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In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Picatrix Images: The First Face of Aries

Author Satyr MagosPosted on
Picatrix Images: The First Face of Aries

Winding up for my last stellar sorcery experiment, I had a few options available to me. (Spoiler: I chose, “all of the above”.) One of them was to empower talismans bearing the image of the first face of Ares. In the words of the Picatrix:

The first face of Aries is Mars, and there rises in it according to the opinion of the great sages in this science, the image of a black man, with a large and restless body, having red eyes and with an axe in his hand, girded in white cloth, and there is great value in this face. This is a face of strength, high rank and wealth without shame. This is the form.

Picatrix Book II Chapter 11 Paragraph 5, trans. Michael Greer & Christopher Warnock

I crafted the image in time for my own use, but not in time to share with the rest of the world in time to catch that first face this year. My apologies to all. I do, of course, share it in the spirit of camaraderie, for personal magical use only. If you do use the image, please share your results with me for the sake of Science.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Stellar Sorcery: Introductory Experiments

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I have been dabbling with old school astrological talismanic magic for a few years now. It started with the Ceremonial Experiment while I was in college, synthesizing what I was picking up from Rufus’ Opus blog with what I could glean from Christopher Warnock’s yahoo mailing list. I produced a handful of well-elected talismans that helped get me through college, and which still sit on my altar today (even though the prevailing wisdom is that talismans of paper and herbs never should have worked in the first place, let alone for so long). In the years since, I’ve produced a variety of talismans and performed an assortment of rituals using my ever-improving understanding of astrological timing and images, with varying degrees of success.

Over the last year or so I have finally deepened my understanding of astrology to the point where I can mostly follow Chris Brennan’s podcast and was delighted to receive his book for Christmas. And I have also, finally, begun to work my way through the Picatrix from cover to cover.

The Picatrix was written in a time and place where magic was understood through the lens of a very limited and limiting spirit model. Obviously, my own understanding an practice of magic is much more syncretic. My spirit modelling draws on Classical, Late Antiquity, Medeival, Rennaisance, and 21st Century shamanic spirit practices. I also work using 20th and 21st energy and spirit models.

I, personally, understand the planetary spheres as magical realms and currents in which spirits live. I believe that it is possible to access those currents directly, without intermediary spirits. I am also finding, through trial and error, that those two approaches are good for very different things. That is to say, that they can produce entirely different genres of error-comedy.

The Picatrix admonishes to have faith that the magic will work, and warns sternly against experimentation. Unfortunately, while I can be good at following directions, “do not experiment” is … not a direction I can follow. So the experiments continue, undaunted by stuffy medieval magicians.

The Framework

Stellar Sorcery, as the modern practice of performing spells and crafting talismans by the use of Medieval and Renaissance astrological timing is coming to be called, is a young discipline wherein the competing schools of thought are all shiny, new, and hot to the touch. The schools of thought within that discipline are too young to be named. One can only cite one’s influences — Christopher Warnock, Kaitlin and Austin Coppock, Clifford Lowe, and so on — and one’s references — the Picatrix, Agrippa, what have you. In case it wasn’t clear, those are mine. They might be ashamed to know it, given how fast and loose I play with the rules.

The components of Stellar Sorcery are deceptively simple:
1) Astrological timing. Certain things are available at certain times.
2) Vocalized prayer and petition. You have to say it out loud. You have to tell the spirits what you want.
3) Physical maeteria. The talismans are vessels for the power/spirits. They must be appropriate (however you define that from your primary sources of choice). They must be made as well as you are able.
4) Fumigation. You seal the deal by holding the talsimanic maeteria in the smoke of your offerings.

You can always add more, but these four things are essential. There’s not a lot that Warnock, Coppock, and Lowe all agree on. These four are it, and my experience so far bears it out.

The experiments I describe below are not the whole of my experience, only the most relevant and best-documented

2012 Jupiter in Sagitarius Talisman

My first semesters of college were a battle against the registrar. She didn’t want to take more credits than she absolutely had to from my declasse community college. At times it felt like she didn’t want to be bothered even looking at my file. I was in her office every week, as polite as I could be, but there wasn’t any traction.

Until, early in my ceremonial experiments, Christopher Warnock offered up this election to his Spiritus Mundi mailing list. Back then he announced elections far enough in advance that you could do something with them, and even offered pdfs with images and prayers. That was a good year for Jupiter, and I hit that election twice: once at dawn, and once at the 3 o’clock second Jupiter hour of that day.

Lacking better maeteria at the time (I was in college, no access to jewelry supplies) I made a paper talisman. I printed the Image of Jupiter that Warnock provided on one note card and various sigils, seals, and characters of Jupiter on the back. I glued the two pages together, sealing Jupiterian herbs and oils in the middle. I called upon the spirits and powers of Jupiter using the Thomas Taylor translation of the Orphic Hymns in the ritual I had cobbled together by following the work Rufus Opus, then blessed the talisman using Warnock’s Picatrix prayer.

I took that talisman with me to the registrar’s office the next day and not only did she finally open my file and finally start looking at my transfer credits, by the end of the semester I had gotten credit for things she swore up and down couldn’t transfer.

2020 Venus in Pisces Talisman

There were a series of semi-questionable Venus elections at the beginning of this year. The Moon and Venus were constantly dodging ill aspects to Mars and Saturn in Capricorn. But I was desperate to try my hand at electioneering and talisman crafting.

I had successfully cast a set of four shibuichi talismans as prototypes and wanted to experiment with casting during an election. A comedy of errors ended up surrounding the attempt to cast the talismans — Alvianna and I had some miscommunications and oversights about what tools I would need to bring from work, then her kiln turned out to be completely unsuitable, and we ultimately decided that casting in her shop was a “later” project. Perhaps a wiser magician would have stopped there, but I did some divination and decided to proceed by blessing the prototypes.

