Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

In art, witchcraft

First Vision of the Sabbat Fires

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the last Full Moon, my ritual crew and I began dabbling in Sabbatic Craft.

We’ve been floundering a little bit, since we reached the end of our year of Drawing Down the Moon. We have a handful of annual rituals that have kept us going – Dionysiac Beltane and Samhain, Her Sacred Fires, our August Ursa Major ritual – but my partner and I have struggled to fill the spaces.

At the last Moon, I pitched a handful of suggestions, one of which was visionary work. One of our members suggested a trip to the Sabbat Fires, specifically. Everyone else thought sounded good. My only objection was that I didn’t know the way. Alvianna was happy to take the lead.

The ritual Alvianna led us in had four phases: a crossroads-themed opening, idiosyncratic to her own work, with features that she had brought to other rituals we had done together; a visionary journey into and through the Wild to the bonfire where we met the Witchfather and danced with him; an ecstatic dance in our material ritual space, accompanied by feasting; and the journey back to reality.

My visionary experience was more physically intense than any I’ve had in quite some time. There were some entheogens involved, but while I do broadly advocate the use of such magical rocket fuel, the relative intensity of my experience is as much a consequence of my long lapse of practice than a statement on the relative merits of drugs versus sobriety in trance.

We each had our own experiences with the Witchfather. For my own part, I hesitate to say more than that, and thus feel doubly uncomfortable revealing what anyone else described after the circle. I know that we all made offerings of one sort or another, and that my offering was accepted graciously. I tried to find my compatriots around the fire. I could see them, distantly, but could never catch up to them.

What I will say is that, for me, it was a clear and positive of first contact. While I have been slow to start, I have had clear signs and messages over the last year both that I need to resume my visionary practice, broadly speaking, and to look into Sabbatic Craft. This, I think – particularly following the visionary preparations I did for last month’s Saturn talismans (which will get their own post soon) – certainly qualifies.

I will say, also, that my contact with the Witchfather was very, very clear. So clear, in fact, that I was compelled to create an image based on it.

The background is painted in watercolor, which is not my best medium. It’s really not intended for the degree of saturation that I always go for. But I think that, this time, I made it work. The figure of the Witchfather, himself is painted in black India ink. I have a scan that I took of the background before I painted him, and I might try to redo this digitally, where I will have second chances with the proportions of the figure. Or I may not.

What I will absolutely do is return to the Witchfather and his Sabbat fires.

In Uncategorized

Invoking al-Thurayya: My First Lunar Mansion Talisman

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

It’s been a few months since I’ve last been in a position – either personally or astrologically – to take advantage of an astrological election. I regret the lost opportunities, but so it goes. My latest talismanic experiment was for me alone: al-Thurayya, the Third Lunar Mansion, ruled by Annuncia.

As always, I got my election from Nina Gryphon. I’ve looked at Lunar Mansion elections before, but the moon is finicky – she moves fast enough, and her position varies more from location to location. But the election Nina found for LA was available in KC, too, and I felt … strongly drawn to the attempt.

The image of al-Thurayya, according to Picatrix, is a seated woman with her right hand raised over her head. According to the Picatrix (Book 1,Chapter 4, and Book 4, Chapter 9), it is for the acquisition of good things, safe travel (especially by sea), all works of fire, and to cause love between man and wife. These are all things I want and need, and as an added bonus, the Picatrix speciffically calls for the image to be made as a ring but does not mention any stones. (Book 4, Chapter 9)

I began sketches almost immediately:

I considered ordering a copper plate for my mold positive – I had both the time and money – but decided that it would be better if I hand-carved the wax. So, on several Mondays of January, during the hours of the Moon, I carved a square-topped ring from wax. I’ve carved a portait on that scale before, but never a whole body. To my delight I was able to create a crude but recognizable figure. (The photo makes it look larger than it is, but the figure is actually barely half an inch tall.)

As I carved the wax, I could feel the spirit that would ultimately come to inhabit it. The spirit didn’t speak to me, but it did provide a sense of “hot” or “cold” as I worked to differentiate design elements, flaws, and happy accidents. I had intended to include the seven stars of the Pleiades on the sides, but that detail got lost in the passion of the work.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the spirit – with the aid of my familiars – also provided details and advise on the ritual during my daily offerings. The election would be in the afternoon, but I was to throw the cast in the morning so that I could finish the ring in time to suffumigate it as the Picatrix described: wrapped in cloth. I was also instructed to make a box for the ring, also bearing the image of al-Thurayya.

