Although I don’t have hard data to compare to, and I’m still dealing with the fallout in a lot of ways, I do feel that the Venus talisman and tincture I made in preparation for that retrograde period helped me get through relatively unscathed. So, in anticipation of the upcoming Mercury retrograde, Aradia and I decided to put together some talismans along similar lines.
Now, in a magical fantasy world where we’re planning further than two weeks ahead, we’d have done that a week or so ago, before the “pre-retrograde period” I keep reading about. In that same magical fantasy world, though, sticking to one’s daily practice would be fun and easy, not real effort, and I would already have fixed everything that’s wrong with my brain years ago.
I like to work during the Hours of Night. Unfortunately, this is the wrong time of year for that. We printed out the templates and started casting our circle just as the Hour of Mercury came this past Tuesday—taking advantage of the waxing, near-full Moon, rather than waiting on the Day of Mercury—and were barely able to suffumigate the charms, incant the Orphic Hymn to Hermes, and light the offering candles before the Hour had ended. As with the Venus retrograde, we made a planetary incense blend to suffumigate, and then used the excess to make a tincture as a backup/battery for the talismans. We also recharged the safe-travel talisman I made with Sannafrid shortly before making the road trip from Sunrise to KC.
I look forward to seeing how well they help. We should probably have made a separate talisman for Aradia’s workplace; we should definitely do so before the retrograde gets much closer.
The Garden of Earthly Delights (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have just survived the first Venus retrograde of my career as a magician working with planetary forces. Not coincidentally, it was also the first such planetary movement I was consciously aware of. If I were a better keeper of journals, it would be interesting to go back and see what, exactly, my experience with such retrogrades had been before being aware of them.
Speaking only for myself, I believe that I passed through this retrograde period relatively unscathed. Perhaps my talisman protected me. Perhaps I just had my ducks in a row (unlikely). Or perhaps I was just too busy dealing with other people’s Venus-related explosions that I didn’t have time to stress out over my own.
Despite my good intentions, I didn’t do much for the Solstice this year. My planned trip out to Gaea the weekend before, with Aradia, Pasiphae, and Aidan, was cancelled due to a conflicting event[1]. The Solstice proper was mostly consumed by Sannafrid’s arrival, insomnia, and napping. Hell, I didn’t even manage to do my usual monthly reading.
I did, however, manage to start my own batch of Fiery Wall of Protection Oil. I used Polyphanes’ recipe, but my process ended up being a bit different. I didn’t have all of the ingredients I needed on hand, but I really wanted to take advantage of the astrological conditions: it was the Summer Solstice, the third day of the Dark Moon, and the first day of the Lunar Month and the waxing moon. So I ultimately split the construction and consecration of the oil over three separate occasions.
Wednesday, at the Hour of the Sun, about two hours after the peak of the Solstice, I put together about half the ingredients[2] in solution with the olive oil. The charge the oil took was very Solar, with a a Fiery heart.
Friday, at the Hour of Mars, I put together the remaining ingredients and added the castor oil[3]. The oil took on a much more frantic, fiery character. In between sessions and after, I left the bottle to rest on Aradia’s altar.[4]
The contents of this post will come as no surprise to people who’ve been working with talismanic magic longer than I have. Nor, possibly, to people whose studies have been shorter but more organized than mine. Maybe my learning curve is a little shallow, or maybe I just haven’t read the right sources yet, or maybe it’s this trial-and-error for everyone and they never talk about it.
Beham, (Hans) Sebald (1500-1550): Mercury, from The Seven Planets with the Signs of the Zodiac, 1539 (Bartsch 119; Pauli, Holl. 121), first state of three, trimmed to the platemark, occasional skinning verso, with associated tiny paper losses at the upper sheet edge, otherwise generally in very good condition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Last night I met with several people to negotiate a resolution in regard to the fallout from the main ritual at Heartland Pagan Festival. In order to make my case better, I prepared a talisman at the Hour of Mercury, employing the Seal of Ophiel, the Planetary Seal of Mercury[1], the Planetary Talisman of Mercury, my Glyph of the Moon, and a set of five sigils produced using the Kamea of Mercury. I blessed the talisman with the Orphic Hymn to Hermes and an offering of a tealight and sandalwood incense. I also brought with me my talismans of Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon.
