Behold, friends, the latest in my ongoing series of astrologial images for study, contemplation, and enchantment.
The image of Jupiter, according to the opinion of Mercurius, is the shape of a man covered in a single linen cloth, riding upon a dragon, holding a lance or a dart in his hand.
-Picatrix Book II, Chapter 10, Paragraph 17 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019)
Some of you may recall, I shared the pencils of this image back at the beginning of September. I’m pleased to now share the digitally inked version.
This is my third attempt to work within a frame to make the images a little more artistically sophisticated (see also this Saturn and the Third Lunar Mansion), and I’m really pleased with the results so far. Eventually, as I develop my visual language through this and other projects, I plan to go back to add Art Nouveau and Arabesque frames to those that don’t have them.
Almost a dozen images into this series, I honestly feel like I’m making deeper connections to the planets and powers these images represent, and confirming (at least in my own mind) my long-held assertion that the images hold power of their own, which can be tapped outside the narrow constraints of Medeival and Renaissance astrological timing techniques.
You can find a higher resolution version of this image up on my Patreon, as well as links to collections of higher resolution astrological images. As a patreon supporter, you’ll get to see everything I do before anyone else, and a lot of things that I don’t share publically. If you’d like to support my work but don’t like Patreon for whatever reason, please consider dropping a tip in my jar at Ko-Fi.
All of us practicing magic publicly should probably be doing more evil-eye removal, uncrossing, and cursebreaking than we do. Protective wards and servitors are great, but even if we never leave our enchanted sanctuaries, some things will still get through. To that end, evolving variations of this spell have become a regular part of my magical protection and spiritual hygiene regimen.
I shared a super-concise version of this spell in the Hermetic House of Life discord not too long ago, at which point it belatedly occurred to me to add the SATOR square. The next weekend, I added the SATOR square. I was super pleased with the results, and felt moved to write this up immediately.
Bon appetit.
For the instructions below, I’ve included making your SATOR square, because it’s too short and easy to deserve a post of its own. I used a glass dip pen and consecrated ink to make my SATOR square, but that’s me being fancy. I used watercolor paper because it’s going to live on my altar and get spattered with oil and ash and god knows what and I want it to last. I have not included how to make your oil, because uncrossing and protection oils are readily available commercially and making it could be the subject of a whole book. (Several people have made their careers on such books.)
I do this ritual Saturday mornings, ideally during the first (Saturn) hour after dawn, but there is nothing inherently planetary about it and it can be done at any time. I also like to double-down on the ritual during the waning moon. Those timing elements make the ritual more effective, but aren’t necessary.
This ritual doesn’t pack as much oomph as some protection/uncrossing spells. It also doesn’t take as much oomph to get it off the ground. It’s meant as maintenance-level cleanup, not hazmat disposal. It does, though, also make a great first step in a heavier duty spiritual cleansing regimen when more is needed, and pairs well with a spiritual bath.
Materials
Paper
Pen and ink
Ruler
Candles (one per ritual; i use tea lights)
A small mirror big enough for your candle to sit comfortably in the middle
Anointing oil (I use uncrossing oil; you can use whatever seems most appropriate)
Incense (I use a frankincense & myrrh blend; use can use whatever you want)
Making Your SATOR Square
Take your piece of paper and draw out a five by five grid somewhere in the middle; you want plenty of room on all sides. The two easiest ways to do this are to start off with graph paper, or to use a ruler straight edge. You can carefully measure centimeters or inches or whatever if you want, but I just use the ruler as the unit of measure: square the ruler against the paper, trace your line on one side and then the other. Repeat until you have six lines. Turn your paper 90 degrees and repeat to make your grid. Pencil in the letters:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
If you’re not artistically inclined (or, even if you are), you may need to make multiple attempts to get a size and geometry you like. I made mine a little larger than my mirror.
When you are ready to do the ritual, bless and consecrate and awaken and enliven your paper, pen, and ink to the work of protection, cursebreaking, and uncrossing. Do not anoint your paper with oil, yet, it will impede the ink.
Ink your SATOR square. I inked mine in this order: grid outline; interior grid lines, letters, square outside the grid. Then I went back and inked over the letters several times. I promise it’s okay if it’s a little messy, as long as its legible. (It is word magic, after all, however inscrutable.)
The SATOR square is largely self-powering. Not much is needed to activate it. To give it extra oomph, though, I chanted the five words (Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, Rotas) repeatedly as I inked my square, then suffumigated it with my incense and anointed the corners with my uncrossing oil. Invoking additional protective powers also always helps. Stop chanting and suffumigating when you know it’s done or when you lose focus, whichever comes first.
Your SATOR square is now ready to rock.
The Ritual
Gather your SATOR square, mirror, candle, and uncrossing oil.
Bless, consecrate, awaken, and enliven your materials with incense and prayer. If you literally just made your SATOR square (as I did the morning before I wrote this up), it is absolutely fine to use the same stick or lump of incense that you used to consecrate and suffumigate your SATOR square.
When you are ready, lay your hands over your SATOR square and chant the words (Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, Rotas) three or five times.
