What happens when you make the move from city to country life to rediscover your roots in the land? Making a new start with her Priest husband in the depths of the Irish countryside - Irish Witch and Priestess, Lora O’Brien, tells us what it’s really like.

Point of Note: These articles were written about a time in our lives when we were graduating from our original Wiccan training to the way in which we work today. What is described is not, to a large extent, what I would consider Irish Witchcraft. The second article in the series {from the issue that has not yet been released} follows...

Diary of a Country Witch

It’s all very well wanting to get ‘back to your roots’, whether practically by moving yourself and your entire family to Ballygobackwards, or magically by wanting to work more in tune with the land and native energies in Ballygobackwards.

I was faced with problems. Having been trained as a ‘Traditional’ Wiccan, I could see the value in it as a training system. We had been asked to initiate a friend of ours, who was very interested in working with us. Crow Coven was born in this way, unlooked for but not unwanted or even unexpected (to some at least, my former High Priestess said it was inevitable, but it hit me like a tonne of bricks). Problem was, now I had this on my hands, I had no idea in what direction I wanted to take it. I didn’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak, by totally dismissing the training and experience received in the Wiccan environment. But we also felt a huge draw from the Land, Water and Sky that surrounded us in Roscommon, we wanted to take things back to as close as we could get to how those who had walked and worked the land for all those years would have done things. My husband is in his heart, not just a Hedgewitch, but more an ‘eat-the-berries-off-the-ditch Witch’. He has worked in a Wiccan coven too, and gained a lot from his time there. His true power lies in the Sea, though, and the Land. Having worked as a fisherman for many years, that is where he had his first experiences and his most powerful to date. He is also a keen hiker, and has spent much time walking the hills and mountains of Ireland. So he was eager to start trying to regain a balance with those energies, which he felt he had somewhat lost through his subsequent years as a truck driver.

Yule or Midwinter was our first circle here at "Eldritch House". The winter solstice isn’t one of the four ‘major’ Sabbats or fire festivals - those are Samhain (31st October), Imbolg (1st February), Bealtaine (30th April) and Lughnasadh (1st August). The fire festivals are based on older agricultural cycles than the cross quarter days, which are based on astronomical observances. The Cross Quarters, or Solar festivals are changeable each year, based around observation of the sun’s cycle. They are Winter Solstice (which can fall between 19th and the 23rd December), the Spring Equinox (falling 19-23rd March), the Summer Solstice (falling 19th-23rd June) and the Autumn Equinox (falling 19th-23rd September). But out of these ‘lesser festivals’, I have always felt that if Midwinter was important enough for my ancestors to construct Newgrange around, it was important enough for me to celebrate in my reconstruction of Irish spirituality (it is at sunrise on the morning of the winter solstice that the sun’s rays penetrate the passage tomb to the inner chamber in this ancient and once impressive monument). So Yule or the Winter Solstice was the first ‘official’ gathering of Crow Coven.

While we celebrate the Winter Solstice on the weekend before Christmas, this is for convenience. Everybody then knows that’s the weekend of Yule, can plan this busy time with that in mind. It always falls between 19th and 23rd, so the longest night is always either just before, or just after this weekend - if we are lucky it falls right in it. I prefer to have it as close as possible and have all the folks here who mean something to me, than be rigorous in the dates and celebrate all alone! But regardless of when the Sabbat celebration with the people and parties and presents happens, I always mark the sunrise after the longest night whenever it falls, by a fire vigil being kept all night. Ideally I will light a fire with an oaken Yule log in the grate, and sit by it all night. If I can’t stay up all night for some reason I will keep a long burning candle lit on the grate, and make sure I rise to greet the sun. That is just after 8.40am on the Winter Solstice round here, so even I can manage to be up and about at that stage. Not because I worry it won’t rise unless I’m there to assure it, but to mark and welcome its return and rebirth after the longest darkness of the year. That is in itself the essence of this festival for me, the rest is icing on the cake (hopefully with no marzipan, awful hateful stuff). I suppose this is the internal stuff, the quiet reflective time that is what some folk do in and of itself, but gathering to celebrate is important to me also.