The negotiations went better than I ever could have imagined. I was able to convince the responsible parties of the harm done, of the necessity and appropriateness of a formal and public apology. The meeting went well enough, in fact, that my desire to become actively involved in the festival and the HSA has been renewed. This post isn’t actually about that, though. That post will come later. This post is about the talismans.
When I got back to Aradia’s apartment, I put the talismans back on the altar and thanked them verbally, as well as making an offering of incense and a candle. Prior to this, the Jupiter and Venus talismans had been “fading” some: although I could still feel their effects I my “sphere” (to use the Hermetic terminology), they felt wan and then to my magical senses. When I lit the candle and incense, all four talismans erupted with power. The Jupiter and Venus talismans now “feel” almost as strong as they were when I first made them. I’m not really sure how to parse the changes I feel in the Moon talisman, or what to do with the Mercury talisman whose highly specialized task has been achieved.
I will be thanking the Jupiter and Venus talismans again at their appropriate hours this afternoon. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.
1 – Please don’t judge me on the source. It’s the only pretty version of the seal that I can find.
Please allow me to preface this story with another. For a few years now, I have been working with a set of three masks I made over the course of a couple months at the end of 2009. Perhaps the crown jewel of the three is the Sun God Mask.
Originally intended to be the focal point of Solstice rituals, it has been calling for more attention lately. In particular, it took an unexpectedly prominent role in my Beltane festivities, and since then it has been much more aware. As an experiment, I took the mask with me to Heartland.
For those who haven’t been to Heartland Pagan Festival, one of the major attractions are the nightly bonfires, surrounded by drumming and dancing. The last couple years I ended up spending so much energy on the radically healing and transformative workshops and rituals that I didn’t actually have any left for dancing. This year was different, for better AND worse, and I think I spent more time around the bonfire than the previous two (and maybe three) years combined. I know I spent more time dancing than the last several years put together.
For me, this year, there were three modes of dancing. I danced by myself. I danced with the mask: letting it experience the mortal pleasures that incorporeal creatures seem to find either intoxicating or abhorrent. I danced with the fire, treating it as an idol of the Elemental Powers of Fire.
Dancing alone was an exercise in the pure, hedonist pleasure of my body. Reveling in the feeling of muscle and sinew moving against bone, of the heat of the fire contrasted with the cool night air, of the thundering drumbeats moving through me, the rough sand under my bare feet. Gods, I’ve missed it. Even if I could stand the music they play at dance clubs, it wouldn’t be the same. The drum circle produces an aIchemy of earth, air, and fire that, in my experience at least, is absolutely unique.
Although, to the best of knowledge, I’ve done more mask-work than anyone I know personally, I can hardly call myself an expert. I’ve worked with exactly three ritual masks, only two of which have personalities. Dancing with the mask was an experience unlike any I have had yet. Although Phil Hine tells me that half-masks are difficult to keep quiet[1], I actually find it incredibly difficult to speak while wearing it. I don’t know if my dancing was perceptibly different to anyone who is not me, but I definitely felt like a back-seat driver in my own body as the mask and I moved around the fire Friday and Sunday nights. One person complimented me on the mask while we were dancing, and it was all I could do to say “thank you.” I don’t even remember what she looked like, even though we were close enough that I could see her without my glasses.
Dancing with the fire itself, this year, was perhaps the most powerful experience of the three. My plan, going in to the festival, had included a lot of visionary and ritual work aimed at pursuing elemental and planetary initiations. None of it happened. After the concert and its coincidental epiphanies, however, I was ready to try. I had already danced by myself. I was dancing with the mask when the sudden calling came to me to put it back down and dance with the fire. I rode the drums into the fire and rode the heat and light back into myself, bringing Fire with me. I haven’t really talked about it here on the blog—I should, but I haven’t; it’s easier to talk about how I was an idiot back in the day than how I’ve fucked up lately—but I’ve been having some trouble with Fire. My elemental journey to Fire, taken as part of my work through Penczak’s Outer and High Temples, left an open portal to the Elemental Realm of Fire in my Inner Temple that would draw me in against my will if I wasn’t extremely careful. Dancing with the fire, becoming One with Fire, I asked it for it’s Elemental Initiation. The fire told me it was already mine. When I returned to my Inner Temple for Monday’s journeywork, the portal was tamed: mine to enter or exit at need, no longer a sucking maw.
1- Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos, (Tempe, AZ: New Falcon, 1995), 153. Maybe he just hasn’t “learn[ed] to speak” yet.
Beham, (Hans) Sebald (1500-1550): Luna, from The seven Planets with the Signs of the Zodiac, 1539 (Bartsch 120; Pauli, Holl. 122), first state of five, trimmed just outside the platemark, generally in very good condition. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Putting Will to Word, I began the process of resuming my visionary practice last night. Because it was Monday, and because my most recent successful journey was to the Moon in Yesod, I chose that as my destination once again.
As always, I began by visiting my Inner Temple, where I finished up some business between myself, Tsu, and ZG, regarding help they had given me at Heartland. Then I called down night over my Inner Temple, where the sun is almost always shining. To my surprise, constellations have begun to appear in that sky: Scorpio and Gemini, so far. The Moon hung full in the sky above my Temple, and I flew up t meet it.
Once more, I found myself in the nine-pillared Palace of the Moon[1] The two figures were both lucid and moving, and when I asked them to instruct me in the Mysteries of the Moon, they took me between them and filled me with the light of the Moon. When I had been filled to bursting, they took me to the Astral mists, pointing the way to the more familiar Void, and to other “geographical” features I don’t have names for or quite know how to describe. It was not an “initiation”, per se … but, then, I haven’t asked for one yet. When they had finished their imparting what they would for the evening, I thanked them and departed.
Filled to the brim with Lunar power, I descended to the elemental realm of Water. Rather than seeking out the Powers of Water, as I have before, I sat and waited for my presence to draw their attention. Soon enough, it did. Although I could sense them, this time I saw nothing but the vast depths of the ocean bottom. First, I asked the Powers of Water to heal and cleanse me of the damage done by the main ritual at Heartland Pagan Festival this year; despite my best efforts, a lingering miasma has remained. A powerful current of water washed over and through me, scouring and soothing way the lingering damage.
When that was complete, I once more asked for the Initiation of Water. I was refused again, but more gently this time. I asked what I needed to do to prepare myself for that initiation. They told me to ask again while I was in the water, filling my mind with an image of Lake Onessa under the light of the moon. I thanked them, and asked leave to depart.
Returning to the waking world, Aradia—who had been doing journeywork of her own—had instructions for me that had been imparted to her: I was to make Moon water with which I would make chamomile tea to use as a kinder, gentler flying potion than the absinthe. I did so, blessing the water with an incantation of the Orphic Hymn to the Moon.
1 – I’ve been there since last I wrote about it, actually. The story just wasn’t interesting enough to share: the male figure was still comatose; the female figure talked to me briefly.
Sun = 14*Gemini – Moon = 16*Sagitarius – Venus Retrograde
Aradia and I had Pasiphae and Aidan over last night for some Full Moon socializing. The place was a little too messy for a full-on Esbat (the Battle of Mount Laundry has yet to be won), but we did spend quite a bit of time with our tarot decks. Aidan purchased his first deck at Heartland, and Pasiphae managed to get her hands on a copy of the out-of-print Rohrig deck she had been coveting for years. After I gave Aidan a reading, he spent the rest of the evening playing with his new deck, trying to grok the Celtic Cross and the internal logic of the cards. Pasiphae as equally eager to break in her new toy.
I actually haven’t had anyone else do a reading for me in quite some time, so I took advantage of the opportunity. Bought gently used, she’s still getting to know the deck and attuning it to herself. It’s already got quite a personality: it doesn’t want to deal with piddly shit. It told me the same as I shuffled it; it also demanded a specific question rather than a general reading.
So I asked it to talk about the direction my magical practice is taking.
The central thesis here seems to be “Good job; now get to work.” The Moon (which was central to my monthly reading as well) and the Hanged Man tell me that there’s some important work I’ve been dodging around.
“What am I avoiding?” I ask. “I’m hip-deep in the biggest thing I’ve ever avoided in my magical career.” I was speaking of the planetary and ceremonial magical studies I’ve been doing, of course. I put that shit off for fourteen-odd years.
Aradia knows me well, though. She knows the answer. “When was the last time you visited the Underworld?”
“I … uh … don’t know.”