Next, anoint your mirror with oil, spiraling counter clockwise from the center. Chant,
Uncross my conditions. Turn away the evil eye. Break any curses that have been laid upon me. Let the work of ignorance be undone. Let the work of jealousy be undone. Let the work of malice be undone. Let the work of my enemies be undone.
or something to the same effect in your own words. Then place the mirror on top of your SATOR square.
Anoint your candle, also counterclockwise, and repeat the chant. Then put the candle on top of the mirror.
Light the candle then anoint your hands with the oil, repeating the chant again. I also anoint my feet and my head.
Repeat the words of the SATOR square, again. At least once, but five times is more stylish.
Repeat the chant and the five words until you feel uncrossed and uncursesd or your attention wavers.
Witches who are particularly fire safety conscious will extinguish their candles, now. The rest of us will leave them burning on our altars that have been built to make that as safe as possible. In either event, turn your back on the uncrossing spell and try not to return to that room until the Hour of Saturn has ended (at a minimum); until after noon is better; until after sunset is best.
At long last, I return to you with a new astrological image:
The image of Saturn, according to the opinion of other sages, is the shape of a man standing upon a dragon, holding a scythe in his right hand and a spear in his left, dressed in black and tawny clothes.
-Picatrix Book 2 Paragraph 13, (Atrell and Porecca, 2019)
This is the same image I used for my triangular Picatrix Saturn talisman, but very differently executed. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
Like most digital photographers, I take a lot of pictures when I do a photoshoot. Small differences in framing and lighting, tweaking settings, trying to get just the right shot. I’m not as uninhibited as some – I usually try for a one usable photo out of every four shot (I’ve seen other photographers online talk about ratios like one in ten or one in twenty). As such, when Luxa and I did the Conjuration of AOS ZOS, I inevitably ended up with some photos that didn’t quite make it into the official set but that I thought were too fucking cool not to share.
These are those photos.
Jeffrey GrovesJeffrey Groves
A couple of these are likely to wind up as post headers for the blog, others are destined to be desktop backgrounds as patron rewards. All of them are worth your time and attention.
As you may or may not recall at this long removed date, over the summer I did a series of four photoshoots with two friends from the Green Musheen Discord. I got the first two, a Conjuration of Alkes and Wizard Rizz with Lavender Laura, out in a … halfway reasonable timeframe. The third, Devotional Images of Aphrodite with Luxa Strata, came out in October. And, now, finally, I have finished processing the fourth and final of those shoots: the Conjuration of AOS ZOS, my second shoot with Luxa.
The Conjuration of Alkes and this Conjuration of AOS ZOS were/are both attempts at spirit photography, a classic genre that has always been at least half grift. For these shoots, I recruited competent practicing magicians who were willing to be photographed while performing a conjuration ritual in the hopes that, in addition to whatever the primary purpose of their enchantment was, we would capture some photographic evidence, however ephemeral, of the spirit contact taking place.
As with our Aphrodite shoot, the day before, Luxa was a delight to work with. The ritual, conjuring the spirit of Austin Osman Spare for communion and instruction, was of their own design. They constructed the altar at which they worked from my collection of ritual bling. The costume was from his own collection.
The set we built pushed the limits of my camera equipment. Even using my 35mm prime lens opened up to f1.8, there was just barely enough light for my d3600 to focus. I had hoped that working at the extreme limits of my camera’s sensitivity would create more opportunities for uncanny artifacts and apparitions. It absolutely made for some phenomenally dramatic images.
Luxa’s ritual was incredible. As desensitized to magical energy as I seem to have become over the last few years, it was fucking palpable in that room and, I think, can be felt through these images. You can certainly see it in her face.
From the two hundred plus images I shot that night, I whittled the set down to these twenty-two in order to tell the story as concisely but completely as possible. There are another seven, which I’ll share tomorrow, that were too good to delete but would have been redundant here, and a few more that were just good altar porn that I’ll use in future projects.
Unfortunately, ritual efficacy did not seem to translate into apparitions in the photos. None of the three orbs I managed to catch that night were even half as impressive as those in the Alkes shoot with Lavender Laura. The best of the set can be seen here, hovering by Luxa’s armpit near the center of the photo:
Luxa, herself, had this to say about the project:
I do some necromancy work with Austin Osman Spare as an ancestor and magical teacher. The ceremony being conducted here was for the purposes of conjuring the shade of AOS so that a communion could take place, and so that we could attempt some spirit photography. I used the “Formula of the White Sabbath as first told me by a Witch” by Spare as part of the ceremony I designed, along with sigils, hand gestures and symbols divined for the purposes of the operation. The ceremony had the effect of inducing a strong feeling of spiritual ecstacy, which I think is evident in the photos. It was a fun and successful operation, and it felt sexy as hell when ZOS joined the party. I appreciate the opportunity to get weird!
They were also kind enough to offer us an excerpt from the ritual, itself:
The Prayer of Communion by Austin Osman Spare
We who are about to partake of each other shall walk past all amorous sickness and deaths, for we are within the magical equinox.
Amen.
We who proudly make unto ourselves every graven image shall have great copulations and are allowed to love our Gods, for we know the Sacred Alignments.
Amen.
We who do not crucify- nothing shall hurt us that is of the ‘Nature’, neither our comings and goings from the womb, for we have the Key to all aesthetics.
