witchcraft – Page 31 – Journey Through The Obsidian Dream

Yesod Altar

Satyr Magos17/10/2011

Behold: my altar to the Qabalistic Moon. At the corners of the tile are the Nines of the tarot suits in Cowley’s Thoth and the Pamela Coleman-Smith Centeniall. Atop them are my newly made Air Knife – a loose blade that has been sleeping in my altar for some years joined to a split branch found near my home – a lab-grown quartz wand I had not found use for (besides showing off and zapping guests with) during the decade it has lived on my altar, an art-glass cup serving as chalice, and my newly-recharged peyton. In the middle are nine candles (they’re tea lights, on account of I’m too cheap to shell out for nine nice candles on a project like this), a rock painted with they glyph of the moon atop the Seal of the Moon, and my ever-handy obsidian orb. Around the outer edges are XXI the World/Universe, leading back to Malkuth; XIX the Sun, leading to Hod; XIV Adjustment/Temperence, leading to Tiphereth; and XVII the Star, leading to Nezach.

With the construction of this Altar I begin my study of Yesod. My tasks for the month include:

The production of Abramelin Oil (I intend to follow the example of Aaron Leitch, rather than Penczak’s recipe)
The Middle Pillar Exercise
The Circulation of the Body of Light
Storytelling as an act of magic
Various Pathworkings and visionary journeys

Two of these, I realize, may well have helped with the issues I was having with the LBRP, had I been willing to tolerate another ten days of that bullshit.

Although the program expects about a month spent on each sephira, I anticipate spending no less than six weeks on Yesod. This is in part because I need to solidify my relationship with the Moon in many regards. One of the tasks Penczak associates with Yesod is sacred story-telling, and I intend to dedicate this year’s National Novel Writing Month effort as an ordeal in the name of the Muses. The additional time is also necessary for the production of the Abramelin oil, whose ingredients are much harder to come by here in Sunrise than I they would have been in KCMO.

I will, of course, be sharing the results of all these experiments with you: my dearest readers.

In witchcraft

October Full Moon: Wand-Maker’s Moon 2/3

Satyr Magos16/10/2011

I began my second night of full-moon rites with an earth-to-sky variant of Q-Cross. I performed an “LBRP” using a burning sage wand instead of the knife, banishing pentagrams of spirit instead of earth, and invoking Iris, Hephaistos, Rhea, and Dionysos instead of the archangels. I completed the rite with by invoking Gaea, Ouranos, Hephaistos, and Dionysos in the second Q-Cross. Let me just say: holy shit that was awesome. I cast my elemental circle, lit the candles on my Malkuth altar, and invoked Earth manifesting as Malkhuth.

I drank my absinthe-and-dream-herb flying potion, donned my mask, and descended to elemental realm of earth by sinking into the center of the stone circle in my Inner Temple (why can’t I ever go the same way twice?). I met the guide I call Troll Lady, who was amused when I greeted and addressed her formally. I asked her to take me to the Lords and Rulers of the Elemental realm to confirm the receipt of my Stone of Sovereignty (in retrospect I probably should have asked for something more open-ended).

She led me down and down and down to a vast dark cavern, along the outside of a bronze gate and wall and into a cavern where I met with shadowy figures who refused to confirm my stone and told me that the sphere was something else entirely.

When they were done with me, I asked Troll Lady to take me to where I should have asked to go in the first place; she told me it was too late for that. I asked her to take me to where I needed to go now, and she took me to the Garden, from where she led me back to the Inner Temple via a mountaintop which deposited me on the plains facing the gate to my Inner Temple.

I returned to my body, did my monthly Tarot reading, thanked all spirits and powers who have helped me, and closed the circle.

With that journey, my month of Malkuth was complete.

In witchcraft

October Full Moon: Wand-Maker’s Moon 1/3

Satyr Magos15/10/2011

At the beginning of the week I performed three days of Lunar rites, which largely consisted of spirit-journeys following up on my issues with the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram and with my transition from the study of Malkuth to the study of Yesod. I began by dedicating the offering bowls which I made for my idols of Dionysos and Rhea, and for my spirit-helper Tsu; I also made bowls for my Kouros and Cycladic figures, but they … didn’t turn out. I finished by building my Yesod altar.

Monday night, the first night of the full moon, I performed my rites in the Hour of the Moon. I opened with my inverted Q-Cross and abstained from any variation of the LBRP, as my mission was to return to the underworld for the instruction I had been promised. I cast my circle, opened a vortex, and descended to the Garden via a World Tree which looked like an apple tree.

