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In scholarship, witchcraft

Candle Magic Study II: Dialing Up Your Candle Magic

Author Satyr MagosPosted on Leave a comment

I didn’t mean to wait six months to follow up on my first candle magic post. The depression and imposter syndrome got me. (Yes, I have been writing publicly about my magic for almost fifteen years and have run an occult art jewelry studio for five years. I have been ritual leader and Chair of the Board of Directors for a major pagan festival. I still struggle with imposter syndrome.)

As I said before, in the opening of part one, I came to results-oriented magic relatively late in my magical career. I really only started fucking around with enchanting for things (besides protection magic) with my first Chaos Magick experiments in the late 00s and early 2010s. When I started fucking around with candle magic, specifically, I found relatively few clear instructions. And so I set out to fill that need.

In the first post, I laid out a basic ritual template for a candle magic spell. It’s hardly the only way to do it, but you have to start somewhere before you develop your own style, and I think it’s a good starting place.

In this post, I go over a handful of ways to take that basic ritual, which can be done with just a candle and a lighter and a prayer, and dial it up a notch. You can do one of these things. You can do all of these things. For that matter, I’m sure that there’s a dozen other things I haven’t even thought of. There are even a handful of things I allude to in my first post, chiefly sigils and petitions, that deserve posts of their own.

This post, like the last one, is the product of my research and experimentation over the last couple years, specifically, but also over the whole of my magical career. But it’s not a finished thesis, or even an articulation of a single school of thought: I am still learning, and would love to hear from any who’ve used these (and other) techniques.

There is going to be a third post in the series – arguably it should have been the second – in which I talk about building a candle magic altar. That post will include things that I vaguely referenced in this post and the last, like the way that you should include fire safety in your ritual planning. In the meantime, please be careful and don’t set yourselves on fire.

Repetition

The easiest and possibly most underrated thing you can do to strengthen your candle magic is to double and triple down on it. I can only guess as to why, but a lot of people seem to have a “one and done” approach to magic, even (maybe even especially), if the first spell toward a goal doesn’t manifest success immediately.

If you need something, keep asking for it. It does not matter which iteration “really worked”. You can do divination to see why a spell (seems to have) failed, or which iteration did the most good. But keep enchanting until you get what you want.

Every single week, I do at least one prosperity candle, at least one protection candle, at least one cursebreaking candle, and at least one healing candle. I will keep doing so (as well as a lot of other magic to those same ends) until I am happy, healthy, and safe (or dead).

Timing

The second extremely easy way to kick you magic up a notch is to consider the timing. Now, contrary to certain theories and cult leaders, the first timing consideration for your spell (candle magic or otherwise) is act when you need to. You can consider more precise and sophisticated timing when you’ve sent up that first flare.

With that first spell cast, now look to more beneficial timing. Consider the phase of the moon. More in-depth looks at lunar timing are available elsewhere, including nearly every beginner’s book on the market, so I will just say here that “waxing” or “waning” are much more important than “full” or “new”. Use the waxing moon for increase and building; use the waning moon for decrease and destruction. Take protection and purification magic as an example of how those are framing devices more than objective strategies: I burn fiery wall of protection candles during the waxing moon and uncrossing candles during the waning; I do most of my healing magic during the waxing moon, but don’t let the lunar phase stop me when I need a healing boost during the waning, or feel like I’m in need of uncrossing during the waxing.

If you have the leisure for a little more precision, look to planetary days and hours. Again, most beginner books and countless websites have this information, so I won’t repeat it here, except to say that the dawn hour is super convenient on account of you don’t have to do any math; day AND hour is best, but focus on whichever one you’ve got. Jason Miller has a whole book on how to mix and match planetary days & hours to more interesting effects.

More sophisticated astrological timing, which takes into account the precise positions of the stars and planets, is a cool thing that you should study if you get the chance, but it’s beyond the scope of this article. Christopher Warnock’s book, Secrets of Planetary Magic, is the best introductory work on the subject that I know of.

Dressing Your Candle with Oils

I mentioned dressing your candles in my first post, but it’s worth elaborating on.

Applying consecrated oils to your candles before lighting them is one of the easiest and most widely used ways of adding power to your candle magic spells that I know of. Making your own oils is both fun and potent magic, but there is nothing wrong with relying on the work of specialists. Hoodoo and conjure shops (if you have one) usually have better oils than Pagan and New Age stores. Do your research into the reputation of the brands you buy; I personally like Quadrivium and Devil’s Conjure for my consecrated oil needs.

There are a variety of schools of thought on how best to apply the oils to the candles, and I encourage you to research them. What I have found most effective for tapers (be it a birthday, chime, or tall) is to rub the candles down while praying, holding the candle perpendicular to my body and rubbing the oil down the candle toward myself for intentions that bring things to me (money- and love- drawing, as the obvious examples) and away from myself for getting rid of things. For dressing a container candle, one drops the oil onto the top of the candle and then rubs it clockwise for drawing and building or counterclockwise for banishing and breaking.

Very little oil is needed. An eyedropper full can easily be too much, and can even be a fire hazard in some situations. One or two drops, or just a bit on the tip of your finger, is plenty. This is not just frugality: especially with container candles, it’s actually possible to apply enough oil that you are mechanically interfering with the process of burning the candle.

If, for whatever reason, you really want to use more oil, apply it to the palms of your hands and the soles of feet, and run it through your hair rather than soaking the candle. (I do this with most of my candle magic, especially my uncrossing and healing work.)

Planetary Powers

The gods, angels, daimones, and other powers associated with the seven traditional planets are shockingly easy to invoke and to work with, and are an excellent way to take your candle spell to the next level. (You can probably make friends with the powers of the newfangled planets, too, but I haven’t done those experiments for myself and I don’t know anyone else who’s done them.)

It will work best if you’ve made friends with the spirits of the planet in question, first (to which end I recommend Rufus Opus’ Seven Spheres), but that’s not strictly necessary. What will be absolutely necessary is a more elaborate workspace for your candle spell.

I’ll have a whole post about an altar space, soon, but the extra short version is this: at the center, your candle goes on a firesafe surface that the candle cant fall and roll out of. Around that dish, you should arrange symbols associated with the planet: a colored altar cloth, an idol or icon, the grand planetary seal and/or the sigils of the archangel, the Olympic spirit, and/or the planetary spirits and intelligences. Picatrix images and Solomonic pentacles are also good. I recommend no less than three such objects; a number associated with the chosen planet is obviously good, but the only way to have too many is to be distracted by your own visual clutter.

When winding up the ritual, call on the powers of the planet(s) – both in general and by name – to bless and consecrate your candle, to awaken and aliven your materia, to execute your will. Invoke them to be present in your ritual: the Orphic hymns (any translation) are effective and easy to find, you can rewrite the final lines to your own purposes; there are also countless other invocations you can find online or in print, or you can speak off the cuff. Again, as always, state your desire aloud for best results. Thank the powers when you have finished your ritual, and again when your goal is achieved.

