My crew and I celebrated Beltane at the end of April. I’ve been struggling to find something to say about it ever since.
It was a great weekend, overall. The air was cool and the sky was overcast. I took several cameras and made some fun photos. Good times were hand, despite the rain that came Saturday night, and the failure of my sleeping mat. But only half of us made it out, and it was not a particularly dramatic year, ritually speaking.
With the first of May landing in the middle of the week, we did a bit of divination to determine whether the weekend before or after would be better for us. Some weeks later, too late to change folks PTO, we learned that our usual spot was booked for an event we wanted no part of, leading us to try an alternate location: Oak Spirit Sanctuary, in central Missouri. Most of us had heard of OSS before, some time over the years, but we’d never gotten around to checking it out, so we were excited for the excuse/opportunity to try someplace new.
OSS is about twice as far from KC as Gaea Retreat Center, and my partner and I hit the road at just the wrong time, so the drive out was a bit of a slog (the way folks drive on I-70 is … questionable, sometimes). But we arrived safely and in plenty of time to set up and chill out before the sun set. The site is a bit smaller and less developed than Gaea, but that made it easier to find each other without already knowing where we were going. We did a bit of exploring, Saurday morning, and got to meet a couple members of the Board of Directors while they were working to get the site ready for their official Beltane festivities the following weekend. They were super hospitable, which was really nice, telling us about a handful of groups that use the land and explicitly inviting us to use the main ritual circle if we wanted. Then, that evening, they made a point of letting us know when they left, and that we had the land to ourselves.
We had our traditional Fuck You Fire on Friday night, burning off the ends of old spells then purging ourselves of winter and our frustrations as we threw expired herbs and other materia into the fire. For whatever reason, we didn’t quite muster the catharsis of some other years, but that’s not unprecedented: we’ve found other ways to vent our spleens, this spring.
Saturday night, we accepted our hosts’ invitation to use the main ritual circle and renewed our vows as Black Goat Brides. It was my turn, again, to lead the ritual, which I haven’t done in … several years. My companions assure me that I did well, but I still feel that I struggled to rise to the occasion. Still, it was good to renew our vows: we weren’t able to do so at either Beltane or Samhain, last year, due to weather and scheduling conflicts and other drama.
Saturday night’s rain ran into Sunday morning, but cleared in time for us to pack up our camp (however sopping) and get back on the road in time for lunch.
It was good to get out into the woods, again. It was good to celebrate Beltane again, especially after missing last year. And it was essential to make sure that all of our equipment was in working order for next month’s big road trip. But, as with so many of our adventures, lately, I feel like I had more fun than my companions, which always leaves me feeling a little weird.
Because I was ritual leader, and because an incoming storm led us to tear down the altar earlier than I would have liked, I didn’t take any photos of the altar. Fortunately, Kraken was kind enough to get some pictures of the altar while I was winding myself up. The images below are from Friday and Saturday afternoon, and from Friday night’s fire, shot with my d5600 using a Nikon 18-300mm zoom lens and my Tamron 150-600mm telephoto lens, and with my Z6 and my Nikon 24-300mm zoom.
The overcast was perfect for photography. I wish that any of my companions had brought fun clothes, or that any of us (myself included) had felt photogenic enough to do portraiture or something more elaborate.
I still haven’t gotten geotagging to work. Hopefully I’ll figure that out before the road trip. I’d really like to be able to plot this adventure’s photos
The image of the Sun according to Baphomet is a serpent with the head of a woman, or of a lion, or with a beard, wearing a crown. To her left is a crescent moon; to the right is a shining star. Over her head is the sun; in metal, a citrine.
These images came to me in a vision some weeks ago: sitting quietly at my altar on a Sunday morning, making my usual offerings of fire, frankincense and myrrh, and strong black coffee. Being the first such visions I’ve had in over a year, I was … hesitant to share them. I feared, more than usual, that they were hubris or delusion. They are, after all, somewhat derivative: clearly an elaboration on the iconic image of Chnoubis.
