The Sorcerer’s stick

The elements of the Sorcerer’s Crucible: second part

by Claudio Simeoni

(Italian Pagans' Federation)

Federazione Pagana

Programme broadcast on 24th April 1997:

In preceding programmes, we talked about the Crucible. the crucible is the philosophical structure in which Witchcraft and Polytheistic Paganism develop themselves.

The Crucible is made by the Apprentice Witch or by the Apprentice Sorcerer when they start their path from the situation they live in that moment.

The Crucible is the gift the Apprentice Witch/Sorcerer give to the Social System in which they live, because the Crucible is their interpretation not only of the system of thought but also of what their Reason elaborates as results of the ability of altering the perception.

All those who are looking for freedom are enriched by this gift; All those who bring Human Beings to their knees become furious because of the interference in the Social System of which they think they’re masters and owners.

The knowledge of what an Apprentice Witch/Sorcerer or a Polytheistic Pagan consider important is significant, but they’re not absolutely important, in an objective way, I mean. An Apprentice Sorcerer looks for different things from a christian; an Apprentice Sorcerer wants different things; an Apprentice Sorcerer’s morality is different from a christian’s; the Freedom for which an Apprentice Sorcerer works is unknown to the christian: it frightens him!

The magic-shamanistic component is prevalent in Chinese Taoism: the following is an extract from “The Celestial Rule” by Lao Tse

The sky lasts eternal and the earth eternally lasts
of the sky’s eternal duration of the earth’s permanence
the reason is that they don’t live for themselves
that’s the reason because they’re eternal and lasting
that’s the reason because the wise man
places his reason after where hi advance
excludes his reason in order to preserve himself
not because he’s not looking for his advantage
but because acting so, he can do his own disadvantage

Freely drawn from “Veiling the merits”

Before I tell you of the contents in the Witch’s or Sorcerer’s big pot, let’s talk about the stick with which the Witch or the Sorcerer mix. The stick the Sorcerer uses to walk along his path is the same hazel stick on which a Witch can fly in the immensity of changes. It’s the same hawthorn stick Janus gives Carna to turn away the Striges. It’s the same cornel-tree stick thrown by the Bellonari to stir up Bellona

The Sorcerer’s stick is formed by three elements

1) suspension of the internal dialogue

2) Suspension of judgement

3) scepticism

We have always affirmed that the world as we see it is people’s subjective description. The world is like people manage to describe. But we also said that magic is doing and the doing is action, not description. Since the moment in which it gets out from its mother’s vagina, the Human Being start a path which educates it; a path teaches the Human Being how to describe the world and its phenomena. This description imposes itself on the Human Being with such a strength that Human Being is the only Nature’s Being who speaks even when it thinks.

The description of the world is basic for the children’s growth, but it stops the development of the adult Human Being at a child level, forcing it to explain why it does or doesn’t this or that.

The Apprentice Sorcerer/Witch uses the description of the world in order to grow because the Social System in which he/she lives bases itself on the description of the world. At the same time, he/she will start a process to leave the description of the world, recovering the will that brought him/her to birth: to turn the foetus’ death into the birth of the baby Human Being.

Leaving the description of the world is starting a path in which the objects are no more perceived only through their phenomena described by reason, but also as objects in themselves. This is the impossible in front of which Kant lost his reason.

This process can be started with the self-imposition of stopping occasionally the flux of words in our minds. Making our minds empty of words for some moments during the day.

We have to strive to evoke in mind not words but images or to pay attention to sounds or physical sensations.

For an Apprentice Sorcerer stopping the flux of words is important.

Stopping the flux of words is the suspension of the internal dialogue.

This shouldn’t be the main activity of a person. You shouldn’t think that you need to remove the words or the description of the world from your life in order to start the construction of the Sorcerer’s stick. It’s just carving out a (big or little) niche for the silence and listening in daily activity of description of the world.

In Witchcraft this action is defined as stopping the suffocating activity of reason, in order to put reason and its manifestation, the description of the world at Human Being’s disposal.

When we do this, we say to our Reason: “You’re an instrument at my service I have to take care of you, but though you’re important, you’re not my master, you have to stop and make room for other instruments I need to found my future.”

This action is the not-secret secret of Witchcraft.

The suspension of the internal dialogue allows the luminous body to present itself with its necessities to the Reason. It says to the Reason: “Keep in mind that I’m here too, and that your function is to help me in my development, not to destroy the Consciousness of which I’m part.”

