The extracts that follow are taken from The Alchemy Gothic Alchemnac, which can also be seen at www.alchemygothic.com.
Through the annals of this extraordinary Alchemnac calendar, you have ingress into the arcana, the canon of ancient knowledge conferred upon the immortal and omniscient prophet Amzer.
Here is a rich tapestry of customs, events and observances from the many cultures and societies of the Old World, from pre-biblical times to Victorian tradition, offering an illuminating window into the strange landscape of the past.
Let this feast of esoteric anecdotes and descendent commemorations enrich your perception of time, history and cabala, and initiate you into the distinguished circle of savants to the profound dimensions of the dark past.
Welcome to the mysteries of The Alchemy Gothic Alchemnac.
Red-Letter Days The term ‘red-letter day’ originates from the mediaeval monastic tradition of using red ink to mark the holy days in their church calendars. Red letters in this Alchemnac are used to designate all principle holy days and bank holidays, plus other important observances and festivals relevant to this calendar.
Bank Holidays/Public Holidays:
UK Bank Holidays for 2005 are as follows:
UK: New Year's Holiday; 3rd
Jan. Scotland: New Year's Holiday; 4th Jan.
N. Ireland: St Patrick's Day; 17th Mar.
UK: Good Friday; 25th Mar. UK
(excl. Scotland): Easter Monday; 28th Mar. UK:
May Day; 2nd May. UK: Spring Holiday; 30th
May.
N. Ireland: Battle of the Boyne Anniv; 12th
Jul. Scotland: August Holiday; 1st Aug.
UK (excl. Scotland): Late Summer Holiday; 29th Aug. UK:
Bank Holiday; 27th Dec.
North American Public Holidays for 2005 are as follows:
North America: New Year; 3rd Jan. United
States: Martin Luther King Day; 17th Jan.
United States: President’s Day; 21st Feb. Canada:
Good Friday; 25th Mar. Canada: Easter Monday;
28th Mar.
Canada: Victoria Day; 23rd May United States:
Memorial Day; 30th May. United States: Flag
Day; 14th June.
Canada: Canada Day; 1st Jul. United States:
Independence Day Holiday; 4th Jul.
North America: Labor Day; 5th Sep. North America:
Thanksgiving Day/Columbus Day; 10th Oct.
North America: Remembrance Day/Veterans Day; 11th Nov. United
States: Thanksgiving; 24th Nov.
United States: Christmas Day Holiday; 26th Dec.
Canada: Bank Holiday; 27th Dec.
Sunday’s date numbers and related months are noted in purple, (e.g. 2nd January).
Holy days and festivals can be assumed to be Christian, (Catholic and Protestant), or secular, unless otherwise stated in brackets following the title.
Gregorian calendar. The Alchemy Gothic Alchemnac is based upon the Gregorian calendar; however, (Old) Feasts are placed according to their old, Julian calendar dates.
January is a time for the return of the faeries and the dead, and Will o’ the Wisp are especially active.
Church bells ring as the old year, represented by the scythe-bearing ‘Old Father Time’, is replaced by the newborn babe of the New Year.
‘First Footing’, the first people, (especially a dark-haired young man for good luck), who cross the threshold of the house after midnight of New Year’s Eve, should carry coal, bread and salt (or money), to portend warmth, sustenance and wealth for the New Year. They should be welcomed with ale, cheese and Yule cake.
The first of sword dancing and New Year’s mummer’s plays begin.
Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord
A festival to honour the circumcision of Christ. established by early
Christians to replace the pagan Roman’s Saturnalia celebration.
Solemnity of Mary (Catholic)
The oldest and most important of the feasts to the Blessed Virgin Mary
as Holy Mother of God.
The Feast of Fools
Celebrated variously on 1st, 6th, 13th Jan, or 28th Dec.
The medieval European version of the Roman Saturnalia, (see 17th Dec),
which was banned in England in the C.16th after the Reformation. New
Year's Day was the principle day of this irreverent church celebration,
sometimes combined with the Feast of Asses, (see 14th Jan). A ‘Bishop
of Fools’ was elected to perform mass and blessings, the clergy
sang bawdy songs while the congregation blasphemed, gambled and feasted
off the alter. The status and duties of the upper and the lower clergy
were reversed for the day when, buffoonery prevailed everywhere.
UK & North America: New Year's Day
Goddess of love and war and, as Ninanna, is Queen of Heaven.
