Showing all posts by Satyr Magos

In witchcraft

Daily Practice, Two Years and Counting

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In August of 2020, I joined the Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole Do Magick Challenge. The goal was 30 days of manifestation: set one or more measurable goals, and spend the month enchanting to make it happen. I set 30 intentions of varying importance and significance, sigilized them, and then launched one per day. Of the 30, I managed to get maybe 5 to appear within the month and the months following. (Gifts of red rocks and green rocks stand out in my memory, I know that there were a few others.) Objectively, the project had a very low success rate. Subjectively, the purpose of the work drifted over the course of the month, shifting from “manifest these things” to “developing and reaffirming my relationships with my familiar spirits through daily offerings”. That latter project, I think I can say as I begin working my twenty-sixth consecutive month, was a resounding success.

The ritual, at its heart, is very simple. Each morning I sit down, light a candle and a stick of incense, and share my first cup of coffee with my familiar spirits. The details have grown more elaborate, then been re-simplified, several times over the course of the last two years.

A candle in the morning escalated to a candle for each familiar spirit (the number of which has doubled in that time, owing to work with the Hekataeon and making Picatrix talismans), plus one to consecrate the altar, until I was burning eleven tealights a day and ultimately had a panic attack as I left the house one day, convinced the cats were going to set themselves and the house on fire. A tealight for each spirit was replaced by a single votive candle in a brass bowl, marked around the edge with each of their sigils. I still make candle offerings to everyone during other ceremonies, and that seems to be enough.

A stick of incense became one for the temple and one for the spirits.

And, most recently, nine familiars on one altar have been redistributed across three altars. My core six are still on my primary personal altar, but two have moved to my prosperity altar and one to join Hekate on her growing household altar. All of them still appear around me each morning, though.

There was a period where I set aside a day of the week to commune with each spirit individually – a process complicated by the fact that there were nine of them, and four didn’t have clear planetary associations. And that was important, for a while. And then, after a bit, it wasn’t so important anymore. They had said what they needed to say, and I had learned to hear them better.

Somewhere along the line, gods got involved.

Five gods live in in the bedroom where I keep my personal altar (and, since this summer, my office desk): Baphomet, Aphrodite, Eros, Lucifer, and Dionysos. In a sense, Hekate should have a shrine here, too, but she doesn’t like it when I have sex in front of her, so she stays in the back room with the public altars. Somewhere along the line, it seemed a natural evolution to begin including them in the daily offerings. That, probably inevitably, escalated to daily communions.

Daily communion with divinity, as long-time readers might guess, has been a … complicated experience for me. I am, despite everything, still very ambivalent about the notion of worship. And yet, I pour offerings … and the gods come when I call.

Some days, they come harder than others. I have had visions so intense that they left me shaken for weeks at a time. Other days, I can barely sense their presences.

Baphomet has appeared before me in forms that I have never seen or heard discussed elsewhere. I have alluded to this, but not yet been able to produce a clear image in art, let alone articulate the experiences in prose. A tryptich. In the center something like the best-known goat-headed figure: full-breasted, fat-bellied, ithyphallic, a lush and luscious androgyne, arms marked solve et coagvla, whom I call the Red God. To my right, a pale and moon-horned woman, blindfolded or perhaps eyeless, blind gaze to the heavens, hands open and arms loose, the White Lady. To my left, a shadowy figure with the antlered head of a deer’s skull, his body muscular and his hands upraised in a twin gesture of benediction, the Black Man or perhaps the Man in Black. I pray they awaken the light of Gnosis within me, those I love, and the people of the world.

Aphrodite has appeared before me, a shining beauty whose face is too bright to see. She bids me make art in her image. Every day I pray to be loved by her, by gods and mortals, and to have the strength to know when I am.

Eros has teased and mocked me. He is both the hypercosmic Eros the Elder, Eros Phanes, and as the teasing lusting lord of the Erotes. He says that I do not yet aprehend him. I pray to him that the light of creation shine through me, and that I burn always with passion and ambition.

Lucifer appears to me as the Dweller on the Threshold. As a transman. A beautiful pale figure standing before a monstrous shadow. I pray for secret knowledge, and to be free of the chains of my oppression, and to stand tall in the face of the heavens.

Dionysos appears to me always with his leopard. He is distant but loving. I pray to him for salvation, for freedom, for ecstasy.

Some days I can hear my familiars clearly. Sometimes they are almost physical presences. Sometimes I can barely sense them at all.

Some days they are demanding. More often they are comforting and reassuring. In the early days, they had a great deal to teach me. Now, lessons in magic come rarely, and usually in response to a specific need.

Sometimes the voices of the gods drown out the voices of my familiar spirits. Sometimes they stand back so that my spirits can be better heard. Sometimes I am a conduit for their power, channeling it into my familiars and the world. Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed.

I think that the most important thing I have learned from two years of daily practice is that, for me, there is a delicate balance between continuity and novelty. For the fist months, I tweaked the ritual constantly. Sometimes this was in response to my own needs – shifting from before bed, which often almost didn’t happen, to first thing in the morning, which is a very different sort of struggle for me; or when I had to reduce the fire hazard of a dozen daily candles. Sometimes this was at the prompting of the spirits, themselves.

