Luxa Strata, on the off chance that you don’t recognize the name, is a chaote, artist, magician, and community leader. She is the host of the Lux Occult podcast and runs the Green Musheen Discord server and is knee-deep in a stunning number or related and unrelated magical projecets. You can check her various works out for yourself via her Linktree.
I’m so excited to finally be releasing these images from the third of July’s four photoshoots, the first of the two that I did with Luxa. As you may recall from my last two two, the Lavender Laura images, this adventure started with a post in Luxa’s Green Musheen Discord server, in which I asked for magical collaborators for a few occult-themed photoshoots. Of the themes I suggested, Laura was interested in showing off her “Wizard Rizz” and in conjuring spirits for me to try to capture in some old-school spirit photography. Luxa was also interested in spirit photography, and in embodying Aphrodite in this, my second devotional image shoot for that goddess.
Luxa visited me here in Kansas City in the last week of July, flying in Thursday afternoon and leaving Tuesday morning. The whole week was an adventure in and of itself, including a meet and greet with my Lunar Shenanigans Crew, a trip out to Gaea Retreat Center, a great deal of good food, and a whole lot of absolutely fantastic conversation and comradery.
We shot these images on Friday night, using two sets and four-ish costume changes. As usual, I shot with my trusty Nikon d3200; that night I used my Nikor 18-140 zoom lens. We shot in my home studio which was … just a little warmer than was comfortable, that day, at least for me. The lighting was more of a challenge than it should have been because I had misplaced the stands for my studio lights. I ran out of stamina before Luxa and I ran out of ideas, so I’m a little sad about all the images we could have made, but we also shot enough images – 218 – that editing them down to the final 54 was a more than adequate challenge.
Luxa called the goddess Aphrodite into herself. We opened with Armed Aphrodite, with a red cloak and a gladius for a bit of a Roman vibe, and just got slowly more sensual and less dressed over the course of the shoot.
Overall, I’m very pleased with how the shoot went. Luxa was a delight to work with, and the images came out fantastically. Culling the set was a real challenge. I’m still learning to use my new software (you may remember that I ditched Adobe back in April and started using DXO PhotoLab7 in July), so there’s the frustrating knowledge that these could be better if I were only a little more familiar with my tools, but … that’s the artist’s life in the age of subscription software, I guess.
Luxa, herself, had this to say about the shoot:
“When these pictures were taken, I was going through a transitional period having to do with leaving several toxic relationships. I had joined a magic group which turned out to be incredibly abusive and misogynistic. Although I had escaped that situation, I was still dealing with the heatbreak and other fallout. The experience of posing for these pictures helped me reconnect with something I had been suppressing; a “golden shadow” I’d been hiding away for safety’s sake. It was an important thing to rediscover, and I feel deep gratitude for having had the opportunity to do so. My overall takeaway from the shoot is that the Goddess is real, She is powerful, and She is here; in this world.”
I hope you all enjoy these images as much as we do.
Behold, friends! The first four designs from my 2024 Samhain line! A saint-style devotional pendant featuring Hekate Trimorphis; Three-Winged Gorgoneion; a Memento Mori skull pendant, and the seal of Belial.
Hekate Trimorphis
Hekate Trimorphis is my fourth Hekate devotional image. This one, based on images found on Roman magical gemstones, is in my oval “saint’s pendant style”. It depicts Hekate with three overlapping bodies: three faces, six arms, six legs, all bound within a single peplos, and holding a whip and torches and daggers. I’ve been planning some version of this image for a while, and I am very proud to be presenting it at last.
I have cast up these exemplars in sterling silver and shibuichi. I will also be making it available in bronze. Probably not brass, though, since I just don’t think it will look good in yellow.
The Three Winged Gorgoneion is based on ancient shield designs. I’m super excited to finally be releasing a second Gorgon image. This one in particular has actually been sitting on my bench waiting to be molded and released for most of the year. I’ve cast up these exemplars in sterling silver (bottom), as a pin, and shibuichi (top), as a pendant, and will also be making it available in brass and bronze, and with rosary fixtures and as a bolo tie.
Momento Mori: remember that you will die (in Latin). This metal skull pendant is the first of several designs that I’m calling Momento Mori. Again, I’ve cast my exemplars in sterling silver and shibuichi, and I will also be making the pendant available in brass or bronze. The hole through the skull is suitable for a 2-3mm chain, but could be made larger upon request.
This will be available as a pendant or as a solid altar-piece.
Finally, least for this first round, is the Seal of Belial from the Lesser Key of Solomon.
“The 68th spirit is called Belial, he is a mighty king and powerfull; he was Created next after Lucifer, & is of his order; he appeareth in ye forme of a Beautiful angel sitting in a Charriot of fire, speaking wth a comly voice, declaring that he fell first & amongst ye worthier & wiser sort which went before Michael & other heavenly angels; his office is to distribute preferments of senatorships, and to cause favour of friends & foes, he giveth Excellent familiars & governeth 80 Legions of spirits.” (from the Peterson translation on Esoteric Archives)
At last, friends, I have delivered unto you another Picatrix Image. Behold the Image of Saturn, according to Picatrix: “a man with a crow-like face and the feet of a camel, sitting upon a throne, with a spear in his right hand and a lance or dart in his left.” Picatrix Book II, Paragraph 11 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019) This is, of course, the same image I chose for my first Saturn talisman design (which I’ve included for comparison).
I penciled the image in my sketchbook, scanned it, and then inked it using Clip Studio Paint, all in essentially one sitting this afternoon. I am particularly proud of the crow-like face, which I think turned out really well.
You are, of course, welcome to use these images in your own planetary magic, but not for commercial purposes.
For those who don’t know, spirit photography is an art almost as old as the camera. It purports (with varying degrees of skill and sincerity) to attempt to capture images of spirits on film. Obviously, inevitably, many famous exemplars have been cruel or even criminal hoaxes, and others merely artistic fakes. As a photographer and a magician, I have always wanted to try my hand at it, but while I’m a fine hand at being my own scryer, I’ve never figured out how to be both the conjurer and the photographer. So, finally, I asked for help.
I put out a bat signal on the Green Musheen discord server, run by Luxa Strata of the Lux Occult podcast. Lavender Laura was one of two occultists who volunteered, and it turned out that she lives close enough to me to make a nice roadtrip out of the photoshoot, so I fucked off to southwestern Missouri and spent a lovely weekend with her and her husband. We also did a glamour shoot, the first in what I hope will be a series called Wizard Rizz, but that’s not quite magical enough for this blog.
When it came time to shoot, the division of labor was absolute. The ritual was written and performed by Laura for her own ends. Invoking the Persian Royal Stars for the quarters and the goddess Hekate as intercessor, she called upon the star Alkes for its blessing and aid.
