Showing all posts tagged art of magic

In art

Once Born

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I was born under a bad star, as were we all. But my family did not know the signs: there must have been birds and other omens—I suspect every birth is so attended, if one knows how to look—but they were not recorded. I was not marked out for my destiny, and so I was thrown into the Factory with all the others: I was dedicated to the Illuminati at birth. They looked between my infant legs and called what they saw a “penis”, then mutilated it to fit their Platonic ideal. They wrote “male” on my birth certificate, and gave me a name which would be recognized as such. They put me in front of a television, and told me in countless little ways that it was my task in life to learn and uphold the Rules.

Unrecognized, I had no one to name for me the craving for knowledge I felt, no one to explain the shadows and voices and intercieses which (I thought) only I could perceive. I heard rumors of such things, of course, but the sources were … less than credible. I knew better than to trust them, yet I could not help but believe. So people called me gullible, a “moony” child, doomed to amount to nothing, perhaps a career in the arts. Perhaps they were right.

They made a mistake, though, in permitting me unrestricted access to books stores and libraries and the Internet. Or perhaps it was not a mistake. Perhaps it was the only true rebellion that my parents could dare to make. So I read voraciously: stories of love and independence, stories of epic quests for identity and community, stories which undermined popular narratives of strength and herd-minded “individualism”, stories of magic and heroism. I could not always avoid the mainstream narratives—I had no way of knowing that I ought!—and so the stories were mixed in my brain and I still sometimes struggle to sort them out.

There were a few children who were more like me than the others. They showed me books I would not have found, otherwise, and shared my fascination with the hidden things in the outside world. But they also craved acceptance from the larger world—as, to be fair, did I at the time—and they were willing to go to any lengths to achieve it: displaying their burgeoning masculinity by tormenting and brutalizing the one person they thought they could. Me. And then mocked me when, put in a positions where I might do the same to others in turn, I refused.

Cruelty is the first and last tool of the Illuminati, of the Archons and the Black Brotherhoods and all their slaves. Violence is the second. It is by these tools that the structures of power most faithfully reproduce themselves. The world can be a terrible place, and there are times when cruelty and violence cannot be avoided, but they are few and far between, and to take pleasure in them is always an only a service to the Powers that enslave the world. I knew this in my heart without being taught, from the earliest days of my memory, but the knowledge brought me such torment that I almost forgot, and even now struggle to hold onto it. We must resist, of course: complacency only serves their interests. But in resisting, we provide them an opportunity to mobilize: the police, the media, the counter-protests by those who worship the Archons. This dilemma must be confronted at every turn. It cannot be overcome entirely.

In art

Whispers of Madness and Insurection I

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I told the story so many times, I don’t know if its even true anymore. Like when you practice a conversation so many times that you forget that you haven’t actually had it … only with reality at stake.

How do I know that what you and I both call “blue”, doesn’t look to you like what I call “red”?

Are we even really here, or are we just figments of our own imagination?

I am an unreliable narrator. But at least you can trust in that: you can rely on me being unreliable.

I’ve told so many stories. I’ve read so many stories. Some of them were never meant to be true. Some of them revealed the truth by the fact of their untruth. After all, it’s so very easy to loose sight of the truth in a steaming fecal pile of facts: have you watched the news lately? I have juggled truth and lies for so long that no one will ever be able to say which is which. Some truth is still true; some lies are still false. Some lies have been made true and some truths have been overthrown in the quest for a new world order—and this has been my work.

I am not the only one. Perhaps I am the least.

We are all the Illuminati, each and every one of us. It is we who are the conspiracy, all the more powerful because we do not know, or refuse to acknowledge it. We invent the rules as we go along, then blame others for our behavior: citing precedent as if it were relevant. All it takes to prove that something new is always possible is to do something new. It is we, alone and collectively, who determine what is real. What is possible. What is portrayed in the media.

There are forces arrayed against us who wish to create change, this is true: there are Archons and Black Brotherhoods and other forces of inertia and retrofuckery. They are powerful, and to defy them is to risk shame and death and maiming. But they can be fought. The can be defeated. And to concede to them is to face certain shame and death and maiming. The war cannot be avoided: the war is already on, and they knew you were the enemy even before you did. They knew because we are all the enemy, before we are initiated into the Illuminati. Even then, even after they have initiated us by baptism and circumcision and education and imprisonment and advertisement, they will never trust us. It is in our interest to turn on them, and they know it even if we do not.

