Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

The image of the Sun according to Baphomet is a serpent with the head of a woman, or of a lion, or with a beard, wearing a crown. To her left is a crescent moon; to the right is a shining star. Over her head is the sun; in metal, a citrine.

These images came to me in a vision some weeks ago: sitting quietly at my altar on a Sunday morning, making my usual offerings of fire, frankincense and myrrh, and strong black coffee. Being the first such visions I’ve had in over a year, I was … hesitant to share them. I feared, more than usual, that they were hubris or delusion. They are, after all, somewhat derivative: clearly an elaboration on the iconic image of Chnoubis.

In the weeks following the vision, though, I received further elaboration on the images. They became clearer in my mind, and as I contemplated them, I felt like I was reminded of a certain solar invocation from the Greek Magical Papyri. When I finally sat down to draw them, they came through to the page with a clarity that confirmed I had something substantial.

The moon was waxing, and (though the image did not specifically call for astrological timing) the sun was in Aries, and I decided to strike while the iron was hot. I made another copy of the image – the woman-headed snake, for myself – this time on watercolor paper (my current favorite basis for hand-drawn text and image magic), and inked it in black and gold, and set it aside for the next Tuesday morning (the Solar second hour of the day of Mars being an ideal time for me, personally, to invoke the Sun in Aries).

I did my usual daily ritual in the dawn hour, then showered and donned my ritual garb. I set the image upright on my altar with a candle and brazier, and gathered a vial of Helios oil made by one of my friends during our trance-possession experiments.

When we crossed over into the Hour of the Sun, I performed my usual frame ritual, then sat down to contemplate the image and perform the ritual.

I consecrated the image using PGM XXXVI 211-30 (Betz, p. 274):

Rejoice with me, you who are set over the east wind and the world, for whom all gods serve as bodyguard at your good hour and on your good day you who are the Good Daimon of the world, the crown of the inhabited world, you who rise from the abyss, you who each day rise a young man and set an old man
HARPENKNOUPHI BRINTANTENOPHRI BRISSKYLMAS
AROUR ZORBOROBA MESINTRIPHI NIPTOUMI KHMOUMMAOPHI
I beg you, Lord, do not allow me to be overthrown, to be plotted against, to receive dangerous drugs, to go into exile, to fall upon hard times.
Rather, I ask to obtain and receive from you life, health, reputation, wealth, influence, strength, success, charm, favor with all men and all women, victory over all men and all women. Yes, Lord,
ABLANATHANALBA AKRAMMAKHAMARI PEPHNA
PHOZA PHNEBENNOUNI NAAKHTHIP OUNORBA
Accomplish the matter which I want, by means of your power.

I repeated the incantation four times. The first time, I put incense on the charcoal and anointed myself with oil: hands, feet, and head. The second time, I suffumigated the image in the frankincense smoke. The third time I anointed the image with oil: first the sun, then the frame, then the moon, then the star, then the serpent, starting at the tip of her tail and working up to her face. The fourth time, I anointed both the image and myself with oil, again, and called upon the Sun to empower me and the image as the spell describes.

I completed the ritual by sitting and contemplating the image and basking in the power I had conjured. I was immediately filled with a strong sense of calm and vitality, and my partner reported that my energy felt improved. My Chnoubis signet, which had been sitting on a nearby table with my other jewelry but not specifically involved, felt particularly tingly when i put it on, after.

The PGM spell includes no timing; it just says “face the sun”. Based on my results so far, and my personal relationship with Solar powers, the ideal timing for me has been a Solar hour of Day on the day of the Sun, Mars, or Saturn. Because this, like Chnoubis, is obviously a Solar-cthonic image, I imagine people with a different relationship with the Sun than I have will get solid results from a Solar Hour of Night.

I think that I will want to repeat the rite for a few Sundays and see what manifests before calling it an unqualified success, but I am sufficiently pleased with the initial results to share the images and the ritual for you all to experiment with. My only complaint, so far, is that this spell-image combination does seem to exacerbate my tendency to overwork, and I have to be even more disciplined about clocking out at night and taking days off.

