Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

In witchcraft

My Chaos Altar and Alchemy Lab

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Coming back to the Sunrise Temple with some new plans, I’ve done a bit of rennovation.  Specifically I’ve rebuilt and organized my secondary altars.  It’s a little silly but I’m kinda proud of them.

THE CHAOS ALTAR

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Featuring my mask dedicated to Baphomet.  To the left is a paper skull representing Thatatos, and to the right a glass vial for Eros, to be filled with Venus oil once I’ve perfected a blend.  And, of course, my first Chaosphere: hand drawn with a pencil, compass, and ruler, then inked with a variety of pens.  It’s got a nice kick already.

THE ALCHEMY LAB

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Yes, it’s a glorified spice cabinet.  It’s even right over my stove.  The bottom shelf are the things that might actually go into food.  The next are teas and things that may be brewed as tea.  The third shelf are things that can’t, shouldn’t, or (for whatever reason) won’t be ingested, and the high shelf if full of empty bottles waiting to be filled with fun things.

In witchcraft

Sunrise Temple Altar Rebuilt

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Rebuilding the altar wasn’t quite the first thing I did upon returning to Sunrise, Indiana, but it was close.  I have been tinkering with it a little every day, but I think I am mostly done.

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The uppermost portions are little changed.  The left side contains my idols of Dionysus and Hephaestus; the right side has my shrines to Rhea and Athena.  The center is currently a collection of my personal talismans and artifacts of power, waiting to be remade into a seasonal altar.  Behind it all sits a mirror, in which reflect my library, textbooks, and an image of Dionysus which I cannot fit on the altar itself.  The reflections were unplanned, but work beautifully: my books are every bit as much a part of my life as my gods.

The level below has been changed significantly.  While Sue and my vision mask still reside there, the have both been moved, and now share space with images of and offering bowls for my Natal Genius and Demon.  Those shelves also bear representations of the planetary powers: the “masculine” of the left; the “feminine” on the right.

The two double bookshelves on either side of the table contain various magical experiments.  Going counter clockwise from the upper left: my various active talismans and sigils; my house wards; my safe travel spell, money-for-Greece spell, and anti-fertility charms; and a collection of talismans of people and places close to me.  In the middle are my “God” and “Goddess” statues beneath a miniature cosmology.

The flat surface of the table is, finally, pure workbench.  My Triangle of the Art holds the place of honor at the center of my elemental symbols.  To the right sit my ritual knife, my talisman of the Beneficial Sign, my brazier, and the coffee I just offered to all my household spirits.  To the left are my copper ring and bracelet that I use when channeling forces, my “bolean” and my cauldron.

Misclaneous tools and projects hide below.  My wands are visible in the corner on the left.

In scholarship

The Ceremonial Experiment In Summation

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I know that my year of studying ceremonial magic (particularly of the Golden Dawn and grimoire traditions) has been a whirlwind tour at best.  How can one cover, in a year, the variations and culminations of two thousand (or more, depending on where you start counting) years of magical tradition and experimentation?  At times I have felt like a child playing with forces I can barely comprehend.

Fuck: the fact of the matter is that I am such a child.  We all are.  I think that the best many of us—particularly those of us with families, jobs, and other “worldly” obligations—can ever dream of achieving is adolescence.  Still, though, if I sit down and enumerate (as I did a bit in my previous posts on the subject) the things I’ve accomplished, it turns out that I’ve made respectable inroads.

In this final post on the subject I want to talk about the resources I accessed in order to make those inroads.  It would have been impossible for me if I weren’t in college, for one: my access to top-notch internet; the moments of down time between classes that were too long to waste but too short to do any real homework; the intellectual ambiance (so radically different from the outside world) that treats spending weeks at a stretch with your nose in obscure data as healthy behavior rather than as dysfunctional.  There’s also the thing about my relative economic privilege which has allowed me to amass (and hoard) my library over the last decade and a half.

Over the course of this project, in approximate chronological order (with some considerations for ease of citation [and comments]) I have read:

Du Quette, Lon Milo.  Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford: Dilettante’s Guie to What You Do and Do Not Need to Know to Become a Qabalist.  San Francisco: Weiser, 2001.  [Gave me the courage to really dig into this project.]

–.  Low Magick.    Woodburry, MN:  Llwellen, 2011.

Penczak, Christopher. Temple of High Witchcraft. Woodburry, MN: Llwellen, 2007. [Solid at first glance, but structurally unsound: lessons begin and end but don’t middle.]

Crowley, Aleister.  Moonchild.

