What better way to show God you appreciate him than to squander his most precious gift, life, in a miasma of ruthlessness and gore? In addition to justifying Crusades, Witch Trials and Wars, this theological breakthrough is also the main justification for the time-honored practice of human sacrifice. Sacrifices are perhaps the most ancient method to honor deities, going right back to the earliest ancestor-worship religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The original theory was "everyone needs to eat," including the ancestor-gods. So priests would dutifully leave food sitting out for the gods, who would never actually eat the food.

It was embarrassing to have all this food sitting around, so the priests eventually began burning, cutting or bleeding the sacrifices instead of just leaving them out to rot. As time went on, the original theory of feeding the gods was forgotten and the practice became a ritual which was essentially meaningless to its participants (like the use of chrism in a Christian baptism, just for example). The first sacrifices consisted of food and meat, but the emphasis slowly shifted to animal sacrifice and from there to blood sacrifice. Once you've moved past the notion that you're actually feeding the gods, an animal hierarchy kicks in, so a goat is a better sacrifice than a chicken, and a cow is better than a goat. So what would be the bestest sacrifice of all? Eureka! There is some controversy about when the practice of human sacrifice actually began.

Some argue for a prehistoric origin, but the evidence for these claims unfortunately tend to be 10,000-year-old bodies found in Northern European bogs, which leaves room for a not-insignificant amount of interpretation. There's a better than even chance those bodies were the result of early executions or ritual killings, among all of which there is an admittedly fine line. Human sacrifice is more or less defined here as the ritual killing of a person to appease or coerce a god figure. The scholars don't really agree on where to draw the lines, but the bloodthirsty bastards have a marked tendency to designate just about any ancient death a "human sacrifice" for no defensible reason. Virtually every culture and region has a history of human sacrifice, from the Romans to the Celts to the Aztecs... Hell, even the Dutch...

The Rose Cross Ritual (RCR) is one of several ceremonial techniques including the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP) and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Hexagram (LBRH) commonly used to ward a space or create a psychically cleansed area for spiritual or magical work. The RCR has certain differences from the others which make it useful. These points will be covered after instructions on how to perform the ritual.


Casting the Circle
The RCR creates a circle or sphere of protected space which can be thought of as a curtain or bubble of energy surrounding the working area. Generally one will want to ward the entire room one is working in, so the perimeter of the bubble should roughly approximate the room. It is OK if the bubble of energy projects slightly outside the walls if the room is irregular in shape. Particularly the bottom and top of the bubble may project through the floor or ceiling, especially if a sphere is visualized. It is fine if mundane furniture in the room falls without the circle. It helps the visualization to let the walls of the room assist in containing the energy, for physical walls reinforce the mental sense of protection, and it is the mind that does the work. In general, it is a harder to visualize protection of only a small area around yourself when you are in a room which is much larger. We have found that when working out of doors, without any walls, it is harder to cast any kind of circle. In such a case, using natural boundaries to define the space warded helps, such as trees or rocks. This is probably why clearings surrounded by a wall of trees, sacred groves, or circles of standing stones have been favourite sites for ceremonies. We have found that erecting banners helps define an outdoor space. Rarely, when working with a small group in a very large room, we have again used banners to cir*****scribe an area to be warded instead of using the entire room.

The Basic Image
The basic image of the Rose Cross Ritual in operation is of a rectangular bubble of white light surrounding the operator with Rose Crosses glowing at four points around the circle, at the apex above the centre, at the nadir below the centre, and at the centre of the room. This totals seven Rose Crosses in all, six at the periphery and one in the centre. Each Rose Cross except the one in the centre of the room is connected to the others by a line of light. This creates an image similar to lines of a force field. The Bubble is often slightly squashed into a rectangular shape along the sides since most rooms are usually rectangular in shape. The Rose Crosses at the periphery are not in the true quarters of the room ? East, South, West, and North ? but in the cross quarters ? Southeast, Southwest, Northwest, and Northeast. It really doesn?t matter what sequence you follow in tracing the lines and drawing the Rose Crosses, as long as they are all there when you finish. Different techniques are given by different authorities, and we will give the one given in our tradition...

Wicca is a religion based, in part, on ancient, northern European Pagan beliefs in a fertility Goddess and her consort, a horned God. Although the religion is a modern creation, some of its sources pre-date the Christian era by many centuries. Most Wiccans do not believe that their religion is a direct, continuous descendent of this earlier religion. They see it as a modern reconstruction.

Joanna Hautin-Mayer has written: "We know tragically little about the actual religious expressions of the ancient Celts. We have a few myths and legends, but very little archeological evidence to support our theories. We have no written records of their actual forms of worship, and the accounts of their culture and beliefs written by their contemporaries are often highly biased and of questionable historical worth."

Ms. Hautin-Mayer is particularly critical of recent Neopagan books which she demonstrates to be largely fictional accounts of the history of Witta (presented as an Irish Pagan tradition), Faery Wicca (presented as an ancient tradition), and 21 Lessons of Merlyn (a somewhat racist and sexist account of Druidism).

Silver RavenWolf wrote in 1998:"Wicca, as you practice the religion today, is a new religion, barely fifty years old. The techniques you use at present are not entirely what your elders practiced even thirty years ago. Of course, threads of 'what was' weave through the tapestry of 'what is now.' ...in no way can we replicate to perfection the precise circumstances of environment, society, culture, religion and magick a hundred years ago, or a thousand. Why would we want to ? The idea is to go forward with the knowledge of the past, tempered by the tools of our own age."

Click on the festivals to read about them.

The Pagan seasonal cycle is often called the Wheel of the Year. Almost all Pagans celebrate a cycle of eight festivals, which are spaced every six or seven weeks through the year and divide the wheel into eight segments.

Four of the festivals have Celtic origins and are known by their Celtic names, Imbloc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain.

The other four are points in the solar calendar. These are, Spring Equinox, Autumn Equinox, Summer and Winter Solstice. Neolithic sites such as Stonehenge act as gigantic solar calendars which marked the solstices and equinoxes and show that solar festivals have been significant dates for hundreds of thousands of years.

(The seasonal differences between the hemispheres mean solar festivals are celebrated opposite different dates in the southern hemisphere)

Winter Solstice
20th/21st December

The Pagan celebration of Winter Solstice (also known as Yule) is one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world.

Ancient people were hunters and spent most of their time outdoors. The seasons and weather played a very important part in their lives. Because of this many ancient people had a great reverence for, and even worshipped the sun. The Norsemen of Northern Europe saw the sun as a wheel that changed the seasons. It was from the word for this wheel, houl, that the word yule is thought to have come. At mid-winter the Norsemen lit bonfires, told stories and drank sweet ale.

The ancient Romans also held a festival to celebrate the rebirth of the year. Saturnalia ran for seven days from the 17th of December. It was a time when the ordinary rules were turned upside down. Men dressed as women and masters dressed as servants. The festival also involved decorating houses with greenery, lighting candles, holding processions and giving presents. Before Christianity came to the British Isles the Winter Solstice was held on the shortest day of the year (21st December). The Druids (Celtic priests) would cut the mistletoe that grew on the oak tree and give it as a blessing. Oaks were seen as sacred and the winter fruit of the mistletoe was a symbol of life in the dark winter months.

It was also the Druids who began the tradition of the yule log. The Celts thought that the sun stood still for twelve days in the middle of winter and during this time a log was lit to conquer the darkness, banish evil spirits and bring luck for the coming year. Many of these customs are still followed today. They have been incorporated into the Christian and secular celebrations of Christmas...