In addition to the relatively basic Stellar Image ritual — prayers, offerings, &c. — I added a component at the end where I asked that the name and sigil of the spirit of each talisman be revealed to me. I also formally consecrated a copper talisman that I had used to tap into the current of the image and been carrying for some time.

My talisman, to date, has produced good results. I have become increasingly inspired and disciplined about creating art. My friends and partners immediately became more physically demonstrative with me. And, by virtue of having their name and sigil, the talismanic spirit has effectively become a fourth familiar spirit (we are currently in search of an appropriate statue for them). I attribute the success of the Eye of Beauty ritual, in part, to my relationship with my familiar.

Reports from my friends who took the shibuichi prototypes have been more mixed. One has not really worn theirs. One has carried theirs to no effect. One described the talisman as heart-opening. One has reported frequent crying. I need to check in for updated reports.

Some observations from the whole of the process:

2020 Sun in Aries Talisman

We got this election from a variety of sources: a co-conspirator in the PGM Praxis group pointed it out first; it was also available in Nina Gryphon’s March election newsletter. We researched the election as thoroughly as we could, finding a couple potential issues with the Moon (according to Picatrix rules that later authors seemed to find excessively restrictive), but went ahead with it anyway.

We selected our prayers by divination, with clear results: 9 cups and 9 disks for the Picatrix prayer, Art and the Devil for the PGM prayer, and the Sun for both.

Aradia mixed a tincture while I scribed the sign of Och on a citrine pendant and three slices of amber that I had cut the night before. Then, together, we made paper talismans, one set bearing a Picatrix Image of the First Face of Aries and another bearing a Renaissance Image of the Sun. Things felt good, but off, until the last minute when I realized that we had not fumigated the talismans. Hastily we threw another lump of frankincense on the charcoal, fumigated everything, repeated the PGM Prayer to Helios a final time, and everything snapped into place. Because we used the whole election window to create and bless the talismans, I have not yet asked for names and sigils for them. I will do that once they’ve had a week to set.

Early Observations and Hypotheses

It’s too early to call anything a conclusion, except that magic is cool and making talismans is fun. I have, however, made some clear observations and have begun formulating some hypotheses.

The skill of the magician is relevant. All your magical skills are relevant, and more skills make a better magician.

Meditation makes it easier to see and hear spirits.

Having good relationships with spirits improves your stellar sorcery. Being beloved of your gods and familiars and allies makes your stellar sorcery stronger, regardless of your arts-and-crafts skills or your ability to find a perfect election. The reverse is probably also true: if you annoy the gods, they’re probably not going to do you any favors.

Better ritual makes for better magic. Elections can be short, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have everything good to go and spend half an hour before the window making offerings to your gods and familiars and getting them and you wound up for the work.

Doing energy work makes you a better vessel and conduit for planetary powers and currents. Just because Medieval and Renaissance writers didn’t know about it doesn’t make it not real or not relevant.

Paper talismans absolutely have a shorter life than talismans made of metal and stone. The once-prevailing wisdom that they are utterly inert, however, is demonstrably false. All things of this earth are mortal: remember how old the universe really is.

Working with a talisman as a spirit-ally seems to improve its efficacy exponentially.

Regarding casting the shibuichi talismans, specifically:

1) The talismans felt inert at the time of casting. Some people have told me that the pouring of the metal is the magically operative moment, but it didn’t feel like it to me. When I broke the talismans off the sprue, however, is another matter: it was like a tiny vortex opening up.

2) I have made a lot of magical jewelry using various schools of thought. Cleaning, filing, and polishing the rough cast in preparation to be enchanted felt like crafting a vessel, as opposed to other talismans I have made using other schools of thought where I could feel the spell coming together as I assembled each component, with everything snapping together as the final pieces went in place.

3) It is entirely possible that if I had been able to either cast the talismans, or pull them from their sprue during the enchanting ceremony, things would have gone even better. With that said, the spirits called did not resist entering the finished vessels and seemed happy at the time. The one I have worked with since seems very happy, except that they want the same honors my other familiar spirits receive, which is reasonable.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Invoking PGM Powers I: Aphrodite, Helios, Selene

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

As I mentioned recently, I’m taking Jack Grayle’s PGM Praxix: 50 Rites for 50 Nights. Our first two weeks actually covered three rituals: a spell “to win a beautiful woman” by invoking a secret name of Aphrodite; an invocation of Helios for a variety of boons and to “accomplish the matter I want”; and, finally, a prayer to draw the attention of the Moon by names and symbols of both Selene and Hekate

Love Spell: PGM IV 1265-74

Aphrodite’s name which becomes known to no one quickly is NEPHERIERI – this is the name. If you wish to win a woman who is beautiful, be pure for 3 days, make an offering of frankincense, and call upon this name over it. You approach the woman and say it seven times in your soul as you gaze at her, and in this way it will succecd. But do this for 7 days.

Betz 1986, p.62

Not gonna lie: this opening spell gave me pause. Not just because “love spell, what the fuck?” but because the spell calls for the sorcerer to “be pure” for three days and I have strong fucking feelings about purity. But I’m taking a class, and following a system, and that means playing by the rules as written. In addition to eschewing the “obvious” sources of miasma — sex, death, animals, &c. — Jack recommended that we fast. To that end, I reluctantly chose a meatless diet and gave up candy for good measure.