–.  Book of Thoth.  (*)

–.  Book Four.  (*)

Fortune, Dion.  Sea Priestess.

–.  Moon Magick.  York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, 1978.

Kraig, Donald Michael. Modern Magick.  St. Paul, MN: Llwellyn, 1997. (*)  [I see that there’s a new edition out, but it looks hardcore Llwellenized.  Does anyone know if it’s been nerfed as bad as it appears, or if it’s actually still solid?)]

Turner, Robert.  Trans.  Arbatel of Magic

Frater Barrabbas. Mastering the Art of Ritual Magick Volume One: Foundation.  Stafford England: Megalithica Books,2008 (*)  [Explain to me again why people take this guy seriously?]

Agrippa, Cornelius.  Three Books of Occult Philosophy. (*)

Trithemius, Johannes. The  Art of Drawing Spirits into Crystals.  (*)  [So … is he a cryptographer or a magician?  Can someone more expert in these fields help me with this?]

Betz, Hans Deiter (ed.).  The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells.  (*) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.  [I wish I had the brazen gonads needed to do half the magic in this book.]

Warnock, Christopher (trans.). Picatrix. (*) [Working with excerpts provided on his web page and via the Spiritus Mundi group.]

Greer, Mary K. Women of the Golden Dawn: Priestesses and Rebels. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1995.  [Brilliant.  You should read it.]

Books I didn’t make it all the way through are marked with an asterisk(*).  Yes, there’s some novels on there.  I apologize for those citations which are incomplete, especially to the owners of those works, I do not have the print volumes on hand for all the relevant publication data.

And, last but not least, I have been hip-deep in the blogosphere.  Rufus Opus at Head for the Red and Polyphanes the Digital Ambler have provided me with a great deal of information on Hermeticism.  The former operates in a decidedly Christian tradition, while the latter is somewhat more eclectic, and between the two I’ve really been able to get a better view of the mechanics behind the symbolism and ideologies.  Also Aaron Leitch of Annael, who provided me a view of the (sane quarters of the) modern Golden Dawn, a recipe for Abramelin oil (and a process for extracting essential oils in general, which has been great fun), and a few other things.  I should also point to Skyllaros of the Crossroads Companion, because he’s awesome and his work is more accessible to me than that of many other hermetic magicians, but I only discovered him late in the game.

Deserving of special attention and thanks is one mister Jack Faust, of Dionysian Atavism, who has helped me contextualize a lot of these ideas with his very post-modern thoughts on the subject, backed by wonderfully hard archaic sources.  He also gave me a number of personal pointers over email and on G+, for which I am extremely grateful.

Thank you, all of you, for sharing your knowledge and experiences with me.

In witchcraft

Talisman for the Solar Election

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
Sun Pillar
Sun Pillar (Photo credit: tomhe)

Dawn yesterday was officially at 6:12am.  I was (am) staying at a friend’s house in St.Louis, spending my last weekend with Aradia partying in the city we both loved (but not at the same time) with old friends before I make the second half of the trek from KC to back the Sunrise Temple for the semester.

My alarm was set for 5:50.  I woke at 5:25.  I tried to go back to sleep, but all I could think about was the Solar election and the morning’s coming ritual.  I did it over and over again in my head.  I had forgotten to prep my sigils, but the glyph I’ve used for the Jupiter, Mercury, and Venus talismans rose from the depths of my brain as I lay there, waiting for the alarm: “Mine is the Favor of Kings.”

Finally, the alarm went off.  I woke Aradia and gathered everything I would need, laying things out in Aurora’s altar room.  We cast our circle a few minutes before the Hour of the Sun began officially.  I ground my frankincense and myrrh; we scribed our names inside the paper talismans that I had printed during the Hour of the Sun on Friday night, knowing I wouldn’t have access to a printer on the road, and assembled the component parts.  The front is an image provided by Christopher Warnock to the Spiritus Mundi group; the back bears my Glyph of the Moon and the Agrippan Characters of the Sun; sealed in between is the blend of frankincense and myrrh.  All three talismans assembled (one each for myself, Aurora, and Aradia), and each associated with a piece of amber jewelry, I placed them in the middle of my Triangle of Art with a candle lit over the glyph of the Sun.

I incanted the Picatrix Invocation of the Sun, and Aradia and I drew the power of the sun into the Circle and poured it into the Triangle and the talismans.  I incanted the Invocation again as Aradia continued to direct the power.

The talismans completed, we promptly went back to sleep.