Calling In Your Gods and Allies

Gods. Saints. Ancestors. Spirit allies. Familiars. Guides. Any spirit you work with on a halfway regular basis can be called in to aid your candle magic. Of the above, I can speak most directly to working with familiar spirits, but I can say that – based on my experience – there is a measurable difference between lighting a candle as a part of a ritual invoking outside powers and invoking those powers as part of a candle magic ritual. The chief differences, in my experience, are that when working directly with familiar spirits and other close allies, as opposed to calling on them to help with your candle magic, your goals don’t need to be as specific and your ritual will probably look fairly different.

As with the planetary powers above, call them in from the very beginning: ask them to bless, consecrate, awaken, and aliven your materia. Ask them for what you want. Ask them to empower your spell. Thank them when you are done with your ritual, and when your goal is achieved.

In Conclusion

None of the techniques above are absolutely necessary for candle magic. As I said at the beginning, they’re ways to take the basic candle magic ritual and bring it some oomph. They’re ways to focus your time and attention on your candle spell so that it’s more likely to go off. You can use any number or combination of them that you can wrap your head around. Or you can stick to the basics: tell your candle what you need, light it, and walk away.

My next post (hopefully to come out in a week or so, but I clearly can’t be trusted to exist in mortal timeframes) will revolve around making a candle magic altar and the fire safety that should go with it. I am also considering a fourth post where I get into my experiences combining sigil magic with candle magic, and possibly als petitions. If I do, that will probably be in January or Feburary.

In the meantime, I hope you found this useful and interesting. Again, if you have any experiences and research of your own that you’d like to contribute, please don’t hesitate to comment or reach out.

And thank you, as always, to my Patreon supporters. Thank you all especially, now, as I’ve neglected the majority of you for the majority of November while I obsessed over my November Novel Draft.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Working the Sorcery of Solomon: Teaching the Book

Author Satyr MagosPosted on Leave a comment

Working the third lesson of the pentacles course turned into a bit of a slog for me. I think that making the transition from preparing the book to scribing the first pentacles would have been a challenge under any circumstances, but August, and the first weeks of September, were incredibly busy for me on the Sorcerer’s Workbench side of things, and that left me as a bit of a mess.

The third lesson of the class and third chapter of the book are, of course, focused on the pentacles of the Moon. Mastros talks about it at length in the course, and makes her point in the book as well, but on the off chance you, my reader, haven’t been sold on the class, yet, it’s worth a sentence or two here. The Lesser Key of Solomon presents the pentacles in descending Chaldean order, Saturn through the Moon. In fact, most grimoires present planetary subjects in descending order. Mastros reverses this order for three reasons: working up, Moon to Saturn, makes more sense to a modern practitioner than the reverse; the Moon and Mercury include pentacles that teach you magic; and she just likes it better that way. As it happens, I agree with her on all three points.

The third lesson is also where we lay the final layer of the foundation before we begin the true work of the course: teaching pentacles to the book before we begin putting them to use.

Teaching the book is an interesting conceit. I am not just inscribing the pentacles in the book in a way that demonstrates and shores up my understanding of the magical seals; I am teaching them to the book so that the book and the book-spirit can study and internalize them, and then aid Solomon (and the pentacles, themselves) in teaching me their proper use. For all its baroque circularity, it does (for me at least) render the oft-advocated practice of transcribing a grimoire in one’s own hand from “ordeal” into “practical sense”.

Preparing and Planning

Following on July’s adventures, and being swamped in the workshop, I did not prepare or plan for this lesson as meticulously as I did the first two.

Following some omens and oracles from August, I wound up for this next phase of the pentacles by starting another course of Seven Spheres initiations. It had been a while since I’d done that, and I was feeling incredibly low energy, and I was hoping that it would help me. Unfortunately, I apparently read the omens wrong … or something, because I only made it through three spheres before the Sun told me to sit down, slow down, and to not exacerbate my burnout like that. I … had to be told more than once.

To prepare to formally inscribe and consecrate the seals into the book, I re-watched the third lesson video and re-read the passages in the book on each of the pentacles. I figured out my best pronunciations of the names of god, and what meanings I was going to lean on. As I penciled in the seals, the afternoon before inking and consecrating them, I made notes on the facing page, including the name and use of the pentacle, the Hebrew and English spelling of each name, and meanings of each name that I would use. I wrote out the full text of the spell that I would perform, including my Blade, Book, and Candle framing ritual and the invocation of Solomon. Mastros, like many teachers, strongly advocates speaking from the heart; I feel like I do my best work from a script, even if it’s my own.

Inscribing My First Seals

I have, so far, inscribed and consecrated three seals/pentacles in my book. I have penciled in two more, but missed the appropriate planetary hours on the days I intended to ink and consecrate them. (The transition from daylight savings time back to standard usually fucks up  my sleep schedule; this year it’s just thrown off my afternoon meditation and evening rites.)

As I mentioned in the last post, I’m just not feeling the volume of energy that Mastros describes in her lessons, or that I expected to feel from such a famous magical technique. Although I have had repeated and powerful contact experiences with both King Solomon, himself, and the spirit of my book of pentacles, the experience of inscribing the pentacles in the books has continued to be anticlimactic.

Like the Great Seal before them, I penciled each pentacle in during the afternoon before I planned to properly inscribe and consecrate it. I chanted the versicle as I inscribed it, and the names of god as I inscribed them, and again as I anointed them all with holy oil. But, like the Great Seal before them, as I inscribed each pentacle in the book, chanting the versicle and names of god, I never felt them “come alive” like Mastros describes. There was just a moment when they were clearly done, and it was time for me to bring the ritual to a close.

The Lunar Lock and Key was the first and hardest of three that I have inscribed so far. The square, instead of circular, geometry, and the uprights that have always struck me as castle pennants, made energetically building the seal difficult and counterintuitive. This was one place where I found Mastros’ instructions to be frustratingly unclear; what seemed to make sense while she was talking/on the page did not make sense in the moment. With that said, it was not so difficult that I couldn’t figure it out, and I’m not at all sure how I would explain the process to someone better than she did.

The Wing of El was, surprisingly, the easiest, though the Witches’ teacher was only marginally more difficult. The geometry is simpler, and their … assembly is more intuitive. Having inscribed these seals, I am much more confident in my ability to proceed further.

Moving at the glacial pace I have through the third lesson, though, I’ve had a lot of time to think, reflect, discuss, and divine about these experiences. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

I continue to have intense contact experiences with Solomon and the book-spirit (who really needs a cute nickname, at this point), even when the pentacle-consecration part of the work.

The book-spirit and the Great Seal feel stronger every time I work with the book.

When I put the pentacles to use (next post), they fucking worked.

So, where does that leave me?

Now, I know (and I think I mentioned before) that part of the problem is that I seem to have lost a lot of energy sensitivity over the last few years. It might be a side effect / natural consequence of taking my magical practice from a place of woven energy and spirit journeys and sigil magic to a more conventional place of spirit conjuration and candle magic and consecrating talismans. It might also be a side effect of the trauma of having been driven out of my community, or the pandemic world. It also might be that I have not yet learned to tune in to the particular frequency of energy (in, like, a radio dial sense not a “high vibes only” sense) at which the pentacles operate.

