Scones alone: A Samhain story about feeding the dead

Well, it's that time of year again--October, when the air gets crisper and the veil between the world gets thinner.  It's the pefect time to dust off our best tales of ghosties and spooks, and also to celebrate the return of the beloved dead, our ancestors and departed friends.  One way to honor the dead is with offerings of food and drink, a practice that that exists throughout history and around the world.  In keeping with the season, I thought I'd share a little personal story about trying to serve tea to a spirit last All Souls' Eve.

I guess I should include some background.  I don't regularly work with the dead, and I don't have any great talent for mediumship.  But I have had some isolated experiences with spirit contact in my life--just enough to know firsthand that there's some validity to it.  When I moved into my current home three years ago, I gradually became aware of one particular spirit.  I now think of him as one of my ancestors, though he's not a blood relative.  He identifies himself as one of the settlers of the area, someone who loved this land before I did (and still does).  My house is just past the northeast edge of the land that was once his family farm.  He's not much like a ghost--more of a guardian spirit, one of the genii loci that just happens to claim a human past.  In the past couple of years, I've been able to find out more about him, through a mix of psychic means and regular ole mundane research.  Through various experiences, my doubts have been quelled, and I've developed a sort of granddaughterly affection for him.  He's also been an important teacher for me in the last couple of years.

As All Soul's Eve approached last year, I began to think about what might make a suitable offering to show my gratitude.  Food seemed appropriate--a lot of the memories he'd shared with me related to food.  He remembered the scarcity of wheat flour, and the trial of eating dry corn breads for a couple of years until they could get a wheat crop going and a mill established.  He told me about raising dairy cows, and that the milk and cheese produced from Texas grass never tasted as sweet as the stuff he remembered from home.  He loved the abundance of fruit here--berries and plums that could be cooked into jams that didn't even need sugar.  Since I knew that this spirit was originally from Devonshire, England, I settled on the idea of a Devon-style service of tea and scones for my seasonal offering.

However, I felt that the details had to be just right--and that wasn't going to prove easy.  If you've never had a Devon-style scone--well, its not a regular English scone, those dense and doughy triangles studded with fruit.  It's actually closer to a Southern biscuit, round, but drier and sweeter and made with cream instead of water.  I checked just about every bakery in town, but couldn't find anyone who made something resembling a Devonshire scone.  So I found a recipe online and assembled the ingredients.  Over the next few days, I tracked down the remaining essentials:  Clotted cream from Devonshire to represent the homeland.  Texas strawberry preserves for the adopted land.  Good tea (loose leaf, not bagged), china cups, saucers, spoons, and a teapot of hammered tin.

On Samhain, October 31, I took the day off from work.  I got out of bed and baked the scones.  (They came out a little dense and crumbly, but a good effort, at least.)  I put hot water in the teapot, and gathered the dishes and cream and jam.  Then I put everything in a cardboard box with a tea towel, belted it to the passenger seat of my car and drove the mile or so to where the old homestead was. 

Of course, the original buildings are long gone.  Part of the place is a lake now, part is a busy road, and part is a public park.  It's active in the evening with people strolling and exercising, but during the workday there's often no one in sight.  It was a crisp, clear late morning--a  Monday.   From the parking lot, I could look and see that there was nobody around for a quarter mile.  Perfect.

I carried my cardboard box into the park and found a bench.  I sat down on one end of it.   I set up two plates, two cups, and two saucers--one for me and one for him.  I put two scones on each plate and split them lengthwise.  I spread the cream on the scone first (Devon style--they do it backwards in Cornwall), then heaped on the preserves.  I brewed the tea and poured two cups (plenty of cream, no sugar).  Then I tried to decide what to do next.

You see, this was the first time I had made a food offering to a spirit, and I had some unanswered questions.  I had done some research beforehand and found that food offerings for the dead are common to many cultures, but I found few resources that addressed what you actually do with the food in case the hungry ghosts don't show up to eat it.  Some of the advice was even contradictory.  I read that you eat the food, and offer the spirit the experience of tasting the food, because spirits don't have mouths to eat, which makes sense.  I also read that you should under no circumstances eat the food, because it is an offering for the dead, not a snack for you, which also makes sense.  I was planning to do what I usually do in such situations, which is go with what feels correct at the moment and hope I don't screw anything up too badly.  I took the first sip of my tea, trying to stay in a magical mood but feeling just a little silly.