Holy Days of St Basil and St Gregory (Orthodox)
C. 4th saints from Caeserea in Turkey, both born in the year 330 and great
friends, and both becoming priests and then bishops.
On this day in 1923, after nearly 4,000 years of seclusion, the greatest tomb in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings was opened, followed by the sudden death of the expedition’s sponsor, the fifth Earl of Caernarvon, the first in a succession of related fatalities.
Orthodox honouring of the ‘other seventy’ disciples, all of which are unknown, whom Jesus sent on ahead of Him.
•
Death of an Inquisitor
1399; Nicolas Eymerich, Spanish Dominican theologian and inquisitor, who
had compiled Directorium Inquisitorum, a guide for inquisitors, placing
alchemists among the denounced magicians and wizards.
• Jacob Grimm born
Elder of the two brothers and co-author of Grimm’s Fairy Tales is
born, 1785.
Scotland: New
Year's Holiday
The common term for the twelfth night after Christmas, marking the beginning of the secular festival season, the customs of which mostly date from pagan times in Europe.
• Christmas Cake
Eaten on the Old Christmas Eve, a rich fruit cake, often dipped in warm ale first.
• Wassailing
Many celebrations revolve around this honouring of plants and creatures for a bountiful season. A toast, often of warm cider, was drunk from a huge wassail-bowl, and poured on the tree roots to ward-off evil spirits. ‘Wassail’ was the Saxon term for ‘good health’.
• Mummers Plays
Many noisy pageants and mummers plays would begin from this day to expel the evil spirits, and carnivals start to welcome-in the New Year.
• Twelfth Night Fires
A row, or a circle of twelve small bonfires and one larger one are lit in a field, or a ring of twelve candles on a tray with a larger one in the centre. Then a toast is made to the master before the fires burn out and the men return to the farmhouse to feast.
Christmas decorations must be taken down on this night, to avoid the bad luck that they would otherwise attract.
Eve (or Vigil) of Epiphany; (Old) Christmas Eve
End of Yule (Norse/Teutonic)
Celebrations honoring Freyr, Freya, and Baldor.
Feast of Bafana (Roman)
The goddess Befana, perceived as an old woman flying on a broom, brings
gifts to good children.
Kore's Day (Greek)
Goddess of wells, springs and life giving.
‘William Spencer’
Alias The Shadow of the Rose, the notorious highwayman, “Died
Jan’y 5th 1729, aged 31.” as his gravestone was incised,
where it stood, strangely, by the crossroads.
From the Greek ‘epiphaneia’ meaning manifestati, referring to the Birth of Christ as originally recognised by the early Christians and the Eastern Orthodox Church. But after the Roman Church fixed Christmas as 25th December in the fourth century, the Eastern Church celebrated Epiphany as the Baptism of Christ, while Rome made it the commemoration of the Visit of the Magi to the infant Christ. Three kings arrive bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Twelfth Day
• (Old) Abbots Bromley Horn Dance
Twelfth Day was the original day for this ancient, pagan fertility pageant
(now held in September, on their local ‘Wakes Monday’), performed
in the English village in Staffordshire, and was once typical of the rituals
being played out at this time all around the rural communities of Europe,
to ensure fertility and good luck in hunting. Calling first on local farmsteads,
six men in strange medieval costumes, holding red and white painted antlers
to their heads, dance in procession to the tunes of an accordion, along
with other characters such as Maid Marion and a fool.
The Feast of Fools
(See 1st Jan). Celebrated variously on 1st, 6th, 13th Jan, or 28th Dec.
Epiphany of Kore (Greek)
The manifestation of the life-giving goddess.
Day of Proserpina (Roman)
Seed goddess and queen of the infernal regions, counterpart of the Greek
goddess Persephone.
Festival of Sirona (Celtic)
The goddess of springs and wells and of astronomy.
• Leviathan
In the Bible, (Job ix), Leviathan is the Hebrew name for the great sea
monster and dragon of turmoil which contested against God.
In medieval custom, the day ending the Christmas season when folk resumed their trades and women, (especially the ‘spinsters’), would return to their distaffs, or yarn spinning.
Christmas Day or Nativity of Christ (Orthodox)
Handsel Monday
In Scotland, the master, or mistress of the household
holds a feast for the servants and gives gifts (handsels), to the poor.
Receiving a gift on this day signifies good luck for the year.
