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Do Magick Challenge: Meditative Acts: Day 1: Dionysos 1

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
Do Magick Challenge: Meditative Acts: Day 1: Dionysos 1

 

Re-Introduction:

Having lost a week to a hand injury, and a bit more time to playing catch up (plus some personal turmoil, just for spice), I actually considered backing out of this month’s challenge.  As you can see, I have perservered and finally begun

As you all may recall, one of the central tropes of my meditative acts is DIYing novena candles for each of the four gods I’ll be honoring.  Below are the four images I ultimately settled on.  An Attic black-figure, an Attic red-figure, a Roman tile, and a devotional image of my own.

From the moment I first set this course, I have been struggling to decide whether the ritual — the casting of the circle, the offerings, the prayers — counted as part of the 30 minutes of meditation.  Ultimately I decided that they did: the theme of the month’s challenge, after all, is “Meditative Acts“.  With that decision made at about 8.30 this evening, I finally began.

The Altar:

I finally began building the altar for my first week of prayer this past Friday, when I no longer needed the altar room for this past week’s photo shoot.  It’s fairly simple, at least to start.  Having met me, it’s likely to grow to overtake the main altar.  In the mean time, y’all should be proud of me that it’s not more over the top from the jump.

The Ritual: 

I washed my hands and face in preparation, then changed into the all-white costume I have been using intermittently for my esbat celebrations.  Cleansed and dressed, I cast a circle, conjuring each element by attunement.  At the last minute, I felt called to add my chiton and wear it so that it was draped over my head as well as around my body, as many pottery images indicate was done in some Classical rituals.  So prepared, I lit the charcoal and burned frankincense tears and poured the first libation, calling out “Io Dionysos!”  After that, I read the three Homeric Hymns to Dionysos aloud, pouring out and throwing back another libation after each hymn.  Once I was done with the  hymns, I poured and drank a second-to-last libations, and lit the first of four seven day candles that I prepared over the last week.

The Meditation:

Reading the hymns and making the offerings took about fifteen minutes, leaving me half of the allotted 30 to sit and listen.  The moment I sat down, I felt endued with power, as though I were doing magical ritual of an entirely different sort.  The sensation grew, quickly accompanied by a growing ringing in my ears, but never quite crossed the line into the sensation that Dionysos, Himself, was present.  I had a very brief vision of a paridisal forest I took to be Nysa, though, which … given my background in Lack Of Prayer is actually a pretty strong start.

Because I am terrible at meditation, I only made it about 11 minutes before I began to grow restless and impatient for the alarm.

Preliminary Thoughts:

Given the week/month/year I’ve just had, I feel good that I was able to sit down at all.  Given my lifetime of Not Praying, I feel pretty good about how that portion went as well.  Beyond that … well, frankly, this is just the beginning.

 

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Meditative Acts – Research 3: Forced Idleness

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

My original plan had been to begin my meditations Monday by making the first round of candles, which would be dedicated to Dionysos.  Unfortunately, Sunday night I cut my hand badly while doing dishes, and that plan was immediately scrapped.  I can’t make candles or build altars without reopening the wound at this stage.  Taking this as something of a sign, I spent yesterday coddling my hand, reading actual printed words, and living life unplugged from the internet.

I type this post, now, entirely left handed, still full of peace from my first day of real leisure since … I don’t remember when.  I spent all of yesterday reading, and half of today.  Depending on how quickly my hand heals, and how far behind I get as a result of this setback, it will be the 11th or the 18th before I start the Do Magick challenge.

Sitting still for a day felt so good, though, that I cant quite bring myself to be upset by this delay.  I think that my meditations will be improved by the slowdown.

In the meantime I will continue my research.  I’ve ploughed through Detienne and bookmarked both the Homeric and Orphic hymns, but Otto and Burkurt yet await.  And I still have a lot of art to dig up.