The ring I empowered is on my hand even now.  It almost burns with power, and it’s going to take a while for me to get used to wearing that kind of spellcraft on my person.

The paper talismans rest on Aurora’s altar, gathering power while we linger in St. Louis.  I can’t wait to see how these bad boys change our lives.  I think it’s going to be epic.

I had been hoping there would be a Solar election soon, so that I could add that power to my collection.  I am grateful that it came exactly when it did.  I need this now as I transition from one life to the next, and as I shift gears magically.

Only one last conjuration remains before I begin what Aradia and I have been calling Project Null: the conjuration of Baphomet.

In witchcraft

My Year of Ceremonial Study: The Home Stretch

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In retrospect, I wish that I had set more concrete goals for my year of studying ceremonial magic.  I started with a particular programme, but I abandoned it about half way through as inadequate to the task it proposed.  I did refine my goals a little short of half way through, but even those were not particularly specific: to begin the pursuit of a supernatural assistant, to form connections with the Planetary and Elemental Powers, to begin producing a grimoire for people of a more polytheist bent, unable to swallow the top-down, antropocentric cosmology of Ptolemy.  Realizing even then that my original time frame of a year could well prove inadequate, I mused about pushing it out to eighteen months or more.  As you, my clever readers, have already inferred, I have decided against extending my study for now:  I am content with the Work I have accomplished in the last year.

There are quite a few projects that I haven’t found the time or clarity to write about yet, but only two goal experiments remain before I am ready to begin my year with Chaos magick.  Through the Spiritus Mundi group, I have learned of a Solar Election this weekend, which will allow me to create the one talisman I had wanted to but not yet had the chance.  Using that election, I will create a talisman for the Favor of Kings—like those I have created for Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury—and a Solar ring of power.  And when the Dark Moon comes, I will use my shiny new Circle of the Art to conjure Baphomet and empower my Chaosphere.

In witchcraft

Lammas: the Sabbat I Always Forget

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Celebrated around the 1st of August, also known as Lughnasadh. Under the sign of Leo.

Lammas is first of three harvest festivals celebrated by witches. It reaffirms the rites performed in the fertility festivals: assuring that the harvest will not just be plentiful, but that the fruits of that harvest will fill their life-sustaining function. This is an excellent holiday to honor sacrificial harvest gods, such as John Barleycorn, Dionysus, Tammuz, and of course, Lugh. This is also an ideal time for cauldron rituals.

Celebrations involve blessing of grains & loaves.

From my own formal Book of Shadows, drawn largely from the works of Janet and Stuart Farrar as well as other “traditional” sources.  Its very brevity speaks volumes.  I mean, seriously: y’all read this blog.  Even when I don’t have much to say, I take a while to say it.

Back in Lawrence, the first of August was always fraught because of my job.  Most of the leases in town turn over on that day, and the jeweler I worked for was also a landlord.  Even when I wasn’t, myself, moving, the whole week surrounding Lammas was fucked dealing with refurbishing his apartments almost literally overnight.  On what was almost always the hottest day of the year.

Not the sort of conditions that really facilitate a religious experience.  And … I’ve never managed to escape the Midwest, which means that Lammastime remains hot and nasty as fuck.  Although I’m better with the heat now than I ever have been, it still leaves me crushed and oppressed.  This year more than most.

There was a public ritual last Sunday. Pasiphae and Aidan attended; they did a ritual to summon rain.  I wanted to go, but I was working the mall on the wrong side of town. I would have been two hours late, and that shit is never cool.  I never got around to celebrating it on my own, either. I didn’t even make any mead.

I think Scylla put it best in her tumblr post:

But there’s nothing fertile, or restful right now. There’s angry fire, bitter wind, and pain. This is not “Fall” – this is Sekhmet at Noon, throwing iron bolts down at the unbelievers. This is “Will it ever rain? Will it ever be cool? Will Winter come? Is Winter going to be as mean and fearsome?”

There is no loving father-god slipping his lance into any fecund goddess’ chalice. There’s no fucking.  There’s no fertility. No. Fucking. Fertility.

Candles? AT A TIME LIKE THIS?! WHAT THE FUCK?! Baking? Holy shit, howabout NO? You want to eat bread and heavy shit? I want to remember what not dying of heat stroke feels like.  (Bold italics mine.)

And then there’s the whole question of, what does this harvest mean in the modern world?  Or as an urban witch?

So, yeah.  I skipped Lammas again.

