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In witchcraft

Diminishing Returns or Deepening Practice?

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 2 Comments

I think that all of us who practice real magic, real spirituality, real witchcraft, go through periods of feast and famine. Fallow periods, sometimes so long that we forget what magic is like. Periods of growth where everything is sharp and bright and we wonder how it is that anyone ever steps away. Periods of high strangeness where we feel alien beyond words. Periods of deep immersion, where we forget that there are people who don’t devote their lives to all this.

This blog has gone through a long fallow period, interrupted only by project announcements and brief shouts into the void. My personal practice, on the other hand, has been going through a long period of slow growth.

I am approaching eighteen months of daily practice, easily the longest consistent streak in my twenty-five years of magical practice. During that time, I have maintained a regular (but not clockwork) practice of Friday night offerings to the Venus(planet)-associated gods in my life, a regular (but not clockwork) lunar practice, including guiding my pseudo-coven through a daisy chain of Drawing Down the Moon rituals, taken advantage of every astrological election I could squeeze into my schedule, and a grown a magical jewelry business – consisting primarily of Picatrix talismans and Hekate devotional jewelry – from side gig to full time job.

And when I put it like that, holy shit does it sound like a lot. An epic adventure of magic and mayhem. Living the dream, right?

But in the day to day experience of it, it has often felt like a struggle. I will not even begin to pretend that I have managed to bring my A game to every one – or even half – of the 517 and counting daily offerings to my familiar spirits and the eclectic pantheon that live in my altar room. Nor, when I have, did the gods and spirits in question necessarily deign to respond. Nor, even when I really, truly, sincerely tried, did I always manage to clear enough of the mundane static and internal screaming to hear what the gods and spirits had to say when they deigned to speak.

I have been thinking about that struggle over the past couple weeks. I can’t say, exactly, when daily coffee offerings for my gods as well as my spirits escalated to daily prayer, but it did. Every day I pray to Baphomet to awaken the Gnostic fire within me. Every day I pray to Aphrodite to open my heart that I may know that I am loved. Every day I pray to Lucifer to help me throw off the chains of my oppression.

I do know that it was about a month ago that those basic prayers escalated to include prayers for initiation into the mysteries. And I also know that I have cried every morning for the last two weeks.

The slow, careful, methodical work of healing and personal growth and deepening spiritual practices … it’s not the fun, dramatic, glamorous kind of magic. And it often feels like diminishing returns.

 At the beginning of the challenge that grew into this daily practice, I was receiving new instructions from my familiar spirits nearly every day. I could barely keep up. Hell, I should probably go back through my journal entries just to see what didn’t sink in. I know that there are some special requests in there that I never got to fulfilling before getting distracted by the next demand or suggestion.

Now, on the days when I can both hear and understand my gods and familiars, my journal entries mostly just read “warm contact with gods; warm contact with familiars; all content; no clear messages”.

It’s worth remembering, here, that I got into magic in search of adventure and high strangeness. I practiced kinds of magic that got me high. And, looking back on my magical youth, I think that sense of diminishing returns is what often led to fallow periods. Then, when I came back, everything would be bright and sharp again. And I wonder if others have had the same experience, if many of us have mistaken deepening practice for diminishing returns. Because, even on days when I’m so tired or depressed that I’m half-glad I’m not receiving potent visions of divinity, or clear instructions from my familiars, I’m also disappointed.

I’ve seen it said often enough that it’s probably officially cliché, but it is still worth repeating that a magical or spiritual practice is practice in both senses of the term: a thing you do repeatedly for its own sake, and doing a thing repeatedly in order to get better at it. How many of my magical and experiences in the last year were made possible by that praxis? If I had not been doing my daily ritual for nine months last Beltane, could I have led the Dionysiac ritual as well as I did? Could I have been possessed, let alone spread that possession as the contagion it was meant to be?

This streak won’t last forever. When it ends, probably after some amazing ecstatic ritual culminating in brain-borking gnosis (or maybe when I just fuck off into the desert), I will enter another fallow period. When that happens, I will probably focus on some mortal art – maybe actually finishing some of the novel drafts that have brought me to tears over the last year. It’s the natural cycle of things. Only the independently wealthy or those with infrastructure support can go forever without breaks.