In art, witchcraft

Meditative Acts — Research #2: Candles

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

Aradia and I have been talking about making our own candles for a while now.  In particular, though not necessarily relevant to his conversation, we have some interesting ideas regarding Imbolc and Valentine’s Day and recycling candles to light new fires for the coming year.  So, when I started thinking about devotional meditations, in part inspired by folk saint rituals, it wasn’t much of a leap to DIYing the candles.

Candle making, at its basic, is simple.  You need wax, wicks, and a couple vessels.  A weight for the bottom of the wick is handy.  So’s a clip to hold the wick still while you pour the wax.  You need one vessel to melt the wax in, and another to pour the wax into.  You can add dies, scents, glitter, and a variety of other things to make end result prettier, the process more involved.  And I may do that as I get down the “don’t make a mess” part.

The wax and wicks arrived a couple weeks ago.  In my first test pour I discovered that while the vessels I have to pour the wax into – reused novena candle containers – work just fine, the vessel I have to melt the wax in and pour the wax from – a Pyrex measuring cup – is not quite as large as I need.  The larger wax melting vessel should arrive in the mail today, along with some wick clips just to make life a little easier.

When the wax has cooled, I’ll stick each candle with an image of the divinity to whom it’s being dedicated.  It should surprise y’all none that between my own art and what I’ve found on the internet, I have a lot of devotional to bring to the occasion.

I’m still trying to decide, from a ritual standpoint, whether it’s better to make the candles in advance and come into each week prepared, or to make making the candles the core of the ritual for the first night of each week.  From a logistics standpoint, obviously, it’s easier to make them in advance.  And the candle making doesn’t fit really well into the “meditative acts” frame of this months’ challenge.  I suddenly remember, though, that 4 weeks =/= 30 days.  There’s room for a prologue and an epilogue.  That day at the beginning gives me time to make a lot of candles and keep to framework I’ve already established.

In witchcraft

Meditative Acts – Research #1: Contemplation

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I have known since September that I wanted to participate in the December Do Magick Challenge.  I know that meditation is one of my greatest weaknesses.  When the full details of the challenge were dropped at the beginning of November, it did not take long for me to settle on the nature of the meditation that I wanted to do.

As I discussed in my previous post, I don’t have much in the way of personal history with prayer.  So it took me a while to figure out what that aspect of it might look like.  In discussing the matter with Aradia, she pointed out that I had been doing weekly-plus offering rituals to the land spirits at the Sunrise Temple and, “What do you think that was?”

Oh.  Yeah.  Duh.

Over the  course of November I also had the opportunity to listen to a couple people talk about their rituals involving folk saints — inevitably, Santa Muerte in particular.  Those rituals tend to revolve around seven day / novena candles.  Now, I’ve spent some time looking for prayer candles with images of my gods.  They’re available, but … wow$er.  I can do that shit myself.  As an added bonus, doing it myself adds significance to the candle.  Plus Aradia and I have been talking about making our own candles for quite some time, anyway.

So, yeah.  That.

Inevitably, given two of the gods I have chosen – Dionysos, Rhea – there will be some pouring of wine.  I can’t decide if Lucifer or Baphomet would prefer coffee … or whiskey.  Whichever way that lands, there will be libations across the board.

Between these three points — Jason Miller’s Rite of General Offering; hand-made novena candles; libations — I think I have the basis of a solid ritual.  I just need to work out the details.

In witchcraft

Do Magick Challenge: Meditative Acts – Declaration of Intent

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Sitting still is a challenge.  I’m a pacer, a fidgeter.  I tap.  I draw.  I stim.  Stillness makes my skin itch.  My mind whirls in spirals of rage and anxiety.  When I sit down to write, I have to have music or movies going in the background to occupy my monkey brain.  For September’s challenge, I set myself to meditating 30 minutes a day by the end … I didn’t make it.  I capped out at 15, though my previous practice had made it as high as 20.

