Ros An Bucca is a Cornish Traditionalist Hearth and Family, and a founding recension of the contemporary Pellar Current, modern Traditional Cornish Witchcraft, and the Bucca venerating Craft. The Pellar Current is the name for a body of initiates drawing upon the streams of gnosis rising from the established and preserved corpus of Cornish and West Country Witch-lore, and folk-magical tradition.
Rooted within West Cornwall, the ‘robed’ rites of Ros An Bucca are conducted, preferably, out of doors at various places of potency and virtue within the landscape. The site chosen will always depend upon the nature of the work to be done. Ros An Bucca is also dedicated to gaining atavistic understanding of the ancient sacred ‘monuments’ and sites of the ‘ceremonial landscape’, in which the Penwith region of Cornwall is particularly rich.
Employing traditional techniques of ritual practice, we seek to induce the states of being, and of mind, so useful to the work of the Witch. Wisdom is gained via experiential immersion, thus we seek, at the opening of the ways, to imbibe of the total experience of our working location, the chthonic force, the ‘sprowl’, the virtues and presences conjured, and ultimately, of divine force. In moving about the ‘Compass’, the body and being of the Witch becomes the active vehicle and vessel for these. The family of the circle, its egregore, the forces, virtues, atavistic presences and Witch divinity become reified in the harmonious coordination of form and force as a holistic entity, all in one - symbolised by the ‘hood fire’ at the centre of the Cornish Witches’ Circle, thus do the experiences encountered within the Circle of the Wise become ‘bone wisdom’.
The chief deity of our Tradition is the West Country spirit/deity Bucca – of opposing twin aspect/selves – the ‘black spirit’, Bucca Dhu who presides over the dark of the year, and the ‘white spirit’, Bucca Gwidder; presiding over the light of the year. Bucca is a deity much misunderstood and surrounded in great mystery and multiple theories. To many working within our particular Craft stream, The Bucca Spirit has revealed itself as a deity of the seasonal tides and of the forces of the weather (revealing the true reason for Bucca’s traditional importance to both fishermen and farmers). As a deity also of balance and an embodiment and resolver of all opposites, a self regenerating source and governor of seasonal forces and magics, the vessel of the life and death tides of the land and initiator of the Pellar Way. Both the black and white aspects of Bucca are seen to possess mischievous energies, this is unsurprising given the associations Bucca has with the weather – foul or fair; the weather in Cornwall always has surprises to throw up when least expected! To practitioners, Bucca reveals the wisdom that arises from the resolving of opposites, thus Bucca is often lovingly depicted or represented in rites by the candle affixed between the horns, representing the light of wisdom that arises at the meeting of the horns, or pillars, of oppose at the point of true equipoise – all in one. As a deity of balance, to many dedicants, Bucca cannot be restricted by gender, and is described by many as a horned androgyne deity. To most modern Pagans, who like their deities to be clearly definable as either male or female, this my be a difficult and even uncomfortable idea to grasp, but nevertheless, this is how Bucca manifests today within the practice of many within the Pellar Current.
The old deities change and evolve, and Bucca is a particularly mysterious and difficult to define deity who’s spirit, like other old deities, may manifest in different ways, to different peoples at different times, this is part of Bucca’ magic.
The working trade skills of a fellow within the Kord, which may reside in one or more traditional areas of the Pellar’s practice (such as healing people and cattle through either hands on work or ‘sending forth the spirit’, working with magical substances, divining futures and past events or the whereabouts of things lost or stolen, conjuration, charm making, spell work and the like) are nurtured within the Pellar Family. Skills and gnosis may be developed and enhanced by continued observance, comprehension and consideration of traditional patterns of ritual, symbolism, conjured force and virtue, experiential phenomena and ritualised seasonal journeying.
As we move about the ‘wheel’ of holy nights (or ‘Furry Nights’ to the Cornish Witch) we tread the path of Penglaz; the Grey Mare who is the mysterious vessel and vehicle of the seasonal death and rebirth tides, presided over by Bucca Dhu – Winter, and Bucca Gwidder – Summer, and of seasonal magic. The Witch’s staff, associated in Traditional Cunning lore with the horse and ‘riding pole’, moves with the Furry Nights to be stationed at different points of the Compass’s edge, as Penglaz traces her path of the year. In treading the path of the Furry Nights, and following the journey of the Bucca, we identify ourselves with these potent seasonal processes of which we are a part. |
