Showing all posts tagged divination

In witchcraft

A Group Ritual for Clarifying Visions

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Over the last couple months, several of my friends and I were struggling with divination. We were getting answers, but they weren’t making sense. So, for the last dark moon esbat (we try to celebrate on the last day before the new moon, which I recognize is a very 21st century sort of timing, but I like it) I wrote a ritual that I hoped would help us all out.

Like some rituals we’ve done before, each of us took a turn as the passive center of attention while the rest of our group worked on their behalf. In this instance, we each took a turn articulating our question that we were struggling with, then sat and waited while the others performed their divinations.

The writeup below is nearly identical to the outline that I provided for my ritual crew. I have changed the pronouns (we -> you), and turned some of the outline into complete sentences, but have left most of the idiosyncrasies intact for your amusement. Honestly, I feel like too many people idealize their ritual scripts when sharing them, and while I definitely do that sometimes, too – because the high dramatic language is entertaining to write as well as read – that’s not the vibe I’ve chosen for this particular post.

For our vision oil, I added a few drops of Quadrivium’s Revel Oil to a jojoba base. You could use anything, including plain olive oil or baby oil. Just be sure it’s skin safe and/or cosmetic grade, particularly if you intend to anoint your eyelids.

The clarity of the oracular chorus will wax and wane. Ideally, each oracle will be on their own wave and each suppliant will have enough oracles on point to have their question answered, but it’s very likely that the first suppliant will get the weakest answers.

Dark Moon Shenanigans Clarity of Vision Ritual

n-1. Pre-prep

Dinner & touch base. (Our lunar rituals always start with dinner. Your group rituals should, too, unless you’re fasting for a reason.)

Confirm that each of you have a set of divination tools and a question that you haven’t been able to answer for yourselves.

Decide on order of divinations in advance. This will save you stress and chaos in the ritual. The order in which you are seated is perfectly adequate.

0. Preperation

Finish setting up temple room, and make sure there are seats for everyone plus the “hot seat”. (Because, between making dinner and cleaning house, I can’t get this done before people arrive. Kudos if you can.) Ideally, everyone will be within arm’s reach of the altar.

Finish setting up the altar. (I drew an ouroboros on a mirror and put the vision oil in the center between two candles.)

Start playlist (I have been using a generic witchcraft music playlist for most of my workings for the last month.)

Exit temple room for purification.

I. Opening

Purification and procession into temple room. Everyone washes their hands in cinnamon and lustral waters. Have a towel handy.

With everyone standing around the altar, invoke your oracular gods and spirits (let people freeverse for a minute), and make offerings of incense and whatever else your tradition demands.

Mix and consecrate your vision oil, telling it “each of us shall approach you and offer up a secret; in return you shall grant all of us clear visions with which to answer our compatriots’ questions.”

Everyone takes their seat.

II. Body

The first suppliant kneels before the altar, whispers a secret truth to the oracular oil, and takes the hot seat.

The oracular chorus anoints themselves with vision oil.

The suppliant speaks briefly on their troubles and asks their question.

The oracular chorus performs their divinations singly and together, answering the suppliant’s question. Tarot. Runes. Scrying. Whatever.

The suppliant thanks chorus, and the gods and spirits, then steps down from the hot seat and purifies themselves before (re)joining the chorus.

Next suppliant steps out of chorus and everyone repeats above steps until everyone has had their turn in the hot seat.

III. Closing

After last suppliant has purified themselves, oracular chorus kneels around vessel of vision oil.

Everyone thanks the oracular gods and spirits for their aid.

Final offerings are made.

If you want to get my posts a week before everyone else, to see the magical experiments that I don’t share with the public, to get first dibs on my elected talismans and fine art jewelry, or just want to support my work, you can do so through patreon. If you’d like to make a one-time donation, or don’t want to deal with all the non-occult content I post on patreon, I also have a ko-fi.