In art, witchcraft

NaNoWriMo 2012: Welcome to the Madhouse

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Book of the Satyr

or

A Grammar of Madness and Lust

Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

It’s all true, especially the contradictions.

…Everything is still permitted…

IAM that I AM

I AM that I WILL BE

DEDICATION TO THE GODS WHO INSPIRE

O Goddesses of Olympus, Musai

O Apollon, father of the lyre

This work I do in your name

This work I do for your glory

Shine your inspiration upon me

That my efforts might honor you better

O Hermes, the silver-quick and clever

O Mercury, messenger and guide

This work I do by your discretion

This work I do by your tools

Stand beside me always

That my words might be bright and clear

O Dionysus, cause and surcease of madness

O Zagreus, embodiment of ecstasy

This work I do as your servant

This work I do as your messenger

Be within me as I write

That I might be without myself and range more widely

Hai Musai!

Io Memnosune, Titan Muse and memory incarnate!

Io Caliope, mistress of the epic!

Io Clio, keeper of history!

Io Erato, voice of lust!

Io Euterpe, mistress of song!

Io Terpischore, inspiration of dance!

Io Melpomene, bringer of tears!

Io Thalia, who causes laughter!

Io Polymnia, source of all hymns!

Io Urania, who keeps the secrets of the stars!

Io Apollon!

Io Phoibos, lord of the sun!

You who slew the serpent Pytho

and who inspire the prophesies of Delos!

Bright son of Metis and mighty Zeus!

You in whose name I issue prophesy!

Bringer and healer of plague!

Io Hermes!

Io Dolios, divine trickster who, new-born, fooled Apollo and Zeus alike!

Slayer of watchful Argos

Great messenger of the gods!

You Of the Gateway,

Guide of both the living and the dead!

Io Ram-bearer! Io Champion!

Io Dionysos!

Io Bacchos! Yourself, your Mask, and your worshiper: one!

Bringer of madness and ecstasy!

Lord of the vine and instructor in fermentation!

Twice-born, Twice-died, Thrice-lived!

You of the Mysteries!

In whose name I pour all libations!

In witchcraft

Paper Talismans, Satyr-Style

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

As you may note by looking to the right, I am a member of Christopher Warnock’s Spiritus Mundi mailing list.  I’m not very active—I don’t know enough about traditional astrology to participate(1)—but I do like to take advantage of the elections he and his students are kind enough to share.  Many of the folks on the Spiritus Mundi group, like myself, are too poor to create talismans of precious metals.  So there’s a lot of talk about paper talismans.  So much so, in fact, that Mr. Warnock has recently posted a page on the history and construction of paper talismans.

The prevailing wisdom on the mailing list is that paper talismans are good for 90 days.  My own experience has been radically different: although my Jupiter talisman, made back in April, did require a bit of a boost over the summer, it is still going strong.

So as I gear up for Monday morning’s Mercury election (the last Hour of Night, just before dawn), I thought I would share the process that is working so well for me.

I start with two unlined notecards.  I mark one as the front and one as the back:  if I’m going to print them off (which I have done in the past) I’ll prepare everything the day before in an openoffice document(2); this weekend, as I’m out of printer ink and money, I’ll be hand-drawing them in pencil to be inked and colored at the electional moment.  If I don’t already have an appropriate planetary incense on hand, I’ll gather the herbs and resins for that, as well, also to be mixed at the time of the election.  Finally you need glue; I prefer rubber cement.

With your cards and images prepped, either digitally or by hand, you wait until the appropriate hour as taught in electional astrology, then print or ink the images.  Write your legal and magical names on the backs of the cards—that is, what will be the “inside”.  Blend or grab your incense that you will use to suffumigate the talisman.  Trace the edge of one of the cards with your glue and sprinkle the incense blend inside it.  Place the other card on top, make sure it seals all the way around.  Suffumigate and incant as the ritual calls for.  I also tend to finalize the concecration with a drop of Abramelin oil.

This is how I produce paper talismans that are still effective almost six months out.  Checking and recharging these talismans is becoming a part of my Full Moon rites, along with my active sigils.