It has always been a special time for me. Some go inwards at this festival, I prefer to be sociable and have my friends and family around me. While we had a fledgling group of just three, which is not exactly a grand total by anybody’s standards, we also had some very close friends who just happened to be at loose ends at that time. So we invited a small group to celebrate, our 3 and 3 more as guests. Two of the guests were members of our previous coven, the other a very good friend. Having them present more than satisfied my need to have family about me at that time of year. Out of the six present, four of us were experienced in ritual and well used to working together, so we felt free to experiment a bit. Trying to figure out what we wanted to do outside and what we should be doing inside was a bit complicated. For the two participants who weren’t proficient in ritual, we felt it important to pass on this training. Well oiled, fluent and practised ritual is the focus that the conscious mind uses while the unconscious mind can get down to the real business at hand. While I didn’t feel the traditional Alexandrian Wiccan rituals were particularly important for what they SAID, the words they used didn’t mean much to me at that stage in themselves - I did and still do feel that a set system of working is vital when starting out in magical training for what it DOES. A set opening ritual, when you know it and work it over a period of time, gives you an easy ‘in’ to the magical space. So we decided we would do our traditional opening ritual indoors, and do our feasting and merry-making inside in the warmth and comfort of the covenstead, but by coming in after celebrating the Sabbat outside.

Working outside in our grove was, and still is, very important, and the traditional Wiccan opening ritual didn’t feel at all appropriate for that space. Summoning, stirring and calling up elemental watchtowers, and conjuring a circle of power seemed a bit, well, rude - for a space that was so essentially sacred and magical in and of itself and had been worked with so personally by us. The surrounding energies seem also to watch our work, and the historical and mythological significance of such a place is not to be ignored. I dare anybody to try to order an Mhór Rioghán or Queen Maedbh around up here and see what sort of a smack they get for their trouble.

We decided to go with my usual way of designing a ritual for the outside celebration, that is free form - where everybody has a set part but each participant has to make up exactly what they want to say (ok, you could say ‘channel what needs to be said/heard’, but this doesn’t always happen and it’s best to have a back up plan of some sort for when it doesn’t) - either on the spot in ad lib, or before hand and learned off. Usually the more experienced participants like to wing it. This works, because they have the back up of knowing what things are supposed to feel like, and how they are supposed to flow in order to work effectively.

I don’t generally allow reading of paper in my circles. I find it not exactly conducive to free flowing and spontaneous magical working. When rituals are only ever read from sheets of paper it ends up more like the dress rehearsal in a school play than a spiritual, magical and moving experience. Paper is a necessary evil at times, for unusual or impromptu rituals when thorough preparation and each participant learning their full part is not always possible; but if a sheet of paper is used in my circles, it’s always more likely to be glanced at as a prompt than read as a rote script. A working space was set up in the grove by welcoming the available energies and quarters - Come as you will and leave as you wish. I invoked the God force and presence into my High Priest and he the Goddess force and presence into me.

When that’s all taken care of, and we are together celebrating the time of year as a group, there are some key elements in the mythological cycles that need to be incorporated. There is a battle between the oak king and holly king, brothers, each of whom rules for one half of the year. The battles are fought at the winter and summer solstices, and the winning king reigns til he is beaten by his brother once again at the other side of the year. At Yule the Holly king dies, the Oak takes his place in growing strength as the year turns towards summer. It is signified by a wrestling match between 2 male members of the group, which I must confess to insisting on being as ‘real’ as possible, not just prancing about and gripping each other occasionally like aunties at a family reunion. I want to see heads knocked, and the king who is going out does NOT make it an easy victory for the winner. None of us feel that this should be treated as some sort of game.

There is also the birth of the sun/son to be taken care of, with a hearty cry of "bring forth the Child of Promise", to bring hope and light for the coming year, the fire blazes forth to signify the birth of light in the depths of the winter darkness, so the God force can live again after his previous sacrificial death. Now, when I say ‘the fire blazes forth’ bear in mind that it is Roscommon, wet and windy and wild in winter Roscommon, and the blazing forth can often involve hefty amounts of liquid fuel and much swearing by my long suffering husband and High Priest, who is (I suppose, but I don’t tend to point it out on regular basis) the midwife in this case. It is of course very important that the sun god gets reborn, bringing new light to the darkness - and lighting a candle in the cauldron in my sitting room seems a bit weak when we have all that space and free firewood, and the celebration is happening outside. However it is not me to whom the task of actually getting the bugger to light falls. I don’t know how he puts up with me sometimes, really I don’t.

In my defence, I have enough to be doing in my role as goddess of the season, without worrying about getting a fire lit in gale force winds and sleet. The energy at Yule is that of the "leprous white Lady", the goddess of death, who contains the seeds of rebirth within. She is Life-in-Death personified. Therein lies the true mystery of the season. The personification, in our case at least, involves not a "dramatically effective addition… (of) a pure white wig" as one source recommends, oh no, not in our coven. That first year we only realised on the night, organised as ever, that I would need to be the ‘White-Haired One’, and as mo ghruaige is pure black (most of the time) it seemed it would be a poor show. Until I spied the can of snow spray on the shelf, and the rest is Crow Coven history.

Lora O’Brien
Imbolg 2004

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