Amen.
In this, the sacred moment (here occurs the symbolic eating of flesh and blood) we forget our enemies: therefore, let our dead children sleep. And let our dead loves arise, so that they too may watch and enjoy our ecstasies. Let their animation be power to our memories and so resurge all ecstasy, for in this day there shall be no inhibitions. Amen. Thou insatiable peripheral quadria of sex.
Amen.
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I am so grateful to Luxa for volunteering for this project, and for flying out to KC to work with me, and for bringing such power, authenticity, vulnerability, and sincerity to the work. I very much hope that we will be able to work together again.
Those of you taking Sara Mastros’ pentacles course may have noticed that my last post did not actually make it to the end of lesson three. I had not, yet, put to use any of the pentacles I had inscribed in by book. Those experiences were weird and interesting enough to deserve a post of their own.
Jupiter Pentacles
My very first pentacles, as it turned out, were made outside the framework of this class. Over the summer, Mastros offered a workshop on using the Hexagram of Ab Ehyeh (second pentacle of Jupiter) for financial gain. I had inscribed but not yet deployed my first Lunar talismans, and decided not to jump ahead to teach my book the Jovial talisman before the class, so I printed the pentacle to inscribe over… which was where I made my first mistake.
I printed the pentacle on the wrong paper. Rather than just roll with it, I reprinted it on the cardstock I had wanted to use … and then I got all up in my head about proper care and disposal about the Hebrew god-names, and decided to punt the problem by consecrating both of them, each to a different professional goal: a particular sales goal, difficult but achievable; and a particular number of Patreon supporters. Both by the end of November.
They didn’t work.
Sales through the end of the summer and were good, but not what I was hoping for in October, and straight tanked in November. I have been delighted to welcome several new patrons, but did not meet my goal. (Writing that sentence, knowing y’all will read it, feels a little weird. Sorry about that.)
It’s possible that they did help. That these two pentacles, along with my other prosperity and financial magic, are what pulled me up out of the pit that was the first half of this year’s sales. But even if so, that’s not a resounding success.
But I didn’t know how those first pentacles would turn out, yet, when I finally sat down to put my first book-pentacles to use.
Preparing and Planning
Sara Mastros strongly suggests The Lunar Lock and Key (the first Lunar pentacle, per Mathers) as a student’s first pentacle, specifically to use it to journey to the underworld. Up to this point, I really had planned to stick as close to the lesson plan as I could. But I couldn’t figure out what would be the … best, most useful, most interesting way for me to employ the pentacle, an unfamiliar magical technology, to go to the underworld, something I am well accustomed to doing on my own.
It’s … a stupid thing to get caught up on. But get caught I did. I stewed on that problem for probably a whole month. Finally, the solution came to me: I would ask the Third Pentacle of the Moon, The Witch’s Teacher.
The Witch’s Teacher
The Witch’s Teacher (the third Lunar pentacle per Mathers) is a more conventional pentacle than the Lunar Lock and Key: round, with clear internal geometry, if with a slightly more obscure versicle. Inscribing it in my Book, as I described previously, went smoothly. Employing it was even more straightforward: I invoked Solomon and wound up the Book according to Mastros’ techniques. I told various powers – Solomon, the Book, the Great Seal, and the pentacle, itself – what I wanted, invoking each in turn, explaining my situation . I asked to be instructed in a vision in circle, in a dream tonight, and/or in visions and revelations later. Anointed a candle with holy oil, then lit it.
I was hit immediately with clairsentient knowledge: the Lunar Lock and key will serve as a guide, showing me where and how to go; it will lead me beyond the brass gates that I have seen in previous visionary trances; it will serve as a passport and a badge of authority; that using the Lunar Lock and Key to journey to the underworld is, itself, a rite of passage.
I thanked the spirits, wound down the book, and began planning my next adventure.
The Lunar Lock and Key
I put the Lunar Lock and Key to use around the middle of October.
Despite – or, more accurately, because of – my familiarity with less structured underworld journeys, I was careful to maintain the ritual and protocols I have developed in my pentacles work so far. I bathed and changed into my ritual whites before the start of the planetary hour. I sat down to meditate with my Book before winding up the ritual proper.
I struggled to stay focused, at first. I did not feel as strong a connection to Solomon as usual during initial invocation. I still didn’t get name or presence from Great Seal, but it definitely opened up and powered up. I didn’t get a strong sense of resonance while invoking the pentacle (further evidence for my theory that I am somehow not tuning in to the right frequency to properly perceive the pentacles), but visualizing using the angel names as the key and “tickling” the lock open (Mastros’ word; those of you who’ve tried your hands at lockpicks might find that metaphor more relatable) did produce a gate through which I was able to move.
I descended through the void, bypassing all my usual routes and landmarks, until I came to a great wall winding through a red desert, and a brazen gate which looked a lot like those that I’ve seen in previous visionary experiences. A glowing blue figure that answered to the name Shioel was waiting for me and led me to a postern gate where we met the spirit of my Book.
Inside the gate was, briefly, a vision of fiery red desert that gave way to a vision of poppy fields and a yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City. Yes, that Emerald City. Sort of. I flew there with Shioel a the spirit of my Book, and we entered the city by a side gate.