1 – I am, in fact, the exact kind of learn-at-my-own-pace system-hacker he despises.  My saving grace is probably that I keep my damn mouth shut instead of demanding that he pontificate at my convenience.

2 – I’ll assume you know how to format the pages and everything yourselves to make that work.  If not, there are message boards for that.

In witchcraft

My Circle of the Art

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

If I had stuck to my original plan and followed Penczak’s Temple of High Witchcraft precisely, I would even now be completing an illustrated map of the cosmos to replace the Qabalistic Tree of Life in my own theology.  I’ll get to that eventually, but I would like to explore the Planetary Realms and the pathways between them a little more thoroughly before I try to map the Labyrinth of the Obsidian Dream.

In the meantime, however, my studies of ceremonialism, Hermetics, and astrological magic have culminated in enough understanding to produce this much:

circleofart

My Circle of the Art

I suppose it is a cosmogram of sorts: god-names in the outer ring, then the Planets followed by the signs of the zodiac—celestial powers and the lenses through which they are focused—and, finally, the Triangle of Conjuration in the center representing the material world.  The names in the outer ring were chosen carefully, of course.  Dionysus and Rhea, long-standing allies and friends.  Hermes, patron of this art.  And Hekate, patron of (among other things) witches.  All powers of somehow ambiguous status in regards to the earth, the underworld, and the upper realms.   Iao and Agathos Daimon: two visions of Mystery and all-consuming power.  Drawn large enough to be used as a base for other work, I may place stones or candles at the appropriate planetary or astrological glyphs, and/or  place talismans of relevant powers within the circle and the triangle.  It’s nowhere nearly as cool as RO’s Box or Skyllaros’ Conjuration Station … but it’s a start.

Although I will be redirecting the bulk of my efforts toward the study of Chaos Magick—I have already begun reading Liber Null and finally acquired a copy of Condensed Chaos to re-read—I will not actually be abandoning what I have learned over the last year.  There will be astrological elections too good to resist.  There will be moments when planetary magic or more formal rites will be more appropriate to the task at hand.  There will be things I need to deal with that I might not be willing to engage using the “bare handed” techniques of Chaos.  This, and the altar I inscribe it on, will be there for me when those times come.

In Uncategorized

Welcome to My Personal, Political, Magickal, Clusterfuck Life

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

[Warning to the people who know me IRL: this gets personal at the end and might be a little awkward.]

So …. I’ve picked up a few new readers in the last weeks.  Welcome to the Obsidian Dream, folks: it’s good to have you along for the ride.  As of last week I know have more “followers” here than I had back on blogger, and (although I know there’s some overlap between the two, and that many of my beloved readers don’t use those buttons for whatever reason) that feels pretty damn good.  My monthly hits aren’t quite what they were, but I haven’t actually been keeping up with the posting that well these last couple months, either, and I suspect those facts are closely related.  I’m grateful to have you all.

Things have been interesting here in the Satyr’s life: working in the mall to cover rent and summer spending money, living with Aradia for the summer, studying my Attic Greek (but not enough), the whole HPF main ritual drama and the continuing fallout, researching my planned switch from disposable razors to a straight edge (not because it’s superbutch, which is almost creepy enough to be a reason not to do it) but because it’s more environmentally sustainable), my car breaking down earlier this week, getting ready for Sannafrid coming out to visit next week, and getting ready for the giant fucking party we’re going to have while she’s here.

I’ve been doing some visionary work, but haven’t yet reached a point where I can provide an interesting narrative about it.  The Moon has a lot to teach me, but it seems like I have to fuck shit up for the correct information they’ve imparted to rise to the surface (“No, man, like this: like I showed you already.”)

I’ve been working images of Venus and the Moon, inspired by my work with the Moon Talisman at Heartland and based on more of the descriptions from Christopher Warnock’s Picatrix translation.  This has been a technical challenge, but super-fun.  I plan to do at least one Picatrix-based image for each planet.  Posts for each of those are forthcoming upon their completion.

