures i cannot part with and make some Incredible deals. My specialties are old iron tools, antiques furniture, and religious iconography. It keeps me busy and distracted and gives me something to do. I have also found that the “common man/woman” usually has more integrity than many “witches” i have met over the decades, though there are a handful of wonderful, truth telling, incredibly beautiful and serious witches i know too. I am blessed by their friendship.

A couple months ago i stopped at an open garage in an alley and met TJ, and we almost immediately took a liking to each other. I picked his garage and cellar and he made some money, he being unemployed d/t breaking his arm and being let go of his job. He knows how to do electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc etc etc skills and he is my handyman now for jobs here and at the red lodge that i do not have the skill or strength to do.

The first time i met TJ something in his garage prompted me to admit to being a Witch and he said his sister Teala was a witch, and her sister, and his late godmother were also Witches, not book learned witches, but Real Witches, solitaries with BOSs and deeply into Nature. Teala was only 28 years old and very very ill with some mysterious illness and had been transferred to various specialty hospitals to figure out what was wrong with her. She grew weaker and eventually went into respiratory arrest and was soon brain dead. They decides wisely to pull her off the ventilator and expected her to pass soon, but it took about a day and a half, as these things often do. You know i have worked in medicine all my life, and in the emergency department, and critical care, and run ALS etc etc so i know the patterns. Now anyone who regularly reads this and the BSSS blog knows that i am a Witch who also practices Tibetan Buddhism and have empowerments into Chod and Powa (Wiki them) and the Rite of Passage in Witchcraft, and initiation into the Cult of Anubis, so i know how to work with the dying and dead (no, i am Not a necromancer nor do i evoke the dead). I also am being trained into PA Dutch German Powwow by my fellow COC HPT “Dutch Jeff” and i have learned to work with the Bible in this healing and working so have lots of old Bibles. Whilst picking his garage the first day i found a red Bible, not old, but well used, dog eared, with passages underlined and circled and pages bookmarked. I asked for it and he had to ask a relative it belonged to.

So one day i drove by and his garage was open and he was working on a vehicle replacing the engine. He said i could have the Bible. He handed it to me. Immediately he received a phone call that Teala had passed. He went into the corner and talked and cried on the phone. I respectfully stepped out of the garage to give his privacy whilst i cried too, holding that Bible. Now in Powwow one often just opens it to whatever page opens to skry a passage of relevance that G_d has for me today. When he was off the phone i opened the Bible on a table and it opened to the 23rd Psalm. Read it. I read it to me holding him and we both cried and i substituted her name into the passage. “Yea though i walk through the shadow of death, i shall fear no evil, and i shall dwell in the house of the (Goddess) forever.” We both cried and cried over a young woman whom i had never met. Then he had to walk up the alley to tell her mum that she had died. I left with that Bible after offering what i could to help him and her and their family.

Later my brother found the obituary in my mum’s newspaper, photographed it and emailed it to me. Her funeral was to be in about a week after her cremation at the local VFW instead of a church of course.

Edited for privacy

I arrived at the service and talked to her sister Sasha, also a Witch, and offered to do the Rite of Passage from my hand copied Book of Shadows which i copied from my teacher, Lady Phoebe Athene Nimue’s, BOS. She negotiated with relatives who all knew Teala was a witch though some were nominal Christians as i did not want to push my way in and offend anyone. They all said yes let that stranger (the only person i knew there was TJ) High Priest do the ritual a Witch has done when she passed over to the next world and reincarnation. I did not dress in a robe but was well dressed in what i call my black wedding and funeral suit. They had set up a table with her pictures as a shrine to remember her as she was, the pictures being below.

I did the opening blessing of salt and water and blessed myself, Teala who helped me by slowing ringing a bell the whole time, and the maybe 50 relatives there. The bar tender of the room rented at the VFW made me put my athame away because of course one cannot display a gun or knife in a bar in PA, so i used my index and middle finger in a mudra instead. I borrowed a salt shaker and water in a plastic cup. Witches make due. I did not have a black and astral colour candle, so used a black lighter and silver lighter. The ritual is only one page long and i read it out loud and i Immediately felt Teala’s spirit right there at the table shrine. I also felt Dr Santee and Anubis behind me.