For our execution of the spell, Aradia and I chose the Night and Hour of Venus. We erected a Venus altar, set a playlist, bathed, dressed in white, and dusted ourselves with cinnamon. After doing some divination, we went into the spell with little preamble: burning frankincense and chanting the name over and over and over for about twenty minutes. I got high as hell, and promptly used the whammy on my own damn self, which I repeated over the next days leading up to a photoshoot I had had planned.

That shit more than tingled.

Jack’s research indicates that the name Nepherieri is probably an Egyptian phrase meaning “The Eye of Beauty”, and in addition to trying to counter some of the self-hate one inevitably picks up as a queerdo living among the normies, I used the power of the Eye to fuel a photoshoot that I had scheduled for the following Sunday. It was only my second shoot working with multiple models and I had not worked with either woman before, and I was somewhat nervous. Owing at least in part to the magic, the images we made turned out astoundingly well.

Prayer to Helios: PGM XXVI 211-30

Prayer to Helios: A charm to restrain anger and for victory and for securing favor (none is greater): Say to the sun (Helios) [the prayer] 7 times, and anoint your band with oil and wipe it on your head and face. Now [the prayer] is: “Rejoice with me, you who are set over the cast wind and the world, for whom all the gods serve as bodyguards at your good hour and on your good day, you who are the Good Daimon of the world, the crown of the inhabited world, you who rise from the abyss, you who each day rise a young man and Set an old man, HARPENKNOUPHI BRINTANTENOPHRI BRISSKYLMAS / AROURZORBOROBA MESINTRIPHI NIPTOUMI CHMOUMMAOPHI. I beg you, lord, do not allow me to be overthrown, to be plotted against, to receive dangerous drugs, to go
into exile, to fall upon hard times. Rather, I ask to obtain and receive from you life, health, reputation, wealth, influence, strength, success, charm, favor with all men and all women, victory over all men and all women. Yes, lord, ABLANATHANALBA AKKAMMACHAMARI PEPHNA PHOZA PHNEBENNOUNI NAACHTHIP . . . OUNORBA. Accomplish the matter which I want, by means of your power.”

Ibid. p.274

The solar rite was a return to more familiar territory. My relationship with Solar powers aren’t quite as good as my relationship with Venusian forces, but it’s close, and the prayer had a lot in common with the Picatrix rites that I’ve been fucking with in my spare time.

We had hoped to perform the rite on the Day and Hour of the Sun, but Sunday and Monday were both overcast. Tuesday, however, came through: the skies were clear and provided an Hour of the Sun not long after dawn, before either of us had to go to work. We sat outside in our yard where we could face the sun rising in the east, lit a stick of frankincense, poured a cup of olive oil to use for the anointing, and set forth. We anointed ourselves with oil before every repetition and after the seventh.

I did not get much effect immediately, besides the hypnotic effects of repetition. Within the hour, though, the power began to build, and I went in to Tuesday’s photoshoot full of Authority and produced another round of really solid images.

Prayer to Selene: VII 756-94

Prayer: I call upon you who have all forms and many names, double-horned goddess, Mene, whose form no one knows except him who made the entire world, IAO, the one who shaped [you] into the twenty-eight shapes of the world so that they might complete every figure and distribute breath to every animal and plant, that it might flourish, you who grow from obscurity into light and leave light for darkness” (beginning to leave by waning). And the first companion of your name is silence, the second a popping sound, the third groaning, the fourth hissing, the fifth a cry of joy, the sixth moaning, the seventh barking, the eighth bellowing, the ninth neighing, I the tenth a musical sound, the eleventh a sounding wind, the twelfth a wind-creating sound, the thirteenth a coercive sound, the fourteenth a coercive emanation from perfection. Ox, vulture, bull, beetle, falcon, crab, dog, wolf, serpent, horse, she-goat, asp, goat, he-goat, baboon, cat, lion, leopard, fieldmouse, deer, multiform, virgin, torch, lightning, garland, a herald’s wand, child, key. I have said your signs and symbols of your name so that you might hear me, because I pray to you, mistress of the whole world. Hear me, you, the stable one, the mighty one, APHEIHOEO MINTER OCHAO PIZEPHYDOR CHANTHAK CIiADE ROZO MOCWTHION EOTNEU PHERZON AINDES LACHABOO PITTO RIPHTHAMER ZMOMOCHOLEIE TIEDRANTEIA OISOZOCHAHEDOPHRA” (add the usual).

Ibid, pp.139-40

Jack included this Lunar prayer in the second week because he felt it bore strong parallels to the Helios prayer, and I have to agree. Though the original text includes no ritual instructions, just the prayer, I very much have to agree.

We had been struggling to find a Lunar hour at which Aradia and I were available, so when my D&D game Wednesday night was unexpectedly cancelled, we leapt at the opportunity to do the ritual before midnight. I came home from delivering Alvianna her dinner (she hosts my game, a favor for which I sometimes repay her in food), and went about converting the Venus altar from Friday into a Lunar altar. When the appointed hour came, lit our charcoal, burned myrrh, and began. We recited the prayer three times, anointing ourselves before, between, and after with the Lunar oil that Alvianna (who is also in the class) had made during her own rendition.

The effects were powerful and immediate. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Sleep, I did: deeply if not long. I awoke early Thursday morning and got up immediately to write. And again Friday. And again Saturday.

Aradia and I like the ritual so much that we decided to share it with our pseudo-coven, the Lunar Shenanigans crew, despite the fact that these are the most difficult Vocces Magicae I have ever attempted to pronounce. To that end, I broke out the barbarous words for ease of pronunciation: APH-EI-BO-E-O MIN-TER OKHA-O PI-ZEPH-Y-DOR KHAN-THAR KHA-DER-OZO MOKH-THI-ON E-OT-NEU PHER-ZON A-IN-DES LAKH-AB-O-O PIT-TO RIPH-THA-MER ZMO-MOKH-OL-EI-E TI-ED-RAN-TEI-A O-I-SO-ZO-KHA-BE-DOR-PHRA. Somewhat to my amusement, however, they were more startled by, “the menagerie”.