I met the leopard and he guided me to the temple again, this time with two kraters of wine. The path was already open, giving me glimpses of hundreds of other Gardens as I passed. I took my female shape at the temple, thanked the leopard, and went up several steps. Rhea waited for me on her throne again, and there was something hiding behind it which left me with a vague impression of yellow. We performed the same drinking ritual as before: I handed her the krater to drink from, se returned it to me to drink, and we passed it back and forth until it was empty.

She handed me a sphere of pale stone and asked me to perform the LBRP as I had been instructed. I did so, and I could feel my root chakra rotting even in that sacred space. I knelt at her feet and she healed me again.

I received no … direct instruction. Not in the way I had imagined, anyway. Instead she filled me to the brim with purple light – subconscious clues, I believe, which will surface as I need them.

When asked if I was ready to pursue the mysteries of the moon in Yesod, she said yes and bid me farewell. I returned to my body almost directly.

In witchcraft

Cross and Pentagram–Rites of the Obsidian Dream

Satyr Magos14/10/2011

Since discovering that satyrs and archangels don’t mix, I’ve been experimenting with variations on the Qabalistic Cross and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

The first variant I tried was the simplest: I stripped the god-names and the archangels from the rites. Instead of intoning the various Names, I tuned to analogous forces from within my own paradigm. The Source and Manifestation (Atah, Malkuth) of the Q-Cross are not unfamiliar to me, though they’re archetypal energies I had never worked with before this exercise. Power and Glory (Vi Geburah, Vi Gedulah) … well, so far they’ve always felt more like Wrath and Wonder, and again, not so unfamiliar. Replacing the archangels was even easier: I simply tuned to the elemental powers I’ve been working with for years. Had I not performed the proper LBRP for the previous three weeks, I would have thought this rite an effective one.

The next variation was more significant: I continued with the Cross, but inverted it altogether: starting with Earth – or, more accurately, the Primal Life of which Earth is a manifestation – below and drawing that power up through my chakras to connect with the Source above. Power/Wrath and Glory/Wonder I left the same. This was incredibly effective, though I haven’t done it long enough to determine if it has any strange side effects. When I next attempted the Pentagram Ritual, I tried replacing the banishing pentagram of earth first with the banishing pentagram of spirit, then with the invoking pentagram of earth. Both were interesting, and deserve further study.

In the three days between seeking healing for the damage done to me by the LBRP and the beginning of my Lunar rites, I gave up the pentagram portion of the rite altogether until receiving the instruction I was promised. The details of that instruction were … vague, but I’ll get into that later. The second night of the moon, when I cleansed my house and dedicated a number of new tools, I performed a variant where I invoked, rather than the archangels, the gods Iris (in the east for air), Hephaistos (in the south for fire), Dionysos (in the west for water) and Rhea (in the north for earth). Let me tell you, I felt the ground move when I did that.

This morning, as I resumed my daily practice in preparation for my study of Yesod, I invoked a number of more primal gods: Earth and Sky, Sun and Moon for the Cross; Mnemnosyne for air, Prometheus for fire, Rhea again for Earth, and Okeanos for water. That, a little to my surprise, was less potent. Possibly due to my exhausted state after a week of chaos, or due to my lack of practice for the last six days, or even possibly due to my lack of relationship with most of those gods.

In hedonism, witchcraft

Things You Never Thought Could Go Wrong With Magic

Satyr Magos08/10/2011

We must never forget that there is more to magic than the mere performance of rites. One does not simply chant words of power and bend the world to one’s will. One is also bent, sometimes against our natural grain.

This post explores an intersection of sex and magic. There are no “gory details”, but if the thought makes you uncomfortable you might not want to read it. You have been warned. With that said, though, I hope that even if some of the people who know me out in the world choose not to read this one, it might receive particular scrutiny from any of my readers who have more experience in these areas than I.

Because this shit was so totally not in the manual.

I have now performed the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram nearly every morning for three weeks. Magically speaking, this was a fantastic exercise: the energetic equivalent of a daily trip to the gym. The ritual got me out the door on several mornings when I thought I might not manage to leave the house.

Not all, however, was as it should be. The first sign that something was awry came at the Dark Moon, when a nymph with whom I have been keeping company invited me to share her sheets … and I failed to adequately reciprocate that honor. It’s embarrassing, but also a sad fact of male biology: sometimes the plumbing just doesn’t work, especially when one is nervous, as one might be with a new, younger lover.