Inside the Emerald City was initially a void. Then there was a vision of a throne, which Shioel said was what I expected to see. The vision of the throne exploaded into a vision of light, followed by a series of visions more weird and personal than I care to share at this stage of internet culture enshittification.
At the end of my visionary journey, Shioel told me to return at the dark of the moon and I returned to my body.
The next dark moon turned out to be Samhain. Winding up for and then having to cancel our usual Samhain campout was exhausting and demoralizing, and I almost spent the night stoned in front of the TV. Somehow, though, I rallied enough to sit down in front of my altar to light some offerings and at least meditate for a while, and commune with my familiar spirits. Those few minutes of meditation quickly escalated into an unplanned visionary experience.
Solomon appeared to me, and the spirit of my Book. They admonished me not to use my Solomonic materia for anything but the Solomonic work (I had lit some of the incense as “the best I’ve got” right then), and then cajoled me to conjure up the Lunar Lock and Key and make my planned descent to the underworld.
In the end, I gave in. I called up the pentacle in my mind, invoked the names as best as I could remember them, and opened the portal. With the Book closed on the altar, instead of open before me, it is perhaps unsurprising that this second journey was more like my other underworld journeys than the first descent with the Lunar Lock and Key had been.
I descended first into light and the void, then ascended to the sphere of the Moon, where the spirit of my Book underwent a Lunar initiation much like those that I have been through in my Seven Spheres workings. Then we descended, again, and returned to the Emerald City for another round of visionary experiences weirder than I am prepared to share publicly, including some that were so weird I couldn’t even find words to record them in my most private journal.
Preparing for the Next Stage
For a wide variety of reasons, I’ve fallen off the work since November. I could point to the US presidential election, or to my father’s illness and death, or to my annual Christmas Depression, or any number of things, and that would all be true … but they are more true about why this write-up too me so long. What really broke my ritual streak was the Fall Back shift from Daylight Savings to Standard time: the Third Hour of Night now coincides with my dinner time, making it incredibly difficult for me to fit planetary timing into my regular life, even as a full time artist and magician. This fallow period, though, is by no means an end of my work in Mastros’ course and with the Solomonic pentacles.
I have already learned so much. About the grimoire tradition. About the legendary King Solomon. About the Hebrew language. About making magic books (this is my … third? Fourth?). About bringing my lifetime of witchcraft to ceremonial magic, and incorporating ceremonial paradigms into my witchcraft. I’ve had insights about how to improve my Picatrix talismans. I suspect that I will learn things that will lead me to make pentacle-like talismans using channeled imagery and versicles from extra-Biblical texts (specifically but not exclusively Homeric and Orphic texts).
Having now deviated from my post-per-lesson format, I think it’s fair to warn you that I’ll be deviating further. I am not going to hand-hold you through the whole of Sara Mastros’ pentacles course. That would be rude to her and boring for me and not actually that helpful or interesting to you.
Instead, going forward, I’ll be sharing my most interesting results from my classwork, and from the experiments that classwork inspires.
I’m quitting Meta. I’ve been begging my friends for years to quit with me, but this summer i stopped using my accounts because i was just too busy (and found the experience so miserable) and discovered that it had, on the one hand, no discernable effect on my sales; and, on the other hand, an enormous positive effect on my mental health. I’ve been planning this exodus since this summer, and Zuck’s most recent fuckeries are only confirming that I’ve made the right decision.
But, there’s a lot of people who don’t want to move to the websites I do use (for a wide variety of reasons, all of them valid), but who do want to keep track of what I’m doing, so I’m making two newsletters: one just for jewelry, and one for basically everything. Followers of this blog, of course, already have the options to receive everything by email and rss. (Though I need to make the buttons easier to find.)
Assuming I’ve set everything up properly, the forms below will allow you to sign up to those lists. (I won’t know for certain until someone successfully uses them.)
Hidden Worlds of JS Groves Newsletter
The everything newsletter. Expect monthly emails that look a lot like my patreon monthly update posts, and occasional other announcements. I may someday escalate to weekly newsletter content, but never more than that. You can sign up using the form below, or the one on my main web page, jsgroves.com
Sorcerer’s Workbench Newsletter
For shop updates: new designs, my rare sales, and occasional more entertaining communiques. Most months you’ll get nothing. I cannot imagine the circumstances that would lead me to sending out messages more than weekly (plus an occasional correction).
I didn’t mean to wait six months to follow up on my first candle magic post. The depression and imposter syndrome got me. (Yes, I have been writing publicly about my magic for almost fifteen years and have run an occult art jewelry studio for five years. I have been ritual leader and Chair of the Board of Directors for a major pagan festival. I still struggle with imposter syndrome.)
As I said before, in the opening of part one, I came to results-oriented magic relatively late in my magical career. I really only started fucking around with enchanting for things (besides protection magic) with my first Chaos Magick experiments in the late 00s and early 2010s. When I started fucking around with candle magic, specifically, I found relatively few clear instructions. And so I set out to fill that need.
In the first post, I laid out a basic ritual template for a candle magic spell. It’s hardly the only way to do it, but you have to start somewhere before you develop your own style, and I think it’s a good starting place.
