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O P U S C U LA M A G I CA VOLUME 2: ESSAYS ON WITCHCRAFT AND CROOKED PATH SORCERY Andrew D. Chumbley OPUSCULA M A G I CA Volume II Essays: Witchcraft and Crooked Path Sorcery Andrew D. Chumbley With illustrations by the Author THREE HANDS PRESS 20II Optiscula Magica Published By THREE HANDS PRESS, 2011 An Imprint of Xoanon Publishing, LLC Series Editor: Daniel A. Schulke Essays, Preface and Art © copyright Andrew D. Chumbley 1992-2003. © Copyright Elizabeth Spedding 2011, Foreword and Notes to Texts © Copyright 2011 Daniel A. Schulke, All Rights Reserved. "The Sabbatic Cultus: An Interview With Andrew D. Chumbley" © Copyright 1996 Robert Fitzgerald and Andrew D. Chumbley. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the copyright holders. Xoanon Limited and Three Hands Press thank the following for their kind assistance in the preparation of this volume: Elizabeth Spedding Robert Fitzgerald Clive Harper Michael Howard Gavin Semple Barry William Hale Michael Staley James Dunk Three Hands Press 15510 San Pablo Avenue Box G313 Richmond Vista, CA 94806 www.threehaiidspress.com Dust Jacket Design by Bob Eames Letterpress wraps printed by Dependable Letterpress, San Francisco, California Fine Binding by Pettingell Bookbindery, Berkeley, California Table of Contents Foreword to Volume II 9 Preface 1$ Magick is Not For All 17 The Crooked Path Part I 21 The Crooked Path Part 2 27 The Sabazian Torch 35 Gnosis For the Flesh Eternal 45 A Scattering of Dust From the Wing of the Moth 63 The Cult of the Divine Artist 73 A History of Teachings of the Crooked Path 81 Seven Shades of Solitude 89 Cultus Sabbati: Dream, Provenance, and Magistry 97 The Sabbatic Cultus: An Interview with Andrew D. Chumbley 101 Notes on the Texts: Volume 2 118 Foreword Opuscula Magica I, the first volume of collected essays of Andrew Chumbley, took as its theme 'Witchcraft and the Sabbatic Tradition'. As a magical dominion, this latter term denotes a vibrant strand of Traditional Witchcraft emergent from the present-day magical order Cultus Sabbati, of which Chumbley served as Magister from 1991 until his death in 2004. These articles served as an exegetic periphery to his seminal magical text Azoetia: A Gritnoire of the Sabbatic Crajt (Xoanon 1992, 2002). Amongst their varying concerns are practices of Traditional Witchcraft operative within the Cultus, from the simple spell-craft of the Knotted Cord charm —originating in English folk-sorcery— to more advanced rites of sexual vision-induction. Importantly, the works identify the Dream and Dream-sorcery as a key feature distinguishing the Sabbatic Arcanum from other forms of Witchcraft. The present collection continues Chumbley's exposition of the Craft of the Witches' Sabbath, but in addition treats Crooked Path Sorcery, one of its central bodies of lore and practice. A concealed by-way of magic, the Crooked Path is linked in particular to British cunning-craft, Chumbley's first, and on-going, contact of initiatic power. Manifesting through the dual-presence of healing and harming, cursing and blessing, it wends these extremities to reveal the 'darkly illuminant' road which lies between and beyond. As a sorcerous metaphysic it is adumbrated in the magical principles of Opposition and Inversion found in Chumbley's Qutub (1995), but reached the height of mystical articulation in the ophiolatrous rites of his Dragon-Book of Essex.1 Rather I. The rites of the Dragon-Book of Essex were initially manifest in Essex from 1992-1999; and in North America from 1998 to the present, exacted by an inner cell of the Cultus Sabbati. Publication of the grimoire is scheduled by Xoanon Limited in the near future. Foreword IO than the mere exposition of such as an occult manifesto, the Draconian rites are the Crooked Path in its actuated form, become vital through the manifest ingenium of the living body of its Initiates. Aside from the Dragon-Book itself, the genesis of the rites of Crooked Path Sorcery are spoken of, in part, in the essay included herein "A History of Crooked Path Teachings".2 It is tempting to consider Crooked Path Sorcery a 'philosophy of witchcraft'; however due to its serpentine nature, ethos is far closer to the mark. This relates to the fact that Traditional Witchcraft, at its root, is not a religion, it is first and foremost a body of practices, informed by an indwelling genius. Born of the natural coition of powers which Wise-Craft fosters, the Crooked Path may be seen as a perpetual dance between the stations of Holiness and Heresy, Tradition and the Deviation of the Path. Each momentary stance must be held in equipoise, the practitioner fully aware of the summit of its potentials, as well as their weaknesses, ultimately knowing that mediative integration will render all duality false and illusory. In witch-lore, this identification of severance and bifurcation with the Crooked Road is embodied in numerous forms, one of which is the Arthana, or double-edged blade. Of it, Chumbley writes: To contemplate the double-edge of the Arthana's blade is to mindfully approach the realisation of the Crooked Path's essential nature. For it reveals the Path of Sudden Change, the transmutative power which may liberate or destroy; and which, like the knife, may cut through the bonds of fateful imprisonment or sever the very flow of life} Mirroring the fateful division of the knife's edge is the historical exemplar of wort-bane, a corpus of herblore haunting a number of Traditional Witchcraft lineages. Instead of 2. See also my article 'The Ophidian Sabbat', Staifirc, Vol. 2 No. 4,2011 j. Dragon-Book ofEssex (1997).