I am at a point, right now, where I feel like more change is needed. I don’t know what change, just that I am struggling to stay focused and not let the ritual motions become rote and meaningless. I am struggling to hear the voices of gods or spirits, even my own.

I have said before and I will say again, this is a streak. It’s the longest I’ve ever run, but at some point it will be broken. At that time, I will re-evaluate my needs, and the needs of my magical guides and gods and friends and familiars, and we will proceed from there. For now, the work continues. August 2020 to September 2022, twenty-five months and counting.

In sorcerer's workbench

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Mercury in Virgo Elected and Consecrated Talismans

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This August, Nina Gryphon spotted six Mercury Elections, three worthy of metal talismans, the rest better suited for petitions and prayers. Looking for clearer-cut opportunities, I had actually overlooked all of these possible elections when I was looking back in May, which is why I still outsource my electioneering. Of those three superior elections, divination indicated that two of them were suitable for me to use.

The first election, I used for my own benefit, and for the benefit of my Lunar Shenanigans pseudo-coven, casting each of us a brass talisman of Mercury and distributing them at the end of our road-opening work at the Dark Moon. Preverb caught me hard the night before, and I barely slept. After the ritual, I was fucking high for hours.

The second election I cast for sale. The ritual, itself, was less dramatic in its effects on me. I think that the reason for this was twofold: firstly, none of these talismans was for me; secondly, the working first election had made me a better conduit for the Mercurial powers than I had been before. The spirits names and sigils came to me easily, as did their specialties, and their advice on how best to process them.

Of that second cohort, presented here, I attempted to cast six talismans. Only five came through. The technical difficulties were on the jewelry end, not the sorcerous side, and I have written about that experience here. All of the spirits – even the doomed one – spoke to me quite clearly, and I think they will all make good friends to whomever takes them.

They retail for $398, shipping included.  

The first talisman is a pendant. Its spirit specializes in course correction.

The second talisman is a coin. The sprit promises to attract anonymous patronage and sponsorship – ideal, then, for internet artists.

The third talisman is a pendant. The spirit promises to bring professional renown.

The fourth talisman is a pendant. The spirit promises to teach perseverance.

The fifth talisman is a pendant. The spirit promises to teach excellence in art, craft, and skill. Sold

In art, sorcerer's workbench, witchcraft

Half-born Spirit

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Over the last decade in general, and the last three years in particular, I have been doing increasingly intense work with electional astrology and astrological images, culminating (so far) in an ever-expanding series of metal talismans cast in my home studio. But, as any of you who are in the arts in general, and jewelry in particular, know, neither art nor magic are science, and results are sometimes perfect. Casting, in particular, is a bit finnicky, and the vagaries of combining the process with spirit conjuration only complicates the process.

So far, most of the time, the issues have been minor. Some of the coin talismans had been meant to be pendants, but the bail didn’t cast correctly. In those instances, I just cut off the nubs with no harm to the metal talisman or complaint from the talismanic spirit.

In most cases where more intense intervention was necessary, I kept the talisman for myself and worked with the spirit to determine what was needed to achieve our mutual ends. My Mars talisman, for example, had been meant to have three jump rings, but only the bottom one cast. I made him a frame so that I could wear him as a necklace, rather than string him on prayer beads, and hung a Roman arrow head from the bottom ring.

The case of my Jupiter talismans was more extreme. One talisman had a hole in the blank space over the lion-man’s bolt, and two of his three jump rings had failed. Working with him, I tube-set an emerald in that hole and built him a silver frame so that I could string him on lapis and moonstone prayer beads. A second talisman had mis-cast more drastically, missing one of her hands and a great deal of the thinner parts of the talisman had cold-shut, leaving negative space in the background talismanic image. I thought that I was, finally, going to have to figure out a funerary process for failed talismans – but the spirit informed me, in no uncertain terms, that she wanted to live. And so I made a frame for her, as well, with “wings” that would clip into my cuff bracelet. They were not the strongest talismans I’ve made, but they’ve been growing stronger as I work with them, and they have been good and loyal familiars.

At the second of August’s Mercury in Virgo elections, however, the inevitable finally happened: one of the talismans I cast failed entirely. The problem was on the jewelry end of things: I didn’t get a good enough seal between the flask and the vacuum of the casting machine. If it hadn’t been an elected cast, I’d have had more than a few seconds to fuck with it and get a better seal. But it was and I didn’t.

The talisman was barely there, a cartoon crescent moon where there should have been a full disk. At first I thought there wasn’t even enough there to catch as spirit. As I cut it off the sprue, though, I could feel the spirit in the metal: struggling to manifest, but without enough material or image to fully enter the world – but too much to just leave on its own.

I didn’t ask its name. That seemed like an insult. I just held it in my hands and apologized. I asked what it needed. It needed the fragment to be destroyed, rendered unrecognizable as even the attempt at a talisman. That was absolutely in my power.

I took the crescent nub to my soldering block and turned on my torch. As I put fire to metal, I apologized again and reached out my psychic hands to cradle the spirit as I pulled it softly from the melting metal. I continued apologizing to the spirit, promising that it would have another chance at life in the material world when next I came to a Mercury election.