In this post, I go over a handful of ways to take that basic ritual, which can be done with just a candle and a lighter and a prayer, and dial it up a notch. You can do one of these things. You can do all of these things. For that matter, I’m sure that there’s a dozen other things I haven’t even thought of. There are even a handful of things I allude to in my first post, chiefly sigils and petitions, that deserve posts of their own.
This post, like the last one, is the product of my research and experimentation over the last couple years, specifically, but also over the whole of my magical career. But it’s not a finished thesis, or even an articulation of a single school of thought: I am still learning, and would love to hear from any who’ve used these (and other) techniques.
There is going to be a third post in the series – arguably it should have been the second – in which I talk about building a candle magic altar. That post will include things that I vaguely referenced in this post and the last, like the way that you should include fire safety in your ritual planning. In the meantime, please be careful and don’t set yourselves on fire.
Repetition
The easiest and possibly most underrated thing you can do to strengthen your candle magic is to double and triple down on it. I can only guess as to why, but a lot of people seem to have a “one and done” approach to magic, even (maybe even especially), if the first spell toward a goal doesn’t manifest success immediately.
If you need something, keep asking for it. It does not matter which iteration “really worked”. You can do divination to see why a spell (seems to have) failed, or which iteration did the most good. But keep enchanting until you get what you want.
Every single week, I do at least one prosperity candle, at least one protection candle, at least one cursebreaking candle, and at least one healing candle. I will keep doing so (as well as a lot of other magic to those same ends) until I am happy, healthy, and safe (or dead).
Timing
The second extremely easy way to kick you magic up a notch is to consider the timing. Now, contrary to certain theories and cult leaders, the first timing consideration for your spell (candle magic or otherwise) is act when you need to. You can consider more precise and sophisticated timing when you’ve sent up that first flare.
With that first spell cast, now look to more beneficial timing. Consider the phase of the moon. More in-depth looks at lunar timing are available elsewhere, including nearly every beginner’s book on the market, so I will just say here that “waxing” or “waning” are much more important than “full” or “new”. Use the waxing moon for increase and building; use the waning moon for decrease and destruction. Take protection and purification magic as an example of how those are framing devices more than objective strategies: I burn fiery wall of protection candles during the waxing moon and uncrossing candles during the waning; I do most of my healing magic during the waxing moon, but don’t let the lunar phase stop me when I need a healing boost during the waning, or feel like I’m in need of uncrossing during the waxing.
If you have the leisure for a little more precision, look to planetary days and hours. Again, most beginner books and countless websites have this information, so I won’t repeat it here, except to say that the dawn hour is super convenient on account of you don’t have to do any math; day AND hour is best, but focus on whichever one you’ve got. Jason Miller has a whole book on how to mix and match planetary days & hours to more interesting effects.
More sophisticated astrological timing, which takes into account the precise positions of the stars and planets, is a cool thing that you should study if you get the chance, but it’s beyond the scope of this article. Christopher Warnock’s book, Secrets of Planetary Magic, is the best introductory work on the subject that I know of.
Dressing Your Candle with Oils
I mentioned dressing your candles in my first post, but it’s worth elaborating on.
Applying consecrated oils to your candles before lighting them is one of the easiest and most widely used ways of adding power to your candle magic spells that I know of. Making your own oils is both fun and potent magic, but there is nothing wrong with relying on the work of specialists. Hoodoo and conjure shops (if you have one) usually have better oils than Pagan and New Age stores. Do your research into the reputation of the brands you buy; I personally like Quadrivium and Devil’s Conjure for my consecrated oil needs.
There are a variety of schools of thought on how best to apply the oils to the candles, and I encourage you to research them. What I have found most effective for tapers (be it a birthday, chime, or tall) is to rub the candles down while praying, holding the candle perpendicular to my body and rubbing the oil down the candle toward myself for intentions that bring things to me (money- and love- drawing, as the obvious examples) and away from myself for getting rid of things. For dressing a container candle, one drops the oil onto the top of the candle and then rubs it clockwise for drawing and building or counterclockwise for banishing and breaking.
Very little oil is needed. An eyedropper full can easily be too much, and can even be a fire hazard in some situations. One or two drops, or just a bit on the tip of your finger, is plenty. This is not just frugality: especially with container candles, it’s actually possible to apply enough oil that you are mechanically interfering with the process of burning the candle.
If, for whatever reason, you really want to use more oil, apply it to the palms of your hands and the soles of feet, and run it through your hair rather than soaking the candle. (I do this with most of my candle magic, especially my uncrossing and healing work.)
Planetary Powers
The gods, angels, daimones, and other powers associated with the seven traditional planets are shockingly easy to invoke and to work with, and are an excellent way to take your candle spell to the next level. (You can probably make friends with the powers of the newfangled planets, too, but I haven’t done those experiments for myself and I don’t know anyone else who’s done them.)
It will work best if you’ve made friends with the spirits of the planet in question, first (to which end I recommend Rufus Opus’ Seven Spheres), but that’s not strictly necessary. What will be absolutely necessary is a more elaborate workspace for your candle spell.