This timing turned out to be absolutely critical, because the cast did not go as perfectly as I would have liked – some fuckery in the back of the shank – but I was able to do the necessary repairs while the ring was still just jewelry.

With the ring completed to my satisfaction, I took it up from my studio to my altar room, where I spent the last hour before the election mixing the aromatic oils and mastic liquor I would be offering and preparing the box I had been told to make.

When the window of the election opened, I began my ritual: making offerings of fire and liqour and aromatic oils. I read the Orphic Hymns to the Moon and to the stars. I anointed the ring with oil and called on Annuncia, the angel of al-Thurayya, to imbue the ring and fulfill the wishes that I inscribed on the paper image with blacklight ink and gold glitter and ended with the Picatrix’ invocation: “You, Annuncia, make it so.”

I felt Annunica. I felt their power descend into the ring.

This election was just at the end of January, and Nina Gryphon recommends creating your Lunar Mansion talismans in one ritual, then waiting until the moon comes back to that mansion before asking anything of the spirit, but I began to feel the effects of the spirit almost immediately. Not two days later, I was able to successfully throw the final bronze cast for my almost-due wholesale order, producing a quality of bronze talisman that I had not seen in a year.

In the weeks since, the spirit of the ring has given me its name. It has settled in among my other familiar spirits very comfortably. It has also provided some guidance as I begin designing the al-Thurayya ring that I will eventually be offering at the Sorcerer’s Workbench.

I’m very excited to begin working with this spirit in earnest when the Moon comes back to al-Thurayya next week.

In witchcraft

Further Visions of Baphomet

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

For the past couple years, my personal circle and I have been doing escalating experiments in trance possession. We started with a year of Drawing Down the Moon, each of us taking a turn as vessel for the Moon at our full moon esbats. The following year, a handful of us stepped out to do some academic study and then continue the experiment with different divinities. We each took a turn as vessel for Hekate – a goddess that we had all worked with fairly intensely, by that point – and then chose a patron deity to invoke in order to deepen our practice. This past weekend was my turn for round two, and I was possessed by Baphomet.

Circumstances were less than ideal. I have only just begun to feel fully recovered from my round with covid. Between lingering exhaustion and brain fog, and the wholesale order of doom (have i talked about that? I have a big order on my bench that is taking me three times as long as it should have), and my struggle to add anything to my existing schedule of practice (a struggle which deserves, and will get, its own post), I was not able to prepare myself as thoroughly as I would have liked. That morning’s daily divination was far from auspicious.

Nonetheless, I prepared myself as best as I could. Mostly, I rested. I did manage to complete the headdress that I had felt called to make. I gathered the bits and pieces of accoutrement that had come to me in various morning prayers, and went out and got a new bottle of absinthe when I discovered that I had run out at home. At our friends house where the ritual was to be performed, I sequestered myself for about half an hour, anointing myself with flying oil and taking a libation of absinthe, and readying myself psychologically to be filled by the god.

For the sake of science, we have a format: a ritual with minor variations for each god and vessel, but I think that I could have walked out possessed without any need for that. The god was there, ready and waiting, before I was even called from my sequestration. To invoke the god, we used a prayer based on PJ Carrol’s Mass of Chaos (Liber Null and Psychonaut, 1989, pp.130-132). To induce me as vessel, we used a guided meditation based on Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone’s Lifting the Veil (published 2016, reads like 1993). Our ritual complete, I donned the headdress and let the god move through me.

I am … ambivalent about the experience. The ritual was a success. Baphomet appeared and spoke through me. In preparation and as oracle, I believe that I had legitimate insights into the nature of the god. I believe that the answers I gave, which I can no longer remember, were divinely inspired. But I was too present, too conscious. In particular, my inner critic was too present: providing constant commentary on my own performance as oracle. I know that there were messages that I could have conveyed if I had just been able to step a little further out of the way.