Progress in my ceremonial studies has slowed greatly.  Partly because I’ve been resting, partly because I’ve been researching, and partly because I’ve been devoting a lot of time to try to actually understand what I’ve already learned.  The biggest things I’ve gotten done in this regard, lately, is downloading AstroWin and Morinus Tradional as potential alternatives Astrolog.  Further, my studies have also been slightly hampered by the ever-clearer knowledge that, while many planetary magic techniques are really interesting and awesome (electional talisman construction, for example), my own talents slant so hard toward visionary work that ceremonialism, Hermetics and astrological magic will always be peripheral to my practice.  They’re good, solid tools—fun to use and especially to make–but never my favorites.

Two things have consumed the last week more than anything else, though: emailing back and forth with the HSA Sacred Experience Committee regarding the horrible ritual, and getting ready for Sannafrid’s visit.

I have, to date, exchanged nearly a score of emails with the head of the Sacred Experience Committee and a couple other people involved in the ritual planning and execution.  The initial emails were heated; since we have begun negotiating a face-to-face meeting (moderated by the former head of the SEC, an individual whom I respect greatly), things have calmed a little.  The meeting will take place tomorrow, and a full report on the exchange will be forthcoming, as will be analysis of how I feel this event was exemplary of what I feel to be one of the greatest failures of the neo-Pagan and magical communities today: a deep and unexamined investment in the patriarchy which poisons all of our lives.

Although an altogether happy occasion (as opposed to the other, which might turn out well or might finish ruining Heartland for me), Sannafrid’s visit will be, in some ways, an equally iconic rejection of the mainline narratives which dominate our lives as people with one foot in the “Muggle”[1] world: I’m not just involved in deeply loving relationships with two different women.  Although they have never met, they have always known about each other, and next week my “girlfriend at school” is going to come visit me while I’m living with my “girlfriend at home”.  I don’t even know where to begin counting all the “rules” we’re breaking, let alone deconstructing them, so I’m just going to go for the lulz: Sannafrid is actually going to arrive while Aradia is away on a business trip.[2]  Yeah.  We’re all emotionally mature grown ups, capable of negotiating such potentially treacherous waters, but there is a lot of negotiating and triple-checking that needs to be done (in addition to all the housecleaning) to ensure that everyone’s on the same page about what is and isn’t going down, and that everyone’s anxieties are being allayed and that everyone’s needs are being fulfilled.[3]

The fact that both of these events are happening (and could only happen) while Venus is fucking retrograde is … interesting.  Also: this shit.  WTF, life?  Man, am I glad that I made those Venus talismans.

All of this is to say that, while I’ll be doing a lot of magic in the next ten to twenty days, and finishing out some Big Shit Already In The Works (including at least one more write-up from HPF), it’s probably going to continue to be a month of light posting.  Welcome to my wild and crazy life.

1 – Referring to people who don’t practice magic, see ghosts, or talk to spirits.  On the one hand, I hate this Harry Potter-born neologism.  On the other hand, it’s so much less problematic and idiotic than any of the alternatives I’ve heard or used: normal, once-born, cowan, mundane, uninitiated, blind, mortal.

2 – The best part is that, although it will work out for the best in some ways, we didn’t plan it that way.  The dates for the business trip came down weeks after the dates for the visit were set.

3 – Wondering how this is related to magic or to my spiritual practice?  Click here.

In art, witchcraft

HPF 2012: Rites of Magic

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Not counting the public rituals, which are a disaster I will get to soon, I did three major rituals at Heartland Pagan Festival this year.  The last, I have already described.  The first was the creation of a Moon Talisman, taking advantage of the Lunar Election; the second was my most effective performance of the rite of the Stele of Jeu to date.

Friday morning there was a window of opportunity to create a lunar talisman.  Due to a variety of factors (idiocy on my own part chief among them) I was not able to print out a copy of Christopher Warnock’s lunar talisman to assemble and charge at the appropriate hour.  Instead, having the pdf on my phone, I transcribed the invocation into my sketch book and reproduced a crude sketch of the general figure and the characters above him.  When the hour came, I expanded upon my crude sketch from memory, using my nice fountain and brush pens.

scan0001

The invocation was potent, and I felt the familiar Lunar power flow through me as I incanted.  I had to leave my ritual jewelry sitting on the talisman when I was done, because it was tingling too much for me to continue wearing it (as is my wont at ritual occasion such as the festival.

I think it turned out nicely.  One of these next days, I’m going to produce a nicer version, as well as Lunar images from the other sources Warnock quotes above.

