A Witch's World of Magick (27 page)

This simple principle of camaraderie is as worthwhile today as it has been for centuries. Liking each other and learning from each other are quite natural inclinations, after all, and coming together for magick and ritual is both our instinct and our heritage.

Let’s now take a look at some concrete examples of group magick from around the world. By exploring the common threads that weave these different traditions together, you’ll discover how to use group magick more creatively and more effectively for both your personal benefit and for the benefit of your community as a whole.

Group Magick Around the World

Spellcasters and magick weavers around the world have practiced magick in groups for many purposes, from building community to securing a good harvest to adding power to a particular magickal working. Let’s take a closer look at a few of the more common motivators for group magick worldwide.

More Music for More Ears

Music is a well-known and effective medium, catalyst, and facilitator of magick. Even a one-man band can do much with the magick of music, and when we create our music with others, the possibilities become richer and the process is more rewarding. Ancient and modern magicians alike have recognized this simple truth and in result have found their way to group magick and music.

To the ancient Dionysians, music was an integral part of group ritual. One of many important magickal groups in ancient Greece, the cult of Dionysus was originally believed to have been imported from Thrace or Phrygia. However, inscriptions to a DI-WO-NO-SO-JO found on a Mycenean tablet written in Linear B, the second oldest known Greek script, indicate that the cult may have its origins in a nature religion indigenous to Greece that dates back to 1200 BCE or earlier.
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As the god of wine and passion, Dionysus was worshiped and celebrated widely, often with drums, singing, dancing, and the music of the aulos, a type of double-pipe wind instrument from which the oboe got its origins. Group rites ranged from private ceremonies open only to initiates, to large public festivals, feasts, and processions involving the wider community. Dionysus was representative of wild abandon, offering followers a reason and a means to shed inhibitions and enjoy the moment.
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In ancient Greece, Dionysus was celebrated with many prominent community-wide rites throughout the year. Music was a big part of these ceremonies, which were often enhanced with strong visual symbolism in addition to the auditory effects. One important tradition was the phallus procession, in which representations of penises—called phalli—in varying sizes were paraded through the town in honor of Dionysus and in hopes of procuring fertility of the crops and of the people. The phalli were typically made of wood, leather, or stone, and some were small enough to be handheld. Others were much larger, and had to be rolled on a cart. In
The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History
, Patricia Simons provides a description of these phallic sacred objects:

While many were handheld, representations of the larger processional type tend to show it looking like a large log pulled on a cart or carried by a group of bearers …

On many occasions, a system of ropes or strings ensured that the phallos was a puppet, rising up and down in the parade, which would have accentuated the seasonal changes of the agricultural cycle but also provided a degree of levity, in both the literal and figurative senses.
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As the penis cart rolled through the streets, singers sung songs rife with phallic humor and adulation. Although one result of the phallic procession was certain to have been laughter and levity (Aristotle believed it to be the origin of stand-up comedy), the fake penis parade and its accompanying music held deep significance not only for the followers of Dionysus, but for the community as a whole. The phallic procession promoted fertility of both the crops and the people, and also offered protection for the entire city. Even for those community members not directly associated with Dionysus’s cult, the large public festivities held in honor of this god were a sight to behold and could not be missed.

Of their private rites, little is known, though we can ascertain that Dionysus’s followers used a combination of group music, intoxicants, costume, mimicry, and revelry to achieve their magickal and spiritual aims, which were focused in part on embracing the natural instinct. With wild music, dancing, and magick mingled, rituals were primal and passionate, creating a state of ecstasy in which the whole group could share. Sometimes the rituals were bloody, involving the ritualistic killing and consumption of snakes and small wild animals.
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The collective frenzy enjoyed by the cult of Dionysus in both their public rites and private rites not only allowed for a powerful shared experience, but also provided a very large generator of magickal energy. It’s hard to imagine that a Dionysian rite in which devotees don animal skins, shed their inhibitions, and allow the sounds of the drums, the aulos, and their own voices to open the door to ecstasy, would have quite the same effect or potential if performed by a solitary practitioner with only one voice with which to sing, one drum on which to play.

The cult of the Mother of the Gods was another important mystery cult that made prominent use of music, with groups spread throughout the ancient Greco-Roman world. Her origins in the older nature religions of Asia Minor and in particular Phrygia, the Mother of the Gods was imported into Rome by decree of the Senate in 204 BCE, in response to an oracle predicting that doing so would be beneficial to the state.
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The Roman worship of the Mother of the Gods was much more tame and controlled than was her original worship. While state-sponsored public ceremonies were held for her annually, the goddess’s own foreign priests took care of the more exotic aspects of rituals held in her honor. For instance, there was an important blood-letting ceremony in which the altar of the goddess was sprinkled with the blood of her priests. These priests were Phrygians who had traveled to Rome alongside the imported goddess, and Roman citizens were prohibited from taking part in these exclusively Phrygian rituals.