I do remember some of what I said, some of what I learned. I have spoken before about my visions of Baphomet as a tripartite divinity: Divine Androgyne, White Lady, Man in Black. This weekend’s experience revealed each of those parts as tripartite in its own right, though the nature of those divisions is yet unclear to me. The vision emphasized Baphomet’s infinite and ever-changing nature: chaos in both the creative and destructive senses; simultaneously not-yet-made and complete/perfected. The light by which truth is revealed.

They experience left me tired and somewhat foggy. Despite that, I wasn’t able to sleep until late that night. If I had any significant dreams, I did not remember them on waking.

In art, witchcraft

Visions of Baphomet Cernunos

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In the midst of our otherwise more light-hearted shoot, KaCee was willing to take a moment to pose for a set of devotional images depicting the god Baphomet.

Images like these were always part of my plan for this shoot, but I had originally intended a different set of horns. Unfortunately, the enormous curling papier-mache ram’s horns that I had brought out of storage had suffered a bit of damage that I didn’t notice until I was on site, and we weren’t able to use them at all. But, in a way, the antler crown was super appropriate.

My relationship with Baphomet began with the Mass of Chaos B from Peter Carroll’s Liber Null & Psychonaut, which I used to consecrate myself and a mask. The ritual conflates Baphomet with the Horned God of “the Second Age”, an ideosyncratic conflation of Crowley’s ages and Wiccan pseudohistory), an aspect which is not central to my experience of the god, but which I honor in these images, and by making sacrifice to him when my Horned God devotional images sell at the Sorcerer’s Workbench.

I still have a whole Baphomet-themed shoot that I want to do with Kraken, specifically, but we just haven’t managed to make that happen, yet, and in the interim I am very, very happy with these.

In witchcraft

Visions of the Serpent-faced God

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

The first time I performed the ritual – PGM XII. 153-60, Spell for a divine revelation – it was a part of Jack Grayle’s PGM course, Fifty Rites in Fifty Nights, back in 2020. It’s a short ritual, near perfectly complete, with little suggested framing or preparation.

I bathed, dusted my hands and hair with cinnamon. I sat, terrified, but summoned the courage to begin. I intoned the name IAO three times, growing in size and confidence as I did so. I called out the great name, stumbling over the Vocces Magicae. The serpent-faced god appeared.

I asked them, “How do i thrive as an artist in these times?”

They came upon me from behind. Held me. Came in through my left eye, then my right. I began to cry. The god moved in to my mouth.

I said. “I am to look, to feel, to speak. Have i understood you?”

“Yes,” the serpent faced god told me.

I thanked them, made the offering of serpent skin.

And they departed.

It was one of the most intense visionary experiences of my life.

I have performed the ritual a number of times since. For a while, it was fully incorporated into my dark moon rites. With each invocation, the vision of the serpent-faced god grew more and more feminine. I was told that the ouroboros image which has so long fascinated me, which I have tattooed on my flesh, was her image.

In 2020, visions I received revolved around the theme of “see, feel, and speak”. I don’t know how well I succeeded at following that imperative, but I did my best.

In 2021 a new theme arose: a vision of a thunderstorm storm in the desert, of long road west and a mesa rising out of the plain. I took this fairly literally: that I needed to fuck off into the desert, a physical and spiritual retreat.

For Samhain 2022,I was finally able to make that pilgrimage. My partner and I and our ritual crew took a road trip to Black Mesa, Oklahoma, where we spent four nights under the clearest, darkest skies that I have ever seen. (I have been a few places that boasted skies as dark or darker, but every time I brought storms west with me, and could not see the sky.) The Milky Way flowed directly over our heads. The Great Bear hovered on the western horizon each night, and Jupiter rose in the east.

I performed my ritual at dusk of the last night, offering wine and incense. The vision that came to me was faint but clear. I could see the serpent-faced god in all her glory. She was potent and ancient and primordial, of the earth and all that lies below it. Her message was clear, too: the time has come for me to resume my underworld journeys, because that is where I will find her. And I am to seek out a serpent priestess, whatever that means, and to make one if I cannot find one.

I thanked her for the vision, and for her patience – it took me more than a year to find her in the desert – and then I returned to my revelry.

This trip healed something in me that was broken. I slept better than any of my companions every night. Back in the world, I am more rested than any or all of them. I feel better than I have in years.

Hail to the serpent faced god. I hope that I can hear what she has to teach. I hope, too, that it is wisdom that I can share.