High resolution versions of these images can be found at my Patreon, where you will also find all my work before anyone else gets to see it, as well as things that I hold back from more public forums and all my other arts. If you like my work, but don’t like Patreon for whatever valid reason, you can also support me on ko-fi.

In witchcraft

Gnosis or Delusion (My Persistent Fear)

Satyr Magos15/04/2025Leave a comment

I have practiced magic for nearly three decades. I have been pouring out daily libations and burning offerings for my small, eccentric pantheon and my spirit court for four and a half years, now. I have been writing publicly about my rites and the experiences they have engendered since 2010. I am, at this point, a professional mystic as much as an artist of any stripe. I should be elated that when I sit in silence before my altar, sometimes I have visions.

But the thing that I have always feared most in life – more than pain, more than death, more than humiliation and betrayal – is being locked away in an asylum. (People keep telling me that’s a thing that doesn’t happen anymore. Somehow, that doesn’t help.) And so every vision I have, every divine epiphany, every moment of clairsentience, is followed immediately by fear and doubt.

Is it so strange that, after years of prayers and offerings – to say nothing of more vigorous invocations – the gods or their messengers might appear to me? Is it less mad to claim I was comforted by a messenger of Aphrodite than the goddess, herself? Why do those epiphanies seem more suspect than the spirit journeys that I used to write about regularly? Why are they harder to talk about than the visions of the cosmos I have been granted?

Some of it, I think, is the changing world. It’s a more hostile place, now, than when I started this blog. Some of it is just that I’m older, now, and more deeply wounded.

Grifters and con artists abound. I know, now, as I did not, ten and fifteen years ago, that many of the people claiming to be mystics and magicians and visionaries are liars and thieves. I know, now, how sincere seekers can be subjugated by cult leaders and other abusers.

Worse, I have seen magicians that I admired, whose work I have benefited from, whose work has become foundational to my own, crawl up their own asses to die. I have seen good teachers fall prey to prosperity gospels and other unjust theologies. I have seen others turn to fascism and white supremacy. I have seen friends and colleagues lose confidence in their works, doubt their insights, and retreat into mundane diversions and, ultimately, disappear from the public sphere. I have seen peers become convinced that the salvation of the world is their responsibility, alone; that the taboos and strictures the spirit world has applied to them must be obeyed by all. I have seen countless members of my community fall victim to conspiracy theories and taken in by cults. Any of them could have been me. It could still be me.

How do you discern between gnosis and hubris and delusion? How do you know which visions to share, and which are for you alone? More pointedly, how do I discern? How do I know?

I know, at least, that I am reporting my visions in good faith. I am not trying to start a cult, or grift anyone out of their life savings. All I want is to share what I’ve seen and done with my peers, to encourage them to share their own works and visions, that we can all benefit. (And, sure, sell some jewelry and some novels, but on the basis of their artistic merits not my spiritual authority.) But all anyone else has is my word.

I also know, as much as I seem to overshare, how very much I hold back. I have had experiences that made me doubt whether “reality” is even a thing that exists. I have had experiences that leave me shaking in fear that I have devoted the last thirty years to wallowing in my own madness, that I should be locked up for my own good and for the good of society.

I have seen and done things that cannot be explained by anything I’ve read, that fly in the face of the conclusions I’ve drawn from my other experiences. I have done things that people more experienced and respected than I am assure everyone are impossible. Conversely, things that should have worked didn’t. Magic works in practice, not in theory.

Some days, some years, I can sit comfortably with those dissonances.

Some days, some years, I can’t.

How much of what I have seen is real? How much is the product of madness, of drugs, of cruel trickster spirits and mortal charlatans? How much of what I’ve said is true? How much is the best approximation I can manage, an artist’s sincere attempt to convey the ineffable? How much is the rambling of a madman?

If I don’t know, how can you?

—–

I began writing this in September of 2023, after a particularly intense visionary experience in a season of intense visionary experiences, possibly the high point of my magical and mystical career to date. No more than a month later, I was plummeting into one of the deepest depressions that I can remember, lasting well into 2024.

