• Vlad’s Initiation
In 1430, Vlad II Dracul was initiated as Knight of The Order of the Dragon.
The order’s official dress, to be worn only on Fridays or during
the commemoration of Christ's Passion, included a black cape over a red
tunic.
• Oyster Season Opening
In a tradition dating back almost a thousand years after Richard I bestowed
the Colne Fishing Rights to Colchester in 1156, the Mayor in his robes
of office embarks in a fishing boat to the oyster beds in Pyfleet Creek,
where the ancient
proclamation of 1256 is read out.
Celtic Tree Month of Hazel ends.
One of the plentiful festivals in honour of the cult god of the dead, the sun god, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, to name a few of his many titles.
• The ‘Great Fire’ Apparition
In 1666, a young Isaac Newton witnessed the vision of a great phoenix above the flames of the Great Fire of London.
• The Great Fire of London
Begins in Pudding Lane, in a bakers, (or possibly an alchemists laboratory), in 1666, destroying the entire medieval city within five days.
Celtic Tree Month of Vine (Muin) begins.
Initiates begin a seven-day period of fasting and community benevolence, as prescribed by celestial divination by the elders of Ur, (Babylonia), in around 800 BC.
• New 14th September
In Britain in the year 1752, this day became 14th September. Parliament
decreed that the ‘Old’ Julian calendar was to be abolished
and the new style Gregorian system adopted from midnight on 2nd September
instead. In order to correct the compound inaccuracies incurred over the
past centuries, eleven days had to be deducted at the change. Many traditionalists
and pagans however remained faithful to the ‘Old’ observances.
• Coronation of Richard I
Richard Couer de Lion, (The Lionheart), was crowned in 1189 by Archbishop
Baldwin of Cantabury.
Parliament decreed that the ‘Old’ Julian calendar be abolished in favour of the new style Gregorian one from 2nd September 1752. The following day therefore, became 14th September, provoking a riot in London the next day, (Old 4th or “new” 15th). (See the Calendar Riots on 15th September, the ‘Old’ 4th).
• Penllyne Dragon Snakes
The Dragon Snakes of Penllyne, when seen in Wales in 1812, were described
as flying snakes with beautiful feathers. They were however all killed
by local people for preying on their chickens.
Formally called the ‘Wakes of Walton’ and held on the Monday and Tuesday after St Giles’ Day, in Oxford, near to his church, with peddlers, travelling showmen and gingerbread stalls amongst the attractions.
• Abbot’s Bromley Horn Dance
A very ancient fertility ritual and ‘mumming play’ variation in Staffordshire, England, originally held on Twelfth Day, when it was once typical of the rituals being played out at that time of year in all the rural communities of Europe, ensuring 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. Performed on the local Wakes Monday, (the Monday following the first Sunday after September 4th).
• Day of Dvaln
Druids ritually honour the self-sacrificing priest as Lord Over Wyrms.
The birth of Mary Mother of God, celebrated on 8th September by the Eastern Church.
• 1100; Death of Guibert of Ravenna
The opponant of Pope Gregory VII, the first elected anti-pope in 1080,
(as Clement III).
Benedictine monk, Alexander Barlow, was hanged and pulled apart for heresy on this day in 1641. His 300-year-old head is displayed at Wardley Hall in Worsley, Manchester, following several fated attempts at burial, causing demonic sounds and visions, and untimely deaths. Such distress was caused that a legal charter was acquired to prevent its concealment.
On this day in 1377, the magi and acolyte known by the name of The Alchemist, attributed as being one Modus Quintus of Fetch Harrow, is believed after many arduous years of reclusive, solitary toil, to have eventually produced eight ounces of the Philosopher’s Stone, the jealously guarded secret substance vital to the quest for the hermetic quintessence.
• Dale Cockatrice
In Dale, Shetland, a woman found an egg and put it to incubate beneath
a hen. The egg hatched into a cockatrice and ate all he chicks before
hiding in a stack of peat. A cockatrice can kill with its glance, but
it was recognised and some clever person set fire to the peat and the
monster was destroyed.
• Hop Picking season
Hopping begins in the “Garden Of England,” with gypsies,
itinerants and young people flocking to help collect the vital ingredient
for the making of traditional ales.
Dragon Slayer
Piers Shonks, was the squire of Brent Pelham in 11th century Engliand.
While hunting one day he cornered a terrible dragon in a lair beneath
a yew tree. The ensuing fight was long and bloody, and Shonks himself
was fatally wounded in his triumphant hour, when the dragon writhed
in death at the hero’s feet. Satan then appeared and demanded
the squire’s body and soul as payment for the death of his creature.
Piers replied that his soul was God’s and his body would lie where
his arrow fell. With his dying breath, he shot an arrow which went through
the window of the church and stuck in the north wall of the nave, where
he rests in his elaborately carved tomb, with the inscription reading:
‘…Shonks one serpent kills t’other defies, And in
this wall, as in a fortress lies’.
• Widecombe Fair
Held on the second Tuesday of September in
Dartmoor, Devon, the roads of the moor being haunted by the ghosts of
Tom Cobbley and the mare, immortalised in ballad.
St. Helen had a church built over the Holy Sepulchre to house the relic of the True Cross, which was dedicated in the year 335. As the Cross was being carried into the church it was again raised up and since that time, the Elevation of the Cross of the Lord has been celebrated as one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Church
Holy
Rood Day
Catholic veneration of the raising of the True Cross from Calvary, over
the remains of the Holy Sepulchre.