I’ll have a whole post about an altar space, soon, but the extra short version is this: at the center, your candle goes on a firesafe surface that the candle cant fall and roll out of. Around that dish, you should arrange symbols associated with the planet: a colored altar cloth, an idol or icon, the grand planetary seal and/or the sigils of the archangel, the Olympic spirit, and/or the planetary spirits and intelligences. Picatrix images and Solomonic pentacles are also good. I recommend no less than three such objects; a number associated with the chosen planet is obviously good, but the only way to have too many is to be distracted by your own visual clutter.
When winding up the ritual, call on the powers of the planet(s) – both in general and by name – to bless and consecrate your candle, to awaken and aliven your materia, to execute your will. Invoke them to be present in your ritual: the Orphic hymns (any translation) are effective and easy to find, you can rewrite the final lines to your own purposes; there are also countless other invocations you can find online or in print, or you can speak off the cuff. Again, as always, state your desire aloud for best results. Thank the powers when you have finished your ritual, and again when your goal is achieved.
Calling In Your Gods and Allies
Gods. Saints. Ancestors. Spirit allies. Familiars. Guides. Any spirit you work with on a halfway regular basis can be called in to aid your candle magic. Of the above, I can speak most directly to working with familiar spirits, but I can say that – based on my experience – there is a measurable difference between lighting a candle as a part of a ritual invoking outside powers and invoking those powers as part of a candle magic ritual. The chief differences, in my experience, are that when working directly with familiar spirits and other close allies, as opposed to calling on them to help with your candle magic, your goals don’t need to be as specific and your ritual will probably look fairly different.
As with the planetary powers above, call them in from the very beginning: ask them to bless, consecrate, awaken, and aliven your materia. Ask them for what you want. Ask them to empower your spell. Thank them when you are done with your ritual, and when your goal is achieved.
In Conclusion
None of the techniques above are absolutely necessary for candle magic. As I said at the beginning, they’re ways to take the basic candle magic ritual and bring it some oomph. They’re ways to focus your time and attention on your candle spell so that it’s more likely to go off. You can use any number or combination of them that you can wrap your head around. Or you can stick to the basics: tell your candle what you need, light it, and walk away.
My next post (hopefully to come out in a week or so, but I clearly can’t be trusted to exist in mortal timeframes) will revolve around making a candle magic altar and the fire safety that should go with it. I am also considering a fourth post where I get into my experiences combining sigil magic with candle magic, and possibly als petitions. If I do, that will probably be in January or Feburary.
In the meantime, I hope you found this useful and interesting. Again, if you have any experiences and research of your own that you’d like to contribute, please don’t hesitate to comment or reach out.
And thank you, as always, to my Patreon supporters. Thank you all especially, now, as I’ve neglected the majority of you for the majority of November while I obsessed over my November Novel Draft.
Working the third lesson of the pentacles course turned into a bit of a slog for me. I think that making the transition from preparing the book to scribing the first pentacles would have been a challenge under any circumstances, but August, and the first weeks of September, were incredibly busy for me on the Sorcerer’s Workbench side of things, and that left me as a bit of a mess.
The third lesson of the class and third chapter of the book are, of course, focused on the pentacles of the Moon. Mastros talks about it at length in the course, and makes her point in the book as well, but on the off chance you, my reader, haven’t been sold on the class, yet, it’s worth a sentence or two here. The Lesser Key of Solomon presents the pentacles in descending Chaldean order, Saturn through the Moon. In fact, most grimoires present planetary subjects in descending order. Mastros reverses this order for three reasons: working up, Moon to Saturn, makes more sense to a modern practitioner than the reverse; the Moon and Mercury include pentacles that teach you magic; and she just likes it better that way. As it happens, I agree with her on all three points.
The third lesson is also where we lay the final layer of the foundation before we begin the true work of the course: teaching pentacles to the book before we begin putting them to use.
Teaching the book is an interesting conceit. I am not just inscribing the pentacles in the book in a way that demonstrates and shores up my understanding of the magical seals; I am teaching them to the book so that the book and the book-spirit can study and internalize them, and then aid Solomon (and the pentacles, themselves) in teaching me their proper use. For all its baroque circularity, it does (for me at least) render the oft-advocated practice of transcribing a grimoire in one’s own hand from “ordeal” into “practical sense”.
Preparing and Planning
Following on July’s adventures, and being swamped in the workshop, I did not prepare or plan for this lesson as meticulously as I did the first two.
Following some omens and oracles from August, I wound up for this next phase of the pentacles by starting another course of Seven Spheres initiations. It had been a while since I’d done that, and I was feeling incredibly low energy, and I was hoping that it would help me. Unfortunately, I apparently read the omens wrong … or something, because I only made it through three spheres before the Sun told me to sit down, slow down, and to not exacerbate my burnout like that. I … had to be told more than once.
To prepare to formally inscribe and consecrate the seals into the book, I re-watched the third lesson video and re-read the passages in the book on each of the pentacles. I figured out my best pronunciations of the names of god, and what meanings I was going to lean on. As I penciled in the seals, the afternoon before inking and consecrating them, I made notes on the facing page, including the name and use of the pentacle, the Hebrew and English spelling of each name, and meanings of each name that I would use. I wrote out the full text of the spell that I would perform, including my Blade, Book, and Candle framing ritual and the invocation of Solomon. Mastros, like many teachers, strongly advocates speaking from the heart; I feel like I do my best work from a script, even if it’s my own.
