Feast of Juno Felicitata.
• Death of Nostradamus
The great French clairvoyant whose last prediction, to his servant, was
his own death, which occurred in the night on 1st July, 1566, his lifeless
body being found by him the next morning.
Canada: Canada Day
Saxon Bishop of Winchester.
Birthday, in 1394, of the legendary German, Benedictine monk and alchemist Basil Valentine, who wrote the famous alchemical books, Azoth of the Philosophers and The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony.
• The Guivre
In France, a serpent dragon who's breath would generate plagues and disease.
In Cornwall, Baal fires are lit on the highest moorland hilltops and revellers dance around the Baal tree, after the chief Semitic sun and fertility god of the same name.
Independence
Day
Commemorating the day in 1776, of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence
by the British American colonists who denounced the rule of the extant
Hanoverian-ruled British Empire, to offer the royal crown of America to
the true Sangraal and rightful Stuart heir.
• Peluda
Rejected from Noah’s Arch during the Flood, this fire-breathing
water dragon with tortoise-like body and long tail, survived and inhabited
La Ferté Bernard in France, where it caused havoc and misery. It
was eventually slain by a man whose lover it had killed and eaten.
The Devil may be invoked on this day at the Chanctonbury Ring mound, Sussex.
• Chelmsford Witch Trials
In England in 1589, three women were convicted of bewitching cattle and
causing the death of a child with the aid of their animal familiars, and
hanged within two hours of the sentence.
United States: Independance
Day Holiday
In 1977, an extraordinary discovery was made amongst debris in the rear of a tiny old ‘antique’ and house-clearance shop in Leicester, England. A small, 18th C. leather bound cover concealed a eighty four page manuscript on fine, sheepskin parchment, written in a curious combination of Latin and other indecipherable texts, punctuated with many symbols and intricate diagrams. In laboratory and etymological tests this proved to be a genuine, 14th C. journal written by a practicing alchemist. Amongst its wealth of revelations was his claim to have reached the ultimate hermetic accomplishment. Intense research is continuing to be conducted on the codex, and results are hoped to be published in due coarse.
in 1749, Sir Frances Dashwood initiated the sinister Knights of St Francis, an exclusive temple lodge to Bacchus and Venus, limited to 24 gentlemen. The quasi-religious society of ‘Medmenham Franciscans’, later to be known as the Hellfire Club, met at his country estate at West Wycombe, in caves and inside the golden ball, built on top of the church-tower of St Lawrence’s.
Celtic tree Month of Oak ends.
In 1275, Ramon Lull completed his alchemical treatise, Ars Magna, one of many in his impressive output of voluminous works.
• The Lambton Worm
This massive serpent could coil itself around Worm Hill, at Durham, England. Slimy and with needle-like teeth, originally the small worm was caught on a fishing line, when Lambton threw into a nearby well. The serpent grew to enormous size and began to feed of the villagers. Many men fought the dragon, which was often hacked to pieces, but which had always healed back again afterwards. Lambton returned with a suit of witch-charmed armour covered in spikes, to fight the dragon himself. However, he had also to kill the next creature he saw after the Worm, and after the serpent had finally perished in the river, he saw his father. He refused to kill his own kin, and so the Lambton family was cursed to death for the next nine generations.
Celtic Tree Month of Holly (Tinne) begins.
Deciphered from a solitary page from an early chronicle is the record of a meeting, on this day in 1375, in Paris, of Modus Quintus, the English Alchemist, with the French Nicholas Flamel, relating to an exchange of ideas on the seven times seven processes towards transmutation. So mysterious was their craft, that rarely would practicing alchemists ever divulge their secrets or ideas to each other.
• The Dragon of Boere Pool
The Saxon lord, Wild Eric of Condove Hall, Shropshire, took a fairy-maiden as his wife and continued to fight the Normans for four years after the conquest. Eventually however, he lost all his estates, but the dragon of the local pool became custodian of Eric’s sword, which one day, will be reclaimed by one of his true descendents.
