Hexenacht by Witan Svan
Night of the Witch's a long and mysterious history lays at the feet of this holy tide. Hexenacht or sometimes know as Walburgisnacht has been celebrated amongst our people under different " lenses" for a very long time. Whether for protection, or preparation, sanctity or demonized or christianized for various purposes the core of this theme is protection of the folk by our sacred feminine from the dark forces and the feminine side of chaos ( which is often a mockery of femininity itself)that reside outside the boundaries, in the Outergard and purification of those sacred feminine powers of order and the utilization of that harnessed feminine power to create and bring growth and life within the Innergard.
Origin of the holiday's function are not fully known it is surmised that it originates from the blessing of the herdsmen and their flocks as they prepared to go out into the fields and out amongst the mountains to graze their livestock.
Perhaps this came about as a semblance of the men Folk setting them up out in the wilds perhaps leaving one or two behind as shepherds and then to return and celebration of the summertime with a flower festival which has formulated itself into the now current Holiday, May Day. Our Ancestors knew that out beyond the safety of the village beyond the safety of the Kingdom in the wilds there were forces unknown beguiling forces forces of seduction, forces of desperation, forces that tear away from order that live within the shadowed places. Nothing takes this representation in form more within our culture then in the form of the Hag.
The hag, sometimes known as the Nachtmara or nightmare, in the Old Norse stories they were referred to as the troll wives or wolf riding troll witches. These malicious beings that take the shapes of the mockery of femininity were and still are a threat.
The word witch and the word norn mean the same thing and it was known that the only true way to defend yourself against these forces was to use the power of your own against them. The sacred feminine vs the dissipative feminine.
Misunderstanding became greatly confused with the onset of Christianity slowly making its way into our culture. Combination of Mediterranean concepts of femininity and more so Middle Eastern abrahamic concepts of femininity washed into this time frame and brought with it a coalescence of the two being the same. As it seems femininity and it's mysteries was deemed more a threat amongst the people that speak the language of Shem. This clearly carried through in the monotheistic religion.
It is gone even further into obscurity now in the modern age in which the new ideology of monoglobalism has twisted the holiday to mean that the hag represents the freedom of women fighting against some form of oppression of society in which they attempt to cultivate in order to create a rift dichotomy within the balance of Western society. This is compounded to with the usurption of monoglobal laborers also taking mayday as some form of communistic celebration or holiday.
We've decided to take the blade to these attaching ideologies and cut down to the core of what this night truly represents and it takes representation in our ceremonies. The women folk of our community constructing and building Force sacred blessed herbs and charms in order to place them within a sacred fire so that the folk may pass through the smoke and be cleansed as they may move about into the far reaches of the wilderness protected from these corrosive forces.
Symbolically donning the color of red the color of power, the color of love, the color of passion, the color of life, the color of blood! This sacred symbol of dawning power and Magic upon themselves the sacred herbs are bound to protective woods, and placed within the fire and with the usage of brooms that were dried all year are then wafted over the folk and then the brooms are placed within the fire and new brooms will be constructed for the next year to come.
I will place in the comments below the sacred spell that teaches our women folk the nine herbs that must be dried and prepared and bound to A rod to be thrown into the fire and then I will place in a separate comment the list of those sacred herbs.
the herb charm spell for Hexenacht
"Be they wound to witch's bane, In the fire a hag's hate, wains. An Englishman's foot is bushel bound, there a swine's snout will be found. Let the tongue of a toad cover thee and sprinkle thyself with the dew of the sea. A tuft of hair from the old man's head, twined round tight the old wood bed. Valerian turns away the evilest eye, and so too must the nymph's spur die. Lastly Thor's helper must be a strong rod, and on the gray road your prayers, well shod.
Rue: witchesbane
Plantain: English man's foot
Dandelion leaf: Swine's Snout
Sage leaf: toads tongue
Rosemary sprig: dew of the sea
Mugwort: old man
Valerian: ( name remaining)
Spearmint: spur of the nymph
Rowan twig: Thor's helper
Witan Svan Herul