I think, also, that the layering is a factor. I study the pentacles. I imagine inscribing them in the book. I pencil them in outside of ritual, so that I can get the art part right without worrying about the magic part. At the ordained time, I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars, I wind up the Great Seal, and finally I ink and consecrate the pentacle in the book. Then I close it all back up and let it ferment. And then, every single day, I make offerings – candles and incense and libations – at the altar where the book lives, feeding it again. Each phase of that work layers in more power. So the energy and effort that at least some of my peers are putting in just in that one planetary hour, I’m spreading out over days or weeks or even months.

And then, possibly the biggest factor, we come back to that middle-ish sentence: “I awaken my temple and invoke Solomon and Sheba and all my other patrons and familiars…” I’m not in this alone. I’ve brought my decades of witchcraft with me. I, personally, am providing at most a tenth of the power going into the pentacles to awaken them. Which is good, because I don’t have the fucking juice that I once did. But I have made friends, and this is part of what I come to them for. It’s the nature of this whole shebang that I can’t see what they’re doing behind the curtain.

Preparing for the Next Stages

The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is not, in fact, to make a magic book, or even to make contact with the spirit of Solomon, Magician-King. The point of studying Solomonic pentacles is to fucking use them. Which is where we run into my biggest obstacle as a student of magic in general and as a Chaote in particular: I am actually not super creative when it comes to applying magical means to specific ends.

Sara Mastros suggests that her students start with the Lunar Lock and Key, using it to journey to the underworld. It may seem stupid, but as a moderately proficient underworld journeyer, I was not really certain how to use the Lock&Key to do what I could do empty handed. But, after weeks and weeks of hemming and hawing, I figured out how to answer that question.

Which is where I’ll take up the next post in a few weeks.

If you enjoy these posts and would like to read the read the next one before everyone else, please back my patreon campaign.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Working Sorcery of Solomon: Opening Gambits

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the beginning of May, I acquired Sara Mastros’ book Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magician King. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for the “companion” course (scare quotes because the book grew out of the course, not the other way around, and contains a great deal of information that couldn’t be fit into the book) and began accumulating the materials for the work.

The book and the course are not, in fact, the same: the Venn diagram of the information and techniques they contain is near circular, but not quite. Broadly speaking, the class just has more: more background, more details, more exemplars, plus (obviously) direct student-teacher interaction and all the benefits of working with a group. But, because there is only one of me and I am not quite crazy enough to double up all the work (some of which literally can’t be done twice and the rest of which would result in two books of pentacles, which … might be of use as a long-term thing, but which would be absurd to do I am working them simultaneously), I will treat them as if they were, in fact, one and the same. 

For reference, the format of the class goes like this: Mastros hosts monthly online meetings where she goes over each of the lessons. The first lesson is history and context and making contact with the spirit of Solomon. The second builds on the first and culminates in the construction of your own personal book of pentacles, from which you will make and empower the pentacles you that will actually use. Seven lessons follow, each focusing on the pentacles attributed a particular planet, starting with the Moon and going up the line to Saturn. Then the class culminates in two lessons synthesizing and building on what you’ve learned in the first nine. Then the cycle repeats. When you join the class, you’re given access to the recorded meetings and their slideshows/notes; the expectation is that you’ll work the back catalog at your own pace, attending classes and discussion groups as they come. Students are also strongly encouraged to find a study / accountability buddy in the class to help keep each other on track with the year-long course, and to keep each other honest and on the rails. The book is structured similarly, but not identically.

I joined in May of 2024, just in time to miss Lesson Nine – Saturn. The next cycle will start in September or (more likely) October, depending on how some things shake for Mastros here in meatspace.

Unlike my Hekataeon series, I don’t intend to break this series into dual posts, with one focusing on the material requirements and one on my experiences. This is because Mastros’ class and book are both better organized and more clearly written than the Hekataeon, and do not require that degree of third-party roadmapping. (Sorry Jack.)

Gathering Materials

I have had to take my time gathering all the materials. Between poverty, having my car out of commission for almost three weeks, and trying to source things locally and used as much as possible, it’s been almost six weeks to gather everything I need to wind up this work. I was actually a bit stressed about that for the first couple of weeks, afraid that I’d embarrass myself in front of the class because I wasn’t ready to jump into everything head first.

Finding a book was more challenge than it should have been: I had a particular style of sketchbook that I wanted but wasn’t able to find in my local art stores at a price that I was willing and able to pay. I was able to find something close enough, though, and that I think I’ll be pleased with. It’s not as large as Mastros’ exemplar – only 8.5×11, not 11×14 – but I think that will be large enough for everything that I’m likely to actually do  with this book. I was able to find a tasseled white scarf at a local thrift store, and I had some leftover blue cord from another project that turned out to be the  exactly correct size to bind the book.

As a professional artist, I have a variety of compasses, protractors, and straightedges to choose from. I was going to use this project as an excuse to buy a better compass, but have not yet found one to my taste in my budget. I have, for the moment, set a protractor and straight edge aside to live with the book. My quest for a swank compass will continue.

Finding an icon was both more and less complicated. As a small business owner (and, honestly, as someone who just hasn’t kept up with the times), I actually own a decent color printer. So, rather than purchasing an icon from an Etsy dealer or Orthodox supply store, I found an image, printed it, myself, and cannibalized one of the many thriftstore picture frames I picked up while thinking I was going to sell prints of my photography. I now keep the framed icon with my veiled and bound Book.

oil painting of king solomon in gold and blue robes and a gold and red headdress. He faces left and holds a narrow staff in his right hand.

I chose this particular image of Solomon because I thought he looked handsome and majestic in it, the magician king at the height of his power. I also deliberately chose an image in the public domain: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.76152.html

Then I turned to sourcing materia for the oil and incense. Most of the ingredients are things I either had on hand or needed to restock, anyway, though some of it was a little pricey: the ceylon cinnamon and the cannabis, specifically. I was prepared to start with just frankincense instead of the full Solomonic incense, but things ended up coming together for me to blend and consecrate both oil and incense at the Full Moon / Summer Solstice combination.

The recipes for the oil and incense (which are available in the free-first-lesson-powerpoint [insert link here]) are given in parts rather than specific units. I can see the advantages of that, but also it’s given me a bit of an autistic fit. Ultimately, I chose to measure out the oil and associated materia by weight, and the incense by volume.

Regarding the oil, that may have been the wrong decision. Either I mis-measured something, or botched my math somewhere, because I my initial results came out as absolute used-coffee-grounds sludge. Getting a consistency that I liked ended up tripling the oil, and creating a supply that will probably last me a lifetime even if I’m extra generous with my friends.

The incense, however, turned out fantastic. It was my first time making incense lumps rather than just powder, but other than hating how the sticky honey felt on my hands (autism things), it came together almost exactly as planned. That “almost” is the fact that I chose the size of my “parts” poorly, and ended up with another lifetime supply when that wasn’t really called for.