I finished writing this in April of 2025, on the far side of that depression, following a wildly different series of visionary experiences. These more recent visions have been, on the one hand, much less intense than anything from the summer and fall of ’23; on the other hand, they have been significantly more actionable.

The question of “did i just imagine all of this” has haunted me from the very beginning, even as a teenage dabbler in the 1990s. Although there are days, weeks, even months where it weighs less heavily than others, I suspect that question will haunt me forever. As uncomfortable as that often is, I don’t know that it’s a wholly bad thing. Self-doubt can cripple us, yes, but it can also keep us honest.

The questions of what to share, and how, and when, will dog my steps for as long as I am participating in public Paganism. That won’t be forever: some day I’ll die or retire. In the meantime, though, I would rather grapple with these issues semi-publicly rather than present myself as some sort of infallible expert.

I am an artist, not an authority.

All things wax and wane. My madness and my magic are no exceptions. Lately, rather than the rise and the fall, I’ve been thinking on the turning points; the apex and the nadir. My practice and I, I think, are on the rise right now. That will not last forever. What was it about the autumn of 2023 that led me to crash out so hard? What was it about the last year that has made staying in the work despite that fall so much easier than some falls before?

I still have my doubts, my fears, my wounds. And yet, I persist. And, for the foreseeable future, I will continue to do so.

If I were writing a different article/essay/blog post/whatever, this would be the part where I tell you how you, too, can recover from depression and burnout; how you can overcome and confront your fears; how you can defeat the Dweller on the Threshold. I have no such wisdom in me, today. I know only that I have stumbled and carried on. You have, too, at some point. We will both do so again.

Finally, though the through line may not be clear to everyone, this post is very much of a piece with this one from last May.

In art, witchcraft

Picatrix Image of Mars According to Apollonius

Satyr Magos08/04/2025Leave a comment

Behold, another completed Picatrix image for your mystical contemplation and thaumaturgic application.

The image of Mars, according to the opinion of the wise Apollonius, is the shape of a crowned man holding an inscribed sword in his right hand. – Picatrix Book II, Chapter 10, Paragraph 19 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019)

I chose this image for Mars despite having already used it as the image for my Mars jewelry talismans because I felt like there was more for me to learn from it. For the sword’s inscription, I chose a seal of the archangel Kamael (I chose the version from The Magus because it was the first to fall to hand).

I have also, I think, finally decided on a size format for (most) forthcoming images: 2.75×4.75 inches, 600dpi, which – if you recognize them, will immediately give you a clue about at least one forthcoming application of these cards. That is, for the rest of us (I’ve looked it up, like, fifty fucking times, now), the dimensions of a “standard” tarot card. (I’ve seen too many tarot decks to name a standard without laughing; but that is the size of my magpie decks, which was the deciding factor for me.) With that decision made, I can now begin serious work on developing borders for these images and the cards they will eventually become. Once I’ve developed that border, I’ll go back and reformat and re-release my previous images.

A high resolution version of this image (and an alternate version with some lurid red) is available on my Patreon.

In art, witchcraft

Astrological Image: Jupiter Acording to Mercurius

Satyr Magos03/04/202503/04/2025Leave a comment

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.

In witchcraft

Saturday Uncrossing and Cursebreaker

Satyr Magos29/03/202521/03/2025Leave a comment

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.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

The Image of Saturn According to Other Sages

Satyr Magos01/03/202528/02/2025

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.

In art

Ritual Glam with Luxa Strata

Satyr Magos24/02/2025

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.

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.

Enjoy!

In art

Conjuration of AOS ZOS with Luxa Strata

Satyr Magos19/02/202520/02/2025

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.

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.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Working the Sorcery of Solomon: Using My First Pentacles

Satyr Magos03/02/202512/03/2025

[This is the fourth post in a series. Click here for the first.]

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.

So I’m going to end this post again recommending that you buy Sara Mastros’ book, The Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magician King, and that you take her class if you can. (Her main site is down for maintenance at the time of this writing, so that second link might be dead by the time you read this. If so, let me know?)

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Newsletters to Stay in Touch as I Abandon Meta Properties

Satyr Magos09/01/2025

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).