The Blood and the Cauldron Part 1 by Karen Soutar

Karen wrote The Blood and the Cauldron for our Vampire month. Do you remember Kate, the witch? Turns out our Dear Kate has some connections to our beloved Lochie Witches.

I”m bringing back The Blood and the Cauldron all three parts, and linking up some of Karen’s other Lochie witch stories so you’ll be ready for her newest installment going live here on 10-25-14

The Summoning This is where it all begins. I love this story.
The Potion Mistress I love this too, I love watching Evie grow in her skills.

Here’s the first installment of The Blood and the Cauldron, mostly about vampires, but keep a look out for Kate. The Blood and the Cauldron 1 Tomorrow and the next day will have part 2 and 3.

Karen’s coven isn’t all fiction, the Logie witches were real. You can read about them on Karen’s blog. Or you can read the series she did here on my blog last November here, and here, here, and here.
Make sure you check out her blogtoo

Tools Of A Witch Part 4

You can find part 3 to this series Here

This series is in no way a full list of a witch’s tools. Each and every witch uses what she feels is necessary for the spell or ritual she or he is preforming at that moment. Some witches don’t use any tools, other use a large array of tools. My lists during these past few months are the most commonly used tools.

Potion

Any Medicinal drink can be referred to as a potion. The wise ones knew how to brew herbs to heal, although potion is most often thought of as a poison. Or to be used in love magic.

Staff
Scotttish Witches use a staff much like other witches use a wand, sword, or asthme, to cast a circle and direct energy. A staff is a symbol of authority.

Crystals and Stones
They’re belived to have energies that aid in magic, and healings.

Swords
A coven tool the HP or HPs walks around the circle allowing the tip of the sword to mark the circle’s line. Can also be used instead of a wand without a coven.

Card from a Tarot deck.

Scourge
The witches’ tools differ from tradition to tradition. Whether the witch is a solitary or part of a coven is also important when looking at tools.

Pentacle and/ or Pentagram
Used in divination. Usually on the altar as a protection symbol.

Tarot
Cards used to tell the future. The Roma or Gypsies brought the cards with them to Europe. The earliest known deck of tarot cards from the fourteenth century. There are 78 cards in total. Twenty-two are figure cards. There are 4 suits usually Wands, Pentacles, Swords and Cups. These cords run from Ace to 10. There are also 4 face cards: King, Queen, Knight, and Page.

White Handle Knife
Used in rituals. Used only to engrave other tools with symbols or names.

The Logie Witches

I’m so honored to have Karen Soutar here again. This post is amazing, and I can’t thank her enough for sharing her homeland’s witches with us.

I so want to go and hangout at Carly Crag. One day I will, and Karen and I will cause chaos and mass hysteria with out love of witches on their own ceremonial land. 

The Logie Witches

A few miles from my home stand the ruins of Logie Old Kirk (Kirk being the old Scots word for church). Situated just outside Stirling, a church was first dedicated in this ancient parish around 1173. The ruins date back to around 1592.

In 1720, the Old Kirk was said to be used by ‘The Witches of Logie’ for their rituals. It was probably already falling into disrepair at this time. The use of churches by those practising the ‘Black Mass’ is well documented. Old, often abandoned kirks frequently appear as the meeting place for covens in Scottish folklore.

Behind the Old Kirk is the hill known as ‘Carly Crag’ or ‘Witches Craig’. Carly, or carlin, is the old Scots word for witch, or old woman (from the Gaelic cailleach). It was on Carly Crag that the Logie Witches were supposed to meet with the devil himself, who took the form of a black dog with burning eyes. He would cavort among the witches with a blue torch attached to his hind quarters. Quite why he needed a blue torch there remains unclear! Also, the Evil One was running the risk of a singed bottom, as torches and lamps burned oil at that time. Maybe, being the devil, he was impervious to flame!
There are several documents pertaining to this local legend:

In David Morris’s (1935) essay on the local township, he told the common story that “an elder in (the new) Logie Kirk was of the opinion that the Carla’ Craig…was haunted.” At the end of the 19th century, Morris remembered a local lady known as ‘Ailie’, who was said by many old folk to be the traditional ‘witch of Logie’:

“Sickly children were brought to her for her blessing. Occasionally people came from as far as Stirling on this errand. Her method of giving the blessing was to blow her breath on the child, and this was supposed to ward off evil. It was also said that anyone buried in Logie Kirkyard on the first day of May, Halloween, or other days of that kind, without her blessing, would not rest in his grave…”

Another legend told to Morris stated that:

“Around 1720 witches were believed to rendezvous with the Evil One who would appear in the form of a large black dog.” This is clearly the most well-known tale relating to Logie Old Kirk and Carly Crag. Again, the devil appearing in the form of a dog crops up more than once in the folklore of Scotland.
Another account of the belief in witchcraft and animistic pre-Christian rites on the crag came from Charles Rogers (1853):

“About the second decade of last century, there lived in the parish of Logie several ill-favoured old women, to whom the reputation of witchcraft was confidently attached. They were believed to hold nocturnal dialogues and midnight revels with the Evil One, and Carlie Crag was regarded as one of their places of rendezvous. Satan, though he was believed to appear to them in various forms, was understood, in his interviews with the dreaded sisterhood, to appear most frequently in the aspect of a large shaggy dog, in which form it was alleged he had repeatedly been seen by the minister.”

I first heard the story of The Logie Witches when visiting the Witches Craig Caravan Park, where I was testing a new tent, believe it or not! I wondered how the park had got its name, and this led me to the local legend, and my explorations of Logie Old Kirk and the Carly Crag. Do the kirk, and the crag, feel spooky? A bit. Do they feel evil? No. The Old Kirk is now overlooked by several modern dwellings, though they do not detract much from its isolated location. There are several interesting gravestones in the Kirkyard, featuring masonic symbols and the macabre skull carvings which are common on grave markers of this era. There is now a new Logie Kirk, built in the early 1800s and still in use, closer to the nearby caravan park and visible from the modern road. The Old Kirk is further up into the hills, shrouded by trees, so it can’t be seen from the roadside.

I used the tale of The Logie Witches as inspiration for a short story, featuring a modern day version of the coven. I played around with the locations of the various landmarks a little (artistic licence!), as I thought it would be funny if my witches had to contend with the road and the caravan park. There will be more stories from my 21st century witches soon!

If you haven’t read this story yet…… what on Earth are you waiting for? The Zombie Apocalypse? Go read it…. here’s the pretty little link to take you there … I love this story. Abosolutely LOVE it…

The crag is a fine site for ritual magic, and its associated devil-lore may simply derive from Pictish shamanistic practices, remains of which have been found across the Scottish hills. These rites survived longer in the remote areas of Scotland than in other parts of Britain. On the other hand, maybe witches did indeed meet with the devil there. Maybe they still do..?

Next week: The witches who plotted to kill King James VI…

(References: Morris, David, B., “Causewayhead a Hundred Years Ago”, in Transactions of the Stirling Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1935. Roger, Charles,” A Week at Bridge of Allan”, Adam & Charles Black: Edinburgh 1853.)

 

Thank you again, Karen, for coming by. I can’t wait to read next week’s guest post.

Scottish Witches with Karen Soutar

I’m so happy, no….. elated to have Karen Soutar here to talk about her native witches with us. Karen and I have been planning this for some time now and the anticipation was becoming unbearable.

If you haven’t already you NEED to read her story about her local witches

So without me rambling on further…Because I will do it…. I’ll hand it over to Karen and her first post …. yes, I did forget to mention that didn’t I? Karen’s agreed to doing a series for us. A whole month of Scottish Witches!!! YES!!! Four posts about Scottish Witches….. Oh be still my content heart…

Here’s Karen…..

How I discovered the wonderful, wicked world of witches

What do you think of when you hear the words ‘Scottish witches’? The three from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, hunched round their cauldron? The ones who chase Tam O’ Shanter in Robert Burns’s poem? Scotland is a country rich with tales of witches. Some are legends that have grown with the telling, some are completely made up, and some of them actually happened.