For those planning to take the course themselves, my advise is this: when choosing your base measurement, think about what’s going to look like fully assembled.

Hacking the Current

I began, as I said, by reading the book. Once I had access to the archived class videos, I immediately binged them, as well. Inevitably, especially on my first pass, not every lesson got my undivided attention. But, each lesson begins with a prayer and a chant invoking Solomon as patron of the work. So, once I’d acquired the sketchbook, veil, and cord, and once I’d chosen and framed my Solomon icon, I made it my habit to sit down with my book and icon, light incense and a candle, and join the chant.

After a few rounds of that – one day, in particular, when I made it through three lessons in a day, each with its own new round of offerings – I could feel the energetic current of the class. I almost want to say that joining asynchronously, as I did, made it easier to feel the current at large, because I could pause the video, light my offerings, and then unpause and focus on the chanting.

Having found the current, I reached out and … joined it, adding my own voice to the chanting, and drawing power from the chanting down into my icon and book.

I did something similar, way back in the day (2014), when I was joining Seven Spheres in Seven Days experiments that preceded the Seven Spheres book.

Courting Solomon and the Mighty Dead

Regular readers may recall that I am deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work of any kind. I am only marginally less uncomfortable with saints and the Mighty Dead. But one of the reasons I took this class was to push my own boundaries, so here we are.

I began courting Solomon as a patron in the work as I described above, making offerings at the beginning of each (recorded) class. I also began including Solomon (and the nascent spirit of the Book, awaiting consecration and awakening) in my morning rituals, which revolve offering incense, a candle, and a cup of coffee to all the gods, powers, patrons, allies, friends, familiar spirits, and anyone else who lives on the altars of my house, in the pages of my sacred books, or comes when I call and aids me in my work.

That bore fruit more quickly than I anticipated. I made direct contact with the spirit of Solomon in the first week of June. He seemed a little confused at where he’d manifested, but also curious, which … same, bruh. In subsequent contact, in which I asked him if there were any particular stipulations that I needed to observe as I approached this work, I have been told: A) Not to contact him on the Sabbath except for Saturnian work; and, B) to approach the work with an open heart.

Obviously, I will continue to develop that relationship. Swift success has saved me from the need of making another infuriating attempt at dream incubation (Mastros’ recommended method for spirit communication when they don’t just show up for morning coffee), but not from some of the specific conversations needed before beginning the work.

I have not yet begun courting the Solomonic lineage of teachers, translators, and preservers. This isn’t a major part of the work, but it is something that Mastros recommends, at least at the beginning. I am, as is probably well know to all at this point, deeply uncomfortable with ancestor work, and for whatever reason approaching the lineage as a whole is psychologically more difficult for me than approaching Solomon, himself.

On the Treatment of Holy Names

The study and creation of Solomonic pentacles brings a new logistical problem to my practice: the disposal of pages on which Hebrew holy names have been written. My usual witchcraft, chaos magick, and neo-hellenistic practices have no particular taboos about written names; some white middle-class fuckery about preserving books, sure, but that’s not quite the same. My general practice is to burn failed experiments, expired materials, and even the remains of successful magic whose need has run its course.

The Hebrew religious, magical, and literary traditions from which the pentacles come, however, have some very strict rules about the creation, use, and destruction of such names – specifically (assuming I’m understanding correctly), any page on which such a name is written becomes a person, and must be mourned and buried accordingly. Synagogues, I have learned, have special repositories for such things. It’s not exactly my theology, but I can wrap my head around the need to see my Book and any consecrated and activated pentacles I have made consigned to such an end. I can come up with ways to make that work.

But I’m having a little more trouble trying to decide what to do with practice pages and dry runs. After reviewing that section in the course material (video Lesson Two: Planets and Craft), I believe that I will collect my practice pages carefully and burn them ceremonially at Samhain, and use that sacred ash to make sacred salt and/or ink. But I think I’m also going to talk to other folks in my class and see what compromises and solutions they’ve come up with.

Preparing For the Next Stage

With the above work done, I am ready to move on to the next phase: consecrating the book as a magical companion and familiar, and inscribing the Great Seal of Solomon from which all the subsequent seals will draw (at least a portion of) their power.

I’ve started assembling all the instructions from the book and videos into a coherent-to-me ritual. My study buddy and I have planned out the dates we intend to consecrate our books, and empower our Great Seals. Mostly, we’re waiting on the waxing moon.

I’m excited to take the next steps in this new (to me) magical adventure.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Book Review: Sorcery of Solomon by Sara Mastros

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

A few weeks ago, I had the money to buy a book I’ve been looking forward to since I first heard about some time last winter: Sara Mastros’ newest offering, The Sorcery of Solomon: A Guide to the 44 Planetary Pentacles of the Magcian King.

I have been circling Solomonic magic for a little more than a decade now, ever since I began my big deep-dive into the ceremonial side of the western magical tradition. While I have recently joked that it was the appeal Picatrix images that pulled me in other directions, and that’s true to a point, there were other factors, as well: the culture of grimoire purism that dominated a lot of the spaces I found; the explicit Christianity of most Solomonic magic sources; and the lack of quality modern language translations and guidebooks.

So, when Mastros announced her highly focused work on the pentacles, I was super excited. I was doubly excited to get my hands on it while it was actually still new and shiny. Very often I’m not able to buy books until they’ve been in circulation for long enough that there are more hot takes than legit reviews, and that takes a little bit of the fun out of things.

Mastros’ Sorcery of Solomon turned out to be exactly what I was hoping it to be: a work equally of scholarship and sorcery, with a clear grounding in both the source text and hands-on experience, clearly written in modern language with practical advise for the modern reader. It is written as a companion to, expansion on, and elucidation of the pentacles in Samuel Liddel Mathers’ edition of The Key of Solomon, and I’ll be getting my hands on the recent Peterson edition as soon as I can, but Mastros’ book functionally usurps that volume: providing everything that an intermediate magical practitioner might need to begin their work with Solomonic pentacles, with no need for previous experience in the Solomonic tradition.

My very first thought when I got my copy in the mail was, “shit, this is some nice paper”. I don’t know where Weiser’s paperbacks are on the grand scale of print quality, but it feels much nicer than a lot of books I’ve picked up over the last few years.

The book walks the reader through the process of making their own book of pentacles, a sort of personal grimoire that can then be used to perform magic through those pentacles, make pentacle talismans to carry or for others, and ideally learn to make new pentacles of their own. The book is made under the auspices of the spirit of Solomon, himself, and becomes a familiar spirit in its own right.

Each pentacle is reproduced in large, easy to read format, with gorgeous modernized artwork. Mastros discusses Mathers’ original pentacles, what she believes to be either errors or misguided choices, and her corrections and adaptations based on a greater understanding than Mathers’ of the larger talisman tradition and her own experiences. She explains the meaning, likely origin, and use of each element in each pentacle, and speaks briefly about her own experiences with each – those she has used extensively, and those she has disdained. (Unsurprisingly, she does not use the seventh pentacle of Saturn to cause earthquakes, nor does she use the sixth pentacle of the Moon to fuck with the rains.)

