Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

I began my second night of full-moon rites with an earth-to-sky variant of Q-Cross.  I performed an “LBRP” using a burning sage wand instead of the knife, banishing pentagrams of spirit instead of earth, and invoking Iris, Hephaistos, Rhea, and Dionysos instead of the archangels.  I completed the rite with by invoking Gaea, Ouranos, Hephaistos, and Dionysos in the second Q-Cross.  Let me just say: holy shit that was awesome.  I cast my elemental circle, lit the candles on my Malkuth altar, and invoked Earth manifesting as Malkhuth.

I drank my absinthe-and-dream-herb flying potion, donned my mask, and descended to elemental realm of earth by sinking into the center of the stone circle in my Inner Temple (why can’t I ever go the same way twice?).  I met the guide I call Troll Lady, who was amused when I greeted and addressed her formally.  I asked her to take me to the Lords and Rulers of the Elemental realm to confirm the receipt of my Stone of Sovereignty (in retrospect I probably should have asked for something more open-ended).

She led me down and down and down to a vast dark cavern, along the outside of a bronze gate and wall and into a cavern where I met with shadowy figures who refused to confirm my stone and told me that the sphere was something else entirely.

When they were done with me, I asked Troll Lady to take me to where I should have asked to go in the first place; she told me it was too late for that.  I asked her to take me to where I needed to go now, and she took me to the Garden, from where she led me back to the Inner Temple via a mountaintop which deposited me on the plains facing the gate to my Inner Temple.

I returned to my body, did my monthly Tarot reading, thanked all spirits and powers who have helped me, and closed the circle.

With that journey, my month of Malkuth was complete.

At the beginning of the week I performed three days of Lunar rites, which largely consisted of spirit-journeys following up on my issues with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and with my transition from the study of Malkuth to the study of Yesod.  I began by dedicating the offering bowls which I made for my idols of Dionysos and Rhea, and for my spirit-helper Tsu; I also made bowls for my Kouros and Cycladic figures, but they … didn’t turn out.  I finished by building my Yesod altar.

Monday night, the first night of the full moon, I performed my rites in the Hour of the Moon.  I opened with my inverted Q-Cross and abstained from any variation of the LBRP, as my mission was to return to the underworld for the instruction I had been promised.  I cast my circle, opened a vortex, and descended to the Garden via a World Tree which looked like an apple tree.

I met the leopard and he guided me to the temple again, this time with two kraters of wine.  The path was already open, giving me glimpses of hundreds of other Gardens as I passed.  I took my female shape at the temple, thanked the leopard, and went up several steps.  Rhea waited for me on her throne again, and there was something hiding behind it which left me with a vague impression of yellow.  We performed the same drinking ritual as before: I handed her the krater to drink from, se returned it to me to drink, and we passed it back and forth until it was empty. 

She handed me a sphere of pale stone and asked me to perform the LBRP as I had been instructed.  I did so, and I could feel my root chakra rotting even in that sacred space.  I knelt at her feet and she healed me again.

I received no … direct instruction.  Not in the way I had imagined, anyway.  Instead she filled me to the brim with purple light – subconscious clues, I believe, which will surface as I need them.

When asked if I was ready to pursue the mysteries of the moon in Yesod, she said yes and bid me farewell.  I returned to my body almost directly.

Since discovering that satyrs and archangels don’t mix, I’ve been experimenting with variations on the Qabalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

The first variant I tried was the simplest: I stripped the god-names and the archangels from the rites.  Instead of intoning the various Names, I tuned to analogous forces from within my own paradigm.  The Source and Manifestation (Atah, Malkuth) of the Q-Cross are not unfamiliar to me, though they’re archetypal energies I had never worked with before this exercise.  Power and Glory (Vi Geburah, Vi Gedulah) … well, so far they’ve always felt more like Wrath and Wonder, and again, not so unfamiliar.    Replacing the archangels was even easier: I simply tuned to the elemental powers I’ve been working with for years.  Had I not performed the proper LBRP for the previous three weeks, I would have thought this rite an effective one.

The next variation was more significant: I continued with the Cross, but inverted it altogether: starting with Earth – or, more accurately, the Primal Life of which Earth is a manifestation – below and drawing that power up through my chakras to connect with the Source above.  Power/Wrath and Glory/Wonder I left the same.  This was incredibly effective, though I haven’t done it long enough to determine if it has any strange side effects.  When I next attempted the Pentagram Ritual, I tried replacing the banishing pentagram of earth first with the banishing pentagram of spirit, then with the invoking pentagram of earth.  Both were interesting, and deserve further study.

In the three days between seeking healing for the damage done to me by the LBRP and the beginning of my Lunar rites, I gave up the pentagram portion of the rite altogether until receiving the instruction I was promised.  The details of that instruction were … vague, but I’ll get into that later.  The second night of the moon, when I cleansed my house and dedicated a number of new tools, I performed a variant where I invoked, rather than the archangels, the gods Iris (in the east for air), Hephaistos (in the south for fire), Dionysos (in the west for water) and Rhea (in the north for earth).  Let me tell you, I felt the ground move when I did that.

This morning, as I resumed my daily practice in preparation for my study of Yesod, I invoked a number of more primal gods: Earth and Sky, Sun and Moon for the Cross; Mnemnosyne for air, Prometheus for fire, Rhea again for Earth, and Okeanos for water.  That, a little to my surprise, was less potent.  Possibly due to my exhausted state after a week of chaos, or due to my lack of practice for the last six days, or even possibly due to my lack of relationship with most of those gods.