But I hope that I will be able to carry these lessons forward, and remember that the returns of a regular practice are not diminishing as quickly as they may feel.

In art, witchcraft

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Consecrated Jupiter Talismans

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

{This post is condensed from several posts originally shared only with my Patreon supporters. To get first dibs on elected talismans like these, or even just to read about them first, please support me at the $1 Seeker level or above.}

Hail to the King, my friends.

Specifically, hail to Jupiter in Pisces. The Greater Benefic in his domicile, gracing the ascendant.

There were three such elections in February, as identifited by Nina Grypon (I buy her monthly elections newsletter from her website, and you should too.) I caught the first two, and will talk about that in detail in a later post, but I did not manage to catch the third. Somehow the day before got away from me and I did not get the wax positives invested and into the kiln in time. I’m a little frustrated with myself, but in the end it’s probably for the best. I was already tired from the work I had done so far, and while I did end up claiming two of the talismans for myself, I had not taken any time to petition Jupiter directly. And, as a newly independent artist, I definitely think that time was well spent.

It’s been just over a month since the last election and my own material results are starting to come in. I’ve seen a 30% follower growth in some of my social media and what feels like much greater engagement (I don’t pay for tracking, so I can’t give a number). This month’s sales have definitely gone up over last month’s, and I’ve even had someone reach out about teaching services that I don’t currently offer. I am also continuing to experience the secondary effects of big magic – erratic sleep and vivid dreams and as much high weirdness as is possible given that I am respecting the pandemic and staying home.

All the talismans are made with my signature Picatrix Image of Jupiter talisman (which is getting a post all its own in the next weeks), based on the following passage: “The image of Jupiter, according to the opinion of Picatrix, is the shape of a man with a leonine face and the feet of a bird; beneath his feet he is holding a dragon that has seven heads, and in his right hand he holds a dart as if he wished to throw it at the head of the dragon.” Picatrix Book II, Paragraph 16 (Attrell and Porecca, 2019)

I chose to make the talismans in shibuichi (a 3:1 copper:silver art metal alloy, whose name comes from Japanese (literally “one in four”) under the guidance of my familiar spirits, knowing that silver is attributed to Jupiter by Agrippa, and set Jovial stones in the curl of the serpent’s tail.

All the talismans were conjured using alternating invocations of the Orphic Hymn to Zeus (Athanasakis translation) and the Picatrix Inovacation of Jupiter (Greer and Warnock, as presented in a election pamphlet shared in 2012). The spirits were invoked to provide “unblemished health, … divine peace and riches, [and] glory without blame.” and to “grant us wisdom, prosperity, success, help us be happy, healthy, and safe.” Additionally, each offered a specialty as I was cleaning and polishing it.

Each talisman has been packed with a small quantity of the incense used it its consecration.

Patreon supporters got first dibs. I listed them publicly on Etsy on Thursday 3 March. I meant to talk about them here sooner, but I am still getting back into the habit of blogging, and I apologize for that. So far only one has been claimed (not counting the two I kept for myself). As the talismans are claimed, I will continue to mark them off.

So, then, I have the two cohorts of spirits/talismans:

First Cohort

The first batch of talismans was cast on the 2ndof February with Jupiter just past the ascendant. The talismans were cast and consecrated with the sapphires in place. The sapphires are rough Yogo sapphires mined in Montana.

The talismans were then cleaned, polished, and interviewed for names and sigils – which may not be the names and sigils they wish their proper owner to use, but provide a point of contact – during subsequent Jupiter hours throughout the following week.

I am selling each of these for $430, including shipping.

The first talisman is a pendant, and he promises, “I bring that which you desire.” He one feels like a wild ride, definitely spicier than I’m in the mood for, but definitely exactly what someone needs.

The next talisman is a pendant, and they promise, “I teach happiness.” This talisman had a super chill vibe.

The next talisman spirit is a coin, and they promise, “I teach peace and bring prosperity.”

The final talisman is a pendant, and they promise, “I teach discernment.” I think this one will be a very good friend to someone.

Second Cohort

The second batch of talismans were cast on the 7thof February. This election I timed more perfectly, and I threw the cast as Jupiter was precisely conjoined to the ascendant. These talismans were set with emeralds from one of my mundane jewelry suppliers – A grade, cloudy but beautiful green, visually stunning in the shibuichi setting.