The material supplies needed to work this book are delightfully few and relatively inexpensive:

·       A large sketchbook, the kind you will actually draw in not a fancy grimoire notebook you’ll be afraid to fuck up. You want this to be large enough to draw your initial pentacle seals at a scale large enough that anything you with to enchant as a talisman can be set within the seal.

·       A pen with black ink. Mastros uses Sharpies. I’ll probably use a fancier drawing pen. (Drawing aids like a compass, protractor, and straight edge are also highly recommended.)

·       A cloth big enough to wrap the book in when it is not in use. White silk is ideal, but not necessary.

·       A blue ribbon long enough to tie the cloth closed.

·       Tea light candles. Mastros advocates beeswax for the vibes, better smell, and shorter burning time than standard paraphin tealights.

·       Frankincense. There is a more complicated incense recipe if you want it, but frankincense is fine.

·       Consecrated oil. There is a fancy holy oil recipe if you want it, but olive oil is fine as long as you pray over it.

Having read the book, I have gone on to enroll in the companion class: a year-long guided walk through the book and its techniques. The next cohort doesn’t officially start for a couple months, so I have been blazing my way through the recordings of the currently-wrapping cohort’s classes while I gather supplies and wait my turn. I can already say that the class is absolutely worth the price. In addition to the benefits of any live course over solitary book study, Mastros’ teaching style is very hands on, and the course gets into a lot of granular, esoteric, and tangential material that couldn’t be squeezed into the book, itself. Also, she’s funny, and shares several of my hottest takes on the current state of scholarship and the magical community, which is super exciting.

I want to be clear: as excited as I am for the class, you can absolutely work straight from the Sorcery of Solomon book without it. I have chosen to enroll in the companion class for a few reasons: firstly, the way the opportunity came to me, it felt like the fulfillment of some of my community-seeking and right-place-right-time magic; secondly, I feel like the initiatory aspect of being taught legitimizes my access to the Solomonic current, generally, and the Hebrew-language pentacles, specifically; thirdly, all those god names are going to go tap-dancing over my biases and my trauma, and I feel like I’m much more likely to succeed in the work if I am doing it in community.

The paperback edition of Sorcery of Solomon clocks in at $20-25, depending on shipping, tax, and your retailer’s margins. Like Mastros, herself, I encourage you to buy from a local bookseller or from bookshop.org rather than supporting Amazon. The companion course is $777.

As I said above, I have not yet begun working the course or the book. Patreon supporters will absolutely get stories of my results; I don’t know yet how much I will end up saying in public.

In scholarship, witchcraft

To Work the Hekataeon: Book One: The Call

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The first book of the Hekataeon leads the Reader through a series of rituals taking place over two sets of nine days. The first nine days culminate with the Reader’s initiation at midnight on the night of the New Moon. The second nine days culminate on some night while the moon is waxing with the creation of a magical tool and ally called an iynx. Having completed these two rituals, the Reader devotes themselves to Hekate and the work of the Hekataeon, and is awarded the apropriate title of Devotee.

What follows is an inventory of what is needed to complete each of these two nine-day rituals. I have also included notes based on my experience doing these rituals, and countless others, to help you prepare and so that the work can go as smoothly as possible.

I provide these notes, primarily, because in my experience of working the Hekataeon, I sometimes found it difficult to read ahead, as if doing so even for the sake of preparation would somehow ruin the experience. And also, the descriptions of what is needed each day become slightly less precise as one progresses through the work. So, when some of my friends took up the work of the Hekataeon, those of us who had begun the work previously compiled these lists to ease them through.

The Call

Counting backwards inclusively from the night of the new moon, set aside nine days when you can perform a ritual at a liminal hour – ideally dawn, dusk, or midnight. Depending on whether you can leave your altar in place from one day to the next, the speed at which you move and read, and if you do the recommended additional reading at the end of each ritual can take anywhere from fifteen to ninety minutes.

Each chapter presumes that you have read it at least once before sitting down to perform the ritual. You should absolutely do that. Twice would be better.

Each ritual begins with washing your hands. Bring a towel.

Each ritual involves candles, burning paper, and collecting the ashes. Some of the rituals call for pouring the wax into a bowl of salt water. Buy paper that takes ink nicely, and that burns well burns well. Choose a fireproof bowl that is easy to empty. Buy candles that drip nicely. Make certain that your ritual space is sufficiently fire safe.

You will not burn all the way through the candles. Decide in advance if you are going to use the same candles from one ritual to the next, or if you wil discard them at the end of each day, or accumulate them on the altar to illuminate later rituals.

Most of the rituals involve some sort of guided meditation or trance journey, with a heavy emphasis on visualization. If you think you’ll struggle with this, do what preparation you think you’ll need. There is absolutely nothing wrong with using your phone (or computer or old school tape deck) to record yourself reading the chapter aloud for your own benefit.

Each ritual ends with a recommended reading selection from one of four books: The Orphic Hymns, The Homeric Hymns, Proculs, and the Greek Magical Papyri. Some of these passages are available on the internet. Some are not. The Hymn to Selene is PGM IV. 2785-2890. The Hymn to the Waning Moon is PGM IV. 2241-2358.

You will need:

  • Three bowls: one for hand washing, one fireproof, one saltwater proof
  • Cinnamon in an easy to access container (I like a salt cellar)
  • A previously unused pen
  • Paper
  • Matches or a lighter (I prefer a butane torch lighter)
  • White candles (x16, if you are not reusing them one night to the next)
  • Black candles x3
  • Myrrh incense
  • Spring water
  • Salt
  • Yew sprig
  • 6 small, similarly shaped stones (3 light and 3 dark)
  • A small pouch for the stones
  • A bloodletting devise (I recommend a lancet over a knife) or pomegranate juice as a blood substitute

Night One: DE SGILI

The work begins.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • one (1) white candle
  • matches or lighter

Reading: Hesiod’s Theogony, lines 411-452. This passage about Hekate, her lineage and her attributes, doesn’t really fit in with the narrative as it has progressed so far, leading some scholars to speculate that Hesiod was a member of a mystery cult centered on Hekate. If you don’t have your own copy (I, unsurprisingly, favor the Athanassakis), this one is available for free from Harvard.

Night Two: DE NATURA

What is the nature of Hekate?

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen
  • paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • one (1) white candle
  • matches or lighter

Reading: Proclus Hymn to Hekate and Janus. I do not own a copy of any translation to recommend. I found this copy online, which compatriots of mine have vouched for, and which has the bonus of being interlinear for your hardcore nerds like me.

Night Three: DE POTENTIA

What are the powers of Hekate?

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen
  • paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • one (1) white candle
  • myrrh incense
  • matches or lighter

Reading: Hymn to Selene, PGM IV. 2785-2890. I have found this transcription online. It may contain errors or typos that I have missed.

Night Four: DE FORMA

What is the appearance of Hekate?