And … that’s unfortunately true. The deeper into the planetary magic I get, the more my visionary work has been left by the wayside. I could blame that on the fact that it’s not really a part of the system I’m studying—even if it is a major component of Penczack’s High Temple, which I’ve been using as an outline for my studies—but the fact of the matter is that I’ve just run into one too many things that have scared me when I’ve visited the Underworld.
Between the unsettling demands some of my newer spirit-allies have made of me, and my seeming inability to explore new territories without incurring new alliances and their attendant obligations… Well, let’s just say that I’ve become very, very good at finding reasons not to do Down. Smart people can be disturbingly good at lying to themselves. And with all the Work I have been doing—planetary talismans, the Stele of Jeu, puzzling my way (oh, so slowly) through Agrippa and my newfound relationship with my Natal Genius, and even the continuation of Deb’s New Year, New You, which I have fallen so far behind on in the last month—it’s been particularly easy.
“But wait!,” you (my dear readers) ask. “Didn’t you work your way through that already?” Yeah, I thought that I had. Apparently I hadn’t. It’s that bastard Dweller at the Threshold again.
So I’m setting myself a new goal: to descend to the underworld every Sunday and/or Monday night, regardless of whether or not there’s Work I think needs to be done. It’s time to face the Moon.
Tarot card from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
[Trigger Warning for discussion of gendered violence in a ritual context.]*
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not categorically opposed to cutting-edge ritual. I think anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows that I’m willing to take magical risks … sometimes just to see what will happen. Frankly, when done responsibly between consenting adults, I’m pretty much down with any sort of boundary-pushing you can think of. But I don’t think many of you are going to argue with me when I say that the main public ritual at a festival is not the place to try being edgy or experimental. That’s how people—unwitting bystanders—get hurt.
Not counting the public rituals, which are a disaster I will get to soon, I did three major rituals at Heartland Pagan Festival this year. The last, I have already described. The first was the creation of a Moon Talisman, taking advantage of the Lunar Election; the second was my most effective performance of the rite of the Stele of Jeu to date.
Friday morning there was a window of opportunity to create a lunar talisman. Due to a variety of factors (idiocy on my own part chief among them) I was not able to print out a copy of Christopher Warnock’s lunar talisman to assemble and charge at the appropriate hour. Instead, having the pdf on my phone, I transcribed the invocation into my sketch book and reproduced a crude sketch of the general figure and the characters above him. When the hour came, I expanded upon my crude sketch from memory, using my nice fountain and brush pens.
The invocation was potent, and I felt the familiar Lunar power flow through me as I incanted. I had to leave my ritual jewelry sitting on the talisman when I was done, because it was tingling too much for me to continue wearing it (as is my wont at ritual occasion such as the festival.
I think it turned out nicely. One of these next days, I’m going to produce a nicer version, as well as Lunar images from the other sources Warnock quotes above.
Saturday night, after the main-ritual-gone-awry, Alopex and I went back to Camp WTF to decompress. The sun was setting, Alopex went for a walk, and I’d been wanting to perform the Stele of Jeu since I arrived, but hadn’t quite found the right moment. That seemed to be the right moment: Memorial Grove, Camp Gaea’s small graveyard was near the encampment, there was a trivium crossroad on the way, and the sun was setting. I made the walk and found a stone slab of an altar in the middle of the grove. Beside it was a fist-sized rock, ideally shaped for me to paint the Beneficial Sign upon it.
I opened with my Pentagram Rite, and made my offerings of pomegranate mead. The wind, which had stilled for a while, rose as I incanted and just kept rising. I really don’t know how to describe the effect of the ritual except to say that I was high, and that I stayed high for hours. I was going to leave the stone, except that it insisted I take it with me.
The next night, while Aradia and Aurora combed my aura and I tried to let go of all the accumulated pain and bullshit I hadn’t quite managed to deal with and/or banish over the semester, shortly before I performed my overzealous blessing, I was struck by my first real insight into the Stele.
Although one source gave the rite explicitly as an exorcism, the other people I’ve talked to about it insist that there’s more to it. And there is. The first two thirds seem to be an exorcism or banishing of sorts—“Mighty Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him”—but the final portion suddenly identifies the magician with the Headless One he has been calling upon:
“I am the headless daimon with my sight in my feet; [I am] the mighty one [who possesses] the immortal fire; I am the truth who hates the fact that unjust deeds arc done in the world; I am the one who makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll;/ I am the one whose sweat is the heavy rain which falls upon the earth that it might be inseminated; I am the one whose mouth bums completely; I am the one who begets and destroys; / I am the Favor of the Aion; my name is a heart encircled by a serpent; come forth and follow.”
