On Thursdays, We Eat Pork
A year ago, I ran away to live in the strangest house in Wigan. I knew it was a strange house before I ran. It was part of the appeal. I knew the doors were alive, I knew where The Hole was and what must be put into it. I’d already lost a hat to the house spirit (Jeff). I’d felt the atmosphere in the Magic Room, oozing down my back like cold honey. I was ready for the house. But was the house ready for me? I was bringing my own magic, my own god, my own things that go bump in the night. And worse - two cats. But this is the grand experiment - to find out what happens when you put two tonnes of magic in a one-tonne bag.
LIke all good love stories, it started on the internet. A witch, a wizard, a discord server. We met in the flesh and he kissed me while we recited the Orphic hymns. It was all really revoltingly romantic, and a year later I was packing up my paraphernalia and hightailing it over the hill. The idea was to create a temple, a hearth house, a LaVeyan Total Environment where we’d devote ourselves to our practice and each other. As much as possible, of course - we still must pay bills and go to the Big Asda and the dental hygienist, at least for now. Obvs when I Become A Living God I will be above all that and my teeth will be perfect and shine like the sun.
At first, I was curious and a little bit anxious about how our magics would combine. On the surface, Mr Smith’s practice is very different from mine. While we both started with chaos magic, Mr Smith is now deeply immersed in grimoire magic, and I’m more chaotic than ever. Mr Smith works seriously and dedicatedly with the spirits of the Grimorium Verum, the notorious 18th century ‘handbook’ of black magic. To be honest, before I met him, I would have been far more likely to use a Jackie Collins novel in my magic than a grimoire. But there’s just something about Mr Smith that makes a girl want to try new things.
And so on Thursdays, if the moon is waxing, we eat pork and make an offering to Frismuth, giving him the choicest chunk and saying our grace to him. He likes hot sauce on his pork and bones in it. On waxing Fridays we eat fish with Bechaud, and thank him for the rain and the wind and the sea and what’s in it.
Frutemiere ‘prepares all kinds of feasts and sumptuous banquets for you’, so as a high-priestess-cum-housewife, he’s my main guy. Before I cook, I offer him salt in boiling water and ask him to make our food into a feast. Also, Mr Smith told me that in Quimbanda, Frutemiere is associated with the spirit of the Marquis de Sade, so I always make sure I’m a bit suggestive with the pepper grinder.
Heramael is in the garden, in the seed trays on the window sills, the little pots of rosemary, marjoram and mint. Claunech’s sigil is on our treasure hunting bags, Fleruty’s in the bathroom.We have all agreed not to use Klepoth to cheat on family poker night.
Humots has my whole heart, though. Gentle saint of the bookshelves, honored with tea and scones, leaving me Culpeper and candle kits in the local charity shop. I have dedicated the little free library in the park to Humots. I write his sigil in magic books and leave them there, and in return I get Shirley Jackson novels and WWII books and The Postman Always Rings Twice. (I do occasionally leave offerings to my God there, too, and I would like to anonymously apologise to whoever runs the enterprise for the amount of plastic babies, false teeth and ceramic clown parts they have had to clean out of there).
I’ve learnt that grimoire magic’s not just robing up and reading (although reading is fundamental). It is far more hands-on than that.There’s gardening involved, and butchery, and metalwork and embroidery and nature walks and poster paint and baking and, if you’re doing it right, puppets. I have learned and done so much this year, and my personal practice has expanded and changed in beautiful, glimmering ways I could never have imagined, just by knowing and loving these strange and powerful spirits. It’s a busy life (I haven’t even mentioned our work with Hecate, or Aphrodite, or Jeff and his lovely wife, Mrs Jeff, and then there’s MY God, who is another story entirely), but every last bit of it is magic.