Mission accomplished. I did my duty as an elder Witch High Priest and helped a Witch i never met, doing a ritual in front of mostly strangers.One last profound moment. After the ritual whilst having a beer a relative bought me i noticed a guy sitting along at the bar looking rather forlorn. I went over and talked with him and found out he was her boyfriend and he did not know many of the relative there too. He was nursing a rum and coke. I had already asked for some of the table centerpiece purple and white flowers for my shrine, and asked for a red flower to give him. He refused but i tucked it into his shirt. Later i saw him smelling that flower like it was his Teala and tears come to my eyes even now seeing that moment.

A Witch friend asked why i would publish this on the COC blog since it is not about the COC i assume, but it is, as this blog post in entitled – The Duties of a Witch High Priestess and High Priest for a Wiccan Rite of Passage even for someone you do not know, but who Is a Witch. 

Teala in a photo shoot by her sister Sasha

A shrine i set up in my Witch Temple with a Picture Sasha gave me.

This long cold winter many relatives of friends have passed on, or are circling the drain as we used to say in the ICU. We are all going to die some day, whether young or old, peacefully or in pain, ready or not. Like Carlos Castaneda said once, and i paraphrase, go through life aware that Death is always there on your left shoulder. Live one day, one hour at a time.

One thing i forgot. Because of the state of her body she could not donate organs, but did donate her lily white skin, so many many burn victims and skin cancer victims are benefiting. Thank you Teala

May the Goddess and God of our Faith Bless the woman and witch Teala on her journey to the Summerlands or wherever she wants to go before she is reincarnated into a country and family where our Faith is tolerated. So Mote It Be. SMSBFZ 3rd* HPT COC.

All photographs copyright GLHoke and Sasha 2015 except for the Tumblr image above, and Please, do Not try to use FB facial recognition to probe farther into this private affair!

The Red Lodge Covenstead of the Blau Stern Schwarz Schlange Hexenzirkel of HPT/Frater SMSBFZ

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.

1 January 2015 – Transcending and Hiving off from the Coven of the Catta

A quick 1 January 2015 post. I am hiving off, or rather transcending my coven lineage into the

Blau Stern Schwarz Schlange Hexenzirkel (in German)

Coven de la Colouve Noire (in French)

Blue Star Black Snake Coven (in English)

The Coven of he Catta will continue as long as Lady Alsace and Magister Shawnus are alive. We remain elders in the COC. The coven will continue in northern PA and eastern NC in the third degree High Priestesses we have initiated. I will continue to teach the Apprentices I now have. If asked to Priest a ritual in northern PA i will do so.

But i am starting a new branch of this coven, much more complex, much more inclusive of various eastern, western, gnostic, and shamanic  lineages, just like Dr Frederick LaMotte Santee aka Merlin did in his day collecting initiations from all over Europe, North Africa and America.

I realize this is a coven of one, just me in my UPG, but we shall see where it goes in 2015 and beyond….

 

Honi Soi qui Mal y Pense. Finis.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 20,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I’m Back Early from my Short Sabbatical as HPT of the CoC

Due to my burn out of trying to herd cats for 33 years i tried to take a Sabbatical recently from my role as Elder High Priest 3rd* of the Coven of the Catta.

I tried to line up some leader north and south, but to no avail. Both HPSs were too busy with life and survival and in their own virtual worlds, so no communication from them.

Elder Lady AIB has never wanted to lead a coven so she refused the responsibility, but at least she told me by telephone.

So i give up on trying to have a short Sabbatical. Obviously this group needs a strong organized leader who has the time to herd the cats of the Catta. Everyone else is justifiably to busy with legitimately urgent affairs in their lives. I on the other hand have plenty of time in between renovations to three houses and two acres of property which are winding down now, finally, as winter approaches.

Yule will be held in one of my inside or outside temples at 1400 hours Sunday 21 December New Moon. Let me know if any of you will be attending. I hope to have a part time job at the retail end of the s_x industry by then and may be in full time training but will let you know when i know. My boss lady knows i am a Witch and HPT and will most likely let me off that day. If no one shows up then Galatea will stand in as my HPS for the ritual. 