In witchcraft

My Circle of the Art

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

If I had stuck to my original plan and followed Penczak’s Temple of High Witchcraft precisely, I would even now be completing an illustrated map of the cosmos to replace the Qabalistic Tree of Life in my own theology.  I’ll get to that eventually, but I would like to explore the Planetary Realms and the pathways between them a little more thoroughly before I try to map the Labyrinth of the Obsidian Dream.

In the meantime, however, my studies of ceremonialism, Hermetics, and astrological magic have culminated in enough understanding to produce this much:

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My Circle of the Art

I suppose it is a cosmogram of sorts: god-names in the outer ring, then the Planets followed by the signs of the zodiac—celestial powers and the lenses through which they are focused—and, finally, the Triangle of Conjuration in the center representing the material world.  The names in the outer ring were chosen carefully, of course.  Dionysus and Rhea, long-standing allies and friends.  Hermes, patron of this art.  And Hekate, patron of (among other things) witches.  All powers of somehow ambiguous status in regards to the earth, the underworld, and the upper realms.   Iao and Agathos Daimon: two visions of Mystery and all-consuming power.  Drawn large enough to be used as a base for other work, I may place stones or candles at the appropriate planetary or astrological glyphs, and/or  place talismans of relevant powers within the circle and the triangle.  It’s nowhere nearly as cool as RO’s Box or Skyllaros’ Conjuration Station … but it’s a start.

Although I will be redirecting the bulk of my efforts toward the study of Chaos Magick—I have already begun reading Liber Null and finally acquired a copy of Condensed Chaos to re-read—I will not actually be abandoning what I have learned over the last year.  There will be astrological elections too good to resist.  There will be moments when planetary magic or more formal rites will be more appropriate to the task at hand.  There will be things I need to deal with that I might not be willing to engage using the “bare handed” techniques of Chaos.  This, and the altar I inscribe it on, will be there for me when those times come.

In witchcraft

Conjuring the Natal Demon

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I almost didn’t perform the conjuration yesterday: a series of coincidences and a side of bad planning ended with me not having the apartment to myself at any Hour of the Sun.  So once I’d worked on my scholarship application until my brain was running out my ears, I decided to have a number and work on other projects in front of the boob tube.

With the Fifth Hour of Night, though, the urge to Work fell over me like a weight: I reached for my sketchbook and finished inking the Circle of Art I had designed for the conjuration of my Natal Demon, whose name I had calculated according to Agrippa (using Frater Acher’s lovely spreadsheet) and whose sigil I had drawn using that name and the Rosy Cross.  I was already high, but it was the magic that really clouded my mind:  despite the presence of Aradia’s atheist room mate, which barred me from employing more formal ritual, I could feel the daimon coming on even before I completed the Circle.

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The names on the Circle (for those who can’t read Greek) are Helios, Phoibos, and Agathos Daimon.  The glyphs are the planetary symbol and Grand Seal of the Sun, and the Seal of Och.  I first conjured my Natal Genius under the auspices of the Moon, so it seemed appropriate to conjure my Natal Demon under the auspices of the Sun.  My Demon’s sigil and name have, of course, been edited out, but they were drawn in the innermost circle.

When the circle was done and empowered to the best of my ability under the circumstances, I pulled the page from my sketchbook and laid it on my lapdesk.  Almost immediately, the sigil appeared to me to become an eye.  Grabbing my sketchbook, I drew that eye on the page and from there the image of my Natal Demon began to flow.  Perhaps it was the amount of time I spent contemplating this ritual; perhaps the stars were just in better alignment; maybe I’ve actually learned something since my first conjuration experiment.  Whatever: the connection was much stronger than it was when I made my first attempt to contact my Natal Genius, ZG.

During that Hour of the Sun, my Natal Demon was able to instruct me somewhat in its nature and image.  It appeared to me as a narrow-faced humanoid, with an attentive expression.  Its body was slender and tall, and from its back sprung two pairs of wings.  Something rose from its head: I thought it a third pair of wings, but it may also have been horns or a helmet.  It informed me that its nature was that of Jupiter, and of the Sun in Scorpio, and the Moon in Virgo.  Perhaps most interestingly, the name of my Natal Genius was echoing through my head for most of the time I was performing the automatic drawing, leaving me uncertain whether the Genius and Demon are, in fact, separate entities or different faces of the same spirit.

When the vision began to fade, I put the Circle on the altar and made an offering of incense and a votive candle, thanking it and bidding it license to depart.  In all, I would call the experiment a qualified success.  I wish I had been able to stick with my original plan, but at the same time: sometimes the magic arranges to be performed the way it wants to be.