Prayer is alien.  I was raised with a television sort of Christianity, where prayer was like a desperate bargain, or the sort of thing that puts the “psycho” in psychodrama.  It was an identity marker with no action – as a child, no one I knew personally went to church; as I grew older, the churchgoers I met did not obey they teachings.  My pursuit of magic began in rebellion against that vision of Christianity, of any conception of god or gods which was compatible with such hypocrisy and inaction.  When I eventually began to hear the call of the gods, I had no framework from which to begin that exploration, no context with which to process the experiences I had in seeking them.

For the December challenge, I will be confronting those issues together.  I will be spending the 30 minutes of daily meditation in devotional prayer. I will light a candle, burn incense, pour libations, and say a prayer (or three).  Then I will sit quietly and listen.

As I approach December, I am going back to the Classical Studies section of my research library.  I am beginning by re-reading Dionysos at Large, by Marcel Detienne and Dionysus: Myth and Cult by Walter F Otto.  (Note that both these books have translators.  What is it the Anglophone world has against good Dionysiac research?)  Burkert’s Greek Religion will also feature prominently.  I will post some results from that research in the coming days.

Week 1 – Dionysos, Bakchos, Zagreus, Iachos, Eleutherion

My first love among gods, I literally wrote my undergraduate thesis on Dionysos.  He was there for me at my initiation, and has blessed my drinking and my brewing in abundance.  I have found solace in him when madness took me, his presence grounding me when I was adrift.

And yet, for all that, I have too often felt that he was … aloof from me.  I have never felt the ecstasy that so many feel in his worship.  And this saddens me.  So I will begin my month of devotional meditation with the god who convinced me that gods were cool.  I will devote the week to Dionysos.

I will read ancient hymns.  I will read modern hymns.  I will drink wine.  I will breathe frankincense and myrrh.  And I will sit.  And I will listen.

Week 2 – Baphomet Thanateros

I have been drawn to the image of Baphomet since very early in my magical practice.  The first magical book I ever bought was Eliphas Levi’s Transcendental Magic, with his iconic image of Baphomet on the cover and frontspiece.  I found him in occult-themed art on the internet, was drawn to the implicit bisexuality of his hermaphroditism.  I met him again, more formally, when I began studying Chaos Magick and performed the Rite of Chaos B.  He calls to me.  Sometimes I know how to answer.

It’s worth noting that I say “he” as a matter of grammatical convenience.  I see myself in Baphomet: a combination of genders and a rejection of them.  He.  She.  Xie.  All of the above and none of the above.

As far as research for this section goes, I don’t know what there is to be done in that direction, really.  Baphomet is … sort of a new god.  Half-formed.  Or perhaps re-emerging with a new face and name.  I will be digging up modern prayers to him, of course, including my own.  And art.

I will begin my devotions by returning to the Mass of Chaos B, re-dedicating the mask that has served as his idol on my alter, and awakening the statue I have just purchased.  Then I will continue with devotional candles and libations and fumigations.  And listening.  So much listening.

Week 3 – Whoever is calling me from that Luciferian current

Like most of us who got our start in eclectic Wicca, I swallowed a double dose of respectability politics and was always leery of anything that smacked of Satanism.  And yet … sometimes I hear that call.  One year, while I was away at college and keeping the Sunrise Temple, I got a song stuck in my head.  That doesn’t happen to me.  Except there it was, for a fucking month.

The day I acknowledged that it was Someone calling to me, the song went away.

The call began again when I returned to Kansas City.  In particular, it returned when I heard Peter Grey speak of Lucifer Princeps on the Rune Soup podcast.  It was slow building, at first, but peaked in July.  I’ve wanted to answer the call, I’ve promised myself and the world that I would … but I haven’t really known how.

In all honesty, I don’t know who, exactly, it is that’s calling me.  I’m hoping that if I sit still and listen, they’ll let me know.  Is it that Lucifer, arch nemesis of That One God?  Is it Malek Taus, as suggested by a particular divination earlier this year?  Is it some underlying emanation of the Promethean current that runs between them?  Some other figure I cannot even name?

This section will be the hardest to research.  How do you even start?  I will be acquiring Lucifer Princeps.  A friend has offered me her copy of Evolutionary Witchcraft, though we have not managed to connect since then.