Blessed Be!

Shawnus Merlin Santee Belarion Ferrisstar ZAXON 3* Coven of the Catta

All Photographs Copyright GLHoke 2014

While I am on Sabbatical as HPT of the Coven of the Catta….

 

I have decided that while i am on Sabbatical as the oldest living male HPT of this coven, whether for a month or half a year or who knows how long, that Lady Ember Willow Hawk and Lady Alsace Isa Brie, 3rd* High Priestesses of the COC will lead and organize the rituals and activities of the Coven of the Catta. It made more sense to me to have people who live in the original area of the covenstead to take on these roles. Lady AIB does not have email and i will not give out her phone number, but you can contact Lady EWH at Spiritember@gmail.com or through her Witchvox page.

Of course if they ask me to HPT at a ritual i will do so, but they will do the rest. Like i said in a previous post i just need to stand back, regroup, get my head on straight and figure out what is most important to me right now.

I will also continue to teach my Apprentices and maybe even take on a few more, though my experience of some guys up north who wanted it and i gave it to them just like to text and email and not talk on the phone or visit (not talking about you CB), well those people went into the X-Apprentices file.

I will change some things here and more especially at Witchvox which seems to be the way most people find our coven, unless they watch some old episode of “The Haunted”.

I will also continue to write on this CoC blog but anyone in the coven who wants to write a guest post, like Apprentice Aren did earlier, you are welcome to do so.

Blessed Be!

Shawnus Merlin Santee Belarion Ferrisstar ZAXON 3*HPT COC

 

Guest Post by Apprentice Acolyte Frater Aren – Why the Coven of the Catta Makes our Evoking and Invoking Pentagrams Starting at the Spirit Point

Apprentice Acolyte Frater Aren 0* COC

I have been making my pentagrams for the four directions, evoking the Archangels therein, in a certain way for 33+ years. I know that in the G.’.D.’. and before that Freemasonry and after that Crowley they attributed certain elements to the points of the pentagram. It looked like, in their method, we in the Coven of the Catta, starting the pentagram at the top point then tracing clockwise to the bottom right etc,  were Evoking the element Fire, which made sense and which is appropriate for Witchcraft and working to connect with the Spirit through the elements to eventually make a Cone of Power to Heal people (the prime working of our Coven then, now and in the future).

My friend JJ and Apprentice Aren came up with this brilliant insight based on his having read 99% of every book on Witchcraft since he was a teenager, which is almost three decades of books from the earliest to the most recent, spanning probably the cunning man and witch healer shameness from anthropological works going back to 5000bce to Gardner/Valiente etc up to the older writers like the Farrars. He has made a Key Connection with the Aurum Solis writings, which i seem to remember were also in Dr Santee’s library and which i have read since then but not putting together this connection, to the Coven of the Catta’s method of making the evoking and invoking pentagrams in a certain way that are not G.’.D.’. per se but evolved out of them from the Masons to Freemasons to Aurum Solic even through Crowley and the Ordo Templi Orientis in their German line through Doc Santee aka Merlin to the COC through many many skilled insightful witch Pries/esses up to we who still practice this system today, a chain unbroken. (sorry for these long comman punctuated sentences written late last night which i am trying to clean up a little in the light of day).

I am just going to past his synopsis by email straight into this post, and kudos and praise to AA for his weaving data to reality. So, to get back to the point, why does the Coven of the Catta make our pentagrams this way? Well, read on. Like i said this insight and connection hit me like a rock, Duh, after 33+ years if questioning it and where it came from but i know for me it works so i guess i am just being OCD cerebral ceremonial magickally anal retentive ADD all these years but then besides my natural tendencies that is also how i was trained to be by Lady Phoebe. I did the pentagrams the way my teacher Lady Phoebe taught me, not questioning why, and she had them formulated not by Sybil Leek that i know of but apparently by that Master Magickian who had been all across Great Britain and old Europe having been initiated into (well read my book for the full long list) all that was out there in England, Germany, France, Italy and Northern Africa). OK i will stop rambling and present out guest post from Frater Aren –