In the weeks following the vision, though, I received further elaboration on the images. They became clearer in my mind, and as I contemplated them, I felt like I was reminded of a certain solar invocation from the Greek Magical Papyri. When I finally sat down to draw them, they came through to the page with a clarity that confirmed I had something substantial.
The moon was waxing, and (though the image did not specifically call for astrological timing) the sun was in Aries, and I decided to strike while the iron was hot. I made another copy of the image – the woman-headed snake, for myself – this time on watercolor paper (my current favorite basis for hand-drawn text and image magic), and inked it in black and gold, and set it aside for the next Tuesday morning (the Solar second hour of the day of Mars being an ideal time for me, personally, to invoke the Sun in Aries).
I did my usual daily ritual in the dawn hour, then showered and donned my ritual garb. I set the image upright on my altar with a candle and brazier, and gathered a vial of Helios oil made by one of my friends during our trance-possession experiments.
When we crossed over into the Hour of the Sun, I performed my usual frame ritual, then sat down to contemplate the image and perform the ritual.
I consecrated the image using PGM XXXVI 211-30 (Betz, p. 274):
Rejoice with me, you who are set over the east wind and the world, for whom all gods serve as bodyguard 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 AROUR ZORBOROBA MESINTRIPHI NIPTOUMI KHMOUMMAOPHI 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 AKRAMMAKHAMARI PEPHNA PHOZA PHNEBENNOUNI NAAKHTHIP OUNORBA Accomplish the matter which I want, by means of your power.
I repeated the incantation four times. The first time, I put incense on the charcoal and anointed myself with oil: hands, feet, and head. The second time, I suffumigated the image in the frankincense smoke. The third time I anointed the image with oil: first the sun, then the frame, then the moon, then the star, then the serpent, starting at the tip of her tail and working up to her face. The fourth time, I anointed both the image and myself with oil, again, and called upon the Sun to empower me and the image as the spell describes.
I completed the ritual by sitting and contemplating the image and basking in the power I had conjured. I was immediately filled with a strong sense of calm and vitality, and my partner reported that my energy felt improved. My Chnoubis signet, which had been sitting on a nearby table with my other jewelry but not specifically involved, felt particularly tingly when i put it on, after.
The PGM spell includes no timing; it just says “face the sun”. Based on my results so far, and my personal relationship with Solar powers, the ideal timing for me has been a Solar hour of Day on the day of the Sun, Mars, or Saturn. Because this, like Chnoubis, is obviously a Solar-cthonic image, I imagine people with a different relationship with the Sun than I have will get solid results from a Solar Hour of Night.
I think that I will want to repeat the rite for a few Sundays and see what manifests before calling it an unqualified success, but I am sufficiently pleased with the initial results to share the images and the ritual for you all to experiment with. My only complaint, so far, is that this spell-image combination does seem to exacerbate my tendency to overwork, and I have to be even more disciplined about clocking out at night and taking days off.
High resolution versions of these images can be found at my Patreon, where you will also find all my work before anyone else gets to see it, as well as things that I hold back from more public forums and all my other arts. If you like my work, but don’t like Patreon for whatever valid reason, you can also support me on ko-fi.
I have practiced magic for nearly three decades. I have been pouring out daily libations and burning offerings for my small, eccentric pantheon and my spirit court for four and a half years, now. I have been writing publicly about my rites and the experiences they have engendered since 2010. I am, at this point, a professional mystic as much as an artist of any stripe. I should be elated that when I sit in silence before my altar, sometimes I have visions.
But the thing that I have always feared most in life – more than pain, more than death, more than humiliation and betrayal – is being locked away in an asylum. (People keep telling me that’s a thing that doesn’t happen anymore. Somehow, that doesn’t help.) And so every vision I have, every divine epiphany, every moment of clairsentience, is followed immediately by fear and doubt.