New MoonSt Gudula’s Day
Died 712; her lamp was extinguished by The Devil. She knelt and prayed and it was miraculously relighted by an angel.
Day of Justicia (Roman)
The sacred day to Justitia, goddess of Justice.
Double-faced god of gateways, entrances and exits, and beginnings and endings, hence January is named after him.
• Alembic Exorcism
In 1925, an itinerant clergyman visited Alembic Hall in the old county
of Calicshire to perform a much-needed exorcism. The resident ghost
there has never been seen since, but nor was the minister, who it
was said, lost both his mental faculties and his physical senses.
Plough Sunday
(First Sunday after Twelfth Day). A plough is blessed in church for
the coming year.
Feast of the Holy Family (Catholic)
On the Sunday after Epiphany,
this day honours Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Post Mortem Vita
Dr Von Rosenstein realises the Induction Principle and conducts the first
successful Post Mortem Cognitive Transfer.
Plough Monday
Villagers dress-up the ‘Fool Plough’, which is drawn through
the streets by bands of young men called Jags. Failing to give to
the costumed donation-collector, called a ‘Bessie’, would
cause your front ground to be ploughed-up.
(Old) Hogmanay
The Scots and Borderers gather at their Kirks,
standing stones and market places to revel and toast-in the New Year
with oatcakes and whisky as the bells strike midnight.
Omega Alpha (Hermetic)
The precise moment of the stroke of midnight on Old New Year’s
Eve is the moment of The End and of The Beginning, of death and rebirth,
the transmutation of’ the earth, and as revealed in the book of
Revelations, Lapis Christus, symbol of the redemptive powers of Christ.
Festival of Carmentalia
(Roman)
Feast to the Camenae, the nine muses or the nymphs of prophecy. Her
priestesses cast the fortunes of children at the moment of their birth.
Sacred day of Juturna (Roman)
Reverence to the goddess of pools and still waters. and those who work
with water are blessed upon this day.
• More‘s Dragon
In the North East of England long ago, More of More Hall, a knight,
was implored by the people to free them from a dragon whose den was
near by. He asked for a young, black-haired maiden to anoint him and
arm him for battle. In Sheffield he had an iron armour made, set with
spikes.
Hiding in a well, he surprised the dragon with a heavy blow, which began
a two-day battle.Eventually, the dragon constricted More and impaled
itself on his armour and inflicting its mortal wound.
Auld New Year
The original Scots and Northern English seasonal celebration.
• Birth of van Helmont
1579-1644; Joan Battista von Helmont, very important, pioneering alchemist
and natural magician originally influenced by Paracelsian and Rosicrucian
thinking.
Bishop of Poitiers, died c.368. Traditionally, the coldest day of the year and the first day after Christmas that you can marry.
· In 1865, an “ancient dwelling” around the Aldersgate district of London was acquired by Shuttleworth, Dilley & Co, on behalf of an aristocratic recluse known as Count Magistus.
St. Kentigern’s Day
Celebrated in Scotland and Northern England, the monk and bishop also
known as Mungo, who miraculously recovered the Queen’s ring from
inside a salmon, thus restoring her liberty; d.603.
Feast of the Baptism of Christ;
Theophany (Catholic)
When Jesus is considered to have begun His ministry of salvation.
Tivondag Knut (Norse/Teutonic)
Swedish celebration of King and St. Knut, and marking the end of the Christmas
season.
Midvintersblot (Norse/Teutonic)
The Norse winter festival, Midvintersblot (Midwinter Night), is held for
peace, a good winter and good harvest to come, marking the darkest and
coldest time of winter. Also celebrating the honour of Tiu, the chief
Teutonic god and ruler of the year.
Feast of Brewing (Celtic)
Pre-Christian Irish festival celebrated by the ancient druids.
Feast of Asses
An ass is lead into the church to the conducts of
Orientis partibus, in honour of the ass in the stable.
Gamelion Noumenia
(Greek)
Two-day festival honouring all of the Gods and Goddess's.
King of Northumbria from 729, who, in 731 was abducted and his head tonsured (shaved), coercing his status as a monk in an attempt to disqualify him from the throne. He resumed his reign however, until 737 then abdicated with all his wealth to Lindisfarne monastery. His relics were highly prized after his death.
•
Church of England
In 1535, Henry VIII declares himself the Head of his newly founded Anglican
Communion, English Church.