In art, witchcraft

Vision of Lucifer

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I first heard the Luciferian call something like ten years ago, now. It came, perhaps oddly, the same year that I began conjuring archangels as a part of the Ceremonial Experiment. I was still, in a very real sense, new to working with gods of any kind, and god-like powers at that scale. And I was still the product of my youth in the tail end of the Satanic Panic: I had spend the first five, maybe ten, of my practice trying to convince onlookers that we were not Satanists, that most witches don’t even believe in the Devil. So, though the metaphorical phone kept ringing, I refused to answer.

The call kept coming. Little signs. Songs. Visions. And I kept putting it off. Putting him off.

I don’t remember exactly when I changed my mind and decided to answer the call. I think it was a craft night with the coven. I was making a mask and it … went in a direction. And I figured that was as good a place to start as any. And I recommitted to the work in Beltane of 2019, when I made a star talisman in Luciferian colors during another Lunar Shenanigans craft extravaganza. I put those tokens on a shelf in the spare room where I kept my personal altar, but it didn’t really go any further than that.

The work really only started in the fall of 2020, when the daily offerings to my familiar spirits escalated into daily offerings for the gods who shared the space of my altar room. From there it was slow escalations.

The visions began early this year, when I quit my day job to pursue art and magic full time. I was going around the altars, each day asking one of the gods in that room to initiate me into their mysteries. And I had put Lucifer off for so long that, at first, he refused. Since then, though, he has begun revealing aspects of himself to me.

Whether or not you believe that the being I am calling Lucifer is the Devil at odds with That One God depends a lot on how you see him.

To me he is a Promethean figure: a bringer of light and magic, a teacher of art and mysteries. He is the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. He is Melek Taus of the Anderson Feri tradition.

He is a Gnostic power: bringing light and wisdom to mortals, kindling and sheltering their fire against the dark of the universe and the malice of the demiurge and the archons.

He has presented himself to me as the Dweller on the Threshold: the terrifying image meant to keep the weak from the mysteries. To pass him, one needs only sufficient courage.

He has presented himself to me as the Light in the Darknesss: the light-bringer, literally.

And he has presented himself to me as transmasculine, or perhaps as an androgyne opposite and equal to the full-breasted and tumescent androgyny of Baphomet.

In this image, I have done my best to evoke all of these, and to recreate the visions of Lucifer that I have seen in my morning meditations. This is a first attempt. It will not be my last.

In art, witchcraft

The Sorcerer’s Workbench Picatrix Image Talisman Casting and Consecration Process

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I haven’t spoken publicly my talisman construction & consecration process in detail before now for a variety of reasons, most of which are just abusing the thesaurus to avoid admitting to my insecurities. Most of the others in my field are professional astrologers, or work very closely with one. Many teach classes or write books on magic. I’ve taught some workshops, and I had a short stint in local Pagan leadership – if you don’t already know it, that’s a story for another time – but all my magical writing is here on this blog. But someone asked for details in a forum where I had posted a link to my most recently elected and consecrated talismans, and I’m not here to be mysterious about my process. Answering a couple questions over there quickly led to a longer-form answer here. 

There are, obviously, two parallel and interacting parts of my process: the jewelry and the sorcery.

On the jewelry side, the core of my process is lost wax casting. I was raised in a casting studio, and that’s even though I’m only just now getting a real handle on wax carving, that’s always been my go-to process for design and production. I suspect that someone with a background in, say, hand engraving, or etching, would find that applying sorcery to those techniques would serve them better than learning to cast just for the sake of talisman making.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos/video/7138499729222241582" data-video-id="7138499729222241582" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@satyrmagos" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos?refer=embed">@satyrmagos</a> <p>i am the Sorcerer&#39;s Workbench.  i make talismanic, devotional, and art jewelry in silver, shibuichi, brass, and bronze</p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ original sound - iluvart - ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-iluvart-6882633195850844929?refer=embed">♬ original sound - iluvart - ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

On the sorcery side, I am an autistic eclectic witch who has made a special interest of the grimoire tradition, but whose every ritual is informed by their previous decades of spiritual work. I am not a purist in anything. Moreover, I am unconvinced that most talisman recipes can be performed as-written: the jewelry part will always take much, much longer than the astrological window available, even without the ritual part. All my pieces are the result of years of art and magical training, both formal and informal, and more years of trial and error.

