October Totems: Hazel

In our tradition we divide the year not only by eight solar and agricultural holidays, but also by the Kalends. We celebrate twelve months of the year by the common calendar, plus a special thirteenth month for Samhain.  These month cycles are associated with different totemic spirits. Each month is assigned an animal, a bird (or other flying creature), and a tree. October's totems are Salmon, Hazel, and Lapwing.

The totemic associations are as follows:

Salmon – (Bradan) oldest animal; wisdom, knowledge, inspiration
Hazel – (Coll) wisdom, intuition, creativity, divination, the source
Lapwing – (Curracag) resourcefulness, distraction, wisdom, divination

Hazel

The Hazel is deciduous and grows to the height of a small tree/large shrub – 12-20 feet tall. Hazels are plentiful in copses, oak woods, and hedgerows, and they thrive in damp places near ponds and streams. Their bark is smooth and light brown with lighter brown specks that are the pores of the tree. They have tough, elastic stems and slightly heart-shaped, asymmetrical leaves.

Hazel’s magical associations include fertility, wisdom, marriage, divination, healing, protection, intuition, dowsing wands, individuality, finding the hidden, luck and wishes. Hazel’s atmosphere brings exhilaration and inspiration, and it has been called the ‘Poet’s Tree.’ It has associations with faerie lore and entrance into faerie realms. It is aligned with the element of Air and with the feminine.

Hazel is one of the “Seven Chieftain Trees” of the Celts, and the unnecessary felling of hazel trees brought the death penalty in Ireland.

The Hazel is considered to be the Tree of knowledge for the Celts. Its nuts are ultimate receptacles of wisdom. Hazelnuts were considered the food of the Gods.

Hazel was used in combination with other woods (oak, apple and willow) for various magical purposes, and it has associations with love divinations and love wands (possibly due to the shape of the leaves).

Because it is plentiful near water, Hazel is associated with wells and springs. For example, nine hazels of “poetic art” surrounded Connla’s Well, the destination and home of the first salmon. Magically speaking, silver snakes and silvery fish dart around its roots, which signifies swift energy. Hazel brings speed through the air and water.

In Cornwall, it was used for dowsing (to find water, ley lines, thieves, murderers and treasure). In France, it was used for beating the bounds (to define the boundaries and make sure they didn’t fall into a state of neglect). In Wales, twigs were made into wishing caps.

Hazel’s healing qualities were used to cure fevers, diarrhea, and excessive menstrual flow. The kernels were used for clearing cough and head congestion. The nuts were used in divination rituals, especially concerning love.

Hazel wands or rods bring poetic and magical inspiration. They can also be used as “talking sticks” for order in large group discussions. The Druids also believed they could achieve invisibility from hazel rods fashioned in a certain manner.

October Totems: Salmon

In our tradition we divide the year not only by eight solar and agricultural holidays, but also by the Kalends. We celebrate twelve months of the year by the common calendar, plus a special thirteenth month for Samhain.  These month cycles are associated with different totemic spirits. Each month is assigned an animal, a bird (or other flying creature), and a tree. October's totems are Salmon, Hazel, and Lapwing.

The totemic associations are as follows:

Salmon – (Bradan) oldest animal; wisdom, knowledge, inspiration
Hazel – (Coll) wisdom, intuition, creativity, divination, the source
Lapwing – (Curracag) resourcefulness, distraction, wisdom, divination

Salmon

The Salmon is the “Oldest Animal” in Welsh mythology and is critical in the search for Mabon. Salmon is a symbol of wisdom, inspiration and rejuvenation.

The Salmon will return to place of its own birth to mate (often with great difficulty) and is, therefore, a reminder that we need to journey back to our own beginnings to find wisdom. The Druid quest is for wisdom and knowledge, leading eventually to the Oldest Animal.

It swims in the well of wisdom (Connla’s Well) at the source of all life, a sacred pool that has 9 hazel trees growing around it. Fionn MacCumhaill received the wisdom of the salmon when he was cooking the fish for someone else. The juice splashed on his hand, and he got the knowledge of the fish when he sucked the burned spot.

