Chronos Apollonios' "Home On Olympus"
It’s been my goal throughout the pages of this site to take what are commonly regarded as superstitions and apply some of the more recent developments of science, as well as older ones whose application here is long overdue, toward lending credence to many of these notions so that they are not dismissed casually or prematurely. They are time and time again part of a larger picture of uncanny consistency, where they are in great harmony with what we know about science, and even at times that science has been born of those superstitions, and then turned and denied of superstitions the same facts it has proven as science.
To say that there is a severe and groundless bias that exists to this very day on the part of so many persons is to say the least.
Likewise, the logic of systematically collectivizing superstitions is faulty. Ten thousand superstitions could prove untrue, but this does not disprove the next one to be examined.
The reasons given are often ridiculous, but keep in mind the possibility that these kinds of rationale are given because there are no true substitutes for the exceedingly long reasons that often ought to be given. Sometimes the real reasons are chronically misunderstood, and a great many times they may have been lost altogether. Today we have supermarkets that promise to fufill our every need or whim that discourage us automatically from the kind of thinking that was once part of the human experience-- looking to nature, high and low, to fufill the same needs.
This is only one thing that makes it challenging for modern people to understand the mindsets of only a few generations ago; our current state of estrangement from nature makes it further challenging to experience the same proofs that were once commonplace as originators or perpetuators of what superstition should often be rightly called: Nature Wisdom, or Natural History.
Many scholarly works on superstition do notes by students and researchers as to the “real” reasons that superstitions were applied, even though they may have barely begun to scratch the surface.
While virtually everyone’s belief system seems to contain things that for one reason or another that they regard as preposterous, as genuine misconception and nothing more, there is an even greater number of notions that deserve careful scrutiny. Not only do these notions promise to be the groundwork for much that is genuinely magickal, but they often promise to be amazing leads for researchers as well.
Ethnobotanically speaking, a great many of the superstitions that surround plants and trees promise to be a great deal more than mere superstition. In a great many cases, modern scientific research has concluded what the “old wives’ have been saying all along.
There are a number of superstitions which have lent credence and coherence to the notions I am maintaining about the technical/ magickal prowess of ancient peoples. With or without the broader context of the countless citations of ancient genius that are possible, only a few of which appear on the pages of this site, they are particularly poignant, and yet because of both their obscure nature, and the obscure structure of wording that they therefore take, they are easily lost again and in the pages of the works that feature them.
For my own reference, I include them here; I will also include some notes as to their possible significance...
from “The Dictionary of Omens & Superstitions” compiled by Phillipa Waring
(pg 46)
BUTTERMAKING
Superstition decress that you should throw in a pinch of salt into the fire before you begin
to make butter or the milk will not churn. In some coastal areas of Britain it is maintained
that the milk will not curdle until the tide is coming in, and across the channel in France,
the best time for buttermaking is at high tide just as the water begins to flow. The Scots
believe that witches delight in preventing milk from turning into butter and consequently
make their churn staffs of rowan wood which is well known to be feared and hated by
those in league with the Devil.
(pg 178)
PINE CONES
Pine cones are another means of predicting weather, for they will stay open when the
omens are fine, but as soon as they close rain is on the way.
from “A Treasury of American Superstitions” by Claudia De Lys
(pg 230)
“...Mushrooms are poisonous if a silver spoon boiled with them turns black...”
From Edwin & Mona Radford, “Encyclopedia of Superstitions”
(pg 81)
CHURNING
Whenever churning is going on, a small peice of burning turf should be put under the
churn to prevent the abstraction of butter by the “good people (fairies).-Ireland
The handle and cross of the churnstadd should always be made of rowan wood, because
that is the most potent charm against witchcraft-Highlands of Scotland
In her “Superstitions of Ireland” , Lady WIlde records the widespread practice of
putting a ring of rowan wood, or quikenmas as it is called, on the handle of the churn-dash
when she is churning so that no one can steal her butter.
MUGWORT
In Prussia Bavaria and other parts of Germany a mugwort was used very much as rowan
wood was used in Scotland-as a preventative of witchcraft. Prussian farmers stuck the
herb on the gates and hedges of feilds in which cows grazed, to protect the animals and
their milk from witches.