When I wrote the “Book of the Antichrist”, I analysed these two aspects as if they were separated. Actually the luminous body’s necessities of development merge with the Reason’s necessities and modify little by little the direction of these, without changing the individual’s predilections.

Summarizing: suspending the internal dialogue to allow the luminous body to express itself and to merge its necessities with the reason’s.

This suspension of the internal dialogue, practiced in different ways, can often be found in eastern religions, in yoga practicing and so on. But often those path practice this suspension as an aim, not as an instrument.

We affirm that the suspension of the internal dialogue forms the Witch’s/Sorcerer’s stick. But a stick must be used: if Carna doesn’t use the hawthorn stick, the Striges will wrap the newborn baby in their destructive coils.

A stick is a stick insofar as it’s an instrument to face the contradictions in everyday life. This is the difference between the Polytheistic Paganism and Witchcraft and the eastern ways. The Apprentice Sorcerer constructs an instrument for himself to face the everyday reality and escape from the deception imposed by the Social System and by the Educational Conditioning. The suspension of the internal dialogue allow us to go over the educational conditioning’s impositions and to construct our subjective way to see the world.

Merging the reason’s senses with the feeling of the luminous body and with the different necessities is feeding and breeding the luminous body, favouring its future.

The suspension of the internal dialogue helps the Human Being in looking at the world.

Suspending the judgement, the Apprentice Sorcerer faces the world and assumes two complementary attitudes: the suspension of the judgement and the scepticism.

The suspension of the judgement allows the Apprentice Sorcerer to allow the flow towards his thought of new elements on the basis of which founding the judgement. The suspension of the internal dialogue allows not only the luminous body’s appearing, but also the coming-from-surrounding-divine messages’ flowing towards reason.

The reason can’t perceive the divine, but can only sustain its action. The luminous body doesn’t relate itself with the world of numbers and shapes but only sustains its constraint.

The suspension of the judgement is an act of magic because it puts the individual’s divine in touch with the surrounding divine.

The sceptic attitude is the Apprentice Sorcerer’s attitude inside the Social System. The sceptic attitude allows to distinguish the shape and the appearances from the substance, the deception from reality.

Summarizing: when they suspend the internal dialogue, the Apprentice Sorcerer and the Polytheistic Pagan prepare themselves to face reality; by the suspension of the judgement they make their feelings and phenomena flow towards the luminous body’s senses; by keeping a sceptical attitude inside the Social System, they distinguish lies from reality, shape and appearance from substance, important things from secondary ones.

We need to remember that the Human Being is a social Being, and no ways to Knowledge and Awareness are possible evading from the Social System in which we live. The starting point to develop a path to become eternal is the moment and the situation in which we live when we decide to start walking along this path.

This is the Sorcerer’s or the Witch’s stick. In Polytheistic Paganism the stick is described in different ways as there are different images which form it or different aims in using it.

The Apprentice Sorcerer and the Polytheistic Pagan use the stick to mix the elements in their Crucible. The Sorcerer’s Crucible is the Sorcerer himself. The Witch’s Crucible is the Witch herself. We are our Crucible. Only expanding ourselves we can develop the Social System in which we live.

We described the Crucible and the stick with which we mix its contents, now we’re ready to deal with the contents of the Crucible. We are armed with a stick to face life. The stick gives us strength to walk along our path. On the path there are many obstacles, but we are armed with the stick of the suspension of the judgement so we can face them.

We are ready to walk in life and, at the same time, to change ourselves.

We walk from change to change, but while we walk, we mix the contents of our Crucible.

The first element we put into the Crucible is our attention.

Suspending the internal dialogue we allowed the luminous body’s necessities to merge with the reason’s. So the attention we are talking about it’s not only the reason’s attention but also the luminous body’s.

I don’t ask anybody to take what I say as gospel or as truth: everyone is the master of his/her own existence, but if there’s the need of developing the future, this is the path.

I know that only few persons are prepared to understand what I’m saying. However, at the right moment, somebody will remember what I’m saying now.

Mixing the attention will be the matter of the next programme.

1997

Write only in Italian, please!

Claudio Simeoni

Mechanic

Apprentice Sorcerer

Keeper of the Antichrist

P.le Parmesan 8

30175 Marghera Venice

Italy

Tel. 3277862784