The second round was, for lack of a better way to describe it, less like sorcery and more like religion. We made a more elaborate ritual of the prayer, which I will write up for a separate post in a bit. The sensations were lighter, cooler, clearer, deeper. We stayed up late talking and laughing, but then went to sleep with little trouble. We slept late but when we woke, got up swiftly.

Cumulation and Synthesis

Inevitably, doing these rituals so close together — Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday — it is impossible to say, precisely, where the effect of one ends and the next begins. I had mostly come down from the Eye of Beauty when we invoked Helios, but I was still riding that high when we called upon the Moon. I didn’t come down from that until the following Sunday morning, when the combination of a bad day in retail and the archonic rite of Daylight Savings Time conspired to bring me back down to earth.

I am disappointed to report that neither the Aphrodite nor Helios invocations did shit to minimize my pre-photoshoot anxiety. Nor did reiterating the prayer to the Moon bring me back to the high that I had been enjoying before the crash, though I will say I feel very good as I finish this write-up the morning after.

I do believe that the rituals did a great deal to minimize my post-socialization anxiety. Episodes that usually last 30-90 minutes were reduced to 10 or 15. Since the Eye of Beauty invocation, I have felt better and more resilient overall, like there is more possibility and potential in the world. I have been both more sensitive to and less vulnerable to magical influences around me.

While I have felt better, and have gotten a lot of writing done, I will say that I have NOT been more focused, overall. Less, if we’re being honest. In particular, my ability to sit down and do my day job has been … hampered. I got a lot of housecleaning done yesterday before our esbat, but I was bouncing all around the house, picking things up, putting them down, moving far from efficiently.

Finally, my initial reaction to the rites was a feeling that they had a lot in common, energetically, with Rufus Opus’ Seven Spheres rites and, as I mentioned above, certain Picatrix prayers. I stand by that analysis. I believe that these prayers/rites/rituals would be good for both planetary initiations and for enchanting talismans. I will put the latter theory to the test as soon as I find a suitable election.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Invoking PGM Powers: Prologue

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

At the end of February, Aradia and I, along with the rest of the Kansas City Sorcerous Arts Collective, signed up for Jack Grayle’s year-long class on the Greek Magical Papyri: PGM Praxis: 50 Rites for 50 Nights, offered via the Blackthorne School. We, along with seventy-odd others, are following Jack down a rabbit hole I’ve been circling for a while, putting the fragmentary spells of the PGM into practice, and I’m very excited.

PGM Praxis: 50 Rites for 50 Nights | Jack Grayle | The Blackthorne School

It’s worth noting, here at the outset, that while I have been practicing magic since 1996, have attended lots of workshops and have studied a lot of systems, I have never before taken a long-form, externally-directed class. Intense study periods have often coincided with my best blogging periods. On the one hand, I imagine that will be true of this, as well; on the other, there are course materials that I cannot, in good faith, share to those not taking the class.

I have, of course, done some work with the Greek Magical Papyri before. I have been using the Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist (PGM V. 96-172) since Jack Faust introduced me to it back in 2012. I have made more than one pass through the book since, looking for either rites to experiment with (though I never had the nerve / inspiration to do any of the ones that caught my eye) and for inspiration for magical practices for characters in my novels.

But this is a guided tour. With homework. And technical support. And I am very, very excited.

We’re into the third week, now, as I type this. We have done our first three rituals (week two had a two-fer) and are winding up to do our fourth. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks on an escalating high of magical power, more optimistic and resilient than I have been in years. Only the one-two punch of a Bad Day in Retail and the Archonic vampirism of Daylight Savings Time has been able to blunt my ecstasy. There will be more about that in the next post.

My classmates — not just the KCSAC — are starting to open up about their adaptations and experiences, and it’s fucking fascinating. Unfortunately, that’s the last I’ll be able to say about that, though I hope to encourage the rest of the Collective to blog about their experiences, and will share the public posts of any of our classmates who want such attention.

It is, of course, possible that I will be less enthused about things at some point (or points) over the course of the remaining 47 weeks. That’s how things go, sometimes. But right now, I’m really, really stupid excited. And I’m going to hold on to that for as long as I can.

On a technical note: we are, of course, using the University of Chicago Press edition of The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, as edited by Hans Dieter Betz. We are at times augmenting this by use of the Orphic Hymns, for which I usually favor the Apostolos N. Athanassakis edition. I also happen to have a copy of Stephen Skinner’s Techniques of Graeco-Egyptian Magic, which may come in handy.

The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells, Volume 1
In scholarship

Personal Gnosis: Some Preliminary Thoughts

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I’ve been using the word Gnostic a lot.

I should probably talk about it.

I first encountered the word “Gnosis” in Phil Hine’s Condensed Chaos. I met it again — a lot — in the various works of Peter J Carroll. Then I encountered it again, as “Gnostic” or “Gnosticism”, in Bart D Ehrman’s Lost Christianities. The last gave some context and meaning to the glib, 1990s pomposity of the first two.

Since then, it’s become something of a rabbit hole. Rune Soup. Aeon Byte. Ecstatic rituals, modern and ancient. Conspiracy theories.

“Gnosis” is generally understood to be Greek for “knowledge”. Touching base with the dictionaries at Perseus, it seems to be a little more than that: there is a strong implication of inquiry; Heraklitus used it to suggest cosmic knowledge; some sources indicate a sense of being known. “Gnosticism”, meanwhile, shares a key feature with the word “shamanism”: many scholars believe the word to be too broad, too modern, to be of use in discussing ancient sources. It is certainly a large and broad subject, too vast for me to discuss at bredth. But I do think it may be useful, both to my readers and myself, to talk a little about a few of the through lines and what they mean to me.