Then, a week later, I failed again. I began to wonder what was different – my diet has changed, but not so much or so badly as to cause that sort of problem; I haven’t been that sleep deprived; I’m in as good a shape now, physically, as I’ve been in years; and it sure wasn’t lack of interest. Meditating on the subject, I could only find one significant difference: the magic I’m practicing.

Meditating further on the subject – perhaps the first serious self-diagnosis I’ve done since escalating from the Q-Cross to the LBRP – I discovered that in the formation of a Malkuth-shaped energy nexus at my feet, my “root” chakra (the one between my genitals and the base of my spine) and my One Point (the one right above that) had been hollowed out.

Was I doing the LBRP wrong? I don’t think so. Was I damaged by banishing elemental earth and invoking sexless archangels every morning? I think that might be it. Actually, given what came next, I know it was.

Three days ago, I replaced the archangelic invocations with invocations of the elements. I did traditional chakra meditations. I could feel it revitalizing me, but it wasn’t enough. Last night, I begged Dionysos for help with the immediate problem and sought answers in the underworld.

I found myself in a primordial garden, Dionysos’ white leopard and my side. The cat led me into the garden, warned me against the very very tempting apples, and gave me a krater of wine to carry as a gift. I struggled to keep up as the leopard led me through a series of veils which reminded me of nothing so much as the oppressive geometry which pinned me to the ground on my second underworld journey. It was a battle to maintain my shape – I was a man at the beginning, then the woman-shape I take sometimes in the underworld, then both, then the scarlet dragon I see sometimes in my visions of “past lives”, then a skeleton, then a sphere of white light, before finally managing to maintain my own form.

I caught up to the leopard at the steps of a great open-air temple – something drawing influence from Hellenic architecture, and the pagoda, and the most modern syncretism. I ascended the stairs and found a regal, queenly figure whom I know well. Usually she is nude and gargantuan, reclining in a cave within the bowels of the earth. Here she was only a little taller than myself, clothed in a rich and conservative chiton and a crown which resembled nothing so much as a castle.

“Only mortals are naked here,” she told me when I asked.

I gave her the goblet I had been given, and she drank of it before instructing me to do the same. We passed it back and forth, and when it was empty I knelt and her feet and laid my head on her knee. She told me that the Banishing Ritual was, indeed, to blame for my … problem: an incompatibility between the rite and my own Work. She repaired most of the damage that had been done to me, and told me that when I returned to this place on the first night of the Full Moon, she – or her representative – would instruct me in the proper way for me to perform the rite.

I returned to my flesh, cast back by that same geometric force. One hesitates to say more, for fear of being crude; suffice to say that my satyr’s honor has been restored.

Could anyone have warned me that this might happen? Possibly. Does anyone out there have an explanation for this shit? Sweet gods of fragrant heaven, I hope so. Chiefly, though, I share this story in hope that someone out there might be saved from this problem.

Also, I’m really glad that my gods love me enough to help with this sort of problem.

In witchcraft

Tradition, Technique, Appropriation, and Exploration Part 2/2

Satyr Magos07/10/2011

The last post was already in the works when when Gordon, Jason, Jow, and RO began their discussion of the simplicity, complexity, and relative eclecticism of their practices. I seriously sympathize. If you’ve read my previous post, I imagine you can see why: eclectic Wicca, years of unverifiable personal gnosis (both my own and that of those I’ve worked with), Hellenic gods, neo-shamanic spirit-journeys, Chaos- and Hermetic-inspired sigils, masks and hammers and things no one else has ever thought to do with a circle.

As I said before: I’ve spent years searching for a tradition. I’ve played with Cunningham and Conway, dabbled with Crowley, Carrol and Kraig, mocked Lady Sheba and Silver Ravenwolf alike. I am a student of Tarot and astrology. I’ve experimented with candle magic and sorcery and astral projection, with auric healing and magically enhanced massage. I’ve tuned myself to the elements and grounded into the astral plane – invoked the cosmic forces of the quarters and cast spells with nothing but the power of my own aura. I have gone on spirit journeys and hung out with gods and spirits. No one tradition I’ve found covers half these things, let alone all of them. So, while the search continues, I’ve been working on my own: a systematic breakdown of the things I’ve done (as best as I can with my substandard journals), and maps of the things I want to do in the future. I doubt anyone will ever want to join, but it will be perfect for me. And who knows, maybe I’ll find the perfect apprentice some day.

