Evan John Jones > Quotes

“Historically speaking,6 any male Clan or Tribal leader was once thought of as the Sacrificial Divine God-King imbued with the essence/Virtue of the Old God within. As the willing sacrifice killed in his prime for the good of the tribe, he would pass on that spirit of the Young God to his successor, keeping the divine essence strong even as the King weakened with age.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“The modern English word anvil developed from this early form: anfealt which has its origin in the Proto-Indo-European root *pel. If we study the origin of the word anvil as an attempt to learn why the smith and smith craft has been so esteemed and venerated as possessing something ‘other,’ there is an abundance of astonishing information and confirmation as to the magical and possible priestly/kingly role of a person who is able to fashion by force of wit and will a weapon to defend as easily as a plough to plunder and fecund the earth. For many decades much speculation has surrounded the word commonly associated with the role of cunning-person in the title of ‘peller/pellar.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Before his death, Robert Cochrane spoke more than once of breaking with the past and moving on in what he called his personal “magical argosy.” Had he lived, there is no doubt he would have fully enfleshed the scant forms he knew regarding the rites of the ‘Cave of the Cauldron,’ the ‘Chapel of the Grave,’ ‘The Castle of the Four Winds’ and the ‘Stone Stile.’ Today, the Clan of Tubal Cain continues this work.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Ironically, Robert Graves was also in correspondence with Gerald Gardner, who was expounding a very different kind of ‘Craft’ to that of Robert Cochrane during the 1960s. And although there is a plethora of material assumed to have been penned by Gerald Gardner, we have very few surviving letters or articles of Robert Cochrane’s from which we may draw resourcefully or reliably upon. So the discovery of two additional letters expands our understanding of the man considerably (but not his work). Graves’ book influenced both men considerably, but in entirely different ways. While Gardner used the material as an historical basis for his nature based religion: ‘Wicca,’ Cochrane exploited the resources both allegorically and analogically, allowing him to develop his teaching praxes substantially. Most especially he became very adept at setting riddles based on material from the book to test students upon their intuitive faculties and lateral cogniscence.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“I was interested in your description (one of the difficulties of communication _ ‘interested’!) of the physical appearance of the Goddess symptons (Gawd, my spelling). I am not biased towards the poetical aspect but more towards the Black Goddess, so my knees do not shake or eyes run, but I do get a sudden feeling of intense pressure, something like an approaching storm. It is as you say a physical thing, almost a desire to run and find shelter. I have also ‘seen’ the Goddess, although She was riding a white horse, maybe it was artistic vision, I do not know, but I was genuinely terrified for the following week. At the present moment I have the best of both worlds with the Black and the White… Of course I will pay for it later, hire purchase is no new thing …”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Cochrane also wrote: “The hunter and the hunted (old Tubal Cain) and the Roebuck in the Thicket, are one and the same thing - Divine Presence. This is the time of the God of mysteries.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Shot through by one of Her arrows, we are enamoured of Her forever. Filled with Her love, we cannot see a Full Moon without an overwhelming urge to be out in it in some quiet and lonely place. Without actually having to do or say anything, just stand there, allowing the moonlight and night breezes to work their magic, until all is in harmony and at one with the night and the hidden life around us. This is the essence of the Craft.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Although many traditions within the Craft divide their ritual year at May’s Eve to All Hallow’s Eve, still others place the death of the Old Year at All Hallow’s and the beginning of the New at Candlemas, celebrated on or around February 2nd. The Clan, in accordance with medieval traditions, honour this descent into the Mound, but view the threshold, or turning tide as the peak, around Yule. The Old Fire is extinguished, prior to a new one being lit from its dying embers.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“the ritual of the Old Covenant 11 speaks of the time of the rutting deer, the circle of the dead when the Hunter, Old Tubal Cain and the Roebuck in the Thicket are one and the same thing-, the Divine Presence. The time when the ancient God of the mysteries, who by tradition passed on his powers through himself and into the female worshiper (expressed by) the time when the Sun King and the Moon Queen mated underground in the deepest of silence.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“The circle is more a ‘sacred’ area than a ‘working’ circle because it seeks to represent the area in front of the grave/mound entrance to the Underworld.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“In one of his letters to William Gray, Robert Cochrane wrote: “I am seriously considering leaving my group and working alone. I may sound dreadfully un-humble, but Jane and I have reached a stage where we can go faster by ourselves. The group is beginning to pull us backwards, and I for one would like to establish a new leader and move on myself. We have had a brilliant ‘flash of light’ recently that may lead to the end of an old era and the beginning of a new for us.” As this letter reveals, turning away from group workings to further develop one’s own magical persona is not uncommon. Cochrane was at that stage about 1965, but things went horribly wrong, leading to his premature death. That particular tragedy however, in no way invalidates the concept that eventually one or two people will leave any group to continue its mysteries by working more intensely on their own. Some of these people may in fact become the shadow elders that Cochrane described in another letter: “We may be the last of the old school, but we still uphold the old attitudes and expect the same thing. Above we two rises another authority whose writ is far older than ours; to that authority we give absolute allegiance, and whose function is to train and work with us.” But he may also be referring to something far more enigmatic. The policy of Elders within any tradition holds true today just as it did in Cochrane’s day and will continue to do so as long as the Clan of Tubal Cain exists. Only the Maid and the Magister will know and speak to them because it is they who maintain the contact.