Why do witches fascinate me? They always have, ever since I was a little girl. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I read my first ‘scary’ witch story when I was about seven. I never bought into the good witch, bad witch thing. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ wasn’t a favourite of mine. (I much prefer ‘Wicked’). Even when I was young, I understood that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are often subjective. When I read books and watched films, I always thought the wicked witch character was a lot more interesting than the simpering heroine. I still do. Witches appeal to my dark side. There are as many aspects to witchcraft as there are to life: witches are people and the same ones can be good or bad depending on what they’re doing and who’s describing them. I love that.

In my home of Scotland I have spent a lot of time visiting spooky sites and absorbing local stories, many of which go back before written records. We have a great ‘oral tradition’ of folk tales. A few forward-thinking writers captured some of them on paper before they were lost forever. Witches, fairies (NOT the fluttery pretty kind), ghosts…they are everywhere. Dark, forbidding mountains and crags, wild weather, dense forest – even the landscape conspires with the legends.

One of my earliest memories of a ‘real’ witch (or in this case, warlock) story comes from a school trip to Edinburgh, again when I was about seven or eight. On this trip to Scotland’s capital city, we went to the waxworks museum. When we got to the inevitable ‘chamber of horrors’ you could choose whether to go through or not. Guess which I did? I thought it was BRILLIANT. I bought the guidebook and devoured it when I got home. One of the characters I was particularly taken with was Major Weir.

Major Thomas Weir was born in 1599 and lived in the street called the West Bow, between Edinburgh Castle and the Grassmarket. He attended his local Protestant prayer meetings and was a respected pillar of the community. Then the Major fell sick, and decided, in his feverish state of mind, to divulge his secret life to his fellow worshippers.

He admitted ‘crimes against man and God’, including necromancy and other supernatural activities that resulted from witchcraft. He was taken into custody, along with his sister Jean, who was his partner in these arts. Both were tried on April 9, 1670 and sentenced to death. While Jean was hanged in the Grassmarket, Major Weir was burned alive somewhere between Edinburgh and Leith. He fervently refused to repent his sins. There is a popular legend that his staff was cast into the flames after him, where it twisted and writhed due to ‘whatever incantation was in it’.

The house where Weir and his sister lived and practiced their witchcraft stands to this day, and neighbours have confirmed sightings of his ghost and strange lights from within; also the sounds of laughter and revelry – a macabre sign that ‘The Wizard of West Bow’ and his cohorts still enjoy their distractions!

With this story I was hooked. I moved to Edinburgh when I was seventeen and found out more about the history of the city. During the reign of King James VI, more ‘witches’ were put to death on Castlehill than anywhere else in Scotland. From 1590 onwards, hundreds of women were executed. Of course, it is doubtful that most of these were witches at all, and even those that were, mostly used their arts to cure illness, heal wounds, and provide the occasional love potion.

The idea of ‘black’ and ‘white’ witches can be traced back to Roman times and beyond. But James VI considered himself an expert on witchcraft, and adopted the theory that all witches had made a deliberate pact with the devil, leading to a wholesale persecution of witches. They were often accused of plotting treason and trying to bring about the King’s downfall by using black arts. I’ll tell the story of one such coven in a future post.

So far it doesn’t sound as though witches had a very happy time in Scotland! But there were plenty of places where they could practise their arts undisturbed. Abandoned ‘Kirks’ (churches) were a favoured spot. One of these is a few miles from my home. Logie Old Kirk, just outside the town of Stirling, was the meeting place for a coven in the 1700s – more on them next time…

The Witching Hour Special

My friend  Karen Soutar has agreed to guest post four Witching Hour posts.

Starting on November 5th and every Tuesday until December Karen will share a Scottish Witch with us.

This is going to be awesome, I can’t THANK her enough.

Make sure you come by every Tuesday this month. YES!!! Every Tuesday for the whole month of November to read Karen’s posts about Scottish Witches!