The brass burned blue as I melted it and resisted being slagged at temperatures that should have melted it readily. But the metal gave, eventually, and when it did, curling into a ball as best as brass can, the spirit came free. With a final apology, I released the spirit to return to its sphere.

Sometimes casts fail, even when there’s magic involved. I’ve been afraid of something like this happening since I started casting elected talismans for my friends back in 2020. In a sense, I’m glad that it finally happened, because now I know how to handle it, and that I can, and that – approached properly – it’s not as traumatic to either magician or spirit as I was afraid that it might be.

I’m also glad that it happened because it answered a question that has been with me since I first heard about spirit conjuration magic back in the 1990s. The spirits we call – or at least the ones that come when I throw my consecrated casts – are here because they want to be. There is something about incarnating as a talisman spirit that is appealing to them. They all want to live.

In sorcerer's workbench, witchcraft

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Venus in Taurus Talismans

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the beginning of the month I was able to catch the two Venus in Taurus elections, casting two cohorts of shibuichi Image of Venus talismans. For this election, I divided my efforts between my usual Picatrix Image of Venus talisman – “…the shape of a woman with a human body but with the head of a bird and the feet of an eagle, holding an apple in her right hand and a wooden comb similar to a tablet in her left, which has these figures written upon in [the Greek letters OLOIOL]. Whoever carries this image will be well received and esteemed by all.” (Picatrix Bk 2, Chapter 10, Paragraph 55, translated by Attrell and Porecca) – and an experimental variant without the characters, which effectively becomes a synthesis between the Picatrix (“…a woman holding an apple in her right hand and, in her left, a comb… “) and Mercurius (“…a shape with the body of man , the face and head of a bird, and the feet of an eagle.”) images (Book II, Chapter 9, paragraphs 27 and 28)” .

The first cohort, cast before dawn on the 1st, consisted of four talismans – two each of the friendship and experimental images. The second cohort, cast before dawn on the 6th, consisted of five –  three friendship and two experimental. The pre-verb for both rituals was intense: I couldn’t sleep at all those nights, and spend the non-ritual hours leading up to the elections working on old drafts. 

All are being sold for $409, including shipping anywhere in the US.

THE FIRST COHORT

Doing divination in preparation for the first cohort, I drew the Princess of Disks: good things will come of these, but they may be slow to manifest – possibly as much as nine months, depending on how literal that pregnancy metaphor gets. I mixed up an incense for the rituals on the night of the 1st, consisting of red sandalwood, rose buds, crushed amber, oil made at a previous Venus election, nutmeg, and cinnamon. I invoked the spirits by means of the Orphic Hymn to Venus (Athanasakis translation, as usual) and the Picatrix Invocation of Venus (Attrell and Porreca, p. 173), calling upon the powers of Venus to send down spirits who would aid and serve and be good companions to whomever carried them, and bring with them the blessings of the planet Venus. I got a little restless and hurried during the casting, and poured the metal at the exact beginning of the election’s window, but I think that was the spirits on the other side as much as me, because I could absolutely feel them come through.

The first talisman is a pendant, and she promises to teach self-love. This is the first of the experimental images. Sold.

The second talisman features the experimental image and is meant to be strung on prayer beads. She promises to help build a new life in a new place.

The third talisman is a pendant and she promises to rebuild bridges.

The fourth talisman bears the experimental image and is meant to be strung on prayer beads. She says, “I am a muse. I draw and inspire muses.”

THE SECOND COHORT

In preparation for the second cohort, I drew IV Art (Crowley’s answer to the Temperence card). Although I was and am confident in the go-ahead message, I am less certain what it means for whomever will carry it. I used the same incense for the second cohort as for the first, and invoked the spirits by the same two hymns, and again asked that the planetary powers send down spirits who would be good companions to those who carried them, and bring with them the blessings of Venus. This election I hit more precisely, a single minute before Venus crossed the ascendant, and again I could very much feel the spirits rushing through.

The first talisman is a pendant and she promises to “bring true connection.” Sold.

The second talisman is a pendant bearing the experimental image. She promises, “I will awaken something within you.” I’m not sure if this will be a new passion or a new fetish, but … I’d take her at her word.

The third talisman is a pendant and she promises, “I will help you find family.”

The fourth talisman is a pendant and she promises, “I grant grace and bring friendship.”

The fifth talisman, bearing the experimental image, is meant to be strung on prayer beads. She promises, “I offer all the blessings of Venus.” SOLD

A FEW CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Between various mundane and magical exertions, I collapsed both physically and emotionally after these elections, and was not able to complete and polish these pieces until the last few days. I got them clean and free of the sprue during the Night Hour of Venus on Friday the 10th. I polished and communed with them on at the night hours of Venus on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week. Having now done these spirits their due honors, I am feeling much better … though that may be confusing causalities.

It is also worth noting that while my divination indicated that these would be good elections for me and my customers – possibly owing to my unique relationship with Venusian powers – two of the astrologers I follow and respect made a point of not taking advantage of these elections: they considered the Uranian influence too destabilizing. Certainly these are not talismans for someone hoping to stabilize existing relationships. But I’m glad that I made them, and I think that whoever takes them home will be glad that they did so. The ideal recipients of these talismans are queer magicians with passions for the arts.