Evoking and Invoking Pentagrams of the Coven of the Catta

by Apprentice Acolyte Frater Aren 0*

“Recently I was reading back through a very unique BOS published by the Tetian Press several years ago in a relatively small private printing. The tradition described, reading between the lines and going by similarities in the rituals and circle casting procedures also referenced in Persuasions of the Witche’s Craft by T.M. Luhrmann , seems to date back to one of the older BTW Covens in the UK and at the very least dates back to a coven active and practicing in the 1970’s in Surrey per the authors description . I was struck by the fact that the invoking pentagram drawn by the coven seemed to be that of a banishing earth pentagram though it was called a sign of invoking. This struck me as being very curious and at first I thought perhaps it was simply due to the influence of the Lesser Banishing and Invoking rituals of the Pentagram historically given to new students in the Golden Dawn Society but that sent me off in another direction the more I looked and brought to mind how we in the COC draw the invoking pentagrams to all four quarters when calling upon the Mighty ones and Archangels using what “appears” to be an invoking fire pentagram. In the COC I at first assumed that the invoking fire pentagrams were used because when calling upon the archangels you were calling upon Higher Beings of Light and so fire seemed an appropriate element but the more I looked I thought maybe there was more, so I went back to the original template that I had first seen years ago when starting to study witchcraft and magick which was the Golden Dawn method of drawing the invoking and banishing pentagrams upon the air. To be honest this method has always seemed rather cumbersome to me and though I respect its etheric ties and associations there are inconsistencies. This by accident led me to another society , and set of correspondences , known as the Aurum Solis http://www.aurumsolis.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=54:apresentacao-da-eo&id=100:&lang=en-us , founded in England in 1897. In this tradition we see a much different and simpler method of drawing an invoking and banishing pentagram , by starting at the point of the element you wish to invoke and them moving clockwise through the drawing of the pentagram back to the starting point , and to banish beginning at the point of the element in question and moving counter clockwise through the drawing of the pentagram back to the starting point. This to me seemed to resonate and also seemed to answer, or at least raise a possible answer , to my earlier questions about the “seeming” banishing earth pentagram in the BTW BOS , as in the Aurom Solis method, this would in fact be an invoking earth pentagram , beginning at the earth point and moving clockwise up to Spirit , down to Fire ,etc. This also and most importantly led me back the the COC invoking pentagram ; seemingly an invoking fire pentagram per the Golden Dawn set of correspondences but from the Aurom Solis method it would actually be an invoking Spirit pentagram which made perfect sense given the covens use and method involving it. Is this right ? Correct ? Who knows but to me it answers the questions I had  quiets my OCD and makes an interesting kind of sense.”

A Day in a Life of an Appalachian Witch in Pics and Rambling Thoughts Early September 2014

Almost a Tornado Touchdown – 1

I’m not going to ramble much right now as the main Pastor of the German Lutheran Church in the Burg is coming for a visit, yes a visit to moi, a confessed Witch. He is very tolerant, has no hidden agenda, and is a great person to have deep intellectual theological metaphysical philosophical discussions with.

So, just a few pics from this week that has almost nothing to do with the COC and i really should have put this on the BSSS blog which i will reblog it to. But sometimes i slip over to something more personal here where “da priest” steps outside his formal role and is just “me”.

BTW Jason, Ryan and Amanda who i did the conference call with yesterday regarding your proposal to use me and some other active coven members for a TV series on a year in the life of a witch, and i know you all are exploring my blogs and booklet now – I hope this post won’t be too far out as i am what i am. I am a formal HPT but i am also a human being with many facets, like Everyone  has, even the Pastor arriving shortly. He knows as do i we can both take off our robes and cassocks (figuratively lol) and let our hair down (tho neither of us has much hair lol). It will be a good visit as i get  very lonely here with very few visitors of late.