Is it so strange that, after years of prayers and offerings – to say nothing of more vigorous invocations – the gods or their messengers might appear to me? Is it less mad to claim I was comforted by a messenger of Aphrodite than the goddess, herself? Why do those epiphanies seem more suspect than the spirit journeys that I used to write about regularly? Why are they harder to talk about than the visions of the cosmos I have been granted?
Some of it, I think, is the changing world. It’s a more hostile place, now, than when I started this blog. Some of it is just that I’m older, now, and more deeply wounded.
Grifters and con artists abound. I know, now, as I did not, ten and fifteen years ago, that many of the people claiming to be mystics and magicians and visionaries are liars and thieves. I know, now, how sincere seekers can be subjugated by cult leaders and other abusers.
Worse, I have seen magicians that I admired, whose work I have benefited from, whose work has become foundational to my own, crawl up their own asses to die. I have seen good teachers fall prey to prosperity gospels and other unjust theologies. I have seen others turn to fascism and white supremacy. I have seen friends and colleagues lose confidence in their works, doubt their insights, and retreat into mundane diversions and, ultimately, disappear from the public sphere. I have seen peers become convinced that the salvation of the world is their responsibility, alone; that the taboos and strictures the spirit world has applied to them must be obeyed by all. I have seen countless members of my community fall victim to conspiracy theories and taken in by cults. Any of them could have been me. It could still be me.
How do you discern between gnosis and hubris and delusion? How do you know which visions to share, and which are for you alone? More pointedly, how do I discern? How do I know?
I know, at least, that I am reporting my visions in good faith. I am not trying to start a cult, or grift anyone out of their life savings. All I want is to share what I’ve seen and done with my peers, to encourage them to share their own works and visions, that we can all benefit. (And, sure, sell some jewelry and some novels, but on the basis of their artistic merits not my spiritual authority.) But all anyone else has is my word.
I also know, as much as I seem to overshare, how very much I hold back. I have had experiences that made me doubt whether “reality” is even a thing that exists. I have had experiences that leave me shaking in fear that I have devoted the last thirty years to wallowing in my own madness, that I should be locked up for my own good and for the good of society.
I have seen and done things that cannot be explained by anything I’ve read, that fly in the face of the conclusions I’ve drawn from my other experiences. I have done things that people more experienced and respected than I am assure everyone are impossible. Conversely, things that should have worked didn’t. Magic works in practice, not in theory.
Some days, some years, I can sit comfortably with those dissonances.
Some days, some years, I can’t.
How much of what I have seen is real? How much is the product of madness, of drugs, of cruel trickster spirits and mortal charlatans? How much of what I’ve said is true? How much is the best approximation I can manage, an artist’s sincere attempt to convey the ineffable? How much is the rambling of a madman?
If I don’t know, how can you?
—–
I began writing this in September of 2023, after a particularly intense visionary experience in a season of intense visionary experiences, possibly the high point of my magical and mystical career to date. No more than a month later, I was plummeting into one of the deepest depressions that I can remember, lasting well into 2024.
I finished writing this in April of 2025, on the far side of that depression, following a wildly different series of visionary experiences. These more recent visions have been, on the one hand, much less intense than anything from the summer and fall of ’23; on the other hand, they have been significantly more actionable.
The question of “did i just imagine all of this” has haunted me from the very beginning, even as a teenage dabbler in the 1990s. Although there are days, weeks, even months where it weighs less heavily than others, I suspect that question will haunt me forever. As uncomfortable as that often is, I don’t know that it’s a wholly bad thing. Self-doubt can cripple us, yes, but it can also keep us honest.
The questions of what to share, and how, and when, will dog my steps for as long as I am participating in public Paganism. That won’t be forever: some day I’ll die or retire. In the meantime, though, I would rather grapple with these issues semi-publicly rather than present myself as some sort of infallible expert.
I am an artist, not an authority.
All things wax and wane. My madness and my magic are no exceptions. Lately, rather than the rise and the fall, I’ve been thinking on the turning points; the apex and the nadir. My practice and I, I think, are on the rise right now. That will not last forever. What was it about the autumn of 2023 that led me to crash out so hard? What was it about the last year that has made staying in the work despite that fall so much easier than some falls before?