In witchcraft

Dabbling in Deomonolatry – Preliminary thoughts

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I’ve spoken before on how, in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I began my magical career, conjuring spirits in any way was considered deeply taboo.  Nothing was more taboo than the point where the lingering echoes of the Satanic panic overlapped with Neo-Pagan respectability politics: Crowley’s Goetia(1) and the summoning of demons.  I, of course, confronted this taboo through juvenile art (tragically no longer extant), but I also worked very, very hard to enforce it in the magical circles in which I socialized.

So when Andrieh Vitimus proposed Beginner’s Mind as the theme of this past month’s Do Magick Challenge, the Goetia was one of the first things to come to mind.  I briefly considered devoting the whole month to the grimoire, but given that I was dragging myself out of a deep depression during which I had done relatively little magic, had skipped the research month because where the fuck did August go, anyway?, and would be diving in to the challenge two days late … Yeah.  That just seemed like a bad idea.  Instead I set my sights lower: to conjure a single spirit from the grimoire.  I, perhaps inevitably, chose Bune.  I would conjure him to bring me riches.  On a whim, having made the decision, I engraved his seal in brass.

In a sense, then, my first two weeks of the challenge were spent in preparation for that ritual.  In addition to getting my aura back into fighting shape, I needed to decide which approach to take in the conjuration.  I boiled my potentially unlimited options down to three: to perform the operation as described in the Goetia; to perform an alternate Bune ritual presented by Jason Miller(2); or to perform a ritual of my own design(3).  I turned to divination to help make the decision.  Drawing a card for each of the options, I got XIII Death, 0 The Fool, and 3 Disks “Work” respectively.  I interpreted this to mean that the Miller rite would be my best place to start, that the work would continue freestyle, and that I would eventually conclude with the Legemeton ritual.

On Day 12 of the challenge, at the Day and Hour of Jupiter, I conjured the spirit of Bune using Miller’s rite.  The ritual was very bare bones, so I made a few aesthetic alterations to account for the layout of my temple space — I made and donned the paper talisman of Bune as Miller described, and set the brass talisman in my triangle along with the obsidian sphere I use as a focus in almost all of my rituals.  I then performed the rite as Miller described, and the ritual worked as promised.

The spirit’s appearance was faint, but discernable; although I did not perceive him immediately, he made his presence known before I repeated the call.  I made my request of Bune – a sum of money from a certain source and within a certain time frame – and he (I believe) acquiesced.  I dismissed him and my circle.  I put away the brass seal in the box I bought for it.  I went about my day, flush with the afterglow of successful magic.

On Day 28, Bune appeared to me during my nightly meditations.  He informed me that by putting the brass seal in its box, I had limited his ability to act.  To quote my original notes:

He said that I had left his seal in a box too long to accomplish the task I had asked of him.  In order to procure my cash, he said, he needed his seal placed on my Jupiter altar and a candle lit for him.  I considered saying no, but part of the premise of the Miller invocation I had originally chosen is that you are building a cooperative relationship with the spirits, and that request is well within the boundaries of reasonable established by my other spirit-work.  I assented, and when I was done with my meditation I moved his seal and lit the candle as promised.  As an act of good faith, tomorrow I will put in the order for the copper seal I promised him upon his success.

I have since made good on those promises: the seal has been moved to my Jupiterian money altar, not one but two candles have been lit for him, and the copper seal has been ordered.  We’ll see how things come and go.

1 – Crowley, Aleister, and Hymenaeus Beta, eds. The Goetia: the lesser key of Solomon the King: Lemegeton–Clavicula Salomonis Regis, book one. Translated by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers. 2nd ed. York Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, 1997. It should, I hope, go without saying that the volume is Crowley’s more by reputation than by fact.

2 – Miller, Jason. The Sorcerer’s Secrets: Strategies in Practical Magick. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books, 2009.  Pages 139-142.

3 – Such a ritual would have probably been based on the conjuration circle shown to me by the spirits of Saturn.  I may yet perform it anyway.