The Witch (2015)

The Witch (2015)
"What went we out into this wilderness to find?"

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The Three Practices: Introduction

This series is about the three regular practices of Fencraft; but it's also about tradition-building.

I think Cassini is right to spot that there's very little content showing you how to find or hack your own religious tradition. This is a shame - because nothing is quite as intense or otherworldly than encountering the sublime, or discovering the divine for yourself, or expressing it through imagery which sets your mind on fire. The Three Practices are the three basic techniques I used, which lead me to developing my own religious system; so that's why I've named them the official three practices within the tradition, the roads to follow to get to the same kind of place. But I feel confident that anyone following them for a period of time will benefit: they deconstruct and explain some of the practices which are often assumed within Pagan/Occult stuff.

At their core, the Three Practices are a way to make space in your life in which you can encounter the Landweird. For non-Fencrafters - they're quite simply a way to make space. It's the long road, filling your mind with ideas and images, your life with experiences, and just giving it time to percolate.

(There's also the secular Practices: they are a reminder to spend more time doing what you love. Your humble author is profoundly depressed; and so, these daily practices are built around the things that keep me healthy, happy and well. There's an important lesson here for system-builders: your religion should call you to do more of the things which nourish you. If you love blues rock, then put it in your rituals. If you make clothes, then design robes and masks for it. And so forth. Make sacred.)

Finally: There's nothing new here. There are an awful lot of "Seeker First Steps" techniques and pathways; and this one is mine. These are the three I think are most important. They are achievable and accessible - nothing is worse than "two months of waking at dawn, three meditations a day, and cold showers" as an initial step no one will ever actually pass. And I encourage you to adopt and deconstruct them - you could use them within whatever tradition you're currently following, or to consider Fencraft, or as first steps towards developing your own thing.

The Three Practices: Walking

"It's a dangerous business, stepping out of your front door"

The best thing I ever did for my practice was going for a weekly walk in the local woods. Paganism, as taught in books, can so easily become book-bound: we learn the magical uses of the rowan, without being able to identify one. The weekly walk was time: aimless time, boundless time, experiential time. I cannot say, exactly, what I learnt there; but that too was a lesson. For it is easy to import our achievement-focused, progress-seeking mindset into Paganism - am I advancing? Am I succeeding? Am I acquiring? Rather than another way of experiencing the world: am I being, am I existing?

So the first of the Three Practices is: go for a damn walk.

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DIY Religion: Use Genre

There's nothing new or unnamed under the sun.

Genre is a grouping together of similar things: horror films, cowboy films, horror-cowboy films, and so on. And within an era or movement, a single idea might be expressed through image, cinema, literature and music - making it accessible in several different ways.

Genre is great for religion-building:

• Step one - identify a mood, feeling, lesson, value, or experience you wish to reverence through your craft.
• Step two - find an artwork evoking it.
• Step three - find out what this movement is called, and who else was creating things like it

You very swiftly build up your Reading List, and have images and words with which to populate a Commonplace Book, and to draw from in ritual.

(Like most people with ADHD, I am so easily tired that learning to automate processes is essential. See what we've done: from a single book, a genre name. From a genre name, a list of 40 books which I can then seek out one by one).

Any genre big enough will already have masterlists of recommended content; and often, articles or essays by master thinkers and researchers delving into the details, writing about your religion with a power and complexity to which you can only aspire.

Now, what I've discovered about genre is it basically only says one thing. In other words, you only really need to see one Folk Horror film to grok the principles of Fencraft which the genre evokes. But! Paganisms are experiential, not intellectual; a list of 40 folk horror films allows me to be consistently immersed in new content evoking these states. And yes, occasionally, I'll have a new idea, or a new set of phrases, to show for it.

The Reading List is a form of meditation, so a genre is a way to continually return to an idea expressed in different hands, from different angles - it's an exploration.
Genre is also a way to make religion-building a collective endeavour. Art evokes moods and responses. What one person sees in an artwork might be very different from another: and so from the outset our "sacred texts" invite conversation and different responses. Similarly, genres are huge - if I send my flock out to seek folk horror, then I no longer have control over the liturgy and canon. Anyone can watch, and contribute a recommendation, for something obscure or significant they have found. It's a way to set a unified direction for a group which is still flexible and collaborative.