Goetia

Jake Stratton-Kent’s Encyclopedia Goetica from Scarlet Imprint traces the buried roots of the grimoire tradition in cthonic practices, especially those of the ancient goes or necromancers. While I was reading the Geosophia, Volume II of this work, a poem started to come to me. It represents the ritual trance induction song of a goes preparing for a journey to the underworld such as those described by Stratton-Kent. You can think of it as a book review in verse!

Goetia

 

To the tune of “In the Pines”

 

I will moan

I will moan

I will moan

I will moan

Dressed in rags, and my hair will be down.

Oh, you spirits in flight

Ride on moths through the night

And alight at the top of my crown.

 

Now my head with their dead dreams is swarming

I am not what I was, I can tell.

By the price I have paid

And the magic I’ve made

I will go on a voyage to hell.

 

I will go

I will go

I will go

I will go

On the sea of the whispering dead

With a wreathe on my brow

And a head on my prow

And a crown for the murmuring head.

 

And the crown will be made out of iron

And the eyes of the dead they will burn

And the head will proclaim

All their barbarous names

So the gates will swing wide

In their turn.

 

I will sing

I will sing

I will sing

I will sing

As I walk through the ash and the rain

By the mountains of glass

Made of dreams that have passed

And the bones of the giants in chains.

 

Oh their blood with the starlight is seething.

When I drink of it, I will be dumb.

In my silence I’ll weep

For their dreams in the deep.

In my sorrow for what

They’ve become.

 

In the kingdom below, there are regions –

Some of fire, some of ice, some of stone.

There are oceans of mud

There are rivers of blood

There are forests of hair and of bone.

 

There are spirits sublime and most subtle.

There are others both vulgar and strange.

There are spirits who fly

Through the underground sky.

There are others who burrow and change.

 

If you wish to be allied with legions

And to know all their names and their signs

You must enter your mark

In the book, in the dark

You must drink of the fire and the wine.

 

I will moan

I will moan

I will moan

I will moan

Dressed in rags, and my hair will be down.

Oh, you spirits in flight

Ride on moths through the night

And alight at the top of my crown.

Christopher Scott Thompson

Christopher Scott Thompson is a writer, historical fencing instructor and founding member of Clann Bhride, the Children of Brighid. He was active with Occupy Minneapolis and Occupy St. Paul. His political writing can be found at https://alienationorsolidarity.wordpress.com/.