I don't know what I was expecting to happen. I didn't see anyone, obviously.  I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary, other than the intensity of my concentration on the ritual.  As I mentioned before, I can be a little dense.  I don't always know when spirits are present, but I am a bit more confident in my abilities as a tarot reader.  So, I pulled out my cards--the ordinary 52-card deck I use when I'm in public and want to be discreet.  I asked if my guest was present.  I shuffled the deck and drew his significator on the first try--a definitive "yes" if ever there was one.  I still didn't know what to do.  I took a few more sips of tea.  It was aromatic and perfectly warming on that cool October morning.  I began to think I could easily drink both teas, if need be.

What happened next was baffling.  I saw someone approaching from the corner of the park.  Not an apparition.  Just a nicely dressed white man, slightly past middle age, walking a border collie mix along the path behind me.  When he was about six feet away, he stepped off the sidewalk.  He greeted me heartily, like we were old friends.  Then he came and sat next to me, just inches away from the second tea setting.

I guess I should have been worried, being accosted by a strange man in the park, with no one else in sight.  I guess he should have been frightened to come sit next to a crazy lady on a bench with two cups of tea and a cardboard box full of junk.  But it felt fine--normal, somehow.  I offered him the tea.  He didn't take the scones, but said they looked delicious.  I saw the dog coveting them, so I asked the man if his dog could have one.  Then we sat for a while, savoring the tea and watching the dog lick the cream off the scone.  I poured a refill.  I don't remember what we talked about--the weather, probably, and the dog.  I'm certain he didn't ask me what I was doing there with tea for two and some playing cards--because I wouldn't have had a ready answer for him if he did.

When we were finished, he stood up.  He looked me over and said,  "Enjoy your day...and God bless you."  And he continued on down the path.  And I did--I felt as blessed as could be.  When he had gone out of sight, I poured the remaining tea on the ground, and left the last of the four scones there in the grass.

I don't really have anything to add to this story, except to say that it comes close to typifying how magic, real magic, usually works--in unexpected and quietly stunning ways.  It's not always fireworks, but it's sometimes, just...wow.

Have a happy Halloween, y'all!

Legendary scryers: Pan Twardowski

Today's famous scryer is perhaps a little less than famous to English-speaking readers.  I'm talking about the quasi-historical Polish sorcerer and folkloric figure Pan Twardowski.  Pan Twardowski (or Master Twardowski) is a Faustian character who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for occult powers.  In Poland, he has been memorialized in numerous plays, ballads, legends, and folk art.

Like Faust, Twardowki managed to evade fulfilling his end of the bargain for many years.  Always a clever one, he included in his contract a clause that stipulated that the devil would collect his soul in Rome, a place that he then avoided visiting at all costs.  His magical career finally ended when Old Scratch found his own loophole, coming to collect Twardowski's soul while he dined in a tavern named Rome.  (Today, there are numerous inns in Poland that claim to be the site of this fatal meeting.)  As Twardowski was being carried off to Hell, he entreated the Virgin Mary, and she came to his aid.  The appearance of the Blessed Virgin so startled the devil that he dropped Twardowski on the Moon, where he resides in solitude to this day.  But Twardowski gets bored there without his magical books and tools.  He sometimes sends spiders down to earth on silvery threads, to act as emissaries and informers for him.

The sorcerer of Krakow may be based on a real 16th-century occultist whose true identity is unclear.  Or he might be composite character created from the activities of various seers and magicians that were swarming Poland at the time (including, perhaps, John Dee and Edward Kelley, who resided in Krakow).  It's one of those cases where historical fact and colorful fiction blend together in an inextricable mess.

The most well-known story about Twardowski involves his evocation of the ghost of a Polish queen.  It seems that Twardowski spent some time in the employ of the Polish king, Sigismund II Augustus.  The king, after the death of his first wife, had made the politically unwise choice of marrying his court mistress, a Lithuanian noblewoman.  This second queen, Barbara Radziwiłł, was reportedly beautiful, accomplished, and the object of the king's passionate devotion.  Unfortunately, her position attracted the jealous attention of many courtiers, and she died of a sudden illness just five months after her coronation.  (Poisoned by her treacherous mother-in-law Bona Sforza?  Oooh...history's mysteries!)  In any case, her untimely death devastated the king.  He draped her chamber in black and remained in mourning for the rest of his life.  (Though he did remarry, hoping vainly for an heir.)

