DatC #067 - The Devil's Dozen with Gemma Gary

Hello and thank you once again for joining me down at the crossroads for some music, magick, and Paganism. Where witches gather for the sabbath, offerings are made, pacts are signed for musical fame and we cross paths with today’s most influential Pagans, occultists, and deep thinkers. I am your bewitching, bald headed, host Chris Orapello and tonight we meet with beloved author, witch, and artist Gemma Gary. Gemma and I have a great discussion which explores witchcraft, her experiences as a witch, her book The Devil's Dozen: Thirteen Craft rites for the Old One, and the issue of the devil in Modern Traditional Witchcraft. This a very interesting discussion which challenges some of the modern conceptions of witchcraft and how it may be practiced by some people in today's world. The operations of magic and witchcraft deal with the hidden worlds of spirit and the powers innate within the natural world; within plant, stone and magical loci. The ‘Old One’, who in folk tradition is often named ‘The Devil’ embodies both the ‘rend in the veil’ and the spanning bridge between the worlds of the material and spiritual, the revealed and the hidden. It is through union with this entity that witches and folk magicians gained access to the powers that reside within the hidden realms and the natural world, and could awaken the potent fire within. In traditional folk belief, the Devil existed also as an embodiment of the chaotic forces of nature; a belief quite distinct and separate from that of the Church with its ‘Satan’ figure. To the witch, he might also represent the ‘darker’ aspects of the divine; the keeper and the revealer of the divine light, the psychopomp guide of souls, and the sentinel at the threshold unto the mysteries of death and the Otherworld. - Troy Books website Featured Songs: "Stolen Season" by S.J. Tucker "Bridge of Birds" by The Familiars "Pretty Little Head" by Eliza Rickman "If You Were My Monster" by Tara Rice "Call Me Satan" by Omnia "Shade of Grey" by Witchwood Other Books Mentioned: Traditional Witchcraft - A Cornish Book of Ways by Gemma Gary The Black Toad by Gemma Gary The Charmer's Psalter by Gemma Gary Related Links: Gemma Gary Troy Books Troy Books on Twitter Cornish Witchcraft Museum of Witchcraft Three Hands Press