For now, she has this to say about the ritual:
“The humble magician begs to be noticed by the sublime Queen of the Chalice that sits upon the back of Hydra. By the flower scented amphora, a servant of Alkes appears. The blood and perfumed Waters pour down from the empyrean cup and give succour.”
and
“I had been craving an opportunity to grow closer to a celestial spirit and was ecstatic. I felt very dedicated and driven for the ritual and it has only come to mean more to me in the passing days. Looking back at the images I can see that emotion coming forth, and didn’t realize how much I have begun to look like my grandmother.”
The day was hot as shit, and the sun was bright as hell. We waited until the last possible minute to start the ritual, hoping for both some lovely Golden Hour light and a bit of break in the heat. The quickly-fading light made the shoot a bit of a technical challenge; the heat added a degree of physical difficulty, as well.
It was an interesting technical challenge to photograph the ritual without interfering. It was also a little surreal being on the outside of magic that I wasn’t participating in – I am very, very rarely a spectator to others’ work; I’m always either leading or participating. It was fun feeling the power rise, and seeing the spirits respond. But even though I could tell that the ritual was going well, from that perspective, I had no idea if I was managing to capture anything but cool ritual pics.
In the end, I got about a half-dozen images with discernible artifacts, all fairly classic “orbs”. Three appear in the above set; one was in a photo too terrible by every other measure to include; the rest are in a second set, to follow – not quite good enough for this set, or not quite the right vibe, but still too good not to keep and share. It is, of course, possible that these are simple lens flares. But they don’t look like other lens flares I’ve taken, and don’t seem to be in the right place relative to the light sources. I have, of course, edited the photos to make the flares a little more dramatic – they’re still photos – but nothing beyond basic photo development.
If I’m being 100% honest, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get more dramatic apparitions. At the same time, though, I’m over the moon that my first spirit photography experiment was as successful as it was.
As I mentioned above, there are more waves of photos coming from from this session: a second set of the ritual that just didn’t quite fit in the tight drama of the above; and some of just the garden, and of the altar – occult themed still lifes of the kind you all know I love.
I said it before and I’ll say it again, it was an honor and a delight to work with Lavender Laura on this. I am unspeakably grateful for her collaboration and her hospitality. And I very much look forward to collaborating with her, again, in the future.
The first phase of this work – the first chapter of the book; the first lesson of the course – was to gather art supplies, buy or make incense and holy oil, and to make contact with the spirit of Solomon the Magician King. The second phase – the second chapter of the book; the second lesson of the course – was to consecrate and awaken the book that will serve as an ally in the work, and then to inscribe in that book the Great Seal of Solomon that will empower the book and the pentacles that I will begin inscribing in phase three.
This second phase was not as photogenic as the first. Well, I suppose it could have been, if I’d begged, bribed, or bullied Kraken into photographing me in ritual – and now that I say that aloud, so to speak, I may do just that some time later – but so far I’ve followed Mastros’ implied taboo of not showing the book, itself, on camera. She’s shown other pentacles she’s made, and I think maybe once shown the cover of one of her books in the class, but not the open pages.
Making and awaking the book played to my strengths in ways that making and consecrating the materia (while not difficult) did not, and making contact with Solomon did not. I’ve made magic books before, and done well at it. I’ve created/recruited familiar spirits before, to the point where you could fairly describe it as one of my specialties. But I tried to approach the work with an open heart and a beginner’s mind. Overall, I’m really pleased with how everything has come together, so far.
Preparing and Planning
After weeks of gathering materials, and then the physically and magically intense work of making the magical materia that I would use when I truly began the work, I was able to take the weeks of the waning moon off to rest and plan. That, I think, will be the shape of things as I continue this work over the coming year; it has certainly been my experience for the past month, as well.
Waiting for the moon to wane back to New, when I could resume the magical work, I also had time to plan my approach for the next phase, and make a couple decisions that I hadn’t quite made: choosing watchwords for the work, a sort of Solomonic motto to guide my steps and serve as a touchstone, and choosing a name for the book. Each of those decisions were their own unique challenge.
The watchwords were a challenge because I already have … multiple magical names and magical mottos, and am leery of accumulating too many more. After considering a handful – the Delphic maxim “Gnothi Seauton” among them (along with a rabbit-hole search into whether or not that epsilon belongs there [it appears to vary with dialect]) – and then being reminded that Mastros specifically suggests words attributed to Solomon, I chose a phrase from the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon: “Honor Wisdom that She may reign forevermore.”
I similarly struggled to choose a name for the book. Divination noped out my first choice, which was more a bad Latin title than a name. In the end, I named my book after a saint and a goddess, which I will not print here for (I hope) obvious reasons.
Finally, although I had made successful contact with Solomon on several occasions, I wanted to sit down and have a … relatively formal conversation with him before I called on him to help me consecrate the book. I don’t really do meals with the dead, it’s not my thing, but I did sit down, call him up, pour us each a couple fine whiskeys and smoke a bowl with him in order to hammer out some details about the work going forward.
It was a good conversation. I got confirmation on the go-ahead to invoke him as a part of the work, to don his crown and mantle. I also got some fun and interesting bits; more personal rules and taboos, like his admonition not to contact him on Saturdays except as part of Saturnian work with the book.
I was told to make, essentially, a saint’s candle with his image on it. And that I would need to make one for Sheba, as well, so I might as well get on that. And that there would be a third such candle by the end of the work, but I couldn’t guess who it was. He also, when I asked permission to make a ring, I was told that would be for later, “as a sign of mastery”. So I guess I’ll do some divination when I’ve entered all the seals into my book.
He also, as I did some yes/no coin divination at the end of the session to confirm that I had heard and understood everything correctly, made abundantly clear that he was going to play word games with me for his own amusement, and that I should phrase my questions more carefully in the future. I’m not particularly looking forward to that, but … Solomonic work is fundamentally Mercurial in many ways.
I started the ritual with at the beginning of Third Hour of Night (Hour of Mercury on the Day of Mercury). Without checking the clock until I was done, I finished my ritual with just four minutes left in the hour.
Consecrating the Book and Tools
Over the course of the week following that session with Solomon, I prepared the book by sitting and meditating with it in the afternoon, trying to fill both it and myself with the power I was going to need to raise for the consecration. I drew out practice pages to map out my lettering.
I penciled in the pages Tuesday and Wednesday the 9th and 10th. Interestingly, during that last afternoon day & hour of Mercury I, felt rather like I could have inked the first pages and named the book aloud right then and called it good. Despite that feeling, I went ahead with plan as written.
There was a storm rolling in as I wound up to do the ritual, so I set out a bowl to collect rainwater to use in the consecration of the cord. The storm didn’t quite hit in time to fill my bowl, but I got enough rainwater to be magically active, which was all I really needed. As the bowl was filling, and as I waited for the appointed hour, I bathed and purified myself and dressed in whites.
