The Devil’s Dozen

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 both 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 sentinel of the threshold unto the mysteries of death and the Otherworld.

From this wellspring of inspiration ‘The Devil’s Dozen’; a modern ‘gramarye’, or ‘black book’ of thirteen Craft rites of the Old One has been created and is offered by a present day initiate of the ‘Old Craft’.

Within its pages there are to be found thirteen rites – for both the ‘lone’ practitioner and the assembled companie – of vision, sacred compact, dedication, initiation, consecration, empowerment, protection, illumination, union, transformation and devotion. ‘They are my own creations all; given in hope that they may provide usefulness or inspiration, and each a personal offering of devotion unto the starlit and smoking altar of the Old One