From the book’s introduction:
This collection of spell-poems, incantations, catechisms, eulogies, hymns and evocations is concerned with the dark half of the year; that is, the six months from the autumn equinox to the vernal equinox. Ordered according to the ritual calendar, to read them in sequence is to ride the seasonal dark tide as it washes over this world, reaching its apogee on the longest night – winter solstice – before ebbing thereafter.
Many of these works are inevitably concerned with myth, dealing as they do with the sun’s cosmic struggle at this time of the year. These days, the term ‘myth’ is pejorative, synonymous with falsehood (‘the myth of capitalism’.) But myths are not lies or confections; rather, they are sacred narratives describing a primal epoch when humans were surrounded by an unseen supernatural realm. Myth was the product of mystical engagement with directly apprehended powers, of the unmediated revelations of gods and goddesses.
We still exist in a continuum of mythic activity, where some have occurred, some are in progress and some are yet to pass. Conscious magickal engagement with the mythic cycles of creation and destruction, enshrined in the wheel of the year, gives us, like our ancestors, license to direct their unfolding. And in so doing, we can briefly walk with gods once more.