In Japan, if a house has been robbed at night and the footsteps of a burglar are visible next
day, the householder burns mugowrt inthem, thereby hurting the robbber’s feet so that he
cannot run from the police and thus easily be overtaken.
ROWAN WOOD
If you do not hang up on Rood Day branches of rowan wood (moutain ash) above the
floors of the cowhouses, and the them around the tails of the cattle with red thread, the
witches will be at work milking the tether
It was on Beltane that the Scots made the most use of the rowan wood. It was believed
that that on that evening witches went abroad casting spells on cattle and stealing the milk
of cows.
To counteract the bewitching, peices of rowan wood were placed over the doors of
cowhouses, and fires- the Beltane fires- were kindled by every farmer and cottar.
Fot the same reason, Higlanders of Scotland insisted that the peg of the cow shackle and
the handle and cross of the curn staff should always be made of rowan wood as a charm
against the butter from being bewitched and not coming in the churn.
from, “ A Dictionary of Superstitions”, edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem
(pg 333)
1793 Stat. Acc. of Scotland IX 328 [Tongland, Kirkcudbright, c. 1730] The
lower class...were tainted strongly with superstitious sentiments... They fixed branches of
mountain ash, or narrow leaved service tree above the stakes of their cattle, to preserve
them from the evil effects of elves and witches.
1827 HONE Table Book I 674-5 {Witherslack, Lancs.] To prevent the old
bedlam introducing herself into the churn, the churn-staff must be made of the “Wiggen
Tree”.
(pg 357)
SILVER
1883 BURNE Shropshire 165. A goodwife at Moreton Say is accustomed to put
a silver coin into the churn when the cream swells instead of turning into butter.
(pg 452)
WYCH ELM protects
1958 Farmer & Stockbreeder 18 Mar Suppl. N. “The butter wunna come in that’
she said firmly. “There’s no wych elm in it, and anyone in their right mind knows a butter
wunna gather unless there’s wych elm in the churn.
From Scott Cunningham & David Carrington, “The Magickal Household”
(pg 52)
In earlier times, when poisoning was all the rage, many rituals wre carried out to prevent
such calamities. If it was suspected that a food had been poisoned, a diner would jab a
knife with a snake-bone handle into the dining table. The knife would quiver and quake if
the food was tainted.
Ivory chopsticks were once pushed into suspect food; if the food had been poisoned, the
sticks would turn black.
Outside of the striking notion of using Mugwort to aid in apprehending a theif, I prefer to explain the significance of these in a collective fashion... but as you can see, that herb has other citations that place it very close to the center of discussion here nonetheless, and therefore need not be as distinct a topic as I am making it here. In fact, the theme of theives in mythology, folklore, and classical literature occurs again and again in such as way that it may indeed be a generic marker of certainly underlying explanatory themes, of natural factors and relevant physics principles... likely to be the form in which they are preserved from any earlier and demonstrably more advanced culture. This may well account for the odd frequency with which witches somehow, and no doubt unjustly, if not comedically, recieve the blame for the failures of the dairy farmer.
In the case of many trees, their reputations for dowsing imply what is understood about dowsing in the modern sense, that they have the capacities for certain interactions with various molecules and/ or possess properties of interactions with magnetic feilds. Likewise, their respective reputations for repelling or attracting lightning strikes displays properties that may be assessed tentatively as electrochemical.
The abilities of such materials to coagulate or cauterize certain materials, especially involving calcium ions, to catalyze certain chemical reactions, need not be ruled out.
Those anecdotes which place association between the success of churning butter and the tidal forces may be exemplary of those which show an understanding that tidal forces may rely on calcium as an intermediary. Numerous citations of calcium can be made in this regard, from native textile dyes which require a certain phase of the moon for their best success, to modern scientific evaluations of astrology, which note differences in the physical behavior and properties of calcium at different times of the year, such as the works of Michel Jauquelin.
The anecdote involving silver spoons, while it cannot be taken for a principle that merits risking one’s life on, still has a great deal of consistency. Apart from putting it into practice, it does not need to be taken any less seriously or regarded as superstition any more than the indicative reactions of chemical color reactions or of litmus paper...