Week 4 – She Below

The first deity I made contact with was not one I went looking for.  That encounter, and those that have followed, have haunted me at times.  Rhea, along with Dionysus, made her presence known at my initiation.  I have kept her on my altar for years, I have attempted to recruit for her.  But I have never … followed through the way I should have.

Above and beyond the simple need to continue the work, there is also the lingering damage done to me by the ceremonial experiment.  My Gnostic experiments are fruitful, and valuable, but they remain tied to the same reified astrotheology that burned me out.  I can’t just live in my head and in the Void.

Witchcraft is on the earth, of the earth, and below the earth.  I need the earth.  I need to stay grounded, and visceral, and alive.  I need that first goddess who reached out to me from Below.

The research for this oddly both among the most and least difficult.  Little is known about her cult, save for the incarnation favored by the Roman Imperial elite.  Much of what is known is contaminated by 19th century archaeology.  At the same time, though, there are through lines between the cult practices of the Theoi, and Dionysus is her initiate … I cannot imagine that she will refuse the rites he accepts.

I will light candles.  I will pour libations.  I will burn offerings.  I will read hymns both ancient and modern.  And I will sit.  And I will listen.

 

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Season of Contemplation

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The final months of the year are always a period of deep contemplation for me.  Samhain, Yule, New Years.  My birthday and my partner’s, and our anniversary.  Five different calendars turn over from 31 October to 1 January, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the navel-gazing that goes with that.  This year, even more than most, I have a lot to contemplate.

Usually, I begin the season with a sort of revel: dressing up for days leading up to Halloween, each costume more outrageous than the last, and greeting each night with as much wine and ecstacy as I can muster.  I have pushed the boundaries of dress codes at my places of employment, unnerved the casual libertines of a residential liberal arts college, been too weird for the weirdest town in Kansas.  I have gone out into the world to be seen, to confront the squares with the life they could have if only they’d grow a soul and a spine.

This morning, however, I woke in a mental place of quiet.  I have no revel in me, today.  My thoughts circle on who I am and what I want.  I find that my answers do not come as readily as they have in the past.

Mine is not a simple life.  Much of that is by choice, but at the core it’s also my nature.  I am not now, nor ever have I been, nor ever shall I be a “get-along, go-along” kind of person.  I have always believed in things that others do not; always wanted things that were not what was prescribed for me.  I have always not pursued those desires – all other arguments aside, there are only so many hours in the day – but I have always stood up for what I believe in the face of not just convention, but actual authority.

This year has seen a great deal of both those things.  The one has left me blessed, surrounded by more love and stronger community than in many years.  The other has left me adrift as certain ambitions were broken on the rocks of my ideals, shattered by my refusal to be expedient with my ethics.

This year, I have been victorious and beloved.  This year, I have been disappointed and betrayed.  Certain magical operations have, all rather suddenly and together, born fruit: I feel like there is more of me than there has been in years, and that I can see more clearly than I have since the Sunrise Temple … or possibly even Lawrence.  At the same time, though, I feel like the world is murkier by the day, and that even more of me isn’t enough for the work at hand.

The last year has seen the rise of a new autocratic strain in US politics, and a savage resurgence of white supremacy in both the US body politic at large and the KC neo-Pagan community in particular.  Homophobia and heteronormativity are coming back like a tide, and allies are mistaking the most banal lip service for real support.

In this moment, I’m feeling mostly good.  In an hour that might change.  Looking back over the last year, I’m really not certain I can say that there hasn’t been more down than up.  So begins the season of contemplation.

 

In witchcraft

Do Magick Challenge: Beginner’s Mind Master Post

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In the Beginning

I have intended to participate in Andrieh Vittimus’ Do Magick Challenge for some time.  My tendency to lose months at a time has resulted in me checking the web page days into each challenge and having missed the research period several times, now.  Including this month, actually, but Jason and Andrieh made it clear on the podcast that one could join at any time this month.  And so I did, posting my Statement of Intent on the second day of September and diving in head first.  I set myself a number of goals: daily meditation; magickal art three days a week; conjuring the Spirit Bune; and, finally and most importantly, the rediscovery of my sense of magical play.

