Mayster Pouck with the Light Between His Horns
The Cunningflame. The Fire of Heaven. The Promethean Fire. Witchfire. The Hidden Element. Throughout various cultures Fire has represented man’s artifice, man’s consciousness, man’s awareness, man’s cunning.
I think that man has forgotten this. They have forgotten that their heart, their spirit is gifted to them by the spirits, by the Gods. We have forgotten why we are able to build skyscrapers and huge roads and have a worldwide web. Now our fire is electric, cold and distant and expensive. What use have we of the trees now that would once fill our homes with sweet scents and cook our foods.
Ever since man was gifted with fire he has been able to work night and day. With fire man could work to build roads, form new weapons, read at night, work at night. He could use fire in new ways: to clear trails, burn forests, hunt, kill, heal. Now we have forgotten. We have forgotten our Fire.
That is physical fire, but there is another fire, an inner fire that represents our spirit and our artifice as a species. The Medium Between gifted it upon us at the beginning of the world. The Great Serpent gave that poisonous apple that inflamed our minds and taught us to be of the gods! It gave us Spirit. It gave us Knowledge. All in exchange for our mortality. And a fitting exchange! All the knowledge of the worlds at our hands in exchange for not being able to live forever. What could we do with that knowledge? Basically anything that we wanted.
This Fire gifted to us by the gods also gave us the knowledge to reach them again. In modern paganism books will tell us that our body is of the four classical elements, that is Air, Water, Earth and Fire. Air, Water, and Earth are easy to describe (Breath, Blood, the bones and muscles). But where is Fire? It is the Hidden Element, the Heat that we give off, the Fire of our Minds. It is that spark that gives us life that we can not explain. It is the electricity that runs our brains.
Without this we are dead, truly dead. Stopping the breath stops the billowing of the fires that warms the cauldron that heats the waters. Cutting out the blood pours waters onto the fires. Aging throws dirt upon the fire. It all connects, as it should be connected.
I call this Divine Fire the Witchflame or the Cunningflame. I also believe that it is this Fire that is used in witchcraft to create supernatural effects. In more modern terms this Fire may be called energy. When one is learning to create energy balls and such what one starts with rubbing their hands together (much like a force fire) until they feel a heat and maybe even a tingling sensation. This is of course easily explained away by science as the friction created when rubbing our skins together, but others can also feel this intense heat that we give off! Pulling our hands apart we can feel the energy (or perhaps fire) pulling away and creating a resistance. This is the first step to feeling the Fire, and sensing energy.
Many modern readers know about these techniques (to my knowledge there is something similar in most books about spellcraft today). However, what many do not include is the use of the breath. Our lungs are like billows that fuel the fire. We can heat up our bodies by breathing in and out very quickly and holding in our breath (though if one does this without practice they are likely to get light headed and faint). It is best to start with slow deep breaths to fuel this fire. I have had wonderful effects with blowing out the air as one would to build a small fire. From here after one has built the energy, the Fire, they can direct it through the hands, or through a device such as a wand or a staff to create fantastical effects. Or they might inflame their mind to send them into other worlds or to incredible heights!
This Fire is the Fire of the Serpent. Robert Cochrane would explain it as a serpent spiraling up the spine to the head, and indeed it does feel like that! I can really feel it in my head at the base of my cerebellum when I billow the Flames. It gives a brightening vision and everything seems to glow. Cochrane detailed this better in his explanation of the Treading of the Mill and compared the practice to the Kundalini, which details a kind of serpent energy that comes up from the Root Chakra (or the sexual chakra) all the way up to the Crown Chakra and beyond to gain cosmic wisdom. And is that not what the Serpent is? He is the Life Force; His Red Blood courses through our veins empowering us always.
Of course this Fire is dangerous, what fire isn’t? One can become too consumed in the flames, as the publisher of Cochrane’s letters warned about. They may become too sexually lustful, or too energetic, or too hot and feint. But through these burns hopefully comes the knowledge one needs for True Witchdom.
The manipulation of this Fire, this Inner Fire, and the manipulation of the physical flame are the traits that make the Cunning Witch so cunning. That is the Art of the Cunningflame. And he is a servant to it ever.
The Witchflame. It is the Light of the Stars. The Fire of the Sun. The Hidden Light Within the Land.
