It occurred to me this evening that the year I set aside to study the Western Ceremonial Tradition will come to an end in fewer than thirty days. I wrote the first post on my experiments a year ago yesterday.
Holy fuck.
It’s been a wild ride. What started as a vague (almost childish) intention to study “ceremonial magic” has wandered across Chaos Magick, the grimoire traditions, traditional astrology, the qabalah, the Golden Dawn, and quite a few things I don’t even know the proper names of. I’ve experimented with the Qabalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. I’ve conjured my Natal Genius, and am planning to conjure my Natal Demon, as well. Although I have struggled with my maintaining my visionary practice, I’ve gone on visionary quests to the Temples of Malkuth and Yesod, striven and failed to reach Hod, and visited the Elemental Realms of Earth, Fire, and Water. I have made Planetary talismans of Jupiter, Venus, the Moon, and Mercury. I have discovered the Greek Magical Papyri and incorporated the Stele of Jeu into my Lunar devotions at both the Dark and Full moons. I have discovered the magical value of the Orphic Hymns. I As my studies progressed, they focused increasingly on Hermeticism and astrological magic, with a bit of grimoire magic on the side.
Shit has been intense. The rituals have been elaborate, effective, and exhausting. Although I’ve been fighting it, I’ve been falling into the trap of armchair magicianhood because, as much as I’ve enjoyed a lot of it, there are parts of my nature that I have to fight to do this sort of Work. And because I’ve been having so much fun getting caught up in the theory that I’ve been loosing track of the practice. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not done with the Western Ceremonial Tradition by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that, when my year is up, I’m going to switch streams.
This coming year is going to be dedicated to Chaos Magick. Stephen Mace and AO Spare. Phil Hine and Peter Carrol. Gordon White and Jason Miller. And probably lots of authors and bloggers that I haven’t even heard of yet. Hopefully some of them ladies.
Lots of things have been pointing me toward Chaos Magick over the last year, anyway. I mean: y’all have noticed that Gordon White is just too damn cool to ignore, right? There’s been this whole post-Chaos thing that Jason Miller’s been talking about, though I think Gordon and Skyllaros have the right of that in a lot of ways. And, even if Chaos Magic really isn’t what he seems to be doing anymore, I’ve picked up a serious torch for Phil Hine. So … I’ll come back to Agrippa, the Picatrix, and the Corpus Hermeticum sooner rather than later. Hell, I’m probably going to keep working on planetary talismans and my illustrations of the Picatrix images of the planets even as I change trajectories, because they’re pretty and they make me happy.
Before getting to anything else: it has come to my attention that the gentleman I have referred to as House Arcanum is not, in fact, the sole individual to whom that title belongs. My apologies to my readers, and to the rest of that House: the misunderstanding is entirely my fault. I will henceforth refer to that gentleman as Bousiris, and edit previous posts to reflect that reality in the coming days. Again: my apologies to all involved for that misrepresentation.
From beginning to end, the process of dealing with the ritual and the Sacred Experience Committee was terrifying, emotional and exhausting. Still, I’m glad that I went through with it. If nothing else, the festival which has been so central to my social and spiritual life over the last fourteen years remains a safe (if now slightly stained) place. Several in my encampment would not even consider returning had I not secured an apology—though there are still no guarantees that they will choose to attend the festival again. Above and beyond that, I have been encouraged to follow through with my intention to join the Heartland Spiritual Alliance and get involved with the Sacred Experience Committee, once I have the money to do so. The apology itself … well, having spoken with Bousiris personally, please allow me to say that I believe it to be more sincere that it may appear[1].
Thank you, Bousiris. Thank you, Mr. Crane, Alexandros, and Aradia for working with us toward closure and progress on this issue. I look forward to working with you all in the future.
The festival, the email exchanges, the meeting, and the composition of the apology all took place under the influence of Venus retrograde through Gemini. I cannot believe that this fact did not greatly shape both the ritual itself and the fallout afterwards. One wonders if the astrological “weather” of the moment at which the ritual was destined to be performed could shape to process of writing that ritual over the course of the preceding year.
The old hurts which were dredged up by the ritual seem well within the character of the Venus retrograde. The old ways of responding to hurt—particularly on the part of Bousiris , who would later admit that such behaviors were not only counterproductive but something he wished to excise[2], and on my own part[3]—are even more perfectly aligned with the way Austin Coppock characterized the retrograde through Gemini. None of this excuses anything, of course, but it does shed light in some interesting places.
With all that said, there remain a few points which I was either unable to bring up in the meeting, and/or which wish to address to the public at large. I do this not to try to “score a second victory” but because I think these issues are important to the community as a whole.
Apparently, as someone clever once said, “it’s that time of year again.” People are arguing about the nature and merits of the Holy Guardian Angel. Beyond what I’ve learned by following the conversation and from Frater Acher’s study, however, it’s a subject I know next to nothing about. Which makes it fascinating to me.
