Footnotes

*1 I have elected to use the spelling magick in lieu of magic throughout this text. The evidence in my library indicates that it is the preferred spelling of many occultists and witches today, and it is the spelling we use in my own spiritual community (with the k ending used to distinguish spiritual practice from stage performance).

*2 For more information on Vogel’s cleansing technique, see my other works, The Seven Archetypal Stones and Crystals for Karmic Healing.

*3 To be a “Vogel,” the crystal must meet certain criteria to assure that the universal life force is attracted, amplified, and transmitted properly: the crystal must be natural quartz; it must be hand-cut with the necessary intent, skill, and understanding of the crystal and its intended use; it must be doubly terminated or cut and polished to this shape; the crystal has to be cut completely aligned with the c-axis of the quartz crystal; the receptive, or female end of the crystal must be faceted forming the same angle as the angle of the sides of the Great Pyramid at Giza (an internal angle of 51 degrees, 51 minutes, 51 seconds); the crystal must have four or more side facets; the transmitter, or male end of the crystal must be faceted with a more acute internal angle than the receptive end.

*4 Archaeologist Marija Gimbutas outlines several examples of much older representations of the Divine Feminine, though they lack the overall anthropomorphic features of the Venus figurines. The oldest examples she cites are triangular figures crudely knapped from flint in the style of the Acheulean hand axes. These prototypical goddess figures, which may be up to 500,000 years old, are adorned with breasts and/or vulva, and sometimes a head/face near the uppermost point of the triangle (Gimbutas, Language of the Goddess, 237).

*5 The name of the Teton Range in Wyoming comes from the French téton, meaning “nipple.”

*6 Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Middle Eastern goddess Astoreth, a form of Ishtar (worshipped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians), who herself is a later form of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. She was a Mother Goddess who was also regarded as the goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, combat, justice, and political power.

*7 Traditional peoples the world over have always followed a lunar calendar of approximately twenty-eight days, the average length of a woman’s cycle. This contrasts with the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582, still in use today.

*8 The names Agneyi and Agni are both derived from the Sanskrit root agni, “fire,” a word that gave rise to the Latin ignis, from which Ignea’s name comes.

*9 Some etymologies even link the words granite, garnet, and pomegranate to the same Latin root: granum, meaning “grain” or “seed.” This serves as another connection between such stones and the myth of Persephone in the underworld.

*10 Although traditional literature on the magickal arts defines the Great Rite with heteronormative language and symbolism, it can, in fact, be enacted with any consensual pair of adults, regardless of their gender.

*11 A subset of chemical sedimentary rocks is known as biochemical sedimentary rocks. These are minerals like limestone, chert, and coal that are formed from the remains of once-living organisms.

*12 Some traditions use a counterclockwise direction, as it represents banishing and cleansing.

*13 Having a crystalline structure so fine that no distinct particles are recognizable under a microscope.

*14 Glamourie is a Scots word referring to a charmed condition in which everything is invested with magical properties and possibilities. It also refers to the magickal art of changing or augmenting the way you are perceived by others, often called glamoury or simply glamour today.

*15 The Flower of Life is a figure composed of overlapping circles; in sacred geometry it is used to express the first act of creation and the original information system of the universe. For more on this variation of a circle, see “Symbols of the Goddess” in chapter 4.

*16 For a complete discussion of the Grail archetype and other emerald symbolism, see pages 123–53 of my book The Seven Archetypal Stones.

*17 Refer to the discussion of garnets and Ignea, the Maiden of Stone, in chapter 5.

*18 Many species of corn, or maize, in the Americas are blue in color.

*19 The metaphysical community generally claims that Lemurian jade is an aggregate of both jadeite and nephrite jades. Geologically this is not possible. I have yet to find a conclusive and authoritative study published on the content of this material, though I suspect that it is a greenstone that contains both jadeite and serpentine.

*20 Many green gemstones, notably emerald, have been connected to the eyes and vision throughout the ages. Appropriately, at one point malachite may have been called smaragdos, meaning “green,” alongside many other green stones. Smaragdos is the root of the word emerald, which may account for conflating the properties of emerald and malachite.

*21 In a curious gender reversal, Finnish myth records pearls as resulting from the tears of the poet-hero Väinäimöinen. However, he is the son of the goddess Luonnotar and is the rescuer of the sun goddess Päivätär, so his mythic cycle is deeply connected to aspects of the Divine Feminine in Finnish mythology.

*22 For ethically sourced mother-of-pearl tools for use in gemstone therapy, consider visiting www.gemisphere.com and www.gemformulas.com.

*23 Since quartz crystal exhibits such a wide range of skills, it has variously been attributed to each sign of the zodiac and virtually every planet at different points in history and by astrologers and magicians of different cultures. For this reason, I have listed quartz as representing all planets and signs.

*24 For a more in-depth exploration of Isis crystal, refer to pages 153–71 in Katrina Raphaell’s The Crystalline Transmission: A Synthesis of Light.

*25 Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), or “Order of the Temple of the East” or “Order of Oriental Templars,” is an international religious organization founded at the beginning of the twentieth century. English occultist Aleister Crowley was the best-known and most influential member of the order. Crowley organized OTO around the religious philosophy of Thelema, the central religious principle of which is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will.”

*26 Ninlil is also called Mullitu in some texts. Lilith’s name is derived from the Akkadian lilitu (a class of female demons in ancient Mesopotamia), a word that shares the lil root with Ninlil and the litu suffix with Mullitu.

*27 I’ve included many, though not all, of these correspondences as listed in Janet and Stewart Farrar’s The Witches’ Goddess in the appendix.