October Totems: Lapwing

In our tradition, we divide the year not only by eight solar and agricultural holidays, but also by the Kalends. We celebrate twelve months of the year by the common calendar, plus a special thirteenth month for Samhain.  These month cycles are associated with different totemic spirits. Each month is assigned an animal, a bird (or other flying creature), and a tree. October's totems are Salmon, Hazel, and Lapwing.

The totemic associations are as follows:

Salmon – (Bradan) oldest animal; wisdom, knowledge, inspiration
Hazel – (Coll) wisdom, intuition, creativity, divination, the source
Lapwing – (Curracag) resourcefulness, distraction, wisdom, divination


Lapwing

The lapwing is one of the three guardian animals discussed by Robert Graves in his book The White Goddess.  (The other two are Dog and Roebuck, both of which have a place in our totemic wheel). The lapwing guards the Mysteries of the Wise, he says, by "disguising the Truth." She does this by feigning injury to make herself appear helpless to predators who have come to close to her nest. This nest is on the ground in the spring, with her hatchlings inside. She flops and flails and flies in little spurts, all the time leading the predator away from her young. When she has gone far enough, she abandons the rouse and flies away.

The Greeks used the phrase "deceitful as a lapwing" because of this same behavior. Framed positively, though, we see the lapwing's great resourcefulness and cleverness.

Because Lapwing's nest rests on the ground in the spring, hares have been known to sit in them, looking like they are hatching eggs (which is where the combined association of bunnies and eggs come from for spring fertility celebrations). It is actually said in myth that the Teutonic Goddess Ostara transformed a Lapwing into a Hare. The Hare, of course, is already associated with shape-shifting, and this myth shows that Lapwing is also a shape-shifter (further adding to her ability to "disguise the Truth").

She is a Guardian of the Mysteries, and she teaches us to look beyond the superficial details, to ignore appearance and aim instead for reality.

The Season of the Witch

From the Autumn Equinox until just after the Wild Hunt rides out around Samhain is the Season of the Witch.  People all over the United States seem to know that this is true without being told so.  The stores decorate for Halloween, reporters develop stories about local Witches, and Witches themselves feel a certain thrill in the chilly autumnal breeze that stirs something wild and magical within them.

We honor this season by flying out as much as possible during this time, in preparation for the Wild Hunt.  We also begin our Samhain season preparations, which include: changing over to black robes from white, ancestor contact, a dumb feast, pumpkin guardians, deep divination, and, of course, flying to the Sabbat.

Our friend and mentor Pythia Blackthorn, of the Classic Witchcraft Blog, has a wonderful excerpt from Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes that sums up the Season of the Witch beautifully:  The Autumn People:

“Beware the autumn people. … For some, autumn comes early, stays late, through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the only normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No, the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks through their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.”

- Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Our totems for this time of year reflect the themes of this dark tide. The Autumn Equinox is the time we honor the early face of the Black Goddess: The Grail Queen.  We see her as the Silver Queen of Castle Perilous, whose treasure is the Holy Grail, the Cauldron of Cerridwen to which we must all return.  It is also the bloody Cup of Babalon, who collects blood offerings of sacrifice and transmutes them into magic.  Her totems are the swine, the chicken, and the grapevine, all of which offer forth their flesh and blood to feed and nourish us.  Early October's totems are those of deep wisdom: the salmon, the hazelnut, and lapwing.  These symbols of sacrifice and wisdom prepare us for our journey into the underworld to seek the heart of all magic at Samhain.  Samhain's totems are the toad, the crane, and the elder tree.  It is the time when we honor Tubal Cain in his dark aspect as the Lord of the Dead, keeper of the Quench Tank, the Deathhelm, and the West Gate.

Witches all, we hope to see you at the Sabbat, be it atop the Brocken, under the Walnut of Benevento, at the hill-top cromlech, or around the well-worn Mill Grounds.  Celebrate the coming of the Season of the Witch!