The jewelry and the sorcery come together, before I even begin thinking about a specific election, with the magical nature of my studio. Every day I consecrate my home, including the studio below my altar room, as a temple for the gods I worship and the magical work I do, and make offerings to those gods and my familiar spirits. Every time I descend to my studio, I light a candle and incense as offerings to the gods and powers that aid me in my work, the planets that I call, and the spirits who dwell there waiting for good homes.

The process of making a consecrated talisman begins with finding a viable election. I get mine from a few sources, but mostly from Nina Gryphon’s monthly election newsletter. After vetting the election to make certain that it’s as valid in Kansas City, MO, as it is in Los Angeles, CA, I then sit down with my tarot cards and divine whether any given election is suitable for: a) a personal petition; b) a personal paper talisman; c) metal talismans for myself and my coven; or, d) metal talismans for customers. I don’t always understand why a particular election might not be a good candidate for me and my customers, but this is spiritual work as well as material and we do divination for a reason.

Having determined that an election is suitable for metal talismans, I make up the waxes and invest them the day before the election, timed so that they’ll be ready to cast when the time comes. Once the flask is in the kiln, I rearrange my workspace into an altar where I will perform the consecration. I only do one flask per election, because getting the metal up to flow temperature takes too long to pour and have it really still be at the peak of the electional window.

A little more than an hour before the election, I turn on the electric crucible that melts the metal, and I begin my preparatory rituals. I shower, and I purify myself with cinnamon. I make offerings for my familiar spirits, my personal gods, and the gods and spirits of the workshop, who will all work together to bring the best possible spirits into the talismans. I consecrate all the maeteria, specifically both the incense I will be offering and the metal that will become the talismans. Some of the details vary from ritual to ritual, depending on when the election is relative to my daily purifications and offerings and the instructions provided to me by my familiar spirits, but those variations are minutiae.

About fifteen to twenty minutes before the election (depending on the kind of metal and the weight), I start melting the metal and begin suffumigating the studio and invoking the spirits. I alternate between the Orphic hymn to the relevant planet and the appropriate Picatrix invocation. The timing, here, is honestly the hardest part: if left too long, the metal will boil and the final cast will be pourus; if not left long enough, it won’t flow and there will be cold shuts.

In the minutes before the election’s peak, when the metal is at temperature, i suffumigate the flask of molten metal, pour into the waiting flask, then suffumigate the cooling flask – this is the point at which I can feel the spirits enter the talismans. I time this process so that I make my final Picatrix invocation before or as I pour, and then my final hymn after. I am, of course, always trying to complete my consecration at the precise minute of the election, when the relevant planets are precisely conjunct the ascendant or midheaven. But I also know for a fact that modern timekeeping was invented for trains, and ancient astrologers must necessarily have been working with wider and wooblier windows of time.

Once the pieces are cast, I get as much of the plaster off of them as I can before the window has closed (i strongly prefer ascending elections for this reason) and store the talismans in a planetary altar box until the next appropriate hour to clean them up as jewelry.

<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos/video/7133267092798836010" data-video-id="7133267092798836010" style="max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px;" > <section> <a target="_blank" title="@satyrmagos" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@satyrmagos?refer=embed">@satyrmagos</a> <p>the aftermath of some work for myself and my coven</p> <a target="_blank" title="♬ Howl&#39;s Moving Castle - Merry-Go-Round of Life - Vitamin String Quartet" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/Howl's-Moving-Castle-Merry-Go-Round-of-Life-6702010411413145602?refer=embed">♬ Howl&#39;s Moving Castle - Merry-Go-Round of Life - Vitamin String Quartet</a> </section> </blockquote> <script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>

While cleaning and polishing each piece, I get a name and sigil and specialty from it, which whoever it goes to can use to make initial contact.

When each piece is done, it goes into an envelope with a bit of the incense used to consecrate it. That envelope goes into the planetary altar box, where it lives until i find it a home.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Images of Starry Power

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I have practiced many kinds of magic over the decades of my magical career. Astrological images in metal are what I am (probably) best known for, at this point, because that is the most marketable combination of my artistic talents and magical aspirations. But talismans of metal and stone are not the only such combination. In the past, I have dabbled in sigil magic, and masks, and talismans made from mixed media and witchcraft, and portraits of spirits – both conjured and constructed. Most recently, I have been experimenting in talismanic images of ink and paint and paper.