The talismans were cleaned and polished, and the stones set, then interviewed for names and sigils in subsequent hours of Jupiter throughout the week.

I am selling each of these for $598, including shipping.

This talisman spirit a pendant, and she promises, “I will keep you happy, healthy, and safe.”

The next talisman spirit is meant to be strung on prayer beads like a rosary. She promises, “I bring riches and teach mysteries.” I suspect she will need to be pampered and courted, but that the effort will be worth your while.

The final talisman spirit is a pendant, and he promises, “I bring victory and justice.” This one spicy.

Attunement.

Upon receipt of your consecrated talisman, you will need to perform an attunement ritual. Lacking guidance from the spirit, themselves, or your own traditions and familiars, I recommend the following:

Mix up a batch of Jupiterian incense in advance. Secure a brazier and charcoal. Wait until the next available day and hour of Jupiter (dawn is ideal, but not necessary) before opening the envelope with your talisman.

In the hour before you perform your ritual, set up your ritual space as needed. Prepare an appropriate libation for your tradition, I use coffee and/or wine.

At the appointed time, cleanse and consecrate your space in accordance with your tradition. Open the envelope (careful not to make a mess with the included incense) and set the talisman on your altar. Burn the included incense on your charcoal brazer. As you do so, introduce yourself to the talisman and spirit. Tell it what you want it to accomplish for you. Ask it if it has a different name and sigil that it would like you to invoke it by. Negotiate as necessary. Repeat daily or weekly as needed until you and the spirit have come to an agreement.

My first several talismans took months to a year to really settle into my life. The more recent ones have started talking to me in days. Be prepared for swift results, but do not expect them.

In art, witchcraft

From the Sorcerer’s Workbench: Picatrix Image of Venus

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

“The image of Venus according to the opinion of Picatrix is the shape of a woman with a human body but with the head of a bird and the feet of an eagle, holding an apple in her right hand and a wooden comb similar to a tablet in her left, which has these figures written upon in [the Greek letters OLOIOL]. Whoever carries this image will be well received and esteemed by all.”

Picatrix Bk 2, Chapter 10, Paragraph 55, translated by Attrell and Porecca

I drew my first Image of Venus while I was in college, as I was beginning to catch my stride with what I was calling the Ceremonial Experiment (with no idea, then, the long-term effects it would have on my magical practice). I later remade the image as a photograph, with a hand-made mask and a human model. I returned to the Image of Venus, again, when I changed jewelry jobs after college and found myself in the rare position of having space and encouragement to learn and grow as a jeweler. If it was not literally the first piece that I prototyped through what would become my signature process (I think that it was), it was in the very first batch. And, thus, it was one of the handful of designs that launched the Sorcerer’s Workbench.

The Image of Venus was not the only Picatrix image I attempted at that time, but it was the only one I finished. It played to my strengths as an illustrator: a standing figure with animal features and simple iconography. When I went to take that first illustration – which, tragically, seems to have vanished into the void – it was relatively easy to take my line art and redraw it to fit the needs of the prototyping process I learned at the (then new) day job.

two-tone art and prototype

In a very real sense, the Image of Venus Picatrix talisman was the prototype for entire line of Piecatrix talismans. It was early experiments with the Image of Venus that taught me how much power could come from the image alone, without any enchantment, and how the inclusion of the Agrippan seals and characters amplified that raw power, and helped tune out any trouble from a mediocre election, or an unelected enchantment ritual. The talisman that I, myself, carry to this day has only the image, without the characters and seal, and was consecrated/enchanted post-facto after having been carried for some months. The spirit that now dwells in that talisman is one of my most trusted familiars.

It is, in large part, for the benefit of this talisman that have I practiced and perfected my shibuichi process. Shibuichi is a Japanese art metal alloy of copper and silver at a 3:1 ratio (the name literally translates as one in four) that can look like rose gold when highly polished, darkens to a lovely coppery rusty red over time, and takes a stunning matte black patina. It is also available in .925 sterling silver, yellow brass, or red bronze.

