Sigil of Agilma, 32nd Name of Marduk

Australia certainly has this going for it: when its capital city is burning to the ground the smell is oddly pleasant. At least according to my brother who lived there at the time.

I didn’t smell it. But I know the smell he means. It’s the eucalyptus oil, you see.

Of course, it’s that same oil that makes them explode. Sounds like a car backfiring. I remember periodically hearing them as we drove back home through a fire after ending our Christmas holiday early. (Because of said fire.)

Workers at the wildlife sanctuary half way home said that in between the sound of the exploding trees they could hear the screams of the otherwise silent koala burning to death on the superheated ground.

The whole world mocks Canadians for their really obnoxious habit of not pretending it’s cold when it really is. But maybe Imma stop the mocking as I apparently have one of those habits, too.

• You ever received a little plastic timer from a government utility that you have to stick up in your shower so you know when two minutes are up?
• Do the kids in your local primary school know how to install a grey water tank? Do they know what grey water is?
• You ever seen London do this?

Because it seems to me you shouldn’t be able to call it a drought until the number of farmers committing suicide reaches one a week like it did in NSW at the height of the Big Dry.

Which means England can relax. Yes, there will be water restrictions. Yes food is going to get more expensive (although inflation is dropping). This is a country renowned across the world for two things:

• Having, without peer, the best news media on the planet but only consuming the most alarmist.
• Obsessing over the weather.

So I understand that this drought is about to become your new national hobby. And yes, it would be better if the reservoirs were full. Yes, it would be nice if we could turn the fountains on for the tourists. But let’s examine the situation a bit.

There are a lot of comparisons between this current UK drought and the last one in 1976. However, this is a very different game.

First, the upside:

• There is a lot less industry in the south-east (actually everywhere) than in 1976.
• Secondly, agricultural methods have improved tremendously.
• Scotland is full of water. Full. Worst case scenarios don’t need to rely on international imports.

Now the downside:

• There are a lot more people living in the south-east today. Like a lot.
• Britons have one of the largest ‘water footprints’ in the world. It looks alarmingly profligate to Australian eyes. A former flatmate was even savage enough to leave the tap running as she brushed her teeth. (She’s emigrated to Australia, funnily enough. The new husband will put a stop to that, let me tell you.)
• I’m not sure on the details but there is apparently some kind of sporting event being held in London this summer? That’s quite a few more showers to contend with.
• Thanks to the always-wrong strategy of privatisation, Britain’s water infrastructure -and more specifically south east England’s- is some of the shittest in Europe. Fully 25% of all water is lost in transit. How much water is used by ‘hosepipes’? Exactly.

Consider it national karma

Perhaps my glibness is because whenever I ‘tune into’ the drought it feels more like a lesson and less like an ordeal? Tuning into Australia’s drought was like walking past the gates of hell with them banging in the breeze. (Spoiler: it was to do with European impact on the land and indigenous cultures. And look how much less racist we are now! I would go so far as to say “slightly.”)

Let’s instead think of this drought then as an Elemental Initiation.

Quick. Name a high-profile Celtic rain god. (Not thunder, not water, rain.) We tend to form gods around desirous, unpredictable outcomes like military victory, agricultural yield or stable monarchies. I was not short of indigenous rain gods in Australia.

Their absence from these soggy north Atlantic islands speaks volumes.

Adding points for the Elemental Initiation theory is the fact that this challenge falls on domestic water use rather than industrial. Because the thing about industrial water usage is that

1. It’s fixed. It takes a specific amount of water to make sheet metal.
2. It’s optimised. Well-managed commercial operations minimise running cost.

This is a good thing. Take it from me, from personal experience. You can shower in two minutes. I have. With a bucket underneath for the garden. You can wash your dishes in the sink. Actually I already do this. You can water the garden at night from a watering can. This was seriously one of my chores. (I loved it.) You can handwash the vast majority of your clothes. They end up cleaner anyway. And you shouldn’t be shaving or brushing your teeth with the tap running anyway. Seriously.

Domestic water supply can be more effectively ‘squeezed’ than commercial water supply. And there’s nothing like pain to help us grow. Kinda why we’re here.

Go through a summer of water restrictions and watch water security investment and desalinisation -both essential in the twenty first century- top the political agenda. Come with me on this journey, England. The pain is the cure.

The target, the spell and the odds

All that being said it’s best to start pushing those probabilities from as far out as possible. As PJC tells us, taking advantage of the intervening chaos improves the likelihood of success. Simon beat me to some suggestions by a day. Check them out.

1. The target

Weather magic is some of the easiest to successfully perform owing to the inherent unpredictability in the system. And British weather is some of the most unpredictable in the world. Watch this four minute video that explains why and also gives us our target.

2. The spell

In the absence of a local god and in the spirit of complete inclusion, let’s go with a Being that literally everyone can play along at home with because it is entirely fictional.

Meet Agilma from the Necronomicon Spellbook: Bringer of Rain. Maketh the gentle rains to come, or causeth great Storms and Thunders, the like may destroy armies and cities and crops. His word is MASHSHAYEGURRA.

You’ll find an embiggened version of his sigil at the bottom of every Rune Soup post in your RSS reader. This is a modification of the traditional (ha!) summoning:

Feel free to deviate, we’re all deviants here. Sitting at your computer you can just embiggen the sigil, chant, request and dismiss.

My process has been:

• Summon as above.
• Raise power using the final chant until you can almost smell the lightning in the air coming off the sigil.
• Fire repeated sigils straight up into the sky where the two weather cells meet.

Repeat as necessary over the next few months.

3. The odds

Now let’s assess the probability range:

• The likelihood that this quarter will fall into the driest range is 20%-25%.
• The likelihood that this quarter will fall into the wettest range is 15%-20%.

Those are the official numbers from the Met Office of “barbecue summer” fame. I piss on these numbers. Five fucking percent difference? You think you can predict British weather three months out to within five fucking percent? This quarter was going to go either way without sorcerous interference.

But it’s still going to get it.

So point your wands to the sky and think of England.