(Old) Twelfth Night
The last day of Christmas by the Julian calendar.
• Ash-Faggot Burning
By Saxon tradition, huge bundles of ash branches are bound with withies
and ceremonially dragged to the hearth by four oxen, to rekindle the
hearths for the Christmas season and guard against the winter. A remnant
of the faggot must be kept to relight the following year’s fire.
• Wassailing Orchards
The most common night for Apple Wassailing, especially in the West-country
of England, to protect the fruit trees from evil and promise good harvests.
Evil spirits are driven away by bon-fires and the clamour of cow-horns,
bucket beating and shotguns. The men mimic the growth of trees by bowing
down before them and slowly growing back up to encourage their strength.
Copious amounts of cider are drunk and the fruit trees ceremonially
anointed by dousing their roots, while singing wassailing songs and
merrymaking in the orchards into the night.
• Witches Sabbats
Witches designate this night to indulge in satanic revels.
Irish mystic who left his body to be given a tour of Heaven, then was
tormented by demons for his own sins before returning.
Feast of the Charities (Greek)
Two-day festival to honour the Goddesses of Beneficence.
United States: Martin Luther King Day
(Old) Twelfth Day; (Old) Epiphany
Sacred day of Felicitas
(Roman)
Propitious observance to the Roman goddess of good luck.
Feast of Aphrodite (Greek)
Two-day festival to the goddess of beauty and love.
• Flamel’s First Projection
On this day in 1382, Nicholas Flamel achieved a ‘transmutation’,
of lead into the purest silver, with the help of the gilded, Cabalistic
book of Abraham Eleazar.
Ancient rite when witches gather after nightfall to ceremonially summon the goddess’s powers to counter those of the Wyvore, the dragon and guardian of the transmuting alkahest.
St Wulfstan’s Day
c.1008-95. The great and highly venerated Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Worcester,
who served under both Kings Harold and, after 1006, William. His cult
was such that King Rufus had his tomb covered in gold, where many miraculous
cures were recorded.
Festival of Thor (Norse/Teutonic)
God from the Aesir race, of thunderstorms and fertility, and owner of
the great throwing-hammer, Mjölnir.
By sewing barley grains beneath an apple tree, a young maiden, if fortunate, may induce a vision of her future husband to appear during the coming night.
The Cwn Annwn, the Welsh ‘Hounds of the Underworld’ said to be the souls of the damned, are out tonight. To hear their howling means that doom and disaster are imminent.
· Last day of the Celtic Tree Month of Birch.
St. Agnes Day
Patron saint of virgins; the 13 year-old, fourth century Roman martyr, executed by sword in 350 AD for preserving her virginity. When in Cornwall, England, she thwarted the obsessions of the legendry giant, Bolster, who bled to death at Chapel Porth.
• Divination by Fire
Agnes Day is a particularly edifying time for pagan divination by fire.
Celtic Tree Month of Rowan (Luis) begins.
Tu B'shvat (Hebrew)
Celebrating the relationship of the Almighty with His people as expressed
by the blessings He has bestowed on the Holy Land.
Full Moon
St
Vincent of Saragossa’s Day
The Patron saint of drunkards, who died slowly in 304 AD after torture on
the rack and the gridiron. “If on St Vincent’s Day the sky is
clear, more wine than water will crown the year”.
• Birthday of Sir Francis Bacon
1561; Philosopher, alchemist, Freemason, English statesman and founder
of the modern Rosicrucian Order.
Thurseblot (Norse/Teutonic)
Thor's Feast, held on the Full Moon of January, to drive back the frost
and the storms so that spring may return to Midgard.
Septuagesima
The third Sunday before Lent.
Terminus Quinquegenus of Deth
Eve of the second half-century of the
Acolyte, marked by excessive, licentious and hedonistic revelry by notable
luminaries from around the world.
In1330, Pope John XXII gaves funds to his physician to set up a laboratory for a "certain secret work".
Feast of St. Francis
of Sales
d. 1622. Philosopher, Bishop of Geneva, and patron saint of writers, whose
most treasured virtue was humility.
St Paul’s Eve
Originally named Saul, he hated and persecuted Christians and was present
at the stoning to death of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
• St Paul’s Pitcher Day
In some places processions are held, and in Cornwall where it is known
as St Paul’s Pitcher Day, tin miners
would pelt a pitcher full of water with stones until it broke, when they
would retire to the inn and replace it with one of ale.