I still have my doubts, my fears, my wounds. And yet, I persist. And, for the foreseeable future, I will continue to do so.
If I were writing a different article/essay/blog post/whatever, this would be the part where I tell you how you, too, can recover from depression and burnout; how you can overcome and confront your fears; how you can defeat the Dweller on the Threshold. I have no such wisdom in me, today. I know only that I have stumbled and carried on. You have, too, at some point. We will both do so again.
Finally, though the through line may not be clear to everyone, this post is very much of a piece with this one from last May.
Behold, another completed Picatrix image for your mystical contemplation and thaumaturgic application.
The image of Mars, according to the opinion of the wise Apollonius, is the shape of a crowned man holding an inscribed sword in his right hand. – Picatrix Book II, Chapter 10, Paragraph 19 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019)
I chose this image for Mars despite having already used it as the image for my Mars jewelry talismans because I felt like there was more for me to learn from it. For the sword’s inscription, I chose a seal of the archangel Kamael (I chose the version from The Magus because it was the first to fall to hand).
I have also, I think, finally decided on a size format for (most) forthcoming images: 2.75×4.75 inches, 600dpi, which – if you recognize them, will immediately give you a clue about at least one forthcoming application of these cards. That is, for the rest of us (I’ve looked it up, like, fifty fucking times, now), the dimensions of a “standard” tarot card. (I’ve seen too many tarot decks to name a standard without laughing; but that is the size of my magpie decks, which was the deciding factor for me.) With that decision made, I can now begin serious work on developing borders for these images and the cards they will eventually become. Once I’ve developed that border, I’ll go back and reformat and re-release my previous images.
Behold, friends, the latest in my ongoing series of astrologial images for study, contemplation, and enchantment.
The image of Jupiter, according to the opinion of Mercurius, is the shape of a man covered in a single linen cloth, riding upon a dragon, holding a lance or a dart in his hand.
-Picatrix Book II, Chapter 10, Paragraph 17 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019)
Some of you may recall, I shared the pencils of this image back at the beginning of September. I’m pleased to now share the digitally inked version.
This is my third attempt to work within a frame to make the images a little more artistically sophisticated (see also this Saturn and the Third Lunar Mansion), and I’m really pleased with the results so far. Eventually, as I develop my visual language through this and other projects, I plan to go back to add Art Nouveau and Arabesque frames to those that don’t have them.
Almost a dozen images into this series, I honestly feel like I’m making deeper connections to the planets and powers these images represent, and confirming (at least in my own mind) my long-held assertion that the images hold power of their own, which can be tapped outside the narrow constraints of Medeival and Renaissance astrological timing techniques.
You can find a higher resolution version of this image up on my Patreon, as well as links to collections of higher resolution astrological images. As a patreon supporter, you’ll get to see everything I do before anyone else, and a lot of things that I don’t share publically. If you’d like to support my work but don’t like Patreon for whatever reason, please consider dropping a tip in my jar at Ko-Fi.
All of us practicing magic publicly should probably be doing more evil-eye removal, uncrossing, and cursebreaking than we do. Protective wards and servitors are great, but even if we never leave our enchanted sanctuaries, some things will still get through. To that end, evolving variations of this spell have become a regular part of my magical protection and spiritual hygiene regimen.
I shared a super-concise version of this spell in the Hermetic House of Life discord not too long ago, at which point it belatedly occurred to me to add the SATOR square. The next weekend, I added the SATOR square. I was super pleased with the results, and felt moved to write this up immediately.
Bon appetit.
For the instructions below, I’ve included making your SATOR square, because it’s too short and easy to deserve a post of its own. I used a glass dip pen and consecrated ink to make my SATOR square, but that’s me being fancy. I used watercolor paper because it’s going to live on my altar and get spattered with oil and ash and god knows what and I want it to last. I have not included how to make your oil, because uncrossing and protection oils are readily available commercially and making it could be the subject of a whole book. (Several people have made their careers on such books.)