As with most of my talismans, I offer the Image of Venus as a coin, a pendant, or a “rosary” charm with three rings so that it can be easily strung on prayer beads. If you are particularly concerned about the talisman taking its “final form” during the election (something I have observed spirits require from some sorcerers but not others for reasons known only to the spirits, themselves), I recommend stringing the rosary or pendant variants on prayer beads, which you could complete during the electional window.

shibuichi image of venus talisman strung on copper and lapis prayer beads with tassel

Each piece is hand-made to order in my home studio, with unique variations and defects as a result of the fabrication and casting process.

These talismans are NOT consecrated. That is your responsibility. Many customers have reported intense vibes from the power of the image, seal, and characters, but you still need to put in your part of the work, whatever that looks like in your tradition.

Astrological timing and consecration is available with a minimum of 30 days advance notice at an additional charge depending on the difficulty of the election you provide me with.

Custom variations – such as with stones, or alterations to the image – are available at my usual custom jewelry rates.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/817915354/picatrix-image-of-venus-two-sided

In witchcraft

Speaking of Speaking to Spirits (Self-censorship When…)

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I wonder, sometimes, how much other witches – and magicians, sorcerers, wonderworkers, mystics, what have you, those who even talk about their experiences – dial back, tone down, even outright censor their processes and experiences. Not just because somethings are private, but because they don’t want to admit in that forum just how far into the weeds they are.

What got me thinking about this most recently was a post that I wrote for my Patreon supporters, talking about casting and consecrating a series of Jupiter talismans. There were some things that came up in the process that gave me pause. For a couple of those problems, I pulled cards. For others, I consulted my familiar spirits. And I wondered – publicly on twitter – how many occultists just elide that distinction, obscuring their spirit contacts behind cartomancy and other slightly-more-respectable forms of divination.

For all that my brand is radical authenticity bordering on oversharing, I’m certain that I’ve been guilty of this in the past. And I know for a fact that I’ve been guilty of the reason for this: even in the last few days, having written the opening lines of this post, I’ve seen people talking about “the spirits told me” and physically cringed. I remember clearly a moment a few years ago when a woman came into the jewelry store where I was working, asking about making a series of custom Mjolnir hammers because Thor had told her that it was her responsibility to do something about the growing presence of Nazis in the visible Heathen community. The store was (and is) explicitly magical / New Age / Pagan, so this was a little less weird than it might sound, but it was still incredibly jarring. This woman didn’t know me from Adam, and she was – to put it in the least flattering light possible – talking to me about hearing voices. Nor do I think I am alone in seeing any public claim of “channeled messages” (that phrase in particular) as a glowing red flag.

I’ve been thinking about this off and on for the last week, and have not come up with any answers that I’m comfortable with. Public channeled messages are almost always weirdly invasive, and have historically often served as the hook for literal grifts and cons. There are reasons they had to be banned in the Facebook group I helped moderate a few years back. At the same time, spirit contact has historically composed the overwhelming majority of magical practices in the Western mystical tradition (and, to the best of my knowledge, most others, but that’s not my lane). The Greek Magical Papyri is literally nothing but a stack of notes on how to beg, bribe, or coerce spirits into doing something for you. The Picatrix and other astrological image magic revolves around timing your spirit petitions so that they will do the most perfect job of what you want. The Solomonic tradition is just about getting a cohort of very specific spirits to do what you want, based on very specific rites and their very specific specialties. This is not to say that I don’t believe in and practice magic based in the energy and cybernetic models of magic as well, but spirit-model is – to use one of my least favorite neologisms – the GOAT.

Which is all to say that the best magical practitioners are almost all involved in some degree of spirit contact, and are therefore both talking to and listening to spirits. So why do so many of us hold back from talking about that? And why do we – myself very much included here – get so uncomfortable when people break that silence?

Speaking only for myself, it comes partly from my deep-seated fear of institutionalization. I read too much Victorean literature as a child and have spent the subsequent decades in terror of being thrown into a sanatorium. It also comes from how difficult spirit contact has always been for me. I have been able to see and sense spirits since my teens, but only learned to hear or understand them with any reliability in my early thirties, and only developed real confidence with that in the last three or four years. And, finally, I think it comes at least in part from a fear of cringe-by-association: we’ve seen the weirdos and grifters in both physical and online spaces, people who will approach you with a “message from the spirits”, people whose guides and allies seem to be leading them astray, people who think that their cat or dog or ferret is a magical familiar, and we frankly don’t want to be mistaken from them.