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen
  • paper\fireproof bowl
  • two (2) white candles
  • myrrh incense
  • matches or lighter

Reading: Orphic Hymn to Hekate. It’s likely that a Reader of the Hekataeon already has well-established preference for a particular translation of the Orphic Hymns. Mine varies with the task, and for this I recommend in favor the Athanassakis and adamantly against the freely available Thomas Taylor. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, that seems to be the only one I can find online.

Night Five: SENSIBUS

A consecration of the self and senses to better perceive the divine.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen
  • paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • three (3) white candles
  • myrrh incense
  • matches or lighter

Reading: Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Fair warning: it is long and depressing and any legitimate translation will 100% require a content warning for rape and abuse. I happen to own the Penguin Classics edition and would love a recommendation on a superior translation. I found this version available online courtesy, again, of Harvard.

Night Six: CANTICUM

A consecration song that you will sing as you continue the work. At last you will need the yew sprig that you might have gathered a week ago.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • three (3) white candles
  • myrrh incense matches or lighter
  • spring water
  • salt
  • a sprig of yew

Reading: Hymn to the Waning Moon, PGM IV.2241-2358. A potent curse from the Greek Magical Papyri, actually called “Document to the…” in Betz, and “Cry to the…” in Grayle’s other works. Unfortunately, I cannot find a copy online for your convenience.

Night Seven: FATUS

The creation of a divination tool which you will use repeatedly as you continue the work of the Hekataeon. A lesson learned when my own group worked the book: at the end of the night, use some other divination tool to confirm that your stones will speak clearly and truly.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • three (3) white candles
  • myrrh incense matches or lighter
  • spring water
  • salt
  • a sprig of yew
  • three black stones
  • three white stones
  • a bag to store them in and read them from

Reading: Orphic Hymn to Artemis. See previous notes on the Orphic Hymns. This was the best I could find online, unfortunately the Taylor translation.

Night Eight: ARBITUM

A night of relatively intense visionary work, culminating in a divination which will determine whether or not you go forward. Note places where your vision deviates from the guided meditation. If you do not get the answer you were hoping for, do further divination, both with the stones and with another tool you have mastered.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • three (3) white candles
  • myrrh incense matches or lighter
  • spring water
  • salt
  • a sprig of yew
  • the divination stones that you consecrated last night.

There is no recommended reading for this ritual.

Night Nine: INVOCATIO

Where the previous rituals may have been done at any “liminal hour”, this one calls to be done at midnight. A fast is recommended. The phrase is “eat little, drink only water”, which I think is a good balance. The more of your day that you can set aside to mediate on and prepare for the ritual that you are about to perform, the petter.

  • bowl of water for washing hands
  • cinnamon for washing hands
  • Hekataeon pen paper
  • fireproof bowl
  • three (3) white candles
  • myrrh incense matches or lighter
  • spring water
  • salt
  • a sprig of yew
  • a bloodletting device, or a blood substitute such as pomegranate juice

There is no recommended reading for this ritual.

The Iynx

When the nine nights of The Call are completed, the Devotee – formerly the Reader – makes and ensouls a tool called the “iynx”. No timing is given for the making of the iynx except that it must be buried in one place for three days, submerged under water for a second three days, and then hung in the air for a third three days, and then must be completed on a night of the waxing moon. It is somewhat vague as to whether the completion is done on the ninth night or the tenth. If the Devotee is to make the iynx in the waxing moon immediately following The Call, they have three or four days to rest and gather supplies before beginning.

As described in the Hekataeon, the completed iynx-spirit is embodied in a strapholos: a child’s toy no longer easy to find in the United States, and the (internet) search for which may well bring up more Hekataeon results than material. The strapholos is a disk with two holes drilled near the middle, through which a string is strung, and on which the disk is suspended between two handles. When spun and pulled, the disk makes a whirring, buzzing sound. But the precise geometry is more finicky, and you will want to construct and test your strapholos before ensouling it.

You will need:

  • A glass bottle which you are willing and able to break
  • Candle
  • Saliva
  • Salt water
  • Grave dirt from one who died young
  • Myrrh
  • Charcoal
  • Ash from burnt crossroads sigils from the Call
  • Feather and/or snakeskin
  • Someplace where you can bury the bottle
  • Someplace where you can drown the bottle
  • Someplace where you can hang the bottle
  • A wooden disk which you can carve and/or paint, and which you can put two holes in the middle
  • String
  • Sticks or rods for handles.
  • A name that you will assign to the spirit
  • A form or image that you wish the spirit to appear in
  • A plan for offerings that you will give the spirit in the future, when it does your will

I think that the ideal order of operations is:

  • set out all your materials (on a single fire-safe surface, if possible)
  • light charcoal for myrrh, apply myrrh early so it’s good and smokey when you start
  • light one candle for “flame” component of ritual and a second for wax to seal your jar
  • use jar to cover, snuf, and absorb the candle flame
  • without turning the jar up, then use it to capture the myrrh smoke
  • upturn jar to spit in it and then pour in the salt water, idealy before the myrrh smoke has dispersed
  • add grave dirt
  • add ashes
  • add snake skin and/or feather
  • seal jar

My partner and I are fortunate enough to have a yard to bury the bottle in, and trees from which to hang it. Lacking a pool or local body of water, we drowned ours in a bucket. There is nothing saying that the iynx bottle cannot be buried in a plant potter, or hung from a balcony railing or lantern hook. There is also nothing saying that you have to smash the iynx bottle against the ground (as we read it originally); when we redid the rite, we used a hammer.

I recommend assembling your strapholos as close to the beginning of the rite as possible. This gives you time to test that it works, and to practice with the unconsecrated tool so that, when you are called upon to spin it during the final ritual, you can do so with confidence.

I recommend choosing a name, image, and preferred offering at some point earlier than I did (which is to say, not on the final day). Write them down in advance, somewhere you won’t loose it – in the Hekataeon, itself, if you have to. Make the offering something that you will always have on hand – in my case, frankincense and myrrh.

With these rites complete, the Reader-turned-Devotee is ready to proceed to the second phase: the Book of the White Flame.

If you want to get my posts a week before everyone else, to see the magical experiments that I don’t share with the public, to get first dibs on my elected talismans and fine art jewelry, or just want to support my work, you can do so through patreon. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, or don’t want to deal with all the non-occult content I post on patreon, I also have a ko-fi.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Triangles of the Art: An Idiosyncratic Journey

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Discussing tools and techniques in the Hermetic House of Life discord server this month, I’ve been reminded of how much of my work these days – especially the public-facing stuff – is rooted in the art of Drawing Spirits Into Crystals (DSIC). In discussing various elements of my practice, I have discovered that I did not leave as clear a trail in my blog as I had thought. Perhaps I was – for once – “Keeping Silent”. Or perhaps what seemed relevant at the time just isn’t what I want to share in retrospect. Either way, now seems as good a time as any to look back on my journey.

