The writer thanks Sister Ethelnyd of the Iona Fellowship of Grace for her assistance with the following.

Practitioners of all three surviving branches of magick appear in This Iron Race and this is only a quick guide to the various characteristics and practices of each as they apply to the narrative. All three branches have suffered a marked decline in the last one hundred and fifty years (especially the Red Branch which is all but extinct) and despite the resurgence of interest in the study and practice of magick in the last few decades many of the techniques and customs described in This Iron Race are no longer current.

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The White Branch or Northern Tradition

The White Branch or Northern Tradition is primarily represented by Eolhwynne. Its practitioners are called spaewives or rune-wives (archaic) and are exclusively female. It practiced runic divination and charm making, weather-reading, familiars, and herblore, and it forbade using magick for aggressive purposes or for self-interest. Geographically, it extends south and west from Scandinavia (excluding Finland), through the Holy Roman Empire and the Low Countries, and across Northern France to Eireland and Greater Britain. 

Schools are known as Fellowships of Grace (in France, Écoles des Etudes Esotériques) and the principal ones were Iona (Scotland), Peel (IOM), Lindisfarne (Anglia) Mont Dragon (Brittany), Hills of Tara (Eireland), Aalborg (Denmark), Teutoburger Wald and Heidelberg (Germany), Carcassonne (France), and Uppsala (Sweden). Only Iona and Mont Dragon remain active.

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The Red (or sometimes Black) Branch or Eastern Tradition

In the Red (or sometimes Black) Branch or Eastern Tradition practitioners were variously called starets, shamans or kolduny and were always male. Its practices included self-flagellation; onanism; coitus with male and female partners, either singly or in groups; alternate heating and cooling of the body (sauna); animal sacrifice; capnomancy (smoke-reading), and cartomancy. Unusually, the Red Branch discouraged the use of familiars but starets could co-opt animals as and when required.

Geographically the Red Branch extends north and east from the shores of the Black Sea through parts of the Ottoman Empire and into Austria and Hungary and thence across Bohemia, Finland, and western Russia. Unlike the White and Green Branches, novices were traditionally apprenticed to an older practitioner rather than being schooled alongside their peers; however, limited reforms by Peter the Great established Akadimías at St Petersburg and Kiev, in modern-day Ukraine, and at Riga in Estonia. Lazarus is the sole representative of the Red Branch featured in This Iron Race.

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The Green Branch or Southern Tradition

Graciana Zabala A’Guirre represents the Green Branch or Southern Tradition in which practitioners are called oracles or sibyls and are exclusively female. Their practices include astromancy, capnomancy and pyromancy, familiars, and the evil eye. Dedication to the master is at the centre of the Green Branch and ethical issues are secondary.

Geographically it extends north of the Mediterranean from the Iberian Peninsula to the Levant. Its schools are Villa Sophia, and the principal establishments were at Zaragoza, Montserrat and Gran Canaria (Spain), Gernika (Pays Vasco), Marseilles (France), Gozo (Malta), Lesbos (Greece), and Venice and Ravenna (Italy). Only Lesbos remains active.

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The Root Branch or Western Tradition (Extinct)

Said to have originated on the islands of Atlantis and Thule, the Root Branch or Western Tradition has been extinct for three millennia. The only historical references come from Plato and the Greek explorer Pytheas. According to Plato its practitioners were called prophets and might be male or female and practices included divination by observing the flight of birds, cartomancy, aeromancy or cloud-gazing, oneiromancy, astromancy, and the casting of seashells. However, Plato’s account is considered unreliable, and this may be an incomplete or erroneous list. Pytheas also refers to scatomancy and animal sacrifice but as his account, titled On the Ocean, only survives as a few references in other classical texts and he was more concerned with astronomy and agricultural practices than magick, it may be unreliable. As the name suggests, the Root Branch is considered the origin of the three surviving branches of magick and at various times each has claimed to be the most faithful to the form of magick practised on Atlantis and Thule.

In modern times the historical existence of both islands has been largely disproved, leading to speculation that the true origin of the branches of magick lies further west. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Christian missionaries among the Inuit and other First Nation Americans noted (even as they attempted to discourage its practice) that their ritual magick resembled that of Plato’s Atlanteans, leading to speculation that First Nation Americans were their descendants. For a few decades of the mid-nineteenth century this became a popular theory among Neoplatonic scholars and Gramareans and MacGregor elaborated on it in Devices and Executions, the final volume of This Iron Race, although it is unlikely he ever gave it much credibility. Recent ethnographic studies of First Nation Americans have shown their magick derives from the Laplander and far-northern inhabitants of Siberia whose practices are so different from any of the three surviving Traditions they must be regarded as a wholly distinct form of magick.

Plato’s text gives us the name of only one school on Atlantis, but scholars have disagreed on the translation from Ancient Greek with most referring to it as “House of the Blessed” while others regard “Electium” as closer to Plato’s meaning. At one time Tara in Eireland claimed it was founded by the brothers Autochthon and Azaes who had fled the destruction of Atlantis, however this is dismissed by all reliable scholars.