Agrippa Day
1486-1535; Birthday of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Cologne, highly respected
Cabalist, scholar of occult philosophy and magician, who held most alchemists
in contempt as “physicians or soap boilers”. He was patronized
principly by Emperor Maximilian I, and his greatest hermetic work is Occulta
Philosophia.
Full Moon
• Calendar Riots
The apparent loss of eleven days from the lives of all British folk provoked
great unrest and riots in London on 15th, or the ‘Old’ 4th September
in 1752.
• Harvest Moon
Nearest full moon to September 23rd.
The most potent moon of the year, when women are especially vulnerable
to pregnancy.
In 1224 St. Francis of Assissi, while on Mount La Verna, begeld a seraph and miraculously suffered the Wounds of Christ.
• Death of Hildegard
Hildegard von Bingen, medieval saint and metaphysician, dies in 1179.
Old Greek festival celebrating lawful justice and the birth of democracy.
• Alembic Hall Dig
in 1977 archaeologists in Southern England sensationally discovered uniquely
mysterious and well-preserved ancient remains, around and beneath the
medieval, moated site of Alembic Hall.
Beginning a secretive, nine-day holy ritual of processions, cleansing rights, animal sacrifices, feasts, dances and initiations, celebrating the tales of Demeter and Persephone and recalling Goddess Demeter's search for Her missing daughter.
• Canones Yeoman's Tale
In 1388, Geoffrey Chaucer discussed alchemy in his satirical Canones Yeoman's Tale, from the famous Canterbury Tales.
356 B.C. the birth of the great warrior and scholar, Alexander the Great, who, founded the city of Alexandria, the greatest seat of culture and learning the world had ever known, its astonishing library attracting scholars, philosophers and scientists from the world over.
• Birth of Doctor Robert Fludd
1574-1637; at Milgate House, in the parish of Bearsted. Oxford based hermetic philosopher, alchemist, and physician, and supporter of Rosicrucian and Cabalist principles.
From the twelfth century until 1752.
Devil’s Nutting Day
The day to abstain from nut collecting during the nutting season, if you wish to avoid the Devil’s curse of insanity.
Uroboros
Serpent
Alchemical observance of the purifying glyph, infinity, the unity of the
cosmos and of Mercurius; the tail-eating dragon, universal spirit of transmutation.
First discovered in Egypt, around 1600 BC, the serpent devouring its own
tail symbolises the eternal cycle of renewal and creation out of destruction,
life out of death.
Autumnal Equinox
The sun crosses the equator, into the first day
of autumn.
Winter Finding
(Norse/Tutonic)
The shedding of nature and onset of cold and winter. Call on Odin for
inspiration and strength. The start of the celebration of harvest.
FIRST DAY OF LIBRA
Atum Day (Egyptian)
Honours offered to the self-creating god Atum, who was thought to manifest
in the form of a scarab or the primeval serpent.
Maponus, or ‘The Divine Son’ was at the centre of the Druidic magical cosmology and identified with the Greco-Roman sun god, Apollo. Also, the 'Son of Light', a fertility god and god of music and poetry, he was vitally important to the early Celtic peoples who passed-on their history and traditions orally.
• Death of Paracelsus
Alchemical-philosopher and physician died in Salzburg, 1541, aged forty-eight.
Following the Golden Calf, Moses pleaded with God to forgive the people. Finally on Yom Kippur, atonement was achieved and Moses brought the second set of Tablets down from Mount Sinai.
A spectacular, early C 13th, esoteric stained glass window, now restored, was recovered today in 1994 from a medieval quasi-monastic site near Chalisbury, in what is believed to have been the chapel and working house of a great alchemist. The original 13 zodiacal signs including Ophiuchus, are clearly depicted in the lights.
A basilisk was a reptile described as being ‘hatched from a cock’s egg by a serpent’ and is like a small, wingless dragon with the head of a fowl, a beak like a toad’s mouth, and with Gorgon’s eyes, representing the alchemical philosopher’s egg. Agricola saw such a creature, and one was killed in Halle, Saxony, 1528, apparently by a weasel.
Duke of Bohemia 907-29, he was an educated, religious and wise ruler who tried to avoid war and conflicts. He was assassinated by his own, war-like brother, Boleslav when entering church, St. Wenceslas has been worshipped as a sufferer and patron of Czech lands since the 10th century.
New Moon
Michaelmas Day; Feast
of St. Michael; St. Michael and All Angels’ Day
St. Michael is called the Archangel, because he is
placed over all the angels, the prince of the seraphim, the first of the
nine angelic orders. In Apocalypse;
"And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought
with the dragon." and cast Satan out of Heaven.
Patron of the orders of knights in the Middle Ages, Michael is also charged
with rescuing and bringing of men's souls to judgment at their hour of
death.
Winternights (Norse/Teutonic)
A riotous three-day feast to start the winter and hunting seasons for
the Northern folk. The Wild Hunt begins, ancestors and the dead are
venerated and divination takes place to foretell the fate of the coming
year. Sit on a barrow-mound (grave) all night long on Winternights to
acquire divinatory and bardic powers.
Celtic Tree Month of Vine ends.
Meditrinalia (Roman)
Celtic Tree Month of Ivy (Gort) begins.
Rosh Ha-Shanah (Hebrew)
The Jewish New Year Festival on the first day of Tishri, and a two-day
festival to crown God as the King, during which the ceremonial shofar
(trumpet) is blown.