Week One

On the first week, I opened strong.  On Day One, I sat down to meditate for the first time in weeks — it had been perhaps months, actually, since I last mediated outside the Esbat circle.  On Day Two I performed Andrieh’s Baphomet ritual, and then confronted the reality that the mundane world changes at its own pace.  On Day Three I made my first serious efforts at my goal to do more magical art, devoting hours to my Mask of Venus, then spent the evening in Esbat rituals attempting to rid myself of baleful influences.  On Day Four I did more magical art — working on both the Venus Mask and a number of apotropaic jewelry designs — and made myself a charm against the evil eye.  On Day Five I continued my mask-making and escalated my mediation practice.  On Days Six and Seven I coasted, only meditating, but I began to notice changes in my dreaming.  Additionally, on Day Seven Aradia began joining me for meditation.

Despite resting on my laurels the last two days, I feel like the first week was a success.  I did a lot of magic and a lot of art.  Coming from practically no meditation to meditating daily is an intense lifestyle change.  The depression and anxiety that plagued me before beginning the project did not, of course, vanish immediately.  In fact — an upside to journaling, I guess — they initially got worse.

Week Two

In the second week, Aradia and I added planetary invocations to our daily work, immediately before nightly meditations.  Days Eight, Nine, and Ten were slow days for most of my goals, but I continued to escalate my meditation times slowly and escalated the planetary magic from previous versions of our ritual by reading both the Thomas Tayor and Apostolos Athanassakis translations.  On Day Eleven I returned to my masks, and did some divination to help me decide how I wished to approach the spirit Bune, and on Day Twelve I went through with that conjuration.  Day Thirteen was meditation only and on Day Fourteen I strung myself a necklace for my Baphomet pendant but missed my daily meditation.

In this second week I continued to increase my daily meditation time and, in doing so, I began discerning changes in my energetic body.  I also particularly struggled to balance my mundane and magical lives.  I made my three days of magical arts and crafts, and achieved my goal of conjuring the Goetic spirit Bune, but failed at my goal of daily meditation.

 

Week Three

In the third week, my physical health failed me.  Day Fifteen was exhausting, and I barely managed my daily routine.  On Day Sixteen I turned a museum trip with my mother into a magical experiment, examining mummies with a magical eye, then collapsed onto the couch for the next two days (17, 18), though I was able to resume meditation and planetary rituals on Day Eighteen.  On Day Nineteen, I was feeling mostly better and went through with teaching a class on using the Classical Planets as a source of power for freeform energywork.  On Day Twenty I collapsed again, sicker than I had been yet; I went into work then needed someone else to drive me home.  On Day Twenty One I called in sick and spent the day on my couch, working on magical jewelry designs.

I managed only one day of magical art and missed a second day of meditation.

 

Week Four

I did my best to come back strong in week four, but my total collapse in week three left both me and my house in serious disarray.  It was struggle to resume even daily planetary rituals and meditation, let alone my loftier goals.  In retrospect, I pushed myself too hard, because I wasn’t really fully myself again until Day 28.

On Day Twenty Two I managed 22 minutes of meditation.  This would prove to be the peak.  It was also the second day in a row when I experienced intense sensory non-sequiturs.  See the daily records for details.  On Day Twenty Three I experimented with adding the Qabalistic cross and pentagram banishing to my daily rituals.  On Day Twenty Four I began designing and constructing a new set of house wards.  That night I gave up on my goal of escalating to 30 minutes of meditation by the end of the month and began setting my timer for 15 minutes.  On Day Twenty Five I decided to fumigate the house to clear out any lingering bad vibes.  On Day Twenty Six I meditated only, and on Day Twenty Seven I managed only my planetary ritual and meditation.  On Day Twenty Eight I succeeded in tracing an amulet gifted to me to a particular grimoire,

Overall, in that week I succeeded only at meditating daily.

