The Witches’ Ointment online course

The Witch­es’ Ointment

 

Intro­duc­tion

It seems witch­craft can­not escape cur­rent-day trends. Now stripped of traces of mys­ti­cism and taboo, witch­craft is often pre­sent­ed before us as a sys­temic, mea­sur­able path, lim­it­ed by human inter­ven­tion. Researchers who are also prac­ti­tion­ers of witch­craft some­times find them­selves hav­ing to choose between aca­d­e­m­ic and eso­teric dis­cours­es, because both sides of the sto­ry are often pre­sent­ed as eter­nal­ly irrec­on­cil­able. Also, things do not seem to add up when we com­bine the con­clu­sions reached in anthro­pol­o­gy, his­to­ry, and folk­lore. There is always some­thing miss­ing, spe­cial­ly some­thing that con­nects this path to some­thing old­er, more prim­i­tive, some­thing that res­onates deeply with our intuition.

This unex­plain­able sen­sa­tion of incom­plete­ness is more evi­dent when we focus on a cer­tain aspect of witch­craft, ie. the witch­es’ oint­ment, the con­coc­tion used by cer­tain indi­vid­u­als for fly­ing and shape shift­ing. The oint­ment escapes, at least appar­ent­ly, any rea­son­able expla­na­tion, and forces us to choose sides (a reli­gious approach, a sci­en­tif­ic approach, the his­to­ri­an approach, or the eso­teric approach). There are as many the­o­ries about the oint­ment as there are indi­vid­u­als who have talked about it.

We believe that what makes it hard for us to under­stand the con­cept of the oint­ment (and also what makes it hard to real­ly com­pre­hend what Hedgerid­ing is about) are the lim­i­ta­tions of the dis­ci­pline we choose to fol­low when enter­ing in this path. The biggest prob­lem we face when try­ing to under­stand the witch­es’ oint­ment is, on the one hand, that the top­ic is not observed holis­ti­cal­ly, and on the oth­er hand, that the oint­ment is often por­trayed as sep­a­rate from the mys­tery of Hedgerid­ing and prim­i­tive witch­craft. We try to con­fine the oint­ment to mythol­o­gy, sci­ence, pop­u­lar belief, while per­haps what we should do is try to under­stand it from a mys­ti­cal point of view, as an inte­gral part of an ini­tia­to­ry path.

This is why we decid­ed to offer The Witch­es’ Oint­ment online course, to present the oint­ment as a key to the path of Hedgerid­ing and witch­craft in its most prim­i­tive aspect, as a poten­tial mys­tery that the prac­ti­tion­er can incor­po­rate to their per­son­al prac­tice. We want you to accom­pa­ny us on a path of research, self-dis­cov­ery, and work with our sur­round­ings that results in some­thing that works only for YOU.

This course is rec­om­mend­ed to those who wish to find the con­nec­tion between Witch­craft / Hedgerid­ing, and the Path of Poi­sons, those who want to find the miss­ing link that con­nects work with allies, plants, the Hedge, and Spir­it Flight.

 

Course Syl­labus

Part I: “Some believe that witch­es fly”

  • Intro­duc­tion
  • The­o­ries about witch­es ointment
    • Oint­ments in mythology
    • Oint­ments and heresy
    • Oint­ments and science
  • Spir­it (and body?) Flight
  • Poi­son / met­z­i­na / pon­zoña and its rel­e­vance in Witchcraft
    • The Witch­es’ Ointment

This block intro­duces the masks that the witch­es’ oint­ment has used through­out his­to­ry and the the­o­ries that have been used to explain and present this con­cept in the aca­d­e­m­ic and the eso­teric fields. We will intro­duce the con­cepts of Spir­it Flight and of poi­son / met­z­i­na / pon­zoña as sup­port­ing con­cepts for a holis­tic com­pre­hen­sion of the witch­es’ ointment.

Part II: “Green like the pop­uleon”

  • The ele­ments of the ointment
    • Sym­bol­ic elements
    • Tan­gi­ble items
  • Plant, ani­mal, min­er­al allies
  • Oint­ment recipes through­out history
    • Inter­pret­ing recipes under a mys­ti­cal light

In this part, we will ana­lyze the ele­ments and recipes of the oint­ment from a mys­ti­cal approach. We will talk about the plants that we often find in his­tor­i­cal texts: tox­ic, nar­cot­ic, seda­tive, stim­u­lant sub­stances, etc. and we will ana­lyze dif­fer­ent recipes found in his­tor­i­cal and folk sources.

Part III: “Wait until you’ve been anoint­ed”

  • Oint­ment formulation
    • Goals
    • Craft­ing your per­son­al recipe
  • Cre­ation of the ointment
    • Tools
    • Cre­ation process
  • Incor­po­rat­ing the oint­ment in your hedgerid­ing / witch­craft practice
    • How, When, Where
  • Bib­li­og­ra­phy

In this part, we will talk about the prac­ti­cal and mag­i­cal aspects of the oint­ment cre­ation process, what to take into account when we for­mu­late our oint­ment, the meth­ods to do it, and its use in a mys­ti­cal or spir­i­tu­al context.

ATTENTION: We rec­om­mend enrolling in this course if only you have already attend­ed “The Path of Poi­sons” course. How­ev­er, some of the basic con­cepts cov­ered in the afore­men­tioned course will be briefly rein­tro­duced in this one.

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