Pageant in honour of the11th-century noblewoman who rode naked on horseback through the streets of Coventry to persuade the Earl of Mercia to stop taxing the peasants. Fragments of a stained glass window believed to show the beautiful face of Godiva were recently unearthed.
• Village Fairs
such as the ‘Yattendon Revel’, with feasts and activities
such as the Head-Breaking game, the Jingling Match and sword dancing,
become frequent at this time.
St Benedict Day
c.480-c.550. Founder of Monte Cassino, the Benedictine
Order and author of the Benedictine Rule.
St. Austine of Georgia’s Day
Patron saint of the middle child. Today’s newborn will be happy
and lucky in life.
• Leonardo’s Dragon
A small drawing of the ‘Revenge…’ was discovered
in manuscripts belonging to Cesare Borgia, believed to be detail from
a lost fresco by Leonardo da Vinci, done while in his patronage around
1502.
Northern Ireland: Battle of the Boyne Anniversary
The astrologer, mathematician, alchemist and magi, John Dee, was born in 1527. From his working house in Mortlake, London, he was Royal Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, wrote many learned treatises including Monas Hieroglyphia, and developed the Enochian system of Angel Magic.
The dead king that watches over the nether world and is rejuvenated in his son Horus, whose birthday hails the rising of the Nile flood.
Rain on this day ordains rain for forty days and forty nights.
Feast
of St. Kenelm
The Kenelm’s legend tells of a white dove ascending from the skull
of the beheaded boy and delivering an Anglo-Saxon scroll to St. Peter’s
in Rome with word of his murder.
Birthday of Horus (Egyptian)
The falcon-headed Sun and sky god, the Divine Child and the reborn Sun.
As the divine falcon, his two eyes were the Sun and the Moon.
• Jerusalem Captured
in 1099, the Crusaders breeched the walls of Jerusalem. The Franks were
the first to enter the city, supported by men of the Knights of St Levantius
who themselves took back the Holy Sepulchre. With the bloody massacre
that followed the storming of the city, no infidels were left alive.
The god Set, murdered his brother Osiris and became the embodiment of evil and god of hostility and chaos.
• Atalanta
Fugiens
In 1618, Michael Maier, alchemist and Court Physician to Rudolf II of
Bohemia, published his Atalanta Fugiens,
noted for its strange combination of allegorical woodcuts and musical
verses describing the alchemical process.
Matriarch of the Egyptian holy trinity, wife of the god Osiris and mother to the infant-god Horus.
There were many devotion days to Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom, the father of all book learning, the source of all chemical knowledge and blend of Egyptian religion, Babylonian astrology and Greek philosophy.
Christian virgin daughter of a pagan priest, Margaret was tortured with iron combs and burned with torches by Olybrius, the governor of Antioch, for not succumbing to his advances. In prison the devil himself tempted her, as a fierce dragon who threatened to devour her. Margaret prayed to the Lord and killed the dragon with the sign of the cross. Olybrius eventually beheaded her.
Deliverance
Day
Marking the legendary day that, in the remote mountain regions of the
Bohmerwald in Germany, a long-tailed bat-creature named Vladeptus, believed
to be the familiar of a powerful reclusive alchemist of great age, was
seen clutching a black rose which, it is said, he delivered to his master
in time to divert an untold, great tragedy.
Give a black rose to prevent a disaster in the coming year.
Holy day of Osiris (Egyptian)
The ‘Lord of life after death’ that made up the Holy Trinity
with his sister and wife, Isis and their son Horus.
• Bernard of Trevisa
Born, possibly on this day in 1380 in Trier, on the Mosel, Bernard was
an intrepid yet frustrated alchemist who continued to experiment and seek
the Magnum Opus until his death, some time after travelling to Rhodes
in 1442, his work being recorded in the autobiographical De
Chemico Miraculo.
1st century disciple, consort of Jesus and former prostitute ‘out of whom he had cast seven devils’. Mary anointed Christ’s feet, stood by His cross at Calvary, anointed His body in the tomb and was the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared on the morning of Easter Sunday. Patron saint of reformed sinners.