And yet … I still wax poetic, sometimes, about Traditions and Orders. I share that strange jealousy for those who can name their path and have it recognized. Envy for those who’ve found a teacher or a system that they can adopt in toto – even if they still need to look outside that system for new techniques to fill its inadequacies, addendums and appendices to a finite and discrete system.

I’m white, (apparently) cisgendered, and from a (lower) middle class family. The list of spiritual traditions that I have any “legitimate” claim to are relatively few. Unfortunately, none of them are to my taste. Which leaves me either blazing trails in a dark and moonless wilderness or seeking refuge in other spiritual lands … and trying to avoid the ones where the locals would just as soon I curled up and died. Or, as always, all of the above.

Does it sound a little like I’d like someone to do the hard work for me? Yeah, it’s a little bit like that: I envy the people who can just accept a prefab structure. For whom any of the existing systems have meaning. Satyrs are not, by nature, hard workers: we like to drink and dance and fuck (nymphs, eachother, mortals, deities … I deal exclusively with enthusiastically consenting humanoids of legal age, myself, but other satyrs aren’t so picky). So, yeah, I wish I could take a lazy rout.

But I can’t.

So I’m ecclectic. I look to the past and to the modern Western Hermetic and Witchcraft traditions for inspiration. I learn techniques from anyone who is wiling to share – god or mortal – and try to make sure all my sources are ethically sound. Still … inevitably … I’m a transgressor of spiritual boundaries even as I am of social ones. I’m bisexual. Although I’m male-bodied and I present (mostly) as masculine, I actually identify as “fuck you and your stupid gender dichotomy”. I am a hedonist and an intellectual in a society that simultaneously condemns both pursuits and sees them as inherently incompatible. I am a historian in a religion that is (understandably) skeptical of mainstream historiography (a post of its own for another day), and which in its attempts to acquire popular and legal credibility is increasingly absorbing the overculture’s anti-intellectualism.

I am a queer, hedonist, shamanic witch. The party’s at my place, and we can talk Plato in the morning … maybe hung over, maybe still smashed.

In witchcraft

Tradition, Technique, Appropriation, and Exploration Part 1/2

Satyr Magos06/10/2011

I am nothing if not eclectic. My sacred calendar follows the Eight Sabbats of Wicca, even though those dates have nothing to do with the actual seasons in which I live. My ritual construction is firmly rooted in the pseudo-Gardnerian Outer Court Witchcraft of the sixties and seventies – Uncle Bucky’s Big Blue Book, Ed Fitch’s Book of Shadows – and certain modern plays on those themes. I have studied the “core” shamanism of Michael Harner and Gail Wood (to name two), and learned tech at festival workshops and from friends whose linages are dubious at best. I am now studying the Western Hermetic tradition, and though I will not adopt it in whole, I will certainly take what’s useful to me. I’m increasingly fascinated by Chaos Magic (only ten years late to that trend, right?), but can’t quite swallow the entire open-source, paradigm-hat-trading irreverence to tradition it seems to require. Dionysos and Rhea were present at my initiation, and I have spoken to Hephaistos and Apollon and to gods who still haven’t given me their names.

For fifteen years, now, I have searched for a tradition – one that will have me, or even one that I want to have me. Initiatory covens are few and far between here in the Midwest, and I haven’t ever gotten invited to their Outer Court parties (though, looking back, I might have totally missed the subtext of an invitation once or twice). I’m a white USian, descended from the English on one side and the Germans (and Swedes) on the other.

But the gods who are mine by right of blood have never expressed any interest in me (being ogled by Freya’s handmaidens after invoking them at a wedding so totally doesn’t count) … nor I them, to be fair. When I must defend my devotion to Hellenic gods – a rare event, but it happens – I cite the fact that my civilization is descended from theirs, even if my family is not.

In general, I give little credence to those to whom I might need to defend my eclectic neo-Wiccan practice. I’ve never had access to sealed rites, so I can’t possibly have stolen them, and I think the effectiveness of my rituals says all that needs to be said about their validity. Are some eclectics idiots? Yes. Do I struggle with the dissonance between Wiccan praxis and my queer feminist spirituality? Frequently: the whole Goddess-God thing fucks with me a lot. Do I have trouble fitting sacrifice to and propitiation of my patron and matron dieties into the Wiccan frame? Absolutely.