Denouement

On Days Twenty Nine and Thirty, I concluded my Beginner’s Mind experiment by erecting the first two layers of my new household protective wards, invoking the Sun and Moon by Taylor’s Orphic Hymns and empowering the talismans with Picatrix invocations.  I meditated fifteen minutes each night.

In theory, I wanted to end the month of magic with a bang.  In the moment, though, I was just glad to have made it through.

In Conclusion

At the beginning of September, I chose a particular (broad) interperetation of the Beginner’s Mind challenge.  Where others cracked open grimoires,  or sought to master various forms of divination, I sought to reclaim a portion of my own mind.  Over the course of several previous magical experiments and programs, I have painted myself into various corners.  I miss the enthusiasm with which I once pursued and practiced the magical arts.  To that end, as detailed above, I set myself a number of smaller challenges.

I challenged myself to meditate daily, starting at five minutes and escalating to thirty.  I … mostly succeeded.  I meditated 28/30 days.  One day I missed in favor of a hot date.  One day I missed because I was sick as fuck.  I ultimately capped out at 22 minutes of meditation, then settled for a more achievable goal of 15 minutes.

I challenged myself to work on magical art three days a week.  I succeeded at that for the first two weeks, but failed abominably in the second two.

I challenged myself to conjure the spirit Bune.  I did so.  That conjuration has yet to receive results, but so far the spirit contact has proved positive and potentially fruitful.

I challenged myself to follow my magical whims.  They proved less, well, whimsical than I had imagined they might, but overwhelmingly succeeded in this.  I can recall only one whim I did not follow through on, and that was because the particular school of thought I wished to apply to a situation proved inapplicable in that moment, and then I forgot about it before the opportune moment arose.

All this with the ultimate goal of reclaiming my magical practice.  Of finding the fun back.  In that, I think, I succeeded.  I no longer feel so constrained by the schools of thought I have studied.  I feel like my magic is my own again.  And I’m excited to move forward with my art and experiments.

I am also reminded very viscerally of the value of daily meditation.  At the beginning of September, I was a depressed and anxious mess, despite how objectively awesome my life is.  During the first week, perhaps slowing down to confront those feelings, I actually fell down a little further.  In the weeks since, however, despite the physical illness I suffered in week three, I’m feeling incredibly better emotionally.  We can see some evidence of this, in fact, in this and my previous blog post.  I’m actually writing again, something I hadn’t done in a while.

The Do Magick Challenge came with its own requirements, chief among them daily public journaling.  The value of that has been demonstrated what I should have already known, which is the value of such journaling.   I don’t wish to spam my followers (or continue the particular self-censorship public journaling requires), so I must now challenge myself to do one of the important sorcerer’s tasks I have never quite managed before.

And with all this written up, I now look forward to the next Do Magick Challenge.  I’ll try not to be a stranger here in the interim.

In witchcraft

Dabbling in Deomonolatry – Preliminary thoughts

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I’ve spoken before on how, in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I began my magical career, conjuring spirits in any way was considered deeply taboo.  Nothing was more taboo than the point where the lingering echoes of the Satanic panic overlapped with Neo-Pagan respectability politics: Crowley’s Goetia(1) and the summoning of demons.  I, of course, confronted this taboo through juvenile art (tragically no longer extant), but I also worked very, very hard to enforce it in the magical circles in which I socialized.

So when Andrieh Vitimus proposed Beginner’s Mind as the theme of this past month’s Do Magick Challenge, the Goetia was one of the first things to come to mind.  I briefly considered devoting the whole month to the grimoire, but given that I was dragging myself out of a deep depression during which I had done relatively little magic, had skipped the research month because where the fuck did August go, anyway?, and would be diving in to the challenge two days late … Yeah.  That just seemed like a bad idea.  Instead I set my sights lower: to conjure a single spirit from the grimoire.  I, perhaps inevitably, chose Bune.  I would conjure him to bring me riches.  On a whim, having made the decision, I engraved his seal in brass.