So, I’ll talk about how my familiar spirits advise and aid me on the selection of astrological elections, and the consecration of elected talismans. I’ll talk about my daily offerings, and how I came to offer coffee instead of wine – well, in addition to wine. But I don’t talk about the advice they give me about my mundane life. I don’t talk about the adventures we go on together, physically or astrally. I don’t talk about the strange and complex interactions between my familiars, or about the hints I sometimes get of their lives outside of mortal contact.

I don’t even know that these boundaries are wrong or unreasonable. Maybe it’s for the best that we self-censor like this. But as someone who always had a certain amount of physical community, but still mostly learned magic from books and experiments, I would have loved to know more about the nitty gritty details of spirit contact when I got started. Because the idealized form that so many people talk about … well, frankly, eleven years since the conjuration of my Natal Genius and Daimon and the experiments that followed, I still haven’t experienced it.

In witchcraft

Order of Offerings: Spirits Before Gods

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Last August I started a magical experiment that technically failed but which became the first thirty days of a now-fifteen month streak of daily ritual praxis that is, without question, my longest uninterrupted run. The experiment was aimed at manifesting concrete desires and measurable results. The first thing my familiar spirits told me( a week or so into that experiment) was, “Make this about us.” I did. the next thing they told me was, “We’re not going to manifest anything you don’t actually want.” Which was, arguably, the end of my career as a chaos magician, and absolutely the doom-bell for that manifestation experiment.

My familiar spirits had a lot to say at first. They helped me craft a ritual that suited their needs as well as mine. Sometimes, what they wanted was very clear and easy to do. Other times, I could tell what they wanted but had to explain that things like “I’m not that rich” were relevant. Still other times I could tell that they were talking to me, that they wanted something, but I either just couldn’t hear them or just couldn’t quite make sense of what they said.

But the daily ritual continued. I listened a lot. Asked for little (have occasionally been told to ask for more!). And I have learned so, so much – not least of which is how to hear these spirits, something that has always been a challenge for me.

The longer the ritual goes on, the less frequently I get new instructions. The most recent change to my rituals is one of the more significant. It also was one that took them longer than average to communicate to me, because it was a matter of order of operations.

When the ritual began, it was just my familiar spirits. But the spare bedroom where that altar lives is also where I house the altar for the sex-positive (quais-) Venusian gods that I honor. And after a few months of pouring out offerings while the other gods just ~watched~, it seemed appropriate to begin daily offerings to Aphrodite, Eros, Lucifer, Dionysos, and Baphomet, as well. And because of my quasi-Hellenistic influences and the nature of ~authority~, it seemed to be appropriate to make offerings to the gods first, then my familiar

the last month or so, it became clear that this was not the correct order of operations. But, being dense, I couldn’t figure out what the needed changes were. Fortunately, when clarity came, it came with an explanation: let us share in the blessings.

I now invoke my familiar spirits first, pouring their coffees and lighting their candles, and give them a moment to manifest before moving on to praying for the various blessings of the gods. And, when I utter those prayers, I pray for *us*: “Hail unto you, O Baphomet, we pray you awaken the light of your gnostic fire within us and within the world…”Every day since I made this change, I have felt my familiars and I growing closer, and felt them growing stronger from the blessings we now share.

So, if you work with familiar spirits, and there is room in your traditions to make such a change, I strongly suggest that you give it a try: call your spirits first, before your gods, so that when you do invoke the higher/greater/other powers, your spirits may share in those powers’ blessings with you.

In witchcraft

Continuing Experiments in Stellar Sorcery: Spirit of the Sun

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Early in the days of Covid, and toward the beginning of Jack Grayle’s class on the magic of the PGM, my partner and I took advantage of an auspicious astrological moment to consecrate an assortment of Solar talismans. The ritual went well. The power rose. The spirits came. All in all, we consecrated four mixed-media paper talismans of the sort I have had great success with before, three pieces of black amber, and a citrine set in silver.

But lockdown was in full force, and would remain so for months to come. Aradia took her paper talismans to work when her office reopened. The rest of talismans languished on my altar for a full year. I experimented with a few different ways of wearing the citrine, but none of them were quite right.