[A preliminary note: this is probably the first in what may be a very long series of posts. Due to its personal nature, it will not be as citation-heavy as later posts. When I start talking facts and theories, I’ll go back to Chicago Style for you. Today we’re talking about the broad strokes, emphasizing my feelings and UPG.]

Inquiry, Revelation, and Awakening

The mystic’s first task is to seek knowledge. No more, no less. Through research, experimentation, ecstasy, and art. Seek knowledge.

Having attained knowledge, having awakened to her truth, the mystic’s next task is to awaken the world around her. Not by sharing the truth she has found, per se, but by spurring others to seek out knowledge for themselves.

What “knowledge” constitutes Gnosis varies somewhat from tradition to tradition, even person to person. The broad implication always seems to be knowledge of the cosmos. Or, more narrowly, knowledge of the source of all things (“God”). The neo-Pagan term Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG) seems overwhelmingly to refer to the needs, nature, and personality of the gods. From where I sit, Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (KCHGA) would probably qualify, though I don’t know that most ceremonialists in pursuit of that Knowledge would consider themselves Gnostics. The Chaos Magick use of “Gnosis” to mean little more than “trance” seems, to me, to water the term down unnecessarily.

Divine Spark

When I first discovered the modern neo-Pagan movement in the mid 1990s, this was one of the ideas that drew me in. The notion that each person is born with a spark of the same divinity as possessed by the gods.

Ancient and more conventional versions of Gnosticism attribute this divine spark to an intercessory figure, often named Sophia, whose departure from the heaven / the true source / the alien God / whatever marks the beginning of the Gnostic narrative. There are too many variations to count or describe here, but the gist of it is that by accident, error, or mercy, the Sophia / savior figure brings the spark of divinity from heaven to earth and transmits it to humanity.

Many Gnosticisms reserve this divinity for humanity; animist visions perceive it in literally all things. For myself, I lean toward the animist vision.

In many versions, the Gnostic inquiry and awakening (see above) culminates in a visceral awareness of this divine spark. So awakened, and seeking to awaken those around her, the Gnostic seeks rites by which to return to Sophia and/or the alien divine source from which Sophia came.

Archonic Interference

There is something fundamentally wrong with the world. There are people and places, both mortal and cosmic, that clearly want nothing so much as they want everyone else to suffer. These corrupting, controlling forces are the archons, who seek to imprison all who bear the divine spark so that they might steal it for themselves.

The name “archon” also comes from Greek. The root, archo, means to be first; from that we have arche, which simultaneously means law and origin, and archon, which means ruler, lord, or king. Another common phrase in English is “Powers and Principalities”. The archons are cannonically cosmic tyrants; Gnosticisms which perceive allies among the forces of the cosmic forces refer to those powers as Aeons. In a perfect world, this would make all Gnostics Black Block anarchists; tragically, this is not the case.

In many forms of Gnosticism, the chief archon is the Demiurge: the mad god who either created our sick,sad world or who took the work of the true creator and perverted it into a prison. “Demiurge” is, of course, also from Greek: demiurgos, maker or craftsman. This monstrous divinity has many names; my favorites are Yaldabaoth and Sammael (they’re fun to say).

It is this aspect of Gnosticism which is often responsible for its reputation as world- and life-hating. Certainly those strains exist. But, that way lies nihilism, and I try very hard not to go there.

For myself, I do not see an inherent conflict between the notions that, on the one hand, life and the world are sacred; and that, on the other, there are parasitical and/or cancerous cosmic powers who wish to drain the joy out of everything. Just look at people. What is the cosmic reflection of earthly Status Quo Warriors? Of parasitic billionaires? Of murderous tyrants who claim divine favor and are not struck down by lightning?

As above, so below.

Live a Mythic Life

“Write your own Gospel, live your own myth.” This phrase comes not from ancient sources, as far as I can tell, but was coined by Miguel Conner of Aeon Byte: Gnostic Radio. It is, I believe, both his most radical and most useful thought associated with modern Gnosticism.

In the words of [look dude’s name up], “The awakening of any individual is a cosmic event.” Or, as Miguel Connor likes to say: The awakening of any individual is a cosmic rebellion.

If the gods who oversee the world are evil — and only the most toxically positive deny that at least some of them are — then to know goodness is to rebel against them. If the gods of this world wish us to live in ignorance, then to seek knowledge is to rebel against them.

There is a dark side, of course. The notion of a mythic life, a cosmic battle between an awakened elect and monstrous forces of control, seems to make Gnostics even more prone to paranoid delusions and asinine conspiracy theories than the rest of the New Age and neo-Pagan population. Frankly, I’m a queer historian: I know damn well how the rich and powerful have oppressed their subjects since the rise of agriculture; that doesn’t make the conspiracies that fascinate the pseudo-enlightened (chemtrails, hollow earth, reptilians, Bilderberg) any less farsical, particularly given how those same people point to feminists, queers, anti-racists, and anti-imperialists as divisive weapons and lapdogs of the Secret Chiefs. But I’ll dig into that, later, along with so many of the hanging threads above.

What’s important to me, personally, and to this introductory blog post is the mythic potential of life. Not every myth is heroic — we are not all (thank the gods) Theseus murdering the Minotaur, seducing and then abandoning Ariande. Some of us are the Roman citizen-soldier, whose only ambition is to go home and serve our families. Some of us are the Sybil, holed up in our divine caverns, hotboxing sacred fumes, spewing mad prophesy to those brave and desperate enough to listen. There are so many myths, and an infinite universe to fill with more.