I started my ritual, casting my circle and awakening my temple with the Bell, Book, and Blade framing ritual that I talked about so much last year, just a few minutes before the Hour of Mercury, maximizing my time in the Hour for the work of consecration.
I consecrated my book, pen, scarf, and rope in that order. I was originally going to name the book at the same time I consecrated it, but I decided at the last possible moment to shuffle the naming to the end, because that’s what felt right at the time.
Called upon Solomon, Sheba, Baphomet, and all my gods for blessings both before and during the work. I inked the frontispiece and title page, then named the book before those assembled powers.
The book absolutely came to life in my hands, and I took my time bonding with the book, talking to it about my plans for the work and how excited I was to get started.
And then, feeling it was time, I wrapped and bound the book in its consecrated cloth and cord, thanked the various powers I had invoked, and brought the ritual to a close. Though it felt longer before I checked my clock, and everything felt right and proper in the moment, it turned out that the ritual, itself, had only taken about 30 minutes.
Though it all felt good and effective in the moment, I didn’t get the magical fireworks I was hoping for. I felt very little of the rush of power that I’m accustomed to feeling during such rituals, and I had no significant dreams that night or since.
Encountering the Great Seal
The week between consecrating the book and the great seal kind of got away from me. I did spend time practicing drawing the seal, making sure I had the geometry down before I even attempted to pencil it in to the pages of the book, but between my road trip to southern Missouri for a photoshoot, and the various obligations of life and work, I did not spend the time with my book that I should have. Nor
Monday and Tuesday got away from me, so I ended up finalizing my ritual outline just before dinner Wednesday night
Spent the nine o’clock hour cleaning my house and the ritual room … partly because Thursday is trash day in my neighborhood, and partly because that just felt like the right vibe for the last hour before winding up for ritual.
As the week before, jumped into the shower at 10 o’clock and donned whites and familiar rosary and started pre-ritual 10 minutes ahead of the Mercury hour.
I began with my full Bell Book and Blade frame ritual. I invoked Baphomet and lit his candle. I invoked Solomon and Sheba and lit their candles.
Inked seal and names. My Hebrew calligraphy is super shaky, but it did at least turn out pretty. The geometric details of the seal turned out just a little shaky, too, but it all came together well enough, in the end.
The energy work was a little easier than I was afraid it would be, even though the voltage wasn’t quite what I used to be able to pull. Chanting the holy names, they didn’t do any of what I thought they would based on Mastros’ descriptions, more like my experiences with relatively tame barbarous words/names from the PGM. I did not get any weird hallucinations with the geometry (I got more out of some of my practice pieces, actually).
The seal definitely came alive. I asked if it has a name – it does, but it won’t tell me what it is, just yet. Nevertheless, I slathered it in holy oil and whispered sweet nothings to it, as instructed. I poured energy into the seal, into the book, as much as I could, from myself and the candles.
I wound down the ritual when I started losing focus: closing the seal; closing the book; thanking the various assembled powers with a final round of offerings. Without having looked at the clock, I finished the wrap-up 4 minutes into the next planetary hour.
I did not feel as wrecked after the ritual as I was afraid I would; I attribute that to the help I got from my spirit court.
Bonding With My Book
I didn’t do as good a job as I would have liked bonding with my book in the week between naming consecrating, awakening, and naming my book and consecrating the Great Seal, so I made an extra special point of spending time with her in the weeks after the Great Seal. In the last month, I’ve managed to (re)cultivate a halfway regular meditation practice, and I have called on the book to join me in my meditations. She’s shown up a handful of times, now, which has been super cool.
In the book-spirit’s most dramatic appearance, the Great Seal was visible above and behind her, a little like the disk-shaped auras of medieval saints’ icons. It felt both like a separate entity and a part of her, which … makes complete sense.
Preparing for the Next Stage
In both rituals, I was surprised by a lack of “fireworks” strong sensations of energy and movement, apparitions, or various knock-on effects. I’ve done enough magic over the years to know that effective magic can be anticlimactic, but this was … more than that. Honestly, I think that one of the lingering effects of my current stage of burnout and this winter’s awful depression is an intensely decreased capacity to sense magical energy. The meditation practice I mentioned above is helping, a little, but … well, I think I’ve got a long road to walk as far as that goes.
The homework for the class, after all the reading and magic, ends with tracking the moon to prepare for the weeks of Lunar magic to come. That’s easy. I’m already doing that. My crew’s Full and New Moon rituals aren’t Lunar-themed (this last week’s was a group invocation of the Serpent-Faced God, PGM XII 153-60), but we’ve been having them with clockwork regularity for … eight years, now? Nine? I know when the moon is waxing or waning, if not necessarily what sign it’s in.
As you may have heard me brag/complain, already, t’s been a busy month. (I hear it’s been a wild month for a lot of people.) So as I finish this write-up on the day of the New Moon, I’m also trying to fortify myself to start the work of Lesson Three: The Moon, tomorrow. I need to make some logistical decisions: how I’m going to map the first pentacle onto the page; when, having taught the pentacle to the book, I’m going to make time to use it. And also, what I’m going to use it for? No pentacle has only one use, and I already have too many unused magical objects. I’m also considering taking myself through another round of the Seven Spheres work (though I may decide to wait for the Full moon and do the waning cycle
I’m excited to be moving into the meat of the class. The foundational work was both fun and fascinating. I’m looking forward to my first encounter with a pentacle and its names and energies. I’m looking forward to being able, when that first book-pentacle has had a chance to ferment, to making a usable pentacle and seeing how the Lunar Lock and Key (Lunar Pentacle No. 1, which Mastros suggests as the first entry) works.
I’ll be back in three to five weeks to tell you how it went! In the meantime, thank you, as always, for your support, and I hope your own magical experiments are going as well as mine.
Early in my magical career, when I was but a wee faun, I wasn’t really interested in what we might call results-oriented magic. I was there to see spirits, feel energy, and get high on cosmic power. So I never learned candle magic way back in the day.
I picked up a few things here and there, of course. Bits and pieces from books, stories from my peers. Enough to synthesize with sigil magic and evocation (and with good results) when I started fucking around with those things in the 2010s. but it’s only been in the last couple years that I started trying to make an actual study of it.
And, in the course of that study, I’ve found a stunning dearth of clear and concise instructions for doing candle magic spells. So, of course, I’ve been working on fixing that.
Here is what I have so far, synthesized from a handful of books and dozens of TikTok videos and anecdotes from several friends and a fair bit of experimentation. It’s not complete. Even when it’s complete it won’t be absolute (there are too many conflicting schools of thought). And, of course, it’s written in teaching voice because I am literally teaching myself.
But, with those caveats aside, this seems to be doing it for me. I would love input from anyone with more experience than I have. If you give this method a try, please share your results!
(Patreon supporters who are re-reading this may note some very small editorial changes above and below.)
Candle Magic Spell Template
In advance, prepare a clear statement of intent: name your desire in plain language.