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Cochrane raised this very point, and I can do no better than to quote his actual words: “When I am dead, I shall go to another place that myself and my ancestors created. Without their work it would not exist, since in my opinion, for many eons of time the human spirit had no abode, then by desire to survive created the pathway into other worlds. Nothing is got by doing nothing, and whatever we do now creates the world in which we exist tomorrow. The same applies to death; what we have created in thought, we create in that other reality. Desire, as you probably know better than I, was the very first of all created things.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“In the mad sixties, when the Beatles were at their height of popularity, Cochrane writes: “All that noise, sexual hysteria and so on is a dangerous force to play with and this is what the Beatles are doing. I would not be surprised to read that (A) that a meeting of R&B had evolved into a fertility rite and (B) that one of the Beatles had come to a very bloody and untimely end, à la primitive magic as the God of Vegetation.” The letter was undated, but it had to have been written before Cochrane’s own death in the summer of 1966. And of course John Lennon of the Beatles met a tragic death when shot by an enraged fan, though not until 1980.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Robert Cochrane was convinced that Shakespeare “knew something.” In a letter to William Gray he wrote: “Shakespeare really knew his witchcraft. I have a wild theory that he spent some time in one of the more advanced clans; and that it was during his service that he first gave birth to the silver tongue.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“To begin with the chalice has always represented the feminine side of the Old Faith, the “gynergy” to be found in women, symbolized by the cup of wine carried by the Maid within the ritual circle.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“As a matter of historical interest, some English ceremonial magicians made a serious attempt to raise an elemental spirit in 1857CE on a rooftop in London’s Oxford Street. They were members of an occult club founded by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a Victorian novelist famous for ‘Zanoni’ and ‘The Last Days of Pompeii.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“We meet the three sisters again in Shakespeare’s infamous Scottish play, the much lauded Macbeth. In the first act, when Macbeth is still King Duncan’s victorious war leader, he meets the three witches on the heath and they great him: First witch: “All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Glamis!” Second witch: “All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!” Third witch: “All hail, Macbeth that shalt be king hereafter!” They have named his previous noble title, his new title, the Thane of Cawdor, gained when its rebellious former holder was executed; and the title that he does not yet have. If we understand these three hags as the ‘Wyrd,’ then they have just revealed Macbeth’s past, present, and future in chronological order.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“The world of our ancestors was a different, far less secure world than our own. Whereas ours is heavily populated; theirs, by contrast, was sparsely so. No technology or infra-structure to detract the mind from its musings and contemplations; yet instead, a world soothed only by the warmth of the daytime Sun existed that often seemed hostile and inimical even to life itself. At night, faced with darkness that in our light saturation we may never comprehend, they were able to see the heavens illuminated by billions of stars, shining brilliantly against the pitch-black vaulted arc of the skies until the rising of the Moon cast a cold, harsh, twilight over the land. Little wonder that this celestial mirror came to symbolize the Old White Goddess Herself.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“This is the taper that lights the way, This is the cloak that covers the stone, That sharpens the knife. That cuts the cord, That binds the Staff, That’s owned by the Maid, Who tends the fire, That boils the pot, That scalds the sword, That fashions the bridge, That crosses the ditch, That compasses the hand, That knocks the door, That fetches the watch, That releases the man, That turns the Mill, That grinds the corn, That makes the cake, That feeds the hound, That guards the gate That hides the maze That’s worth a light And into the castle that Jack built.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“We portray the Goddess (Gaude/Guiden) seated on a throne with two of Her sacred geese, one at either side, looking up at Her, as do we, with adoring eyes. She sits calmly, dispassionate and infinitely remote, with an air of detached sadness tinged with compassion. For She is the one who knows the ultimate Fate of our world because She is the one who ordained its weaving into the very fabric of creation. Even when that Fate finally has been played out, She will still be there, the Alpha/Omega of all Creation.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Cochrane expressed the ultimate Godhead in terms of a Goddess who is the Mother of Creation, yet who is also the Renewer of Life through being the Giver of Death. She manifests Herself in the warming winds of the springtime, the cooling breeze in the summer’s heat and the death-dealing blasts of winter.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Both Robert Cochrane and William G. Gray took an occultist’s view of pop music; that is to say, they saw within it, various forms of evocation. In the same letter in which he gives Gray a riddle, Cochrane observes that attendees at rock concerts use magic unknowingly, raising what their ancestors called ‘Cain’ or the unbalanced forces of chaos.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain

“Do not do what you desire, Do what is necessary. Take all you are given, Give all of yourself. What I have, I Hold. When all is lost, And not until then, Prepare to die with dignity.”
― Evan John Jones, The Star Crossed Serpent: Volume 1 - Origins: Evan John Jones 1966-1998 The Legend of Tubal Cain