In art, hedonism, scholarship

Pride and Paganism 1/2: Dance for the Dead

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

It’s Pride Season, and that always puts me in a contemplative mood.

I guess I should start by saying that I was a late bloomer. I didn’t grok that I was bisexual until I was about 21 years old. In my defense, sex education and mainstream culture in the 1990s had left me with the impression that bisexuality was something that only existed in women (and let’s not even get started on all the transphobia that my genderqueer ass is still struggling to sort out). I didn’t go to my first Pride Parade 2007, after I moved to St. Louis, in part to come out of the closet. I didn’t have much experience with the community. I was still pretty fresh out of the closet, still pretty ignorant of most politics. 

It was a lot spectacle.  I took hundreds of pictures with my first digital camera, a ViviCam3705.  It meant a lot to me to go with the folks of BASL, to see and be seen.  I bought my first pride jewelry.  I had my first “what do you mean you want to have an actual conversation before I suck your dick” encounter with a gay man.  It was wild.

Fast forward a decade and change.  I haven’t been to a Pride festival or parade in years.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  Part of it is that I’ve always worked weekends — even in shops where not every jeweler worked Saturday and/or Sunday, I’ve found myself in the position of Weekend Jeweler.  Part of it is poverty — in Kansas City, unlike St. Louis, Pride is a ticketed event, and the venue they chose previously was one whose policies made bringing your own food and beverages difficult.  Part of it is my growing sensitivity to heat — I had made plans to meet my friends at Pride after work, last year, but heat exhaustion defeated me.

Part of it, though, is that I don’t like the direction Pride has taken.  I’m a history-minded queer, you know.  I know that the modern liberation movement began with a riot sparked by police brutality.  I know that many of the first Pride festivals were Gay-Ins — massive displays of public queer affection meant to confront, shock, outrage.  It wasn’t that long ago that half the states in the country passed constitutional amendments in “Defense of Marriage“.  You can still be fired or murdered anywhere and everywhere in the country for being too visibly queer (particularly if you’re a woman of color).

So it bothers me that Pride events have been taken over by corporations that profit off queer trauma survivors’ and queer youth’s abuse of alcohol (without doing anything for the movement besides some PR stunts and HR handwringing).  It bothers me that people are advocating for larger police presences at Pride festivals and parades.  It bothers me that, in most parts of the country, Gay Liberation (a phrase that, when it was coined, was every bit as radical and frightening as queer anything) has become LGb(t) Assimilation.

And yet … cops whinging to be included in Pride parades is an improvement over clockwork raids of gay bars.  Corporate sponsorship / takeover of Pride festivals is better than every single queer knowing that his, her, or their job was at stake if anyone, ever, found out.  Assimilationism is better than countless lives swallowed by sham marriages.  But … those aren’t the only options, are they?

I oppose the institutions of marriage and military service.  And,  yet, I demanded an end to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell because, so long as the institution of the military exists, it’s better that queers be allowed full participation.  I demanded Marriage Equality for the same reason.  Being able to imagine a better world does not mean we cannot or should not celebrate victories in this one.

Unlike marriage and the military, Pride is not an institution with roots in previous civilizations.  Pride is a late 20th Century bid for revolution.  The Gay Liberation Front, formed mid-riot, was as opposed to the Vietnam War and to poverty as it was to the oppression of queer people.  Thus, marriage be damned, Pride’s assimilation by mainstream capitalist and imperial forces is a betrayal of its own roots — a clear case of winning a few battles while ultimately losing the war.

I don’t have any answers here.  No thesis.  Just hard questions about goals, tactics, strategy.

Remember that the Nazis burned the library of Magnus Hirsfeld’s Institue for the Science of Sexuality, setting back sexual science and queer liberation by at least a hundred years.  Remember that in mid-19th century United States, the police systematically raided gay bars for fun and profit.  Remember that Reagan (and most USians) ignored the AIDS crisis for more than a decade, figuring that the queers deserved to die.

I dream of a better world, but I don’t know how to get there.

I believe in Pride.  The procession.  The pageantry.  The mad Dionysiac revel of it.  The seeing and being seen, our warts and asses (sometimes literally) on display beside our vital life and joy.  But it needs less Bacchanalia and more Sporagmos; fewer drunken satyrs, more maenads tearing blasphemers limb from limb.

When you dance for Pride, you dance for the dead.  Don’t let our murderers and their sympathizers turn a profit off of you.  Don’t let their successors use you as a public relations prop.

In scholarship, Uncategorized, witchcraft

Lust of Results is Not Your Problem

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

I’ve been reading and talking magical technique a lot, lately, so I’ve been re-exposed to the notion of “lust for results” and it’s been driving me up the wall.

Let me lay it down like this: I was once a presumed-male 16 year old with even more lust in my heart than I possess today.  I know precisely how wanting something too much can screw it up for you, and I honestly believe that it’s this memory that Carrol and Spare and even less douchy chaotes are holding in their hearts when they speak of lust of results.  But here’s the thing: it’s not the wanting that’s the problem, it’s the being an inconsiderate and creepy fuckwit part that screws it up.  As a magical principle, the destructive power of lust of results just doesn’t hold water.

Historically and socially minded magicians talk about this a lot: there are three things that people turn to for magic before all others: money, sex, revenge.  As such, folk magic, the grimoires, and even the PGM are all thick with spells to bring you those things.  They are things that people want desperately, things that people can’t think rationally about.  They are results that people lust over.  And, quite frankly, if they were things that magic couldn’t bring people just because they wanted them too badly, books of magic would be a lot thinner, and the pockets of magicians and sorcerers across time would be a lot dustier.  More to the point, the desires for money, sex, and revenge, are the things that get people into magic in the first place, and if wanting them bad enough to enchant for them were a guaranteed failure, then no one would keep practicing magic long enough to pursue more enlightened goals.

