Verbena

*Everything is intertwined. To understand your tears is to understand the sky.*

Life is shit and piss and blood. Pain and pleasure are inevitable birthrights. Our spirits are not some transcendent separate thing but are instead the raw vitality of Life itself. Drawing from among the oldest mystic understandings, the Verbena Tradition views life as a wondrous, implacable cycle – a dance of elements in which a mage calls tunes but cannot herself resist the dance. This view scares the living hell out of most folks, and that’s just how many Verbena like it. If you can’t hang with the truth, they figure, just get the fuck out of the way!

Like the herb for which they’re named, the Verbena (or, more correctly, Verbenae) excel at healing, divination, and purgation. No other Tradition understands Life magicks the way they do. Masters of shape-changing, animal affinities, plant craft, and weather work, Verbenae stay close to Nature in her truest forms… and some of those forms can be bloody indeed. Although it’s rare, the Verbenae have been known to practice animal and human sacrifice. More often, they carve runes in their own skins, endure hideous ordeals, subject themselves to painful deprivations, and perform other acts of self-sacrifice in order to avoid harming other beings. Every Verbena grove has a World Tree, the living symbol of Creation as a whole. These trees have been stained red by the rituals performed in those groves; the darker the red, the more powerful the grove.

Although the Tradition itself formed in the 1400s, Verbena roots run far deeper. Like many mystic societies, these mages trace their origins to primal humanity’s beginnings… and in their case, they’re probably correct. The primordial Wyck, they say, embodied the first fusions of spirit, mind, and flesh. Essentially gods, they soon guided the first human beings toward wisdom and magick. The Old Ways, say these traditionalists, are the inheritance left by those entities, and the Verbenae – and perhaps the Dreamspeakers – are its truest heirs.

These Old Ways are, by most standards, harsh. Blood, sex, passion in its rawest forms – these are the tools most Verbenae prefer. Cold iron, worked wood, fires kindled with your bare hands, natural clothing, organic foods… the simpler it is, the more powerful its effects. Although some Verbenae make concessions to the modern world – cars, guns, perhaps a favorite TV show or two – this Tradition, by and large, remains stubbornly archaic. And though they can be compassionate in their way, Verbenae have no time or patience for weakness. To them, the comforts of a technological world breed sickness and laziness. “Until you spend a month,” they’ll tell you, “in the wild with nothing but the clothes on your back… or better yet, without them… you don’t know jack shit about reality.”

## Organization

Covens – often numbering 13, nine, seven, or three – make up this group’s foundation. Solitary Verbenae exist, but most members of this Tradition prefer to work in groups. Women probably outnumber men overall, and they’re granted more respect here than in most other groups. Many female mages gravitate toward this Tradition for that reason. Two leaders (taking priest and priestess roles although both might be male, female, or transgender) govern the larger covens, with a single witch in charge of three-person groups. Covens tend to favor older members over younger ones, and old-school covens can be quite autocratic. Although disputes often get resolved through votes, those votes might involve ordeals, tests, or combat.

This Tradition respects strong bloodlines. And so, whenever possible, Verbena covens follow family lineage. Each coven has a grove, though that grove might be a garden in the leader’s back yard. Large meetings occur eight times a year, during the two equinoxes, the two solstices, and on Imbolc (Feb. 2), Beltane (May 1), Lammas (Aug. 1), and Samhain (Oct. 31). Plenty of Verbenae also gather at Christmas (Dec. 25) and on July 1, especially as shifts of climate and culture blur the distinction between Nature’s seasonal cycles.

## Factions and Sects

### **Gardeners of the Tree** (Pattern Avatars)

The traditionalist core of the Verbena, the Gardeners believe that power and prestige is passed down through family lines, and that cultural paths of magic should not be mixed.

*Specialty Sphere:* Matter.

### **Lifeweavers** (Dynamic Avatars)

Hermits and wanderers largely independent of the other factions and one another. They focus on living in the moment and reinventing themselves in order to better understand life and the world.

*Specialty Sphere:* Mind

### **Moon-Seekers** (Questing Avatars)

Open-minded pagans willing to try new things and welcome different groups as a means to continue the growth the Tradition as a whole.

*Specialty Sphere:* Mind

### **Twisters of Fate** (Primordial Avatars)

Isolated individuals who feel the Verbena have been choked by the orthodoxy represented by the Gardeners, they focus on living simply and making a difference in the world.

*Specialty Sphere:* Entropy

## Initiation

Verbena newcomers undergo a ritual death and rebirth. An intense period of study, testing, and meditation climaxes in a distressing ordeal – sometimes illusionary, often real. If and when the coven members are satisfied with the initiate’s trustworthiness and dedication, they call the elements as witnesses. As they were during the Burning Times, most Verbenae remain loyal unto death.

