A few weeks ago, I had the money to buy a book I’ve been looking forward to since I first heard about some time last winter: Sara Mastros’ newest offering, The Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magcian King.
I have been circling Solomonic magic for a little more than a decade now, ever since I began my big deep-dive into the ceremonial side of the western magical tradition. While I have recently joked that it was the appeal Picatrix images that pulled me in other directions, and that’s true to a point, there were other factors, as well: the culture of grimoire purism that dominated a lot of the spaces I found; the explicit Christianity of most Solomonic magic sources; and the lack of quality modern language translations and guidebooks.
So, when Mastros announced her highly focused work on the pentacles, I was super excited. I was doubly excited to get my hands on it while it was actually still new and shiny. Very often I’m not able to buy books until they’ve been in circulation for long enough that there are more hot takes than legit reviews, and that takes a little bit of the fun out of things.
Mastros’ Sorcery of Solomon turned out to be exactly what I was hoping it to be: a work equally of scholarship and sorcery, with a clear grounding in both the source text and hands-on experience, clearly written in modern language with practical advise for the modern reader. It is written as a companion to, expansion on, and elucidation of the pentacles in Samuel Liddel Mathers’ edition of The Key of Solomon, and I’ll be getting my hands on the recent Peterson edition as soon as I can, but Mastros’ book functionally usurps that volume: providing everything that an intermediate magical practitioner might need to begin their work with Solomonic pentacles, with no need for previous experience in the Solomonic tradition.
My very first thought when I got my copy in the mail was, “shit, this is some nice paper”. I don’t know where Weiser’s paperbacks are on the grand scale of print quality, but it feels much nicer than a lot of books I’ve picked up over the last few years.
The book walks the reader through the process of making their own book of pentacles, a sort of personal grimoire that can then be used to perform magic through those pentacles, make pentacle talismans to carry or for others, and ideally learn to make new pentacles of their own. The book is made under the auspices of the spirit of Solomon, himself, and becomes a familiar spirit in its own right.
Each pentacle is reproduced in large, easy to read format, with gorgeous modernized artwork. Mastros discusses Mathers’ original pentacles, what she believes to be either errors or misguided choices, and her corrections and adaptations based on a greater understanding than Mathers’ of the larger talisman tradition and her own experiences. She explains the meaning, likely origin, and use of each element in each pentacle, and speaks briefly about her own experiences with each – those she has used extensively, and those she has disdained. (Unsurprisingly, she does not use the seventh pentacle of Saturn to cause earthquakes, nor does she use the sixth pentacle of the Moon to fuck with the rains.)
The material supplies needed to work this book are delightfully few and relatively inexpensive:
· A large sketchbook, the kind you will actually draw in not a fancy grimoire notebook you’ll be afraid to fuck up. You want this to be large enough to draw your initial pentacle seals at a scale large enough that anything you with to enchant as a talisman can be set within the seal.
· A pen with black ink. Mastros uses Sharpies. I’ll probably use a fancier drawing pen. (Drawing aids like a compass, protractor, and straight edge are also highly recommended.)
· A cloth big enough to wrap the book in when it is not in use. White silk is ideal, but not necessary.
· A blue ribbon long enough to tie the cloth closed.
· Tea light candles. Mastros advocates beeswax for the vibes, better smell, and shorter burning time than standard paraphin tealights.
· Frankincense. There is a more complicated incense recipe if you want it, but frankincense is fine.
· Consecrated oil. There is a fancy holy oil recipe if you want it, but olive oil is fine as long as you pray over it.
Having read the book, I have gone on to enroll in the companion class: a year-long guided walk through the book and its techniques. The next cohort doesn’t officially start for a couple months, so I have been blazing my way through the recordings of the currently-wrapping cohort’s classes while I gather supplies and wait my turn. I can already say that the class is absolutely worth the price. In addition to the benefits of any live course over solitary book study, Mastros’ teaching style is very hands on, and the course gets into a lot of granular, esoteric, and tangential material that couldn’t be squeezed into the book, itself. Also, she’s funny, and shares several of my hottest takes on the current state of scholarship and the magical community, which is super exciting.
I want to be clear: as excited as I am for the class, you can absolutely work straight from the Sorcery of Solomon book without it. I have chosen to enroll in the companion class for a few reasons: firstly, the way the opportunity came to me, it felt like the fulfillment of some of my community-seeking and right-place-right-time magic; secondly, I feel like the initiatory aspect of being taught legitimizes my access to the Solomonic current, generally, and the Hebrew-language pentacles, specifically; thirdly, all those god names are going to go tap-dancing over my biases and my trauma, and I feel like I’m much more likely to succeed in the work if I am doing it in community.
The paperback edition of Sorcery of Solomon clocks in at $20-25, depending on shipping, tax, and your retailer’s margins. Like Mastros, herself, I encourage you to buy from a local bookseller or from bookshop.org rather than supporting Amazon. The companion course is $777.
As I said above, I have not yet begun working the course or the book. Patreon supporters will absolutely get stories of my results; I don’t know yet how much I will end up saying in public.