Put another way: blaming magical failure on “lust of results” is a fucking cop-out.  Although I can think of a couple notable exceptions, most of us aren’t calling upon the Gods Above and Below to protect and grow our existing wealth.

You don’t call upon the forces of the cosmos to bring you things you can get just by walking out your door.  By the time you’re enchanting for money, you’ve probably been stuck in your shit job (or unemployed) for a while, and you’ve already probably put out a hundred or so resumes and applications.  By the time you’re enchanting for sex and love, you’ve probably got a few failed relationships under your belt and some serious emotional baggage on your back.  By the time you’re enchanting for revenge, you’re probably up against forces that you cannot face on an even field of battle.

That is to say, for the most part you don’t enchant unless you’re lusting for results.  Also, take some time to talk to some witches: we know what great spell-fuel lust and fear and hate can be.  Thus, we must look for another, more meaningful explanation for spell failure.

Generally speaking, modern Chaos Magick operates under the assumption of a probabilistic universe.  (I single out Chaos Magick, here, because Chaotes are the ones having interesting conversations about how magic works behind the curtain, and because Peter Carrol and Gordon White and Andrieh Vitimus are the people I’ve seen talking about this in print).  So, to reframe the debate in those terms, it turns out that most of us don’t start enchanting for results until the odds are already stacked against us.  Again: we lust for results when our magical goal is objectively more difficult to achieve.

From this probabilistic perspective, then, the “lust for results” argument is completely non-sequiter.  Lusting for results is only a problem if causes you to act against your own interests.

Why then, can a skilled magician, witch, or sorcerer find themselves in a position where they can happily enchant their friends and clients into new carreers but cannot do so for themselves?  Frankly, I would turn to non-magical explanations, first.  Stress and trauma reduce cognitive function and creative capacity: it’s harder to come up with good magical solutions to your own problems.  Moreover, speaking now only of American mages, thanks to the poison of prosperity theology in the cultural waters, we may well blame ourselves for our circumstances, further reducing our ability to see solutions to our problems.

If we must find a magical explanation for the failure of a skilled magician to adequately alter the probabilities of their situation, I propose a different metaphor: leverage and angles.  It is easier to do prosperity magic (or many kinds of magic, for that matter) for another than for ourselves because we do not have the best angle of attack on our own problems.  Although I cannot explain why this may be, based on my own observations I believe that this is particularly true of sympathetic magics.

In summary, I believe that “lust for results” is rarely if ever a satisfactory magical explanation for failure to manifest one’s desire.  I believe that it has survived so long by playing into the worst parts of where mainstream and magical cultures overlap – victim blaming, “u mad bro?”, caring isn’t cool – and by virtue of its pedigree.  I propose that any time we are tempted to use “lust for results” as an explanation for a failed enchantment, we reassess the actual probability of success on the one hand, and the material action nesscessary (vs. taken) to back up the enchantment on the other.

In scholarship, Uncategorized, witchcraft

Producing a Lexicon of Queer Witchcraft

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 1 Comment

This post was originally written several years ago, while I was still in the Sunrise Temple.  For some reason I can’t recall – possibly because it didn’t tie in neatly with the Ceremonial Experiment – I decided to post it exclusively to my Tumblr.  I repost it here, now, because I was looking to link to it as I was drafting my response to the Ruth Barrett issue and was irate that I couldn’t find it.  It was, probably, my most popular Tumblr post, and I think that the discussion is still relevant, and I am still struggling to think clearly in the wake of post-festival and post-tragedy collapse.  The below post has been slightly edited for spelling and grammar.

This is a thing that has been on my mind for a while, and I’m going to float it here before I begin drafting a larger post for the main blog.

I know for a fact that I am not the only genderqueer witch who doesn’t fit comfortably under the trans umbrella.  I strongly suspect that many like me share my struggle to find language to describe their experiences.  The one word I know that comes close to describing the way in which my spirituality and gender identity intermix–Two-spirit–is not mine to use.  Being a Classicist, though, I have access to two whole lexicons from which to less problematically adopt words:  Attic Greek and Classical Latin.

Let me, therefore, propose a word for those of us whose spiritual genders embrace a combination of masculinity and femininity: digenes, from διγενής.  Literally, it renders as “two kind”, but is more commonly taken to mean “of dual or ambiguous nature”.  For those who wish to explicitly embrace a broader spectrum, the neologism polygenes (πολυγενής) can be coined: many-natured.  If you don’t like genes, phusis can be used: diphues (διφυής) or polyphues (πολυφυής): literally two- or many- natured.  Digenes is historically testified to describe Dionysus (citation pending), and diphues to describe Eros in the Orphic Hymn.

So: the proposal:

digenes, diphues, polygenes, and polyphues

Attic/Koine Greek borrow-words and neologisms to describe the experience of genderqueer spirituality for those of us whose traditions do not come equipped with such words.

In scholarship

Star.Ships Calling

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

As a yet-unpublished writer, the last eighteen months have been rough on me: the list of people I know and admire who have published before I have has grown immensely.  Rufus Opus, Lance Tuck, Luna Teague.  Most recently, now, Gordon White has blown onto the scene with not one but two books in the last fewmonths: the first with the most prestigious occult publisher of our age, and the second with the largest.  My hat off to you, sir, you fucking grand over-achiever.  Holy shit.

