84 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard
nothing but rods. This is why nearly all modern mam-
mals still don’t see in color—even after the dinosaurs
were exterminated—because almost all later mammals
descended from those nocturnal burrowers.
But some mammals moved into the trees, where
the predatory dragons couldn’t reach them. Among
these were the primates (“first ones”): tree shrews,
which later evolved into lemurs, monkeys, apes—and
us. Because we lived in trees, we didn’t have to give
up color vision for night vision, and we kept both
cones and rods. Primates (and marsupials) remain the
only mammals that can see in full-color; and both of
us can still see better at night than nearly all birds.
When I was a boy, I would climb out of my bed-
room window at night when there was a full Moon.
While everyone else slept, I would explore this strange
silver-lit world of blacks and greys. No other people
would be abroad, and I was free to wander the yards,
fields, and forests around my neighborhood alone. I
thrilled to the night sounds of crickets, cicadas, coy-
otes, owls, and whippoorwills. I would come across
other nocturnal creatures making their nightly rounds,
and discovered they had no fear of me in the dark.
Many, many years later, my lifemate Morning
Glory made a profound observation: “True Witches
(and Wizards) are not afraid of the Dark.”Faces in the Moon
Our Moon is gravitationally locked so that the
same side always faces the Earth. This side has very
distinctive large dark areas of lava flows that look
from here like oceans. Thus the ancients called them
maria (“seas”). When we look up at the full Moon,
these maria seem to resemble the features of a face.
In different countries, these lunar patterns were seen
as the Lady in the Moon, the Man in the Moon, or the
Rabbit in the Moon (seen from Australia). Next time
there’s a full Moon, see if you can find them.Lesson 4: Ley Lines
The verdant landscapes of the British Isles are
crisscrossed with mysterious lines that run arrow-
straight from horizon to horizon, like the once-imag-
ined “canals” on Mars. These are called ley lines, and
they have been the subject of much study and specu-
lation—and a number of books. Hills, tall standingstones, and circular stone henges have been erected
along their courses and intersections, and over mil-
lennia, many Christian churches have been built on
those sites. The biggest mystery concerning them is:
What is their basis? Some have thought that they trace
the course of underground rivers, or geomagnetic cur-
rents, and call them “Dragon Paths.” Others believe
they are remnant roads of lost Atlantis—or aliens. I
have walked along some of these lines and have seen
from the Tor of Glastonbury the obelisk stones that
mark where they pass over the horizon. And so I asked
some magickal friends in London about these lines,
and they told me a remarkable story:
During the last Ice Age, so much water was bound
up in the mile-high glaciers that covered much of the
land that the sea levels were 400 feet lower than they
are now. The English Channel and the North Sea were
all dry land, right up to Scandinavia, and Western
Europe looked much like Tolkein’s map of Middle
Earth, with the Shire being in England. Across all that
tundra country, vast herds of caribou traveled on their
long annual migrations—just as they still do in parts
of Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and Scandinavia. Then as
now, they filed in straight and narrow lines, and over
tens of thousands of years, these became clear
trackways—especially as the ground became deeply
fertilized from aeons of their fewmets (droppings)!
When the caribou had passed over, psychedelic
amanita muscaria mushrooms sprang up in this rich
manure. And the nomadic tribes who lived off the great
deer and followed them (as they still do in places) ate
those mushrooms, and were enlightened. And
so they erected tall stone markers on the
horizons and high hills along these
trackways, so they could be easily fol-
lowed even when the ground was cov-
ered in snow. Important crossings would
be marked with circles of stones, which
remained long after the ice had melted and
the seas had risen, and the caribou were
long-gone. Ages later, these became sa-
cred ritual sites. So of course, when the
Christian missionaries wanted to build
their churches, where better than at
these most sacred places?Lesson 5: Sacred Places
(by Jesse Wolf Hardin)All of the natural world is sacred...magickal and
inspirited. It all has something to teach us, and every
bit of it needs our protection and love. But at the same
time, some places are more intensely charged than
others, with heavier concentrations of energies and
insights available to the seeking Wizard. The genius
loci (“spirit of place”) informs, excites, and inspires
through specific sites, through landforms vibrating- Nature.p65 84 1/14/2004, 3:33 PM