The first books I turned to in my study of the Western ceremonial tradition – these were the days of the great Ceremonial Experiment, as I called it – were guided first by Christoper Penczak and then by Donald Michael Craig. Although I have previously praised Penczak’s Temple of Witchcraft series, when he came to volume 4, Temple of High Magic, he dropped the fucking ball. And, to the chagrin of many in the community, I found DM Craig’s Modern Magic to be equally useless. So I turned to the internet. And on some random ass demonolator’s website, I found clear instructions for a barebones summoning circle.

The design I produced therefrom was simple: a triangle in a circle. The sigil of the spirit to be summoned went in the middle. Around the triangle (and, in my case, around the circle) went the statement of intent in clear script. And, falling back on my eclectic neo-Pagan witchcraft background and some vague notions of what a magic circle should look like, I wrote the names of four elementally-aligned gods, and seals and sigils associated with the moon … because that felt right.

For that first conjuration, I summoned my natal genius. I calculated her name using Agrippa’s formula via Frater Acher’s spreadsheet. (Reverend Erik of Arnemancy fame now hosts a widget that is much easier to use.) I derived her sigil using the Rosy Cross. And I wrote out my statement of intent to know her. My records of the ritual, back in 2012 or so, are unfortunately even more vague than my memories, but I got what I needed out of the ritual: confirmation of the name and sigil, a vision of the spirit, and some notes as to her nature. (You can read my original blog post about it here.) I wasn’t entirely satisfied (though, in retrospect, it went great), so I tried again, to similarly frustrating (but in retrospect phenomenal) results. Dissatisfied as I was, it was some months later before I followed the experiment through and attempted to contact my “evil demon” using that same circle, only this time under the auspices of Solar powers.

Shortly after these experiments, I consecrated my first astrological talisman using an election, ritual, and image provided by Christopher Warnock on his yahoo group, as he was in the habit of doing in those days. My notes don’t say what if any triangle I used for that conjuration, or for the Venus and Sun elections that I remember hitting that spring and summer, but I know that I had been exposed to more conventional circles by the time I began the Spirits of Spirits experiments, and used a synthesis of the two (I know that Aradia and I also conjured the spirits of wormwood and Jack Daniels, but right now I can only find a write up for the initial cannabis experiment.

The idea behind the above synthesis was a cosmogram: planetary powers in the outer circle, elemental powers within. I had not yet twigged to the fact that the four angel names were sanitized replacements for demon names from older grimoires, rulers of the four quarters of the world. Based on my background in eclectic Wicca, I thought they were elementally aligned, and placed gods I was comfortable with instead of angels in those quarters: Iris for air, Hephaistos for fire, Dionysos for water, and Rhea for earth. Though my logic was flawed, it worked well enough at the time.

My notes don’t specifically say, but I think that I was still using that circle when Rufus Opus was running his Seven Spheres in Seven Days events in October/November of 2012. Looking back at my notes, it’s no wonder the planetary magic took over my life the way it did. The call was strong. At the end of my first seven days, the powers of Saturn taught me how to better hijack the current of the project, even though I didn’t have access to the full Gates Rites. At the end of my second round of daily conjurations, the powers of Saturn taught me the triangle of conjuration that became the basis for my planetary work going forward. (And at the end of my third consecutive week of planetary conjurations, I fell flat on my face.)

In the center goes my crystal ball, and/or the glyph of any particular spirit I may be calling under the auspices of those greater planetary powers.

I have been using this double-triangle to ever-increasingly potent effect for just short of ten years now. I have transcribed it into my personal grimoire, once for each planetary section, where it sits beside the relevant lamen and Orphic hymn. Unfortunately, the pages don’t quite sit flat enough to use it as intended, so often what I end up doing is standing the book up and setting the candles and brazier in front of the triangle, but I’ve found that always works just as well, and is almost as aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes corner 5 gets a brazier with incense instead of a candle. And, as you can see, a couple other small details morphed over time.

In the years since, I’ve also developed another variation on the traditional circle, mostly for the purposes of art, but which I have used a few times to good effect, and which I would recommend as an option for someone looking for somethign mostly traditional but a little more glam. The out ring is still the Agrippan planetary characters, which I think are just neat, but the angel and god names in the outer ring have been replaced by seals of the four archangels. I use this circle in my official Mundus Occultus branding, so it is absolutely not available for commercial use, but if you want to print it out and call a spirit into it, that’s what it’s here for. Just shoot me an email to tell me how it works out for you.

Writing this post has taken me weeks longer than I originally anticipated, in part because I had to re-read as many of my old notes as I could find, and partly because I had to re-scan and re-censor several of the above images, and mostly because the last six weeks have been just absolutely bonkers.

I’m glad I finally got through it, though. Looking back over that wild year’s work, thinking on how it has shapped my current work, has been pretty educational. In retrospect, I could have asked for a lot more help during those early conjuration experiments. My excuse is that no one I felt comfortable asking for help had fucked with this kind of work, as far as I knew, but also in retrospect, there were absolutely people who could have at least pointed me in clearer directions. Also, somehow, in my memory, many of these events had shifted from late 2012 to early 2014. Why do I remember the conjuration-induced migraine as happening the week of my college graduation?

I’m also glad to finally have this done because it’s reaffirmed my dedication to my chief point of advice for those looking to start or escalate their magical practice: go forth, fuck around, and find out. The information I needed to do these things more traditionally was hidden behind the paywalls of the few people teaching classes on the subject, and the even more insurmountable barrier of 19th century translations so terrible that even as an in-the-weeds Classical Studies student, I couldn’t fucking hack it. But now, people who know more than I did then but less than they’d like to know before they start can look at this and say, “fuck it, if that lunatic can have results that good with that bullshit, anything I do will work great!”.

So make the tools you want to make. Sing the songs you want to sing. Call the spirits down from the heavens and up from the depths of hell. Do it all with style and audacity. Go forth. Fuck around. Find out.

If you want to get my posts a week before everyone else, to see the magical experiments that I don’t share with the public, to get first dibs on my elected talismans and fine art jewelry, or just want to support my work, you can do so through patreon. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, or don’t want to deal with all the non-occult content I post on patreon, I also have a ko-fi.

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 art, scholarship

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: The Attic Gorgon

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The Attic Gorgon is one of the handful of designs that launched the Sorcerer’s Workbench, and was not only my first design to sell, but my first piece to sell again: first, directly off my body at Paganicon 2019, and then to someone I had met at that event a month or two later. It remains one of my best sellers to this day, and it is one of my favorite designs.

That last is no surprise. I have long been fascinated by the image of Medusa and the gorgons. Looking back, I can’t quite remember an inciting incident, so to speak – my first encounter was almost certainly Wrath of the Titans (1981), but what I remember most from that movie is actually the owl. My own earliest art that I can find on the subject was from around 2008, but by that time I clearly already had a fully internalized image. That image, of course, was most deeply influenced by Renaissance and modern images: a beautiful woman, her face surrounded by coiling serpents, draped in clinging gauze. A lot has changed since those early days, including my Bachelor’s degree in Classical Studies, and while I do still want to do a design based on that more modern image, I knew from the jump that I wanted my first Gorgon talisman to be in the Classical style.