• The Founding of the Rosicrucian Order
The Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, (AMORC), began in 1611 with the writing in Latin of Fama Fraternitatis by the English philosopher and alchemist Francis Bacon, under the esoteric pseudonym of Christian Rosenkreuz, the mystic traveller. It was published for the first time in 1614 in Germany
Centuries ago, a giant, poisonous dragon lived near the manor farm of Penhesgyn in Wales. A wizard prophesied that one day it would kill the young heir, so he was sent away to England for safety. A local hero cunningly managed to kill the dragon and then buried it. The heir returned to the manor to great celebrations, and the dragon’s grave was reopened for his viewing. He mockingly kicked the dead dragon’s head, but a poisonous fang pierced his foot and the young man died, so fulfilling the early prophecy.
St. James the Great Day
d. 44; One of the three witnesses of the Transfiguration
of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, and he first apostle to die a
martyr, being put to the sword by Herod. His principle shrine, now a
gothic cathedral, was built at Compostela in Spain where in 813 the
apostle’s original tomb containing his bones was supernaturally
discovered, becoming one of the most important pilgrimages in Medieval
Christendom.
• Compostela
Santiago de Compostela in Spain, is the Mecca of alchemists and the
chief site of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages. From all places
in the alchemical world, Jews, Muslims and Christians, (including Nicholas
Flamel), would travel on foot, sometimes taking years, drawn by the
telluric currents under the shrine of St James, where they met, exchanged
manuscripts and practiced initiations. The spectacular gothic cathedral,
temple to science and the hermetic arts was considered a giant alembic,
an alchemical vessel, where God was the alchemist and believers experienced
spiritual transformations. St James’, or Santiago’s attribute,
the scallop shell, is also an alchemical symbol for mercury and is seen
at the entrance of many hermetic domains.
St. Christopher’s Day
A 3rd century Canaanite giant who first decided to serve the Devil,
but seeing his fear of Christ and His cross, he decided to serve Jesus
instead. He carried travellers safely across a river, including the
Christ child. He was martyred by beating, shooting with arrows and finally
beheading. Patron saint of travellers.
Feast to the eight-legged horse given to Odin by Loki, which could travel over land and sea and through the air.
• First Chelmsford Witch Trials
Agnes Waterhouse confessed to witchcraft and was the first to hang at Chelmsford in the county of Essex before the Queen's Majesty's judges. Her cat, with an ape’s head, horns and a silver whistle about its neck, would perform her malevolent commands and take a drop of Agnes’s blood for each service it performed.
Martyrs who were walled up in cave near Ephesus during the persecutions by Decius in c.250. 200 years later they were disinterred and awoke, youthful and well. After a reassuring audience with the Roman emperor Theodosius II, they returned to their cave, to sleep again until Judgment Day.
A major festival denoting the time when the Dark One yields his harvest from the Earth, celebrated in Ireland with a great horse fair and throughout the Celtic world it was a time of games and competitions, of settling legal and clan affairs and for choosing Kings.
King of Norway at the turn of the tenth century. King Offa of Mercia, architect of Offa’s Dyke, died in 796.
• Armada Day
The defeat of the Spanish Armada off Plymouth, England, by Drake and
the English fleet. The door to world trade, exploration and colonisation
opens up to England.
The Norse/Teutonic monster serpent, hidden in the pit Hvergelmer and gnawing at the roots of the ash tree Yggdrasil trying to destroy the universe.
Diminutice Saxon monk and hermit, and divine counsellor to King Alfred against the heathen Danes - d. circa 877.
Lithasblot
(Norse/Teutonic)
The harvest festival, giving thanks to Urda (Ertha) for her bounty. Alms
and Sun-wheel loaves are given to the needy.
Day of Loki and Signy
(Norse/Teutonic)
Loki was a principal demon and cause of dissension among the gods, and
the slayer of the benevolent god Baldr. His children are the Midgard serpent
Jörmungander, which girdles the Earth, the wolf Fenris, and Hela,
goddess of death.
• Well-Dressing
At around the end of July and beginning of August, local communities perform
the pagan and medieval well-dressing celebrations. The communal well or
spring is decorated with flowers, to ensure a good supply of water, and
to offer thanks for relief from the plague.