Sementivae (Roman)
Nine-day festival of sowing begins, (ending on 1st February), in honour
of earth goddess Terra, grain goddess Ceres, and the goddess of seed Proserpina.
• ‘The Last Necromancer of Winchcombe’
Bevil Blizard died in 1838, aged 94. His ghost is often seen wandering
around Winchcombe church.
• Wilhelm Grimm born
The co-author of Grimm’s Fairy Tales is born, 1786.
• Begetting of ‘Deth’
Gothic craftsman, scribe, adept and eternal acolyte of The Alchemist.
Feast of the Conversion of St
Paul
On his way to seize Christians in Damascus, A.D. 37, Saul was struck
and blinded by a flash of light from heaven. He then recognised Jesus
and became ‘Paul’, a pacifist and committed his life to
the Son of God.
Good weather means a fortuitous year ahead, but winds and thunder mean
war and death.
Burn's Night
The tribute to ‘Rabbie’ Burns the Scots
bard, was started by friends after his death in 1796. The ceremony begins
with the chairman inviting the company to receive the haggis.
• Birth of Robert Boyle
1627-1691; Irish scientist and co-founder in Oxford of the secret laboratory,
the Invisible College, forerunner of the Royal Society of which he was
also a member. Boyle was a practical alchemist, supporting the theory
of transmutation but also the first theorist and exponent of modern
chemistry and physics, developed from their alchemical genesis.
Celtic abbot of the Hebrides and Isle of Man, and first Bishop of Sodar (Viking for ‘southern islands’); d. 648.
Sementivae Feria
(Roman)
The fourth and most welcom day of Sementivae, the festival of sowing.
The Feria is the Roman’s public holiday, in which all work, labour
and legal matters are suspended, temples are visited and feasts held.
1225-1274; brilliant intellect, theologian, philosopher and Dominican monk who studied and lectured in Paris.
• Charlemagne’s Death
In 814, Charlemagne, the mighty, learned and zealous ruler of Europe
died. He was canonized in 1166.
• Sir Francis Drake Dies
An omen of death is to see his ghost riding at the head of the Wild
Hunt across Dartmoor, in a black carriage pulled by headless horses.
• Henry VIII Dies
Following his Dissolution of the Monasteries and the formation of the
Church of England.
• Gaslight
In 1809, along Pall Mall in London, the world’s first gas-lit
street was illuminated.
• Twilight Conventicle
The celebrated writer, Arthur Conan Doyle made a note to the effect
that, on this Spring night in 1882, a prearranged, clandestine meeting
took place between himself, Oscar Wilde and a certain Count Magistus
within a large, vaulted, medieval undercroft in Aldersgate.
• The Allerwood Wyrm
A great, scaly flying serpent laid waste the environs of Aller in Somerset
with its poisonous breath. Sir John of Aller armoured himself with a
coat of pitch and a mask to protect him from the dragon’s breath,
and armed with a long spear, he fought and killed the dragon in its
cave. He also found there however, several infants, and so he ran back
to his home to fetch two men to seal the cave’s entrance before
he himself dyed of injuries sustained in the fight. The nearby church
of Low Ham, displays John’s nine-foot long spear which he used
to kill the dragon.
Up Helly Aa (Gaelic/Nors)
Meaning ‘end of the Holy days’; in Lerwick,
Shetland, on the last Tuesday in January, and in other parts of Scotland
on different days, this great fire-festival marks the end of the winter
Yule festivities. A large, noisy procession of Viking clad torchbearers
carry a longship to the harbour, where it is launched out to sea and burned
as a ship-pyre. Dancing, feasting and drinking then commence and continue
into the night. Prior to 1889 however, the procession consisted of wooden
sleds loaded with blazing tar-barrels being pulled around by chains, while
the ‘Guisers’ added horn-blowing to the noise.
The only execution of a British monarch took place when Charles was publicly beheaded at Whitehall, London, 1649, following the Royalist’s defeat in the English Civil Wars.
• Opus Maius
In 1266, Roger Bacon finished writing his Opus Maius.
Feast of Hekate (Greek)
One of many festivals to the goddess of necromancy
and keeper of the keys to the underworld. She has snakes in her hair,
carries a torch and is attended by ferocious hellhounds.
• Death of the Pretender
1788, Bonnie Prince Charlie, exiled Sangraal pretender to the English
throne died, supposedly childless, in France.