The whole thing, as I said, is fascinating to me. Although I’ve done some very interesting Solar
19 The Sun (Photo credit: n0cturbulous)
work, none of it yet qualifies as an initiation[1]. I have, using rites derived (vaguely) from Agrippa, recently contacted my Natal Genius. Over the last several years, I have acquired a small cadre of spirit-helpers by other means, as well. The first is clearly not an HGA, and one of the the others laughed in my face when I asked her if she was. I’m familiar with existence of the Abramelin rite, of course. but I honestly know just enough about the details to I know that I’m never going to do it. Not my bag, as they say. I have read the Bornless Ritual. I’ve never performed it, or the Samekh variant, but I’ve been doing the ritual from which both are derived regularly for some months now. The association between Bornless and Abramelin, however, is purely the invention of Crowley[2]. Whatever its effect has been, though, it has not been the vaulted Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. It’s distinctly possible that, even if I have a Holy Guardian Angel in the original sense[3], I may never achieve “Knowledge and Conversation”.
Honestly, I’m not sure that I want or need K&CHGA. As RO points out, the explosive immolation which many have reported
undergoing with the Abramelin, Bornless, Samekh, and other such rites, is not universal:
For others, it’s not that bad at all. A couple students, a few fellow wise old magicians didn’t go through a ton of shit, just some minor shit, because they got the point quicker than I did. I bet Jow, with his appreciation of the important things in life, his honest gratitude, his humility, his kindness… I bet for people like him, it’s a walk down the beach, and the heat of the Sun is a pleasure, not a pain at all.
At the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing: I have been putting myself through a transformative slow-cooker for as long as I can remember. I think I was eleven or twelve years old when I first realized that the world was fucked, that all the rules I’d been taught served to put the needs of bullies before my own, and that authority could not be trusted. When I discovered magic at the age of thirteen, I was obsessed with gaining power, but when I started practicing magic for real between sixteen and eighteen, it didn’t take long for my magical practice to become a way of managing my moods and getting my shit sorted out. I came out publically as a Pagan about that same time, and figured out I was bisexual (with the accompanying coming out process) about the same time I moved out of my parents’ house at twenty. Between the move to St. Louis (what was explicitly to make me a better writer by taking me away from my home base), my experiments in visionary and shamanic work, the shift of my career path from I have been jamming the Shiny Red Reset Button on my life pretty constantly since 2006. Or, as RO put it:
[P]eople go through worse shit without ever conjuring their HGA. You know anyone over thirty who hasn’t had some shit to deal with, something traumatic, something huge that you think about and wonder if you’d be able to handle it? I’ve got magician friends with more experience and empowerment than me who I respect and love who are facing or have faced more terrible things than I can imagine being able to deal with. Shit that doesn’t just go away in a year or two.
Shit. Happens. Regardless.
And and then there’s the whole thing with the spirits who have sought me out since beginning of this process. So really, while I would welcome another supernal assistant, between the life and magic I’ve already got more on my plate than I can handle. Like Jow, I would rather continue to simmer off the excess and the unnecessary, rather than risk an unplanned series of detonations in a life which is already on the edge, with too few resources to be spread between the various people who love and depend on me.
There’s a part of me that wishes that I had even known about this kind of magic back in the day: high school and the early years of my apprenticeship would have been much more interesting. I might not have taken quite so long to pull my head out of my ass. Or, you know, I might be in a padded room wearing a straight jacket.
Reset (Photo credit: kokeshi)
As things stand, though, I’ll have to content myself with listening to the stories that others tell about their explosive pursuits of the HGA and other Solar initiations. With reading the theory performing my own, smaller, experiments. And maybe in another twenty years, when I’m more magician than satyr, when my tenure is secure and my ambitions achieved, I’ll say “fuck it”, and go looking for the “Nuke” setting on my Shiny Red Reset Button.
1 – You see what I did there?
2 – See Hymanaeus Beta in his foreword and footnotes to the Illustrated Second Edition of The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon theKing. Weiser: York Beach Main (1995). See also: The Bornless Ritual by Alex Sumner.
3 – Something I am not convinced of, as I reject the sort of top-down cosmology which is necessary in order to assume that everyone has the same arrangement of supernatural allies.
On the Spiritus Mundi mailing list, Christopher Warnock often complains of the way in which Mercury retrograde seems to have been chosen as a New Age scapegoat: along with Luna Void-of-Course, it seems to have absorbed all the “negativity” and malific influence that was (traditionally) ascribed to numerous planetary aspects and interactions. Although I have only a little more interaction with the New Age community than I have with traditional astrologers, I can definitely see this dynamic at work. Rufus Opus has talked about the magical “storms” associated with bad astrological “weather” like Mercury retrograde in the context of his Hermetic practice.
For myself, I have an interesting relationship with Mercury in general and the retrograde period in particular. You see, while I’ve seen everyone else scrambling around me trying to deal with unanticipated communication, computer, and travel related disasters, I’ve never personally experienced any difference. I’ve never noticed periods of my magic backfiring, only to later discover that Mercury was running backwards. I kind of thought it might just be that New Age hooey. Specifically, I thought that people were just more self-conscious about the sorts of disasters they were already living with every day—you know, just like I was.
Then I discovered that I was born under Mercury retrograde.
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.