I do this ritual Saturday mornings, ideally during the first (Saturn) hour after dawn, but there is nothing inherently planetary about it and it can be done at any time. I also like to double-down on the ritual during the waning moon. Those timing elements make the ritual more effective, but aren’t necessary.
This ritual doesn’t pack as much oomph as some protection/uncrossing spells. It also doesn’t take as much oomph to get it off the ground. It’s meant as maintenance-level cleanup, not hazmat disposal. It does, though, also make a great first step in a heavier duty spiritual cleansing regimen when more is needed, and pairs well with a spiritual bath.
Materials
Paper
Pen and ink
Ruler
Candles (one per ritual; i use tea lights)
A small mirror big enough for your candle to sit comfortably in the middle
Anointing oil (I use uncrossing oil; you can use whatever seems most appropriate)
Incense (I use a frankincense & myrrh blend; use can use whatever you want)
Making Your SATOR Square
Take your piece of paper and draw out a five by five grid somewhere in the middle; you want plenty of room on all sides. The two easiest ways to do this are to start off with graph paper, or to use a ruler straight edge. You can carefully measure centimeters or inches or whatever if you want, but I just use the ruler as the unit of measure: square the ruler against the paper, trace your line on one side and then the other. Repeat until you have six lines. Turn your paper 90 degrees and repeat to make your grid. Pencil in the letters:
SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS
If you’re not artistically inclined (or, even if you are), you may need to make multiple attempts to get a size and geometry you like. I made mine a little larger than my mirror.
When you are ready to do the ritual, bless and consecrate and awaken and enliven your paper, pen, and ink to the work of protection, cursebreaking, and uncrossing. Do not anoint your paper with oil, yet, it will impede the ink.
Ink your SATOR square. I inked mine in this order: grid outline; interior grid lines, letters, square outside the grid. Then I went back and inked over the letters several times. I promise it’s okay if it’s a little messy, as long as its legible. (It is word magic, after all, however inscrutable.)
The SATOR square is largely self-powering. Not much is needed to activate it. To give it extra oomph, though, I chanted the five words (Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, Rotas) repeatedly as I inked my square, then suffumigated it with my incense and anointed the corners with my uncrossing oil. Invoking additional protective powers also always helps. Stop chanting and suffumigating when you know it’s done or when you lose focus, whichever comes first.
Your SATOR square is now ready to rock.
The Ritual
Gather your SATOR square, mirror, candle, and uncrossing oil.
Bless, consecrate, awaken, and enliven your materials with incense and prayer. If you literally just made your SATOR square (as I did the morning before I wrote this up), it is absolutely fine to use the same stick or lump of incense that you used to consecrate and suffumigate your SATOR square.
When you are ready, lay your hands over your SATOR square and chant the words (Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, Rotas) three or five times.
Next, anoint your mirror with oil, spiraling counter clockwise from the center. Chant,
Uncross my conditions. Turn away the evil eye. Break any curses that have been laid upon me. Let the work of ignorance be undone. Let the work of jealousy be undone. Let the work of malice be undone. Let the work of my enemies be undone.
or something to the same effect in your own words. Then place the mirror on top of your SATOR square.
Anoint your candle, also counterclockwise, and repeat the chant. Then put the candle on top of the mirror.
Light the candle then anoint your hands with the oil, repeating the chant again. I also anoint my feet and my head.
Repeat the words of the SATOR square, again. At least once, but five times is more stylish.
Repeat the chant and the five words until you feel uncrossed and uncursesd or your attention wavers.
Witches who are particularly fire safety conscious will extinguish their candles, now. The rest of us will leave them burning on our altars that have been built to make that as safe as possible. In either event, turn your back on the uncrossing spell and try not to return to that room until the Hour of Saturn has ended (at a minimum); until after noon is better; until after sunset is best.