Clean and set up your space.
Clean and prepare yourself.
Cast your circle and enter a magical frame of mind.
Bless, consecrate, and empower any and all material you’ll be using. Pray aloud to whatever god(s) you honor to awaken and enliven the materials for your purpose, including pre-consecrated oils you may be using.
Bless and consecrate your candle, saying aloud what you desire.
If you are dressing your candle, repeat your statement of intent as you do so. Rub the candle tip to base and toward yourself for drawing things to yourself, and to rub the candle base to tip away from yourself for banishing and protection. Rub the candle from the ends to the middle if your intention doesn’t clearly go one way or the other. Dress container candles (tea lights, novenas, &c.) clockwise or counterclockwise along the top.
If you like, you can also write down your desire/statement of intent. Write it once, or write it repeatedly, filling the sheet of paper with an inward spiral of text, then folding it in half toward yourself at least twice, so that it fits neatly under your candle. Or you can sigilize it, and set your candle on top of the sigil. If you are using a container candle, you can write your desire or sigil on the outside (a sharpie or paint pen is going to be your best bet.)
Now, before you light your candle, having clearly and repeatedly articulated your desire, hold the candle in your hand. Picture your desired outcome as already accomplished. Hold the image in your mind as firmly as you can, imagining what success looks and feels and smells and tastes like. As you do so, focus on pouring your energy into both the image and the candle.
Light your candle before your attention starts to slip.
Once you have lit the candle, continue to focus on the image of success. Feel the fire from the candle fueling that image. Know that, when the candle burns down, your success will be set. Focus on that image, on that feeling, on your candle, for as long as you can.
When you can no longer hold your attention in place – ideally, when the candle has burned all the way down – stop pouring attention and energy into the spell. Walk away and think of something else. If you can, leave the completed spell on the altar until the sun has set (or risen), or at least until you feel sufficiently separated from it.
At the beginning of May, I acquired Sara Mastros’ book Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magician King. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for the “companion” course (scare quotes because the book grew out of the course, not the other way around, and contains a great deal of information that couldn’t be fit into the book) and began accumulating the materials for the work.
The book and the course are not, in fact, the same: the Venn diagram of the information and techniques they contain is near circular, but not quite. Broadly speaking, the class just has more: more background, more details, more exemplars, plus (obviously) direct student-teacher interaction and all the benefits of working with a group. But, because there is only one of me and I am not quite crazy enough to double up all the work (some of which literally can’t be done twice and the rest of which would result in two books of pentacles, which … might be of use as a long-term thing, but which would be absurd to do I am working them simultaneously), I will treat them as if they were, in fact, one and the same.
For reference, the format of the class goes like this: Mastros hosts monthly online meetings where she goes over each of the lessons. The first lesson is history and context and making contact with the spirit of Solomon. The second builds on the first and culminates in the construction of your own personal book of pentacles, from which you will make and empower the pentacles you that will actually use. Seven lessons follow, each focusing on the pentacles attributed a particular planet, starting with the Moon and going up the line to Saturn. Then the class culminates in two lessons synthesizing and building on what you’ve learned in the first nine. Then the cycle repeats. When you join the class, you’re given access to the recorded meetings and their slideshows/notes; the expectation is that you’ll work the back catalog at your own pace, attending classes and discussion groups as they come. Students are also strongly encouraged to find a study / accountability buddy in the class to help keep each other on track with the year-long course, and to keep each other honest and on the rails. The book is structured similarly, but not identically.
I joined in May of 2024, just in time to miss Lesson Nine – Saturn. The next cycle will start in September or (more likely) October, depending on how some things shake for Mastros here in meatspace.
Unlike my Hekataeon series, I don’t intend to break this series into dual posts, with one focusing on the material requirements and one on my experiences. This is because Mastros’ class and book are both better organized and more clearly written than the Hekataeon, and do not require that degree of third-party roadmapping. (Sorry Jack.)
Gathering Materials
I have had to take my time gathering all the materials. Between poverty, having my car out of commission for almost three weeks, and trying to source things locally and used as much as possible, it’s been almost six weeks to gather everything I need to wind up this work. I was actually a bit stressed about that for the first couple of weeks, afraid that I’d embarrass myself in front of the class because I wasn’t ready to jump into everything head first.
Finding a book was more challenge than it should have been: I had a particular style of sketchbook that I wanted but wasn’t able to find in my local art stores at a price that I was willing and able to pay. I was able to find something close enough, though, and that I think I’ll be pleased with. It’s not as large as Mastros’ exemplar – only 8.5×11, not 11×14 – but I think that will be large enough for everything that I’m likely to actually do with this book. I was able to find a tasseled white scarf at a local thrift store, and I had some leftover blue cord from another project that turned out to be the exactly correct size to bind the book.
As a professional artist, I have a variety of compasses, protractors, and straightedges to choose from. I was going to use this project as an excuse to buy a better compass, but have not yet found one to my taste in my budget. I have, for the moment, set a protractor and straight edge aside to live with the book. My quest for a swank compass will continue.
Finding an icon was both more and less complicated. As a small business owner (and, honestly, as someone who just hasn’t kept up with the times), I actually own a decent color printer. So, rather than purchasing an icon from an Etsy dealer or Orthodox supply store, I found an image, printed it, myself, and cannibalized one of the many thriftstore picture frames I picked up while thinking I was going to sell prints of my photography. I now keep the framed icon with my veiled and bound Book.
I chose this particular image of Solomon because I thought he looked handsome and majestic in it, the magician king at the height of his power. I also deliberately chose an image in the public domain: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.76152.html
Then I turned to sourcing materia for the oil and incense. Most of the ingredients are things I either had on hand or needed to restock, anyway, though some of it was a little pricey: the ceylon cinnamon and the cannabis, specifically. I was prepared to start with just frankincense instead of the full Solomonic incense, but things ended up coming together for me to blend and consecrate both oil and incense at the Full Moon / Summer Solstice combination.
The recipes for the oil and incense (which are available in the free-first-lesson-powerpoint [insert link here]) are given in parts rather than specific units. I can see the advantages of that, but also it’s given me a bit of an autistic fit. Ultimately, I chose to measure out the oil and associated materia by weight, and the incense by volume.
Regarding the oil, that may have been the wrong decision. Either I mis-measured something, or botched my math somewhere, because I my initial results came out as absolute used-coffee-grounds sludge. Getting a consistency that I liked ended up tripling the oil, and creating a supply that will probably last me a lifetime even if I’m extra generous with my friends.
The incense, however, turned out fantastic. It was my first time making incense lumps rather than just powder, but other than hating how the sticky honey felt on my hands (autism things), it came together almost exactly as planned. That “almost” is the fact that I chose the size of my “parts” poorly, and ended up with another lifetime supply when that wasn’t really called for.