The biggest problems start when we get into my shamanic work, which is where Gordon’s post on ethical syncretism comes in. Simply put, there’s a lot of problems with my pasty white ass practicing anything that I could call “shamanism”. There are the problems with the word itself: cribbed and Anglicized from a group of Siberian nomads. There’s the whole scholarly debate on whether or not it’s even a thing, on whether or not the category works in the real world or if it’s just a way for anthropologists to lump together things that aren’t actually the same (which is a debate to lengthy and complicated for me to point you to any one or two sources). And then there’s the part where most of the people who practice things we call shamanism don’t like us (that is, ignorant white people) stealing their rituals.

I strive to keep to what’s called “core shamanism” – the magical and psychosomatic techniques that transcend culture – but even that is iffy. Even if shamanism is/was the universal root of all religious experience and expression, my culture left it behind so long ago that you can’t see anything but the roughest outline of its memory on the oldest rites we have. I strive to re-contextualize it all, to provide the cultural and spiritual meaning in which all effective magic is rooted. I disdain ayahuasca, datura, and peyote as entheogens in favor of flying “potions” such as absinthe and marijuana – drugs that, to the best of my knowledge, no subaltern group has staked out as their own, exclusive, spiritual tool. I claim no titles, use no names. The fact is that a certain rhythm of drum-beet can drive the human brain into places it is much, much harder to reach otherwise.

There are those who would argue that it is wrong of me to call upon the gods of Hellas using any rites but their own. That my refusal to participate in reconstructionism – study it though I may, as a Classicist and an historian – ought bar me from calling upon the Olympians. In my particular case, there are fewer who would argue that lack of blood-ties forbids me – Hellenistikos are less prone to that than, say, Asatruar – but it is still an issue. Many of the most legitimate heirs are tied to the Greek Orthodox Church and disdain attempts to resurrect their old gods – you know I’m not going to listen to them.

Still, however carefully distanced I keep myself from the worst forms of cultural appropriation, I don’t know that I can actually divorce myself from the that legacy. And yet … I cannot help but persist. It is through this madly syncretic set of rituals and techniques that I have had my most profound spiritual experiences. It was in a circle cast by Wiccan rite, using Harner’s shamanic techniques, that I entered the spirit realms in preparation for my initiation, and descended until I was greeted by Briareos*, Dionysos and Rhea.

The gods are the final arbiters of whether or not our rites are acceptable. So why can’t I stop worrying so much about this?

*I don’t actually know that it was Briareos. Possibly one of his brothers. Regardless: he did me a favor once, and I needed to pay him before I could descend further.

In witchcraft

Early Thoughts on the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

Satyr Magos03/10/2011

It has been harder for me to maintain a daily practice of the LBRP than it was with the Q-Cross. Nor had the rituals been as consistently powerful. I don’t know if this is because I’ve been sick, or because of the insomnia I’ve been suffering, or because of the alien (to me) imagery, or simply a matter of insufficient practice. It is certainly not just the ten minutes it takes to do it properly, except for the once or twice when that brief time has been the difference between breakfast before class and none. Perhaps it is just that I know I am committing myself to perform this rite every day for at least the next year, and I am struggling with that level of sacrifice.

Since the Dark Moon, I have been less successful at visualizing the archangels – a failure I intend to remedy by drawing them – but the rest of the rites have been far more potent. I am successfully conjuring the pentagrams well outside my Temple, almost to the limits of my House-wards. The difference in power and effect is phenomenal. What is responsible for this change? Simply a matter of having practiced more? The change from the waning to the waxing moon? (I am, after all, more witch than magician.) Could it be a benefit of the rites I performed at the Dark Moon – specifically the bolstering of my house-wards? A clearing of psychic congestion allowing me to perform more effective rites? A benefit of the deepening intimate connections I’m making here in Sunrise?

Regardless of the reason, in the last half-week my performance of the ritual has become more powerful, more clear, and more easy. And this while performing the rite on an average of only three or four days out of five. I look forward to seeing how it continues to progress.

In witchcraft

Malkuth Altar

Satyr Magos02/10/2011

I have constructed a separate altar as part of my ceremonial studies. This is actually part of the program, and a part that – having not seen it in Kraig or any of the other (admittedly few) systems I’ve looked at – strikes me as a particularly witchy approach to the subject. Penczak’s High Temple is based on studying each of the Sephira in turn, and performing a number of rituals and practices associated (in his mind, at least) with that Sephira.