In a sense, then, my first two weeks of the challenge were spent in preparation for that ritual.  In addition to getting my aura back into fighting shape, I needed to decide which approach to take in the conjuration.  I boiled my potentially unlimited options down to three: to perform the operation as described in the Goetia; to perform an alternate Bune ritual presented by Jason Miller(2); or to perform a ritual of my own design(3).  I turned to divination to help make the decision.  Drawing a card for each of the options, I got XIII Death, 0 The Fool, and 3 Disks “Work” respectively.  I interpreted this to mean that the Miller rite would be my best place to start, that the work would continue freestyle, and that I would eventually conclude with the Legemeton ritual.

On Day 12 of the challenge, at the Day and Hour of Jupiter, I conjured the spirit of Bune using Miller’s rite.  The ritual was very bare bones, so I made a few aesthetic alterations to account for the layout of my temple space — I made and donned the paper talisman of Bune as Miller described, and set the brass talisman in my triangle along with the obsidian sphere I use as a focus in almost all of my rituals.  I then performed the rite as Miller described, and the ritual worked as promised.

The spirit’s appearance was faint, but discernable; although I did not perceive him immediately, he made his presence known before I repeated the call.  I made my request of Bune – a sum of money from a certain source and within a certain time frame – and he (I believe) acquiesced.  I dismissed him and my circle.  I put away the brass seal in the box I bought for it.  I went about my day, flush with the afterglow of successful magic.

On Day 28, Bune appeared to me during my nightly meditations.  He informed me that by putting the brass seal in its box, I had limited his ability to act.  To quote my original notes:

He said that I had left his seal in a box too long to accomplish the task I had asked of him.  In order to procure my cash, he said, he needed his seal placed on my Jupiter altar and a candle lit for him.  I considered saying no, but part of the premise of the Miller invocation I had originally chosen is that you are building a cooperative relationship with the spirits, and that request is well within the boundaries of reasonable established by my other spirit-work.  I assented, and when I was done with my meditation I moved his seal and lit the candle as promised.  As an act of good faith, tomorrow I will put in the order for the copper seal I promised him upon his success.

I have since made good on those promises: the seal has been moved to my Jupiterian money altar, not one but two candles have been lit for him, and the copper seal has been ordered.  We’ll see how things come and go.

1 – Crowley, Aleister, and Hymenaeus Beta, eds. The Goetia: the lesser key of Solomon the King: Lemegeton–Clavicula Salomonis Regis, book one. Translated by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. 2nd ed. York Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, 1997. It should, I hope, go without saying that the volume is Crowley’s more by reputation than by fact.

2 – Miller, Jason. The Sorcerer’s Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magick. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books, 2009.  Pages 139-142.

3 – Such a ritual would have probably been based on the conjuration circle shown to me by the spirits of Saturn.  I may yet perform it anyway.

In witchcraft

Purification Ritual Draft

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Last October I wrote a purification ritual in anticipation of Samhain rites and led it at the October Spirit Circle.  The original ritual was set up with participants encircling a raised altar.  The initial results were positive, but not really in line with the amount of effort it took to put on the ritual.  The following week, I adapted the ritual for an outdoor setting, encircling a bonfire.  The participants moved in and out of the center, each taking their turn in contemplation at each of the four elemental stations.  Participants were deeply moved, and the energetic results were spectacular.  Yesterday, I adapted the ritual for a smaller, more intimate indoor setting.

The ritual went smoothly, and all participants reported a feeling of weight being lifted from them.  I, myself, even as the facilitator of the ritual, felt strong effects in the moment.  After the ritual, I was overcome by a deepening sense of calm.  I slept well for the first time in weeks.  I felt fantastic in the morning, which is something that almost never happens.

I think it’s safe to say that the ritual is ready for wider testing.