The traditional name for the design is “Gorgoneion” which, to the best of my ability to discern, renders approximately as “Gorgon-image” or “Gorgon-thing”. It is apotropaic: meant to protect by frightening away evil spirits. It was a popular, even ubiquitous, design in the Hellenic world of Classical Greece, seen on temples and shields and pottery and jewelry and … well, you get the idea. When I went to make my own, I looked to a variety of ancient sources, ultimately settling on a particular piece of pottery.  

But with that image in place, we have to ask the question – where does that image come from?

No Greek myth has a single point of origin. Every story is a palimpsest: a mess of layer upon layer upon layer, each written over the other, which has been imperfectly removed from the vellum below. So we, as modern witches, sorcerers, neo-Hellenics, and mythographers, sift through those layers as best we can, picking and choosing the versions that bring us the most meaning.

Medusa and the Gorgons are no exception. When I look at the image of the Gorgoneion, fanged and bearded and serpent-tressed, I do not see the victim Ovid salivated over: raped by Neptune, cursed and transfigured by Minerva, murdered by Perseus. I see the youngest of three monstrous sisters, the lone mortal, daughters of either the sea monsters Keto and Phorkys, or of Keto and the elder Gorgon, Aix who was killed that Zeus might wear their hide as his aegis.

The very title “gorgon” means simply “terrible” or “fierce”. The three Gorgon sisters were Medusa, Sthenno, and Euryale, and our oldest written account of them comes from Hesiod’s Theogony 270 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.) : “And to Phorkys (Phorcys) Keto (Ceto) bore … the Gorgones (Gorgons) who, beyond the famous stream of Okeanos (Oceanus), live in the utmost place toward night, by the singing Hesperides : they are Sthenno, Euryale, and Medousa (Medusa), whose fate is a sad one, for she was mortal, but the other two immortal and ageless both alike.”

Homer, a littler earlier than Hesiod, mentions a single “Gorgo” whose head and/or hide are used for the aegis of Zeus and Athena. Hyginus, a 2ndC CE author, reconciles these stories by naming that elder Gorgo Aix and naming them parent of the gorgon sisters. This last is my personal favorite, despite the late date (longtime readers and close friends know how strongly I favor older versions of everything, particularly predating the questionable urge to justify the behavior of gods as good).

The image itself springs onto the just a little before, emerging in its persistent form at the beginning of the 8th Century BCE. Some scholars trace it back to Knossos. A few – sadly, mostly discredited – attempt to trace it back much further, to the mythical neolithic goddess cults. But the image was more detailed, more complex than those earliest stories, and I think that the Gorgoneion is a fair exemplar of the movement from image to ritual to myth.

I will never be fully comfortable with the stories that surround the image of the Gorgoneion. That terrible defensive power, stollen and weaponized by the “civilizing” influence of father gods and heroic men. Ovid’s rape-and-transformation fantasy is only the most vile and explicit expression of that theme. Looking at the image, whether Attic or Renaissance, I see the same terrible beauty and power that drove Second Wave Feminists to invent their own mythologies, empowering Medusa and the gorgons as slandered goddesses, or reframing Athena’s curse as a defense against further injury.

But I return, again and again, to that face: a goddess whose image the gods themselves use to turn away evil. A goddess born of the monsters of the elder world. A goddess whose sisters live on.

I wear my own Gorgoneiai every day. I have one that lives on my keychain. I have another that I hang from the front of my face masks in this age of plague and fools.

Between different metals and fixtures, there are more than a dozen unique variations, but there are two basic designs: one sided, with a textured back; and two sided, with the names Medusa, Sthenno, and Euryale on the back.

Attic Gorgon Sterling Silver Pendant Protection Talisman | Etsy

Attic Gorgon Two-sided Protection Talisman | Etsy

In art, scholarship

Announcing the Sorcerous Arts Podcast

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

The Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective came together in 2018 to teach hands-on classes and run public rituals. Our public debut was in February of 2019, when we performed our Purification of the Sacred Grove ritual with the Kansas City Witches Meet-Up. We performed the ritual again at Paganicon 2019, taught several workshops also hosted by the KCWMU, and were winding up for our second major public ritual at Paganicon 2020 when the covid-19 pandemic brought all 2020 events to a screeching halt. It took us a while to decide what, if anything, we were going to do with in-person events off the table.

In June, we accepted an invitation to do an online workshop presentation for the Kansas City Witches Meetup Main Event in July. We were so pleased with how that went that we decided that we would, after all, do online events. Moreover, we’d had so much fun that we were going to do a podcast. We began meeting up online (almost) every Sunday in August, and have now recorded an acceptable backlog of episodes, ranging from a return to our July topic of magic in this time of Covid to why the Law of Attraction is bad magic and worse theology.

The Sorcerous Arts Podcast will be a series of informal, kitchen-table discussions on magic as a living practice: theory, experiments, and our actual results (or lack thereof). We’ll talk history, theology, ethics, experience, memes, community … anything that seems relevant at the time. The first episode will drop this Saturday, October 31st, 2020. It will be available through our RSS feed and Spotify, immediately, and hopefully soon through iTunes (Apple makes things hard because they can) and Stitcher and all the other major distributors. (We do our best, but none of us are actually IT people, coders, or competent at social media.)

I hope you’ll join us, and enjoy. See you Saturday.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Picatrix Image of the Moon

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This week, after literally years of waffling between planets and images to pursue next, I have finally produced another talismanic image from the Picatrix, following up on the Image of Venus that I produced so many years ago.

“The image of the moon according to the opinion of Picatrix is the form of a man who has the head of a bird, and he holds a stick above him, and he has a tree before him.”

— Picatrix Bk.II Ch.10, p.105, as translated by Greer and Warnock.

As with my Venus talisman, I turned to the grand planetary seal and the Agrippan characters for the reverse.

Although I could probably rationalize it in a variety of ways – a decision to pursue the rest of the talismans in Chaldean order, perhaps, or a fictitious upcoming election (this year sucks, there are no elections – my decision to make an Image of the Moon was ultimately based on the easy availability of the most appropriate metal: silver. By that same logic I should probably do a Solar image next, for all that probably no one will be able to afford the ten pennyweights of 14k gold.

The image I selected was not my absolute favorite. That honor goes to an image described on the preceding page: “… a woman with a beautiful face, with a dragon about your waist, having horns on her head with two snakes encircling them, and with two more snakes entwined around each of her arms, and a dragon above her head and another dragon under her feet, and both these dragons have seven heads.” which is somewhat beyond my current ability to produce a mold positive. But I think that a second bird-headed figure makes a fine follow-up to my Venus talisman, and I know that I need to enjoy the few relatively simple images presented in the Picatrix.

I have already ordered the mold positive of this Image, and will hopefully be able to present the first silver prototype in early August. It will probably end up being priced identically to the Venus — $116 in my Etsy store, assuming that the price of silver does not continue to rise, and will be available in brass and bronze for those who are less concerned with material than image.