My first elected talismans were paper. Back in the fall semester of 2013, as I was fighting with the registrar over what classes and credits from my associate’s degree would and would not count toward my bachelors, I combined what I had managed to learn of spirit conjuration (mostly from Rufus Opus’ blog) with a Jupiter in Pisces election and talismanic image from Christopher Warnock on his then-Yahoo mailing list. I assembled the talisman from a pair of 5×7 note cards, one bearing Warnock’s image (probably by Nigel Jackson), the other bearing seals and sigils of Jupiter, glued together with dandelions and other Jovial maeteria in between them, and suffumigated in the smoke of the same.

That talisman steamrolled over the registrar and her objections to my insignificant (in her eyes) urban community college credits. It, and the other similar talismans that I made that year – Sol, Venus, Mercury Cazimi, maybe one or two others – lasted not the weeks or months generally expected of paper talismans, but for years.

When I had my first chance at a decanic election – Sol in Aries I, back in 2020 – I went that same route. Aradia and I were taking Jack Grayle’s PGM Praxis course, and I believe that we consecrated them using a PGM solar rite. But I used the Picatrix image, and I made it available for others to use on my blog.

I got this election, in fact, who had just discovered Nina Gryphon’s monthly election newsletter, and I suddenly had enough advance notice on most elections to begin planning for them. My two-sided Venus talisman (and my personal Venusian familiar spirit) is the result of these experiments, and ultimately served as the template for the rest of my Picatrix planetary image talismans.

I returned to paper talismans toward the end of 2021, with my first fixed star election: Jupiter on Deneb Algedi. I was up to my eyeballs in burnout, and had neither time nor money to prototype and prep a metal talisman. The results were swift and phenomenal. Likewise, a Solar election early in 2022.

After years of such experiments, frankly, both my home altar and my prosperity altar were getting a little crowded. So, when the opportunity for a pair of Libra decanic talismans (Venus ascending in the first and second face of Cancer) and I wanted to do something less than a metal talisman (which I couldn’t afford to prototype, or fit onto my altar) but more than the paper talismans I had done so far, I turned to my personal grimoire.

Now, flashing back to the beforetimes, I bought myself one of those big leather-bound “journals” for my birthday in 2019. I divided it up into likely sections and started drawing planetary circles of conjuration in it, which became the centerpiece of my first few months of daily rituals. Then it quickly served as a prop in a couple photo shoots (first with Cailin, then with Vanessa). Then became a repository for my favorite pieces from Jack Grayle’s PGM course, and the object of several such rituals, including a Solar consecration aimed at increasing the effecacy of magic done with the book. Then I did a series of portraits of my familiar spirits in it.

It occurred to me to combine the theory behind conjuration circles and the practice of the spirit portraits. I selected a page, drew the image, inked the outlines and colored the scene of the image with water-color pencils, and sigilized my petition. During the window of the election, I wet and blended the watercolors, painted and detailed the figure and the seals and sigils, and consecrated it with the Picatrix Venus prayer and suffumigated it.

It went so well that I repeated it with the second face of Cancer. And then with Regulus. And now, most recently, with Aldebaran. (The images below are, obviously, not photos of the paintings in my personal grimoire. As public as my practice is, that feels like … too much. Instead, they are the practice drawings I did to perfect my design and layout, and then refined to share with my coven, in case they wanted to catch the elections, and now with you for your benefit.)

Cancer II
Regulus

The images are all still hot to the touch. Each day, after my ritual honoring my household gods and familiar spirits, I turn to one of these images and let it emanate into the world. They all seem to be always active, but whichever is currently visible seems to be most active.

It’s still very early days to speak about material results or longevity, but I think that I’ve sufficiently demonstrated that it’s a technique worth speaking about so that others can try their own experiments with it.

So, if you have a magic book that you work with – a Wiccan Book of Shadows, or a personal grimoire, something that lives in or around your altar and participates in your rites, and you want to fuck around with astrological image magic but aren’t prepared to financially commit to metal talismans, I strongly recommend experimenting with talismanic images in your personal magic book.