The first month I dedicated wholly to the Qabalistic Cross and to preparing for the next stage. This second month is Malkuth. I have learned (and performed far more days than not, and those I missed owing mostly to being very ill) the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. I will be blessing holy water. I will be performing a number of spirit-journeys aimed at acknowledging and mastering my Kingdom. And, though not actually in the Program – Pencazk seems to think that Knowledge and Coversation of the Holy Guardian Angel will just sort of happen on its own, and he may well be right – in keeping with Jason Miller’s suggestion, once he finally weighed in on that big HGA discussion last month, I think I will attempt more serious rites than Penczak ever provides toward the end of that K&C, starting some time this month; maybe Crowley’s Samaekh, maybe something else … it’s research time.

In the meantime, here is my Malkuth altar, which I have been arranging to my satisfaction since I began my Malkuth study just after the full moon.

In witchcraft

House Wards of the Sunrise Temple

Satyr Magos01/10/2011

I think that the value of art as a form of magic, and as a way of performing magic, is often underestimated if not outright overlooked. The creative, free-form sigils posited by chaos magicians such as Peter Carol (Psychonaut, pp.20-22) – and so many others that I could not begin to name them here – are a step in the right direction, but they still rely on an assumed distinction between the process of designing the sigil and the process of charging and firing the sigil. This distinction, I think, cuts off the final product from a huge amount of energy and intention that the witch or magician is already putting into the project as a whole.

Part of this is a matter of intention: if one formulates the design of a sigil as a separate process from the charging of that sigil, the energy flow is truncated. The energy of intention that goes into the formulation is simply discarded: the sacrificed time and creative energy of the formulation of the most perfect phrase, the energy that went into distilling that phrase into a set of characters, the various drafts and permutations – be it by means of planetary squares or Chaotist symbol-making – that lead to the final product. If one simply views the process as a whole, however, one can transfer all of that energy to the final sigil, and have the Work half done before the circle is even cast.

I wonder if I’m making myself clear. I’m not trying to piss in anyone’s cereal. Let’s make this more specific. Let’s leave this theoretical bullshit behind and talk about what I’ve actually done.

Now, dear readers, you may recall that I’m in the process of setting up a new temple. On the first full moon, I laid the foundation and scaffolding. At the following dark moon, I built the frame and put up the walls. This week, at the Dark of the Moon, I installed the insulation, the first pieces of “furnature”, and – let’s not forget – some turrets.

I began by designing six sigils in the traditional manner: writing a statement, reducing it to its barest components, and – in all but one case – converting it to numbers and mapping it onto a planetary square. In this fashion, I produced two Martian, two Venusian, and one Jupiterian sigil.

Any attempt to injure the master or guests of this house shall be thwarted.

Any who intend or contemplate harm to the master or guests of this house shall be dissuaded.

The master of this house shall be blessed with security.

…. and you get the idea. You can see the other three sigils below, but as they’re bound to my Name, they will be of little use to anyone else. (Although, if you really want to help bless me and my guests with harmony and companionship by putting them on your altar, you are a special kind of awesome.)

Having done this, I drew a picture first of my existing ward structure – remember the Pentagram Ward? – and added these sigils to it. Note that the Venusian sigils (green) and the Jupiterian (purple), are all anchored inside the wards, while the Martian are anchored outside. This is for two reasons: I don’t want either set confused about who they’re supposed to be working on, and to provide a certain degree of balance. The balance issue is also why I chose to make an equal number of Maritan and Venusian sigils: I don’t want a house where people get lost or into fights on the way over, or one where every party turns into an orgy.

The sixth sigil – the funny space-dude-looking-one – was made using Chaos Magic methodology, transforming the letters into a shape. This one helps keep my wards from draining me and my guests for power by syphoning off a small portion of the energy from every rite I perform here, in order to sustain the matrix. The elemental glyphs, and the sun, moon, mars, and venus symbols are also there as power sources.

The image you see above was drawn and colored in-Circle, after I spent the day designing the sigils themselves. The image as a whole was then further charged with the help of another witch during the Dark Moon Esbat, essentially by pouring energy into it. I will continue to charge this ward-matrix directly over the course of the waxing moon – performing rites to specifically establish each of the sigils in turn at the correct astrological time. In the meantime, my daily pratice will also fuel them, as will all my rites over the course of my time here.

Also note that there’s a lot of blank space around the edges. Blank space where I can add more sigils, more “lines of code” to the house wards as things become relevant.

This is the sort of the things I’m talking about when I talk about the “art” of magic.