Clever readers will recognize elements from a variety of sources.  The altar construction and layout has its roots in eclectic Wicca.  The blessings of the elemental components are adapted from Agrippa via Rufus Opus.  The magical Names and barbarous words are drawn from the Stele of Jeu.  The concluding meditation on the Light is drawn from Thelema and modern Gnosticism.  The decision to mix all these things together, of course, is rooted in my study of chaos magick.

Please check out the ritual behind the cut.

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Beginner’s Mind

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This month’s Do Magick challenge is the beginner’s mind.

For this challenge, you are to work with a new system, set of techniques, or use any new experience or hobby to force yourself into the beginner’s mind and use it.  Get excited about your magic again. Ideally you would use the new techniques or paradigm does as often as possible in the 30 days.

What, though, is the beginner’s mind?  What I hear in Andrieh’s choice of words and suggested activities is an attempt to return to a state Tarot describes as The Fool: curiosity in the face of the unknown, courage uninhibited by past failures or an overabundance of knowledge.

But my beginner’s mind was already full of fear.  I owned Crowley’s Goetia, but I was afraid to conjure spirits.  I had an emerging talent for clairsentience that outstripped my friends’ empathy or divination by hilarious degrees, but I was afraid of the things that I could know.  I got high weirdness effects out of goddamn Tarot readings, but never pursued them for fear of monsters.  I had an embarrassment of riches and did fuck all with it.  I had no hesitation to try things that no one else had ever heard of before, but staples of magical practice … well, besides Tarot, if it didn’t scare me too much to try it, then it was passé.

There are things, though, that I do miss about my beginners mind.  I miss how relatively few preconceived notions I had cluttering up my brain, leaving me free to invent forms of energy manipulation that I have yet to see in print and to perceive spirits and worlds with a clarity I recall now like a dream.  My home town was mine, and I could feel the pulse and flow of its life; synchronicity put me in the right place at the right time with a regularity that made it seem mundane until it stopped happening when I moved away.  Magic, in every instance but the very most terrifying in-my-own-home-apparitions,

Finding my way into this month’s Do Magick Challenge will be a bit of a challenge in and of itself: as a voracious reader, a giant art nerd, and a witch with twenty-one years of magical experience,  there is nothing left magically or artistically (which I currently know exists) that I have not put at least three months study or experimentation into already.  That’s hardly expertise, but neither does it leave much room for that uncluttered “beginner’s mind” we’re speaking of.

I’m late to the game, because I lost control of my life, but I’m going to play along at home anyway because … well, frankly, I need to.  I need to find back that uncluttered curiosity, that sense of play.  To do so, I will set myself several goals:

  • I will meditate daily.  I will begin at five minutes daily, escalating over the course of the month until I am meditating 30 minutes daily.
  • I will spend three days a week engaged in some sort of magical arts and crafts for at least twenty minutes each of those days.  Although I hope to produce many magical talismans and images over the course of the month, in particular I aim to finish my Mask of Venus and produce a photographic version of the Image of Venus as described in the Picatrix. (Anyone want to model for that one for me?)
  • I will conjure the spirit Bune to bring me riches.  In doing so, I will face my first great magical fear — the conjuring of demons — and make my first practical foray into the last major area of magic which I have studied but not practiced.  Goetia here I come.
  • Most importantly, I will rediscover my sense of magical play.  I will achieve this through magical art on the one hand, but also by giving in to every magical impulse that I possibly can over the course of the next thirty days. Decide I want something?  Make and fire a sigil on the spot.  Feel like electrocharging my lover with the spirit of Venus?  Hell to the yeah (as long as she, they, or he think it sounds like fun).  Has it come time to curse those bastards?  Let’s do it.  This building feels like it needs a little Lunar bombardment?  Let’s do some energy and breathwork and make everybody purple for the day.

This is me throwing my hat into the ring.

Today’s magical impulse coincides with magical art and the conjuration of Bune: while at work, I made myself a brass talisman featuring his seal.  Not fancy, just a hand-cut brass disk engraved using a ball but, but it’ll do the trick.  Now, let’s go meditate.