In witchcraft

Ritual Report: Orphic Solstice Vigils

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At yule, my psuedocoven and I finally pulled off a ritual that we’ve been talking about for years: an all-night vigil, reading our way through the Orphic Hymns. 

Some of us had done Yule vigils, before. Aradia and I hadn’t, so we (arguably) overprepared. We designed our ritual so that four of the seven of us had something to do at every stage, and rotated roles so that no one could space out so hard that it became a problem. We divided the night into hourly shifts, with each of us taking a turn reading the hymns in English (and with Alvianna and I alternating reading the hymns in Greek), pouring wine and burning incense (“sacrificer”), tending to the coffee maker and crock pots (“mom friend”), and participating by chanting back pre-selected lines when prompting by the readers. 

Of the various translations available to us – Thomas Taylor (1792), Apostolos Athanassakis (2013), Patrick Dunn (2018), and Sarah Mastros (2020) – we settled on Dunn. It’s Alvianna’s favorite translation, overall, and my second-favorite after Athanassakis, which is more academic but is admittedly not as good for actual use.

Each shift covered seven hymns, taking us from a bit after sunset (the sun sets early at the Winter Solstice, and most of us have day jobs) to just after dawn, and we bracketed the entire thing with prayers and offerings to Hestia. It was cold in our temple at first, but between my pellet stove and the body heat we generated, it was sweltering by the end. The air was already psychoactively thick with incense by the time we got to the God of Annual Feasts, whose hymn demands an offering of “suffumigation of everything but frankincense, plus a libation of milk”, at which point we were officially chonged out by the time we got to the moment of dawn and the Hymn to Eos. One of us had to leave before then, and a couple of us didn’t quite make it (I was among those falling asleep in the last hours. 

It went so well that we decided to do it again, this time at the Summer Solstice.

Going from the Longest Night to the Shortest required a couple changes: nine hymns each hour instead of seven. Cold food and drinks instead of hot. We also elected for a change of venue: Gaea Retreat Center instead of my home.

We had originally planned to make a three-day campout of it. Unfortunately, this year’s heat wave made that impossible. Instead, we rolled out Sunday afternoon with just our cooler, our camp chairs, and our Clam. We got set up early enough to ease into ritual, and we were more than ready to begin when the sun went down. We added fire-tending to the sacrificer role and guard duty (though that proved unnecessary) to the mom-friend role. We might have made those individual jobs, but there were only five of us, and we actually had camp almost entirely to ourselves, so that wasn’t necessary.

The shorter vigil improved the ritual greatly, and we still had down time to rest, eat, and vibe in between the end of each batch of hymns and the beginning of the next. The outdoor venue also really improved things, particularly since the weather for the overnight was nicer than we had any reason to expect – though, I did miss the psychoative effects of the frankincense, and it was too hot to drink wine or even smoke weed. None of us fell asleep, and we were all surprisingly spry in the mornings.

I honestly don’t remember a lot of the fallout and followup from the first ritual. I was already neck-deep in my Christmas Depression. I think that the vigil gets at least partial credit for getting me through December without a complete and total meltdown, and with giving me the courage to quit my day job in January. I am so far experiencing some vitalization in the aftermath, but that has been a mixed blessing.

Inevitably, we have already been discussing how the ritual could be improved for its next iteration. Our first thought is a compromise between the weather and the clock: having the next Orphic Vigil at the Autumn Equinox. I have suggested two or three minute breaks between each hymn, shortening the break at the end of each section. We are also discussing the merits of having everyone who is not reading Greek, sacrificing, or keeping track of food and coffee, reading along with the reader at the head of the altar. Alternately, rewriting the callback lines to be a little more speciffic, and to always invoke the name of the deity.

We have also been discussing aftereffects. Unsurprisingly, we have all reported sleep and dream disturbances – though, for myself and Aradia, we were already struggling to sleep normal hours… which might have been ritual preverb, or might just be the Spicy Sads. 

What is surprising is that fully three fifths of us, rather than experiencing an bump in our Hellenic contacts, have felt a distinct tug in Luficerian directions. For myself, Lucifer (the gnostic/devil/sabbatic figure, not the Roman Morningstar) has been a part of my daily ritual practice for some time, now, but on my previous rounds of initiatory work with my morning gods, he told me that it was not the time. Tuesday, after my first post-vigil sleep, he announced that now, in fact, is the time. More on that as it develops, I guess.  That was strange enough, but the following day, one of us mentioned their own post-vigil Luciferian visions, and a third confirmed that he had poked his head into their work as well. So now we’re wondering what the fuck is up with that.

After two iterations, though, I can confidently recommend the experience. Each group will need to tweak the general shape of things to their own preferences. As you’re planning things, though, we can say with certainty that a spreadsheet will absolutely be your friend.

In art, witchcraft

Triptych Vision of Baphomet

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I’ve mentioned a few times that my daily ritual includes an invocation of Baphomet, calling upon them to light their Gnostic fire with me, my familiars, and the world. I have mentioned that, on some days, I have been rewarded with visions of the god, and that I have attempted to reproduce those visions in art as a devotional practice. I have not been particularly successful at doing so *frequently*, but that practice has continued.