At long last, I return to you with a new astrological image:
The image of Saturn, according to the opinion of other sages, is the shape of a man standing upon a dragon, holding a scythe in his right hand and a spear in his left, dressed in black and tawny clothes.
-Picatrix Book 2 Paragraph 13, (Atrell and Porecca, 2019)
This is the same image I used for my triangular Picatrix Saturn talisman, but very differently executed. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
Those of you taking Sara Mastros’ pentacles course may have noticed that my last post did not actually make it to the end of lesson three. I had not, yet, put to use any of the pentacles I had inscribed in by book. Those experiences were weird and interesting enough to deserve a post of their own.
Jupiter Pentacles
My very first pentacles, as it turned out, were made outside the framework of this class. Over the summer, Mastros offered a workshop on using the Hexagram of Ab Ehyeh (second pentacle of Jupiter) for financial gain. I had inscribed but not yet deployed my first Lunar talismans, and decided not to jump ahead to teach my book the Jovial talisman before the class, so I printed the pentacle to inscribe over… which was where I made my first mistake.
I printed the pentacle on the wrong paper. Rather than just roll with it, I reprinted it on the cardstock I had wanted to use … and then I got all up in my head about proper care and disposal about the Hebrew god-names, and decided to punt the problem by consecrating both of them, each to a different professional goal: a particular sales goal, difficult but achievable; and a particular number of Patreon supporters. Both by the end of November.
They didn’t work.
Sales through the end of the summer and were good, but not what I was hoping for in October, and straight tanked in November. I have been delighted to welcome several new patrons, but did not meet my goal. (Writing that sentence, knowing y’all will read it, feels a little weird. Sorry about that.)
It’s possible that they did help. That these two pentacles, along with my other prosperity and financial magic, are what pulled me up out of the pit that was the first half of this year’s sales. But even if so, that’s not a resounding success.
But I didn’t know how those first pentacles would turn out, yet, when I finally sat down to put my first book-pentacles to use.
Preparing and Planning
Sara Mastros strongly suggests The Lunar Lock and Key (the first Lunar pentacle, per Mathers) as a student’s first pentacle, specifically to use it to journey to the underworld. Up to this point, I really had planned to stick as close to the lesson plan as I could. But I couldn’t figure out what would be the … best, most useful, most interesting way for me to employ the pentacle, an unfamiliar magical technology, to go to the underworld, something I am well accustomed to doing on my own.
It’s … a stupid thing to get caught up on. But get caught I did. I stewed on that problem for probably a whole month. Finally, the solution came to me: I would ask the Third Pentacle of the Moon, The Witch’s Teacher.
The Witch’s Teacher
The Witch’s Teacher (the third Lunar pentacle per Mathers) is a more conventional pentacle than the Lunar Lock and Key: round, with clear internal geometry, if with a slightly more obscure versicle. Inscribing it in my Book, as I described previously, went smoothly. Employing it was even more straightforward: I invoked Solomon and wound up the Book according to Mastros’ techniques. I told various powers – Solomon, the Book, the Great Seal, and the pentacle, itself – what I wanted, invoking each in turn, explaining my situation . I asked to be instructed in a vision in circle, in a dream tonight, and/or in visions and revelations later. Anointed a candle with holy oil, then lit it.
I was hit immediately with clairsentient knowledge: the Lunar Lock and key will serve as a guide, showing me where and how to go; it will lead me beyond the brass gates that I have seen in previous visionary trances; it will serve as a passport and a badge of authority; that using the Lunar Lock and Key to journey to the underworld is, itself, a rite of passage.
I thanked the spirits, wound down the book, and began planning my next adventure.
The Lunar Lock and Key
I put the Lunar Lock and Key to use around the middle of October.
Despite – or, more accurately, because of – my familiarity with less structured underworld journeys, I was careful to maintain the ritual and protocols I have developed in my pentacles work so far. I bathed and changed into my ritual whites before the start of the planetary hour. I sat down to meditate with my Book before winding up the ritual proper.