For those planning to take the course themselves, my advise is this: when choosing your base measurement, think about what’s going to look like fully assembled.
Hacking the Current
I began, as I said, by reading the book. Once I had access to the archived class videos, I immediately binged them, as well. Inevitably, especially on my first pass, not every lesson got my undivided attention. But, each lesson begins with a prayer and a chant invoking Solomon as patron of the work. So, once I’d acquired the sketchbook, veil, and cord, and once I’d chosen and framed my Solomon icon, I made it my habit to sit down with my book and icon, light incense and a candle, and join the chant.
After a few rounds of that – one day, in particular, when I made it through three lessons in a day, each with its own new round of offerings – I could feel the energetic current of the class. I almost want to say that joining asynchronously, as I did, made it easier to feel the current at large, because I could pause the video, light my offerings, and then unpause and focus on the chanting.
Having found the current, I reached out and … joined it, adding my own voice to the chanting, and drawing power from the chanting down into my icon and book.
I did something similar, way back in the day (2014), when I was joining Seven Spheres in Seven Days experiments that preceded the Seven Spheres book.
Courting Solomon and the Mighty Dead
Regular readers may recall that I am deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work of any kind. I am only marginally less uncomfortable with saints and the Mighty Dead. But one of the reasons I took this class was to push my own boundaries, so here we are.
I began courting Solomon as a patron in the work as I described above, making offerings at the beginning of each (recorded) class. I also began including Solomon (and the nascent spirit of the Book, awaiting consecration and awakening) in my morning rituals, which revolve offering incense, a candle, and a cup of coffee to all the gods, powers, patrons, allies, friends, familiar spirits, and anyone else who lives on the altars of my house, in the pages of my sacred books, or comes when I call and aids me in my work.
That bore fruit more quickly than I anticipated. I made direct contact with the spirit of Solomon in the first week of June. He seemed a little confused at where he’d manifested, but also curious, which … same, bruh. In subsequent contact, in which I asked him if there were any particular stipulations that I needed to observe as I approached this work, I have been told: A) Not to contact him on the Sabbath except for Saturnian work; and, B) to approach the work with an open heart.
Obviously, I will continue to develop that relationship. Swift success has saved me from the need of making another infuriating attempt at dream incubation (Mastros’ recommended method for spirit communication when they don’t just show up for morning coffee), but not from some of the specific conversations needed before beginning the work.
I have not yet begun courting the Solomonic lineage of teachers, translators, and preservers. This isn’t a major part of the work, but it is something that Mastros recommends, at least at the beginning. I am, as is probably well know to all at this point, deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work, and for whatever reason approaching the lineage as a whole is psychologically more difficult for me than approaching Solomon, himself.
On the Treatment of Holy Names
The study and creation of Solomonic pentacles brings a new logistical problem to my practice: the disposal of pages on which Hebrew holy names have been written. My usual witchcraft, chaos magick, and neo-hellenistic practices have no particular taboos about written names; some white middle-class fuckery about preserving books, sure, but that’s not quite the same. My general practice is to burn failed experiments, expired materials, and even the remains of successful magic whose need has run its course.
The Hebrew religious, magical, and literary traditions from which the pentacles come, however, have some very strict rules about the creation, use, and destruction of such names – specifically (assuming I’m understanding correctly), any page on which such a name is written becomes a person, and must be mourned and buried accordingly. Synagogues, I have learned, have special repositories for such things. It’s not exactly my theology, but I can wrap my head around the need to see my Book and any consecrated and activated pentacles I have made consigned to such an end. I can come up with ways to make that work.
But I’m having a little more trouble trying to decide what to do with practice pages and dry runs. After reviewing that section in the course material (video Lesson Two: Planets and Craft), I believe that I will collect my practice pages carefully and burn them ceremonially at Samhain, and use that sacred ash to make sacred salt and/or ink. But I think I’m also going to talk to other folks in my class and see what compromises and solutions they’ve come up with.
Preparing For the Next Stage
With the above work done, I am ready to move on to the next phase: consecrating the book as a magical companion and familiar, and inscribing the Great Seal of Solomon from which all the subsequent seals will draw (at least a portion of) their power.
I’ve started assembling all the instructions from the book and videos into a coherent-to-me ritual. My study buddy and I have planned out the dates we intend to consecrate our books, and empower our Great Seals. Mostly, we’re waiting on the waxing moon.
I’m excited to take the next steps in this new (to me) magical adventure.
At the last Full Moon, the Lunar Shenanigans Crew and I celebrated our sixth(?) annual Rite of Her Sacred Fires. I honestly can’t remember how this one came to our attention – I think Aradia or Juniper brought it up? (This is the accidental Hekate cult, after all.) But it was definitely in the Before Times; I remember being upset that we weren’t able to do it in 2020.
We wind it up a bit, of course, to make it more our style and more a fit for a group activity. Specifically, one of us developed a Hekatean protection circle that we use, and one of us is really big on making offerings to Hestia before any ritual. Some years we’ve worked really hard to make and divide up parts so that everyone has a role. Some years, like this year, someone takes point and leads the whole thing.
It was kind of a weird year for me, and I appreciated Alvianna’s willingness to run the show. I am (as you know if you’ve read my last post, in particular) having something of a crisis of faith; I don’t even know that I could have led the ritual at all, let alone led it and got something out of it.
But I gave it my all. I went all-out on cleaning the house and building the altar. I gave the ritual my undivided attention (inasmuch as that’s a thing that even exists). I did my very best to come in good faith.
And I did get something out of it. Not as much as I have some previous years, but it … wasn’t nothing. Of course, I fucked up and didn’t write it all down right away, so my recollection is super vague, but … it was something. I almost managed some fire scrying. And the goddess was there, which I … wasn’t at all sure she would be. And the offerings were accepted, which I wasn’t sure they would be. (Yes my arrogant ass thought I could bring the whole thing down for everyone in the room.)
And, of course, I took pictures. Before and after (the daylight ones are before; the burning ones are after). And I’m pretty pleased with how they came out, especially the after images.
At forty-three years of age and art-making, after twenty-seven years of magic and mysticism, I can say for certain that two things are true: much of what we call our “selves” and “personalities” are, in fact, behaviors and habits that can be changed with sufficient effort; and, also, there are parts of ourselves that are innate, the products of fate or consequence, which we cannot change, no matter how we might wish. I have changed and grown a great deal over the course of my life, the (mostly positive) results of a life committed to doing better, to being better, to more positive outcomes. I have done so in ways that others have found enviable … and also terrifying and hateful. At the same time, there are parts of myself that, no matter how badly I or those around me might wish I could change, that seem fixed, utterly immutable.
For as long as I can remember, I have sought out mystic experiences and Mystery, both through sacred connections with the people in my life, and through my magical practices. I began my earliest research at the age of thirteen, and began practicing magic at the age of sixteen. From that day forward, I have had few friends who weren’t fellow travelers on this path, and those who did not share my proclivities had to be prepared to hear about those experiences.
