The Forest and The Desert

I was working with a client recently, and we were workshopping a personal magical system that integrated her broad range of esoteric interests.

I don’t think this is super uncommon. Most of us who do magic are curious and constantly exploring and learning new magical techniques, engaging with different spirit persons, and generally fucking around and finding out. And from that work we end up with a collection of practices that we then attempt to form into a useful and coherent whole.

I was talking about an article that I’d found online from a mid-1990s magick zine - so basically the dawn of Internet time - that categorized magic and religions into two broad areas: snakes and ladders.

Snake practice is concerned with the ground: nature, sex, the underworld, death and rot, and embodiment. It is directionally descending. Ladder practice is concerned with the sky: the mind and spirit, elevation and enlightenment, the heavens, immortality, and transcendence. It is directionally ascending.

Using the metaphor of the child’s game has always made sense to me. My client immediately saw what I was getting at, but described this as The Forest and The Desert - which I actually might like better, or at least equally well.

Certainly the engagement with the spirits (whether categorized as religion or cult) align neatly with those environments. In the forest (or jungle) we have the witch, cunningman, shaman, bruja, curandera, and indigenous / animist faiths from around the world (including the Faery faith of the ancient British Isles). In the desert we get the religions of the book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as Buddhism and certain branches of Hinduism (though these are not my area of expertise and I can’t speak authoritatively on those practices). Hermits go to the desert (or the seashore which has a similar vibe) while Witches go to the woods.

Now it might sound like I’m primacing one category over the other, or implying that one is less magical than the other - but that’s not the case!

Astrology, for example, is absolutely Desert / Ladders all the way up (lol) and is highly esoteric and magical (where do you see the stars better, the desert or the forest?). And there are many initiatory/immortality cults around the world that are ladders poking up out of nests of snakes. Indeed, there is so much crossover, here. Saints are often very snakey, despite being part of a ladder religion. And Orphic Dionysianism comes immediately to mind as the ultimate crossover (I am a Child of Earth AND Starry Heaven!).

Every so often I will designate a day in the Magical Planner as ‘for Witchcraft’ and I’ll get questions from the membership about what that really means. I often feel like I’m being asked to define porn (I know it when I see it). But in the end, when I say Witchcraft, I’m meaning Snake/Forest magic - dirty, down in the ground, embodied, sexy, somatic magic. I’m talking clay poppets, and body fluids, and hedge riding, and journeying under the Earth. I’m talking about practical work concerned with body, community, composting, and preserving. Dancing not meditating. Feasting not fasting. Grounding not elevating. Indulging not abstaining.

This is a spectrum. Just like introversion / extroversion or feeling / thinking. Your magic exists along this spectrum. And most people aren’t going to be on the ends of that spectrum, but someplace in the middle. So this isn’t about limiting. It’s about organizing. It’s about thinking where you are with your magic, and what that means for its integration into your life.

For example, one of the things you often learn when you learn magic is that you should have some kind of regular practice of it. And this makes sense - it’s called practicing magic after all. But too much rigid scheduling or repetition of the really Snaky stuff doesn’t work! That’s not how those practices are meant to be engaged with. They are meant to be formulated in the moment when the energy is right (and while the planner hints at that for me, that doesn’t mean you won’t have other times you are called to the forest.

On the other hand, if you want to do a daily prayer and offering (a more ladder kind of activity) it rewards repetition, diligence, and discipline. That’s the rosary and the ancestor veneration and the intermittent fasting in preparation for a ritual.

My own personal practice leans Snake/Forest and yet I love astro-magic and the clockwork of the universe and the PGM. I’m balanced in the middle (also makes sense that I’m an Orphic initiate).

When you think about the magic you want to integrate into your life, think about the ecosystem of those practices in order to embed them into the wider ecosystem of your life.