I may also have mentioned that the god has frequently appeared to me as a … triptych, for lack of a better word. Or I may not have. Frankly, I have struggled with the vision, in part because it is so different from the way Baphomet is depicted in any other source that I’ve seen. I have made a few attempts to render those images into art – as an act of devotion, yes, but also so that I can contemplate them, and try to understand them. These three pencil sketches from mid-May are the best that I have managed so far.

In the center, of course, is Baphomet as one usually sees them: goat-headed and goat-footed, in the magician’s pose, the sacred androgyne: both man and woman and neither; both divine and mortal and neither. Levi, who first drew this image, hid their phallus behind a magic wand. I suffer from no such cowardice. In this vision they are the Red God. No, I don’t know what that means.

On the right hand side (of my vision) is the White Lady, or perhaps White Priestess. She is crowned by the moon, and sometimes veiled or blindfolded. She tilts her head back toward the sky, and her arms hang down with her hand open, palms up.

On the left hand side is the Black Man, or the Man in Black, or both. His head is that of a deer, or perhaps the skull of a deer, with branching antlers. He holds his hands up in a gesture of power.

I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what any of this means. Didn’t I just write about how deeply uncomfortable I am with religious impulse and experience? And yet, mystic visions like these are what I live for. And if there are mystic waters unmixed with religion, well… I left those shallow shores behind years ago. When I wrote last, that thought made me angry. Today I am just … confused.

Of all the gods in my altar room, Baphomet is almost always the most present. Even as I have struggled with deep depression over the last weeks – a plain fact that deserves a post of its own – and I have struggled to feel the presences even of Dionysos and Aphrodite, gods who have been with me even longer, Baphomet has been there with me, reaching out, a palpable presence in the room.

The images above are still as much artistic flourish as mystic vision. I hope that, as I continue to struggle out of this emotional morass, I will be able to resume that work, the vision will return and I will be able to render it more clearly.

In art

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Pride 2022: Divine Images of Sappho and Antinoos

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Happy Pride, friends. It’s been a bit of a road to get here. I meant to have this done weeks ago. Life, as they say, happened, instead.

Having a Sorcerer’s Workbench Pride Line was one of my big goals for 2022. But I set that goal for myself before I quit my day job, and while that decision did ostensibly leave me with more free time, the burnout and depression that led me to that decision … well, tending to those wounds has been a serious investment in time and energy.

In the end, I was only able to come up with two divine persons to launch what I hope will be an annual tradition: Sappho and Antinoos. Both are semi-mythic figures: real to the best of scholars’ knowledge, but the majority of their true biographies have been lost and replaced by myth. 

The Antinoos design went perfectly from the jump. The Sappho design has given me trouble: the first prototype came out looking more like a Muppet than Classical beauty. The second prototype was perfect, but the first bronze exemplar didn’t turn out at all, and I somehow failed to get an exemplar into that day’s silver cast. But, as of tonight, I have a successful bronze cast and can properly unveil these images.

Sappho, on the off chance that you don’t know her, was a poet from the island of Lesbos in the Aegian Sea, who lived and wrote in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. Her work was taught as a pinnacle of poetic skill for centuries, well into the Roman Empire, until – through a combination of censorship, neglect, and luck – it was lost to the ages. No contemporary biography survives, and mere scraps of her estimated 10,000 lines of poetry, but her work has been associated with sexual love between women since the Hellenistic period. Now, she and the island from which she came are virtually synonymous with queer women and their experiences.

Antinoos was a young man beloved of the Roman emperor Hadrian. More myth than fact remains of either his life or his death, but the record is clear that he died while travelling with Hadrian in Egypt and that emperor had him deified, established a hero cult in his name, and named a city after him. The cult never became a major religion, but it was widespread and reasonably popular, and Antinoos became both a religious and literary icon of sexual love between men.

I based the artwork for both of these medallions on classical artworks: Sappho on a black figure vase painting from the late 6th century BCE, and Antinoos on a Roman statue in the Antinous Mondragone style from the 2nd century CE, reframed in imitation of an ancient coin. Both will be in my usual 1 inch talisman style, though I am considering a 3/4 inch variation if there’s sufficient interest.

So, friends. Here it is. Sacred Sappho and Holy Antinoos, ancestral figures (for those of y’all who are into that thing), heroes in the hero-cult sense, shining beacons from the ancient past, lights that we can hold up to say “we have always been here, and we will always be here”. The Sorcerer’s Workbench Pride Line 2022. Better late than never.

In Uncategorized

Obsidian Dream Blog: Rite of Her Sacred Fires 2022 – After Action Ruminations

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the last full moon, my ritual crew and I joined Sorita d’Este’s Rite of Her Sacred Fires. It was our fourth round – 2018, ’19, ’21, and now ’22 – and the fifth anniversary of the point where, at least for me, we crossed the line from a working group that (singly and together) happened to do a more-than-average amount of Hekate-oriented rituals into what I now jokingly call the Accidental Hekate Cult. Having done the ritual three times before, all as-written, we could not help but give it the Lunar Shenanigans treatment: elaborating on and escalating the ritual, taking a relatively short and to-the-point ritual intended for a solitary practitioner and turning it into something that six people could do collaboratively.