Saturday night, after the main-ritual-gone-awry, Alopex and I went back to Camp WTF to decompress.  The sun was setting, Alopex went for a walk, and I’d been wanting to perform the Stele of Jeu since I arrived, but hadn’t quite found the right moment.  That seemed to be the right moment: Memorial Grove, Camp Gaea’s small graveyard was near the encampment, there was a trivium crossroad on the way, and the sun was setting.  I made the walk and found a stone slab of an altar in the middle of the grove.  Beside it was a fist-sized rock, ideally shaped for me to paint the Beneficial Sign upon it.

I opened with my Pentagram Rite, and made my offerings of pomegranate mead.  The wind, which had stilled for a while, rose as I incanted and just kept rising.  I really don’t know how to describe the effect of the ritual except to say that I was high, and that I stayed high for hours.  I was going to leave the stone, except that it insisted I take it with me.

IMG_5387

The next night, while Aradia and Aurora combed my aura and I tried to let go of all the accumulated pain and bullshit I hadn’t quite managed to deal with and/or banish over the semester, shortly before I performed my overzealous blessing, I was struck by my first real insight into the Stele.

Although one source gave the rite explicitly as an exorcism, the other people I’ve talked to about it insist that there’s more to it.  And there is.  The first two thirds seem to be an exorcism or banishing of sorts—“Mighty Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him”—but the final portion suddenly identifies the magician with the Headless One he has been calling upon:

“I am the headless daimon with my sight in my feet; [I am] the mighty one [who possesses] the immortal fire; I am the truth who hates the fact that unjust deeds arc done in the world; I am the one who makes the lightning flash and the thunder roll;/ I am the one whose sweat is the heavy rain which falls upon the earth that it might be inseminated; I am the one whose mouth bums completely; I am the one who begets and destroys; / I am the Favor of the Aion; my name is a heart encircled by a serpent; come forth and follow.”

Suddenly, after months of practice, this seems to be a ritual which first hollows out the magician—blasting him free of “negative” influences and forcing his aura into the shape of a vessel—in order to make room for the Headless One to fill him.  In a very loose sense, the Stele of Jeu may be the badass great-great-great-grandparent of Drawing Down the Moon.  It is an exorcism, and simultaneously a literal invocation.  Or seems to be, anyway, at this stage in my practice.  Would anyone who has experimented with this more care to comment?

In art, hedonism, witchcraft

Continuing Experiments: Sigils, Talismans, and the Stele of Jeu

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

While I haven’t had much time to write clever blog posts since finals week started gearing up (then ended, with all the unanticipated post-semester and graduation-related madness), I have managed to make time to actually do the magic.  I have performed the Stele of Jeu twice, fired off a shoal of sexy sigils, and made two new talismans based on what I learned of talisman-making from the Jupiter Election.

the Stele of Jeu

The Stele of Jeu the Hieroglyphist  is becoming an increasingly integral part of my practice.  Interestingly, though, the more often I perform it the more subtle the effects seem to be.  I performed the rite at the last Dark Moon, on the Day and Hour of the Sun, and as a part of my Beltane celebrations in the woods behind my school.

In the first case—as seems to often happen—I was struck by the sense that something was watching me as I performed my rite.  That sensation faded, though, as I performed the ritual.  By half way through, actually, it had faded to the point where I decided to try out something I’d read somewhere and repeated the central portion of the ritual until I got the feeling of rising power:

Holy Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him, / ῥουρβριαω μαρι ὠδαμ βααβναβαωθ ασς ἀδωναι ἀφνιαω ἰθωληθ ἀβρασαξ ἀηωωυ / mighty Headless One, deliver him, NN, from the daimon which restrains him. / μαβαρραιω ἰοηλ κοθα ἀθορηβαλω ἀβραωθ / deliver him, NN ἀωθ ἀβραωθ βασυμ ἰσακ σαβαωθ ιαω

That definitely had an effect, though I would be hard pressed to actually describe what it was.  I sat in the salt circle and meditated for a while, basking in the magical afterglow.

I performed the ritual again at Beltane, under the nearly-full moon.  My outdoor festivities with Sannafrid were actually a couple days late, on account of the rain on the 1st and 2nd.  Being in the woods, I skipped the salt circle—salting the earth is not my idea of a good time.  On the one hand, the effects were much less profound than I had hoped/feared/anticipated; on the other hand, they were very interesting.  The woods suddenly felt more alive.  Sannafrid and I could sense spirits everywhere—not like I had conjured them, but more as if I had suddenly tuned in to the layer of reality where they already lived.

