kaos

more information has come to light concerning Yelg’s spirit guide, Black Eagle. This
entity was the ‘control’ behind several covens, two of which were directed by Yelg Paterson.
She claimed that Black Eagle was of Narragansett provenance. [p 17]
… after Yelg Paterson died Black Eagle ‘focussed’ through Spare [p 17]
… Paterson was the link between this cult, whose votaries she knew as the ‘Ancient
Winds’, and several writers and artists […] such as Blackwood, Rohmer, Lovecraft,
Roerich … [p 17]
The coven headed by Paterson seems to have been a fluid and nomadic group. It was
based in South Wales, and she is known to have evoked Black Eagle … [p 17]
Since the publication of Images & Oracles (1975) fresh light has been thrown upon Spare’s
occult affinities with the Old Ones. It is now considered probable that the name Yelga,
hitherto supposed to have been the first name of Zos’s ‘witch-mother’, Mrs Paterson, is
in fact Yelder, which is not a name but a designation. Spare suffered a mild form of
dyslexia which occasionally affected his speech and his writing. Examples are his
mispronunciation of the name of his friend, Hannen Swaffer, as Swather, and his
conviction that in illustrating (for the Bodley Head in 1911) The Starlit Mire, he had
illuminated aphorisms composed by the philosopher Bertrand Russell when, in fact, the
book had two authors, James Bertram and F Russell. [p 24]
Spare, like Crowley, sometimes dipped into erudite works on witchcraft produced by the
Rev Montague Summers. In that divine’s work, The Werewolf (1933), page 29, appears a
reference to ‘yelder-eyed witches’. The word ‘yelder’ may well be an elision of ‘Ye Elder’,
which Spare doubtless thought applicable to the aged Mrs Paterson. However, the word
suffered further erosion and came from his lips as Yelga. In consideration of Mrs Paterson’s
connection with the Old Ones and the Elder Gods, as focussed through Black Eagle,
the applicability of the term now seems to have been singularly appropriate. What is
certain is that through Mrs Paterson, Spare was first enabled to traffic with occult entities
that were survivals of ancient witchcraft, and, based on his experience of them, to evolve
a unique system of sorcery. [p 25]
This seems very thin to me.
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