In witchcraft

Breaking Up With Bune

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Back in 2017, I made a prosperity sachet using the seal of Bune. It was an unorthodox procedure, combining a bit of US folk magic with modern chaos and ceremonial magic, and (of course) my own unique style. Overall, it served me well. I wrote briefly about the positive results in 2019. And as the Sorcerer’s Workbench got me through the pandemic and turned enough profit that I was able to quit my day job at the beginning of this year, the relationship was strong and solid. I was making offerings with every sale, and more offerings at certain sales goals.

Then, toward the beginning of this year, things went sideways.

Back in December, I hit a Deneb Algedi election that provided swift and powerful results. Then in February, I cast two cohorts of Jupiter talismans, and kept two pieces for myself. And after that, sales got real slow.

Initially, I thought one or both of the Jupiter talismans was to blame. The two I had kept for myself had mis-cast – cold shuts that left gaps in the images – and, though they assured me that they wanted to live and to work with me, it was still only my second time casting elected talismans for sale and I was still waist-deep in the same mental health crisis that had led me to quit my day job with only half the savings I’d wanted, and, as such, I lacked confidence in my own perceptions. Additionally, as March waxed into April, one of those talismans was being very explicitly tetchy about working with a demon.

But I had been working with Bune for five years at that point, and – as a relational rather than strictly transactional practitioner – I was not prepared to end that relationship yet. So I contacted a peer – Asphodello of Ward and Weave – to check in. His suggestion – short of severing my relationship with Bune – was to set up separate altars and specific spheres of responsibility. That worked very well in the short term: May was a *very* good month.

But June, July, and August have been real challenges. Weird bank shit. Rude custom inquiries, including two requests to rip off another artist’s work. A shocking lack of interest in my elected Venus talismans. Constant reassurances from my familiar spirits and divinations that things were in the works, but no explanation for why they weren’t manifesting.

In August, I took advantage of some oracular work my coven and I are doing (that I’ll write up some day) to get a more clear perspective on what’s going wrong. The answers I got, in three separate sessions, were “make more offerings”, “make even more offerings, and a new altar”, and “you’re doing the wrong work”.

That last answer was, of course, infuriating. I’m putting in the material work. I’m putting in the spiritual work. If I’m missing something, then what?

So, I went back to the tarot. The divination I did for myself was, of course, unclear except in retrospect. “What should I be working on, instead?” *VIII Adjustment* Contracts and consequences? Dafuq? Clarification, please? *Princess of Cups* Feelings, intuition, and mediumship?

Clearly I wasn’t going to puzzle this out on my own. So, at last, I called my partner in. Aradia is one of the best diviners in our social circle; I should have asked her for help months ago, but I try not to abuse her time and talents.

Our first reading was a basic 10 card Celtic cross. It was lousy with court cards, and overall seemed to agree that everything was fine. The one off card was the 7 of Cups in the crown position, indicating that that was probably where my problem was. But that wasn’t actually a clear answer. Another spread indicated that I needed to change my magical approach. So we looked to the spirits on my prosperity altar: how do things stand with each of them?

The answer came with the first card in the next spread. Bune was the 7 of Cups. We named and inquired about each of the other spirits, too, but he was the only problem. Another draw indicated that it would sort itself out in time, but the solution was to sever the relationship. That left only when: immediately (6 of Disks, “that’ll work”) or when I clean my prosperity altar on Thursday (V the Hierophant, “this is the most correct way”).

So, two days later (an hour or so ago, as I write this; some days ago, as you read this), I did the deed.

Using the same conjuration that I had used to make my initial contact with Bune (found in Jason Miller’s Sorcerer’s Secrets), I called the spirit up and told him that it was time to end our relationship. I apologized for any insult I might have given, any accidental failure to fulfil my end of our contract, and for any number of possible slights. I disassembled the sachet and promised to bury it and the lamen at a crossroads, and to slag the metal seals that I had made for his altar. I made one last round of offerings – coffee, candle, incense – and it was done.

I felt him appear to hear me speak. I more than half expected protests, or promises of better behavior. I did not expect him to fade out so softly that I barely noticed.

Now, having completed the rite to release him and end our contract, I feel a very strange rush of energy. My heart is racing; I’m near tears. It’s more like a panic attack than mania or a meltdown, but it’s not any of those things.