At the same time, many of my earliest memories are of teenage and pre-teen efforts to reconcile the exoteric practices and theologies of late Satanic Panic Middle American Christianity with the actual text of the Bible (inasmuch as even a precocious child could actually understand that book). The clear rules the Bible presented, and the punishments promised for the breaking of those rules, and the clear lack of punishment for the wicked in the modern world, made one thing abundantly clear to my ten- or twelve-year-old self: the God of the Bible was a bully who enforced rules as he saw fit, just like the bullies in my life and the authorities who enabled them. When, a few years later, I learned that other gods existed, it was implicitly obvious to me that they were of the same moral fiber.
In the thirty years since, despite my best efforts, I have been utterly unable to shake that bone-deep conviction.
I say “despite my best efforts”, because I have, in fact, attempted to change that. In the beginning, I tried to believe in and pray to a generic eclectic Wiccan goddess that I could never quite feel or fully believe in, but I could never get past the pervasive (and not particularly theologically sophisticated) “all gods are the God; all goddesses are the Goddess” monism of late-1990s and early 2000s Paganism. Later, in my middle and late twenties, I renewed my efforts to find gods worthy of worship; I couldn’t get past all the rape and warmongering in the mythologies I could get my hands on. My earliest visionary journeys included trips to the upper worlds where I encountered gods that I had tried to worship, with decidedly mixed results.
A more rational person, perhaps, would have given up the pursuit of magic and mysticism years ago. But that just doesn’t seem to be who I am as a person. My earliest magical experiments (besides an obsessive teenage preoccupation with wards, shielding, and other magical protections) were in astral projection and trying to develop my psychic senses. Those experiments ultimately led me to “shamanic” visionary work and to my conjuration experiments and to the trance possession experiments I just wrote about. I wanted to see the parts of the world I couldn’t see. I wanted to experience the larger cosmos. I wanted to communicate with the spirits that I could see and feel but not hear.
I still want all those things.
And so I have persisted.
Rites and rituals and research, escalating experiments both solitary and with my Lunar Shenanigans crew.
I have said before, and I will say again, that the one god with whom I have anything like a “religious” relationship is Dionysus. That one god has answered my prayers with ecstasy and insight. That one god has shown up in my visions consistently, meaningfully, and helpfully. That one god I love in spite of all the other assholes who worship him.
I accidentally started a Hekate cult. The crew has never shared my ambivalence toward divinity, and Hekate just … kept being the right number call for any given Esbat. One ritual led to another led to another led to another until I decided it just seemed polite to buy an idol for our rites. Then came the Hekataeon. Hekate is the one god who gets her own altar in our house, not shared with anyone.
For two, maybe three years, I poured out daily offerings to Baphomet, Aphrodite, Eros, Lucifer, Dionysos, and Hekate. Over the last two summers, I have had intense visionary experiences at my morning prayers: potent divine visitations that left me shaking and crying. I had experiences that I can’t even tell my closest conspirators about, because it’s “monks locked in a tower with nothing but ergot rye bread” levels of crazy. I experimented with deity possession, opening my mind and my body to be ridden by Hekate, Baphomet, and Eros Protogonos, and receiving visions from other deities as my co-conspirators took their own turns in the hot seat.
And then, somehow, it all came crashing down.
In retrospect, I can identify some of the factors that led to my collapse.
Last summer, at the height of certain workings, I learned that a spiritual teacher whose work I had based a great deal of my practice on had stalked a friend-of-a-friend back to her hotel room. On the one hand, what the fuck to I expect of straight white men in positions of authority? Real talk: exactly that; I had been waiting for him to fail in pretty much exactly that way. On the other hand, it hurt me much more than I expected to be proven right, and while I went on and published all the writing I had already queued up, I have not been able to continue that work, and that knowledge has … fundamentally undermined my relationship with the goddess in question.
My failure to make myself a vessel during what proved to be the last meeting of the Possession Club was … deeply hurtful to me. In addition to the obvious and, I think, understandable disappointment, it also hit me in my pride and my self-confidence.
The October eclipse fucked me up good. It amplified everything else that was going on inside and around me. In a very real sense, things didn’t start turning around until the second half of the eclipse-pair hit in April.
Also in October, I got chased out of a local pagan meetup. I thought it was going to be a good group because it was run by two trans men. I honestly thought I was making friends. But it turned out that the group was half Nokean Heathens who expected everyone to just know without being told that speaking Loki’s name aloud was taboo and were not prepared to have that taboo questioned. They were also not prepared to hear any criticism white ancestor worship.
All that, combined with more mundane difficulties in my social circles, the soul-crushing effort of self-promotion on modern social media, my second round of Covid, the ever-rising prevalence of Christofascism and the horrors that the US government is facilitating around the world, and the worst depression of my adult life …
I feel like I have lost all the progress that I have made over the last ten years.
I am back in a place where, despite the mystic impulse that has followed me for literally longer than I can remember, I am blindingly blisteringly angry at the gods and anyone who loves them. That anger is obsessive. It keeps me from my work during the day and keeps me from sleeping at night. It interferes with my ability to do magic, to exist in magical communities.
It took me nearly twenty years, from my first offerings to Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Apollo, back in 2007, through visionary journeys and ecstatic rituals and trance possession, to get to my apotheotic experiences of the summer of 2023. To find myself here, feeling like I’m back where I started, hurts more than I have words for. So now I’m in a place both where I feel like I need to write about it … and can’t write about it.
Part of the problem, is that I don’t know how to talk about the gods and my struggles with them without insulting and alienating my friends and followers who sincerely love them. I feel like even alluding to the anger and alienation I’m feeling is a threat to those relationships. Expounding on those feelings in any detail? Almost impossible.
Part of the problem is that the only way I have ever figured out to do the work I want to do is to just … put that anger and distrust out of mind, and hope that the ecstasy of magic and apotheosis will magically make it go away. Clearly, fucking clearly, that hasn’t happened. Which only reinforces my deep-seated suspicion that antitheism is not just a thing I learned very early in life, but an intrinsic part of who I am as a person, every bit as much as my art.
So here I am.
Hurt. Angry. Afraid. Fighting to reconcile two parts of my nature: the inescapable desire to do magic, to experience Mystery, to seek the gods; and a bone-deep suspicion that the gods are corrupt authorities who should face the gallows alongside their mortal counterparts. I have jokingly described this conflict as a fundamental urge to find God and punch Him in the dick.
Honestly, I don’t know that I’ll ever really be able to fully reconcile those two natures. It’s possible that I don’t even need to. It’s possible that what I really need to wrestle with is the blinding, murderous rage that rises when those two parts of my nature come into friction.