I think they were just the spirits of the wood, and while they may or may not have been aware of our presence, I honestly don’t think they could have cared less.  It was a very powerful experience, if just a little surreal.  I think that’s an important lesson for all magicians, but for witches and nature-worshipers in particular: to keep in mind that most of the spirit world, like most of the natural world, doesn’t care one way or the other about humans.  We’re doing our thing; they’re doing theirs.

a Sigil Shoal for More and Better Sex

The way I count the Moons, the third day of the Dark Moon is also the first day of the waxing phase.  After performing the stele of Jeu, once the hour had passed from Sun to Venus, I fired off a shoal of sigils for more and better sex.  The effects of this shoal were even more awesome—and, importantly, longer lasting—than the first one.  The shoal included five sigils (the specific phrasing of which is apparently in the stack of notes that didn’t make it back to Kansas City with me), all aimed at improving my sex life.  The majority of the sigils were aimed helping my body keep up with my libido—and, more importantly, with Sannafrid’s.

The results were fucking spectacular.  (Yeah, I went there.  How could I resist?)  At risk of crossing into the realm of Way Too Much Information: not only was I able to manage 2-3 times in a day (a little difficult at 31 on a mediocre diet), I was able to keep that up almost every day for a ten day stretch of the two-and-a-half weeks between when I fired the sigils and when they faded about a week ago.

So … waxing Moon, day of the Sun, hour of Venus is damn good astrological timing for sex magic.  I would have thought the Full Moon, day and hour of Venus would have been as good … but it was also the 3rd day of the Full, so technically a waning Moon, which may have had an impact.  Further confounding factors here include the sigils themselves, the way they were phrased, single versus shoal, and the fact that I was still tingling from the Stele of Jeu.

a Talisman of Venus

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Anticipating Venus’ recent retrograde movement, I made a talisman of Venus based on the Jupiter Talisman I made at the recent election.  I used Christopher Warnock’s Venus image on one side (I really need to buy his Picatrix translation and star producing my own images based on the descriptions); the Agrippan characters of Venus, my Glyph of the Moon, and a pair of sigils (empowering myself with the Favor of Kings) on the other.  I performed the rite at the Day and Hour of Venus, using a slightly altered version of the Orphic Hymn to Venus—I added a line at the end asking to be endowed with the Favor of Kings—burning incense of my own making, and anointing the talisman with Abramelin oil—and using the various Venusian symbols I keep on my altar rather than a formal Triangle of Art.  For a more general Venusian boost, I also took a bit of my Venusian incense and started an infusion like I do for my essential oil production.  I left both projects on my altar to marinade essentially until I packed everything up for the trip.

My understanding is that, so close to the retrograde, even the otherwise auspicious arrangement of planetary forces on that Day and Hour of Venus with a waxing Moon was less than ideal.  Still, I felt that it would be a good idea to shore up Venusian in my sphere given the complexity of my love life at the moment (that’s a post in and of itself, and one which is particularly delicate since all parties involved read the blog.  I’m glad that I did: the talisman and the infusion-in-the-making are both radiating good, clean, Venusian power.

Safe-Travel Talismans

My final magical project in the Sunrise Temple, before leaving for the summer, was to produce safe-travel talismans for Sannafrid and myself.  She is spending the month in China as part of an ethnography program through our school—a sort of “victory lap”, as they call it here.  I was going to be making a drive across three states with a number of the things most dear to me in my back seat.

Using essentially the same methodology as I did for my Jupiter and Venus talismans, I made a pair of Mercury talismans for Sannafrid and myself.  The most interesting differences between the rites was that these were made at the day and hour of Mercury, outside in the woods during our Beltane celebrations, and that I used a lock of her hair mixed in with the Mercury blend between the two sheets of cardstock and had her write her own Names to create the link to her, where I used my Glyph of the Moon for my own talisman.

The results were again spectacular.  If I do say so, myself, I’m getting pretty good at making paper talismans.  I’m looking forward to teaching myself some metal-etching skills so that I can use similar techniques in more permanent mediums.