The first movement happened toward the end of spring, this year, when, in need of some old-school razzle-dazzle, I settled on wearing the citrine as an earring (upsides of being a sorcerous jeweler, and being able to manufacture my own findings at a whim) as part of an overall wave of you-will-never-hear-the-details magics to keep my life together.

The next action came my best friend, Kraken, bought a house in May: my familiar spirits informed me that one of the enchanted amber pieces was for them. That was easy. I don’t know what, if anything, they’ve done with it. But feedback is a courtesy, not a requirement, when you give someone a magical gift.

Things escalated shortly thereafter. The talisman, when not in my ear, began clamoring for a more prominent place on altar, not with my planetary lamens and seals and talismans and maeteria, but to join my familiar spirits and receive the accompanying daily offerings and honors. This was not wholly unprecedented. My Venus talisman from the January Venus in Pisces consecration experiment made similar requests, as I alluded to in my last post on these experiments. But it still came as a bit of a surprise. Upon hearing and comprehending the request, I began searching for an appropriate idol. Unfortunately, that sort of religious statuary was an early casualty of the supply chain issues which have been escalating since the pandemic first hit and which have finally become mainstream news. Ultimately, I decided that a space on the altar was more important than an image.

That decided, I set aside extra time on a Sunday morning in June to sit with the talisman and commune with its spirit. It told me its name and helped me to draw its sigil. It now lives on the altar when not in my ear and partakes of my daily coffee offering ritual along with my other familiar spirits. Communications and negotiations are ongoing, and I hesitate to say too much, but I am already learning form this spirit.

The thing that I am prepared to say, a few months in, is that either my chaos magic and witchcraft backgrounds make my experiences with astrological talismans very different from other, more traditional ceremonial magicians, of those magicians are desperately failing to communicate what they actually mean when they talk about the care and feeding of a talisman. Because my experiences — particularly as I get further away from my very earliest experiments — is that these are not mute magical servitors whose efficacy waxes and wanes with the attention given them, but talking spirits who listen, learn, teach, and act.

In witchcraft

Back to Basics, Again

Author Satyr MagosPosted on 1 Comment

We all come from different paths, traditions, schools, but there are certain things that most of us do (or, at least, are told that we should do) when we begin our magical practice. Meditation. Divination. Journaling. We are taught (and teach) that these are the foundations upon which a mature magical practice is built.

I think that many of us, however — whether you started young, like me, or later in life — somehow get the impression that we will graduate beyond these things. That meditation will be replaced by ecstatic trance. That divination will become redundant as we enchant for the future we want. That journaling will become irrelevant as we perfect our arts and come to believe in ourselves. And, even as we grow and learn and come to know better, these fundamentals all fall by the wayside at times.

Speaking for myself, however, once I’ve lost track of those fundamentals, I find that my practice as a whole is likely to decline soon after. I grow complacent. I begin studying magic more than I practice it. The contentment and satisfaction that I achieved with my magical practice fade into apathy and complacency.

When that happens, it’s time to go back to the basics.

This week, I began a new tarot study: a card every day with The Wild Unknown (a beautiful deck I was gifted for my birthday or Christmas two or three years ago but which never made it in to my regular rotation). I am also making time for regular meditation: two or three times this week, four or five next week, every day the week after.

This is not my first rodeo. I have fallen off the horse and gotten back on before. I had to start practically from scratch after giving myself magically induced migraines in my early twenties. Later, when Aradia and I met, we were both at a low point in our practices, and joined Chirotus (and a few others) in a back-to-basics group. We started with Christopher Penczac’s Temple of Witchcraft books (no links and no respect so long as he remains close friends with Christian Day) and eventually escalated into the Pseudo-Coven before imploding (have I ever told that story all in one place?). I’ve had to go back to basics (with less dramatic causes and results) on a couple occasions since, as well.

Every time I do a back-to-basics course, I am confronted with the same lesson: the baiscs are not training wheels, they are fundamentals. As a jeweler, the first things I was taught were how to wield the hammer, how to file and polish, how to solder. Every single jewelry task I have done in the following twenty years has used those skills. Magic is no different.

Meditation has a host of physiological and psychological benefits on its own. Additionally, it is the seed of nearly every other trance induction technique you will ever attempt. If you want to learn to do visionary work or astral projection or candle magic or charge sigils or conjure spirits, you will be well served by getting good and staying good at meditation.