## Focus

Verbena Arts concentrate on doing a lot with very little. Their tools are practical as well as symbolic, with uses that reach back to antiquity. “Pagan” in every sense of that word, these magicks hold deep ties to Nature. Shape-changing, transformation, healing and injury, divination, purification, growth and withering, natural cycles, and the tricky ways of Fate are witch-folk specialties.

To all Verbenae, Creation’s Divine and Alive. Because Creation, life, and divinity aren’t particularly nice, other common Verbena paradigms include A World of Gods and Monsters, Might is Right, Bring Back the Golden Age, and Everything is Chaos. Witchcraft is the group’s core practice, with certain individuals favoring Voudoun, dominion, weird science, chaos magick, yoga, martial arts, High Ritual, cybernetics, the Art of Desire, craftwork, medicine-work, and even organic hypertech.

## Glossary

* Aeduna: The ancestors of the Verbena, a loose alliance of pagans, wise ones, herbalists and such who were influential in Europe (particularly around the Mediterranean) in the ancient world.
* Airts: The four directions (north, south, east and west). An old form not in common use among modern Verbena.
* Burning Times: Verbena reference to the period of time following the rise of the Order of Reason, when pagan traditions were persecuted and followers of the Old Ways were hunted, tortured or killed. The witch-hunts of the mortal Inquisition were often cover for the true purpose of the Burning Times: the elimination of pagan mages.
* Craft, the: The Verbena Tradition, although some Verbena use "the Craft" to refer to specifically to the practice of magic, while others use it to refer to the Tradition as a whole (including its spiritual and cultural practices).
* deosil: (JESS-il) "Sun-wise" or in the direction of the sun. In Verbena ritual, deosil means moving in a clockwise direction.

fam-trad: Short for "family tradition",a Verbena who was initiated by a family member and whe comes from a family line of Verbena.

* Gardeners of the Tree A faction of the Verbena devoted to maintaining the traditional ways, and beliefs of their ancestors.
* Great Rite: The unton of opposites, embodying the divine masculine and feminine, performed in Verbena ritual The Great Rite can involve sex magic, but it is often performed symbolically.
* Great Wheel: A pagan symbol of life's cycles, which progress perpetually around and around in ever-changing cycles.
* Lifeweavers: A faction of the Verbena that explores the limits of magic to transform both them- selves and others, often disregarding the rituals and rites of the Tradition.
* Moon-Seekers: A forward-looking faction of the Verbena that seeks to incorporate diverse styles and cultures into the Tradition and learn from them.
* Old Faith: The worship of the old gods in general, also referred to as the Old Ways. The Old Faith was the name of a loose alliance of pagan magicians, witches, druids and other mages that predated the Verbena.
* Old Gods: The many deities that predate Christianity, which are often worshipped by the Verbena.
* Old Ways: A general erbena term for the teachings, beliefs and way of life of their Tradition, stretching back to the most ancient times.
* pagan: From the Latin paganus or "country-dweller." Verbena generally use "pagan" to mean any follower of the Old Faith, in one form or another.
* Paths of the Wyck: Pathways through the Umbra, supposedly created by the Wyck long ago, their secrets entrusted to the Aeduna and, later, to their descendants, the Verbena.
* Rede: Also known as the Verbena Rede or the Great Rede; "An it harm none, do what thou wilt." It is a guiding principle of Verbena belief.
* Twisters of Fate: A Verbena faction in touch with ancient and primordial magic that works to reclaim and maintain the root paradigms of the Tradition.
* Valdaermen: An alliance of mostly Scandinavian mages in the Dark Ages. Many Valdaermen joined the Verbena at the Tradition's founding.
* Verbenae: The plural form of Verbena and the original, formal, name of the Tradition. It quickly fell out of use among all but the most scholarly ourside of the Tradition itself, and most now use "Verbena" as both a singular and a plural term.
* widdershins: Moving in a counter-clockwise or "anti-sun wise" direction. Generally avoided in Verbena ritual except for rites of banishing or destruction.
* widderslainte: Old term referring to a mage gone over to the Nephandi. Fallen out of use in favor of the more common barrabi.
* World Tree: A Verbena metaphor for the structure of the Tellurian and of their Tradition. The World Tree's roots reach deep into the Underworld, while its branches spread out among all the worlds of the Deep Umbra. Its trunk runs through the center of reality and is the axis around which it turns.
* Wyck: The Primordial Ones, the first mages. The Wyck are the ultimate ancestors of the Verbena (and all mages). They are often associated with the great gods and heroes of pagan myth.