We started by adding an opening purification of self and space, drawing on elements of our various syncretic practices and the opening rites of the Hekataeon. We added a protection spell written by one of our members. We included an invocation of Hestia. We added a space for each participant to pour offerings, and to prophesy or speak as called, and a divination to confirm that our offerings were both worthy and sufficient. And then we divided up the ritual so that everyone had a key part in the overall ritual.

Alvianna consecrated the candles in earth and water the night before. Someone else in the crew made special incense for offerings. I built the altar while cleaning the house for company. We had a lovely dinner and then transitioned quickly to ritual.  

It all came together beautifully. Our offerings were accepted, and then we went outside together to look at the eclipse. As a personal bonus, though I did have a section, I was not *in charge* of anything.

We may make further changes – that’s who we are as people – but we’re definitely keeping the changes we’ve made so far.

And yet, for all that …

I think everyone else got more out of it than I did.

That disconnect is why it’s taken so long for me to post this.

I am still, as I’ve spoken about before, more sorcerer than priest. I work with gods and spirits far more than I worship them, and the Rite of Her Sacred Fires is more devotional than magical, more theurgy than thaumaturgy. Religion, in any conventional sense of the term, remains strange and uncomfortable to me. It’s not like ancestor work – no matter how many people I otherwise respect advocate for it, they will ever convince me that white people can ethically do anything with ancestors other than bind them, and the very subject makes me physically ill – but it is deeply alien.

I know when a magical or ecstatic ritual is successful – I know that feeling intimately. But devotional ritual? We had divination, this time, to confirm that for me. And I will say that I felt the presence of the goddess. But the very impulse of worship continues to make me uncomfortable.

Why am I even doing it, you ask? I don’t entirely know. Each of the various devotional practices that I have taken up in the last five years have made sense in the moment. Each has been a natural and obvious outgrowth of the work I had done up to that point. 

But together, in aggregate? I’ve reached a point where I barely recognize my own life. I remain deeply hostile to anyone practicing a mainstream religion, or who is willing to submit to a god-king. There are powers in the universe that we can work with, but those are edge cases. Like the mortal parts of the world, the majority of the supernatural and spiritual realms of the cosmos are indifferent to or hostile to human life.

You know what, I take it back. Just thinking about religiosity does make me angry. 

And yet, here I am? Twenty-two months into daily devotional work, mostly centered on my familiar spirits, but increasingly encompassing a handful of gods. Five years into an increasingly devotional Hekate practice wherein she is the de facto patron of my jewelry business (I sell more Hekate devotional jewelry than everything else combined). Ten years into my devotion to Dionysus, the only god who has ever felt more like home than a threat or a challenge.

When I’m just doing it, everything’s fine. Maybe I’m a little bemused. But the harder I think about it, the weirder and more uncomfortable it gets.

Three weeks out from this latest encounter, I am still struggling to write this, to reconcile my feelings around this. What does it mean, what does it cost, to offer devotion and sacrifice to a god?

My Christian upbringing teaches me that devotion is submission and slavery, not just to the god but to their worldly representatives – priests and missionaries. Large parts of the neo-Pagan movement exist ostensibly to cut out those intermediaries. But, frankly, so was the entire Protestant movement, especially in the US, and all that did was establish smaller and more absolute fiefdoms for charismatic priests. And sometimes Paganism feels like it’s just reproducing US Protestantism, just with different questionable fashion choices. But I know that it doesn’t have to be that way.

So, I continue the work to the best of my ability. And I wait. and I wonder.

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I am a Black Goat’s Bride

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Behhold, I am a Black Goat’s Bride!
Behold, I am a wife!
Behold, I bear a breast to feed
The one whose tongue’s a knife!
Behold, I bear a breast that bleeds
The very stuff of life!
Take me, Dionysus!
Make me the Black Goat wife!

Of all the gods I honor, the one with whom I have a relationship that most resembles “religion” is Dionysus. I make and drink wine in his name. I study his lore, both ancient and modern, and I study the history of his worship. I ask nothing of him except that which is his nature to offer: the ecstasy of wine and mystery, freedom from bonds and oppression, healing from the wounds of madness, to come when I call, and to move through me into others. Perhaps, some day, I will scribe my own golden tablet with which to be burried.

Through the years, the relationship has been more and less regular, more and less formal, more and less intense. I was not, as I have said before, raised with anything that could legitimately be considered religion, just the cultural malaise of compulsory Christianity – much like and interwoven with compulsory heterosexuality – which is to say, a form of rigid social and thought control, but without meaningful ritual or any attempt to connect to divinity. So “worship” in any sense of the term has always been fraught and confusing, at best, and, at worst, alien and threatening. This has always been compounded by the fact that so many of the Dionysiacs I have known in person, especially early in my experience of Paganism, are less devoted mystics and more illiterate alchololics. So I have found my way in the darkness, more by luck than skill, and I remain ever insecure in that first, formative devotion.