This is also true of the lore about ivory chopsticks from Cunningham and Carrington. Besides promising to imply a good deal more about the origins of pagan iconography, such methods of metering and indicating are normally anything but superstitious... even if our modern results are anything but foolproof themselves.
Even more promising, however, is the possibility that more is possible with this reaction than simply indicating toxins, but also neutralizing and even removing them. Products for purification of water this century have indeed included salts of silver such as silver iodide. That one anecdote has silver substituting for rowan wood in coagulation of butter is not the least bit surpising, considering.
It should be remembered that superstitions regarding the purity of household water include magickal symbols which can be associated to superconductive electric devices or to modern magnetic devices. The spirals and stars which appear on the “magick bucket” mentioned in Cunningham and Carrington’s “The Magical Household” (pg xiii: “A wooden bucket swung in the stone well, which was amply gaurded againt contamination by the deeply carved starts and spirals surrounding it”).
These features, particular spirals, are featured on Many ancient spoons and laddles as well, and outside of this train of thought, rather inexplicably.
This is not much of a departure from the ancient alloy Electrum. Lewis Spence, in Elcyclopedia of Occultism”, gives a passage under the name Electrum, and refers to Pliny, the ancient Roman historian: “ Amber is the subject of some curious legends under this name but there is also a metallic electrum , known to the French and in modern times as Orbas. A cup of this metal, according to Pliny, has the property of discovering poison, by exhibiting certain cemi-circles like rainbows in the liquor, which it also keeps sparking and hissing as if on the fire...
Like the account of the silver spoon, this may be a classic understatement as to the full abilities of the material in question.
So too, is this collection still missing formidable quotations on the significance of the direction of stirring. We have our modern counterparts in scientific research, certain substances were found to alter the structure of their molecules, namely their chirality, depending on whether the solution was stirred to the left or to the right--- a powerful demonstation of what witches have long asserted, and metaphysicists who have studied many energies and pyramid forces, like Christopher Hills, join them.
This should be theoretically capable of having some impact on the churning of butter or the purity of a solution as well. While there is no explicit promises made, Cunningham and Carrington place reference, one of countless references in such a category, advise that “prior to eating any liquid with a spoon (such as soup or porridge), stir the bowl’s contents from left to right (clockwise) three times, then withdraw the spoon and enjoy.
Likewise, by way of extrapolation, it is not far to associate this much ado about milk and water and purity and silver to certain goddesses, one outstanding is Artemis. Within reason, then, the facades of Artemis that the Bible criticizes as decadence may be an ancient adornment which had the power to purify drinking water, in accord with many of the purposes of Artemis, such as assuring safety and safe provisions for the lost traveller from this protectoress of children and mistress of the woods. Just as many of the herbs which are or may be found to be, sacred to her have these functions, so may a great many of her tokens.
One other that is included here is the use of pine cones for prognosticative purposes regarding the weather. This is hardly outlandish, a great many flowers for example are noted for their ability to presage bad weather by the curling up of their blossoms. One of the better known may be “poor man’s weatherglass”, or Anagallis arvensis to use the Latin/ scientific name.
Likewise, the seeds of a great many cranesbills, or plants of the genus Erodium have seed whose long tails curl in response to moisture or humidity in the air. So pronounced is this effect that it is daid that one species is still grown so that, in Italy, instruments which measure humidity can be made from these seeds. Far from a superstition, it is an accurate meter of the weather, literally.
There are certain implications about how the pine cone processes energies involved in magick, such as in being the traditional tip for the thyrseus-wand, that may be inferred from this, and perhaps from here to the energetics of magick in a more general sense.
At any rate, as you can see, these notions still promise to unfold many blessings on man as yet unreceived, many of them perhaps still unsuspected... And while a great many of them are marvelously tangible and down to earth, such as devices which may pruify food and water without the input of energy from electrical sources or batteries...
Throw some of these notions into the contemporary discussions of some cutting edge physics, like the discussions of ather holes you will find at this time in the Keely Net Archive, and the most far-flung goals of scientists and magicians alike appear closer than ever.
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