On the off chance that you don’t already know who Gordon White is, stop what you’re doing and check him out now.  Gordon runs the twin pulpits of his blog and podcast, Rune Soup, whence he pontificates on a wide variety of subjects, mostly culture and  the paranormal.  He speaks from a Chaos Magick and animist perspective, which is refreshingly off-center, and he is very, very clever.  Some day I hope to be cool enough to win an interview on the podcast.

for book page

The first and (arguably) more ambitious of his two books is more theoretical.  Star.Ships gathers up a wide swath of archaeological loose ends from the late paleolithic and demonstrates how they may lead to the earliest portions of history.  Gordon weaves his argument from the recently discovered paleolithic monuments of Gobekli Tepe to the infamous heads of Easter Island to the submerged ruins off the coast of India.  He draws on cutting-edge linguistics and genetics research to illustrate how the now-widely disseminated 1990s theories of human migration desperately miss the mark, and turns into the analysis of geologists and engineers regarding a variety of ancient “mysteries”.   In doing so, he attempts to fill in the “missing links” of western esoteric tradition, and argues that great swaths of human history have been influenced by a handful of stellar powers.  He also, almost incidentally, condemns the current state of scholarship in general and the field of Egyptology in particular.

I am, by training, a Classicist.  This is to say, on the one hand, that I know little or nothing of the paleolithic sites Gordon points to to illustrate a number of his arguments — particularly Gobekli Tepe, to which he points so often — and I look forward to spending a fair bit of my spare time over the next year looking up everything in the bibliography.  On the other hand, however, it also means that I know better than most how much a shambles academic knowledge is regarding the moments just before “history” (that is to say, the things we wrote down) begins.  I mean … there are Classicists who still believe there was a Dorian invasion, but no city of Troy, and that Pythagorus invented the math he clearly stole from Egyptian engineers.  It was a professional hairdresser who demonstrated how the women’s hairstyles of Roman statuary were physically possible and not sculptors’ flights of fancy; it was the engineers of a century ago who provided the first viable theories of how the Egyptian pyramids might have been constructed; and I have personally seen at least three drunk construction workers on YouTube demonstrating how single individuals might have erected the megaliths across the British Isles.  Finally, having given up my dreams of pursuing a Doctorate entirely because of my own experiences navigating the politics of the academy, I am entirely sympathetic to his condemnations of that institution.

This late to the game, however, there is almost no point in writing a full review of the book.  To that end, I have only three more things to say on the subject:

  1. Unlike so many, Gordon White does an excellent job of distinguishing between his data and his conclusions.  If you are uncomfortable with his conclusions, he cites his less mainstream sources very clearly and has an extensive bibliography at the end.
  2. The most important thing Gordon has to say in Star.Ships is not actually his core thesis, but the mantra he repeats as he makes each of his points: it is the task of science to accumulate data; it is the task of the magician to provide meaning.
  3. Go buy the damn book.  Gordon White’s Star.Ships from Scarlet Imprint

</fanboi squee>

 

 

In scholarship, witchcraft

Orphic Hymns to the Sun: Translations in Action

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

A great deal of the current work being done with planetary magic right now relies heavily on the use of the Orphic Hymns, chiefly the 18th century translations by Thomas Taylor.  Long-time readers may recall that I am uncomfortable with those translations, and have argued that the more recent and more accurate translations of Apostolos Athanassakis be used instead.  It was not only inevitable, then, but entirely by design that my first week of conjurations put these two translations back-to-back to see what differences might be discerned in their efficacy.

For those magicians who are not also ancient language geeks (how have I not bored you to death?), the gist of it is that the Ancient Greek in which the Orphic Hymns were composed was written in meter rather than rhyme, and hammering the verses into a simple English rhyme-scheme takes some serious torture.  Also, archaeology is amazing, and we know more about the languages of Hellenistic Greece today than Taylor did, so some of his mistakes may be rooted in bad dictionaries.  Some magicians, equally if not more geeky and educated as I, believe that the Taylor translations work better magically for all sorts of reasons, but I ride this hobby horse to hell, regardless.

Taylor’s rhyming cant does, I must concede, a certain something for the brain of the English speaking magician.  We have this whole thing with magic and rhyme, and any good Chaos magician knows how valuable it is to tap into that sort of unconscious power source.  Moveover, between their ready (and free) availability, and the work of Rufus Opus (among others), the Taylor translations of the Hymns are explicitly tied to the planetary rites of the modern Western magical tradition.  All this goes to say that when I used the Thomas Taylor translation of the Hymn to the Sun, by itself, as a part of RO’s Seven Spheres rite, and as a part of conjurations of my own design, I already knew something of what to expect.

The warmth of the Sun responds readily to the hymn, and one may ride that way direct to the planetary current, and the Archangel Michael or the Titan god Helios respond equally readily to accept the offerings laid out before them.

The translations of Apostolos Athanassakis are aimed at the casual enthusiast as much as the professional Classicist, so they are not as sharp-edged as some might fear — the pages are unmarred by indications of broken text in the original, or annotation regarding the academic infighting of one translation versus another.  Moreover, in the particular case of the Hymn to Helios, the differences between the two translations are much less stark and more stylistical than other Orphic Hymns.

The Sun that responded to Aradia and I when we called by this hymn, both by itself and as a part of the Seven Spheres rite, was startlingly different from that which answered to the Taylor translation.  It was tarnished, or perhaps brazen rather than gold.  It was older, more aloof, more … Titanic.  Aradia described the experience as having used a back door to the sun.

It was the Athanassakis translation of the Orphic Hymn to Helios, substituted for Taylor in the Seven Spheres rite, which produced my most vivid experience of the experiment so far: the sensation of having ascended to an old, cooling, and abandoned region of the Sun, and of being observed by a vast red-gold eye, the size of a planet, staring widely at my from within an almost understandably vast head.