Suddenly, after months of practice, this seems to be a ritual which first hollows out the magician—blasting him free of “negative” influences and forcing his aura into the shape of a vessel—in order to make room for the Headless One to fill him. In a very loose sense, the Stele of Jeu may be the badass great-great-great-grandparent of Drawing Down the Moon. It is an exorcism, and simultaneously a literal invocation. Or seems to be, anyway, at this stage in my practice. Would anyone who has experimented with this more care to comment?
“Bacchus” by Caravaggio. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Flannigan’s Right Hook was playing their cover of Paint it Black as Aradia and I stumbled back from one of the furthest-flung encampments at Gaea, still high from our first shamanic journey. That was Friday night of HPF 2009, our first year together; they played again the following year on the Sunday night main-stage, to which they returned this year. I missed the first part of this show, too, eventually abandoning half of my encampment to their face-painting shenanigans.
After the quiet of rest of the festival, walking up to the stage was like running face-first into a cacophonic wall of neon light and raucous sound. A beautiful, much-needed wall, the impact with which brought me back to 2k9 and ‘10, returning to those moments in cyclical time. The guitars, the cello, the electric fiddle … it was catharsis, pure and powerful.
I needed it desperately. The festival, to that point, had had its ups and downs. The main ritual, the day before, had been an utter disaster from which we were all—despite the passage of twenty-four hours, multiple cleansing rituals, and the completion of the public closing ritual just hours before—still recovering. Even the land was stained.
So I stood there, vibrating with the music, and trying to let go. To let go of my frustration with the Sacred Experience Committee. To let go of my frustration with my camp-mates, most of whom had not yet made it to the pavilion[1]. To let go of my desire for the festival—which I have been attending since I was eighteen years old, to which I have introduced probably a dozen people at this point, and to which I had brought three “virgins” this very year—to be perfect, and just enjoy it as it was in the then and the now. Perfection doesn’t exist in this world. I’m skeptical that it exists anywhere. …. So why, then, do I get so upset when things turn out to be less than perfect?
The music was amazing, the light show was a blast, and I was drinking thoroughly-blessed wine. And yet, I was still struggling to find the fun. My ambivalence must have been clear. When Aradia asked me if I was alright, I didn’t lie.
Aradia and Aurora had been to one of the workshops I’d missed on account of my work exchange obligations. The workshop was on aura cleansing and chakra balancing. Together, as I stood there listening to the music, they worked over my energetic bodies until I was almost in tears. Finally, something inside me broke loose, the tears came, my aura opened up, and I was able to let go and find the fun. Power filled me, and a few sudden insights.
The band was clearly having the time of their lives, too. Somehow, bottles of mead kept finding their way on stage. At one point, the band stopped to toast the audience. I raised my glass and toasted them back: “The blessings of Dionysus upon you all.”
My wine, as I said, was well-blessed. Recognizing that I was not the only one in my encampment stained by the miasma of the previous night’s ritual, I took the box of wine Aurora had offered for the purposes, and called upon Dionysus to bless it so that all who drank of it would be purged of the stain and incited to sacred revelry. I wish I’d thought to wright down the specifics, but I kinda got lost in the moment. I completed the blessing by pouring a libation in a circle around the box; suddenly, it was “hot” to the touch.
“Holy shit,” said Aradia. “What did you just do?”
When I toasted the band, my blessing spread to their bottles. But one of the things about working with gods and spirits, I guess, is that once you start talking to them, they’re listening more than you realize. And I had said “upon you all.” Little lights started going off in the audience as the blessing spread to those bottles. And then little bells started ringing in my head as other bottles throughout camp were lighted with the same blessing, too.
It was about that time that the rest of our encampment showed up, beaming and with faces painted. The wine flowed liberally and, when the concert was over, we found a secluded place to load a bowl while they lit the bonfire.
The tenor of the evening was changed, radically, and for the better.
1 – I love you guys, but you can’t spend five days camped with anyone and not end up a bit frustrated at some point.