Divination is not just about “do they like me” or “how will this job interview go” (as useful as those can be). It’s not just “what will today/this month/this year reveal for me?” It is also learning to sit and listen and hear things that you didn’t expect or didn’t want to know. Divination is (or should be) used as a safety precaution before enchantments and conjurations. It can also be used as a way to communicate with spirits, for those of us who don’t have the “godphone” built in.

Journaling helps us keep track of the details. Human memory is deeply fallible. Journaling regularly helps you remember what happened, and helps keep your adventures from growing or diminishing with retelling. It helps you spot patterns over long periods of time.

Learn from my fail: go back to the basics every couple years even if your practice hasn’t flagged. I promise that you will find something new and valuable in your core materials that you had missed or dismissed. You will probably also find things that you now violently reject, and that’s worth knowing you.

As your practices grow and change, you will find yourself adding to the list of fundamentals. For myself, that means two things: visionary journeys and planetary conjurations. I, and my magic, are at our best when I am doing journeywork and planetary work on the regular. Despite some of the truly spectacular things I have accomplished in the six years since I came back to Kansas City, I have not been as consistently potent as I was in the Sunrise Temple, when I was doing my original planetary conjurations during the week, and performing the Stele of Jeu and descending to the underworld every full and dark moon.

As such, come Monday, I will begin a new series of planetary rituals — starting on Monday and working through the planets in the Chaldean order as recommended by Rufus Opus‘ Seven Spheres. Rather than performing conjurations as described by RO, however, I believe that I will ascend the spheres and attempt to renew my spirit contacts, particularly with the Moon and Venus.

So empowered (one hopes), I will be fortified to escalate my practice, rejoining the work I began in Jack Grayle’s PGM class (which fell somewhat to the wayside due to quarantine depression) and joining the August round of Deeper Down the Rabbit Hole’s Do Magick Challenge.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Picatrix Image of the Moon

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

This week, after literally years of waffling between planets and images to pursue next, I have finally produced another talismanic image from the Picatrix, following up on the Image of Venus that I produced so many years ago.

“The image of the moon according to the opinion of Picatrix is the form of a man who has the head of a bird, and he holds a stick above him, and he has a tree before him.”

— Picatrix Bk.II Ch.10, p.105, as translated by Greer and Warnock.

As with my Venus talisman, I turned to the grand planetary seal and the Agrippan characters for the reverse.

Although I could probably rationalize it in a variety of ways – a decision to pursue the rest of the talismans in Chaldean order, perhaps, or a fictitious upcoming election (this year sucks, there are no elections – my decision to make an Image of the Moon was ultimately based on the easy availability of the most appropriate metal: silver. By that same logic I should probably do a Solar image next, for all that probably no one will be able to afford the ten pennyweights of 14k gold.

The image I selected was not my absolute favorite. That honor goes to an image described on the preceding page: “… a woman with a beautiful face, with a dragon about your waist, having horns on her head with two snakes encircling them, and with two more snakes entwined around each of her arms, and a dragon above her head and another dragon under her feet, and both these dragons have seven heads.” which is somewhat beyond my current ability to produce a mold positive. But I think that a second bird-headed figure makes a fine follow-up to my Venus talisman, and I know that I need to enjoy the few relatively simple images presented in the Picatrix.

I have already ordered the mold positive of this Image, and will hopefully be able to present the first silver prototype in early August. It will probably end up being priced identically to the Venus — $116 in my Etsy store, assuming that the price of silver does not continue to rise, and will be available in brass and bronze for those who are less concerned with material than image.

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Picatrix Images: The First Face of Aries

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

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

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

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

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

In scholarship, witchcraft

Stellar Sorcery: Introductory Experiments

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

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

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

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

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

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

The Framework

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

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

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

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

2012 Jupiter in Sagitarius Talisman

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

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

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

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

2020 Venus in Pisces Talisman

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

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

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

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

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

Some observations from the whole of the process:

2020 Sun in Aries Talisman

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

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

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

Early Observations and Hypotheses

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

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

Meditation makes it easier to see and hear spirits.

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding casting the shibuichi talismans, specifically:

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

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

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