Krakow at that time was something of a haven for occultists, and the king surrounded himself with astrologers, mediums, and necromancers to comfort him in his grief.  One of these was said to be Pan Twardowski.  One night, at the urging of the king, Twardowski brought his magic mirror to the death-chamber of Queen Barbara.  There, the master magician summoned the wronged queen to full appearance, to the great relief of  the royal widower, and secured his position at court.  (Skeptics and cynics alleged that Twardowski faked the whole thing with the help of the queen's old gowns and a look-alike chambermaid.)

An artifact associated with Twardowski has survived (mostly) intact--the so-called "Twardowski mirror."  This is a tin and silver mirror supposed used by the magician for his scrying and conjurations.  In 1711, the mirror was installed in the Basilica of the Assumption in Wegrow, Poland--where it remains to this day.  The prophetic pull of the mirror was said to be so great that anyone could gaze into it and see portents of event to come.  (That is, until 1812, when Napoleon Bonaparte beheld his coming defeat and lashed out at the mirror, cracking its surface and dispersing its magical power.) The Latin inscription on the frame translates as, "Twardowski played with this mirror, performing magical tricks; now it is destined to serve God."

Artwork, from top:

Wojciech Gerson, "The Ghost of Barbara Radziwiłł (1886).     

Józef Simmler, "The Death of Barbara Radziwiłł" (1860).

Woodcut of Twardowski mirror (1871).

Legendary scryers: Frederick Hockley

Frederick Hockley (1809-1885) was a British occultist who was particularly fascinated with the practice of summoning spirits into crystals and mirrors.  His other interest included alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and later in life, Freemasonry.  An accountant by trade, he spent much of his free time visiting the British library and transcribing magical texts for his vast personal library.  Hockley's meticulously recorded scrying sessions spanned several decades.  In a lecture given in 1854, he claims to have thirty years of experience with crystallomancy.  Assuming he began in 1824, his practice predates both the Spiritualist movement and the Victorian occult revival spearheaded by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

 Despite his lifelong interest in the practice, Hockley apparently was not himself a gifted scryer.  Instead, he relied on the talent of a clairvoyant assistant (usually a young woman acting under hypnosis), who he termed his "speculatrix."  His most fruitful such partnership was with Emma Louisa Leigh, who began scrying for Hockley around the age of thirteen, and who died at the age of twenty.  Through her, Hockly received the answers to over 1,000 questions posed by him to a purportedly ascended spirit being, who he called C.A. (for Crowned Angel).  The result is a lengthy philosophical and cosmological document, which certainly exceeds what a Victorian girl of Leigh's age and education could be expected to generate.

Hockley published no books during his lifetime.  His output was in the form of lectures, letters and essays on magic and mysticism.  He was reputedly a generous lender of his personal library, and kept up an active correspondence with students and colleagues on the topics that interested him.  Virtually the only component of his practice that he did not share was the collection of spiritual diaries that detailed his scrying sessions.  These were dispersed after his death, and the contents mostly lost.  Of the thirty or more notebooks he is said to have compiled, only a few excerpts transcribed by one of his associates have survived.

However, we can gather some of his methods from the book "Invocating by Magic Crystals and Mirrors."  This short treatise originated as a hand-scribed and illustrated manuscript which Hockley presented for the medium Barbara Honywood (herself an accomplished watercolorist), probably to try and inspire her to scry for him.  Hockley was a devout Christian, and grew more and more devoted as a result of his lifelong work with spiritual entities.  Thus his tracts contain effusive prayers, invocation of angelic spirits, and precise formulae for the proper consecration of ritual objects.  For would-be scryers, Hockley prescribes a life of abstinence and piety in order to avoid the physical and mental problems that seemed to have befallen many clairvoyants and mediums of Hockley's day.