Just as music played a major role in the rituals of the cult of Dionysus, so too were the musical arts important to the cult of the Mother of the Gods. Her followers got together and celebrated with singing, dancing, drums, and pipes, as well, though again, these practices were reserved exclusively for her Phrygian worshipers. The timpano drum was especially associated with this goddess of many names, and her followers also made use of castanets to achieve a powerful rhythm conducive to a trance state. The Phrygian followers of the Mother of the Gods also practiced castration, and processions were held in which the dedicated worshipers would carry a chariot-bound idol of the goddess through the streets, asking for alms from the general Roman citizenry who were forbidden from taking direct part in the procession. A good portion of the Roman citizenry was most welcome, however, to take full part in the Megalesia, a festival held in honor of the Mother of the Gods each April. Festivities included games, theatrical performances, ritual feasts, and sacrifices. To the Phrygian priests and priestesses who directly participated in her worship, rites were ecstatic and had much in common with wild and raucous Dionysian rituals.
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The Aztecs also held group rituals, and like the Dionysians and the cult of the Mother of the Gods, they too made use of music to enhance their ceremonies. Favoring ceramic flutes, drums, rasps made from human bones, rattles, whistles, and trumpet-like instruments made from conch shells, the Aztecs made music an important part of their magickal rites. In a ritual to Tezcatlipoca, the Aztec god of the nocturnal sky, ancestral memory, and time, musicians would finish their set by smashing their flutes. Numerous flutes and flute fragments have been excavated at Tenochtitlan, offering evidence of large-scale ritualistic workings involving group music.
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Many African tribes practiced group magick incorporating music, as well. In Uganda, for instance, certain rituals among the various tribes often included the use of drums, rattles, xylophones, and string instruments such as the
edongo
, or bowl lyre.
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Drama and Dance

Another practical reason for group magick is that it makes possible a great variety of ritual drama and dance. Archeology has unearthed plenty of evidence of the long history of both drama and dance, and both disciplines seem to have roots in group ritual. The Bhimbetka rock shelters in India contain rock paintings dating from c. 3300 BCE depicting communal dances and figures bearing body art that may have had symbolic meaning or purpose,
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while Egyptian texts dating from 2800 BCE to 2400 BCE describe dramas depicting the story of Osiris and other important myths.
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These spiritually meaningful and symbolic dances and plays would be hard to perform with one dancer, one actor alone. Our natural propensity to tell stories, to share myths, to express truths with our bodies and souls, has led people throughout the ages to embrace group dance and drama as a means of magick as well as a means of teaching and making merry. Dance and drama, like music, gives us yet more reasons to come together in numbers for our magick and rituals.

Specialization

Yet another practical advantage to working magick in groups is that it allows for specialization. By having more people available to pitch in and take care of the magickal needs of the community, it becomes possible for individuals or smaller groups within the larger group to focus on a particular area or areas of magickal expertise. In Aboriginal society, for example, various clans were responsible for magickally assuring the abundance of certain animal populations.
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Each clan dedicated to its respective animal, within certain clans, eating the meat of said animal was off limits.
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This system allowed for individuals who perhaps have a deeper connection with a particular animal to use this relationship to the advantage of the community in working magick to help propagate said species.

Many indigenous cultures of the Americas also found specialization to be a benefit of group magick. The Seneca, for instance, had a large number of individual clans responsible for their own respective realms of influence. Among these were the Dawando`, a society of women dedicated to the propagation of otters and other water animals, as well as the Husk Faces, a loosely organized group of water doctors that healed by spraying or sprinkling water on the inflicted.
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In many modern magickal groups, we also specialize, with certain people casting the circle, or perhaps administering the wine and cakes,
etc.
However, we don’t seem to see nearly the level of specialization that our magickal ancestors enjoyed. Perhaps in expanding our groups to larger proportions, perhaps in focusing our efforts on discovering and utilizing the unique talents of everyone involved in a magickal working, we’ll come to embrace our niches and learn to excel in our personal areas of interest and mastery.

Same Old Story

Another practical reason people come together for magick and ritual is as old as the hills and as current as tomorrow: yep, that’s right—for the hook-up. Not to imply that the hope of winning love or at least temporary sexual gratification is the main motivator of group magick; many magick groups have no physically intimate interaction at all, and even for those who do, there are typically far greater goals at hand than the immediate pleasure that such interactions might trigger in the moment. Still, we can’t deny the fact that many people do indeed come to community circles and festivals and such at least in part in the hopes of meeting a long-term partner or a short-term lover. The phenomenon is nothing new.

In the days before TV and Internet arrived to pacify, entertain, and temper our human urges for real-life social interaction, community festivals, public magickal rites, and membership in magickal “clubs” such as the Greek mystery schools all served a very important function: they provided an opportunity for people to come together around a common purpose and hopefully bond a little. Ancient Celtic Beltane celebrations, for instance, brought women and men together to gather flowers and build bonfires. The atmosphere of the celebrations was festive and overtly sexual, often leading to the forging of real romantic partnerships.
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Present-day examples are also easy to find: take a trip to any of the major Pagan festivals in the country, and you’re likely to run into at least a few individuals who seem to have their minds set on hooking their claws into someone tasty—not that that’s always a bad thing! The desire for intimacy and interaction doesn’t necessarily take precedence over one’s magickal goals, and acknowledging our human condition of wanting each other and wanting to be wanted is an honest admission that allows us to see another layer of value in our magickal group workings.