Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

Course Two: Nature
Other animals
may experience
her in their own
unique perceptions,
but humanity
first began to
worship her
around the end of
the Paleolithic and
the beginning of
the Neolithic period,
from 12,000-
6,000 BCE. Possibly
this coincided
with the beginning
of agriculture and
animal domestication.
She is known
in many forms to
many people in agricultural and hunter-gatherer cultures
around the world. Her names are legion: Artemis,
Diana, Epona, Bendis, Hathor, Despoina, Astarte,
Lakshmi, Ma Ku, White Buffalo Woman... She is usually
pictured as a powerful (and often bare-breasted)
woman standing either between two animals or holding
onto an animal in each hand. Sometimes she is
shown riding on an animal, such as a tiger.
Fauna’s rites are often associated with lunar worship
and may seem somewhat contradictory on the
surface. She is the protector of young animals and
wild nature; but on the other hand she eats meat, and
blood is her sacrament. This is because she is the
Goddess of all the animals, both predator and prey.
Ancient hunters prayed to her for luck on the hunt,
and farmers prayed to her for increase of the flocks.
Maybe nowadays we should call on her to help us
save endangered species!
The Red Man (Faunus)
He shall wake the living dead—
Cloven hoof and hornéd head,
Human heart and human brain,
Pan the Goat-God comes again!
Half a beast and half a man—
Pan is all and all is Pan!
—Percy Bysshe Shelley,
“The Goat-Foot God”
Faunus is often called the
Horned One—Pan and
Cernunnos (which means
“horned one”) being his most
common names. He is the masculine
personification of the Spirit
of all animals, and thus he wears
their crown of horns.
Forest faun by Oberon
Faunus is the god of fields, shepherds, and prophecy.
He is also the leader of the fauns, the Roman
branch of the Greek satyrs. Fauns and satyrs resemble
humans except for having goat’s feet, tails, pointed
ears, and short horns. In different places, the horns of
the Red Man would be those of whatever animals most
impressed the people: deer in Europe, buffalo in the
Americas, and Antelopes in Africa and Asia. The father
of the satyrs in Greece was Pan, whose name
means “all.” The ancient scholars of Alexandria believed
that Pan personified the natural world, and the
word pantheism comes from this idea, that All is God
and God is All.
Pan’s positive side is the laughing, lusty lover
and musician; this aspect was called Pangenitor, the
“all-begetter.” But like all of Nature, Pan has a shadow
side as well. In this form he is called Panphage, the
“all-devourer,” and as such he is the fierce protector
of the wilderness. The word panic itself derives from
Pan, for in this form he causes irrational wild fear.
The Grey One (Micota)
Micota is the Latin name for the
Queendom of Fungi. The fungus group
includes mushrooms, molds, and slime
molds. The first fungi appeared on Earth
over a billion years ago. Unlike Flora,
Micota cannot make turn inorganic
substances into food, but can only
live off of other living
things—either as parasites
(“one who eats
another’s food”) on the living,
65
Mushroom god
stones from
Columbia
or saprophytes (“growing from decay”)
on the dead. Mushrooms are only the
tiny fruits poking up from intricate
networks of fibers that spread underground
over huge areas. These
fibers are called mycelium, and they
very much resemble the nerve fibers in
the human brain. Some of these mycelia networks are
so huge that they are, in fact, the largest living things
on Earth. The Spirit of Micota is vast and deep!
Many fungi are intimately involved with humanity,
and mushrooms especially have a long
history both as food and shamanic medicines.
Some people believe that humans
gained consciousness through eating
certain magick mushrooms that grew
on the dung of cattle and caribou
whose herds provided sustenance
for early nomadic tribes on every
continent. Throughout the world,
many Mystery rites and Initiations
have involved eating these mushrooms
and journeying into other
worlds of The Dreaming.