Inscribing My First Seals
I have, so far, inscribed and consecrated three seals/pentacles in my book. I have penciled in two more, but missed the appropriate planetary hours on the days I intended to ink and consecrate them. (The transition from daylight savings time back to standard usually fucks up my sleep schedule; this year it’s just thrown off my afternoon meditation and evening rites.)
As I mentioned in the last post, I’m just not feeling the volume of energy that Mastros describes in her lessons, or that I expected to feel from such a famous magical technique. Although I have had repeated and powerful contact experiences with both King Solomon, himself, and the spirit of my book of pentacles, the experience of inscribing the pentacles in the books has continued to be anticlimactic.
Like the Great Seal before them, I penciled each pentacle in during the afternoon before I planned to properly inscribe and consecrate it. I chanted the versicle as I inscribed it, and the names of god as I inscribed them, and again as I anointed them all with holy oil. But, like the Great Seal before them, as I inscribed each pentacle in the book, chanting the versicle and names of god, I never felt them “come alive” like Mastros describes. There was just a moment when they were clearly done, and it was time for me to bring the ritual to a close.
The Lunar Lock and Key was the first and hardest of three that I have inscribed so far. The square, instead of circular, geometry, and the uprights that have always struck me as castle pennants, made energetically building the seal difficult and counterintuitive. This was one place where I found Mastros’ instructions to be frustratingly unclear; what seemed to make sense while she was talking/on the page did not make sense in the moment. With that said, it was not so difficult that I couldn’t figure it out, and I’m not at all sure how I would explain the process to someone better than she did.
The Wing of El was, surprisingly, the easiest, though the Witches’ teacher was only marginally more difficult. The geometry is simpler, and their … assembly is more intuitive. Having inscribed these seals, I am much more confident in my ability to proceed further.
Moving at the glacial pace I have through the third lesson, though, I’ve had a lot of time to think, reflect, discuss, and divine about these experiences. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
I continue to have intense contact experiences with Solomon and the book-spirit (who really needs a cute nickname, at this point), even when the pentacle-consecration part of the work.
The book-spirit and the Great Seal feel stronger every time I work with the book.
When I put the pentacles to use (next post), they fucking worked.
So, where does that leave me?
Now, I know (and I think I mentioned before) that part of the problem is that I seem to have lost a lot of energy sensitivity over the last few years. It might be a side effect / natural consequence of taking my magical practice from a place of woven energy and spirit journeys and sigil magic to a more conventional place of spirit conjuration and candle magic and consecrating talismans. It might also be a side effect of the trauma of having been driven out of my community, or the pandemic world. It also might be that I have not yet learned to tune in to the particular frequency of energy (in, like, a radio dial sense not a “high vibes only” sense) at which the pentacles operate.
I think, also, that the layering is a factor. I study the pentacles. I imagine inscribing them in the book. I pencil them in outside of ritual, so that I can get the art part right without worrying about the magic part. At the ordained time, I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars, I wind up the Great Seal, and finally I ink and consecrate the pentacle in the book. Then I close it all back up and let it ferment. And then, every single day, I make offerings – candles and incense and libations – at the altar where the book lives, feeding it again. Each phase of that work layers in more power. So the energy and effort that at least some of my peers are putting in just in that one planetary hour, I’m spreading out over days or weeks or even months.
And then, possibly the biggest factor, we come back to that middle-ish sentence: “I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars…” I’m not in this alone. I’ve brought my decades of witchcraft with me. I, personally, am providing at most a tenth of the power going into the pentacles to awaken them. Which is good, because I don’t have the fucking juice that I once did. But I have made friends, and this is part of what I come to them for. It’s the nature of this whole shebang that I can’t see what they’re doing behind the curtain.
Preparing for the Next Stages
The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is not, in fact, to make a magic book, or even to make contact with the spirit of Solomon, Magician-King. The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is to fucking use them. Which is where we run into my biggest obstacle as a student of magic in general and as a Chaote in particular: I am actually not super creative when it comes to applying magical means to specific ends.
Sara Mastros suggests that her students start with the Lunar Lock and Key, using it to journey to the underworld. It may seem stupid, but as a moderately proficient underworld journeyer, I was not really certain how to use the Lock&Key to do what I could do empty handed. But, after weeks and weeks of hemming and hawing, I figured out how to answer that question.
Which is where I’ll take up the next post in a few weeks.
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It was my habit for many years to spend the period between Samhain and my birthday looking back at my year, what had happened and how I had grown. I honestly can’t remember exactly when or why I stopped. College, especially my time at Earlham, was probably a factor; I know that the horror of the 2016 election and being chased out of the Heartland Spiritual Alliance cult over the course of that year and the next were the death blows.
From 2008 to 2015 or so, I could honestly say that each passing year had been the best year of my life so far. That has not been true since. Some years were better than the one before, but even so, “better” has often not been “good”. 2019 was a really good year. 2022 had its moments. 2023 and 2024 have had their highlights, but they have also been a really rough ride.
As a whole, 2023 was such a wildly mixed bag. Parts of it were really good. Parts of it were really, really bad.