I first encountered the Black Goat Bride ritual at Paganicon, 2018. It was led by Jack Grayle, now of Hekataeon fame, then just an exceptionally charismatic ritualist who managed to take seventy-odd people in a hotel ball room down to the underworld, where we retrieved a dead god and returned, with little more than the sound of his voice and a consecrated goat skull. It was, hands down, the best public ritual my partner and I had ever participated in, possibly including the best we had ever led. In the weeks after the festival, I wrote to Jack and asked for a copy of the script, so that we could introduce it to our working group.

The ritual has several stages. It begins with an invocation of Hekate, who will lead the initiates to the underworld where they will find the corpse of Dionysos. The next phase is a procession to the underworld, and the casket where the goat skull symbolizing the body of Dionysus awaits. The ritualists then mourn the death of Dionysus – he dies in several myths, most famously as a child dismembered by the giants, and every time grapes are crushed into wine (I apologize that I can’t find an easy-read citation for either of those) – and wail their grief out loud. Then an invocation is performed, which was very clearly inspired by a great deal of work with the Greek Magical Papyri, though I can’t point to any specific ritual. The god rises, the goat skull is freed from its casket, and the ritualists rejoice and dance – laughing and howling and ululating. When they have worked themselves into a frenzy, the dance ends and recite the chant at the top of this post while the goat skull is passed around the circle like a suckling babe. When all have fed the god, it is placed upon the altar and participants may worship individually at the altar, and if one is moved to act as oracle, they may do so.

It took us longer than it should have to source a skull and have money at the same time, and then the plague came, and it worked out that we were not able to stage the ritual for our crew until Beltane 2021. I led the ritual. My compatriots danced and cried around me. We raised Dionysus from the dead, and danced in his honor. My partner, Aradia, took the role of oracle. And, when it was done, I was possessed by the god for the first time in my fifteen-odd-years of worship. The difference was obvious to everyone. I moved differently. I talked differently. I could not participate in basic things like making dinner. And when we had all eaten, I became contagious: spreading the presence of the god to each of my compatriots as they worked up the courage to meet my eyes. And then, eventually, the god left me and I collapsed.

I thought about writing this up, then, but …. other things happened, and the writing didn’t.

We performed the ritual again at Samhain. That night, my partner Aradia led and one of our compatriots (for whom, if I have ever had a clever pseudonym, I have forgotten it) played the oracle. That night we were camped in a different location, and there was some asshole driving laps around our camp site. Perhaps because of the outside interference, perhaps because of the season, the mourning seemed to be the focus of the ritual, and rather than the revelry. The mood afterward was subdued. I had a quiet meltdown, and went to bed before everyone else.

I thought about writing up the ritual again, but the words stuck in my throat – so to speak – and the first paragraph of this post lingered in my drafts for six months.

We performed the ritual again this Beltane. Alvianna took point leading the ritual, and Kraken sat as oracle. Building on our experiences from previous years, and because Alvianna in particular likes exceptionally long rituals, she added two preparatory sections to the overall ritual – a Hermes Crossroads rite, and the Sensibus rite from the Hekataeon (pp.36-41 of the first edition).

I have been … feeling and seeing signs that there are big changes coming in my life, and that I need to make big changes to my practice. I had hoped that I might have some experience this weekend that might clarify that sense, even point me in a direction. Leading into the Dionysus ritual, I was feeling powerful and connected and ready to call the god and revel in his presence and perhaps have a vision. But when it came time to mourn, I could not make a sound. I felt the pain and the grief, but I could not make myself cry. All the built up power and impending ecstasy … just fell away. I found a little bit of it back as the ritual continued. But when the revel ended, and everyone else was yipping and howling an ululating … once more my voice caught in my throat, and I was stuck. I ended the ritual feeling lost and confused.

Kneeling at the altar after the ritual, I could feel the god – present but aloof. I can’t put into words what I asked, or what was answered. Only that, as I knelt there, I felt the presence of not just the god, but his panther, who circled and then came up behind me, a comforting weight. 

Afterward, though, the sky was as clear and beautiful as the last year, and the Great Bear constellation hung in the sky directly over our camp, framed by the trees. Given my experiences with the Great Bear on my 2019 desert road trip with Aradia, and the Great Bear rituals that our crew have done since, I was inclined to take that as a powerfully good omen. Which I needed, because the answers I got from the oracle were not as clear or helpful as I hoped they would be.

The ritual did not go as well for me, personally, as it has in the past. I am still glad that we did it, and that everyone else in the Lunar Shenanigans crew is as excited to include it in our small but slowly growing ritual calendar. Dionysus calls to me. He has called to me, probably, since before I first decided that I was willing to fuck with gods. This ritual speaks to me. I like that this ritual is so somatic, so all-in. I like that it has room for drunken revelry, but that it speaks first to the uncanny, disturbing, cthonic aspects of Dionysus and his worship. You cannot suckle a goat skull at your breast and pretend that what you’re doing is just like church.

For those curious, the goat skull is back in its place on my public altar, draped in its shroud. When I am keeping up with my own lunar practice (distinct from the work I do with the Lunar Shenanigans pseudocoven), it gets a candle and a wine offering at the full and dark moon. Otherwise it waits patiently for its next resurrection.

For myself, I am back in the world, sitting with a mystic’s visions – both my own and the oracle’s – and with this month’s divination, New Moon and new month uncomfortably simultaneous, and try to see the road forward. Whatever’s coming, it’s weirder than what came before.