I’m disappointed. I feel a little bit like a failure. Both are slightly silly.

My relationship with Bune was mutually profitable for five years. It fell apart when I started accumulating other financially beneficial spiritual relationships. Mostly, I’m frustrated that I didn’t realize more immediately that it was the demon who likes to be paid in public praise that was not playing well with the other spirits, not vice versa.

I feel the need to make absolutely clear that this story is not a cautionary tale about working with demons. It bears repeating that, despite my hilariously idiosyncratic methods, good guy Bune *delivered*. It might not even have been the other magic that I was doing that broke things: five years might just have been the absolute limit on the life of the mojo bag. Further divination might reveal some useful post-facto analysis. Bune might have also been happy to work with other spirits on the prosperity altar if it had occurred to me to consult him before conjuring them, instead of just piling the altar high with planetary petitions and Jupiter talismans and (more recently) Mercury talismans. But, without question, once it was over it was over. The cards were clear that there was no fixing what was broken.

And so I will end this with a note of final, formal, public praise for Bune, the 26th spirit of the Lesser Key of Solomon. For five good years, you brought me patrons and prosperity. Without you, the Sorcerer’s Workbench would not have been possible. Hail unto you, O Bune.

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From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Horned God no.1

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I think it was in April that I started playing around with Horned God imagery. It’s such an iconic part of modern neo-Pagan witchcraft, and yet … I’ve always avoided it. (This, of course, has everything to do with my deeply fucked relationship with masculinity.) In all honesty, I don’t really know what kicked off the research and fascination.

It did not take me long to learn that the iconic Wiccan and Pagan image of the Horned God is not widely attested. In fact, the best known image – the horned man with a snake in one hand and a torc in the other – comes from just one place: the famous Gundestrup Cauldron. That figure – one of dozens of images on the cauldron – is utterly unique in the historical record, and yet it has gone on to inspire so very very much modern theology.

Detail of the original Gundestrup Cauldron

Looking at the original figure, three things really stood out at me. The first, obviously, was the mask-like face. The second was that the figure is clearly clothed. And the third is that, while the animals that surround him all have clearly articulated joints – knees and elbows and wrists and ankles – the human figure is much less naturalistically stylized.

The mask-like face fits so perfectly with my own praxis and theology that I just fucking ran with it and carved a literal mask that sits on top of the face of my figure. When I do the mixed-media version for round three (and maybe four), the mask will be in the alternate metal and be bound (possibly cast, possibly soldered) to the face.

The clothing – a tunic and perhaps leggings – is almost antithetical to is modern counterparts. I have never been initiated as a Wiccan, but my experiences with those who have, and with their iconography, leads me to understand that the Horned God’s nudity is as theologically significant as his tumescence. I left him modestly undetailed for my stock pendant design, but for the more elaborate devotional image I made him ithyphallic, and gave him tattoos based on the texture seen on the garment of the original cauldron image.

The final point – his limbs – gave me real pause. Looking at the surrounding animals, clearly the artist had the skill to give him more naturalistic joints if they so desired. The legs might have been a stylistic concession – as an illustrator, I know well how hard it is to draw a cross-legged figure, and doing it in repousse can only have been a nightmare. But the arms? That shit looks like 1920s “rubber hose” style animation and is very clearly a decision that the artist made. Which begs the question: was it significant?

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that, while there almost certainly was symbolic significance to the noodly arms, I had no idea what it was. Further, it played against my strengths as an artist. So I ultimately decided to carve more naturalistic limbs.

Overall, the piece went beautifully from a technical level. The carving was much easier than I anticipated. The cast turned out very very well. The original torc didn’t cast, so I drilled through his hand and made one from sterling silver wire (next time I’ll do a double-wire twist). And – as those of you who follow me on other social media may recall – there was a giant hole where his left ass cheek was supposed to be, so I filled that with bronze casting grain and sterling silver wire. (That repair is much more visible in the above photo than it is in person.)

It took me a couple tries to get the polish and patina right. Photographing it was an even greater challenge, and I may make further attempts at that. (Actually, I absolutely will: this piece will feature prominently in my next jewelry and witchcraft photoshoot.)

In the end, though, I am extremely pleased with this figure, and am looking forward to starting the second in the next month or two.

It is available for sale in my Etsy store shortly after my next photoshoot.