I do know that this will not be the last time I talk about my deep, painful ambivalence towards the gods. And I know that, the deeper I dig into this, the more likely I will be to offend or even hurt my friends and other readers. I promise is that I am doing my best to approach this in good faith, to work my way through this pain without lashing out. I apologize for any pain I cause to you while I work through my own.
From the summer of 2021 to the summer of 2022, the Lunar Shenanigans crew and I ran a year-long cycle of Drawing Down the moon. One by one, each of us took a turn as “Priestess” and “Priest”: serving first as vessel for the nameless lunar goddess and then as invoker, drawing the power of the moon into the next vessel.
In some ways, it was an exercise in frustration. I knew going in that few of us (and I not among them) had extensive experience with deity possession, but not how few had ever even researched the practice. As we set out to write our ritual, the templates we found were extremely heterosexist, with a disturbing emphasis on wombs and penises as prerequisites for the roles. Several members of the group were so disengaged that it felt like they were barely humoring me, and did not put much effort either research or execution.
The project as a whole was a very mixed bag. I felt like I had to re-explain both the theory and the practice every month, and like I did a worse job of it each time. Some of us did very well at it. Others found it very difficult to let the Moon in. I never got the chance to try: on the date that we had appointed as our last, another member came back from sabbatical to put her hat in the ring.
In the wake of that experience, though, came something good. Soon after, one of our members took point on organizing and hosting a trance possession study group. She invited those of us who, successful or otherwise, had shown the most interest in the Drawing Down the Moon project and posed the question: how can we develop this practice into a skill?
We started with one of the very few books we could find on the subject: Lifting the Veil by Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone. The book proved to be a mish-mash of ahistorical garbage, something one would expect from the mid-1990s rather than its actual publication date of 2016. There was a similar amount of cultural appropriation, a surprising amount of weird apologia, and some very weird and creepy jokes about dropping gods into people they knew were not prepared for the experience. But there was also a viable-looking ritual and, lacking much else in the way of templates to work from, we took it and ran with it.
The core of the Farrar/Bone ritual is this:
Establish sacred space. Build an altar for the deity to be invoked. Build a throne for the vessel. The ritual facilitator invokes the deity into the vessel using a guided meditation. An audience comes in and the possessed oracle answers questions and/or issues prophesy.
Which is all solid, except for the weird and heterosexist way Farrar and Bone frame the facilitator as male priest who does all the work, and the vessel as passive priestess who just sits back and lets it happen to her. But we liked the guided meditation and the rest of the framework enough to break it down for parts.
In our reworked version, the facilitator is just that: someone who takes the leadership parts of the ritual so that the vessel can focus on the talking-to-god and talking-as-god parts. As vessel, we take point on building the altar and throne, then sequester ourselves while the facilitator gets the room and the other participants ready. A third member of the group takes point on casting the circle and consecrating the temple. A fourth focuses on taking notes during the rite. The facilitator performs the consecration of the altar and the preliminary invocation of the god, then brings the vessel in for the guided meditation leading them to the underworld where they will meet the god. Once the vessel is possessed and speaking in the voice of the god, the facilitator works the room, directing the participants to ask their questions, and managing the incense and libations. It is the facilitator’s responsibility to make certain that the possessed vessel doesn’t do anything they’ll regret later, and that they are not overwhelmed by the god, then to send the god home when the oracular session is complete, and to guide the vessel back to their body at the end of the rite.
We’ve refined the details a lot over the year and a half that we’ve been doing this work. We had a very tight script for the first round, almost exactly by the book. We changed things up a bit for the second round, based on lessons learned. For the third round, each ritual was idiosyncratic, similar to the others only in outline. We have begun our forth round in similar style.
Round One
Our first round, all four of us called upon the goddess Hekate. It was an obvious choice. We knew her, and she knew us. I had even served as a vessel for her, before. Were we not the Accidental Hekate Cult?
I don’t remember, now, if we drew lots or if I was chosen, but having served as a vessel for Hekate in several previous rituals with the Lunar Shenanigans Crew, and having been inadvertently shut out of the Drawing Down the Moon experiment, I was happy to take the first turn in the hot seat.
I was struggling financially, at the time, and my questions all revolved around the prosperity magic I was doing, and how it could be improved. I, at least, was not taking good notes this round, and can no longer remember much of it clearly. I do remember that some of the answers I got were actionable, but others were not.
Round Two
For the second round, we took on a fifth member. We also took on different gods. One of us invoked Lilith, one the Morrigan, one Helios, and one Prometheus. I invoked Baphomet.
With my financial situation somewhat settled, I struggled to come up with questions to ask. I know that, at the time we conjured the Morrigan, I suspected that someone was flinging some cursework or evil eye my way, but when I asked “who is it”, the answer “you know who, crush him” was … cathartic, but not actually helpful. I did not (and do not) know who was fucking with me. And, as surprising as some may find this, of the three or four candidates that I could think of, at the time, I didn’t want to crush any of them … just be quit of them. I was facilitator for the Helios ritual, and was able to avoid the issue in that ritual. When the time for Lilith came, I admitted that I had nothing to ask for, and accepted the blessing I was offered. In retrospect, that caused as many problems as it fixed.
Preparation for Baphomet came in fits and starts. There were things that I could see clearly – the need to make a horned headdress, for which I cannibalized one I had made previously, and added a black lace veil. Mostly, though, I struggled to make contact with the god until the time came.
I remember parts of my time as Baphomet very clearly. I remember that the god/dess was waiting for me when I sequestered myself to prepare for the trance, and that I could have walked out into the circle, fully possessed, while the others were still casting the circle, and that there was less of me than there could have been by the time the ritual caught up to me. As a result of this, we added “ask if the god is there already” to the ritual before the trance induction.
Round Three
Through a series of schedule conflicts, the third round became a sprint: we conjured Odin and Freya and Persephone, one week after another, only breaking for our Beltane campout before I took on the mantle of Eros Protogonos. (Which, given the amount of magic that I did over Beltane, was no break at all for me.)
This round was more of a challenge for me, personally, than the previous two. Opening with Odin and Freya, we ran face-first into two of my major issues: god-kings in general and the Norse pantheon in particular. I hate god-kings. I do not sacrifice to them, period. I do not honor them. And, after twenty-five-plus years in the neo-Pagan community, I can count on one hand the number of Norse-focused pagans I’ve met who didn’t turn out to be assholes without ethics if not outright fascists. I did my very best to participate in good faith. I failed.
Honestly, coming up on a year later, I don’t remember much except my discomfort. I wish that I had taken better notes. I didn’t want to ask anything of Odin or Freya. I was more focused on my role as facilitator for Alvianna’s channeling of Hermes, but my question was the same as the time before: who is fucking with me? Unfortunately, as facilitator, I could tell that the answer I got came from the vessel, not the god. So, with the signal lost, I brought the ritual to a close.