And I am the Black Goat’s bride.

If Jack Grayle has published the full text of this ritual anywhere, I am not aware of it. I hope that he does, some day. I do not have permission to share it. If you want the full text, I encourage you to reach out to him from his website.

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Dedication Ritual for Consecrated Talismans from the Sorcerer’s Workbench.

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Most of my talismans are unconsecrated: empty vessels waiting for you to fill them with power and/or a spirit. There are numerous traditions and schools of thought on how to perform that enchantment (even the word “consecrated” is up for debate), and I’m writing some guides for that as we speak.

In addition to those empty vessels, I offer a small selection of talismans that I have cast and consecrated at opportune astrological moments. I have made initial contact with the spirits that now dwell within them and acquired a name and sigil, which I pass on to the client, but I can’t do all the work. You – the hypothetical you who is both reading this post and has purchased one of my consecrated talismans – must still introduce yourself to the spirit, and come to some sort of arrangement.

If you have a lot of experience with spirit work, or a well-developed tradition into which you’ve been initiated or from which you’re working, this guide will not be necessary for you. You will either have your traditional rites to fall back on, or be able to communicate with the talisman spirit without my guidance or input.

This guide is for solitary and intermediate practitioners for whom a roadmap is at least helpful. If your tradition covers some of this territory (anyone with a background in eclectic Wicca, for example, has a tried and true circle-casting procedure), feel free to substitute that. However you proceed, I recommend writing out an outline and doing some basic divination to confirm that that ritual at that time is the way to go.

You will only need to perform this ritual once, to make initial contact. Afterward, the talisman spirit will tell you what it needs. My personal talismans all wanted a box to live in while they weren’t being worn or carried. They all also eventually promoted themselves to familiar spirits, at which point they were added to my spirit altar and now receive daily offerings and weekly consultations. Yours may not be so intimate or demanding.

Supplies

You will need:

A flat surface upon which to lay or draw your triangle of conjuration. If you do not have one you already prefer, I have included my own, based on the Trithemius circle used by Frater Rufus Opus. If you have a mirror or crystal that you use for spirit work, place it in the center of the triangle.

Consecrated incense for your temple space. I use a stick of frankincense and myrrh, usually consecrated just before lighting it.

A brazier and charcoal and tools to light it.

The incense from the envelope that came with the talisman.

An offering candle. I prefer tea lights or chime candles.

A libation to offer. I prefer coffee or wine. Clean water is usually acceptable.

Set and Setting

Schedule your ritual for an appropriate day and hour. I recommend the dawn hour of the appropriate planetary day, or the Third Hour of Night.

If you have an altar or temple space you usually use for spirit work, use that.

Opening

Purify yourself with a bath and/or by washing your hands with cinnamon.

Cast your circle by drawing the perimeter clockwise with a blade and consecrate the space with incense.

If you have any guides or familiar spirits, invoke them to help make the talisman spirit welcome, and to facilitate communication between you.

Body

Draw the talisman from its envelope and either draw the sigil in the center of the triangle or place the envelope with the sigil in the center, beneath the mirror or crystal if you are using one.

Place the talisman in the triangle on your altar. If possible, sit it upright so that you can look at the image on its face.

Call the spirit by name, setting some of the incense in the charcoal as you do so. If necessary, chant the spirit’s name until you can sense its presence.

Introduce yourself. (Also introduce your cadre of guides and familiars, if you have brought any.)

Light the offering candle, pour a libation, and add more of the incense to the charcoal.

Ask if the spirit has another name or sigil that it would prefer you to use.

Sit with the spirit until you are confident in the answer. If given a name or sigil, record them and thank the spirit.

Tell the talisman spirit what you need from it.

Sit with the spirit until it speaks to you, or until you have a sense that your petition has been heard.

Ask the talisman spirit what it needs from you. Possible answers include preferred offerings, or taboos.

Put the rest of the incense on the charcoal and sit with the talisman and spirit until all the incense has burned.

Closing

Thank the talisman spirit for appearing.

Thank any guides and familiars that you have summoned.

Dismiss the circle by drawing the knife along the perimeter counterclockwise.

If you are in an environment where it is safe to do so, leave the offering candle to burn.

Going Forward

Magical talismans are not D&D magic items. They don’t just work without your interest and attention. Traditions vary as to what maintenance they need. As I mentioned above, the talismans I have kept for myself have been, I think, needier than average. Then again, I ask for a lot.

At a minimum, your talisman should be kept clean and intact. To that end I have included a polishing cloth and a box to store it in. As jewelry, your talisman should not be worn in the shower or when swimming, or when you sleep. Please trust me on this: I’ve been a jeweler almost as long as I’ve been a magician.

My experience has also been that talismans left on the altar, rather than worn or carried, need that time and attention made up in other ways.

Commune with your talisman on a regular basis. Thank if for fulfilling petitions. If it fails to manifest what you have asked for, ask what it needs to fulfill your requests. If you can’t hear spirits clearly, use divination to facilitate the conversation.

Thank you for patronizing the Sorcerer’s Workbench, and I hope that your talisman serves you well.