I struggled to stay focused, at first. I did not feel as strong a connection to Solomon as usual during initial invocation. I still didn’t get name or presence from Great Seal, but it definitely opened up and powered up. I didn’t get a strong sense of resonance while invoking the pentacle (further evidence for my theory that I am somehow not tuning in to the right frequency to properly perceive the pentacles), but visualizing using the angel names as the key and “tickling” the lock open (Mastros’ word; those of you who’ve tried your hands at lockpicks might find that metaphor more relatable) did produce a gate through which I was able to move.
I descended through the void, bypassing all my usual routes and landmarks, until I came to a great wall winding through a red desert, and a brazen gate which looked a lot like those that I’ve seen in previous visionary experiences. A glowing blue figure that answered to the name Shioel was waiting for me and led me to a postern gate where we met the spirit of my Book.
Inside the gate was, briefly, a vision of fiery red desert that gave way to a vision of poppy fields and a yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City. Yes, that Emerald City. Sort of. I flew there with Shioel a the spirit of my Book, and we entered the city by a side gate.
Inside the Emerald City was initially a void. Then there was a vision of a throne, which Shioel said was what I expected to see. The vision of the throne exploaded into a vision of light, followed by a series of visions more weird and personal than I care to share at this stage of internet culture enshittification.
At the end of my visionary journey, Shioel told me to return at the dark of the moon and I returned to my body.
The next dark moon turned out to be Samhain. Winding up for and then having to cancel our usual Samhain campout was exhausting and demoralizing, and I almost spent the night stoned in front of the TV. Somehow, though, I rallied enough to sit down in front of my altar to light some offerings and at least meditate for a while, and commune with my familiar spirits. Those few minutes of meditation quickly escalated into an unplanned visionary experience.
Solomon appeared to me, and the spirit of my Book. They admonished me not to use my Solomonic materia for anything but the Solomonic work (I had lit some of the incense as “the best I’ve got” right then), and then cajoled me to conjure up the Lunar Lock and Key and make my planned descent to the underworld.
In the end, I gave in. I called up the pentacle in my mind, invoked the names as best as I could remember them, and opened the portal. With the Book closed on the altar, instead of open before me, it is perhaps unsurprising that this second journey was more like my other underworld journeys than the first descent with the Lunar Lock and Key had been.
I descended first into light and the void, then ascended to the sphere of the Moon, where the spirit of my Book underwent a Lunar initiation much like those that I have been through in my Seven Spheres workings. Then we descended, again, and returned to the Emerald City for another round of visionary experiences weirder than I am prepared to share publicly, including some that were so weird I couldn’t even find words to record them in my most private journal.
Preparing for the Next Stage
For a wide variety of reasons, I’ve fallen off the work since November. I could point to the US presidential election, or to my father’s illness and death, or to my annual Christmas Depression, or any number of things, and that would all be true … but they are more true about why this write-up too me so long. What really broke my ritual streak was the Fall Back shift from Daylight Savings to Standard time: the Third Hour of Night now coincides with my dinner time, making it incredibly difficult for me to fit planetary timing into my regular life, even as a full time artist and magician. This fallow period, though, is by no means an end of my work in Mastros’ course and with the Solomonic pentacles.
I have already learned so much. About the grimoire tradition. About the legendary King Solomon. About the Hebrew language. About making magic books (this is my … third? Fourth?). About bringing my lifetime of witchcraft to ceremonial magic, and incorporating ceremonial paradigms into my witchcraft. I’ve had insights about how to improve my Picatrix talismans. I suspect that I will learn things that will lead me to make pentacle-like talismans using channeled imagery and versicles from extra-Biblical texts (specifically but not exclusively Homeric and Orphic texts).
Having now deviated from my post-per-lesson format, I think it’s fair to warn you that I’ll be deviating further. I am not going to hand-hold you through the whole of Sara Mastros’ pentacles course. That would be rude to her and boring for me and not actually that helpful or interesting to you.
Instead, going forward, I’ll be sharing my most interesting results from my classwork, and from the experiments that classwork inspires.
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.
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.
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