Our conjuration of Persephone is a notable exception to my struggle to engage with the gods and remember what was said. As I mentioned above, I frequently struggled to come up with favors or questions to ask of these unfamiliar gods. When this round came, though, I finally thought to ask for an image that I could make in jewelry. This is the oft-referenced possession rite that produced the Dread Queen Persephone pendant that I am (still) so very proud of.
Then came my turn in the hot seat. I had chosen to play vessel to Firstborn Eros, the desire at the heart of creation.
Eros Protogonos, Eros Phanes, Eros the Elder, is a god chiefly attested in the Orphic Hymns. His is first-born, self-born, hatched from the golden egg laid by Time, itself. Whether he was the same entity as the better known and hornier Eros, as Aphrodite Urania is the same goddess as her more … distant aspects, is a matter of some philosophical debate. I say he is, but it was Phanes Protogonos that I intended to invoke. As such, I advised my compatriots to ask larger scale questions, not ask the god-in-me for advice about getting laid.
For all my daily offerings, my relationship with Eros was/is not as close as my relationships with Hekate and Baphomet. The “signal” was neither strong nor clear. It was, however, productive, and the god (through me) blessed two of my compatriots with strong visions (that I got no glimpse of). In addition to those visions, and the questions I answered for our fourth compatriot, I consecrated a series of candles for us, each imbued with the Light of Creation. In the aftermath of that ritual, my own candle has become a part of my daily rituals, helping me maintain contact with the light of creation.
Round Four
We started the fourth round in September. The idea was that we would abandon our established script and go fully bespoke for each ritual. That didn’t quite happen.
The first god invoked for the second round was Macha. I was notetaker this round, as our usual notetaker was facilitating for the vessel. I struggled to get into the group headspace, but I did get an image of an eye and a crow and a sheaf of wheat that may yet become a devotional pendent.
Macha was the most standoffish of the gods we have yet summoned. She did not appreciate our freeform format and demanded clear articulation of what would be expected of her, and what she would get in return … but then she ended up going beyond the parameters we set, so … ?
I won’t speak to what answers and blessings she gave others, but I will say that her answer to my request for words of wisdom was not at all helpful.
When I took my turn as vessel for the fourth round, what I really wanted was to have the experience that I had been hoping for but missed out on from the original Drawing Down the Moon cycle that had, in part, inspired the creation of Possession Club in the first place.
My plan was to come up with a seamless and stylish synthesis of the original DDtM ritual, the Possession Club ritual, and the ritual framework that I had been developing for my personal work throughout both projects. Somehow, despite having a clear plan and a perfectly serviceable pile of scripts, I failed to write that ritual and ended up using an only-slightly-modified version of the ritual that I wrote for Eros. Interestingly, what little genuine inspiration I did have came from wearing my moon crown while sitting at the computer.
When it came to actually do the ritual, I thought everything was adequately in hand.
Then we called the goddes and … I failed. I couldn’t let her in. I couldn’t trance deep enough, or I couldn’t open far enough, or … I don’t even know. But I failed, and it really, really hurt my feelings.
On a certain level, we all knew that such a complete failure was always an option. None of us channeled the gods equally well every time. There were points in every possession ritual where the human was answering as much as or more than the god. But this was the first instance of a giant, big-nope, goose-egg, nothing.
We closed down the ritual. Made our final offerings. Had dinner. And we went home.
Unplanned Hiatus
My failure to Draw Down the Moon turned out to be the end of Possession. There are a few reasons for that; some logistical, others emotional.
We had a couple meetings after to talk about what went wrong and what to do differently in the future. Those meetings did not go well, also for a variety of reasons, the details of which are not for public consumption. In retrospect, though, I don’t think that an immediate post-mortem was the way to go.
Then I caught Covid (my second confirmed infection), which took me out for a solid three weeks. Then it was Christmas, the least wonderful time of the year.
We’ve tried to start back up a few times, but illness or bad weather or worse omens have nixed every attempt. Planning meetings met with the same blockages as attempts to schedule the final ritual of round four. When we were finally able to sit down together and discuss the fate of the project, the five of us were in four very different places psychologically, spiritually, and energetically. Ultimately, we decided that it was time to shutter the project.
Speaking personally, I was – and am – still so drained after this winter’s deep, deep depression, that I am struggling to be fully present for any work, even my own. I am also (and there’s a post about this already written and waiting) really struggling with the idea that the gods are worth of love and trust, making continuing this project uniquely difficult. Neither of those are energies to bring to a group project.
I feel bad that one of us never got to do her fourth round. But stepping back was the more honest and good-faith course than ploughing forward.
What I’ve Learned So Far
I’ve learned a lot from these escalating experiments. Some of it is the technical and experiential knowledge that I came for. Some of it is much more logistical and interpersonal.
The first thing I’ve learned is that everyone needs to be on the same page at the beginning of the project. When I orchestrated the year of Drawing Down the Moon, I sincerely believed that everyone else was fully on board. I also thought I knew how much everyone else knew. I was dead fucking wrong on both counts, and that made a lot of messes. When we started up Possession Club, we started off with a shared reading list and enough conversations that we were all in a much more similar place to one another, and the successes of those experiments are largely attributable to that.
The second thing I’ve learned, also a logistical lesson, is to write everything down someplace you can actually find it. Project drift will happen, that’s not only fine it’s inevitable, but it’s good to have a source document to return to as that goes. It also makes it easier to onboard anyone added to the project once it’s in motion.
The magical aspects of what I’ve learned are harder to articulate. I also am not at all sure that they apply to anyone who is not me. But I think the below points are universal enough to be worth sharing.
Alcohol and marijuana facilitate being possessed by Dionysus, but not by anyone else as far as I can tell. At least not for me.
BaneFolk ointments DO facilitate trance possession. Or, at least they were great for Baphomet and seemed helpful for Eros.
Everyone in the room needs to have a compatible idea of who the god is. I think this is one of the places where Drawing Down the Moon went so wrong, both in the initial year of DDtM and last October.
In Conclusion
Finally, I want to come back to a logistical and social lesson that these experiments taught and confirmed, over and over again. This sort of work is only possible when everyone involved is acting in good faith and communicating successfully. Being along for the ride is neither. Not everyone needs to be totally sold out / all in, but everyone does need to be genuinely open to the experience, the process, and the result. Yes, that means me. I know I brought the group down by not discussing my Norse allergies during the planning of round three. I suspect that was a lot of what went wrong with the DDtM experiments that preceded Possession Club.
Although I have framed several moments above as failures, because that’s the only word I know for that feeling, I do not believe that the experiments as a whole were failures. They were experiments. Some of our results were things we wanted; some were things we predicted; some were complete surprises. We learned from them all. As such, the projects, as a whole, were resounding successes.
Post Script: The ritual from Lifting the Veil is worth pillaging. The book, however, is not worth paying for. Steal it. Mock it. Someone, for the love of all that’s holy, write something better.