In the summer of last year, I was at a high point in my magical and mystical practices. I was experiencing divine epiphanies and revelations on a near-daily basis. I got some really good writing done. My partner and I celebrated our birthday by flying to New Orleans with some of our closest friends.
At the same time, I was struggling to maintain some of my most important relationships. I was barely making ends meet as an independent artist. I had some magical experiments go sideways in ways that really fucked me up. By September and October, I was deeply depressed and distressed over (among other things that I will not get into here) my failing eyesight and having been screwed over and then gaslit by an optometrist who fucked up my prescription and tried to blame me for it.
This time last year, I had just come home from a birthday/Samhain trip to New Orleans sick with my second or third round of Covid (second confirmed case, I’m pretty sure I had it at least once more that didn’t present strongly enough to show up on an at-home test but did do its damage to my mind and body), a week of forced bedrest and idleness during which I wrote, watched bad television, slept, and did little or nothing else. That November and December, I went through what may have been the very worst depression of my entire life to date.
The first several months of 2024 were spent crawling out of that depression hole. That climb was made more difficult by poor finances and continuing fallout from the previous year’s depression.
Part of that depression was a crisis of faith, culminating in an anti-theist blog post in May that … seemed to resonate with people, but which also sparked a lot of “are you okay” messages that were nice but not particularly helpful. I am hardly the first mystic to doubt the goodness of the gods, or their worthiness to be worshiped.
I am no longer obsessed by it, but the question of “why should anyone worship gods who answers Nazi prayers?” will really never go away. I know that neopagan circles are rife with fascists, and Hellenic polytheism second only to Heathenry (or third, if you count worship of the gods under their Roman names as separate from the Greek gods). I am not special; if the gods show up for me, why should I assume the gods don’t show up for them?
Every camping trip I have attempted this year has been rained out. Beltane was cancelled in advance on account of the forecast. My random weekend in the woods with my best friend was cut short by incoming torrential rains. Samhain camping was cancelled by forecasts of rain two weekends in a row.
This has been my third year as a fully independent artist. The first half of the year was really rough, in that regard. Since July things have really turned around: I’ve had more consistent sales in August, September, and October than ever before. I’ve released some work that I’m really proud of. I put out new my first Beltane line, my third Pride line, and my second Samhain line … though I might be a little less ambitious that way, next year.
In February, floundering on how to put the final polish on several other projects, I started a new novel draft: Chimaera, the story of the half-dragon daughter of Morgana Iramon and the Avhaar Dragon, and mother of Dano`ar Ashandosaar, one of the great adventurers of my fantasy world. I’m about 40,000 words in to what will probably be a rambling doorstop fantasy, and I’ve gotten a little stuck finishing out the first act, but it’s still been a lot of fun.
In July I took a road trip to do some photography with a friend from the Green Musheen discord server, and another came in from out of town to shoot with me. I did four photoshoots in three weeks, and still havent’ finished processing the fourth, but the results have been incredible.
Despite the depression, and crisis of faith, and occasional struggles to afford incense, candles, and wine, I have maintained my daily ritual practice without interruption for a fourth consecutive year. I am slowly incorporating a daily meditation practice.
Back in May, things lined up to allow me to take Sara Mastros’ class on Solomonic pentacles. I am moving more slowly through the lessons than I would like, but the most consistent message from my guides and divinations has been to slow down, take the time I need, and not exacerbate my burnout by pushing too hard. And, by following that advice, I have slowly made my way back to a place where messages and visions are once more coming through clearly. I still throw up in my mouth whenever I see someone talking about the gods being Good and their actions beyond mortal judgement, but … that has always been the case, and probably always will be.
Now, come November, I am sick on my birthday again – though this seems to be a common cold, not Covid. Last week it was 80 degrees out at a time of year that used to be consistently snowy. The USAmerican people have given me another Trump presidency. I just got word that one of the men who taught me my trade died over the weekend, and of a fatal illness in my family.
2024 has by no means been the best year of my life so far. But, despite everything, I am still doing significantly better than I was this time last year.
Inevitably, as I wind this rambling retrospective to a close, I find myself looking toward next year. I doubt that I will be able to make 2025 the best year of my life, so far, but I’m going to try, against all odds. I am taking my time with everything. I am certain of absolutely nothing, except that things are going to be bad and ugly for the next four years (at a minimum). I think that I am exactly old enough that I will make them murder me instead of going back in the closet as a queer, as a witch, as an artist, as an intellectual (which is a distinctly different vibe from being young enough to make that same decision). I may make some new decisions about what platforms I’m on, but … I’ve been doing that math the whole time.
To all my family, friends, and followers: thank you for accompanying me on this long strange journey. Some of you, I know, have been here in one way or another at least as far back as the first Journey Through the Obsidian Dream blog posts in 2010. Some of you have joined the party more recently. I just can’t say how grateful I am to have such brilliant and supporting peers.
And I do see you as my peers: I am not a guru or wisdom teacher, pontificating from on high. I am a madman, a mystic, a seeker. I speak of my experiences in the hopes of providing guidance for those who follow after me, sure, but also in hopes that those who went before me can see these posts and offer the benefit of their own wisdom. I am not special, but that does not mean I am not unique and valuable. And so are you.