But then it is summer and everyone is busy and if they are like me i have projects spread across 2 acres, 3 houses, and the inside of this house has every counter top covered with minor projects. Keeps me busy…   

No i am not a NZ but my Tattoo artist has some obscure war memorabilia like this officers sword given him by his grandfather and yes it is politically incorrect in the taking of it and in the display of it but it is a work of art both aesthetically and as a weapon.

Now i look “like one of those types” lol. I have not ridden on the back of a motorcycle since i was a teenager, and a friend brought over one of his many Harleys to give me a ride on these country roads. I Loved it. I may get one someday to save on gas money and know how dangerous they are from having worked in the ER for 7 years. But i Always wear a helmet and full leather. The helmet, shown in detail below,, is Tony BST’s first one which he decorated with the spike and his three sons who also bike decorated with the stickers. Way cool in my opinion. The leather i got for cheap at the Good Will believe it or not.

Some manipulated not too revealing of my mannikin like Doc Santee has his Galatea mannikin based on the story of the artist who made a statue called Galatea which he loved so much it came alive. Well, such things are possible and those of you with some Solomonic Magicke experience know how easy it is to animate an egregore, or for one to manifest itself if the Magickian is not too careful. The whole working is “interesting” and also “dangerous” but that never stopped me, though i am not a fool. I do at times tend to “tread where angels fear of falling” aka the Nephilim who taught us Witchcraft according to out Trad.

Speaking of the Nephilim any of my true followers remember my previous posts on Samael (if not just type his name into the search bar for posts containing that name). Something very strange happened just before the German Lutheran Pastor arrived and i showed him the Hex House. I had a broken octagonal mirror mounted securely at a stable angle with a nail in front of the base in the open northern window, you know, like the dreaded always sealed up northern doors of Medieval churches. Now, how could a mirror literally jump out of such secure placing, with no wind, with a nail still intact there, and fall face up not face down, like it was literally picked up and thrown down? My theory is the power of the Christian “Priest” finally broke the long spell of Samael meddling in my workings over there, just my theory.I cleaned it up last night and took these manipulated pics before hand to see if there was a pattern. BTW the thing that looks like an alien face is just a piece of round iron in a triangular iron tripod with the base of a dragon ashtray making that image, nothing mystical there. The images are manipulated such that even the totally washed away circle is visible, which is invisible in daylight. When i cleaned up the broken glass i recovered one perfect triangle and 9 perfect sharp curved fang shaped pieces. Right afterwards i hear the loud chilling howl of one of my black panthers again out across the creek. Maybe Samael has taken on the form of a “lion prowling the world” like the Bible says….

And two days ago under cover of darkness i did something radical with gasoline and thus fire – the sidewalk at the black cabin is So overgrown with small roots and plants, and i have tried to hack it away, so the ole Boy Scout in me just poured gasoline on the 10 meter path and lit her up. Of course i had a water hose in hand and had soaked down the grass and weeds and trees on either side. But it made for some interesting pictures and excited the “closet pyromaniac” (legal fires, not illegal ones of course) in me LOL.

And thus the strange life and pictures Copyright GLHoke 2014 of an Appalachian Witch….

Some footnotes –

The Pastor arrived with a rumble of a 4.3 liter V-8 engine i thought was a Harley and turned out to be an older but pristine Mustang muscle car, silver, racing wheels, over 200,000 miles on it. His alter or rather altar ego? And he was to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary that night. He also helped me do some physical labour that took two people. And in the end after the mega tour of every temple room and every house and the beautiful land on a beautiful day he said “this land is Holy” and i said “to a Witch All Land and all the Earth is Holy” and he agreed. I think maybe there is a little bit of pagan in him when i had him in the woods, and the Native Spirits liked him.

Raining today, which we need badly, then off to the Central PA Rock and Mineral Show at the Zembo Mosque Masonic Lodge which i have attended every year but one (when i was ill with this Meige) for the last 30+ years. I have no $ to spend but enjoy the rock and crystals and especially picking the brains of the “rock hounds” there.

Oh, and to throw something more into this Louisiana gumbo here is a link that will keep you busy this weekend, tons of downloadable PDFs of various magickal documents that a friend sent me. http://www.oldways.org/occult.html

Enjoy!

Almost a Tornado Touchdown – 2