Maybe this speaks more to my ignorance that his obscurity, but I hadn't heard of Frederick Hockley until fairly recently.  His works are not much in print, and for that reason I think he's often overlooked.  It is almost certain that Hockley's manuscripts were circulated widely among members of the Golden Dawn, and strongly influenced the development of that organization.  Hockley also stands as a transitional figure between the venerable tradition of Renaissance magic whose grimoires he studied, and the eclectic occult revival which was soon to follow him.  For those who are interested in learning more about this fascinating figure (and who have moderately deep pockets), occult publisher Teitan Press is currently in the process of putting out some truly covetable fine editions of his major works.  Or, you can check out the book The Rosicrucian Seer (out of print, but available as used paperback and also online if you poke around), which compiles some of Hockley's papers into a single volume.

Further reading:

Teitan Press's Frederick Hockley Series.
Hamill, J.  The Rosicrucian Seer: The Magical Writings of Frederick Hockley (1986).
Samuel Scarborough. "Frederick Hockley: A Hidden Force behind the 19th Century Occult Revival" Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition 14:2. (2008).

Yes, no, goodbye? Rosemary Ellen Guiley on Oujia

This week I caught an episode of the Paranormal Podcast, featuring Rosemary Ellen Guiley on the topic of Oujia boards.  The interview coincides with the release of Guiley's new book devoted to the history and lore of the Oujia, or "talking board," as the device is generically known.  She breezes through the Oujia's origins as a Spiritualist-era craze and its current status as a pop-culture icon and mainstay of urban legend.  But host Jim Harold keeps the conversation centered around one question:  Does the board really deserve its bad reputation?

 I've always marvelled at the knee-jerk reaction many people have to the very mention of Oujia--and not just people who are unfamiliar with or fearful of the occult.  I remember one time as a preteen, two friends and I pooled our allowance money to buy a Oujia board at the toy store.  It was the closest my liberal and rational-minded parents ever came to an outright prohibition of anything.  Much later, I became active in a paranormal group, where it was accepted as a truism that any pesky house-ghost manifestation could likely be traced back to a naive person playing with a Oujia board.  And of course I've heard plenty of New Age folks say matter-of-factly that Oujia allows "lower vibrations" to manifest, that it attracts "earthbounds," that it "opens a door" to astral cesspools, etc., etc.

So it's become a matter of course to shun the boards and blame them for all kinds of mayhem, from demonic possession to poltergeist activity to streaks of bad luck.  But why?  Why does Oujia occupy a category apart from other tools people use to access psychic information?  Isn't Oujia, based as it (probably) is on the ideomotor response of the body, basically just a form of dowsing?  How does using the board open a person up to unwholesome spiritual influences any more than say, automatic writing?  Is a paper and ink really more "visible" to predatory entities than a mediumistic individual, sans board?  I'm not denying that some people experience truly disturbing events related to Ouija use.  I just want to understand the mechanics here, and why this device is considered to be so especially dangerous.

Which is why I listed to Guiley's opinion with eager curiosity.  Her controversial position: Oujia gets a bad rap.  The board itself isn't evil, and it isn't fundamentally different than other spirit contact devices.  When asked why Oujia is associated with so much bad juju, she offers some different theories.  (I don't have the recording handy, so I'm going to paraphrase.) There's the prevalence of Oujia-related mischief in horror films, she says, which creates the expectation of fear in users.  Then there's also the ease of access for casually interested folks--people who would never go into a metaphysical shop to buy a dowsing rod can pick up a Parker Bros. board at Target.  And there's the internet, which allows fear-mongering and superstition to propagate out of control.  This interview was a treat.  I haven't totally made up my mind about Oujia yet, and I admire Guiley for having the guts to take an unorthodox stance and consider tough questions without spouting off cliches.  It doesn't stop her from rounding out her book with shocking and scintillating Oujia anecdotes--but hey, those make for good reading.

If you're interested in this topic, I recommend picking up a copy of Oujia Gone Wild, with co-author Rick Fisher.  Guiley's been working on the book for the last couple of years, and it's finally available through her website, visionaryliving.com.  (A digital edition is forthcoming.)  Has she been laying low since her sometime co-author, Philip Imbrogno, got busted for fabricating credentials and sources?  No matter.  It's great to see a new book from Guiley, and on such a perennially fascinating topic.